Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise (58 page)
Read Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise Online
Authors: Sally Cline
In August Scott suggested he and Zelda should visit the Murphys. On arrival, as Scott told their good friend Alice Lee Myers, ‘Scotty + the little Murphys begin to glare as soon as they’re in a radius of a hundred yards from each other,’
95
but only one
incident
literally clouded the waters, taking place, inevitably, in a
bathroom
. The children’s nurse put bath salts in Scottie’s bath water. Scottie, thinking it had been used to bathe all the Murphy children, complained to her parents. Scott, fearing Patrick had used it, made a scene, which he used later in
Tender.
Zelda, however, found the Murphys’ ambience healing.
On 15 September 1931 Zelda was released from Prangins. Her case was summarized as a ‘reaction to her feelings of inferiority (
primarily
towards her husband)’. She was said to have had ambitions which were ‘self-deceptions’ and ‘caused difficulties between the couple’. Her prognosis was favourable as long as all conflicts could be avoided.
96
Scott summarized his thirty-fourth year: ‘A Year in Lausanne. Waiting. From Darkness to Hope.’
97
Excitedly they drove to Paris, then, after four and a half years abroad, they returned to America permanently. A photo of Zelda on board the
Aquitania,
ironically labelled ‘Recovered’, shows her as tense, coarse-skinned and ugly. She looks ten years older than thirty-one.
Briefly they paused in Washington, saw Ring in New York and then headed for Montgomery. They began a new sleepy Southern life of tennis, golf, old friends and house-hunting.
98
They settled on 819 Felder Avenue in the prestigious Cloverdale district. The house was half-shingled, with a rose garden at the side and in the front yard an exquisitely scented magnolia tree, whose pink blossoms still bloomed seventy years later when their house became the Scott and Zelda Museum. They acquired a bloodhound called Trouble, a white Persian called Chopin, a black couple called Freeman and Julia to cook and clean, and sent Scottie, now almost ten, to the Margaret Booth School. By October Scott was bored; even Zelda felt out of place amongst Southern women with small horizons. She gave one friend Faulkner’s new novel
Sanctuary
to wake her up.
What they did most of the time was write. Scott worked furiously on
Tender,
hardly noticing that Zelda, intent on new stories, was also planning a novel. She was about to move into his professional
territory
.
1
These three stories were among the set of Zelda’s stories submitted to Ober that were subsequently lost. ‘Drouth’ is sometimes spelt ‘Drought’.
2
FSF
to
MP
,
c.
8 July 1930,
Dear
Scott/Dear
Max,
p. 166.
3
MP
to
FSF
, 5 Aug. 1930, ibid., p. 168.
4
FSF
to
MP
,
c.
1 Sep. 1930, ibid., p. 169.
5
ZSF
to
FSF
, late summer 1930,
CO
187, Box 42, Folder 52,
PUL
.
6
ZSF
to
FSF
, Aug./Sep. 1930,
CO
187, Box 42, Folder 60,
PUL.
7
ZSF
to
FSF
, late summer 1930,
CO
187, Box 42, Folder 52,
PUL.
8
Ibid.
9
FSF
to
MP
,
c
. 20 July 1930,
Life
in
Letters,
p. 186.
10
MP
to
FSF
, 5 Aug. 1930,
Dear
Scott/Dear
Max,
p. 168.
11
Wilson to
FSF
, 8 Aug. 1930, Wilson,
Letters,
pp. 201–2.
12
FSF
to
MP
,
c
. 20 July 1930,
Life
in Le
tters,
p. 186.
13
Katy Smith had introduced Hadley to Hemingway. Katy became a close friend of Pauline Hemingway too.
14
Dos Passos,
Best
Times,
pp. 209–10.
15
They also gave up their Paris apartment and sold their boat
Honoria.
However, in October Zelda heard that with Murphian style they had built a new seagoing schooner 27 metres long to use as a floating villa and Mediterranean classroom for their children.
16
Zelda wrote seven pages in French. The following quotations are from the translation used in Nancy Milford,
Zelda,
pp. 174–6.
17
Zelda’s reference to the salamander, the domestic deity that Plato said could pass unscathed through fire, is an allusion to Owen Johnson’s 1914 bestseller
The
Salamander
which Zelda read. The play based on it starring Nathan’s girlfriend Ruth Findlay (which opened at the Harris Theatre, New York, 23 Oct. 1914), came to Montgomery when Zelda was in her junior year at Sidney Lanier High School. The heroine, Dore Baxter, sees herself as an extraordinary woman who like Zelda adores precipices, danger and the
forbidden
and has a desire to experience everything. For a useful account see Taylor,
Sometimes
Madness,
p. 5.
18
ZSF
to
FSF
, Sep. 1930,
CO
187, Box 42, Folder 66,
PUL
.
19
ZSF
to
FSF
,
c.
Sep. 1930 (author’s dating), co187, Box 42, Folder 67,
PUL.
20
FSF
to Dr Oscar Forel,
c.
summer 1930 (author’s dating), co187, Box 49, Folder 2A,
PUL
.
21
ZSF
to
FSF
,
c.
July 1930 (author’s dating),
CO
187, Box 42, Folder 64,
PUL.
22
FSF
to Forel, summer? 1930,
Life
in
Letters,
pp. 196–7.
23
ZSF
to
FSF
, June/July? 1930,
CO
187, Box 42, Folder 53,
PUL
.
24
FSF
to Forel, summer? 1930,
Life
in
Letters,
p. 197.
25
She had seen her mother accept poverty and family illnesses with stoicism. Her adult resignation is the more interesting because as an adolescent Zelda had rebelled against the Southern female training that was a crash course in self-denial.
26
ZSF
to
FSF
,
c.
July 1930 (author’s dating on grounds of handwriting, notepaper, internal evidence), col 87, Box 42, Folder 53,
PUL.
27
Mayfield,
Exiles,
pp. 161–2.
28
ZSF
to
FS
F
, n.d.,
c.
summer/fall 1930,
ZSF
,
Collected
Writings,
pp. 458–9.
29
FSF
, Five Year Consultation Record (from middle of 7th year of marriage), Craig House medical records,
CO
745, Box 1, Folder 2,
PUL.
30
Wet packs involved patients being tightly rolled in wet cold sheets. Wrapped over these was a blanket to reduce loss of body heat. This treatment aimed to calm ‘uncooperative’ patients. Edmund Wilson told Zelda he had only just survived hydrotherapy and nearly became addicted to paraldehyde in Clifton Springs sanatorium. Spinal douches or hydrotherapy, introduced by Jacques Charcot, had been used since 1890 in French
hospitals
for hysteria. Cold water jets violently applied to the spine to agitate the
neurovascular
structure often caused tissue damage.
31
The drug lithium which has salt as one component is a good example, for it is used to control manic depression cycles by correcting chemical imbalance.
32
He also finished ‘A Snobbish Story’.
33
‘One Trip Abroad’,
Afternoon
of
An
Author,
ed. Mizener, p. 161.
34
ZSF
to
FSF
,
c.
Aug./Sep. 1930,
CO
187, Box 43, Folder 19,
PUL.
35
ZSF
to
FSF
, probably mid-Aug. possibly early Sep. 1930,
CO
187, Box 42, Folder 59,
PUL.
36
ZSF
to Scottie,
c
. summer 1930,
CO
183, Box 4, Folder 14,
PUL
.
37
FSF
to Haardt and Mencken, 18 Oct. 1930,
PUL
, copy lent by Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore.
38
Scott had already met Wolfe in July. In September they met in Montreux, Vevey and Geneva. Scott also took a trip to Paris in fall 1930 to meet Wolfe after his 1929 success,
Look
Homeward
Angel.
Wolfe turned Scott into Hunt Convoy in
You
Can’t
Go
Home
Again.
Scott liked Wolfe but Wolfe was suspicious of Scott.
39
FSF
, Ledger, Aug. 1930. Bruccoli (
Epic
Grandeur,
p. 364) suggests that Scott started
sleeping
with other women to counter Zelda’s accusations of homosexuality. As it was Zelda he wished to convince of his heterosexuality, and as he never told Zelda about his affairs, this seems unlikely. But Scott provoked Zelda’s anger by admitting he took Emily Vanderbilt out in Paris. Rebecca West saw Scott and Emily at Armenonville. West said Scott ‘was leaning towards her, sometimes caressing her hands.’ Donaldson,
Fool
for
Love,
p. 56.
40
Bijou’s real name was Violet Marie. A French nurse gave her the nickname. The
daughter
of a Calvinist Scot Sir Francis Elliot, in 1920 she married Lieut. Edmund O’Conor, a professional naval officer from Dunleer, County Louth, Ireland. She accompanied him to China, learnt Chinese expertly, stayed with him until he contracted TB and died of disease in 1924. She had one son Michael whom she abandoned.
41
Scott deluded himself the binges were a way of escaping his pain.
42
Bijou O’Conor, taped interview,
Bijou
O’Conor
Remembers
Scott
Fitzgerald,
Audio Arts, London, 1975.
43
FSF
to Forel, 29 Jan. 1931,
Life
in
Letters,
pp. 205–6.
44
FSF
, report on Zelda’s mental state Oct. 1930 – Feb. 1931, Five Year Consultation Record,
CO
745, Box 1, Folder 2,
PUL
.
45
Rosalind Sayre Smith to
FSF
, 21 Nov. 1930,
CO
187, Box 53, Folder 14A,
PUL.
46
ZSF
to Rosalind,
c.
summer 1930,
CO
183, Box 5, Folder 11,
PUL
.
47
FSF
, Five Year Consultation Record,
CO
745, Box 1, Folder 2,
PUL.
48
Forel, 15 Oct. 1930, quoted in Milford,
Zelda,
p. 179.
49
Forel to
FSF
, 16 Nov. 1930,
CO
187, Box 49, Folder 2A,
PUL
(orig. in French, translated by Marion Callen and the author).
50
Dr Irving Pine to the author, 1998, 1999.
51
FSF
to judge and Mrs A. D. Sayre, 1 Dec. 1930,
Life
in
Letters,
p. 202.
52
He died in 1939.
53
Forel to Milford, 6 May 1966, Milford,
Zelda,
p. 179.
54
On 9 March 1966 Forel told Milford that schizophrenia had been his original assessment. But on 18 May that same year he acknowledged to Milford that privately he had later changed his diagnosis (Milford,
Zelda,
p. 161n.). Sara Mayfield, who also later talked to Forel, said that the doctor had been reluctant to diagnose Zelda as schizophrenic because she did not manifest enough of the stereotyped schizophrenic thoughts and actions (
Exiles,
p. 153).
55
Dr Irving Pine to the author 1998, 1999. Some doctors have thought that had Zelda been treated twenty years later her diagnosis might have been ‘manic depression’. Others have felt that even if the diagnosis had been schizophrenia, the tranquillizing effects of certain drugs might have been beneficial in controlling acute illness or preventing relapses.
56
Forel to Milford, 6 May 1966, Milford,
Zelda,
p. 179.
57
In 1930–31
FSF
sold seventeen stories. In 1931 he earned $37,599.
58
Résumé of the consultation with Professor Bleuler and Doctor Forel, 22 Nov. 1930. Craig House medical records,
CO
745, Box 1, Folder 2,
PUL
. Translated from French by Marion Callen in conjunction with author.
59
Ibid.
60
Ibid.
61
It was the first of two similar programmes on which Zelda was placed in two hospitals aimed at changing ‘inappropriate’ feminine behaviour into something nearer the
conventional
wifely model of the era. Like other women of her time including Vivien
Haigh-Wood
(wife of T. S. Eliot), Jane Bowles, Sylvia Plath, and her friend Sara May field, Zelda’s failure to live up to a traditional feminine role was to some extent buried within a
diagnosis
of mental disorder. Many women like Zelda, who were artists or married to artists, who were unwilling or unable to conform, whose behaviour or speech did not fit approved family patterns, were administered remedies or ‘cures’ in mental asylums that were often a method of containing them for long periods of time.
62
Résumé of Bleuler/Forel consultation, 22 Nov. 1930,
CO
745, Box 1, Folder 2,
PUL.
63
FSF
to Judge and Mrs A. D. Sayre, 1 Dec. 1930,
Life
in
Letters,
p. 203.
64
ZSF
to
FSF
, fall 1930,
CO
187, Box 42, Folder 65,
PUL
.
65
ZSF
to Newman Smith, late summer 1930 (author’s dating),
CO
187, Box 43, Folder 21,
PUL.
66
ZSF
to
FSF
, Nov. 1930 (author’s dating),
CO
187, Box 43, Folder 10,
PUL.
67
ZSF
to Forel,
c.
Nov. 1930,
CO
183, Box 5, Folder 3,
PUL.
68
Named after the Murphys’ daughter.
69
In later life Scottie herself, always close to Rosalind, had admitted she would have liked it but Scott never countenanced it.
70
ZSF
to Scottie, Oct/Nov.? 1930 (author’s dating),
CO
183, Box 4, Folder 10,
PUL
.
71
ZSF
to Scottie, spring 1931,
CO
183, Box 4, Folder 17,
PUL
.
72
ZSF
to Scottie, Oct./Nov.? 1930 (author’s dating),
CO
183, Box 4, Folder 10,
PUL.