Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise (69 page)
Read Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise Online
Authors: Sally Cline
Then a younger doctor, Harry Murdoch, made a small
breakthrough
and persuaded Zelda to talk to him.
88
She told him she intended to kill herself, a remark that returned her to twenty-
four-hour
observation. Finally a glimmer of improvement occurred in her self-confidence, and she was allowed home some weekends. She saw Scottie, now twelve, who was preparing for summer camp. ‘When I kissed her good-bye the little school-child scent of her neck and her funny little hesitant smile broke my heart. Be good to her Do-Do.’
89
Scott had thought that lifting the ban on Zelda’s writing might help her. While working on a film script of
Tender
he wrote to Elgin, saying he had been mistaken about not allowing Zelda to write serious fiction. Now he recognized that Zelda ‘grew better in the three months at Hopkins where it was allowed’.
90
Zelda begged to be allowed to write another novel. Scott, still uneasy, tried instead to persuade Perkins to accept a proposal for a book of Zelda’s short stories and essays.
91
Excitedly Zelda planned the book jacket then, without warning, suffered another collapse,
became inaccessible, unco-operative, occasionally violent. There was no question of her writing.
In July Rosalind suggested Scott consult Minnie Sayre and the family about Zelda. On 19 July Scott angrily responded, marking the letter ‘Not to be mailed. File only’: ‘I am not going to call your mother into consultation nor have I ever called anybody into consultation on this problem except trained technicians who are dealing with it.’ When he had telephoned Rosalind and Newman from Switzerland it was merely to have a family member aware of his actions. To suggest his conclusions were influenced by drink was as absurd as to think that Grant’s campaigns were influenced by the fact that he used stimulant. ‘Whenever I handle the case by myself it goes well; Whenever I … tell you about it I run into that same old Puritanism that makes drinking unmoral, that makes all thinking done with the help of a drink invalidated and I am put down to a level of a person whose opinion can’t be trusted and that reaches the doctors … they get confused … it all has to start over again.’
Scott insisted, ‘Mrs Sayre is an old woman … you are irreparably prejudiced against me … It must all be left to me.’
92
His job was to ‘reconstruct a broken egg shell’ that was Zelda’s mind; he had Scottie to think of, and he consistently ran up against obsolete family prides such as were shown over Anthony’s death when the real facts were concealed from him. He appreciated Rosalind’s help with Scottie but ‘on the problem of Zelda you are completely blinded, even I accuse you of being purposely blinded’.
93
Scott’s relationship with the Sayres never recovered from that summer’s series of confrontational letters. His bad mood infected Zelda, who occasionally rebelled. Bill Warren, a Baltimore friend who had worked with Scott on the
Tender
film script, recalled a scene at Pratt when Scott refused to play tennis with Zelda and asked him to substitute. Zelda acted as if Scott ‘were backing out of the honeymoon’, said Bill. Scott ignored her and climbed into the high referee’s chair, so Zelda retaliated by stripping as she played. ‘After the first point, Zelda took off her sweater … after the second point, she … unhooked her bra and tossed it away. Still Scott remained silent. After the third point, Zelda’s short white tennis skirt dropped like a hoop at her feet. After the fourth she freed herself from her panties. I was playing with a stark naked woman.’
94
Warren said when you play tennis with a naked woman while her husband watches coolly, you try not to look at her! Scott never
intervened
, even when hospital attendants arrived, bound her in a cold wet-pack and carried her off, screaming hysterically.
Christmas 1934, spent with Scott and Scottie, was one of Zelda’s unhappiest. On Christmas Eve Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas visited the Fitzgeralds. Scott insisted that Zelda show Stein her paintings then, without consulting his wife, invited Stein to choose what she would like. Stein chose two oils already promised by Zelda to her doctor. Though Scott tried to persuade Zelda that her art would become famous if hung on the rue de Fleurus apartment walls, Zelda would not budge. Stein was forced to select
Tulips,
an oil, and
Crossing
Roses,
a drawing. A few days later Scott wrote to Stein: ‘It meant so much to Zelda giving her a tangible sense of her own existence, for you to have liked two of her pictures enough to want to own them.’
95
There was no truth in this: being compelled to give, not even sell, two paintings to a woman she disliked meant nothing but frustration to Zelda. This interchange with Scott’s friends in Baltimore set Zelda back. On her return to Pratt in the new year her condition was so grave she was again placed in isolation.
Throughout 1935 her condition was designated as suicidal. She took in almost no news from the outside world. But news there was. While the Murphys’ son younger Patrick was still gravely ill,
suddenly
in March their other son, fifteen-year-old Baoth, died of spinal meningitis.
96
At the end of his memorial service at St Bartholomew’s in Manhattan, Sara Murphy rushed out of the church cursing God. She never fully recovered.
Two months later Mencken wrote: ‘My dear Scott, Poor Sara, I fear, is now gravely ill – in fact, the chances that she will recover seem to be very remote. After all her long and gallant struggles she has developed meningitis, and the doctors tell me that the outlook is virtually hopeless. You can imagine my state of mind.’
97
Zelda’s Montgomery friend and fellow writer Sara Haardt, who had been typing throughout fevers and sickness all spring, died in Johns Hopkins on 31 May, leaving Mencken bereft and Zelda one less Southern ally. Two terrible deaths had occurred in Zelda’s close circle, but she neither noticed nor responded.
1
Scott had loans from his mother, a loan from Scribner’s at 5 per cent against possible screen rights, advances from Ober. Without another generous boost – a $4,000 Scribner’s
advance on the hardcover – his finances would have been shakier still. $6,000 of his year’s income was withheld to pay off some of his debts to his publishers. The rest was given to Ober who gave Scott money as and when needed.
2
ZSF
, ‘Show Mr and Mrs F. to Number –’,
Collected
Writings,
p. 431.
3
FSF
to John Palmer, 12 Feb. 1934,
CO
187, Box 51, Folder John Palmer,
PUL
.
4
ZSF
to
FSF
, no date,
CO
187, Box 42, Folder 63,
PUL
;
FSF
,
Tender,
p. 138.
5
ZSF
to
FSF
, no date,
CO
187, Box 42, Folder 63,
PUL
;
FSF
,
Tender,
p. 139.
6
ZSF
to
FSF
, no date,
CO
187, Box 42, Folder 50,
PUL
;
FSF
,
Tender,
p. 138.
7
FSF
, General Plan and Sketch for
Tender,
CO
187, Boxes 9–10,
PUL
.
8
Bleuler’s report of 22 Nov. 1930,
CO
745, Box 1, Folder 2,
PUL
.
9
In his General Plan and Sketch
FSF
lists: ‘A. Accounts B. Baltimore C. Clinics and clipping. D. Dancing and 1st Diagnoses E. Early Prangins – to Feb. 1931 F. From Forel (include Bleuler Consultation) H. Hollywood L. Late Prangins M. My own letters and comments R. Rosalind and Sayre Family S. Squires and Schedule V. Varia’.
10
ZSF
, Phipps Clinic, Feb.–Mar. 1934, quoted in Milford,
Zelda,
p. 286.
11
Virginia Durr said that in later years Minnie Sayre confided to her that the Judge came to her bedroom and she locked him out. Some researchers have taken this as evidence that he might have turned to one of his daughters if he was refused sexual relations by his wife. This, together with Fitzgerald’s creation of a heroine based partly on Zelda who is raped by her father, accounts for a flurry of incest rumours. But this author found no definite supporting evidence for this allegation and many interviewees in Montgomery refuted the idea.
12
FSF
to
ZSF
, 26 Apr. 1934,
Life
in
Letters,
pp. 256–7.
13
ZSF
, Phipps Clinic, Feb.–Mar. 1934, Milford,
Zelda,
p. 286.
14
Ibid.
15
As in ‘Babylon Revisited’. Mayfield,
Exiles,
pp. 211–12.
16
It is the image of his father as moral touchstone which Scott uses for the ‘honor, courtesy and courage’ by which Dick Diver holds himself together until he is forced to realize he has betrayed those very qualities.
17
Wilson to Malcolm Cowley, 1951, Wilson,
Letters
on
Literature
and
Politics,
p. 254.
18
FSF
, General Plan and Sketch for
Tender
Is
The
Night.
19
John Peale Bishop to
FSF
, Dec. 1933/Jan. 1934,
PUL
.
20
Robert Benchley to
FSF
, 29 Apr. 1934, reproduced in
Romantic
Egoists,
ed. Bruccoli
et
al.,
p. 201.
21
Thomas Wolfe to
FSF
, Mar. 1934, reproduced in ibid., p. 201.
22
Archie MacLeish to
FSF
, reproduced in ibid., p. 200.
23
Dr C. J. Slocum, born Rhode Island 1873, trained at Albany.
24
This became ‘Show Mr and Mrs F. to Number –’, published in
Esquire,
May–June 1934.
25
The book was of course
Tender
Is
The
Night.
ZSF
to
FSF
, two letters,
c.
Mar. (author’s dating) 1934.
26
Slocum to
FSF
, 19 Mar. 1934,
CO
745, Box 1, Folder 1,
PUL
.
27
FSF
to Slocum, 22 Mar. 1934; Slocum to
FSF
, 19 Mar. 1934, ibid.
28
ZSF
to
FSF
,
c
. Mar. (author’s dating) 1934,
CO
187, Box 44, Folder 34,
PUL
; telegram, 12 Mar. 1934.
29
Slocum to
FSF
, 26 Mar. 1934,
CO
745, Box 1, Folder 1,
PUL
. Zelda’s schedule had been: 7.30 bath; 8.00 breakfast; 9.00–10.00 writing; 10.30–1.00 craft-painting; 1.00–1.30 lunch; 1.30–5.30 outdoor activities – golf, tennis, swimming, riding; 5.30–6.00 prepare for dinner; 6.00–6.30 dinner; 6.30–7.00 rest; 7.00–7.30 bridge, drawing, painting, reading; 9.30–10.00 room and bed (schedule not followed Saturday or Sunday). Slocum insisted on inserting rest periods instead of mental activities.
30
ZSF
to
FSF
, Mar. 1934; Apr. (author’s dating) 1934,
CO
187, Box 44, Folders 35, 24,
PUL
.
31
Cary Ross to
FSF
, 26 Aug. 1932,
CO
187, Box 53, Folder 9,
PUL
. Ross, a Yale graduate and would-be poet whom Fitzgerald had mentored, had stayed with Stieglitz at Lake George in 1932.
32
ZSF
to
FSF
,
c.
early Mar. 1934.
33
ZSF
to
FSF
, Mar. 1934,
ZSF
,
Collected
Writings,
p. 470.
34
Mayfield,
Exiles,
p. 208.
35
Hines was Associate Professor of Anatomy at Johns Hopkins Medical School.
36
I agree with Kendall Taylor’s suggestion that Zelda’s retreat into madness was the way she enabled herself to ‘breathe freely’.
Sometimes
Madness,
p. 13.
37
FSF
to Slocum, 22 Mar. 1934,
CO
745, Box 1, Folder 1,
PUL
.
38
Zelda recalled Diaghilev’s theory that art should shock the emotions. ‘A person certainly could not walk about that exhibition and maintain any dormant feelings.’
ZSF
, letter about the O’Keeffe exhibition at An American Place, Feb./Mar. 1934,
CO
183, Box 6, Folder 6,
PUL; ZSF
. ‘Show Mr and Mrs F. to Number –’,
Collected
Writings,
p. 431.
39
It is possible also to link the way Zelda filled the picture plane with luminous
watercolour
washes, which seem to float freely through her pictures without defining lines, to her comment about Paris when she was already ill but had not recognized it: ‘there was a new signifigance to everything: stations and streets and façades of buildings – colors were infinite, part of the air, and not restricted by the lines that encompassed them and lines were free of the masses they held’.
ZSF
to
FSF
, late summer 1930,
CO
187, Box 42, Folder 52,
PUL
.
40
Antheriums
was probably painted the year before her exhibition. Zelda had written Dr Rennie a series of letters from Craig House decorated with writhing swelling flower shapes, in colours of decayed flesh. They too showed the anthropomorphic potent aura of O’Keeffe’s flowers. Montgomery art dealer Louise Brooks later described Zelda’s
Japanese
Magnolias,
drawn at this time, with its bubbles and foetus shapes as looking ‘like an abortion’ (Brooks to Carolyn Shafer, interview, 27 Aug. 1993). Impasto is paint applied thickly so that the brush marks are evident. One of Zelda’s nurses at Highland Hospital, Mary Parker, saw this kind of brushwork as an extension of her illness. She said it was like a visual interpretation of the term ‘ruminating’ in psychiatry. ‘It’s going over and over things in your head. Her painting was like that to me – using the brush over and over’ (Parker to Shafer, interview, 15 July 1993). Shafer is very informative about the
relationship
between O’Keeffe and Zelda as painters. Shafer, ‘To Spread a Human Aspiration’, 1994.
41
Original list of paintings: 1.
White
Anemones
(priced at $250); 2.
Red
Poppies
($200); 3.
White
Roses
($200); 4.
Laurel
($150); 5.
Vestibule
($300); 6.
Dancer
($175); 7.
Chinese
Theater
($200); 8.
Spectacle
($300); 9.
Football
($250); 10.
Chopin
($125); 11.
Afternoon
($175); 12.
Portrait
in
Thorns
($200); 13.
Portrait
of
a
Russian
($200). Additional paintings: 14.
Nude
($300); 15.
Russian
Stable
($175); 16.
Tulips;
17.
Ballet
Figures
($250). Original list of drawings: 1.
Spring
in
the
Country
($15); 2.
The
Plaid
Shirt
($15); 3.
The
Cornet
Player
($15); 4.
Ferns
($15); 5.
Au
Claire
[
sic
]
de
la
Lune
($15); 6.
Forest
Fire;
7.
Girl
on
a
Flying
Trapeze
($15); 8.
Two
Figures
($15); 9.
Red
Death
($15); 10.
La
Nature
($15); 11.
Etude
Arabesque;
12.
Two
People
($25); 13.
Feuét
é
($25); 14.
Pallas
Athene
($50); 15.
Study
of
Figures
(pencil, $12). Additional drawings: 16.
Crossing
Roses
;
17.
Diving
Platform
($15); 18.
Red
Devil
($15). The additional paintings and drawings may have been those shown separately at the Algonquin.
42
Diving
Platform
is sometimes called
Swimmer
on
a
Ladder.
43
Mabel Dodge Luhan sent Ross from New Mexico a bid for
Portrait
in
Thorns,
but when her offer was refused because Zelda had said earlier she did not want to sell it, she bought
Red
Death.
Though Scott and Ross could have done with another large sale,
Portrait
in
Thorns
was never sold. Cary Ross to
FSF
, 4 May 1934,
CO
187, Box 53, Folder 9,
PUL
.
44
Seldes, typed note, 12 Sep. 1933.
45
Gerald Murphy to Milford, 2 Mar. 1964, Milford,
Zelda,
p. 290.
Chinese
Theater
is also known as
Chinese
Acrobats.
46
ZSF
to
FSF
,
c
. Apr. 1934.
47
Honoria Murphy Donnelly, conversations with the author, summer 1998 and 1999. When Dick Knight visited Zelda in Montgomery in 1940 he was able to buy it. James K. Moody, current owner of the painting, believes it was left in the gallery and was later shipped to Montgomery. According to Moody, when Knight died of alcohol poisoning in 1948 his ex-wife, from whom he was divorced in 1940, put his possessions in storage. After her death her two daughters gave the painting to her executor godson Claude Kemper, who sold the painting to Sotheby’s, New York. They sold it to Moody. Kemper told Moody that Knight’s wife knew how enamoured Richard was of Zelda and that on several
occasions
he broke away to go and see her (James Moody in conversation with the author, 28 Nov. 1999 and 27 Aug. 2001).
48
Tom Daniels lived near Scott in St Paul, gave him rides to St Paul Academy and attended
the Baker dancing classes with him. He carried the manuscript of
This
Side
of
Paradise
to Scribner’s.
49
Jane O’Connell and Mr A. K. Mills, who had helped put the exhibition together, received two drawings, each valued at $25:
Two
People
and
Feu
é
t
é
(which is possibly a pun on the ballet term Fouetté).
50
Arabesque
is listed in 1942 at Zelda’s exhibition of watercolours and drawings at Montgomery Women’s Club.
51
Dorothy Parker to Milford, 26 Aug. 1964, Milford,
Zelda,
pp. 290–1.
52
John Biggs Jnr to Milford, 9 June 1963, ibid., p. 291.
53
James Thurber, ‘Scott in Thorns’,
The
Reporter,
17 Apr. 1951.
54
Parker attempted suicide when her affair with Charles MacArthur broke up.