Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda
Page 31
Of course, it can be arranged for you to go home for your birthday in July, but meanwhile there is another small complication which I thought you might agree with me would best be handled there in Asheville. A letter or two ago, Scottie told me that several doctors had told her that she has a chronic appendix (not acute) that should be taken care of sometime during this vacation. She wants to go to Baltimore for the graduation of her old schoolmates from Bryn Mawr School. (as you remember she skipped a year when she went to Walker’s and is a year ahead of them) But those of the girls, Claire Eager and others with whom she feels very close ties and I imagine she will want to stay there a week or ten days and then my idea is that she might come South to Asheville and have her appendix out in the same hospital where I had my broken shoulder set.
I am sure there is an excellent surgeon there. Either you can inquire from Dr. Carroll or I can get in touch with that bone man, E. T. Saunders who set my shoulders or Dr. Ringer. The hospital seemed very modern and well equipped and it is now such a minor operation, as you know, that I would feel no worry on the subject. I don’t want to bring her out here in June (I think it ought to be gotten over here and now) and if Scottie let slip a thing like that it is probably more important than she said and I don’t think it would upset you—and I think one of us should be near her at a time like that.
I don’t intend to inform her of this decision for a week, so I wish you would think the matter over and answer this letter airmail. Naturally, I don’t want anything to upset you and I can have it done in New York where I am sure that Ann[e] Ober would be glad to oversee the matter, but it would seem nicer if you could be able to visit her during those seven or eight days of recuperation which I seem to remember those operations require. Let this be the test. If the idea frightens you write me frankly that you’d rather I take care of the situation. If on the contrary, you read this much without getting flustered, I don’t think it would be any special strain on you.
No more news at present as I am getting back to work, but please get me off an answer to this as soon as you’ve had a chance to dwell on the matter yourself for an hour or so and perhaps consult someone you trust.
Ever devotedly,
P.S. Remember don’t write this to Scottie. I’d rather more or less, spring it on her a couple of days before it happens because it might worry her through her exam period which is now in full flush and throw a little pall over her Baltimore adventure.
5521 Amestoy Avenue
Encino, California
227. TO SCOTT
[Early June 1939]
ALS, 2 pp.
[Highland Hospital, Asheville, North Carolina]
Dearest D. O.
I will be able to see Scottie everyday; there is a very good boarding house on the corner of this street, with good food, where she can spend the ten days of inactivity that will be necessary for recuperation.
I’m, needless to say, distressed, but am of your advice: an appendix is a very minor operation, and I will not be seriously alarmed. I am most deeply grateful to be able to have her near me; and will do everything I can to make the stay as entertaining as the situation affords.
Dr. Suitt very kindly telephoned Dr. Saunders; and through the hospital I can make arrangements: the Ashville Mission is the name of the hospital.
I’m mostly concerned about you because I know your proclivity to disregard physical observances that ought to be kept. However, I can but acknowledge that what one is unable to do anything about is better endured with equanimity than in a furor. So I am completely dependable, temperamentally; and trust that you’ll soon be rosier than roses itself.
* * *
It’s very good to know that at least Scottie will have a sense of parents available in times of stress; and I’m grateful that you thought of Ashville—
Dearest, take care of yourself.
Zelda
228. TO ZELDA
TL (CC), 1 p.
[Encino, California] June 8, 1939
Dearest Zelda:-
I have two letters from you, one the airmail in regard to Scottie’s operation and the other evidently posted before you had received mine. While she is in Baltimore I am having a recheck by my old friend, Dr. Louis Hamman. I gather that she has had several “attacks”. On the other hand, I want to be absolutely sure that the operation is imperative. I tell you this because though she will come to Asheville in any case—I think you’d better not make absolute arrangements until I get the report from Dr. Hamman. She reaches Baltimore today the 8th (unless she stays over a day with Harold Ober or someone else in New York) and I should get the report from Dr. Hamman about the 15th or 16th—that is a few days before she is due to arrive in Asheville. I will airmail you immediately and then you can clinch whatever arrangements you find advisable.
Remember, I will take care of the business of notifying her, breaking the news by airmail as soon as I hear how long she expects to remain in Baltimore. I am glad, just as you are, that since this seems to be necessary, you will be able to be at her side.
I am awfully sorry about the news concerning your mother. This seems to be a big year for illness in our family. I shall certainly plan for you to go down to see her around your birthday time as soon as the matter of Scottie’s visit—with or without operation is disposed of. Perhaps if by chance Dr. Hamman doesn’t think the operation advisable we can think up some combination scheme.
In the meantime I see from your last letter you were still worried about my health. Only last night I saw the doctor who tells me that I am already 60% better (I quote him exactly) than I was a month ago—and during that time I have blocked out a novel, completed and sold a story to Collier’s Magazine15 and over half finished what will be a two-parter for the Saturday Evening Post—so you see I cannot possibly be very sick. What is the matter with me is quite definite and quite in control—the cause was overwork at the studios, and the cause being removed the illness should decrease at a faster rate than that at which it was contracted.
I am sitting outdoors as I dictate this and the atmosphere has just a breath of the back country planes [plains] in it, dry and hot though the surrounding landscaped gardens are green and cool, very different from Asheville mountains, but I never had your gift for seeing nature plainly and putting her into vivid phrasing so I am afraid I can’t explain to you exactly what kind of country it is until you come here and see. Now Hollywood seems far away though it is just over the mountains and you seem very near always.
Devotedly,
229. TO ZELDA
TL (CC), 1 p.
June 13, 1939
Dearest:-
Will write you at length in a day or so. For a special reason (concerning a 14 year old daughter of my doctor) I want to know the name of the book that you used to read going between Wilmington and Philadelphia to ballet class. The book on “art”. It is stored with the rest of the library in Baltimore and it would be almost impossible for Mrs. Owens to dig it out so I want another copy. I mean that tan book—it might have been called “The Art and Craft of Drawing.” I remember that it had a tan cover with a drawing embossed on it, but you may even remember the name of the author.
Would you airmail me this information as soon as you can?
Dearest love.
5521 Amestoy Avenue
Encino, California
230. TO ZELDA
TL (CC), 1 p.
[Encino, California] June 17, 1939
Dearest:-
Just a note to tell you that Scottie should be there the 20th. On that day I will have the final check from Baltimore about whether or not she needs the operation and you can make final arrangements or cancel them.
Will let you know Tuesday by telegram. In haste. With dearest love,
231. TO SCOTT
[c. June 20, 1939]
ALS, 2 pp.
[Highland Hospital, Asheville, North Carolina]
Dearest Scott:
Scottie arrived, lovelier than I hav
e ever seen her and apparently reconciled to the time in Ashville. We saw the rhododendrum parade and climbed a mountain-side; have had a tennis match and a swim. It is so good to have her here; and to find her so completely charming a companion.
The sun blazes, the heavens are auspicious and the mountain are en fête.
Today, we are going to have a blood-count taken, play golf and make arrangements at the Ashville Mission for Scotties entrance[;] needless to say I will wire you any more definite information or any change of advice. Dr. Suitt said he thought on my instigation of course it might be possible to arrange two week[s] in Alabama together as soon as the recuperative period is over. Wont you write him following your own advice? It will be so happy to have a little time to-gether away from the obligeance of so many—no-matter-how good—regulations. We might even try Saluda, if you will give Dr. Suitt the authority for allowing me time away from the hospital.
We think of you; and entertain ourselves and enjoy the summer days. I like Ashville better every year. Since Scottie has started a novel, and a months rest of tennis and loafing (after the excitement of the past few years, during which time her life has been as closely packed as possible) dont you think a country hotel in Saluda or Bryson City would be a very pleasant prospect for a month? We can bicycle, and swim and tennis + golf, and strike up a very profitable acquaintance; and I would be most grateful for the arrangement
Devotedly Zelda
232. TO SCOTT
[June 1939]
ALS, 4 pp.
[Highland Hospital, Asheville, North Carolina]
My Dearest Scott:
The hospital phoned this evening that Scottie rests well; is not very ill from the ether and is established as a successful case. I saw her this morning before she went into the operating room. She was very brave and cheerful—and prettier than I’ve ever seen her. So I’m glad everything was all right.
We’ve had some happy times: swimming and dawdling and vaguely planning. Scottie is writing a novel. I still think that if you would arrange with this hospital for us to spend the two weeks of her recuperation in Saluda or somewhere we would be very happy at swimming and tennis and getting beat into the scrubby-pine clad hillsides by the sun “en vacances.”
However, Mamma writes that she now suffers considerably with her leg, still cant leave the house and has had to get somebody in to look after her cooking which is quite an admission of defeat from Mamma. Needless to say, short of serious inconvenience, I want to see her sometime this summer. People her age do not survive the rigors of pain and Alabama heat in summer; and I grow restive that I am unable to offer what resources I have to the many enterprizes where they would be of service.
Saluda, with a nurse, would still be less expensive than hospitalization. I’m sure we could be very happy in Alabama. Those lazy summers are so fragrant of endless Time and Eternities of people and seasons waiting and the young people were very hospitable to Scottie.
If you feel that the heat would be ill-advised after her illness, maybe you’re right. Since there arent any plans for her summer, and since there’s nothing more gratifying or of a deeper urgency than the parental obligation, I wish that you would ask the doctors to let me have a month or as long as possible with her.
We both like swimming, at which she is become far above average. We both enjoy tennis at which she is now awfully good and much improved and we had a good time dubbing around a golf course here one day. I will phone Mrs. Flinn16 and find out if there arent some available acquaintances; and maybe Noonie17 knows some youth about the hillside.
Dr. Suitt has been more than kind. We’ve had many pleasant excursions and happy hours together; but it isnt the same as knowing that one is free to come and go without particular authorizations.
Dr. Suitt made the arrangements about the operation, and I am most deeply obliged to him for his courtesies if you want to mention it in your letters.
Don’t worry about Scottie. She’s fine, has never been prettier, and is as interesting and as agreeable a companion as one could want outside her virtues as progeny.
Take care of yourself. Scottie and I think of you, lament our expense account and trust that you will not exhaust yourself on our account—because we are far more in favor of having a good family and the happiness and warmth of human relationships than we are of any luxury that would have to be provided at the cost of such.
Devotedly
Zelda
233. TO SCOTT
[June 1939]
ALS, 2 pp.
[Highland Hospital, Asheville, North Carolina]
Dearest Scott:
The flowers you sent Scottie are a white radiance: gladioli and some little feathery other things. Her room was a gala effect to-day; which makes it far nicer to be an invalid: when one is appropriate.
The nurse says that she is a most exemplary patient. It gives me the greatest pleasure to go in to see her every day. I take her things and look on and am very happy to have her here. She is always so redolent of many happy times and the good things of life.
People at this Hospital have been most considerate and have done so many nice things: telephoning, and rememberring. I expect that Scottie will be able to leave the hospital by next Monday. We will recuperate in as gentle a fashion as is prescribed. I wish that we could spend ten days in Saluda[,] watch Time loaf up and down the dusty streets and listening to the trains whistle.
Meanwhile, the pictures appearred and I am very proud and grateful about this, especially since it appears on the editorial page. I’m sure we could sell some pictures if we could have a show.
Scottie is writing a book: won’t you send her Stevensons Art of Writing, or something to give her an idea of how much more there is to such than appears to the layman? Also, if you located The Art + Craft of Drawing: would it be asking too much that you send me a copy? Books of such particular implications would probably have to be orderred in Ashville—
Devotedly
Zelda
234. TO SCOTT
[July 1939]
ALS, 4 pp.
[Highland Hospital, Asheville, North Carolina]
Dearest Scott:
We are distressed at the seriousness of your illness. I have known since we were to-gether in New York that your lung was in as precarious an estate as is supportable; and was glad of the little money that you had saved ahead. It is very distressing that lungs do not get better:
Although Southern California is probably beneficial to tuberculosis, this part of the world is far more conducive to healing such illness. Why dont you come East as soon as you are able and see what can be done by the more attenuate sun of Tryon Valley. Almost anything could be cured amongst such timeless vineyards and amidst these sun-drenched rocks.
It is regrettable not to be able to [offer] you more than words of sympathy at such a time when some manifestation of our devotion would be so welcome.
—Scottie is very pleasantly established. No matter where she was, she would be unable to lead a very active life until the month is out. I have supper with her and spend the late afternoons planning and felicitating myself on having her near. Yesterday she went to an awfully nice bridge party; and to-day we’re taking two girls to lunch. We’ll be away over the week-end, and next week will no doubt pass as pleasantly as this. So please dont picture us perishing remote from civilization or bereft of any human contact. When Scottie is able to swim and play tennis, or golf, this will be a very pleasant life again.
Here is the board-bill. We still never have any money although we are very conservative on the subject. In any case, I have no alternative to spending the least possible and leaving the circumstance to your own discretion. Needless to say, I wouldn’t even consider stretching matters to the extent of Alabama this summer, or until the pressure of so many unadvantageous circumstance has lessenned. I am more than happy to have Scottie here, and she seems to have made the adjustment to a life less entertaining than is her “habitude” with a very goo
d will. It is so happy an estate to be on terms of intimacy again. We discuss things. She feels very badly about your illness, and is seriously disposed to be of whatever help that she is able.
My own resources are not as propitious as they might have been. Rosalind telegraphs rather desultorily that she wont be able to get up here till later, and Mamma isnt coming at all. Marjorie and Noonie are in Saluda. I wish there were more to contribute.
I am so sorry that you are sick.
Devotedly
Zelda
235. TO SCOTT
[July 1939]
ALS, 4 pp.
[Highland Hospital, Asheville, North Carolina]
Dearest D. O:
It is so happy to have Scottie near me. We’ve been cake baking and reconstituting all sorts of domestic adventures from the past. The boarding house is a very friendly affaire covered with vines and steeped, somehow, in the aura of uncatalogued memories, and Scottie is very comfortable—needless to say it is with the greatest pleasure that we have supper to-gether and loaf through the summer afternoons. Recuperatively speaking, there couldnt be many better places.