Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda
Page 40
Devotedly
Zelda
323. TO ZELDA
TL (CC), 1 p.
November 2 1940
Dearest Zelda:
Listening to the Harvard and Princeton game on the radio reminds me of the past that I lived a quarter of a century ago and Scottie is living now. I hear nothing from her though I imagine she is at Cambridge today.
The novel is hard as pulling teeth but that is because it is in its early character-planting phase. I feel people so less intently than I did once that this is harder. It means welding together hundreds of stray impressions and incidents to form the fabric of entire personalities. But later it should go faster. I hope all is well with you.
With dearest love,
1403 N. Laurel Avenue
Hollywood, California
324. TO ZELDA
TL (CC), 1 p.
November 9 1940
Dearest Zelda:-
Got into rather a fret about Scottie last week, which however came out all right. She went to the infirmary with grippe and then in spite of my telegrams to everyone there including the dean, Scottie and the infirmary itself, darkness seemed to close about her. I could get no information. Her weekly letter was missing. As I say, it turned out all right. She had been discharged and was probably out of town but I wrote her a strong letter that she must keep me informed of her general movements not that I have any control over them or want any because she is after all of age and capable of looking after herself but one resents the breaking of a habit and I was used to hearing about her once a week.
I’m still absorbed in the novel which is growing under my hand— not as deft a hand as I’d like but growing.
With dearest love always
1403 N. Laurel Ave.
Hollywood, Calif.
325. TO SCOTT
[November 1940]
ALS, 4 pp.
[Montgomery, Alabama]
Dear D. O.
Thanks for the money: I am always glad to be able to buy postage stamps and pay for a look at these bright autumn skies. The back yard is punguent of dead leaves and many summers long merged in time: if it rains, sometimes, I will plant poppies for next spring and scratch around a little through the beds for lilly-bulbs. It is such lovely weather.
Meantime, its grand to know that your book progresses. I have been trying to write a short story: it comes so easy that I am a [little] suspicious. May I send it to you for your approval before I send it off? Although you may not like it, and may find it moralistic, it conveys a message that I would be most grateful to put across: that the story of life is of far deeper implication in religious terms.
Meantime, I dont do anything. Every now and then I call on Red Ruth (who is still terribly sick and incapacitated); Livye and I went to a show at the auditorium; every now and then a stranger pops up—but its been a long time since I lived here and most of my friends as long since swall[ow]ed up by a system, hither or yon. I go to church on Sundays at the Holy Comforter where I was baptized; and attend whatever prayer meetings there are.
I am eternally grateful to still have Mamma: a lone and middle-aged woman is a far pleasanter spectacle when merged in her traditions. To a man, I suppose the pressure of life is always supposed to be paramount but to a woman the poignancy of personal desirability is almost inescapably paramount.
It makes me sad to lose forever, in recapturing, the scenes of my youth. Most of us had rather always be children or at least always have the security + affection of a big family—
Devotedly
Zelda
326. TO ZELDA
TL (CC), 1 p.
November 16 1940
Dearest Zelda:
I’m sitting listening to Yale-Princeton, which will convince you I spend all my time on the radio. Have had to lay off coco-cola hence work with an attack of avitaminosis whatever that is—it’s like a weight pressing on your shoulders and upper arms. Oh for the health of fifteen years ago.
I’d love to see anything you write so don’t hesitate to send it. I got the doctor’s bill which has been paid today. I liked Scottie’s little sketch, didn’t you?
With dearest love
1403 N. Laurel Ave.
Hollywood, Calif.
327. TO SCOTT
[November 1940]
ALS, 2 pp.
[Montgomery, Alabama]
Dear D. O.—
Thanks for the money again—now that winter is here coal + gas + all the persuasions that a new season has to offer also exact their toll. Mamma’s little house is so sunshine-y and so full of grace; the moated mornings remind me of twenty-five years ago when life was as full of promise as it now is of memory. There were wars then, and now, and, I suppose, as much Time as ever awaited its utilization: but the race had more gallantry at that time and the more romantic terms in which we took life helped us through. People are beginning to realize that there’s no alternative to the truth now, and facing issues with the stern countenance of an indeed, necessitated and imperative righteousness—that is, those with the good sense to be seeking salvation. There are still lots, I know who still find that it would be too awful to have to “believe it”—
I missed Scotties article: because I [k]new of it only through your letter; then the week was gone and it was too late: Have you a copy that I might see? I thought the thing last summer was very bright and engaging and promising:57 and want her to write her novel—It’s good practise at living if unprofitable otherwise.
Rosalind + Newman will be over for Mammas birthday: the 23[rd]—and I am looking forward to a happy reunion
Devotedly
Zelda
328. TO ZELDA
TLS (CC), 1 p. November 23 1940
Dearest Zelda:
Enclosed is Scottie’s little story—she had just read Gertrude Stein’s Melanctha on my recommendation and the influence is what you might call perceptible.
The odd thing is that it appeared in eastern copies of the New Yorker and not in the western, and I had some bad moments looking through the magazine she had designated and wondering if my eyesight had departed.
The editor of “Collier’s” wants me to write for them (he’s here in town), but I tell him I’m finishing my novel for myself and all I can promise him is a look at it. It will, at any rate, be nothing like anything else as I’m digging it out of myself like uranium—one ounce to the cubic ton of rejected ideas. It is a novel a la Flaubert without “ideas” but only people moved singly and in mass through what I hope are authentic moods.
The resemblance is rather to “Gatsby” than to anything else I’ve written. I’m so glad you’re well and reasonably happy.
With dearest love,
Scott
P.S. Please send Scottie’s story back in your next letter—as it seems utterly impossible to get duplicates and I shall probably want to show it to authors and editors with paternal pride.
1403 N. Laurel Ave.
Hollywood, California
329. TO SCOTT
[Late November 1940]
ALS, 2 pp.
[Montgomery, Alabama]
Dear Scott:
We have been en fête and with gala all week. Mamma was 80 on Saturday and Rosalind and Newman came over from Atlanta to bring us a good many happy reasons for having as many birthdays as possible. All of us bought a new rug and chair covers; and lots of people sent flowers and little pretty things. Tilde sent Mamma a beautiful new radio: which it is beginning to seem, may be our sole means of communication with California. I meant: the Texas floods are raging and your letter hasn’t penetrated, but I suppose that it will show up in time.
Everything pursues its own ends and skies stay warm + beneficent—though winter time always leaves many vagrant nostalgias and a sense of more supply than demand of Time and of the portentousness of the weather.
Hope the book is getting along auspiciously—and that yourself and your job are prospering.
Zelda
330. TO SCOTT
[November/December 1940]
ALS, 2 pp.
[Montgomery, Alabama]
Dear Scott:
The money arrived; and is now largely in circulation. Thank you— I cant see what becomes of it, which is perhaps an iconoclastic habit of mine.
Mamma sends thanks for the congratulations: the birthday still resolves itself through these long sunshiny days into a great many new and as yet vagrant possessions and a house-full of flowers. One must have quite a few very definitive opinions at eighty; and a definite sense of accomplishment at having breathed, and pursued the effort, so consistently. “My Own Ends” still lead me far and wide but I do what I am able of what I would like and give daily prayers of gratitude for such a pleasant roof and such very “relevant” bounties—
Scottie seems to be having a good time. She writes tales of glamour[ou]s pilgrimadges hither + yon; and we are looking forward to seeing her at Christmas. Wouldn’t it be too superior if we had a little cottage somewhere where she could put her last years theses and her next years hats—
Devotedly
Zelda
331. TO ZELDA
TL (CC), 1 p.
December 6 1940
Dearest Zelda:
No news except that the novel progresses and I am angry that this little illness has slowed me up. I’ve had trouble with my heart before but never anything organic. This is not a major attack but seems to have come on gradually and luckily a cardiogram showed it up in time. I may have to move from the third to the first floor apartment but I’m quite able to work, etc., if I do not overtire myself.58
Scottie tells me she is arriving South Xmas day. I envy you being together and I’ll be thinking of you. Everything is my novel now—it has become of absorbing interest. I hope I’ll be able to finish it by February.
With dearest love,
1403 N. Laurel Ave.
Hollywood, Calif.
332. TO ZELDA
TL (CC), 1 p.
December 13 1940
Dearest Zelda:
Here’s why it would be foolish to sell the watch. I think I wrote you that over a year ago when things were very bad indeed I did consider pawning it as I desperately needed $200., for a couple of months. The price offered, to my astonishment was $20., and of course I didn’t even consider it. It cost, I believe $600. The reason for the shrinkage is a purely arbitrary change of taste in jewelry. It is actually artificial and created by the jewelers themselves. It is like the Buick we sold in 1927—for $200.—to come back to America in ’31 and buy a car of the same year and much more used for $400. If you have no use for the watch I think it would be a beautiful present for Scottie. She has absolutely nothing of any value and I’m sure would prize it highly. Moreover she never loses anything. If you preferred you could loan it to her as I think she’d get real pleasure out of sporting it.
The novel is about three-quarters through and I think I can go on till January 12 without doing any stories or going back to the studio. I couldn’t go back to the studio anyhow in my present condition as I have to spend most of the time in bed where I write on a wooden desk that I had made a year and a half ago. The cardiogram shows that my heart is repairing itself but it will be a gradual process that will take some months. It is odd that the heart is one of the organs that does repair itself.
I had a letter from Katherine Tye the other day, a voice out of the past. Also one from Harry Mitchell who was my buddy at the Barron G. Collier Advertising Agency. And one week from Max Perkins who is keen to see the novel and finally one from Bunny Wilson who is married now to a girl named Mary McCarthy who was an editor of the New Republic. They have a baby a year old and live in New Canaan.
I will write you again early next week in time for Christmas.
Dearest love,
P.S. I enclose the letter from Max, in fact two letters only I can’t find the one that just came. They will keep you au courant with the publishing world and some of our friends.
1403 N. Laurel Ave.
Hollywood, Calif.
333. TO ZELDA
TL (CC), 1 p.59 December 19 1940
Dearest Zelda:
This has to be a small present this year but I figure Scottie’s present as a gift to you both and charge it off to you accordingly.
I am very anxious for Scottie to finish this year at college at least, so please do not stress to her that it is done at any inconvenience. The thing for which I am most grateful to my mother and father are my four years at Princeton, and I would be ashamed not to hand it on to another generation so there is no question of Scottie quitting. Do tell her this.
I hope you all have a fine time at Christmas. Much love to your mother and Marjorie and Minor and Nonny and Livy Hart and whoever you see
Dearest love,
1403 N. Laurel Avenue
Hollywood, California
EPILOGUE
Happily, happily foreverafterwards—the best we could.
—ZELDA TO SCOTT, AUGUST 1936
On Saturday, December 21, 1940, Scott, who had been following the Princeton football games on the radio, settled down into his chair to read about the team in the alumni magazine. Sheilah Graham, who had been his companion for the last two years, was also reading, curled up on the sofa nearby. By all accounts, Scott was happy. No longer drinking, he had settled into a warm and comfortable domestic routine with Sheilah. He was proud of Scottie, and pleased that he could provide her with the kind of education that had meant so much to him at Princeton. Over the last decade, he had learned to live with the grief that Zelda’s illness created, and he took solace in knowing that she, too, had settled into familiar domestic rituals and had her mother and sisters to care for her. Her letters reassured him that she found pleasure in her mother’s house, in its garden and flowers, and in the little southern town in which she had been raised. Most gratifying of all, Scott’s new novel, The Last Tycoon, was going well; out of the thirty episodes he had charted, he had completed seventeen. But that afternoon, Scott stopped reading, stood up, seemed to reach for the mantel, then fell onto the floor. When Sheilah returned after running for help, Scott was dead.
Scott had wanted to be buried near his father and the Keys and the Scotts in the cemetery of St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Rockville, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C. After a brief viewing in Hollywood, his body was sent by train to Baltimore. But because he was no longer a practicing Catholic, church authorities denied permission to lay Scott to rest in St. Mary’s cemetery. An Episcopal minister officiated and he was buried in Rockville Union Cemetery instead. His funeral was attended by only about thirty people, including Scottie, a few of her Baltimore friends, the Obers, Gerald and Sara Murphy, Maxwell Perkins and his family, Scott’s favorite cousin, Cecilia Taylor, and his brother-in-law Newman Smith. Zelda was too ill to be there, and Sheilah tactfully mourned her loss in private.
After Scott’s death, Zelda lived intermittently between her mother’s home and Highland Hospital, to which she returned during periods of relapse. In November of 1947, Zelda returned to the hospital for the last time. At midnight on March 10, 1948, the building in which she lived caught fire, and Zelda and eight other patients perished in the flames. Her body was so badly burned that it could only be identified by her slipper, which was found beneath her. Zelda was buried beside her husband on St. Patrick’s Day.
But the story does not end there. In 1975, the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington overruled the earlier decision and the Fitzgeralds’ remains were moved and reinterred in St. Mary’s Church cemetery. The inscription on their stone bears the final words of The Great Gatsby: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Those who visit the Fitzgeralds’ grave today might remember what Scott and Zelda themselves said about a final resting place when any thought of death was but an imaginative projection into the future. As a young woman of nineteen, very much in love with life and with Scott, Zelda
wrote to him enthusiastically in 1919:
Why should graves make people feel in vain? I’ve heard that so much . . . but somehow I can’t find anything hopeless in having lived—All the broken columnes and clasped hands and doves and angels mean romances—and in an hundred years I think I shall like having young people speculate on whether my eyes were brown or blue. . . . I hope my grave has an air of many, many years ago about it—Isn’t it funny how, out of a row of Confederate soldiers, two or three will make you think of dead lovers and dead loves. . . .
Scott liked this description so much he used it nearly verbatim in his first novel, This Side of Paradise. But later he created an affectionate vision of his own about his and Zelda’s grave. After visiting Zelda in the hospital in Baltimore in late September 1935, Scott wrote to a friend:
It was wonderful to sit with her head on my shoulder for hours and feel as I always have, even now, closer to her than to any other human being. . . . And I wouldn’t mind a bit if in a few years Zelda + I could snuggle up together under a stone in some old graveyard here. That is really a happy thought + not melancholy at all. (Life in Letters 290–291)
The Fitzgeralds’ lives were unduly short; and they were tragic, but tragic in the best sense—in the sense that the human heart possesses hopes, dreams, aspirations, and infinite longings that cannot be fulfilled, but the great souls among us continue to desire and strive and work for these things despite all obstacles and failures. Therefore, their tragedy, while it does indeed evoke pity and fear, also inspires admiration and courage. The tragic view is ultimately an affirming one, urging us to love life and to desire it both because of and in spite of its persistent losses.
F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, in the love that they shared and the suffering they endured, in their commitment to each other, their daughter, and their talents, and in the wealth of novels, stories, essays, paintings, and letters they produced in their short lives, have bequeathed to us and to subsequent generations a rich storehouse of intelligence, humor, loyalty, courage, and grace.