Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise
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21 ZSF to Biggs, undated 1943, author’s dating between 6 and 11 Oct., ibid.
22 ZSF to Biggs, undated 1943, author’s dating mid-Nov., ibid. She hoped, vainly, that she might receive cash from the sale of Scott’s books for this venture.
23 ZSF to Biggs, July/Aug. 1942 (ZSF’s emphasis), CO628, Box 2, Folder 18, PUL.
24 ZSF to Biggs, 12 Apr. 1946, CO628, Box 2, Folder 16, PUL.
25 Mayfield, Exiles, p. 282.
26 ZSF–Biggs correspondence, 8 and 12 Apr. 1946, CO628, Box 2, Folder 16, PUL. Zelda through Biggs (via Laird Blassell and Meeds of Wilmington) purchased 35 shares in Panhandle Eastern Pipeline common stock at 51¼. On 3 May 1946 she purchased 20 shares in Lane Wells at the cost of $377.55.
27 In April 1941 Zelda sent religious essays to Anna Biggs and Perkins. Once she had a revelation that Biggs would die next year. ‘Won’t you pray and thank God for his blessings and don’t die?’, she wrote anxiously (1 Sep. 1947). John Biggs lived (longer than Zelda). When his mother died Zelda consoled him: ‘Dear John, I am so sorry about your mother … The only peace now lies on the other side; many people are tired of struggling with these ungrateful horizons’ (9 Feb. 1943), CO628, Box 2, Folders 18, 17, 13, PUL. To Perkins she wrote comfortingly: ‘I brood about my friends; about their Christian virtues and their aspirational purposes and want them to find salvation. You have done so much for people and so endeared yourself … that, of course the Lord takes care of you’ (undated), CO101, Box 53, Folder Zelda Fitzgerald 1921–1944, PUL.
28 Dr Kirk Curnutt, Associate Professor of English, Troy State University, Montgomery, ‘Zelda’s Last Years: Fundamentalism and Madness’, lent to the author July 2000.
29 Rosalind Sayre Smith, quoted in Lanahan, Scottie …, p. 185.
30 Curnutt to the author, 7 July 2001 and subsequent communications.
31 Rosalind Sayre Smith to Kendall Taylor, 3 Dec. 1964.
32 ZSF to Biggs, late Aug. 1943, CO628, Box 2, Folder 13, PUL. She wrote from Mrs Wolfe’s in Asheville where she had a room with two windows for $3.50 a week and where ‘the plumbing bears an outward semblance to modernity’. She said ‘The hospital is filling up with the old contingent of my heyday there … Also have been to the flower-show with an inmate head-nurse who was my friend.’
33 Zelda’s first letter from Highland is 13 July 1946. Five days earlier Biggs had sent Highland a cheque for $275 to cover only four weeks hospitalization. A second bill for $205.71 covered four weeks from 1 August. Biggs paid the final bill of $275. CO628, Box 2, Folder 16; Box 3, Folder 7, PUL.
34 Lanahan, Scottie …, p. 185 (author’s emphasis).
35 Quoted in Bruccoli et al., eds., Romantic Egoists, dedication; also quoted in Mellow, Invented Lives, p. 488.
36 The State of California valued his unfinished manuscript of The Last Tycoon at $5,000 and all other manuscripts at $1,000.
37 In his 1937 will FSF appointed John Biggs and Harold Ober as executors, but on 10 Nov. 1940 he crossed out Ober’s name and substituted Perkins. As this raised legal problems Perkins and Ober withdrew as executors in favour of Biggs but all three worked together to administer Scott’s literary affairs and Zelda’s and Scottie’s finances. On 12 Apr. 1941 Biggs sent Zelda her monthly interest on Scott’s life insurance policy. He had collected the amount of the policy and would invest half in Government Bonds which would bring in a small income for Zelda and Scottie. He had also stipulated that income from writings would be held in trust for them.
38 On 30 July 1941 Court of California awarded Zelda $50 a month plus $250 back-pay for the previous 5 months. On 7 Apr. 1941 Zelda efficiently wrote to Biggs to say she was applying for a war veteran’s widow’s pension. CO628, Box 2, Folder 11, PUL.
39 Biggs to ZSF, 31 Dec. 1940; ZSF to Biggs, Dec. 1940, CO628, Box 2, Folder 10, PUL.
40 ZSF to Biggs, Jan. 1941, CO628, Box 2, Folder 11, PUL. Biggs advised her about Scott’s headstone. She had wanted one engraved with Scott’s name, dates of birth and death, his college and profession, costing no more than $50. Biggs disagreed. He thought it should only say: ‘Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940 “Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest”.’
41 ZSF to Biggs, 15 Aug. 1947, CO628, Box 2, Folder 17, PUL.
42 Biggs still harboured a secret desire to be a writer, but had been on the Bench for three years. He had Chambers in Federal Buildings, Wilmington. The 3rd Circuit ran from Pennsylvania to the Virgin Islands.
43 On 7 July 1943 for instance Biggs forgot to send her July cheque. His court cases had intervened. CO628, Box 2, Folder 13, PUL.
44 ZSF to Biggs, 23 Jan. 1947, CO628, Box 2, Folder 17, PUL.
45 The typical Biggs admonishment ran: ‘I want to make it perfectly clear that the sending of this amount cannot act as a precedent and you will have to live on your income. The previous paragraph sounds very severe. It is not meant to be.’ 25 Jan. 1947, ibid.
46 ZSF to Biggs, 23 Jan. 1947, ibid.
47 ZSF to Biggs, 4 or 5 Jan. 1941, CO628, Box 2, Folder 11, PUL. She also asked him to send her rare History of the Dance and her treasured books on music and ballet. Svetlov’s History of the Dance had cost Zelda $40 in Paris.
48 Curiously, she told Biggs to send the paintings by the cheapest freight possible and uninsured (8 Jan. 1941). It took until 1943 for Biggs to send Zelda a box containing her costume jewellery and a steel file containing her ballet materials and camera.
49 ZSF to Sara and Gerald Murphy, Dec. 1940/Jan. 1941, Honoria Murphy Donnelly Collection.
50 EH to Sara Murphy, Dec. 1940, Honoria Murphy Donnelly Collection. Zelda did not hear directly from her old enemy Ernest Hemingway, but during the war she learnt of his exploits from Sara Murphy. Hemingway had been covering the closing days of battle in Europe as a Colliers correspondent when he wrote to Sara that he and Martha Gellhorn had broken up. ‘I need a wife in bed and not just in even the most widely circulated magazines.’ He was marrying someone else, ‘a girl named Mary Welsh … [who] is a great believer in bed’ (EH to Sara Murphy, 5 May 1945, Honoria Murphy Donnelly Collection). Mary, another writer, would be the first of Hemingway’s wives to stay the course.
51 For a full discussion see Vaill, So Young, pp. 314–17.
52 Zelda sent Van Vechten a mimeographed religious essay, 13 Nov. 1944, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
53 ‘I have painted … King Arthur’s round-table. Jeanne d’Arc and coterie, Louis XIV and court, Robin Hood are under way,’ she wrote Max. ‘The dolls are charming: there isn’t any reason why children shouldn’t learn while having a good time. Would you be kind enough to advise me what publishers handle such “literature”, and how to approach?’ 31 Mar. 1941, CO101, Box 53, Folder Zelda Fitzgerald 1921–1944, PUL. Perkins responded enthusiastically with several publishers’ names (3 Apr. 1941). But the paper dolls did not see publication until Esquire published some in 1960; then in 1996 Zelda’s granddaughter Eleanor Lanahan put them into book form.
54 ZSF to Scottie, undated, CO183, Box 4, Folder 63, PUL.
55 ZSF to Biggs, 9 May 1942, CO628, Box 2, Folder 12, PUL.
56 Biggs to ZSF, 19 May 1942. The Princeton University Library librarians had offered a preliminary figure of $1,000 for all Scott’s manuscripts, library files and letters from literary people. The interchange about the sale of Scott’s books and papers dragged on for months as California Counsel advised against it until the estate had been distributed. On 5 Feb. 1943 Biggs wrote that he was about to crate Scott’s library and manuscripts to send to PUL, which was not prepared to purchase them at that point but would almost certainly make Zelda an offer for them; 14 Oct. 1943 Biggs wrote that Princeton would probably pay $2,000. As far as the rest of Scott’s estate was concerned, Zelda wanted the silver sent to her for domestic use and Francis Scott Key’s table (which the Museum would keep in trust for Scottie). She instructed that everything else should be sold or given to the poor. CO628, Box 2, Folders 12,13, PUL.
57 ZSF to Biggs, 21 May 1942, CO628, Box 2, Folder 12, PUL.
58 Lanahan, Scottie …, p. 150.
59 ZSF to Anne Ober, postmarked 22 Feb. 1943. Scottie and Jack Lanahan were divorced 20 years later. They had four children, Tim, Eleanor, Jack Jnr and Cecilia. Scottie’s next partner was Clayton Fritchey, after whom she married C. Grove Smith in 1967. They divorced in 1980. Scottie died in Montgomery 15 June 1986. She was buried like her parents in Rockville, Maryland.
60 Zelda told friends that she saw Scottie as the Spirit of Truth. ‘If the dearth of hair-pins, A L Lewis’ fantasies, the eccentricities of H. L. Menken, sugartickets and the presence [of] Satan break your heart or spoil your digestion, call up Scottie.’ ZSF to Biggs, undated, 1943, CO628, Box 2, Folder 13, PUL.
61 ZSF to Biggs, 21 May 1943, ibid.
62 Brendan Gill, A New York Life, Poseidon Press, New York, 1990, p. 315.
63 Ibid.
64 ZSF to Scottie Lanahan, 26 Apr. 1946, CO183, Box 4, Folder 52, PUL. Previous biographers have intimated that Zelda was in hospital when her grandson (always called Tim) was born. This is incorrect. The Zelda-Biggs correspondence shows she was resident in Montgomery.
65 ZSF to Ludlow Fowler, undated, 1946, CO183, Box 5, Folder 4, PUL.
66 ZSF to Biggs, 8 May 1946, CO628, Box 2, Folder 16, PUL. Tim later shot and killed himself on 18 Oct. 1973 at Diamond Head Park, Honolulu.
67 ZSF to Biggs, 13 July 1946. On 22 July she wrote to Biggs again saying there wasn’t any time because ‘in the hospital, one follows an inexorable schedule calculated to rehabilitate the most battered of morales + the weariest of skepticisms’. She hoped to emerge better able to observe her social obligations than before she went in. Ibid.
68 Woodrow W. Burgess, Highland Hospital, to Scottie Lanahan at 310 West 94th Street, New York, 25 July 1946. On 1 August Biggs wrote to Zelda that the California Court would allow him to spend only $250 out of corpus for her benefit every month, so as the Highland charges were about $275 a month he would have to retain her annuity cheque of $50 a month if she stayed longer than four weeks. Zelda never received that letter: the hospital intercepted it as they had been instructed by Scottie not to tell Zelda what the hospital cost her. On 17 August Biggs replied to the hospital saying it was better Zelda knew she was not getting annuity cheques but he had no objection to the hospital withholding his letter. Yet again Zelda’s post was being tampered with and censored. CO628, Box 3, Folder 7; Box 2, Folder 16, PUL.
69 Burgess to Scottie Lanahan, 13 Sep. 1946, CO628, Box 3, Folder 7, PUL.
70 ZSF at 58 Grove Street, Asheville, to Biggs, 25 Sep. 1946, CO628, Box 2, Folder 16, PUL.
71 ZSF to Biggs, 24 Apr. 1947, CO628, Box 2, Folder 17, PUL.
72 Most extant Biggs-Zelda letters are carbons of letters typed by his secretary.
73 ZSF to Biggs, 25 Nov. 1946, CO628, Box 2, Folder 16, PUL.
74 ZSF to Biggs, 26 or 27 Jan. 1947, CO628, Box 2, Folder 17, PUL.
75 ZSF to Biggs, 28 June 1947, ibid.
76 Earlier biographers date the start inaccurately as 2 Nov. and make it a continuous stay until her death.
77 ZSF to Rosalind Sayre Smith, quoted in Taylor, Sometimes Madness, p. 356.
78 Mayfield, Exiles, p.285.
79 Dr Carroll had retired two years earlier leaving Dr Basil Bennett as medical director. Highland was now operated by Duke University.
80 Mayfield, Exiles, p. 285.
81 Early biographers say Zelda’s room was on the third floor. Ted Mitchell who has done excellent scholarly research into Zelda’s death is clear it was the fifth. The author has been to Highland and verified this. Previous biographers have also accepted that insulin patients needed to be locked in. This was questioned at the inquest.
82 Ted Mitchell, ‘I’m Not Afraid to Die’, talk given at Fitzgerald Conference, 24–27 September 1998, and in conversation with the author, 1998 and 1999.
83 Dr Bennett said firmly Zelda had been asphyxiated by noxious fumes before the flames reached her. Bennett to Kendall Taylor, 1963 and 1964; Dr Pine to Koula Hartnett, 1991.
84 Zelda’s death certificate states death by asphyxiation trapped in a burning building.
85 Dentist Dr Eugene Shapiro used X-rays of previous dental work.
86 Rosalind Sayre Smith to Highland Hospital, 14 Mar. 1948.
87 Ted Mitchell suggests that Scottie and the Sayres were too stunned to sue Highland. He confirms that Rosalind told Mrs Sayre that Zelda died in her sleep, which if asphyxiation can be considered sleep is correct. Ted Mitchell to the author, 13 Nov. 1998 and in several subsequent conversations.
88 Or the ashes believed to be hers.
89 Many of Zelda’s friends wrote to Mrs Sayre including H. L. Mencken: ‘I needn’t tell you that all of Zelda’s old Baltimore friends have been greatly shocked by her tragic death. She is verywell [sic] remembered here, and very pleasantly. My utmost sympathy to you.’ The obituaries reclaimed her as Scott’s wife or amanuensis. Time magazine described her as ‘the brilliant counterpart of the [Fitzgerald] heroines.’ The Montgomery Advertiser pointed out ‘Mrs Fitzgerald had collaborated with her husband on some of his books.’
90 Scottie Lanahan to Mrs Sayre, 19 Mar. 1948.
91 Edward Pattillo, Introduction, ‘Zelda: Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald Retrospective’, Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, 1974, p. 10.
92 ZSF/Sara Haardt interview, Ellerslie, 1928.
93 ZSF, ‘The Original Follies Girl’, Collected Writings, p. 297.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ARCHIVE MATERIAL
Princeton University Library, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections:
Zelda Fitzgerald Collection (CO183)
F. Scott Fitzgerald Collection (CO187)
F. Scott Fitzgerald Additional Papers (CO188)
John Biggs Collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald Estate papers (CO628)
Craig House Collection (CO745)
Charles Scribner’s Sons Author Files (CO101)
Eleanor Lanahan Art Archive Collection, Vermont
Cecilia Ross Collection, Pennsylvania
Sprague Family Collection, California
Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum Archives, Montgomery, Alabama
Sara Mayfield Collection, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa
H. L. and Sara Haardt Mencken Collection, Julia Rogers Library, Goucher College, Baltimore
Honoria Murphy Donnelly Collection, New York
Fanny Myers Brennan Collection, New York
Lloyd Hackl Collection, Center City, Minnesota
H. L. Mencken Collection, Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore
John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts
Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Library, Yale University
WORKS BY ZELDA SAYRE FITZGERALD
PUBLISHED WORKS
Collections
Zelda Fitzgerald: The Collected Writings, ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli, introduction by Mary Gordon, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1991; Abacus, Little, Brown & Co., London, 1993; University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, 1997
Novels
Save Me the Waltz, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1932
Short stories
‘Other Names for Roses’, Collected Writings, 1991
‘A Couple of Nuts’, Scribner’s Magazine XCII, Aug. 1932
‘The Continental Angle’, New Yorker VIII, 4 June 1932
‘Miss Ella’, Scribner’s Magazine XC, Dec. 1931
‘Poor Working Girl’, College Humor 85, Jan. 1931
‘A Millionaire’s Girl’, Saturday Evening Post CCII, 17 May 1930
‘The Girl with Talent’, College Humor 76, Apr. 1930
‘The Girl the Prince Liked’, College Humor 74, Feb. 1930
‘Southern Girl’, College Humor XVIII, Oct. 1929
‘The Original Follies Girl’, College Humor XVII, July 1929
‘Our Own Movie Queen’, Chicago Sunday Tribune, 7 June 1925
> Plays
Scandalabra, Bruccoli Clark, Bloomfield Hills MI and Columbia SC, 1980
Articles and essays
‘On F. Scott Fitzgerald’, Fitzgerald/Hemingway Annual, 1974
‘Auction – Model 1934’, Esquire II, July 1934
‘Show Mr and Mrs F. to Number –’, Esquire I–11, May–June 1934
‘Paint and Powder’, The Smart Set LXXXIV, May 1929 (originally written as ‘Editorial on Youth’ for Photoplay, 1927, but not published there)
‘Who Can Fall in Love after Thirty?’, College Humor XV, Oct. 1928
‘Looking Back Eight Years’, College Humor XIV, June 1928
‘The Changing Beauty of Park Avenue’, Harper’s Bazaar LXII, Jan. 1928
‘Breakfast’, Favorite Recipes of Famous Women, Harper & Brothers, New York and London, 1925
‘Does a Moment of Revolt Come Sometime to Every Married Man?’, McCall’s LI, Mar. 1924
‘Eulogy on the Flapper’, Metropolitan Magazine LV, June 1922
‘Friend Husband’s Latest’, New York Tribune, 2 Apr. 1922
UNPUBLISHED WORKS
Novel
Caesar’s Things
Short stories
‘Garden of Eden’ (fragment)
‘Here’s the True Story’ (story/letter)
‘Lilian Rich’ (fragment)
‘Nanny, a British Nurse’
Articles and essays
‘Autobiographical Sketch’ (written for her psychiatrists), Phipps Clinic, Johns Hopkins Hospital, 1932
‘Choreography of an Idea’ (also a second version, ‘A Good Idea’)
‘Circus Day’
‘Technically in August’
‘This Time of Year’
‘Travel/Touring/Moving About’
‘Unembellish’
“The World Angered God’
WORKS ABOUT ZELDA SAYRE FITZGERALD