Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated)

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

  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.

  Scott

  To Ernest Hemingway

  14 rue de Tilsitt

  Paris, France

  Postmarked November 30,1925

  Dear Ernest:

  I was quite ashamed of the other morning. Not only in disturbing Hadley, but in foisting that — alias — upon you. However it is only fair to say that the deplorable man who entered your apartment Saturday morning was not me but a man named Johnston who has often been mistaken for me.

  Zelda, evidences to the contrary, was not suffering from lack of care but from a nervous hysteria which is only relieved by a doctor bearing morphine. We both went to Belleau Wood next day to recuperate.

  For some reason I told you a silly lie - or rather an exaggeration - silly because the truth itself was enough to make me sufficiently jubilant. The Saturday Evening Post raised me to $2750 and not $3000, which is a jump of $750.00 in one month. It was probably in my mind that I could not get $3000 from the smaller magazines. The Post merely met the Hearst offer, but that is something they seldom do.

  What garbled versions of the McAlmon episode or the English orgy we lately participated in I told you, I don’t know. It is true I saved McAlmon from a beating he probably deserved and that we went on some wild parties in London with a certain Marchioness of Milford Haven whom we first met with Tallulah Bankhead. She was about half royalty, I think. Anyhow she was very nice - anything else I may have added about the relations between the Fitzgeralds and the house of Windsor is pure fiction.

  I’m crazy to read the comic novel. Are you going to the Mac- Leishes’ Tuesday? I hope Hadley is well now. Please believe me that we send our best wishes to Ernest M. Hemingway.

  Scott

  Villa St Louis

  Juan-les-Pins

  August or September, 1926

  Dear Ernest:

  Sorry we missed you and Hadley. No news. I’m on the wagon and working like hell. Expect to sail for N.Y. December 10th from Genoa on the Conte Biancamano. Will be here till then. Saw bullfight in Fréjus. Bull was euneuch (sp.). House barred and dark.

  Front door chained. Have made no enemies for a week. —

  domestic row ended in riot. Have new war books by Pierrefeu. God is love.

  Signed, Ernestine Murphy

  Did you read in the N.Y. Herald about ‘... Henry Carpenter, banker, and Willie Stevens, half wit,...’

  Villa St Louis

  Juan-les-Pins

  Fall, 1926

  We were in a back-house in Juan-les-Pins. Bill had lost control of his sphincter muscles. There were wet MaFins in the rack beside the door. There were wet Eclaireurs de Nice in the rack over his head. When the King of Bulgaria came in, Bill was just firing a burst that struck the old limeshit twenty feet down with a splat-tap. All the rest came just like that The King of Bulgaria began to whirl round and round.

  The great thing in these affairs -’ he said.

  Soon he was whirling faster and faster. Then he was dead.

  At this point in my letter my 30th birthday came and I got tight for a week in the company of such fascinating gents as Mr Theodore Rousseau and other ornaments of what is now a barren shore.

  Ernest of little faith, I hope the sale of ‘The Killers’ will teach you to send every story either to Scribners or an agent. Can’t you get Today Is Friday’ back? Your letter depressed and rather baffled me. Have you and Hadley permanently busted up, and was the necessity of that what was on your soul this summer? Don’t answer this unless you feel like it. Anyhow I’m sorry everything’s such a mess and I do want to see you if you come to Marseille in October.

  We saw the--- — s before they left, got stewed with them (at their party) - that is we got stewed - and I believe there was some sort of mawkish reconciliation. However they’ve grown dim to me and I don’t like them much any more. — s too have grown shadowy - he’s so nice, but she’s a club woman at heart and made a great lot of trouble in subtle ways this summer. We saw — the day she left and the huge Garoupe standing desolate, and her face, and the pathetic bales of chiclets for the Garoupe beach in her bedroom are the strongest impression I have left of a futile and petty summer. It might all have happened at Roslyn, Long Island.

  Swimming’s almost over now. We have our tickets for America December 10th on the Conte Biancamano - we’ll spend the winter in New York. — was here with his unspeakably awful wife.

  He seems anemic and washed out, a memory of the past so far as I’m concerned.

  I’m glad as hell about the story and I hope it’s the first of many. I feel too much at loose ends to write any more tonight Remember - if I can give you any financial help let me know.

  Always your friend,

  Scott

  I had a lot more to say but it’s 3:30 A.M. and I’ve been working since 11 this morning and it’s very hazy. Have you read The Spanish Farm and Sixty-four, ninety-four! by Mottram? Wonderful war books. Much better than Ford Madox Ford. In fact the best thing I’ve read this summer. Met your cousin from Princeton!

  Villa St Louis Juan-les-Pins

  December, 1926

  Dear Ernest:

  We leave this house Tuesday for Genoa and New York. I hope everything’s going better for you. If there is anything you need done here as in America - anything about your work, or money, or human help under any head - remember you can always call on Your devoted friend,

  Scott

  S.S. Conte Biancamano

  En route New York

  Postmarked December 23, 1926

  Dear Ernest:

  Your letter depressed me - illogically because I knew more or less what was coming.

  I wish I could have seen you and heard you, if you wished, give some sort of version of what happened to you. Anyhow I’m sorry for you and for Hadley and for Bumby and I hope some way you’ll all be content and things will not seem so hard and bad.

  I can’t tell you how much our friendship has meant to me during this year and a half - it is the brightest thing in our trip to Europe for me. I will try to look out for your interests with Scribners in America, but I gather that the need of that is past now and that soon you’ll be financially more than on your feet.

  I’m sorry you didn’t come to Marseille. I go back with my novel still unfinished and with less health and not much more money than when I came, but somehow content, for the moment, with motion and New York ahead and Zelda’s entire recovery - and happy about the amount of my book that I’ve already written.

  I’m delighted with what press I’ve already seen of The Sun, etc. Did not realize that you had stolen it all from me but am prepared to believe that it’s true and shall tell everyone. By the way I liked it in print even better than in manuscript.

  1st printing was probably 5000. 2nd printing may mean that they’ve sold 4500 so have ordered up 3000 more. It may mean any sale from 2500 to 5000, tho.

  College Humor pays fine. No movie in Sun Also unless book is big success of scandal. That’s just a guess.

  We all enjoyed ‘La vie est beau avec Papa.’ We agree with Bumby.

  Always yours affectionately,

  Scott

  Write me care of Scribners.

  Hotel RooseveltWashington, D.C.

  March, 1927

  Dear Ernest:

  A line in terrible haste. Lunched with Mencken in Baltimore yesterday. He is just starting reading The Sun, etc. - has no recollection of having seen ‘BigTwo-Hearted River’ and admits confusion about two In Our Times. Got him to say he’d pay you $250.00 for anything of yours he could use. So there’s another market.

  Told him about how you were going to beat him up. He’s a ‘peach of a fellow’ (no irony; just a slip of the pen). He’s thoroughly interested and utterly incapable of malice. Whole thing was simply rather sloppy, as he’s one of the busiest men in America.

 
The Killers’ was fine.

  Your devoted friend,

  Scott

  Ellerslie

  Edgemoor, Delamare

  Postmarked April 18, 1927

  Dear Ernest:

  Your stories were great (in April Scribners). But like me you must beware Conrad rhythms in direct quotation from characters, especially if you’re pointing a single phrase and making a man live by it ‘In the fall the war was always there but we did not go to it any more’ is one of the most beautiful prose sentences I’ve ever read.

  So much has happened to me lately that I despair of ever assimilating it - or forgetting it, which is the same thing.

  I hate to think of your being hard up. Please use this if it would help. The Atlantic will pay about $200.00, I suppose. I’ll get in touch with Perkins about it when he returns from vacation (1 week). Won’t they advance you all you need on the book of stories? Your title is fine by the way. What chance of your crossing this summer? My novel to be finished July1st.

  With eager and anxious good wishes,

  Scott

  Address for a year - EllerslieMansion, Edgemoor, Delaware. Huge old house on Delaware River. Pillars, etc. I am called ‘Colonel.’ Zelda ‘de old Missus.’

  Ellerslie Edgemoor, Delaware

  November, 1927

  Dear Ernest:

  Thousands will send you this clipping. I should think it would make you quite conscious of your public existence. It’s well meant - he praised your book a few days before.

  The book is fine. I like it quite as well as The Sun, which doesn’t begin to express my enthusiasm. In spite of all its geographical and emotional rambling, it’s a unit, as much as Conrad’s books of Contes were. Zelda read it with fascination, liking it better than anything you’ve written. Her favorite was ‘Hills Like White Elephants,’ mine, barring ‘The Killers,’ was ‘Now I Lay Me.’ The one about the Indians was the only one that left me cold and I’m glad you left out ‘Up in Michigan.’ They probably belong to an earlier and almost exhausted vein.

  ‘In the fall the war was always there but we did not go to it any more.’ God, what a beautiful line. And the waking dreams in ‘Now I Lay Me’ and the whole mood of ‘Hills Like.’

  Did you see the pre-view by that.... Rascoe who obviously had only read three stories but wanted to be up to the minute?

  Max says it’s almost exhausted 7500 - however that was five days ago. I like your title - AH the Sad Young Men Without Women - and I feel my influence is beginning to tell. Manuel Garcia is obviously Gatsby. What you haven’t learned from me you’ll get from Good Woman Bromfield and soon you’ll be Marching in the Van of the Younger Generation.

  No work this summer but lots this fall. Hope to finish the novel by1st December. Have got nervous as hell lately - purely physical but scared me somewhat - to the point of putting me on the wagon and smoking denicotinized cigarettes. Zelda is ballet dancing three times a week with the Phila Symphony - painting also. I think you were wise not jumping at Hearst’s offer. I had a contract with them that, as it turned out, did me unspeakable damage in one way or another. Long is a sentimental scavenger with no ghost of taste or individuality, not nearly so much as Lorimer for example. However, why not send your stories to Paul Reynolds? He’ll be glad to handle them and will get you good prices. The Post now pays me $3500 - this detail so you’ll be sure who’s writing this letter.

  I can’t tell you how I miss you. May cross for 6 weeks in March or April. The Grandmothers * was respectable but undistinguished, and are you coming home? Best to Pauline. With good wishes and affection,

  Scott

  Ellerslie, Edgemoor, Delaware

  December, 1927

  Dear Ernest:

  Perkins sent me the check for 800 bits (as we westerners say), indicating, I hope, that you are now comfortably off in your own ascetic way. I am almost through my novel, got short and had to do three Post stories but as I am now their pet exhibit.... to the tune of 32,000 bits per felony it didn’t take long to come to the surface.

  (This tough talk is not really characteristic of me - it’s the influence of AH the Sad Young Men Without Women in Love.) Louis Golding stepped off the boat and said you and I were the hope of American Letters (if you can find them) but aside from that things look black, ‘old pard’ - Brommy is sweeping the West, Edna Ferber is sweeping the East and Paul Rosenfeld is sweeping what’s left into a large ornate waste-basket, a gift which any Real Man would like, to be published in November under the title, The Real Leisure Class, containing the work of one-story Balzacs and poets so thin-skinned as to be moved by everything to exactly the same degree of mild remarking.

  Lately I’ve enjoyed Some People, Bismarck (Ludwig’s), Him (in parts) and the Memoirs of Ludendorff. I have a new German war book, Die Krieg Against Krieg, which shows men who mislaid their faces in Picardy and the Caucasus - you can imagine how I thumb it over, my mouth fairly slithering with fascination.

  If you write anything in the line of an ‘athletic’ story please try the Post or let me try them for you, or Reynolds. You were wise not to tie up with Hearst’s. They are absolute bitches who feed on contracts like vultures, if I may coin a neat simile.

  I’ve tasted no alcohol for a month but Xmas is coming.

  Please write me at length about your adventures - I hear you were seen running through Portugal in used B.V.D.S, chewing ground glass and collecting material for a story about boule players; that you were publicity man for Lindbergh; that you have finished a novel a hundred thousand words long consisting entirely of the word ‘balls’ used in new groupings; that you have been naturalized a Spaniard, dress always in a wine-skin with ‘zippervent and are engaged in bootlegging Spanish Fly between St Sebastian and Biarritz where your agents sprinkle it on the floor of the Casino. I hope I have been misinformed but, alas!, it all has too true a ring. For your own good I should be back there, with both of us trying to be good fellows at a terrible rate. Just before you pass out next time think of me.

  This is a wowsy country but France is illegible and I hope to spend March and April, or April and May, there and elsewhere on the continent.

  How are you, physically and mentally? Do you sleep? ‘Now I Lay Me’ was a fine story - you ought to write a companion piece, ‘Now I Lay Her.’ Excuse my bawdiness but I’m oversexed and am having saltpeter put in my Pâté de Foie Gras au Truffles Provençal.

  Please write news. My best to Pauline - Zelda’s also to you both. God will forgive everybody - even Robert McAlmon and Burton Rascoe.

  Always afftly,

  Scott

  Ellerslie

  Edgemoor, Delaware

  Postmarked December 28,1928

  Dear Ernest:

  I’m terribly sorry about your trouble. I guess losing parents is just one of the things that happens to one in the thirties - every time I see my father now I think it’s the last time.

  Thank Pauline for the really beautiful Xmas card. It was great to have you both here, even when I was intermittently unconscious.

  I send you what may be news, and what a nice precedent for beating up Mencken. Saw the Murphys for an hour in New York. We’re sailing March 1st and I hope to have the novel here. (Confidential about sailing though, until I’m sure - won’t go unless novel’s finished.) Ring thought you were fine - he was uncharacteristically enthusiastic.

  I’m bored and somewhat depressed tonight so I won’t continue. Oh, yes -I met old H. Stearns just before leaving Paris and feeling drunk and Christ-like suggested a title to him, ‘Why I Go On Being Poor in Paris,’ told him to write it as an informal letter to me and I’d sell it. In a burst of energy he did and I sent it to Max who wrote a check for $100.00 for it. Now Harold writes me that $100 isn’t very much (as a matter of fact it isn’t much of a letter either) and exhibits such general dissatisfaction that I think he thinks I held out on him. You’ve got to be careful who you do favors for - within a year you’ll probably hear a story that what started him on his downward pat
h was my conscienceless theft of his royalties.

  Spengler’s second volume is marvelous. Nothing else is any good - when will you save me from the risk of memorizing your works from over-reading them by finishing another? Remember, Proust is dead - to the great envy of Your crony and gossip,

  Scott

  Paris, France

  Postmarked May 17, 1929

  Dear Herr Hemophile: or ‘Bleeding Boy’ as I sometimes call you.

  Will you take salt with us on Sunday or Monday night? Would make great personal whoopee on receipt of favorable response. Send me a pneu or answer me in person, save between 3 and 7. Highest references, willing to travel - gens du monde, cultivé, sympathique cherche hôte pour dimanche ou lundi - answer because I shall probably ask Bishop, if you can come....

  God save us, Preserve us, Bless us.

  Yrs, in Xt

  Fitzg —

  12 Blvd. Eugène Gazagnaire Cannes, FranceAugust 23, 1929

  Dear Ernest:

  I’ve been working like hell, better than for four years, and now am confident of getting old faithful off before the ail-American teams are picked - hence the delay. I wrote Max (not mentioning your letter) one of those don’t- lose-your-head notes, though I, like you, never thought there was more than an outside chance of his being forced to let you down. I felt sure that if it came to a crisis he’d threaten to resign and force their hand.

  The book sticks with me, by the way; I’m sure it’s all I thought at first and can’t wait to read it in printing letters.