Love always,
Scott
P.S. Apropos of our conversation it will interest you to know that I’ve given up politics. For two years I’ve gone half haywire trying to reconcile my double allegiance to the class I am part of, and the Great Change I believe in - considering at last such crazy solutions as the one I had in mind in Norfolk. I have become disgusted with the party leadership and have only health enough left for my literary work, so I’m on the sidelines. It had become a strain making speeches at ‘Leagues Against Imperialistic War,’ and their treatment of the Negro question finished me. This is confidential, of course.
Grove Park Inn
Asheville,
North Carolina
June 11,1935
Dearest Ceci:
By now the Result-of-an-Irresistible-Impulse will be among you. I am enclosing a check with which I hope you will buy her as much gayety as she deserves. Don’t let her go out with any sixteen-year-old boys who have managed to amass a charred keg and an automobile license as their Start-in-Life. Really I mean this. My great concern with Scottie for the next five years will be to keep her from being mashed up in an automobile accident. I love you as always - and that is no perfunctory statement. Isn’t Mother a funny old wraith? Didn’t you get a suggestion of the Witches’ Cave from several of the things that she said that night at 2400?
Always affectionately,
Scott
P.S. I mean that, about any unreliable Virginia boys taking my pet around. I will never forget that it was a Norfolk number (later drowned in the South American swamps) who gave me my first drink of whiskey. Scottie hasn’t got three sisters - she has only got me. Watch her please!
What a typist this one turned out to be!
Oak Hall
Hotel
Tryon, North Carolina
Spring, 1937
Dearest Ceci:
Zelda is at Highland’s Hospital, Asheville, N.C.
She is much much better. So am I.I stopped drinking in January and have been concentrating on other mischief, such as work, which is even duller, or seems so to me at present. But Scottie must be educated and Zelda can’t starve. As for me I’d had enough of the whole wretched mess some years ago and seen thru a sober eye find it more appalling than ever.
With dearest love always,
Scott
En route toHollywood
Postmarked July 5,1937
Dear Ceci:
Just a line about my whereabouts. I’m going out here for two years on a big contract financially. My health’s equal to it now and the movie people are convinced I’m on the wagon and worth buying.
It’s a hell of a prospect in every other way except money but for the present and for over 3 years the creative side of me has been dead as hell. Scottie is in New York; Helen Hayes and Charlie MacArthur are bringing her out to me in July. Helen isn’t working, as she has 40 more weeks as Queen Victoria on the road, so she’s keeping an eye on Scottie out here while Charlie and I work.
Could Scottie spend a few days with you in September? I think you’d like her a lot now. She took her preliminaries for Vassar this spring.
Dearest love always,
Scott
1403 North Laurel Avenue
Hollywood,
California
August 14, 1940
Dearest Ceci:
Aunt Elise’s death was a shock to me. I was very fond of her always - I was fond of Aunt Annabel and Aunt Elise, who gave me almost my first tastes of discipline, in a peculiar way in which I wasn’t fond of my mother who spoiled me. You were a great exception among mothers - managing by some magic of your own to preserve both your children’s love and their respect. Too often one of the two things is sacrificed.
With Father, Uncle John and Aunt Elise a generation goes. I wonder how deep the Civil War was in them - that odd childhood on the border between the states with Grandmother and old Mrs Scott and the shadow of Mrs Suratt. What a sense of honor and duty - almost eighteenth century rather than Victoria. How lost they seemed in the changing world - my father and Aunt Elise struggling to keep their children in the haute bourgeoisie when their like were sinking into obscure farm life or being lost in the dark boarding houses of Georgetown.
I wrote Scottie to stop by and say hello to you on her way South to see her mother next month. I would so like to see you all myself. Gigi wrote me such a nice letter from Richmond.
With dearest love always,
Scott
To Edmund Wilson
593 Summit Avenue
St Paul,
Minnesota
September 26, 1917
Dear Bunny:
You’ll be surprised to get this but it’s really begging for an answer. My purpose is to see exactly what effect the war at close quarters has on a person of your temperament. I mean I’m curious to see how your point of view has changed or not changed -
I’ve taken regular army exams but haven’t heard a word from them yet. John Bishop is in the second camp at Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indiana. He expects a ist Lieutenancy. I spent a literary month with him (July) and wrote a terrific lot of poetry mostly under the Masefield-Brooke influence. Here’s John’s latest.
BOUDOIR
The place still speaks of worn-out beauty of roses, And half retrieves a failure of Bergamotte, Rich light and a silence so rich one all but supposes The voice of the clavichord stirs to a dead gavotte
For the light grows soft and the silence forever quavers, As if it would fail in a measure of satin and lace, Some eighteenth century madness that sighs and wavers Through a life exquisitely vain to a dying grace.
This was the music she loved; we heard her often Walking alone in the green-clipped garden outside. It was just at the time when summer begins to soften And the locust shrills in the long afternoon that she died.
The gaudy macaw still climbs in the folds of the curtain; The chintz-flowers fade where the late sun strikes them aslant. Here are her books too: Pope and the earlier Burton, A worn Verlaine; Bonheur and the Fêtes Galantes.
Come - let us go -I am done. Here one recovers Too much of the past but fails at the last to find Aught that made it the season of loves and lovers; Give me your hand - she was lovely - mine eyes blind.
Isn’t that good? He hasn’t published it yet I sent twelve poems to magazines yesterday. If I get them all back I’m going to give up poetry and turn to prose. John may publish a book of verse in the spring. I’d like to but of course there’s no chance. Here’s one of mine.
TO CECILIA
When Vanity kissed Vanity
A hundred happy Junes ago,
He pondered o’er her breathlessly,
And that all time might ever know
He rhymed her over life and death,
‘For once, for all, for love,’ he said...
Her beauty’s scattered with his breath
And with her lovers she was dead.
Ever his wit and not her eyes,
Ever his art and not her hair.
‘Who’d learn a trick in rhyme be wise
And pause before his sonnet there.’
So all my words however true
Might sing you to a thousandth June
And no one ever know that you
Were beauty for an afternoon.
It’s pretty good but of course fades right out before John’s. By the way I struck a novel that you’d like, Out of Due Titne by Mrs Wilfred Ward. I don’t suppose this is the due time to tell you that, though. I think that The New Machiavelli is the greatest English novel of the century. I’ve given up the summer to drinking (gin) and philosophy (James and Schopenhauer and Bergson).
Most of the time I’ve been bored to death - Wasn’t it tragic about Jack Newlin? I hardly knew poor Gaily. Do write me the details.
I almost went to Russia on a commission in August but didn’t so I’m sending you one of my passport pictures - if the censor doesn’t remove it for some reason - It looks rather Teuton
ic but I can prove myself a Celt by signing myself
Very sincerely,
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Cottage Club
Princeton,
New Jersey
Fall,1917
Dear Bunny: —
I’ve been intending to write you before but as you see I’ve had a change of scene and the necessary travail thereof has stolen time.
Your poem came to John Biggs, my room-mate, and we’ll put it in the next number - however it was practically illegible so I’m sending you my copy (hazarded) which you’ll kindly correct and send back -
I’m here starting my senior year and still waiting for my commission. I’ll send you the Lit or no - you’ve subscribed, haven’t you?
Saw your friend Larry Noyes in St Paul and got beautifully stewed after a party he gave. - He got beautifully full of canned wrath -I don’t imagine we’d agree on much -
Do write John Bishop and tell him not to call his book Green Fruit.
Alec is an ensign. I’m enclosing you a clever letter from Town- send Martin which I wish you’d send back.
Princeton is stupid but Gauss and Gerould are here. I’m taking naught but Philosophy and English -I told Gauss you’d sailed (I’d heard as much) but I’ll contradict the rumor.
Have you read Wells’ Boon, the Mind of the Race (Doran, 1916). It’s marvelous! (Debutante expression.)
The Lit is prosperous - Biggs and I do the prose - Creese and Keller (a junior who’ll be chairman) and I the poetry. However any contributions would be etc., etc.
Young Benêt (at New Haven) is getting out a book of verse before Xmas that I fear will obscure John Peale’s. His subjects are less precieuse and decadent. John is really an anachronism in this country at this time - people want ideas and not fabrics.
I’m rather bored here but I see Shane Leslie occasionally and read Wells and Rousseau. I read Mrs Gerould’s British Novelists Limited and think she underestimates Wells but is right in putting Mackenzie at the head of his school. She seems to disregard Barrie and Chesterton whom I should put above Bennett or in fact anyone except Wells.
Do you realize that Shaw is 61, Wells 51, Chesterton 41, Leslie 31 and I 21? (Too bad I haven’t a better man for 31.1 can hear your addition to this remark.)
Oh and that awful little — (a sort of attenuated super-
fruit) is still around (ex ‘16 - now ‘17 1/2). He belongs to a preceptorial where I am trying to demolish the Wordsworth legend - and contributes such elevating freshman-cultural generalities as ‘Why I’m suah that romanticism is only a cross-section of reality, Dr Murch.’
Yes - Jack Newlin is dead - killed in ambulance service. He was, potentially, a great artist.
Here is a poem I just had accepted by Poet Lore.
THE WAY OF PURGATION
A fathom deep in sleep I lie
With old desires, restrained before;
To clamor life-ward with a cry
As dark flies out the greying door.
And so in quest of creeds to share
I seek assertive day again;
But old monotony is there -
Long, long avenues of rain.
Oh might I rise again! Might I
Throw off the throbs of that old wine -
See the new morning mass the sky
With fairy towers, line on line -
End each mirage in the high air
A symbol, not a dream again!
But old monotony is there -
Long, long avenues of rain.
No -I have no more stuff of John’s -I ask but never receive. If Hillquit gets the mayoralty of New York it means a new era. Twenty million Russians from South Russia have come over to the Roman Church.
I can go to Italy if I like as private secretary of a man (a priest) who is going to Cardinal Gibbons’ representative to discuss the war with the Pope (American Catholic point of view - which is most loyal - barring the Sinn Fein - 40% of Pershing’s army are Irish Catholics). Do write.
Gaelically yours,
Scott Fitzgerald
I remind myself lately of Pendennis, Sentimental Tommy (who was not sentimental and whom Barrie never understood), Michael Fane, Maurice Avery and Guy Hazelwood.
Fort Leavenworth, Kansas
January 10, 1918
Dear Bunny; Your last refuge from the cool sophistries of the shattered world is destroyed! I have left Princeton. I am now Lieutenant F. Scott Fitzgerald of the 45th Infantry (regulars). My present address is clo Q. P.O.B.
Ft Leavenworth, Kansas
After February 26th
593 Summmit Avenue
St Paul,
Minnesota will always find me, forwarded.
- So the short, swift chain of the Princeton intellectuals (Brooks clothes, clean ears and, withal, a lack of mental priggish- ness... Whipple, Wilson, Bishop, Fitzgerald...) have passed along the path of the generation - leaving their shining crown upon the gloss and unworthiness of John Biggs’ head.
One of your poems I sent on to the Lit and I’ll send the other when I’ve read it again. I wonder if you ever got the Lit I sent you... so I enclosed you two pictures; well, give one to some poor motherless Poilu fairy who has no dream. This is smutty and forced but in an atmosphere of cabbage...
John’s book came out in December and though I’ve written him reams (Rheims) of praise, I think he’s made poor use of his material. It is a thin Green Book.
GREEN FRUIT
(One man here remarked that he didn’t read it because Green Fruit always gave him a pain in the a — !)
by JOHN PEA LE BISHOP ist Lt Inf. R.C.
SHERMAN FRENCH CO.
BOSTON
In section one (‘Souls and Fabrics’) are ‘Boudoir,’ The Nassau Inn’ and of all things ‘Fillipo’s Wife,’ a relic of his decadent sophomore days. ‘Claudius’ and other documents in obscurity adorn this section.
Section two contains the Elspeth poems - which I think are rotten. Section three is ‘Poems out of Jersey and Virginia’ and has ‘Campbell Hall,”Millville’ and much saccharine sentiment about how much white bodies pleased him and how, nevertheless, he was about to take his turn with crushed brains (this slender thought done over in poem after poem). This is my confidential opinion, however; if he knew what a nut I considered him for leaving out ‘Ganymede’ and ‘Salem Water’ and ‘Francis Thompson’ and ‘Prayer’ and all the things that might have given body to his work, he’d drop me from his writing list. The book closed with the dedication to Townsend Martin which is on the circular I enclose. I have seen no reviews of it yet.
THE ROMANTIC EGOTIST
by F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
.. the Best is over
You may complain and sigh
Oh Silly Lover...’
Rupert Brooke
“Experience is the name Tubby gives to his mistakes.’
Oscar Wilde
Chas Scribner’s Sons (Maybe!) MCMXVIII
There are twenty-three chapters, all but five are written, and it is poetry, prose, vers libre and every mood of a temperamental temperature. It purports to be the picaresque ramble of one Stephen Palms from the San Francisco fire thru school, Princeton, to the end, where at twenty-one he writes his autobiography at the Princeton aviation school. It shows traces of Tarkington, Chesterton, Chambers, Wells, Benson (Robert Hugh), Rupert Brooke and includes Compton-Mackenzie-like love affairs and three psychic adventures including an encounter with the devil in a harlot’s apartment.
It rather damns much of Princeton but it’s nothing to what it thinks of men and human nature in general. I can most nearly describe it by calling it a prose, modernistic Childe Harold and really if Scribners takes it I know I’ll wake some morning and find that the debutantes have made me famous overnight. I really believe that no one else could have written so searchingly the story of the youth of our generation...
In my right hand bunk sleeps the editor of Contemporary Verse (ex), Devereux Josephs, Harvard ‘15 and a peac
h - on my left side is G. C. King, a Harvard crazy man who is dramatizing War and Peace; but you see I’m lucky in being well protected from the Philistines.
The Lit continues slowly but I haven’t received the December issue yet so I can’t pronounce on the quality.
This insolent war has carried off Stuart Walcott in France, as you may know, and really is beginning to irritate me - but the maudlin sentiment of most people is still the spear in my side. In everything except my romantic Chestertonian orthodoxy I still agree with the early Wells on human nature and the ‘no hope for Tono Bungay’ theory.
God! How I miss my youth - that’s only relative of course but already lines are beginning to coarsen in other people and that’s the sure sign. I don’t think you ever realized at Princeton the childlike simplicity that lay behind all my petty sophistication and my lack of a real sense of honor. I’d be a wicked man if it wasn’t for that and now that’s disappearing...
Well I’m overstepping and boring you and using up my novel’s material so goodbye. Do write and let’s keep in touch if you like. God bless you.
Celtically,
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Bishop’s address:
Lieut, John Peale Bishop (He’s a 1st Lt)
334th Infantry Camp Taylor, Kentucky
599 Summit Avenue
St Paul,
Minnesota
August 15,
1919
Dear Bunny:
Delighted to get your letter. I am deep in the throes of a new novel. Which is the best title?
Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated) Page 465
