Breaking Down: 1930–1938
. . . and the only sadness is the living without you. . . . You and I have been happy; we haven’t been happy just once, we’ve been happy a thousand times. . . . Forget the past—what you can of it, and turn about and swim back home to me, to your haven for ever and ever—even though it may seem a dark cave at times and lit with torches of fury; it is the best refuge for you—turn gently in the waters through which you move and sail back.
—SCOTT TO ZELDA, APRIL 26, 1934
After a decade of marriage, the Fitzgeralds were under every strain imaginable. Zelda’s years of ballet had depleted the very resources such a career demanded—her physical stamina and grace, along with her youth and beauty. Scott’s reputation as a writer was also suffering while the public waited for him to produce another novel, and he had already developed the habit of borrowing against future work. Money, once plentiful, was now harder to earn, at exactly the same time when writing was also more difficult—problems that would worsen over the decade and nag Scott for the rest of his life. The Fitzgeralds’ relationship, tested at every turn for over ten years, had certainly weakened. And neither Scott, who was only thirty-four but whose alcoholism had caught up with him early, nor Zelda, only thirty, would ever be truly healthy again. Under the considerable weight of these grave difficulties, the Fitzgeralds began the third and most challenging phase of their lives together—the thirties. Scott and Zelda, like America itself, entered into a decade in which an apparent immunity from suffering was no longer an option; yet also, again like the country itself, it was a decade that would lead them to reevaluate themselves and develop the inner resources of character that had lain dormant during the boom years of the twenties.
First Breakdown
LES RIVES DE PRANGINS, JUNE 1930–AUGUST 1931
The following letters were written while Zelda was a patient at Les Rives de Prangins. Scott, who was not allowed to visit until his wife’s treatment had been established but who wanted to be near her nevertheless, commuted between Paris (where Scottie remained in school and with her governess) and a series of hotels in Swiss towns near the clinic. He asked Zelda’s doctor for permission to send her flowers every other day and asked if he could “start sending her short notes, mentioning neither the misunderstanding of these last days nor her sickness?” Zelda often referred to these brief letters from Scott, which, unfortunately, appear not to have survived. Yet we still know Scott’s state of mind and his troubled but supportive devotion to Zelda through letters he wrote on her behalf to her doctor and family and from those he wrote to his editor, Maxwell Perkins, and to his agent, Harold Ober, in which he repeatedly worried about his work and money, in addition to Zelda and Scottie.
In her letters to Scott, Zelda vacillated between the deepest, most tender affection for him and absolute scorn—between relying on him exclusively for kindness and understanding and accusing him of abandoning her, even to the point of demanding a divorce. In the fall, her condition further deteriorated; the worse she grew, the more she villainized Scott and begged to be released from the hospital, which in her agony she had begun to see as a torture chamber. Either way, Scott certainly emerges as the central figure in her life and the only person to whom she was close during this period. The letters are also invaluable because in them Zelda describes her symptoms and suffering in her own words, giving us an intimate window into her mental illness—her panic attacks, periods of heightened sensitivity and distorted perceptions; periods of depersonalization similar to shock, when she seemed distanced from reality; and the physical manifestation of her mental illness, an extreme form of eczema.
The exact order of the letters during this period is impossible to ascertain, partially because Zelda never dated her letters, but also because her moods changed so quickly, as did the course of her illness. In addition, her references to Scott’s whereabouts—Paris, Geneva, Caux, Lausanne, and so forth—offer no reliable clues because he moved around a great deal during this period. Still, there are striking consistencies in Zelda’s letters, in the form of two outstanding and recurring themes: first, how primary her relationship to Scott was; second, how driven she was, broken at the age of thirty, to find real work for herself—a coherent vocational identity, when her personal identity was so fractured—and a clear sense of purpose amid the chaos of her illness.
Les Rives de Prangins, with an arrow pointing to Zelda’s room
Zelda’s room at Les Rives de Prangins. Courtesy of Princeton University Library
52. TO SCOTT
[Late June 1930]
ALS, 2 pp.
[Prangins Clinic, Nyon, Switzerland]
Dear Scott:
Just at the point in my life when there is no time left me for losing, I am here to incapacitate myself for using what I have learned in such a desperate school—through my own fault and from a complete lack of medical knowledge on a rather esoteric subject. If you could write to Egorova a friendly impersonal note to find out exactly where I stand as a dancer it would be of the greatest help to me— Remember, this is in no way at all her fault. I would have liked to dance in New York this fall, but where am I going to find again these months that dribble into the beets of the clinic garden? Is it worth it? And once a proper horror for the accidents of life has been instilled into me, I have no intention of join[in]g the group about a corpse. My legs are already flabby and I will soon be like Ada MacLeish, huntress of coralled game, I suppose, instead of a human being recompensed for everything by the surety of a comprehension of one manifestation of beauty—Why can’t you write one what you think and want instead of vague attempts at reassurance? If I had work or something it would be so much decenter to try to help each other and make at least a stirrup cup out of this bloody mess.
You have always had so much sympathy for people forced to start over late in life that I should think you could find the generosity to help me amongst your many others—not as you would a child but as an equal.
I want you to let me leave here—You’re wasting time and effort and money to take away the little we both have left. If you think you are preparing me for a return to Alabama you are mistaken, and also if you think that I am going to spend the rest of my life roaming about without happiness or rest or work from one sanatorium to another like Kit you are wrong. Two sick horses might conceivably pull a heavier load than a well one alone. Of cource, if you prefer that I should spend six months of my life under prevailing conditions—my eyes are open and I will get something from that, too, I suppose, but they are tired and unhappy and my head aches always. Won’t you write me a comprehensible letter such as you might write to one of your friends? Every day it gets harder to think or live and I do not understand the object of wasting the dregs of me here, alone in a devas[ta]ting bitterness.
Zelda
Please write immediately to Paris about the dancing. I would do it but I think the report will be more accurate if it goes to you—just an opinion as to what value my work is and to what point I could develop it before it is too late. Of cource, I would go to another school as I know Egorowa would not want to be bothered with me. Thanks.
Scott did write to Madame Egorova, who replied that Zelda was a good dancer who might perform in minor roles but that, having started too late, she could never have a noteworthy career. Zelda was terribly disappointed, but Scott and her doctor (who saw her obsession with ballet as contributing to her breakdown and an obstacle to her getting well) were relieved for Zelda to have this decisive evaluation from the teacher she trusted.
Although Scott never encouraged Zelda in ballet, he expressed genuine admiration for her as a writer and tried to promote her work with his publishing associates in New York. In July, Scott wrote to Perkins, praising Zelda’s stories and recounting the frame of mind they represented:
I’m asking Harold Ober to offer you these three stories which Zelda wrote in the dark middle of her nervous breakdown. I think you’ll see that apart from the beauty + richness of the
writing they have a strange haunting and evocative quality that is absolutely new. I think too that there is a certain unity apparent in them—their actual unity is a fact because each of them is the story of her life when things for awhile seemed to have brought her to the edge of madness and despair. (Dear Scott/Dear Max 166–167)
53. TO SCOTT
AL, 7 pp., on stationery embossed ZELDA at top center
[Summer 1930]
[Prangins Clinic, Nyon, Switzerland]
Dear Scott:
Every day it seems to me that things are more barren and sterile and hopeless. In Paris, before I realized that I was sick, there was a new significance to everything: stations and streets and façades of buildings—colors were infinite, part of the air, and not restricted by the lines that encompassed them and lines were free of the masses they held. There was music that beat behind my forehead and other music that fell into my stomach from a high parabola and there was some of Schumann that was still and tender and the sadness of Chopin Mazurkas. Some of them sound as if he thought that he couldn’t compose them—and there was the madness of turning, turning, turning through the deciciveness of Litz [Liszt]. Then the world became embryonic in Africa1—and there was no need for communication. The Arabs fermenting in the vastness; the curious quality of their eyes and the smell of ants; a detachment as if I was on the other side of a black gauze—a fearless small feeling, and then the end at Easter.2 But even that was better than the childish, vacillating shell that I am now. I am so afraid that when you come and find there is nothing left but disorder and vacuum that you will be horror-struck. I don’t seem to know anything appropriate for a person of thirty: I suppose it’s because of draining myself so thoroughly, straining so completely every fibre in that futile attempt to achieve with every factor against me—Do you mind my writing this way? Don’t be afraid that I am a meglo-maniac again. I’m just searching and it’s easier with you. You’ll have to reeducate me—But you used to like giving me books and telling me things. I never realized before how hideously dependent on you I was. Dr. Forel says I won’t be after. If I can have a clear intelligence I’m sure we can use it—I hope I will be different. [I] must have been an awful bore for you.
Why do you never write me what you are doing and what you think and how it feels to be alone—
I can’t make head or tails out of all this dreary experience since I do not know how much was accidental and how much deliberate— how big a role circumstance played and what proportion was voluntary—but if such a thing as expiation exists it is taking place and I hope you will forgive me the rest of my part.
Love,
Dear—
When are you coming?
54. TO SCOTT
AL, 8 pp., on stationery embossed ZELDA at top center
[Summer 1930]
[Prangins Clinic, Nyon, Switzerland]
Dear Scott:
You said in your letter that I might write when I needed you. For the first time since I went to Malmaison I seem to be about half human-being, capable of focusing my attention and not walking in black horror like I have been for so long. Though I am physically sick and covered with eczema I would like to see you. I’m lonely and do not seem to be able to exist in the world on any terms at all. If you do not want to come maybe Newman would come.
Please don’t write to me about blame. I am tired of rummaging my head to understand a situation that would be difficult enough if I were completely lucid. I cannot arbitrarily accept blame now when I know that in the past I felt none. Anyway, blame doesn’t matter. The thing that counts is to apply the few resources available to turning life into a tenable orderly affair that resembles neither the black hole of Calcutta or Cardinal Ballou’s[?] cage. Of cource, you are quite free to proceed as you think best. If I can ever find the dignity and peace to apply myself, I am sure there must be something to fill the next twenty years of a person who is willing to work for it, so do not feel that you have any obligations toward me, sentimental or otherwise, unless you accept them as freely as you did when I was young and happy and quite different from how I am now.
I am infinitely sorry that I have been ungrateful for your attempts to help me. Try to understand that people are not always reasonable when the world is as unstable and vacillating as a sick head can render it—that for months I have been living in vaporous places peopled with one-dimensional figures and tremulous buildings until I can no longer tell an optical illusion from a reality—that head and ears incessantly throb and roads disappear, until finally I lost all control and powers of judgement and was semi-imbecilic when I arrived here. At least now I can read, and as soon as possible I am going on with some stories I have half done. Won’t you send me “Technique of the Drama” please? I have an enormous desire to try to write a play that I have begun a little.
Scottie has not written but I know she is happy with Madamoiselle. I’m glad you are better. It seems odd that we were once a warm little family—secure in a home—
Thank you for the books—
Was it fun in Paris? Who did you see there and was the Madeleine pink at five o’clock and did the fountains fall with hollow delicacy into the framing of space in the Place de la Concorde and did the blue creep out from behind the colonades of the rue de Rivoli through the grill of the Tuileries and was the Louvre gray and metallic in the sun and did the trees hang brooding over the cafés and were there lights at night and the click of saucers and the auto horns that play de Bussey [Debussy].
I love Paris. How was it?
55. TO SCOTT
ALS, 1 p.
[Summer 1930]
[Prangins Clinic, Nyon, Switzerland]
Dear Scott:
There is no use my trying to write to you because if I write one thing one day I think another immediately afterwards. I would like to see you. I don’t know why I have constantly a prese[n]timent of disaster. It seems to me cruel that you cannot explain to me what is the matter since you will not accept my explanation. As you know, I am a person, or was, of some capabality even if on a small scale and if I could once grasp the situation I would be much better able to handle it. Under existing conditions, I simply grovel about in the dark and since I can not concentrate either to read or write there does not seem to be any way to escape. I do not want to lose my mind. Twice horrible things have happened to me through my inability to express myself: once peritonitis that left me an invalid for two years3 and now this thing. Won’t you please come to see me, since at least you know me and you could see, maybe, some assurance to give me that would counteract the abuse you piled on me at Lausanne when I was so sick. At any rate one thing has been achieved: I am thoroughly and completely humiliated and broken if that was what you wanted. There are some things I want to tell you.
Zelda.
56. TO SCOTT
AL, 8 pp., on stationery embossed ZELDA at top center
[Summer 1930]
[Prangins Clinic, Nyon, Switzerland]
Dear Scott:
To recapitulate: as you know, I went of my own will to the clinic in Paris to cure myself. You also know that I left (with the consent of Proffessor Claude) knowing that I was not entirely well because I could see no use in jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire, which is what was about to happen, or so I thought. I also went, practically voluntarily but under enormous pressure to Valmont with the sole idea of getting back enough strength and health to continue my work in America as you had promised me. There, my head began to go wrong and the pristine nurse whom you accused me of attacking played almost constantly on the thing that I had assumed I was there to get over. Finally by constant references to Teol and Plantanes[?] and other pronounced and vulgar symbolism I at last began to believe that there was but one cure for me: the one I had refused three times in Paris because I did not want it but had persistently kept my eyes for the last three years on the only thing I knew which was good and kind and clean and hard-working. During all this time you, knowing everything about me,
since in all this dreary story I have never tried to conceal the slightest detail from you, but have on the contrary urged you to manifest some interest in what I was doing, never saw fit to either guide or enlighten me. To me, it is not astonishing that I should look on you with unfriendly eyes. You could have saved me all this trouble if you had not been so proud of Michael Arlen the day I went to Malmaison; if you had explained to me what was happening the night we had dinner with John Bishop and went to the fair afterwards, which left me in hysterics. The obligation is, after all, with the people who understand, and the blind, of necessity, must be led. I offer you this explanation because I know I owe you one and because it is like this that I began this abominable affair.
My attitude towards Egorowa has always been one of an intense love: I wanted to help her some way because she is a good woman who has worked hard and has nothing, or lost everything. I wanted to dance well so that she would be proud of me and have another instrument for the symbols of beauty that passed in her head that I understood, though apparently could not execute. I wanted to be first in the studio so that it would be me that she could count on to understand what she gave out in words and of cource I wanted to be near her because she was cool and white and beautiful. Perhaps it is depraved, I do not know, but at home there was an incessant babbling it seemed to me and you either drinking or complaining because you had been. You blamed me when the servants were bad, and expected me to instill into them a proper respect for a man they saw morning after morning asleep in his clothes, who very often came home in the early morning, who could not sit, even, at the table. Anyhow, none of those things matter. I quite realize that you have done the best you can and I would like you to try to realize that so have I, in all the disorder. I do not know what is going to happen, but since I am in the hands of Doctor Forel and they are a great deal more powerful than yours or mine, it will probably be for the best. I want to work at something, but I can’t seem to get well enough to be of any use in the world. That’s not all, but the rest is too complicated for me now. Please send me Egorowa’s letter.
Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda Page 10