Mamma is absolutely amazingly courageous. I hope we can keep her well.
We are fine. Scottie is a darling. I did not take her to the funeral or near anything sad. It seemed unnecessary and Mamma did not want it. She is so bright and happy it would have been useless to depress her with incomprehensible things
Daddy seemed very noble and like a statesman—I never saw so many manifestations of esteem and affection.
Dear, I did not know what to do: Marjorie was crying because she could not afford a black dress and Anthony is very poor—so I said we would pay most of the flower blanket that we wanted for the coffin: It will come to about fifty dollars. I knew how you felt towards Daddy and that you would have wanted us to. It is such a small acknowledgement and we felt we should send the casket flowers ourselves.
I love you so much, dear—
I had rented the Little Theatre, written a one-act play for five children (Scotties little friends) and composed a Bach fueg, a Chopin Nocturne and a gay bit of Schumann; Mlle. B. was going to play some lovely things and we were to have some Dalcroze round for children. There were to be 20 people present and egg-nog and cake. It was for your Christmas present. We will give it at Easter, perhaps since we have the rounds from Switzerland, half the costumes and everything is ready. The play was called “In Provocation” I will send it to you—It was just to amuse you—
Dearest, my own heart, I don’t see how anybody can live without their husband.
All our love
Zelda
95. TO SCOTT
ALS, 2 pp., on stationery embossed ZELDA FITZGERALD at top center
[After November 18, 1931]
[Montgomery, Alabama]
Dearest, my Own Love:
This has been such a discouraging day: if there weren’t the thought of you at the end to make everything have a compensation existence would be too dispiriting. I have been able to walk for the first time. The body is given us, I presume, as a counter-irritant to the soul. And my story at last is started. We closed up Daddy’s office. It was very musty and masculine and cerebral and the great bulk of all those old men impressive. Daddy had a big butterfly pinned over the map of the L+N. lines and some shirt samples and a copy of Josephus. We hope the state will buy his library. It’s just the little personal things we care about in people, we being what we are—only his historians bother about what a man has contained of time and race. Who cares what good or evil dies? And all of us care that we will never hear a certain chuckle again or see the fingers meet a certain way. The things we can do ourselves are all that really move us: Which is why our intellects and our emotions subsist in different spheres and ceaselessly destroy us with their battles. It is a beautiful warm night like steam from a savory cauldron and I want to be happy and glad of the rutted moon and the birds in the bare baked trees. Life is horrible without you because there’s not another living soul with whom I have the slightest communion.
Scottie is a fiend on horse-back. We love you and miss you—
O Dee-o I love you so. It is very good to have something to love
Zelda
96. TO SCOTT
ALS, 2 pp., on stationery embossed ZELDA FITZGERALD at top center
[Late November 1931]
[Montgomery, Alabama]
Dearest Love:
The sky lay over the city like a map showing the strata of things and the big full-moon toppled over in a furrow like the abandoned wheel of a gun carriage on a sun-set field of battle and the shadows walked like cats and I looked into the white and ghostly interior of things and thought of you and I looked on their structu[r]al outsides and thought of you and was lonesome.
It’s warm here and effulgent like the end of April and I can’t bear to have you missing how nice it is. I took Mamma a birthday cake and got Scottie’s tickets to the Thanksgiving game. Julia and Freeman are making us a fruit-cake for a Christmas present and the yard is full of little yellow flowers like coins dropped from a worn old purse, bright shabby flowers that look as if they were saved up for for ages—poor people’s flowers. The little room is ready for your mother or my mother and everything is fine. Scottie says tell you she thinks she made zero faults in school test. She is a sweet, cheerful, infectuous, pretty darling. I’m going to shave the cat if she doesn’t stop kissing his fur. I am silly about the horse but I want her to learn to ride so I try to pretend that I am sensible.
Dear, my Goofy, my darling own—
Among Daddy’s law library there was nothing but one set “Modern Am. Law” that was comprehensible to a lay-man. Mamma gave it to us, since I thought it might interest you.
I never hear from you but I know you are written out so I don’t worry. But send a night letter sometimes, my sweet. Even after this week there are three weeks more—It seems hopeless to get through them—
Love—Zelda
97. TO SCOTT
ALS, 4 pp., on stationery embossed ZELDA at top left
[Late November 1931]
[Montgomery, Alabama]
Dearest:
We had lunch with Mamma. Her house is always like a sunny Sunday afternoon when all the people are away driving and an intangible expectancy lurks in the popping coals. Then I worked and fed the gracious Chopin and Julia had left us a big chocolate cake and Mlle heated the chicken and we three sat down to supper. My “Cotton-Belt”26 is fine the first thousand words. The other is, I am afraid, mediocre tho not compared to lots I read. I sent it off under “There’s a Myth in a Moral” which isn’t very good.
It’s hot again to-day with the spring drifting thru the land like a sleep-walker and many bells ringing distantly. Your disc came and your dear voice made me utterly miserable. This has been the longest time in my life. I’m glad you are not bored and I am horribly jealous. I will never be so foolish as to think I can get on without you again.
Scottie’s garden has sprouted in embryonic wands and tongues and I have a beautiful pink begonia in my window. The flowers always look to me as if they were made by smashing something between the thumb and the forefinger and the leaves are luxurious raggedy cushions. Little yellow butterflies fly about for Christmas and Tilde writes there is snow in New York. Scottie spent the afternoon reading “astronomy” in Mamma’s encyclopaedia. Your closet is full of lovely silver packages. It looks so sad to see your clothes getting dusty on their hangers. D. O, if you will come back I will make the jasmine bloom and all the trees come out in flower and we will eat clouds for des[s]ert[,] bathe in the foam of the rain—and I will let you play with my pistol and you can win every golf game and I will make you a new suit from a blue hydrangea bush and shoes from pecan-shells and I’ll sew you a belt from leaves like maps of the world and you can always be the one that’s perfect. But if you write me about Lily Dalmita and Constance27 I will go off to Florida for a week and spend our money and make you jealous of my legs à la Creole when you get home.
How do you like my gingham paper? It’s really for algebra—and more things seemed to happen on the plain gray.
With all my love,
Your wife, Zelda—
98. TO SCOTT
ALS, 3 pp.
[November 23, 1931]
[Montgomery, Alabama]
Dearest, My Own Darling
I went to get my hair washed th[is] afternoon and shades of Hollywood Boulev[ard] in walked her the hairdressers sister straight from Los Angeles, and fried to the eyes. It reminded me of the Helen Buck era. “Bessie Love?”28 she’d say “well she’s out,” with the finality of Ring. And “I haven’t had a bite yet” by which I inferred that she was on her way to supper and “Say listen!” every other word and then at the end opening her big 35 year old eyes very innocently “I’m tight” Then a long wait for laudatory exclamations. Hearing her talk was like being two people at once, one of them dim and far away in the past. Equivalent spectres floated thru so many of our early years. “The Talmadge girls are absolute rag-pickers—say friend, have you got a match?”
> O dear, this beneficent weather—and a pink rose in the garden and the cat rolling a sun-beam over the grass and the nights like a child’s prayer. I wish we were sharing the expansiveness of this benevolent country. I have never never missed you so much as I do. Do you think of me out there amongst the vibrations where everything quivers and waits to fall like swelling drops from a dropper?
And Daddy’s grave so sad on the side of an old and sinking hill. To-[day] was Mamma’s birthday—I had [portion of letter torn] all to lunch—Anthony’s wife is [aw]fully nice and Tilde is pretty and Marjorie is good and kind and there we were: All Daddy had to leave behind. Mamma sat in that more aristocratic world where she and Daddy have always lived. She is so sweet and foolish and infinitely courageous—I have been feeling very proud and simple lately. How have you been feeling? I do not examine myself very closely or my reactions since you are away and there is no one to talk to. Life is just the essence of zero without you and it somehow seems a very distant affair—as [if] it were taking place in California perhaps—I love you so—Please write Scottie that she must learn her American history. Her information on the Revolution is lamentable and she has discovered that she can get by without work. They have long finished it at the school, and she is completely ignorant of both details and conception. Her French is fine—the work, I mean—very thorough + lively—The school thing is important!
Dearest—I love you so dearly
Zelda
99. TO SCOTT
Wire
9S RQ 13
MONTGOMERY ALA 917A NOV 24 1931
SCOTT FITZGERALD
MGM STUDIO
NOTHING BUT THREE HUNDRED FIFTY DOLLARS AND LOTS OF LOVE IN THE BANK
ZELDA
929 AM
100. TO SCOTT
ALS, 2 pp., on stationery embossed ZELDA FITZGERALD at top center
[November 25, 1931]
[Montgomery, Alabama]
Dearest, that is the sweetest lovliest voice I ever heard. It made me feel all safe in the center of things again and important. I play it and play it and I want to be with you. It fills the house with assurance and vitality, excitement and love. You are sure you are my own, aren’t you? Because when anybody is perfect other people have to be very careful.
Freeman has quite a narrative gift. Do you suppose Menken would buy his story with an explanatory paragraph? They listen to the record and I hear Julia in the kitchen laughing and saying “love you—I love you.” Deo you are so sweet.
It has turned catastrophicly cold. The streets are gray and the sky inflamed and thoughts won’t carry themselves on the happiness in these peaceful yards but creep back into the mind and want to be resolved. I wrote 1000 wds. to-day. I wanted to finish two stories before you got back but this will be all I’m afraid. Fantastic exhuberance has deserted me and everything presents itself in psychological terms for novels. Christmas is coming, and your mother will be here in two weeks I hope. I sent the dress to Annabel.29 She will find it a bit Botticelli by this time but maybe she will be invited to a strawberry festival or a Westphalian log-roll and can use it to bind up her shins; or maybe she will be caught in a burning building and can make a ladder.
Scottie is something precious and lustrous in her riding pants: like a very pleasant fairy-tale about princes in disguise. She goes everywhere now with a group which rides every day. It’s such a wild free thing I like her to do it. Mlle is good-humored and succinctly busy. We are all going to Mamma’s to-morrow for Thanksgiving. I gave her the turkey and Tilde the trimmings. I’m thankful that your work is going better and that you’re not unhappy.
Dear it’s so much fun to have the record—Did you move? We did not lose any letters maybe they are at the hotel.
With all and all and all my love—
Zelda
101. TO SCOTT
Wire
12S RQ 9
MONTGOMERY ALA 845A NOV 26 1931
SCOTT FITZGERALD
MGM STUDIO
HAPPY THANKSGIVING AND ALL OUR LOVE PLEASE DONT OVERWORK
ZELDA
10AM 27
102. TO SCOTT
ALS, 2 pp., on stationery embossed ZELDA FITZGERALD at top center
[November 26, 1931]
[Montgomery, Alabama]
Dearest Love:
This still Thanksgiving afternoon fanned with the leaves of school-books and muffled with echoes is very reminiscent. It makes me remember all the times we’ve been to-gether absolutely alone in some suspended hour, a holiday from Time prowling about in those quiet place[s] alienated from past and future where there is no sound save listening and vision is an anesthetic.
Scottie and Mlle. were entranced by the foot-ball. Auburn won and reverberations of victory drift out from the street corners. Freeman said the field was a free-for-all. The big table and Mamma’s had somehow lost direction without Daddy. My story limps homeward, 1,000 words to a gallon of coffee. Some children are chanting enfantive encantations under my window. Perhaps they have produced a warm Nov. night like radium with you in the breeze and houses filled with dreamy nostalgic lethargy. I have a wonderful plot for a short thing that I will get at as soon as I can. It’s for your Christmas. To write you something I would like to be in a celestial reverie that I can’t attain. It’s fun thinking of Christmas and the night you will get home and how you’ll look as you come out the gate. I will be surprised at your mondanity and very amazed that you are concice and powerful and I will be very happy that you are so handsome and when I see how handsome you are my stomach will fall with many unpleasant emotions like a cake with too many raisins and I will want to shut you up in a closet like a dress too beautiful to wear.
Save me this clipping, please dear. I thought it would amuse you. Nobody seems up-set by the story.
Scottie goes like an arrow on her horse—so fast I don’t like to watch.
The house runs on in all directions sort of aimlessly without you—
Dear
I love you
Zelda
103. TO SCOTT
ALS, 2 pp.
[Late November 1931]
[Montgomery, Alabama]
Dearest:
I am so lonesome for you I don’t know what to do. The nights are soft and warm and lonesome and I think of you always. There are things in shoots like spring growing in the back. I asked uncle if they were jonquils but he said they were bulbs. Just mysterious tender things weaving the air into a voluptuous cape for themselves. Door-bells ring from far away and people whistle in the streets and there are seething things in the tree tops.
I suppose the nights in California are still nebulous pink and gray like the spinning of a pearl and there are many drug stores and the streets are all corners and automobile brakes whine in the breeze.
I wish we were to-gether.
Scottie is a darling. She and Jerry have gone to “Cinderella”. She talks always of you. And Goofo! There’s another month to wait! I sent the dresses and I will write your mother.
The man at the bank was sore because I kept the accounts in the bank-book. There’s only $450 left.
Ober says the Red Book still have “Nuts” but I can’t get to work. I am writing a story about Phillipe called “Ganymede’s Rubbers”30 but I can’t write it.
Write me about what you think—It’s so lonesome without you— There’s absolutely nobody who would know if a person was thinking, quoting or reciting the litany. I feel like a person lost in some Gregorian but feminine service here—I have come in on the middle and did not get the beginning and cannot stay for the end but so must somehow seize the meaning—It’s awful to think that Daddy isn’t here any more—I would like to pick up Mamma and go—
With All My Love—
Zelda
104. TO SCOTT
ALS, 2 pp., on stationery embossed ZELDA FITZGERALD at top center
[Early December 1931]
[Montgomery, Alabama]
Dearest My D. O—
Sunday in a trance and sleeping all afternoon like a deserted cat on your bed and now its night and the house seems to be nothing but over-tones with you away—tho you[r] hat is in the hall and your stick still on the bed and you could not tell that it’s all just a bluff and a make-shift without you. I feel like going to Florida for the week-end. It’s only six hours in the car, and I imagine at this time of year it would be very reedy with lone fowls strung on the horizon and the seaflinging loose gray cowls on the sand and long yellow beaches that look like womens’ poetry and belong to the Swinburne apostles.
The cat is the most beautiful fellow. He broods over ancient Egypt on the hearth and looks at us all contemptuously. Julia and Freeman are very good and considerate and Mlle and I get along very well and have not yet come to blows. She is a nice girl. Scottie is engrossed in protecting herself against being disillusioned about Santa Claus and is as pretty as a moon-beam. She dresses herself by my fire and it’s a joy to watch her long sweet delicate body and the cool of her pale hair quenching the light from the flames. However, my disposition is very bad and asthmatic and it is just as well that you are out of this homely lyric. I am going to dig myself a bear-pit and sit inside thumbing my nose at the people who bring me carrots and then I will be perfectly happy. My mother and father are civilized people: it is strange the rest of us should be so inadequate. There are some lovely bears in Berne who live in a mythical world of Sunday afternoon and little boys and itenerant soldiers and the one in Petrouschka is very pleasant and sometimes they live on honey and wild-flowers when they are off duty from the fairy-tales. But I will be a very dirty bear with burrs in my coat and my nice silky hair all matted with mud and I will growl and move my head about disconsolately.
Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda Page 15