Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda
Page 16
There are no grands évènements to report. I am sending my story to Ober as it now seems satisfactory to me, but nobody will buy it since it is mostly about champagne. They wouldn’t buy it anyway even if it was about hydrochloric-acid or mystic anti-kink so what ho!
Darling I miss you so terribly—you can never go off again. It’s absolutely impossible to be very interested in anything without you or even to get along very well—at all.
Love and Love and Love
Zelda
105. TO SCOTT
ALS, 2 pp., on stationery embossed ZELDA FITZGERALD at top center
[December 1931]
[Montgomery, Alabama]
Dearest:
The house sleeps in the ashes of the open fires and Julia and I have sent you some cakes just so you will know we are always thinking of you. Scottie is making you a surprise for Christmas and I have something that will make you laugh. It’s such a homey, dozing time when the days are wet and pliable as potters’ mud and warmth drones inside the windows and over the hearth and I miss you so terribly.
You asked about my cough: so I went to bed to-day to cure it with the fourth of July on my chest and many clamps and bolsterings and it is well again, but I am stuffy as un-sprouted seeds on a hot spring night from aspirin and paregoric. You are a love to think of me. I am so well and fat and healthy that you may not be able to get your arms about me when you get back. If not, I warn you I will pine and refuse food and die of a colic and have to be bled. Dear, I love you so.
To-morrow is Friday, then Saturday and you will be home in two weeks which is really no time at all.
My story made quite a sensation.31 People seem to like it. I had the following telegram from Ober: “Sweet Chariot is beautifully written. I am immensely pleased with it.” He’s had it all this time and has evidently just read it.32
Fire engines are ripping up the night out-side in ruthless clangs and shrieks like an angry seamstress splitting silk and feet run along the pavement like an emptying theatre and little sounds and the way things are are all I have to write you.
Julia Anderson came over to-day. She is a pretty girl but very uninspired. She is the first person I have seen in weeks. We agreed vaguely about vague affairs and decided the panic was very sad.
I am reading New Russia’s Primer. The U. S. A. comes in for an economic balling-out that is doubtless well deserved, but severe.
I sent Dr. Forel Scribners from sheer vanity. I do not dare read the story. Knowing it is not first rate, I don’t want to be discouraged—I wish you could teach me to write—
I love you—O I love you so—Zelda
106. TO SCOTT
ALS, 4 pp., on stationery embossed ZELDA at top left
[December 1931]
[Montgomery, Alabama]
Dearest my love:
I am positively tormented by all sorts of self-reproaches at leaving. Scottie is so sweet and darling and the house is so pleasant and I have everything in the world except you. And yet I know I am nervous and too introspective and stale—probably because since you left I haven’t felt like amusement and recently I have not been able to exercise at all. So I am leaving for the week-end only, in the hopes that just long riding rolling along will give me back the calm and contentment that has temporarily disappeared with my physical well-being. Please understand and do not think that I leave in search of any fictitious pleasure. After the utter solitude of Prangin there have been many people lately and people that I love with whom my relations are more than superficial and I really think I need a day or two by myself. I will leave Sun. and be back Wed. night. While we are away, Julia is thorough cleaning. She is a peach.
D. O. I realize more completely than ever how much I live in you and how sweet and good and kind you are to such a dependent appendage.
Chopin has his nest in our bath-room. He is so lovely with a face like a judicial melancholic bear, the Polly scornfully eats peanuts, and Uncle rakes the leaves like father Time sorting over the years of the past.
Scottie and I have had a long bed-time talk about the Soviets and the Russian idea. I lent her “The Russian Primer” to read and will be curious to hear her reactions when I get back. She is so responsive and alert. You will be absolutely ravished by her riding trousers and yellow shirt and Scottie rearing back in her saddle like a messenger of victory. Each time she goes she conquers herself and the pony, the sky, the fields and the little black boy who follows on a fast shaven mule. I wish I were a fine sweet person like you two and not somebody who has to go 200 miles because they have a touch of asthma.
The house is full of surprises—but as usual I did everything at once and there’s nothing left for the end, except finish my story which is too good to do uninspirationally and out of sorts.
God! I hope you haven’t worked yourself to death. We must reduce our scale of living since we will always be equally extravagant as now. It would be easier to start from a lower base. This is sound economics and what Ernest and most of our friends do—
Darling—How much I love you. Zelda
107. TO SCOTT
ALS, 4 pp., on stationery embossed ZELDA at top left
[December 1931]
[Montgomery, Alabama]
Dearest, my Darling D. O—
I am, needless to say very hurt at your complete lack of confidence in me. If you feel that I am such an irresponsible person you should have left me in a clinic. However I am sorry if I have disturbed you. Having exhausted the powers of Samuel Butler and what small philosophy I could muster I found myself almost desperate to get away into the sun, alone. I have not had a quiet moment since you left: first two sleepless weeks with asthma and then touches of eczema which I could not trace since I have done my best to lead as healthy a life as possible so you would find me fresh and cheerful when you got back. Having no resources at my command to distract myself without my eyes I dreaded that you arrive fine and vital and I should be harassed and half-sick. I was doing what I thought would be pleasantest and best for you. Also I should like to receive your mother with enthusisam, since we see her so seldom.
Scottie is fine: she looks better than ever and is full of life and rosy.
I am afraid you have been over-working. You sounded exhausted and nervous. Please take care of yourself for us, D. O. We love you so—
Nothing has changed here. The town is nice again in the sleepy sun and I have a fine story if I can find time to write it: à la Wm. Faulkner—I won’t spoil it by telling the plot which is actual and very thrilling.
Dear, I will be so glad to have you home but don’t drain and strain yourself to hurry. We are really all right—Julia is like a second mother and the house functions perfectly. I love you terribly and very deeply and in my most erratic moments I would not do anything to injure us. I wish you could believe me that though I may have transitory and uncorrelated ideas and impulses which make it difficult to appear as a solid individual, still they are more fleeting always and my actions accord with what I would like to be—as well as I am able
I love you so, my dear, so please forgive me for the misgivings I have caused you—
Zelda
108. TO SCOTT
ALS, 2 pp., on stationery embossed ZELDA FITZGERALD at top center
[December 1931]
[Montgomery, Alabama]
Dearest:
What a miserable gloomy rainy day: Scottie and Mlle are on their way to a concert and Julia is staying with me. She has lent us her parrot till Christmas. Deo! I must have a parrot! Can’t you bring me one for Christmas? Hers says “Aw go to hell” and carries on long senseless conversations in the exact inflections of people transacting very serious business. It’s curious how they employ very exactly and aptly the tone of the human voice to fit their feelings, and have no sense of the words they use at all. Please, Deo, bring one to me. There aren’t any here and I must have one. You could keep him in your bath-room on the way. Julia’s says “O my Darling” and “Oooo Juli
a!” and he sings “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby.[” ] Deo please!
After this week, there’s one week to clean up and then your mother comes and you will be a little closer.
The Red Book kept “Nuts”33 three weeks, but turned it down. Ober said they asked for more of my stuff. I am discouraged. When you come home I will be happy and free and can maybe begin again, but I do not believe I can be a good writer. It is very melancholy without you. I love you more all the time and since I did not think there was any more it’s an overwhelming and frightening state to be in. When things increase, increase, increase how do they end? Is there a sort of identification with the ultimate or abstract which turns on itself or is their a calm diminuendo with the lessening of physical vitality? And aren’t you scared of such an utterly dependent Baby? That maybe you’ll always be having to make room in your heart for an old emotion like travelling about with an out-grown baby-carriage amongst the family possessions?
Dearest, I love you so—
Zelda
109. TO SCOTT
ALS, 2 pp., on stationery embossed ZELDA FITZGERALD at top center
[December 1931]
[Montgomery, Alabama]
Dearest, my Love:
I wouldn’t want to draw that money out of the bank. What good would it do if the economic system collapses anyway? Nobody here seems alarmed and there’s nothing in the papers and I have no presentiments of disaster.
It’s rather cold and murky and horrifying like one of those days in the first chapter of Well’s History of the World and the air is like a tunnel. The forests in Georgia are all burning up and the air is filled with fetid smoke. Walking about makes you feel like a navigator of vague uncharted seas and like the Romans arriving in England. I bought four of the sweetest little trees for the cemetery. They are green and fuzzy little bears—and planted a jasmine vine on the wall. I love Scottie’s doll furniture. She has planted herself a garden of Valentines names: Sweet William and candy tuft and is very happy. We rode to Mamma’s to-day on imaginary horse[s] and mine had the most exquisite gait, like pulling a rubber band and snappy [snapping] it together, and another sort of lope where you knock your heels to-gether and float on your own good spirits.
My story is finished. It is another flop, I’m afraid. I do not believe I can write. Seriously. But I shall finish your Christmas tale since I will be always thinking of you. Just one more Saturday and I hope your mother will be here. Mlle goes to dancing Sats. and I couldn’t decide whether she needed the pistol most or I—so I gave her the bullets and I have the gun. Do not be alarmed. I would never use it. It has a very professional air that repels me almost super-naturally. It is second-hand with a highly devellopped personality.
We love you so dear. The mist drips slow and things fall like a spring thaw.
Goofo I love you—
Zelda
110. TO SCOTT
ALS, 2 pp., on stationery embossed ZELDA FITZGERALD at top center
[December 1931]
[Montgomery, Alabama]
Dearest:
I have no comment to make on such a monotonous life: Winter rocks the cradle with a weary foot, and spring will wearily straddle the land and wearily summer will doze in the clay roads and autumn again will be weary. Will start in the quiet night when we think of robbers and in the day busy ourselves about not being cheated and live the lives of prostitutes as do all people who live by and for their sensibilities.
Scottie has a sign on her door “Voici la chambre mystérieuse” and four red wreaths upon her windows and many Christmas bundles in her room. She wants an electric train which seems to me one of those dreadful elaborate substitutes for a toy originated by the kind of people who write sub-titles. I mean, a Townsend-Martin sort of thing. Shall I buy it?—After writing that I found this note so dear, you know I will get it. Isn’t it a sad little note?34
Deo—I will be glad when you are home. So many things seem sad when you are not here. Mamma came out here to-night so old and tired because Mlle had gone to a show and she thought I would be lonesome. People relinquish the sacred fire with difficulty once they have possessed it’s scathing light. They seem to like the little blisters full of their own chemistry, and to grow fond of the scorching of their unsound skins.
Darling—
There is such a dearth of impersonal distraction here that it is hopeless not to work and my stuff (the last two since you left) has got too thin and spiritless to be worth the effort. With some ruinous finality junk just flows and is utterly worthless.
But you walk down the streets through the Durner[?] hour into some chill Valhalla and the trees line the sides like the last standing timbers of a burning building and the world is rich in color. And I love economy in decorations—poor man’s Christmas—except that it’s just a lack of imagination and a ponderous seriousness about nothing left over from the days when the family sock was the only safe banking scheme and Grandma made soap herself to save a nickel.
Anyway, in spite of economics and the Soviet and the fact the world is in full retreat before its own forces having been routed by its own barrage and conquered by the lack of an enemy—I love you—
I love you in spite of all these terrible consequences of our perceptive powers—
I love you Zelda
111. TO SCOTT
ALS, 2 pp., on stationery embossed ZELDA FITZGERALD at top center
[December 1931]
[Montgomery, Alabama]
Darling:
The fire burns contentedly like many ladies swishing their silk petticoats and Chopin passes invisible delicacies judiciously about in his mouth. I have sore throat, asthma, grippe and indigestion and I am making Mamma a picture of myself for Christmas that looks like a Florentine fish-monger. The rain keeps up and the ground is heavy as a sponge and receeds from everything. The country clay-banks are washed to deep folds of a heavy fabric and the trees are limp and gummy. I am delighted your mother is coming after all. It will be pleasanter for her than a lone Christmas. Please wire: shall I put her downstairs? The house is fresh as a candy-store. The curtains are washed and starched to paper and the rugs are cleaned and bright, owing to haphazard animal excretions. We have had a zoo here since you left and its only Mamma who kept me from buying a monkey from the circus.
I love climbing out on the tin roof and brandishing my empty pistol and yelling “Who’s there?” as if I had a mob at bay. But I am, secretely, always the escaping criminal. My bravado instincts do not function on the side of law and order, as do not also a great many other interesting facets of myself: ie, to me, interesting, of cource.
Minor tried to teach Scottie a break-down. It’s terribly hard since it consists of dangling yourself by your shoulder while your feet bounce like drum-sticks. It’s the real nigger tap dancing and I’m crazy to have her learn it. It has nothing in common with musical comedy and is very distinguished and would be nice to know when calling on the President.
I miss my Daddy horribly. I am losing my identity here without men. I would not live two weeks again where there are none, since the first thing that goes is concision, and they give you something to butt your vitality against so it isn’t litterred over the air like [a] spray of dynamite. D. O. darling, I love you—
Zelda, the dowager of detriment.
112. TO SCOTT
ALS, 2 pp., on stationery embossed ZELDA FITZGERALD at top center
[December 1931]
[Montgomery, Alabama]
Darling:
First some details that you must wire the answers of:
(1) do you want me to get something and send it to Annabel or will you send a check?
(2) Is Mlle B. to have money or presents and how much?
(3) Do you love me so very much like I do you?
(4) Is it possible for a person to be as absolutely perfect as I think you are.
It’s cold here and these celibate skies are depressing. There is a flat uncurious frigidity in the wind and it roams abou
t like an exile petulantly storming the dead woods and bushes.
I lost Scottie in a store to-day for half-an-hour and it was ghastly: like being whirled through endless rotating hypotheses of life and being in some chaotic functioning of the consciousness without the mind. It was because I let her shop alone and she went to the car after instead of meeting me where she said. She is such a darling and so full of Christmas and excitement. You will roar when you see her on the pony rearing back against the land-scape followed by a little boy just her size and black as the ace-of-spades. It’s cute, like nice things that don’t happen any more. She will send you the history. Her report is one point better than the first month, however.
Mamma and Edith spent the day. She seems so sweet and lonely and lost in the memories of her youth, of a monkey an old beau gave her once, and two Texas hares that ate up her father’s geraniums. I suppose it’s a sub-conscious longing for protection that has recalled her child-hood more vividly than usual.
Darling, my own darling. The little mossy place on the back of your neck is the sweetest place and I can rub my nose in it like a pony in his feed bag when you come home and I’m very, very, lucky—
Zelda—
113. TO SCOTT
ALS, 2 pp., on stationery embossed ZELDA FITZGERALD at top center
[December 1931]
[Montgomery, Alabama]
Mamma spent all afternoon telling me about the Civil War and her father and when she was little and many fragrant, protected things. It’s so nice to have important men and I’m so glad that you are one. I want you to come home and for us to have a son and lots of vital things we own. I love you so my dearest35
Darling:
Another day of paddling about in the rain with skies like craw-fish clay slipping all over the heavens and the wind seething outside like a mountain stream.