Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda
Page 18
I have done some good writing, but it goes slow since I have only 2 hrs. a day in which to collect my agenda on life, organize it and get it down. The rest of the time is very pleasant—gymnasium etc and excursions into Baltimorean superficial[i]ties. It’s a marvelous place, a prosperous, middle-age distinguished lawyer with many artistic hobbles sort of a place. We must live here sometime.
The four hours at night—Well, there is a girl who screams “Murder in the first degree!” when she isn’t screaming “Oi! Yoi! Yoi! The Mistletoe.” I suppose there’s nothing to do about it—I prefer it to the obnoxious reassurances of Mile. B. and the nocturnal visitations of eczema.
I am reading Ian Gordon’s Modern French Painters. He speaks of the sense of growing things in Van Gogh’s work. Those crawling flowers and venomous vindictive blossoms are the hallucinations of a mad-man—without organization or rhythm but with the power to sting and strangle of certain sub-marine flora. I loved them at Prangins. They reassured me. He goes in the same pathological category as Jeanne d’Arc: savage and oblivious.
Dearest—I suppose I will spend the rest of my life torn between the desire to master life and a feeling that it is, au fond, a contemptuous enemy. If there weren’t you + Scottie, melancholia is about as happy a state as any other I suppose. There’s a woman here who wanders tentatively about the halls like the ghost in a poor detective story. It is impossible to feel sorry for crazy people since their realties do not coincide with our normal conceptions of tragedy etc. And yet, a woman’s brother came to pay a visit. I thought how awful and poignant—that boney casket full of nothing that the man had ever loved and he was saying that he wanted her to come home again. It made me feel very sorry. I presume he was addressing his past—42
“Whoe’er, my friends in
the rough stream of life
Hath struggled with affliction,
thence is taught,
That when the flood begins to
swell, the heart
Fondly fears all things.”
Anyway, there’s nothing so sordid as being shut up—When man is no longer his own master, custodian of his own silly vanities and childish contentments he’s nothing at all—being in the first place only an agent of a very experimental stage of organic free will—
I love you—
Dear, My Own—my
Love—
119. TO SCOTT
ALS, 4 pp., on stationery embossed ZELDA at top left
[Early March 1932]
[Phipps Clinic, Baltimore, Maryland]
Darling, Sweet D. O.—
Your dear letter made me feel very self-condamnatory. I have often told you that I am that little fish who swims about under a shark and, I believe, lives indelicately on its offal. Anyway, that is the way I am. Life moves over me in a vast black shadow and I swallow whatever it drops with relish, having learned in a very hard school that one cannot be both a parasite and enjoy self-nourishment without moving in worlds too fantastic for even my disordered imagination to people with meaning. So: it is easy to make yourself loved when one lives off love. Goofo—I adore you and worship you and I am very miserable that you be made even temporarily unhappy by those divergencies of direction in myself which I cannot satisfactorily explain and which leave me eternally alone except for you and baffled. You are absolutely all in the world that I have ever been able to think of as having any vital bearing on my relations with the evolution of the species.
“Freaks”43 gave me the horrors. God! the point of view of sanity, normality, beauty, even the necessity to survive is so utterly arbitrary. Nobody has ever been able to experience what they have thoroughly understood—or understand what they have experienced until they have achieved a detachment that renders them incapable of repeating the experience. And we are all seeking the absolution of chastity in sex and the stimulation of sex in the church until sometimes I think I would loose my mind if I were not insane.
Darling, darling. The Zola is wonderful. Had he ever fallen into the hands of the authorities, we should have missed his contribution to neurasthentic symptology sadly. It is a long time since I have had any new symptoms and I am bored with all the old tricks of my shattered organism
I love you and I would like us to be covered with the flake of dried sea water and sleeping to-gether on a hot afternoon. That would be very free and fine. Dear Heart!
I have got so fetid and constantly smell of the rubbery things about here—It’s ghastly, really. I do not know to what depths the human soul can sink in bondage, but after a certain point everything luckily dissolves in humor. I want to fly a kite and eat green apples and have a stomach-ache that I know the cause of and feel the mud between my toes in a reedy creek and tickle the lobe of your ear with the tip of my tongue.
If Trouble still bites give him a good kick in the ass for me.
Darling, I love you so.
Zelda
P.S. I do not see how Dr. Squires can remain a sprig of old English lilac in this seething witches cauldron. Did you know the Furies turned out to be respectable old women who went about the countryside doing good and laying eggs in their night shirts? So much for Eschyllus. The old moralist!
120. TO SCOTT
ALS, 4 pp., on stationery embossed ZELDA at top left
[Early March 1932]
[Phipps Clinic, Baltimore, Maryland]
Dearest D. O—
I’m sorry to be so nagging house-wife about the money. I did not realize that things like laundry and stuff were hard cash and no refund and, as usual, I am penniless and about to spend three chapters of Dickens in a mental debtors’-prison. Since you did not understand either, I suppose you think that I have been sloshing my insides at Marconis, or tearing up to the Atlantic City Baby Parade.
When are you coming to Baltimore? There is a night-club and some good shows. I have had a terrible proclivity towards the baubles and tawdry doo-dads of life recently—feeling like the ex-wife of Diamond Jim Brady, mentally. I am secretly awfully suppressed in the fancy-goods line—was just coming to in Montgomery.
Darling—I miss you so. It’s very interesting here, however. Every now and then somebody opens the door and I say
“And what do you see my sister” and they answer “Nothing but the dust up on the hills,” and I go back to wishing I had never stolen the golden-key and awaiting the return of Blue-Beard.
I am proud of my novel, but I can hardly restrain myself enough to get it written. You will like it—It is distinctly École Fitzgerald, though more ecstatic than yours. Perhaps to much so. Being unable to invent a device to avoid the reiterant “said” I have emphasized it à la Ernest much to my sorrow. He is a very determined writer, but I shall also die with my boots on.
I mailed Zola— Found he was helping me to nourish my psychological disorders too much for my own good. Eschyllus is infallible and to read him is to wallow in a lush and golden roll of prose that would force you to write if you knew nothing but the Syrian alphabet.
The days wheeze in on these creaky March days like the last moments of a dying novelist. Sometimes I feel like a titan and sometimes like a three-months abortion—But always I love you in spite of the fact that you are infinitely superior to me and I forgive you your many superlative merits—
Dear—I do not want to keep Mlle. It is very irritating to have a person in such close contact whom you feel is not co-operating except by giving in to avoid trouble. Scottie is not fond of her, so I have no regrets. It’s too bad, but I have done my best and I am sure she will not feel that her trip has yielded her nothing. It’s so annoying to have a person in your own house who is distasteful to you. There must be plenty of French women out of work in the east. Mlle is, au fond, very dogmatic and intolerant and both Scottie and I hate making the constant effort of pulling our punches to get along at all.
Damn Serez44 for forsaking us! More + more I realize her perfections. I cannot live any more with people under thirty—harmoniously. They have too much to learn
from experiences which I have already achieved—and do not care to be reminded of or have to explain to others—Chaque-un a son gout! Love and Love and Love—Zelda.
121. TO SCOTT
ALS, 2 pp.
[c. March 9, 1932]
[Phipps Clinic, Baltimore, Maryland]
Dearest:
My letters sound dry and composed, I suppose, because there isn’t much external data with which to embellish them. I assure you they are not the gleanings of my meagre note-book. My writing went so successfully that I didn’t have time to make my usual observations on our social state. It’s an amusing book which I will mail to you Monday. I sent a copy direct to Max, but I know Scribner’s will refuse it. Knopf is the place I suppose since it has no more weight than Nigger Heaven45 and many things on his list[.] I have some slick psychological stuff which will have to be written in future under more tranquil circumstances when I feel more egotistical since I mean to lambaste our whole mass of concepts. Now, I can hardly afford to whip myself to the necessary frenzies to attack the primal deep-seated hypocracies of our kind. But I shall have some words to say of the baseness and beauties of man.
Dear, I’m sorry about the money’s going so fast. This week it was a permanent wave—next week I hope God in his plush heavens with [will] toss me out some old moth-eaten repose that none of his customers could use and I can stop castigating myself long enough to buy nothing, wish for nothing and achieve the infinite: nothing. I have finished a rhapsodic fizzle of a story about the Auerbacks which I shall send to Ober with instructions to try Physical Culture on account of the gymnastics in the prose.46
I’m sorry Montgomery is so dull: It always was, but Daddy[’s] presence seemed to bolster it up to a semblance of being the end of more noble times. Now we see it as a very tentative and unsophisticated snatching at the turmoils brewed in bigger kettles. I’m all for savagery and its discard always moves most to lament. However all my social sorrows are of the École Burne-Jones47 just at present: rather voluptuous and symbolical; vague fleshly figures floating in a ghostly nebulum playing the harp. Or else they are cartoons bearing such legends as “Bologny,” otherwise known as what the hell—
Dearest, I love you—which is not a dead Narcissus but just one of those things: perhaps a boutonnière from the trick shop on the Boulevard des Italiens which squirts water in your eyes when you try to smell it—
Anyway, the Baby is very intent on establishing herself in the unquestionable benefits of our dubious policies of organization, and at considerable loss to know how to proceed since Ober will not dispose of my gems, some of which are as good as Mr Faulkners—the murder story for instance. I’m going to put them in the want adds pretty soon—
Your wife, otherwise known as the mendacious, mendiant, maniacal
Mme. X—
Please let me ask somebody for a job on the paper somewhere—
122. TO SCOTT
ALS, 4 pp., on stationery embossed ZELDA at top left
[c. March 9, 1932]
[Phipps Clinic, Baltimore, Maryland]
Dearest:
The ballet books are of no importance. My novel being finished I shall at once begin on my story about the Bavarian peasants that I have wanted to write. If Reynolds48 can’t sell any of the volumes of tripe that he has from my pen why doesn’t he give it away? It’s very discouraging to keep writing for myself. I already know what I feel about things. And has Scribner’s ever sent a check for “Couple of Nuts”?49
I went to the Follies again: that Rumba with the girls dressed in orange parabola’s is pictorially the equivalent of the fire-music in the Valkyrie50—It’s really marvelous. So much effort the girls put into being lascivious that they quite defeated their purpose and raised it to impersonal levels. For the rest: well, as you probably remember, the subject matter was largely the depression and an appeal for the gilded lobster-palace and the days when murder was a private affair. Florenz51 has probably acquired gall-stones or something to turn him moralistic. The girls all had the illusion that they were vixens, with an occasional face reminiscent of the purity-school of Mary Hay.52
Thanks for the money and thanks again.
What shall I get of the Greeks to read? I now [k]no[w] Eschyllus by heart, nearly. It is my favorite book, and you are my favorite man and nasturtiums my favorite flower.
Dear I love you—as you probably know—and while I am still in a daze as to my proper position in this bewildering and cataclysmic universe, I have not forgotten my original impetus: which has been for considerable time to hue myself one whence we may go on quietly loving as the gods see fit and we ourselves deem just and fair. So if you can accept any spiritual bonds with this mass of confusion which I have grown to think of as myself, love me too. You might as well, since someday I am going to produce something to satisfy that necessity for belief which I find in myself and you will feel very badly when you look on my masterpiece if you have to say: “If only I hadn’t taken the victrola instead.”
Goofydo—It’s bleak here now and my spiritual carcass is being gnawed by superior vultures to myself and I am bleak in spirit and sometimes I don’t care that I am a bitter wretch and sometimes I don’t care that I am most unusually happy—
But I love you
Zelda
123. TO SCOTT
ALS, 2 pp.
[March 16, 1932]
[Phipps Clinic, Baltimore, Maryland]
Dearest:
Considering the many times recently that I have, through necessity, left you with much on your hands which rightfully should have been on my shoulders, I have been tormenting myself with the picture of you alone establishing the family elsewhere. It is a very dismal image and quite insupportable from a stand-point of fairness. Dr. Meyers agreed this morning that I could leave on the following basis: I want Miss Teasley in the house to stand between me and any possible eventualities of strain. She will relieve you or any member of the household of any responsibilities toward me whatsoever and life will be much easier for all of us. Also you will be freed from the added burden of this expense here. I am quite sure she will come for three dollars a day—not more than four in any case and she is a placid, exhausted old lady who will act as an insulator for my self. Her instructions she will have in a sealed letter from Dr. Squires in whom I have the utmost faith, and we will all agree that there will be no protestations from the rest of the family.
It’s the only way I see to get us over the immediate necessities of existence.
Perhaps I can come back here if you feel I ought after we are functioning in new quarters.
So send me the necessary check at once. I will join you for Easter. This weeks money you sent so late that I will owe it all before it gets here.
D. O. please do as I say. You have no confidence in my practical abilities, your own being of a different order—but I am much calmer than when I came here and if you will cooperate I’m sure my skeme is the best solution.
I can’t stay here forever—and I am perfectly able to take care of myself. It’s too devastating to have the whole menage to look after for you and I am missing years out of Scottie’s life just when I’d like to be with her and influence her. Our old contact will never be reestablished, as it is—to say nothing of all the rest of life, and the financial end.
Phone Miss Teasley to-night and mail the check—
You are a darling and I love you—Are we going to Key West or coming to Baltimore or going to Professor Baker?53
Please answer immediately.
Zelda
P.S. Dr. Squires is writing to-morrow
124. TO SCOTT
AL, 4 pp., on stationery embossed ZELDA at top left
[Late March 1932]
[Phipps Clinic, Baltimore, Maryland]
Dearest:
Will you send me immediately—have Freeman do it—special delivery
(1 Any sketches from my portfolio that are wieldy enough
(2 two small pictures of my moth
er as a child. I’ve found adorable frames for them.
3) picture of me in dancing clothes.
4) The Judge—
Please have him insure them as they are all of immense value to me—
Dr. Squires doesnt want me to write so I’m going to draw— perhaps life class. I’ll send my story as soon as I get it—
Darling send my the things quick—
D. O. I am coming home if I can to help you move and pack and get settled. I will ask Dr. Myers Thursday. Lets take Julia with us—if we stay in this country—It’s such an effort training people—
Dear I love you. Do you miss me? This month has gone very fast. It seems impossible that we have been away so long. I hope you’ll like my book—or something that I do some time—
It’s late and there’s a nurse who sticks her head in the door to see that I dont strangle myself on the shadows every five minutes or stab myself with the rays of light—
So Good-night, Love—Please hurry with the stuff. If he says yes I’m coming home so you’ll have to be quick—
Love—
It’s cold here and I wish you were coming in to sit on my bed and talk and we could tell each other all the reservations that we haven’t got and hint at hidden mysteries of life that only we have solved— And I wish you would love me as you please just so you do and be just faintly glad that your nice T.N.T meringue is not a lemon pie— instead of feeling as you inevitably must that it’s a dish better served to the gastronomes with more resistant stomachs than your own—