Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda
Page 21
Please ask Cary to come to see me if he wants to. And tell him that I am sorry I was rude and that if he will lend me the Satie69 I will make him a pink and dreamy picture filled with the deepest appreciation of the most superficial emotions—
D. O:
You don’t love me—But I am counting on Pavloff’s dogs to make that kind of thing all right—and, in the mean-time, under the added emotional stress of the break-up of our state, perhaps the old conventions will assume an added poignancy. Besides, personal love should be incidental music, maybe. Besides, anything personal was never the objective of our generation—we were to have thought of ourselves heroicly; we agreed in the Plaza Grill the pact was confirmed by the shaking of Connie Bennets70 head and the sonority of Ludlow’s71 premature gastritis—
135. TO SCOTT
ALS, 4 pp.
[March 1934]
[Craig House, Beacon, New York]
Dearest Do-Do—
Mrs Owens wrote me that she’d sent everything I asked for including the Key Memorial,72 which was very nice of her. I hope your story goes well and is not too terrific an effort. D. O—I wish you didn’t have to write what you don’t want to—I do the thing for the New Yorker and it grows longer and longer but maybe you can sell it to something. Of cource, I will send it to you to have typed.
Yesterday Mrs Killan and I dug a few holes in some golf balls and I almost uprooted a gigantic oak with what used to be a chip-shot. Next week, the course opens, and we will get in some practice of some sort even if we have to use La Crosse nets.
Also we play bridge. You know how I play: I sit and wait for Divine Guidance to show me the difference between a finesse and a (insert any technical term you know here). Then when I’ve made the mistake I pretend I was thinking of something else and utter as convincing lamentations as I can at my absent-mindedness.
It’s so pretty here. The ground is shivering with snow-drops and gentians. I suppose you wouldn’t like to rest, but I wish you could for a while in the cool apple-green of my room. The curtains are like those in John Bishop’s poem to Elspeth and beyond the lawn never ends. Of cource, you can walk to where young men in bear-cat roadsters are speeding to whatever Geneva Mitchell’s73 dominate the day—but mostly we walk the other way where tumbling villages prop themselves on the beams of the afternoon sun. We have tea, and many such functions to fulfill. It’s an awfully nice place.
Please send the book.74
Love
Zelda
136. TO SCOTT
ALS, 4 pp.
[Early April 1934]
[Craig House, Beacon, New York]
Dearest Do-Do:
I have now got to the Rosemary-Rome episode. It makes me very sad—largely because of the beautiful, beautiful writing. Recapitulation of casual youth in the tenderer terms one learns to cling to later is always moving. You know I love your prose style: it is so fine and balanced and you know how to achieve the emphasis you want so poignantly and economicly. It’s a fine book, suggestive to me of these black tree formations, aspiring or despairing, scattering their white petals to make another valley spring.
Please don’t be alarmed if I don’t write; there is much outside to look at, and my room inside reflects the softness of new greens and harbors the squares of mountain sun—
I’m so happy that it is hot again.
Mrs Killam and I hammered at golf-balls yesterday, taking enough swings to have built the Roxy Center—at least I did. She plays very well. You know my psychological attitude toward golf: it was just the sort of thing they would have brought into England during the reign of Chas. II. The French probably played it in high-heels with stomachs full of wine and cheated a little—
I hope all goes well at home. All you really have to do for Scottie is see that she does not go to Bryn Mawr in dirty blouses. Also, she will not voluntarily wash her ears: I noticed when she was here and hope Louise Perkins75 didn’t. I can’t say that I blame her but some people might, so am afraid you will have to go through a thorough inspection every now and then—
Love
Zelda
137. TO SCOTT
ALS, 1 p.
[Early April 1934]
[Craig House, Beacon, New York]
Mr. Scott Fitzgerald
1307 Park Avenue
Baltimore, Md.
Dear—The book is grand. The emotional lift sustained by the force of a fine poetic prose and the characters subserviated to forces stronger than their interpretations of life is very moving. It is tear-evoking to witness individual belief in individual volition succumbing to the purpose of a changing world. That is the purpose of a good book and you have written it. Those people are helpless before themselves and the prose is beautiful and there is manifest an integrity in the belief of both those expressions. It is a reverential and very fine book and the first literary contribution to what writers will be concerning themselves with some years from now.
Love
Zelda
138. TO SCOTT
ALS, 4 pp.
[c. April 12, 1934]
[Craig House, Beacon, New York]
Dearest Do-Do.
I watch the papers and no reviews. I can hardly wait to know what the critics will say of those “excursions into the frontiers of a social consciousness.” No matter what they say, it’s exquisite prose and a trip into unexploited fields so far as the material is concerned—So if Bunny76 wants to go on thinking about what he’s read of communism, don’t mind. Cadenced adventures of the human heart and an accurate picutre of the end of an era are, I imagine, what animated you to write the book and I wouldn’t care much about an opinion founded on a devitalized version of Christianity. He will think differently when Pavloff and people like that have opened up as mechanistic a universe as the Greek Atomists ever dreamed, only with proofs for everything. Yours is a beautiful and moving book. The man I meant for the clinician in the movies turned out to be Ratoff;77 and the leading man I liked was Paul Lukas,78 but maybe they aren’t famous enough. They’re swell actors, though.
I’m sorry about the income tax and the money I’m spending. I cannot see why I should sit in luxury when you are having such a struggle. Since there seems to be no way in which I can hasten my recovery, maybe it would be wise to try a cheaper place. I promise you I will not be discouraged by any such change you might make and, of cource, will do the best I can, anywhere. Beauty on display costs money, but, as Tolstoi discovered long before Einstein all things are relative and the universal qualities which really count are inherent in everything, individually. Tolstoi said, I believe, that when Peter was tired from the wars, his army palette felt as soft and sweet as the rose-leaves to which he had accustomed himself under more prosperous conditions.
I will send the New Yorker article as soon as I’ve corrected it— probably Tuesday. If they won’t take it maybe it will give you some pleasure to know what a lady thinks about while opening a barrel— an old barrel filled with long-forgotten contents
Love
Zelda
139. TO SCOTT
(Mid-April 1934)
ALS, 3 pp.
[Craig House, Beacon, New York]
Dearest D. O.:
I was afraid you might worry about some of the silly reviews which I have not seen until to-day. Please don’t. All the opinion which you respect has said everything you would like to have said about the book. It is not a novel about the simple and the inarticulate, nor are such a fitting subject for literature one of whose primary functions is to enrich the human mind. Anybody granted a certain talent can express direct action, or even emotion segregate[d] from the activities of the world of their day but to present the growth of a human tragedy resultant from social conditions is a big feat. To me, you have done it well and at the same time preserved the more simple beauties of penetrating poignancy to be found in the use of exquisite prose.
Don’t worry about critics—what sorrows have they
to measure by or what lilting happiness with which to compare those ecstatic passages?
The atomists who followed Democritus said that quantity was what differentiated one thing from another—not quality—so critics will have to rise one day to the high points of good books. They cannot always live on reproductions of their own emotions in simple enough settings not to distract them: the poor boy having a hard time which is all very beautiful because of the poverty, etc.79
It’s a swell heart-breaking book, because the prose compels you to respond to the active situations—which is as it should be.
I am very worried about the finances. Please don’t hesitate to do anything that would relieve the strain on you.
Love
Zelda
140. TO SCOTT
ALS, 4 pp.
[Mid-April 1934]
[Craig House, Beacon, New York]
Dearest Do-Do:
I was so worried that you would be upset about some of those reviews—What critics know about the psychology of a psychiatrist, I don’t know, but the ones I saw seemed absurd, taking little account of the fact that a novel not in 18 volumes can’t cover everything but must rely on the indicative[.] You know yourself that as people yours are moving and heart-rending creations; as instruments of your artistic purpose they arrive at an importance which they would otherwise not have had, and that is the function of characters in a novel, which is, after all, a way of looking at life[.] Do you suppose you could get Menken80 to write an intelligent review? The rest do not seem to know what they think beyond the fact that they have never thought of such problems before. And don’t let them discourage you. It is a swell evokation of an epoch and a very masterly presentation of tragedies sprung from the beliefs (or lack of them) of those times which bloomed from the seeds of despair planted by the war and of the circumstance dependent on the adjustment of philosophies. Woolcot81 might be good to review it, since he had some appreciation of the spectacle which it presents, but I have seen some very silly and absurd commentaries of his lately, and he may have succumbed to the pseudo-radical formulas of Kaufman and Gershwin82 by now.
Let Bromfield83 feed their chaotic minds on the poppy-seed of farm youth tragedies and let them write isolated epics lacking any epic quality save reverence[.] Yours is a story taking place behind the scenes, and I only hope that you will not forget that most of the audience has never been there.
Anyway, they all seem to realize that much thought and a fine equipment has gone into its making and maybe—if they only could understand—
D. O.—darling—having reached the people you wanted to reach, what more can you ask?84 Show man ship is an incidental consideration, after all—they have its glittering sequins in the circus and the Hippodrome and critics yelling for more in literature seems a little like babies crying for things they can’t have between meals—put cardboard cuffs on their elbows—Those antiquated methods are the only ones I know.
xxxx
Since writing your letter has come. Of cource, I missed all but a few reviews. Bill Warren has a swell sense of the dramatic and I hope he’ll separate out the points that will appeal to Mr. Mayer.85 My advice is to revert to the money-triangle as you can’t possibly use the incest. Or make the man a weak and charming figure from the first, always gravitating towards the center of things: which would lead him, when he was in the clinic, to Nicole and later to Rosemary. Regret could be the motif of the last section—Naturally, it’s only advice, and I don’t know if a male star would like to play something so far removed from Tarzan and those things about the desert where people are so brave, and only minor figures make mistakes
Love
Zelda
141. TO SCOTT
ALS, 4 pp.
[Mid-April 1934]
[Craig House, Beacon, New York]
Dearest Scott:
I am glad you did not let those undiscerning reviews upset you. You have the satisfaction of having written a tragic and poetic personal drama against the background of an excellent presentation of the times we matured in. You know that I have always felt that the chief function of the artist was to inspire feeling and certainly “Tender” did that. What people will live on for the next ten years I do not know: because, with the synchronization of light and sound and color (still embryonicly on display at the world’s Fair) there may be a tremendous revision of aesthetic judgments and responses. Some of the later movies have cinematic effects unachievable with a brush— all of which tends to a communistic conception of art, I suppose. In this case, I writing might become the most individualistic of all expressions, or a sociological organ.
Anyway, your book is a sustained and exalted piece of prose—
Bill Warren, in my opinion, is a silly man to get to transcribe its subtleties to a metier that is now commanding the highest talents: because people will be looking thus expecting to be carried along by visual emotional developments as well as story and you will be robbed of the inestimable value of your prose to raise and cut and break the tension. But you know better than I. In the movies, one symbolic device is worth a thousand feet of explanation (granted you haven’t at your disposal those expert technicians who have turned out some of the late stuff)[.] Go to see Ruth Chatterton and Adolph Menjou in that last thing about murder.86 It’s a swell straight psychological story—I simply thought that with all the stuff in your book so much could have been done: the funicular, the beach umbrellas, the garden high above the world, and in the end the two people swimming in darkness.
When Mrs O. sends
1) Dramatic Technique
2) Golden Treasury
3) Pavlowa’s87 Life
4) The Book on Modern Art, I will return Scottie’s Treasury. Until then, I have nothing to read as I can’t stand the Inferno or the pseudo-noble-simplicity of that book Dorothy P.88 gave me.
Won’t you ask her to? Also the paint from Webers. She said she would—They would mail it.
Love
Zelda—
142. TO SCOTT
ALS, 4 pp.
[Late April 1934]
[Craig House, Beacon, New York]
Dearest Do-Do:
I’m so glad all the good people liked your book. It’s swell about Mary Column89 and Seldes90 and I can’t understand your not using Elliot’s opinion of your works91 in the adds. That man J. A. D. in the Times92 is the one I told you dismissed a novel completely on moral grounds not long ago. He is an imbecile and it would be a good thing if somebody attacked him. He knows nothing of art, aestheticly or sociologicly, or of anything that’s going on in the world to-day. However, you had already had a good review in the Times93 so what ho! Only it does make me sore to give people books to review who have no idea of the purpose behind them or of their artistic intent. I Hope you didn’t mind; it is such a fine book, as everybody else seems unanimously agreed.
Cary wrote that Ernest was back in N.Y.; that he had been to see my pictures. Why don’t you ask him down? You’ve got more room than people in the house and Mrs. Owens would get you a maid. He also said the Murphys bought the acrobats.94 I am going to paint a picture for the Murphy’s and they can choose as those acrobats seem, somehow, singularly inappropriate to them and I would like them to have one they liked. Maybe they aren’t like I think they are but I don’t see why they would like that Buddhistic suspension of mass and form and I will try to paint some mood that their garden has conveyed.
I wish I could see the review in the New Republic, Forum, etc. Won’t you send them? I’ll mail them back immediately.
And don’t pay any attention to that initialled moth-hole in the Times.
Apparently the Tribune man95 still believes that movie stars got there via the gutters of Les Miserables—But we can’t buy him a ticket to Hollywood, and, on the whole, it was an intelligent and favorable review—and he liked the book even if he didn’t know what it was about psychologicly. He will like it better when be reads it again.
I hope Ern
est liked it; I guess Morley Callaghan is sore at having his adds reduced.96 Please send me a copy—
Love
Zelda
143. TO ZELDA
TL (CC), 3 pp.
1307 Park Avenue,
Baltimore, Maryland,
April 26, 1934.
Forgive me for dictating this letter instead of writing it directly, but if you could see my desk at the moment and the amount of stuff that has come in you would understand.
The thing that you have to fight against is defeatism of any kind. You have no reason for it. You have never had really a melancholy temperament, but, as your mother said: you have always been known for a bright, cheerful, extraverting attitude upon life. I mean especially that you share none of the melancholy point of view which seems to have been the lot of Anthony and Marjorie.97 You and I have had wonderful times in the past, and the future is still brilliant with possibilities if you will keep up your morale, and try to think that way. The outside world, the political situation, etc., is still gloomy and it does effect everybody directly, and will inevitably reach you indirectly, but try to separate yourself from it by some form of mental hygiene—if necessary, a self-invented one.
Let me reiterate that I don’t want you to have too much traffic with my book, which is a melancholy work and seems to have haunted most of the reviewers. I feel very strongly about your re-reading it. It represents certain phases of life that are now over. We are certainly on some up-surging wave, even if we don’t yet know exactly where it’s heading.
There is no feeling of gloom on your part that has the slightest legitimacy. Your pictures have been a success, your health has been very much better, according to the doctors—and the only sadness is the living without you, without hearing the notes of your voice with its particular intimacies of inflection.