I. Eight Women
(These character sketches and stories appeared in College Humor, Scribner’s and Saturday Evening Post between 1927 and 1931, one of them appeared under my name but actually I had nothing to do with it except for suggesting a theme and working on the proof of the completed manuscript. This same cooperation extends to other material gathered herein under our joint names, though often when published in that fashion I had nothing to do with the thing from start to finish except supplying my name.)
The Original Follies Girl
(about 2000 words)
The Girl the Prince Liked
" 2500 "
The Southern Girl
" 2250 "
The Girl with Talent
" 3500 "
The Millionaire’s Girl
" 8000 "
Miss Bessie115
" 4000 "
A Couple of Nuts
" 4000 "
(There will also be joined to this two hitherto unpublished stories which are also character studies of modern females.)116
II. Three Fables117 (estimated about 5000 words)
The Drought and the Flood
A Workman
The House
III. Recapitulation
Show Mr. and Mrs. F. to Number—
Auction Model 1934
* * *
All in all about 50,000 words. This will give you plenty of work for the next three or four weeks if you can find time for it, especially that item of the two possible stories which I am afraid will have to go through some more revision to measure up to the rest. I am having Mrs. Owens send you (a) All living copies of your Mary McCall story.
(b) All living copies of your Katherine Littlefield story.118
In the first case I think you have got to cut out the mystical element about the dogs because the story itself is so haunted by suggestion of more or less natural vice that the introduction of the supernatural seems excessive and breaks the pattern. In the second case my feeling is that it is largely a question of cutting “down to its bare bones.” I am seldom wrong about the value of a narrative and feel that my continued faith in this one is not misplaced. It may take two workings over, but the first one is undoubtedly stripping it to its girders and then seeing what, if any, plaster you want to slap on it. These two stories would seem to be necessary to make up the bulk of a volume, the aim of which is to compete with such personal collections of miscellany as Dorothy Parker’s, etc. The very fact that the material is deeply personal rather than detached and professional make it expedient that it be presented in some such way as this.
This letter has been interrupted by having a phone conversation with the small publisher (respectable, but with119
152. TO SCOTT
ALS, 3 pp.
[After June 14, 1934]
[Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital, Towson, Maryland]
Dearest Do-Do:
Do-Do you are so sweet to do those stories for me. Knowing the energy and interest you have put into other people’s work, I know how much trouble you make appear so easy. Darling—
I will correct the stories as soon as I can—though you know this is a very regimented system we live under with every hour accounted for and not much time for outside interests. There was a better, later version of the dance story—but maybe I can shift this one since I remember it.
You talk of the function of art. I wonder if anybody has ever got nearer the truth than Aristotle: he said that all emotions and all experience were common property—that the transposition of these into form was individual and art. But, God, it’s so involved by whether you aim at direct or indirect appeals and whether the emotional or the cerebral is the most compelling approach, and whether the shape of the edifice or the purpose for which it is designated is paramount that my conceptions are in a sad state of flux. At any rate, it seems to me the artists business is to take a willing mind and guide it to hope or despair contributing not his interpretations but a glimpse of his honestly earned scars of battle and his rewards. I am still adamant against the interpretive school. Nobody but educators can show people how to think—but to open some new facet of the stark emotions or to preserve some old one in the grace of a phrase seem nearer the artistic end. You know how a heart will rise or fall to the lilt of an aladen troche or the sonorous dell of an o—and where you will use these business secrets certainly depends on the author’s special evaluations. That was what I was trying to accomplish with the book I began: I wanted to say “This is a love story—maybe not your love story—maybe not even mine, but this is what happened to one isolated person in love. There is no judgment.”—I don’t know—abstract emotion is difficult of transcription, and one has to find so many devices to carry a point that the point is too often lost in transit.
I wrote you a note which I lost containing the following facts
1) The Myers have gone to Antibes with the Murphys—
2) Malco[l]m Cowley arrested for rioting in N.Y.
3) I drink milk, one glass of which I consider equal to six banannas under water or two sword-swallowings—
There didn’t seem to be anything else to write you except that I love you. We have a great many activities of the kind one remembers pleasantly afterwards but which seem rather vague at the time like pea-shelling and singing. For some reason, I am very attached to this country-side. I love the clover fields and the click of base-ball bats in the deep green cup of the field and the sky as blue and idyllic as parts of your prose. I keep hoping that you will be in some of the cars that ruffle the shade of the sycamores. Dr. Ellgin said you would come soon.
It will be grand to see Mrs. Owens—I wish it were you and Scottie. Darling.
Don’t you think “Eight Women” is too big a steal from Dreiser120—I like, ironicly, “My Friends” or “Girl Friends” better. Do you suppose I could design the jacket. It’s very exciting.
My reading seems to have collapsed at “The Alchemist.” I really don’t care much for characters named for the cardinal sins or cosmic situations. However I will get on with it—
Thanks again about the book—and everything—In my file there are two other fantasies and the story about the judge to which I am partial—and I would be most grateful if you would read “Theatre Ticket”121 to see if it could be sold to a magazine maybe—
Love
Zelda.
Why didn’t you go to reunion?
Do you think the material is too dissimilar for a collection? It worries me.
153. TO SCOTT
ALS, 2 pp.
[Late June 1934]
[Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital, Towson, Maryland]
Mon chère Monsieur:
Here are some titles—Maybe you can paste them on the unidentifiable bottles in the medicine cabinet if they don’t seem to apply
1) Even Tenor
2) Rainy Sunday
3) How It Was.
4) Ways It Was—
I admit frankly that they are not much good, but then neither am I at quick invention. I will let you know if the next brain storm should bring to light something more pertinent—
“Authors Wife” sounds as if it’s an intimate revelation of the blacker side of how we writers live. Again I admit frankly it makes me sick. For your book,122 would it be a good idea to add up how much those stories brought in and call the book “Eighty Thousand Dollars”—ho! Or “Words”—(sounds to experimental)—and I don’t know what to call anything. Had I a pet canary, he should be nameless—Call it a day—There are some fine ideas for titles in the Victor record catalogue—which is where I found “Save Me the Waltz”—
Couldn’t Scottie come swimming next time with Mrs Owens—if she’s back? I keep hoping you’ll show up but you don’t—and neither does Christmas or other holidays before their time, I suppose.
I am become an expert seamstress and laundress and am, in fact, thoroughly
equipped to make you exactly the kind of wife you most detest. However, I am going to read Karl Marx so we can give a parade if the day of exodus ever arrives—bombs on the house, and a cigar for every Lord Mayor you hit.
Well—
Recevez, Monsieur, mes felicitations les plus distinguées—
And many thanks for the perfectly useless check to Mrs Owens. Now that the blind tiger is no more, I couldn’t think of any place to cash it so I tore it up as emotionally and dramaticly as $34.50 seemed to warrant—Of cource, a hundred would have made a better scene—
With deepest devotion—
Love
Zelda.
154. TO SCOTT
AL, 1 p.
[Summer 1934]
[Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital, Towson, Maryland]
Dearest Do-Do—
I am so glad your letter sounded so well and cheerful. It made me very homesick—your sweet boyancy always holds so much promise of bright and happy things in such a vital world. It will be grand to see you and Scottie again. This month has begun, inevitably, to seem rather endless, though I realize that that is an ungrateful attitude.
Here, we pursue our ways. There is nothing to report—croquet in the late afternoon sun while the big trees swing, rocking shadows down the lawn. Life is idle. Yesterday we took a long ride around familiar roads and it seemed so unreal not to be going home to La Paix—Men rake the rhythm of summer through the clods of a new putting green; we play base-ball, and in the distance the fields conform to futurists patterns and mash each other lop-sided in their scramble down the valley.
I wrote Mrs. Turnbull; I wrote her an eulogy on the iris. Passing the old barn, the place has, in spite of everything, the pleasantest associations. I am sorry it was such a night-mare to you. I wish we knew what we were going to do—and when—and how long
It’s grand about the books. Judging from the papers, the British Empire seems to be succumbing to a cruel nemesis—I hope the book will have a big sale. Darling, darling,—you deserve something so nice. I wish I had it to offer you, and maybe I will find something inside myself for you to love—when I am better.123
155. TO SCOTT
ALS, 1 p.
[Late Summer/Early Fall 1934]
[Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital, Towson, Maryland]
Darling:
I am so glad you went to Doctor Hamman124—Your legs were so thin that day and I hate to think of you working and working until your clothes seem so patheticly too big—I wish you’d go away with Max125 and fill them full of breezes from a cool nocturnal forest. You could have pine trees in a cloister and little inlays of the brightest saphire twilight and there could [be] cascades making vowel sounds for you to fish in. And the water could churn the light to a lovely foam—and you could be going through motions to which you are unused and that always makes the whole world seem an experimental process.
There’s nothing to put in a letter except the summer clouds and the sky billowing above the tennis courts. I play all day and am inaugurating the charming custom of paying no attention at all to the lines. The first leaves are falling on the waters of Meadowbrook—and I think of Gatsby on his fine pneumatic mattress—and of you writing in rooms in France with late fires burning till morning and in the stereotype blur of 59th street and at La Paix behind the vines
I’m sad because I can’t write—
Love and Love and Love,
darling
Zelda
156. TO SCOTT
ALS, 4 pp.
[October 1934]
[Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital, Towson, Maryland]
Dearest Do-Do—
Thanks for your letter. Since you are slowly dissolving into a mythical figure over the long period of years that have elapsed since two weeks ago, I will tell you about myself:
1) I am lonesome.
2) I have no relatives or friends and would like to make acquaintance with a Malayian warrior.
3) I do not cook or sew or commit nuisances about the house
The Sheppard Pratt hospital is located somewhere in the hinterlands of the human consciousness and I can be located there any time between the dawn of consciousness and the beginning of old age.
Darling: Life is difficult. There are so many problems. 1) The problem of how to stay here and 2) The problem of how to get out. And I want so desperately to go to Guatemala still and ride a bicycle to the end of a long white road. The road is lined with lebanon cedars and poplars and ancient splendors crumble down the parched bleached hills and natives sleep in the shade beside a high grey wall. Whereas here Grace Moore126 sings very prettily over the radio and obscure kings get themselves killed by what I am convinced are Mussolinis henchmen so that Lowell Thomas127 will not disappoint the old ladies—It is all very depressing
We had a swell ride through the woods very proudly aflame with a last desperate flamboyance. The paths are like tunnels through the secrets of a precious stone, all green and gold and red and under the maples the world is amber.
Can we go to the Russian ballet? or can I go with Mrs Owens? or will you ask Father Christmas to bring me a Russian ballet—or have the cook put some in the next pudding—or something.
I liked New Types.128 The girl was nice with breezes in her bangs. Like all your stories there was something haunting to remember: about the lonliness of keeping Faiths—I love your credos—and your stories. I meant to write you about The Darkest Hour.129 It was sort of stark and swell and full of the pressure of history in the making— but I would have liked more description and less of the battle. Mrs. Ridgely took me to see the hunt start. There is a story in that atmosphere—There is a grandfather little and guarded like the Pope and Miss Leidy of the love letters here in the hospital and none of them fought in the Civil War. Of cource, it might not be Family history but its an awfully good story.130
The fourth page of Zelda’s letter, with her sketch, “Do-Do in Guatemala.” Courtesy of Princeton University Library
157. TO SCOTT
ALS, 2 pp. (fragment)
[After February 1935]
[Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital, Towson, Maryland]
some forgotten nursery rhyme. There are human bodies without identities as I am myself. But I hope life is very important in your hotel; that the lobby is full of people making estimates of each one’s worldly goods. Places where life transpires under a cloud of suspicion are more exciting. Your interest, inexhaustible, tolerant and expansive, has always made anywhere a desirable spot.
D. O.—take care of yourself. I wish I could have done it better. You have never believed me when I said I was sorry—but I am.
Some day soon you will be well + happy again. Maybe you will be at Norfolk, salty and sun-burned. Your eyes will glow in the darkened room and the hum and drone of deepest summer will seep in under the blinds. Sand in the bath-tub, sticky lotion and a towel for your shoulders. I’ll have to sprawl on my stomach till this sun-burn clears away and cut the sleeves from my softest shirt. Your hair is so gold against your golden skin. And your legs stick to-gether as you sit with them crossed. The room is so still because of the vibrance of the heat outside. Have a good time. Of cource it’s cooler in the grill, and clandestine, and there are gusts of bottled breezes.
North Carolina should be pines and pebbles, geraniums and red tile roofs—and very concise. Breathe in the blue skies. It’s a good place to get up early; there’s a very polished sun to burnish the mountain laurel before breakfast. And the brooks gleam cold in the thin early shadows. Biscuits and grits all floating in butter; resin on your hands and frogs bouncing out of the twilight.
D. O.—
D. O.—
What is there to say? You know how much I have loved you.
Zelda
158. TO SCOTT
ALS, 4 pp.
[June 1935]
[Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital, Towson, Maryland]
Dearest and always
Dearest Scott:<
br />
I am sorry too that there should be nothing to greet you but an empty shell. The thought of the effort you have made over me, the suffering this nothing has cost would be unendurable to any save a completely vacuous mechanism. Had I any feelings they would all be bent in gratitude to you and in sorrow that of all my life there should not even be the smallest relic of the love and beauty that we started with to offer you at the end.
You have been so good to me—and all I can say is that there was always that deeper current running through my heart: my life—you.
You remember the roses in Kinneys yard131—you were so gracious and I thought “he is the sweetest person in the world” and you said “darling.” You still are. The wall was damp and mossy when we crossed the street and said we loved the south. I thought of the south and a happy past I’d never had and I thought I was part of the south. You said you loved this lovely land. The wistaria along the fence was green and the shade was cool and life was old.
—I wish I had thought something else—but it was a confederate, a romantic and nostalgic thought. My hair was damp when I took off my hat and I was safe and home and you were glad that I felt that way and you were reverent. We were gold and happy all the way home.
Now that there isn’t any more happiness and home is gone and there isnt even any past and no emotions but those that were yours where there could be any comfort—it is a shame that we should have met in harshness and coldness where there was once so much tenderness and so many dreams. Your song.
I wish you had a little house with hollyhocks and a sycamore tree and the afternoon sun imbedding itself in a silver tea-pot. Scottie would be running about somewhere in white, in Renoir, and you will be writing books in dozens of volumes. And there will be honey still for tea, though the house should not be in Granchester—132
Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda Page 23