The papers are hot-beds of disaster: disasters of such cosmic proportions that one can no longer cho[o]se the more relevant. It keeps me in a dreadful estate of fearing the collapse of the public utilities and that we will never meet again—Maybe we ought to be equipping ourselves: breast-plates, and nose-guards and things.
Wont your secretary send me some more moccasins? Or why dont you just send me the secretary? Then I’ll never have to worry about where all my lovliness is to come from[.] Heavily beaded; 51/2—of Zodiac-al properties—please.
Devotedly
Zelda
190. TO SCOTT
[December 1937]
ALS, 2 pp.
[Highland Hospital, Asheville, North Carolina]
Do-Do
Joy + glad tidings! Dr. Carrol is taking a car-load of people to Sarasota Florida to-morrow, and I am at last a priviledged character. It’s five days en route and I can roll contentedly recapitulating through the Georgia clay-banks, and through the stark + lonely pines; and over long abandoned roads—the way I love to.
Thanks for the money. I havent yet got a chance to spend it—but will write you on the advent of my new cage.
There isnt any Christmas in the air. Despair blows the night chaoticly here + there and skies gape cosmic terror. I cant even make Christmas cards.
I’m in Highland Hall, and I’m very nice and pretty. It will be happiness to see you at Christmas, and where would there be a better fire than at Tryon or sweeter smelling woods about grow—and the promise + possibility of flowers + the dank of early spring along the roads.
Wont you send me a small picture of you? and thanks for rememberring me by Rosalind.
Devotedly +
gratefully
Zelda
191. TO SCOTT
[December 1937]
ALS, 2 pp.
[Highland Hospital, Asheville, North Carolina]
Dearest Do-do—
Life has puffed + blown itself into a summer day, and clouds + spring billow over the heavens as if calendars were a listing of mathematical errors.
Christmas already seems exciting; there are red + gold stores + stores glittering + ecstatic and streets done up in garlands. I’ll be mighty glad to see you, kind sir.
If you can stop the train at some of the more enterprising Indians, I still would love the mocassins—beaded all over + as near turquoise as they have had heaven enough to make. At Tuc[s]on maybe or one of those places where we bought bracelets a long long time ago.
I am busy at many small + inconsequent exploits, and feeling rather spiritually organized although without any Titanesque projects.
You say what can I do—I want to go home to Ala for a while to establish my capacity as an able + invaluable citizen. It’s a fine gratification to have something to offer when offerring. I could collect my tastes and objectives and meet life with a better sense of unity once habit again becomes volitional—
But we can discuss when you arrive—
Meantime the parties sound fun to be strung on an assurance that they are, after all, happiness—
And so—
Devotedly
Zelda
I wrote the man what to do about the skirt. Could he follow the letter? Because otherwise he may make me boat-rigging, i.e.; flaps + things. Thanks + thanks
During the Christmas holiday, Scott went to Asheville to visit Zelda and took her on a vacation to Florida and then to Montgomery to visit her mother. Writing to Scottie, he admitted that the trip wasn’t altogether successful: “Your mother was better than ever I expected and our trip would have been fun except that I was tired. We went to Miami and Palm Beach, flew to Montgomery, all of which sounds very gay and glamorous but wasnt particularly” (Life in Letters 345). When Zelda returned from vacation, there was a New Year’s masquerade ball, the theme of which was Mother Goose; Zelda, who regardless of her illness kept her sense of humor, very much enjoyed going as “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary.” For Easter, Scott planned a family trip to Virginia Beach for Zelda, Scottie, and himself. Once there, the three of them bickered, and Scott and Zelda caused a scene at the hotel. When he returned to Hollywood, Scott arrived at the airport drunk and had to be placed under a doctor’s care. He was so ill that he had to be fed intravenously.
During the spring of 1938, he exchanged several letters with Dr. Carroll and urged the doctor to continue to allow Zelda vacations; otherwise, Scott feared, Zelda, with nothing to look forward to, would sink into despair. Meanwhile, in April, Scott moved from the Garden of Allah on Sunset Boulevard (and its boisterous social set) to a quieter bungalow at Malibu Beach, and then in November (to escape the cold and damp) to a cottage at Belly Acres (the estate of the actor Edward Everett Horton) in Encino, where he would live until May 1940, when he moved to an apartment near Sheilah’s in Hollywood.
192. TO SCOTT
[February 1938]
ALS, 2 pp.
[Highland Hospital, Asheville, North Carolina]
Dearest Do-Do:
February parades our miseries on as bleak a wind as ever seethed our hopes into necessities—and I long to be off for browner sunnier expectations.
Mamma sent me some calico to sew—already, it speaks of berrystains and the early suns of July mornings and birds perched along the dawn—summer’s so happy: its obscenity to have the highest expectations subservient to the hope of getting warm.
Thanks for your letter, and the money for the clothes. They are to travel in—and I know they’ll be pretty if Rosalind sends. You sent such amazingly adequate, and so sensorily gratifying a perfume that I wanted more of it. The name is Salud, Schiaperilli, and when you go to Mexico again, remember me.
I’m writing a paper for a class we have on whether our brains will work or not. It’s all about everything I know and ought to be very illuminating. I’ll lend it to you at Easter and we can use it as Scottie’s entrance speech into the world.
Meantime violets and lilies and pink beauty blows on my canvas and I hope and wait—
Devotedly
Zelda
193. TO SCOTT
[March/April 1938]
ALS, 4 pp., on stationary embossed MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA, at top center
Dear Scott:
I am a very extravagant woman; I am a jezebel—However, that may be, the money is gone, and so will I be in the morning, and I owe Mamma $10 for sundries—
It’s all very demoralizing; and I hate to call on you for more when you have so recently been so liberal—
But will you be kind enough to send her the check
If you could understand how desperately tired of medical routine, of inescapable suppressions[,] frustrations of my pleasures, suppressions of temper, of opinions with which we (you + I) have always subscribed and of any personal expression) which such a life prescribes, I’m sure you would be willing to let me try outside once more. For as long as a year, Highland Hospital is as excellent a regime as I know; but its the only hospital that I have ever been in that makes no provisions for any personal life—[leisure, right of opinion, liberties such as town etc.]138—and after three years of such, the soul begins to perish.
I beg of you not to leave me there after Easter.
Anyway—I am most grateful for your constant thoughtfullness, your generosity and for all the good things you’ve given me.
Devotedly
Zelda
Why don’t you let me close accounts in Ashville, come out to visit you for two weeks at Easter, and return to Ala—
If this project was successful I could make my own arrangements afterward; and maybe find a cottage somewhere where you could spend a happy month or so whenever you felt like it.
Two pages that Zelda included with this letter, outlining her expenditures. Courtesy of Princeton University Library
194. TO ZELDA
[April 1938]
ALS, 2 pp.139
[Hollywood, California]
I couldn’t b
ring myself to write you last week—I was plenty sore with myself and also a good deal with you. But as things settle down I can regard it all with some detachment. As I told you I was a sick man when I left California—had a beautiful little hemorage the end of March, the first in two years and a half—and I was carrying on only on the false exaltation of having done some really excellent work. I thought I’d just lie around in Norfolk and rest but it was a fantastic idea because I should have rested before undertaking the trip. There has been no drink out here, not a drop of it, but I am in an unfortunate rut of caffiene by day and chloral by night which is about as bad on the nerves. As I told you if I can finish one excellent picture to top Three Comrades140 I think I can bargain for better terms—more rest and more money.
These are a lot of “I’s to tell you I worry about you—my condition must have been a strain and I thought you had developed somewhat grandiose ideas of how to spend this money I am to earn which I consider as capital—this extravagant trip to the contrary. Dr. Carrol’s feeling about money is simply that he wants to regulate your affairs for the time being and he can do so if you live on a modest scale and within call. He doesn’t care personally whether you spend a hundred a month or ten thousand—doubtless for the latter you could travel in state with a private physician instead of a nurse. Here is the first problem you run up against trying to come back into the world + I hope you’ll try to see with us and adjust yourself. You are not married to a rich millionaire of thirty but to a pretty broken and prematurely old man who hasn’t a penny except what he can bring out of a weary mind and a sick body.
Any relations you want are all right with me but I have heard nothing from you and a word would be reassuring because I am always concerned about you
Scott
Oh, Zelda, this was to have been such a cold letter, but I dont feel that way about you. Once we were one person and always it will be a little that way.
In June, Scottie graduated from the Ethel Walker School and applied to Vassar. Scott could not attend her graduation, but he arranged for Zelda and her sister Rosalind to go to New York and then Connecticut for the ceremony. His gift to Scottie was a trip to France, and she visited him in California that summer before leaving for Europe. When Scottie returned to the United States, Zelda met her in New York. Rosalind, Mrs. Sayre, and Zelda’s nurse accompanied her; since Zelda’s sister Clothilde lived near New York, Zelda enjoyed a family reunion. Being with family and being in New York again made her eager to leave the hospital permanently. These trips interrupted Zelda’s routine and made her less satisfied with the hospital regimen. Her success on these outings seemed proof to her family that she was ready to leave; they pressured Scott as well as Zelda’s doctors to allow her to do so. The doctors felt that only by spending the majority of her time in a therapeutic environment was she able to do as well as she did on the trips. A nurse traveled with her to act as a safety net.
During 1938, Scott worked on three films—Infidelity, Madame Curie, and Three Comrades. Zelda saw Three Comrades in June when she went north for Scottie’s graduation, whereupon she immediately sent Scott her congratulations. Later in 1938, his work on the screenplay for Madame Curie made it impossible to see Zelda for Christmas; he arranged for her and Scottie to spend the holiday in Montgomery with Zelda’s mother.
195. TO SCOTT
[c. June 2, 1938]
ALS, 2 pp., on stationery embossed HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT, at top center
Dearest Scott:
Scottie is the prettiest girl; of a stabilized ae[s]theticality and a plasticly tangible spirituality. She wore white gardenias and white flannel and white hopes and the freedom and grace of the best and we are very proud and devoted. She loved your flowers, which are magnificent, of yellow and ma[u]ve and pink and spontaneous impetus; and expanding expectantly to the brightest and happiest of mornings. Although the day was dark.
Thanks again for everything, and the goodness thereof—
Don’t send me the watch; I want to give the money to charity— because I’ve had such a happy time. So won’t you, please? Of cource, if there is any.
We’re going to the movie to-morrow, and I’ll write after.
Meanwhile—life is so nice, when one can have some. and meanwhile, good luck.
Scottie is a very good thing to have. I’m so glad we’ve got her.
Thanks again—
Zelda
I sent Scottie white flowers.
Scottie at her high school graduation
196. TO SCOTT
[After June 3, 1938]
ALS, 4 pp.141
[New York City]
The love scene on the beach was superb, acting, dialogue, set and direction
The street fighting was splendidly handled: a good suspense in the picking off of the lonely figure, and an adequately renderred sense of cavernous emptiness of cities deprived of their safety. The men are pretty good throughout, without much chance for moving acting.
The comedy is excellent all the way through; sophisticated, realistic, and of a bitter delight—The picture got lots of good sound laughs—
The girl was all that she could have been; and very convincing; and utterly charming and deeply moving when he carried her in in the blanket. She looked like a child. But somehow, it seemed rather arbitrary that 3 men should so have avowed their lives to her well-being—
The dialogue is par excellence; the individual sceens excellent; the acting excellent (Margaret Sullavan) and first rate (the men). The music adds lots—
But there isn’t any dramatic continuity—which robs the whole of suspense. I know its hard to get across a philosophic treatise on the screen, but it would have been better had there been the sense of some inevitable thesis making itself known in spite of the characters—or had their been the sense of characters dominated by some irresistibly dynamic purpose. It drifts; and the dynamics are scaterred + sporadic rather than cumulative or sustained.
The audience was most responsive, and applauded The music montage and technical side in general was beautifully handled.
—In casual vein, or what I would have said had it been the product of a stranger: beautifully adequate and intellectual dialogue (unusual)—fine acting from the heroine—of a convincing seriousness + portentuousness that was never realized because there wasn’t any plot: spiritual or material
Most of the scenes are gratifyingly strong + full—
Many congratulations.
Zelda
197. TO SCOTT
[July 1938]
ALS, 3 pp.
[Highland Hospital, Asheville, North Carolina]
Dear Scott:
It fill[s] me with dread to witness the passage of so much time: another summer is half gone, and maybe there’ll never be anymore sun-burns and high hot noons.
Do you suppose they still cook automobiles at Antibes, and still sip the twilight at Kaux [Caux], and I wonder if Paris is pink in the late sun and latent with happiness already had.
Anyway, I now know the address of summer, where it lives and breeds and makes its home, where daisy fields come from and bird-song is brewed, and where is the home of secret heavens[.] It’s not very far away, and Mamma and I may spend a couple of weeks there: if permission resolves
Meantime, Newman thinks Three Comrades one of the best picture’s he’s ever seen, and all sorts of scattered opinions are very pro—so maybe we’ll get some more money and more prestige and more liberties and all sorts of other desirable attributes
—and meanwhile Mamma is here; and lovely and eager as ever, but a year older than she was last year which makes me sad—
I hope she has a happy holiday—The mountains are very green and of as insistently splendid proportions as before—and Ashville is the highest point east of the Rockies. It says so on the radio—
Zelda
198. TO SCOTT
[Late Summer 1938]
ALS, 2 pp.
[Highland Hospital, Asheville, North Carolina]
Dearest Do-Do:
The deluge continues: yesterday we had supper in the sad silver reflections of a swelling river while the vaporous heat of a wet summer threatened to hatch all sorts of things.
Mamma is fine, and the Montgomery contingent of Sayres thrive at Saluda before facades like Appomatox Court House and under the trees of absolute actuality for beauty. “The Big Apple”142 sweeps the floor and is a most engaging entertainment. It’s full of all sorts of most expressive impersonal coquetry and engaging self-dramatization. Maybe Scottie can teach you.
Sir: The summer fades + wanes and I cant know where the daisies are or what has become of the ripe corn-tops.
Sir: I can turn back somersaults at will + ease and I can make a bridge
Sir: I sew two party dresses for when there is a fanfare on the mountain tops.
And I will be mighty glad to see you—
Babani—any or
Rosine—“Sur Mon Balcon”
either is cheap in Mexico.
Shoes: turquoise or red beads
belt: bright sets + brass nails—143
Love + many thanks
Zelda
199. TO ZELDA
TL (CC), 2 pp. [Malibu Beach, California] Sept. 2nd 19 38
Dearest Zelda:
The situation is too difficult to explain in a telegram. It is briefly this:
As you know, the Finneys have taken Scottie not only for two Christmas vacations but for a total of about three odd months in the summer and, as you know also, I have really been able to offer nothing to replace this; that is to say, neither Norfolk, Montgomery, nor Scarsdale144 bear much resemblance to a home. While the Finney’s house—because of her great love for Peaches, and for the way they feel about her and make her feel and because of those formative years when she learned to love Baltimore—has been very much of a home.
Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda Page 27