Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda
Page 32
Scottie spends the day working on her novel: fooling a little at bridge: browning herself in the sunshine and, I hope, making steps toward the so-inevitable adjustment of more mature circumstance: the realization that everybody elses circumstance is not readily wieldable as ones own.
She is so nice: very communicative and not restive, and I am more than happy to remark that she is most considerate, and makes a nice effort to find life agreeable under what, to her, can but be a restrictive circumstance.
If it is inconvenient for you that she should visit California this summer:
1) Rosalind would be more than glad to have her, I know. She and Newman are going somewhere in this state, and Scottie is surely capable of finding entertainment.
2) It would make me very happy to go to Alabama with her for a month. I love those deep and moonlight midnights, and surely she could profitably employ some time where life is so steeped in reminiscences for me.
3) She could board with whichever of the Taylors you chose. Cousin Cecis house is empty, renovated and you know that she would be glad to have her.
4) Any arrangement you care to make with the Hospital about my going anywhere, or being with her, will make me very happy. This last is, of cource, my first choice. Outside of the ties of parental relationship, Scottie is such a satisfactory companion. Her interest[s] cover a big range, and she brings a very gratifying enthusiasm to life.
—Dear: I am so sorry about your health. Maybe you yourself would be better off in this climate where the mountains might help you find more resistance again. Why dont you move to Arizona, or come back to Tryon—Dont just stay there and drift away; Besides, it must be not so happy to be sick alone. If you came East Scottie and I could see you more often and maybe a sense of old associations would contribute some minor solace. Meanwhile, I wish I had something to send you: Ashville book stores are one of the towns weekest points and I know you dont want any home-spun ties—
But I think of you, and would be so glad if I could help: or even offer some stray fragment of consolatory philosophy—
Devotedly
Zelda
236. TO ZELDA
TL (CC), 1 p.
[Encino, California] July 13, 1939
Dearest:-
This came from Marjorie which ought to be reassuring about your mother. In this case wouldn’t you rather wait till she came North and spend some time with her at Saluda than go down into that terrible heat? Conversely if Marjorie and Noonie come up first, you might go down, pick up your mother and bring her up to Saluda which might be better for her arthritis.
Let me know what you think.
Dearest Love,
237. TO SCOTT
[July 1939]
ALS, 4 pp.
[Saluda, North Carolina]
Dearest Scott:
Whenever I come to Saluda, the impersonal nostalgias that haunt the hot baked clay banks, the hot fragrance of the pines at noon, the crickets shrilling the summer days into Eternity remind me of vacations so many years ago at Mountain Creek. I wake up these fine mornings and think of Daddy and remember the happy times that our family spent here last year.
Scottie is engrossed in novel writing and I still collect data for essays. The square dance last night would, no doubt, in more than a figurative sense have swept us off our feet save the fact that this contingent is still invalided. It will be the end of July before Scottie is allowed any very exigent exertion. Dr. Suitt has been very kind and liberal about letting me be with her. We share the pleasantest of rambling suppers at her domicile on the corner and entertain ourselves as seems expedient with movies, or one-of-those-things. Scottie is doing a meritorious amount of good reading, is distressed (this confidentially) that you expect so much more than average of her marks, wants rather pressingly to achieve a job of some sorts. She’s full of constructive energy, which is most gratifying.
We think of you, and wish there was some means at our disposal of ameliorating the pressure of life for you. Though we are not extravagant, we usually need money. The hospital advanced me $25 for this week end—which I will reimbourse from your next allowance. We owe ten dollars on the board bill. There isnt any way of doing any economizing short of eliminating pleasure and, after all, this is not the most entertaining of existences for the very young: though it is one of the most profitable of environments for the more mature.
I wont write you any more about Montgomery[.] I hadnt realized that we were in such a precarious financial estate. Personally, this has been a very happy summer for me: to have Scottie near and see her every day. She is amazingly resourceful about finding good ways to pass the days; and Time progress[es] somewhere in a not-too-regrettable fashion—
Devotedly
Zelda
over
It cost $25 a week at the boarding house: with my suppers, movies, busses, magazines and “junk.” Scotties laundry is on my bill.
We gave an awfully pleasant lunch for 4 at Grove Park costing $10 (with movies)
This board is $12: train $2: 10 taxis $3 : porters $2—junk about $2 (stamps[,] paper[,] tooth-paste): $2.60 for some raspberry stain spilled on the merchandise at Ivey’s—
It’s very awkward to borrow from the hospital, so wont you send us the indispensibles rather than that these things should go over?
238. TO SCOTT
[July 1939]
ALS, 4 pp.
[Highland Hospital, Asheville, North Carolina]
Dearest Scott:
I borrowed twenty-five dollars from the hospital to pay for the Saluda week-end; also Scottie owes ten dollars on the board bill. I dislike reiterating these so material necessities as much as you hate being nagged, but I believe I had rather face the bills than the unpaid creditors. Won’t you please do something about the situation:
Meantime, I had a very pleasant time in Saluda: Scottie was bored to capacity, just as you had presaged, but managed to present an equitable front. The woods down there transport me into so many happy memories: the sun shine[s] in a more Biblical beam, the mornings are earlier and more dewy—the apples are sweeter in the mint beds[?] and the roads are long and dusty. Also I like sleeping in boarded houses and like to get up to the smell of smoke in the kitchen chimney.
Please believe me when I say that I had a letter from Mamma: Dr. Suitt also had one: saying that she was physically unable to make a trip this summer. Since our finances are so strained, of cource I want to wait until we are better able to make the trip. I want you to suit your own convenience; and not tax our resources, and send me whenever you can. As far as my personal requisites are concerned, this is being a very happy summer for me, being able to see so much of Scottie and finding her such good company. Newman told me that Mamma had lost money: she told me that she was financially able to come but physically unfit. I’ll send her your note; maybe it will be of some inspiration in getting her to leave the heat.
Scottie feels very bad about being on probation: is beginning to realize the significance of 1/10 of a point and prays that you will not be too disappointed in her. Her life at present is such a welter of disappointments that I too trust that you will not judge her harshly. Wont you make-up? She has been so examplary about reading; is really working on her novel; is trying to write an article for Harpers; and really makes the most she can of her times here.
Also: she sent the nurses away as soon as possible, did not take the most expensive room, has been very punctilious in her relationship with me—and so, I believe deserves whatever leniency—with which I know you will treat the circumstance—
Please take care of the money either through me or Scottie as soon as you can. We simply haven’t got any because she owes Ober the $50 because she wrote the article to pay bills encurred at Vassar last year. We need $100 sent care of Scottie
Love
Zelda
239. TO ZELDA
TL (CC), 1 p.
[Encino, California] July 24 1939
Dearest:-
&
nbsp; I am enclosing a check for $15.00—didn’t know Scottie had bartered away her fifty in advance. Sorry she’s depressed about the marks. Have been depressed about her marks for two years so maybe she can stand a little of it.
Especially sorry to keep her on short rations but there has been difficulty in finding the sort of picture job that I could do at home in this state of indifferent health. However, that is evidently going to be solved this week and I will send you something by Friday.
It seems best on the whole to bring Scottie out here (the cheapest way) for three weeks or so and I see no reason why, a little later, you can’t go to see your mother if she has definitely decided not to come out here. All other plans—Virginia Beach, etc., seem expensive and fundamentally unsatisfactory. This house is bearable five days out of seven and there is room for Scottie and she seems to have it on her mind to talk over her artistic and general plans with me—our recent meetings having been very short, usually confused (and sometimes not even amicable). I am so glad you’ve enjoyed her and I know she’s enjoyed you. I hope I will be able to bring her East later in the summer for a reunion.
240. TO SCOTT
[c. July 24, 1939]
ALS, 2 pp.
[Highland Hospital, Asheville, North Carolina]
Dearest D-O:
For my birthday, I love the purple asters and great white immaculate daises and yellow gladioli that you sent me. Also, I am very happy to get the book on Art once more. I have always found it a most inspiring volumn, conducive to thought and of a very constructive guidance. I deeply appreciate your thinking of me so appropriately at a time when I know that you are harassed and pursued by all sorts of troubles.
We are going to somebody’s dance and will perhaps give a picnic ourselves later on.
Maybe next year we will be able to celebrate something “en famille” again, and maybe next year we will be doing some very happy thing in remembrance of the times that we were born.
Meanwhile, I’m so glad to have Scottie with me. She’s such fun, and seeing her about make me happy—
With Love
Zelda
241. TO SCOTT
[Late July 1939]
ALS, 6 pp.
[Highland Hospital, Asheville, North Carolina]
Dearest Scott:
Summer billows over the sky and the lakes; every green square swoons to the sway of white swirling dress and Time itself is become a transient in Ashville. We patronize the swimming place and loaf through the busses and go to the movies every now and then, and life is very agreeable to me. Scottie still pursues her novel, a vast expansive correspondence, a coat of tan and the lovliness of her natural estate. I’ve never seen her so pretty before: also she is well disposed toward the social graces and the summer passes ingratiatingly. We’ll begin tennis again to-day; such is so appropriate to these fine skies and bright green and blue concisions that one feels far more a part of the picture, when ones four sets are accomplished.
My paintings progress. I’m making some little pictures for Rosalind and for a friend who made me some frames and one for the little boy who lives in the lane—just in case he ever emerges. I still havent got any money at the hospital, which is going to leave me in lamentable estate at the next necessity for canvas-buying. If you know Carys address, I believe that I would like to start dickering about just who is likely to be interested in my painting, and argue with him concerning all my reasons why they ought to be of the deepest irresistibility to the public.
It is so gratifying that your lungs are healing. I still think maybe Tryon would be more conducive to happiness than anywhere. After all, its a very good thing to feel good when the mornings are bright and dewy and smoke is punguent on the morning air and the world is still raw material.
Thanks for the new check. There are so few days more: we will be very conservative, as we have been up to the present. There’s really nothing around here to spend money on save movies, and swimming—yet it somehow manages to dribble away and so we are grateful for the new security.
It will be sad to see Scottie leaving. Thank you very much for such a pleasant summer. She is the best of company, and we managed to find enough people that she shouldn’t perish of lonliness— and I loved having her near, and we enjoyed the consideration of all sorts of possibilities—
May I once more suggest, in case the California proves too much for you now:
Ceci, Rosalind or Montgomery for the remaining month.
Dearest: I trust that you will not resent this: in a letter to Scottie you wrote that she must consider Vassar as her home. She bears the best morale a child could possibly have considering the fact of the absence of the moral support that a conventionally established family conveys, and I think it’s rather a needlessly painful punishment to remind her of the absence of material attributes which to a person of twenty-one every child has a right to: the sense of safety: no matter what our circumstance, any member of my family would more than gladly extend her whatever they had to offer in case of need. Wherever I am I am always happier, just circumstantially, as well as spiritually that she should be about—I know your family would want to do anything on earth for her. So, to me, it is regrettable that she should (she does not confess to such) ever have a sense of no place to go when she in actuality has as much devotion amidst her portion as most children do.
She is such a particularly brave and self-reliant child that it would be lamentable to allow a sense of the absence of stability to twist her mind with neuroses concerning the necessity to make a living: laudable as the ambition may be per se.
I do not criticize your letter: but I believe that the only right of a parent to share his tragedies with children under age is of a most factual nature—how much money there is and the technical name of his illness is about the only fallibilities that debutantes are equipped to encompass. The relationship of all these things to the child itself is a matter of his or her own personal orientation, and it doesn’t do any good to let them know that one is harassed.
Nobody is better aware than I am, and, I believe, so is Scottie, of your generosity, and the seriousness of your constant struggle to provide the best for us. I am most deeply grateful to you for the sustained and tragic effort that you have made to keep us going;
As I told you, I wasnt critical, only trying to remind you of the devastating ravages that a sense of insecurity usually manages to establish when theres nothing to do about it
Love and gratitude Zelda
242. TO ZELDA
TL (CC), 1 p.
August 2 1939
Darling:
As I write this I suppose Scottie is getting on the train. Again this morning some of her Eastern friends called up impatiently, so she will have some company her own age beside the little Brackett girls18 whom I don’t think she likes much.
This is nothing but a note to let you know I am thinking of you.
With dearest love,
P.S. Pierre Matisse is still the man to see about those pictures. I feel that Carrie Ross did his stuff. I’m trying to think of some way of getting them attention. How many have you got that you would want to show? There seems to be a better market now than at any time since the depression. Wasn’t it preposterous that the Germans sold off all their modern art for a song in Switzerland?
5521 Amestoy Avenue
Encino, California
243. TO ZELDA
[Early August 1939]
AL (draft), 4 pp.19
[Encino, California]
Dearest
I know you’re going to miss Scottie and I hope August passes quickly for you. It seems strange that it’s here—this last month has been too much of a hell for me to help much, but now I can see light at the end of the passage. It was like 1935–1936 when no one but Mrs Owens and I knew how bad things were and all my products were dirges + elegies. Sickness + no money are a wretched combination. But, as I told you, there has not at least been, an accumulation of debt + there are other blessing
s. I see that only the rich now can do the things you + I once did in Europe—it is a tourist class world—my salary out here during those frantic 20 months turned out to be an illusion once Ober + the governments of the U.S. and Canada was paid and the doctors began.
Keep well. I’m going to try to. I’m glad your mother’s illness was a false alarm.
Have arranged for Scottie to have a piano near bye, tho not in this cottage. She seems to have had a happy time with you. I have written two long + two short stories and wait daily for Swanson20 to find me a studio job that wont be too much of a strain—no more 14 hour days at any price. By the time you get this I hope I’ll be paying the small (not formidable) array of bills that have accumulated. Here is another check to be used most sparingly—not on presents but nessessities of Scottie’s departure ect. Her tickets + travelling money will reach there Tuesday morning if all goes well. Her rail fare Round Trip is only 78.50 round trip, with 5.00 extra fare both ways.
Dearest Love,
Of course you can count on going South in September. We could even meet you there.
And the editorial comment about your paintings was a real thrill to me. We must do something about that soon
244. TO ZELDA
TL (CC), 1 p.
August 4, 1939
Dearest:-
Scottie arrives tomorrow and I hope she’ll enjoy the weeks out here. She doesn’t like heat much and of course this is subtropical, but there is a pool nearby belonging to the landlord and as I wrote you there are boys from the East, at least for the present.
Perhaps I was unwise in telling her so succinctly that she had no home except Vassar. On the other hand, she doesn’t see the matter in relation to the past. When I tried to make a home for her she didn’t want it, and I have a sick-man’s feeling that she will arrive in a manner to break up such tranquility as I have managed to establish after this illness. Perhaps she has changed—but this is the first time in many years that you yourself have expressed pleasure in her filial behavior. I, too, have had that, though in short doses, ever since the spring of 1934. Perhaps the very shortness of the doses has been the fault and I hope this visit will be a remedy.