You will be cramped by this at first—moreso than in the hospital, but it is everything that I can send without putting Scottie to work which I absolutely refuse to do. I don’t think you can promise a person an education and then snatch it away from them. If she quit Vassar I should feel like quitting all work and going to the free Veteran’s Hospital where I probably belong.
The main thing is not to run up bills or wire me for extra funds. There simply aren’t any and as you can imagine I am deeply in debt to the government and everyone else. As soon as anything turns up I will naturally increase your allowance so that you will have more mobility, clothes, etc.
I am moving in town to be near my work.38 For the present will you address me care of my new agent Phil Berg, 9484 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills, California. If you forget, “General Delivery, Encino” will be forwarded to me also. As soon as I have a new permanent address I will write you. I do hope this goes well. I wish you were going to brighter surroundings but this is certainly not the time to come to me and I can think of nowhere else for you to go in this dark and bloody world. I suppose a place is what you make it but I have grown to hate California and would give my life for three years in France.
So Bon Voyage and stay well.
Dearest love,
270. TO SCOTT
[April 1940]
ALS, 2 pp.
[Highland Hospital, Asheville, North Carolina]
Dearest Scott:
Best wishes for the job. If not as remunerative perhaps such work should be far more interesting than having to lose yourself in another mans soul. It would indeed be wonderful to be a member in the best of standing again.
Of cource, I was sorry not to see Scottie[;] however this life is shop-worn and dreary and has about made it’s last contribution; so maybe its better not to see her under unfortunate circumstance. It will be grand to see her in Montgomery; we’ll be able to swim and play tennis and we might even enjoy—
I am so deeply grateful to you for arranging about home. No matter what problems one has to face it is so much more agreeable to face them without the pressure of ultimate authority figuring in the balast.
The sun is shining conscientiously; I still dabble on the same old story, and the world still doesnt bloom—nor even dream. However theres a suggestions of green on the horizons and the consolation of summer ahead.
Thanks again and again for the check; and all your courtesies. Dont send any more money care Mrs. Harlan unless I ask you; it might be inconvenient to her and my mail is still ad. lib. which means freedom from inspection—as I am myself 4 times a week—39
Devotedly
Zelda
271. TO SCOTT
[April 1940]
!cALS, 2 pp.
[Montgomery, Alabama]
Dearest D. O:
The very early morning is a mysterious and dangerous time fraught with the controlled purposes the day will hold: on review. The bus left Ashville at five o[’]clock and is now soaring along th[r]ough houses and barn-yard[s] lethal and comforted by sleeping faiths and aspirations in abeyance.
Dr. Carroll gave me fourty dollars of the money. He is getting very old; is extremely irascible and difficult to treat with and I was afraid (from the indication of his manner) that if I pressed the issue I might not be allowed to leave. He very courteously said that if I wanted all the money that he would give it to me; but that I owed him two or three hundred dollars to his own personal account. Having felt the constant restraint of his (materially) omnipotent authority for the past four years, I was glad to get out in easy circumstance and considered it very ill-advised to protest. I deeply regret the twenty-dollars; will use to the best advantage whats left, and take care of myself in wise and mete manner.
I am most deeply grateful to you for sending me home. It is so happy and adventurous to be on the road again. I think of you and the many mornings that we have left believing in new places together. This country is so nostalgic with its imperative possibilities of escape from the doom of the mountains and its long engaging roads that it was made for travel. I am always glad to be going
Meantime: thanks again. Last night when I thought the situation over I tried to persuade the office to give me the other twenty dollars, but apparently they couldnt.
I wanted to pay Jean West; and a months board.
Devotedly
Zelda
Dear: on second thoughts: the hospital paid the bus ticket home so maybe we owed him the confiscated $20. I have $40—and will send Jean West $11 on account
272. TO SCOTT
[April 1940]
ALS, 2 pp.
[Montgomery, Alabama]
Dear Scott
Montgomery is as green and fragrant and as ingratiating as it was so many years ago. The back yard is graceful and fragrant and the house is cool and in tune with a very even inviolate cosmic tempo. It is a blessing to be out of the hospital where the properties of things are no longer absolute but assume also the desirabilities of relativity, and of free-will.
Mamma is lovlier than ever. Joe still cajoles the morning with the most gracious significances and Melinda40 wheedles the hour to the happiness of fruitions. I’ve seen Livy, the Auerbachs and Katherine Ellsberry. It seems to me that the terms of my stay are not of a strictly social nature: and I want to acclimate myself to this free and somnolent paradise before I try to strike a working basis.
Again, I am most deeply grateful[?] to you for sending me home; and will try to merit my regained estate by the sincerest and most meritorious of cond[uct]
Devotedly
Zelda
Please dont fret over my extravag[ance]. There isnt anything to substanti[ate] any such assumption: My wants are modest: as the case requires and always[s]41
273. TO ZELDA
TL (CC), 1 p.
[Encino, California] April 19 1940
Dearest Zelda:-
I have no word yet that you’ve arrived in Montgomery.42 I hope you are there by now and well ensconced and that things are as you’d like them. I enclose this week’s $15. for expenses and $10. for extras.
The day before yesterday it looked as if things were going to be better. A better paid job intervened and I thought I could postpone the Babylon but it didn’t work out that way. However, it might be a great deal worse. A few months ago I could not have paid for you to come out at all.
Do write me. I have a nice letter from Scottie about her play.
Dearest love,
274. TO ZELDA
TL (CC), 1 p.
[Encino, California] April 27 1940
Dearest Zelda:-
Enclosed are checks for $15., for household and $20. for other expenses. Thanks for your cheerful letter. Try to write me when you get the checks so I will know they arrive on time. I try to mail them Fridays but if they don’t get in the post till Saturday and there is any windstorm there may be a casual delay.
I am working on this “Babylon” moving picture. I can’t make up my mind where to live this summer. After the valley which was so good for my lungs, Los Angeles seems very cityfied. But perhaps I can locate a high spot somewhere.
Scottie’s play seems to be a great success. Things are working out for her much as I had hoped. The boys she goes with seem to be about the best available in that economic strata and I no longer get the horrors less [lest] she elope with some playboy. I think that whatever choice she makes she will be able to do it at leisure and she belongs to a cannier generation than ours.
I am sending you your watch. You’ve said many times that you wanted to give it to Scottie. While you were sick I didn’t feel like giving away any of your possessions. If it gives you any pleasure keep it. If you want to give it to her all right. I’ve said nothing to her. Though it cost $500., I had it valued by a pawnbroker some years ago and he estimated its hock value at about $20.! And yet they say jewelry is a good investment.
With best to all the family.
Dearest love
,
275. TO SCOTT
[May 1940]
ALS, 2 pp.
[Montgomery, Alabama]
Dear Scott:
Tilde sent me this from the N.Y Times. I am very proud of Scotties such aspirational activities; and happy that she is achieving distinction in so many fields. Wont you send the article back to me as soon as you’ve read it? Mrs McKinney will use it in the Montgomery paper—43
The town still blossoms and bowers. This is the most friendly of cosmoses; even the lay out of the town welcomes the advent of vagrant hearts, and June and I always feel somehow, more inclusive, corporeally in Montgomery.
I wish I had something to do. After I have been here a month I intend to try to find some sort of job. I may try short stories and might try magazine covers—because I seriously doubt that a person in this circumstance would get a job with so many people not knowing of what they are likely to be fed.
It’s wonderful to be free from those so compelling obligations of hospital routine: it would seem impossible that a person could have been so exhausted as I was and still survive—
Thanks again for saving me. Someday I’ll save you to[o]—
Devotedly
Zelda
276. TO ZELDA
TL (CC), 1 p.
[Encino, California] May 4 1940
Dearest Zelda:-
I sympathize with your desire to do something. Why can’t you hire a cool room somewhere for a studio? All you’d need is an easel, a chair and a couch and I think you have an easel somewhere. I think with Marjorie’s help you could get it for almost nothing and perhaps after next week I can help more (I go according to the fever—if it stays around 99 I feel rash, if it runs up over a degree at a daily average I get alarmed and think we mustn’t get stony broke like last Fall. My ambition is to pay the Government who’ve laid off me so far. I don’t know what they’d annex except my scrapbook.
Will return the clipping Monday—she’s a smooth enough kid (for which I take most of the credit except for the mouth, legs and personal charm, and barring the wit which comes from us both)—anyhow she’s the best kind a good deal of figuring out could do. She’s not as honest as either you or me but maybe she didn’t have as much to conceal.
I hope you’re happy. I wish you read books (you know those things that look like blocks but come apart on one side)—I mean loads of books and not just early Hebrew metaphysics. If you did I’d advise you to try some more short stories. You never could plot for shocks but you might try something along the line of Gogol’s “The Cloak” or Chekov’s “The Darling”. They are both in the modern library’s “Best Russian Short Stories” which the local Carnegie may have in stock.
Don’t waste your poor little income on wires to me—unless the money doesn’t come.
Yours at about 99.7
P.S. Love to all. Excuse the bitter tone. I’ve overworked on the God damn movie and am in bed for the day.
277. TO ZELDA
TL (CC), 1 p.
[Encino, California] May 11 1940
Dearest Zelda:-
Sorry I wrote you such a cross letter last week and I miss getting an answer from you. Things are better. The awful cough I had died down, the temperature fell and I’ve worked hard this week with apparently no ill effect except that I’m looking forward tomorrow to a peaceful Sunday spent in bed with Churchill’s “Life of Malborough”. Funny that he should be prime minister at last. Do you remember luncheon at his mother’s house in 1920 and Jack Churchill was so hard to talk to at first and turned out to be so pleasant? And Lady Churchill’s call on the Countess of Byng whose butler was just like the butler in Alice in Wonderland? I thank God they’ve gotten rid of that old rag scallion Chamberlain. It’s all terribly sad and as you can imagine I think of it night and day.
Also I think I’ve written a really brilliant continuity. It had better be for it seems to be a last life line that Hollywood has thrown me. It is a strong life line—to write as I please upon a piece of my own and if I can make a reputation out here (one of those brilliant Hollywood reputations which endure all of two months sometimes) now will be the crucial time.
Have a cynical letter from Scottie about the Princeton Prom. Thank God I didn’t let her start to go at sixteen or she would be an old jade by now. Tell me something of your life there—how you like your old friends, your mother’s health, etc., and what you think you might do this summer during the hottest part. I should have said in my letter that if you want to read those stories upon which I think you might make a new approach to writing some of your own, order “Best Russian Stories”, Modern Library Edition from Scribners and they will charge it to me.
Next week I’ll be able to send you what I think is a permanent address for me for the summer—a small apartment in the h[e]art of the City. Next Fall if the cough is still active I may have to move again to some dry inland atmosphere.
Love to all of you and especially yourself.
Dearest love,
278. TO SCOTT
[May 1940]
ALS, 2 pp.
[Montgomery, Alabama]
Dear Scott:
Thanks for the money. I am so glad life uses you a little less ill: and pray that someday things will be fairer. I still maintain that you[r] reward is not anywhere near commensurate to your contribution
Mamma sends her love. The little house is peaceful, and fragrant of the prospect of June, and free of evil import in the clear morning sun. Life is so ingratiating sustaining oneself on the fragrance of strawberries and the beneficence of these deep lush May days. The roads bloom with butter-cups; the meadows flower with starry aspirations and the gardens aspire with poppies and gay staccato discipliners of the flow[e]ring summer.
I write you at least once a week every week; and last week I wrote you twice: so maybe Mr. Berg is a letter-eater amongst his other attainments.
Why dont you send stories to the Post again: they might be in a mood to consider favorably the premium that they created not so long ago. Surely the era that you discovered is not yet past—completed
Gratefully; devotedly
Zelda
279. TO ZELDA
TL (CC), 1 p.
[Encino, California] May 18 1940
Dearest Zelda:-
It’s hard to explain about the Saturday Evening Post matter. It isn’t that I haven’t tried but the trouble with them goes back to the time of Lorimer’s retirement in 1935. I wrote them three stories that year and sent them about three others which they didn’t like. The last story they bought they published last in the issue and my friend, Adelaide Neil on the staff, implied to me that they didn’t want to pay that big price for stories unless they could use them in the beginning of the issue. Well that was the time of my two year sickness, T. B., the shoulders, etc., and you were at a most crucial point and I was foolishly trying to take care of Scottie and for one reason or another I lost the knack of writing the particular kind of stories they wanted.
As you should know from your own attempts, high priced commercial writing for the magazines is a very definite trick. The rather special things that I brought to it, the intelligence and the good writing and even the radicalism all appealed to old Lorimer who had been a writer himself and liked style. The man who runs the magazine now is an up and coming young Republican who gives not a damn about literature and who publishes almost nothing except escape stories about the brave frontiersmen, etc., or fishing, or football captains, nothing that would even faintly shock or disturb the reactionary bourgeois. Well, I simply can’t do it and as I say, I’ve tried not once but twenty times.
As soon as I feel I am writing to a cheap specification my pen freezes and my talent vanishes over the hill and I honestly don’t blame them for not taking the things that I’ve offered to them from time to time in the past three or four years. An explanation of their new attitude is that you no longer have a chance of selling a story with an unhappy ending (in the old days many of mine did have unh
appy endings—if you remember). In fact the standard of writing from the best movies, like Rebecca,44 is believe it or not, much higher at present than that in the commercial magazines such as Collier’s and the Post.
Thank you for your letter. California is a monotonous climate and already I am tired of the flat, scentless tone of the summer. It is fun to be working on something I like and maybe in another month I will get the promised bonus on it and be able to pay last year’s income tax and raise our standard of living a little.
Love to all and dearest love to you.
P.S. I am sending you the copy of the article you sent me about Scottie. You said something about giving it to Mrs. McKinney.
280. TO ZELDA
TL (CC), 1 p.
[Encino, California] May 26 1940
Dearest Zelda:-
Do please write me when my checks come. This is the last day of the script and I’m pretty much all in, beautiful 99.6 fever and all. If this thing makes a hit it may make a difference in everything out here.
Will write fully in a few days.
Dearest love,
281. TO SCOTT
[May 1940]
ALS, 4 pp.
[Montgomery, Alabama]
Dear Scott:
I dont know what infamous trait causes Mr. Berg to dispose of the letters I send you. I write every Monday or Tuesday anyway acquainting you of how rejoiced I am at my renewed prosperity.
Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda Page 36