Mamma and I are having a very pleasant summer. It rains a lot and the garden breathes weeds and a sense of lost worlds, but its fun digging and watering and somehow a deep sense of romance and adventure lies behind the gate. No word from Scottie for some time but I believe that she intends to turn up here towards the end of June.
Her friends are planning a couple of weeks on the Florida coast: maybe she’d like to join the enterprize. Montgomery is cooler then I ever [k]new it at this time of year; even the pools aren’t yet open so it may be a very tenable locale even as late as June. The young girls and honking automobiles inspire uncatalogued nostalgias and the deep green of the alleys sometimes make[s] me think of Cannes.
I’m so glad the picture is made; and will pray for reward; and wish you every success—
Devotedly
Zelda
The Little Theatre here has manifested an interest in “Scandalabra”45—would a copy of the play be possibly available?
Also Marjorie suggests that your Basil stories46 ought to be good material for Mickey Rooney or maybe even Diana Durbin—They seem to be the sort of thing most deeply in demand. People (in general) just cant stand any more hysteria and fight shy of even the best if it promises to be depressing. Anything wholesome is a go: and any reassurance, spiritual or material that a person can offer in these times meets with a grateful respons[e]—
Devotedly
Zelda
(over)
Do let me know about my play and about the sea-shore—whether you think it advisable for either or both of us, or even the whole family to undertake such a project.
Gratefully
Zelda
282. TO SCOTT
[May 1940]
ALS, 2 pp.
[Montgomery, Alabama]
Dear Scott:
Thanks for the money: one of the best things it buys is peace of mind; and I am alway[s] happy for a little surcease.
The garden grows: poppies blow and scatter their seed under the big trees and Time sleeps under the lavender. I tend it faithfully and cherish my floral aspirations despite the somewhat recalcitrance of the beds that I planted.
A few friends have been to see me. Most of the people we knew seem desperately engaged in keeping alive whatever keeps them alive. I havent been invited to any parties so I dont know what tempo the balls swing in. To this sort of town a beau is almost indespensible; but there dont seem to be any left. Pretty soon the pools will open; and I’m going to buy a bicycle.
Mamma suggests that we spend a week at a Florida sea-side when Scottie arrives. Her confreres are gay and young and lovely and I know that she will have a good time.
It is indeed edifying that things go better. I pray for the just reward of you[r] talent; and for a more proportionate acknowledgment of your contribution to American letters.
Devotedly Zelda
Julia Andersons father died.47
283. TO ZELDA
TL (CC), 1 p.
[Encino, California] May 31 1940
Dearest Zelda:-
Have finished my story and am going to rest for a week, perhaps somewhere further North. The Phil Berg Agency will always have my address. Have finally found a small apartment where I’ll probably spend the summer but I don’t expect to occupy it till the middle of June. From Scottie’s letters I think she expects to join you about then, for the Florida expedition.
As you say in your letter, the problem does seem chiefly “how to keep alive” through these times but if this job of mine turns out well there will most certainly be others.
With dearest love,
284. TO ZELDA
'TL (CC), 1 p.
[Encino, California] June 7 1940
Dearest Zelda:-
The Harvard Summer School idea seemed better for Scottie than her going to Virginia. You remember your old idea that people ought to be born on the shores of the North Sea and only in later life drift south toward the Mediterannean in softness? Now all the Montague Normans, Lady Willards, Ginnisses, Vallambrosas, etc., who loafed with us in the South of France through many summers seem to have dug themselves into an awful pit. I want Scottie to be hardy and keen and able to fight her own battles and Virginia didn’t seem to be the right note—however charming.
I’ll be sending you a semi-permanent address any day now.
Dearest love,
285. TO ZELDA
TL (CC), 1 p.
June 14 1940
Dearest Zelda:-
At the moment everything is rather tentative. Scottie is coming South about the 20th and after that wants to go to summer school at Harvard. If I can possibly afford it I want her to go. She wants an education and has recently shown that she has a right to it. You will find her very mature and well informed. My feeling is that we are in for a ten year war and that perhaps one more year at Vassar is all that she will have—which is one reason why the summer school appeals to me. If I can manage for a month than [then] perhaps I can manage the seashore for you in August—by which time you will have had a good deal of Montgomery weather. A lot depends on whether my producer is going to continue immediately with “Babylon Revisited”—or whether any other picture job turns up. Things are naturally shot to hell here with everybody running around in circles yet continuing to turn out two million dollar tripe like “All This and Heaven Too”.
Twenty years ago “This Side of Paradise” was a best seller and we were settled in Westport. Ten years ago Paris was having almost its last great American season but we had quit the gay parade and you were gone to Switzerland. Five years ago I had my first bad stroke of illness and went to Asheville. Cards began falling badly for us much too early. The world has certainly caught up in the last four weeks. I hope the atmosphere in Montgomery is tranquil and not too full of war talk.
Love to all of you.
1403 N. Laurel Avenue
Hollywood, California
286. TO SCOTT
Wire48
CA703 27 NT=MONTGOMERY ALA 18 1940 JUN 18 AM 11 50 SCOTT FITZGERALD=
1403 NORTH LAUREL AVE HOLLYWOOD CALIF= I WONT BE ABLE TO STICK THIS OUT. WILL YOU WIRE MONEY IMMEDIATELY THAT I MAY RETURN FRIDAY TO ASHVILLE. WILL SEE SCOTTIE THERE. DEVOTEDLY REGRETFULLY GRATEFULLY=
ZELDA.
287. TO SCOTT
Wire
V109 10=MONTGOMERY ALA 18 409P 1940 JUN 18 PM 2 48 SCOTT FITZGERALD=
1403 NORTH LAUREL AVE HOLLYWOOD CALIF= DISREGARD TELEGRAM AM FINE AGAIN. HAPPY TO SEE SCOTTIE=
DEVOTEDLY=
ZELDA.
288. TO SCOTT
Wire
SV85 6=MONTGOMERY ALA 20 349P 1940 JUN 20 PM 2 57 SCOTT FITZGERALD=
1403 NORTH LAUREL AVE HOLLYWOOD CALIF= SCOTTIE ARRIVED SAFE. EVERYTHING FINE. DEVOTEDLY=
ZELDA.
289. TO SCOTT
[June 1940]
ALS, 2 pp.
[Montgomery, Alabama]
Dear Scott:
Thanks once again for the money. Mammas old Jo[e] has been on the invalid list, so I’m grateful for the possibility of giving him a little. He’s been here 24 years, and the family feels sorely stricken that anything should happen to him. Melinda still functions; and with Scottie here sometimes the house has quite an air of Pleasant Ave.
The garden is swathed in weeds, and in the poetic tradition of romantic regret. It gives me great pleasure to encourage the ageratum and to pamper the gladioli; but in these luxuriant summers things grow again before they can be cleared.
Scottie is having accolade: and a very picturesque time of midnight bonfires[,] barbecues and lots of expensive glamour that was non-extant when we grew up. She is so pretty and charming; I hope that she will stay a while—since Mamma says the sejour isn’t too much for her—
Although eighty, she seems like a woman of sixty; running her own life as she always did and affords so much pleasure to all of us
With gratitude and devotion
Zelda
29
0. TO ZELDA
TL (CC), 1 p.
June 29 1940
Dearest Zelda:-
Scottie seems to have had a fine time with you. I’m sorry she couldn’t find a job there but maybe on the whole it’s better for her to get the maximum of education that she still can under these war conditions. I didn’t want her to go to Columbia because New York in summer is just a little too exciting for any serious work, and the same held true of Virginia. She seemed to feel that Harvard was a hardship because she knew so few people there, but for anybody with her ability to make friends I don’t think it will be too difficult. I suppose you feel lonely without her. I’d like to take a look at her too and perhaps if things look better at the end of the summer we could all get together and see how the year has treated us.
Mrs. Owens is going to try to dig up that Scandalabra script for you. An item in the paper says that Shirley Temple may do the picture.49 No other news. I’m being very quiet.
With dearest love,
1403 N. Laurel Avenue
Hollywood, California
291. TO SCOTT
[June/July 1940]
ALS, 2 pp.
[Montgomery, Alabama]
Dear Scott:
This may interest you: it seems that a strange apparition made its way about the Montgomery social structure and, apparently had a very pleasant time.
We loved having Scottie. She is prettier than ever and quite an adjunct and I want so much to have her back for a while before Vassar opens—Though I didn’t have a chance to open any deep channels of “maternal advice” I somehow seemed to have made a little head way as to ingratiating myself—as she seemed quite sorry to leave. There is so much distress and suffering abroad that it is good and indeed spiritually indispensible to feel that one belongs somewhere and that there is still, at least, the warmth of parental relationship—
I am quite proud of Scottie. She is charming and lovely—
Meantime: Life pursues a billowy and dreamy course; and people here seem happy despite the fact that everyday a new country declares a new war—
Devotedly, gratefully
Zelda
292. TO ZELDA
TL (CC), 1 p.
July 6 1940
Dearest Zelda:-
I enjoyed reading the interview given out by our learned Scottie.50 I’m glad to know she spends her time thinking about strikes, relief and starvation while feeling no slightest jealousy of the girls with silver foxes who choose to recline on country club porches. It shows that we have hatched a worthy egg and I do not doubt that someday, like George Washington, she will “raise that standard to which all good men can repair”.
Seriously, I never heard such a bunch of hokum in my life as she sold that newspaper reporter but I’m glad she has one quality which I have found almost as valuable as positive originality, viz: she can make the most of what she has read and heard—make a few paragraphs from Marx, John Stuart Mill, and the New Republic go further than most people can do with years of economic study. That is one way to grow learned, first pretend to be—then have to live up to it.
She has just shown her keeness in another way by taking me for $100. more advance money for the summer school than I had expected to pay leaving me with a cash balance of $11. at date. Don’t bawl her out for this. Leave it to me because it most certainly will come out of her allowance and it was honestly nothing but carelessness in getting the exact data from the summer school. However, it affects you to this extent that I’m going to ask you that if these checks reach you Monday not to cash them until Tuesday. It will be perfectly safe to cash them Tuesday because I’m getting a payment on the story at which I am back at work. The majority of the payment ($900.) goes to Uncle Sam, $300. goes against a loan already made against it and the rest will be distributed for our needs during the next three weeks—so please if you have any extra funds save them for any emergency. We have done our share of lending and giving over many years and we must all watch our money.
Tell me what you do. Cousin Ceci writes that my Aunt Elise died last April at the age of ninety. I was fond of that old woman and I hadn’t yet assimilated her passing.
With dearest love always,
1403 N. Laurel Avenue
Hollywood, California
293. TO ZELDA
TL (CC), 1 p.
July 12 1940
Dearest Zelda:-
You never tell me if you are painting or not, or what you are writing if anything. I spent a silly day yesterday with Shirley Temple and her family. They want to do the picture and they don’t want to do the picture, but that’s really the producer’s worry and not mine. She’s a lovely little girl, beautifully brought up and she hasn’t quite reached the difficult age yet—figuring the difficult age at twelve. She reminds me so much of Scottie in the last days at La Paix, just before she entered Bryn Mawr. You weren’t there the day of the Maryland Hunt Cup Race in the Spring of ’34 when Scottie got the skirt and coat from my mother which suddenly jumped her into adolescence. You may remember that she wore the little suit till she was about sixteen.
It’s hot as hell here today and I haven’t been able to work. I too have had only one letter from Scottie but she seems to like Boston.
With dearest love,
1403 N. Laurel Avenue
Hollywood, California
294. TO SCOTT
[July 1940]
ALS, 6 pp.
[Montgomery, Alabama]
Dear Scott:
The money arrived; thanks for the bounty. The weekly stipend is always a great boon to the morale and puts one again in the humor, at least, for having things all right. I have been trying to (symbolicly as to clothes etc) observe the conventions with it; also to remember the poor in an appropriate scale. It’s wonderful to be a femme d’affairs having wonderful missions of my own instigation again.
Mamma supports the heat as best she is able with the aid of fans and crushed ice and as much ease as can be attained. You have forgotten—as I had myself—what a drenching blistering affair this world is in summer: the streets as eclectic [electric?] with the intensity of these July mornings and by noon the heat is, of almost actuality, blinding. Mamma, I am thankful to say would be able to go to Carolina save that she is now 80 and feels any such departure from her daily routine would be too great a strain. She has $50 a month— is always trying to give most of it away but could support herself in a Carolina boarding house. This is a sweet little house; the garden is deep and romantic and aromatic tinged with Swinburnian suggestions and a lingering faded ritual-of-gardens. I am trying to grow tomatoes, since the flowers I planted have so ungraciously died— but my efforts so far are of a most unprofitable nature.
About sketching: of course I will take up my painting again sometime. Whatever I did now would be of a more desultory than remunerative nature. I work the garden: and spend two days a week at the Red Cross—and I am still under pressure of obligation to Dr. Carrol having signed a paper obligating me to 5 miles a day51 and fantastic diets and generally lugubrious commiserations au lieu de joie-de-vivre. Do you suppose that he will live forever?
I am surviving very well: If Scottie comes back before Vassar (which of course I would love) it would be nice to give her a luncheon for the girls at the club. Unless, of course, such would be ill advised. Red Ruth is still extant—though grievously invalided for his sore foot—and he might under suasion arrange such an accomplishment.
Short of that—there isnt any way of returning her obligations. A picnic, however, might be within our means if we hired a truck; but such things are no good unless on an elaborate scale—Anyways it is very satisfactory to see her quietly and someday I hope and trust to convey to her a sense of family roots and tradition that makes life a so much “fairer” and more honorable arrangement.
Do tell me more about the Shirley Temple picture. To me, she is a most adequate interesting and even compelling personality.
Devotedly
Zel
da
295. TO ZELDA
TL (CC), 2 pp. July 20 1940
Dearest Zelda:-
Thanks for your letter about what you are doing. I do wish you were sketching a little if only to keep your hand in. You’ve never done any drawing at all in Alabama and it’s so very different in flora and general atmosphere than North Carolina that I think it would be worthwhile to record your moods while down there. When times are a little calmer I think you ought to have a really inclusive exhibition of your pictures. Perhaps if the war is over next year it would be a good summer’s job for Scottie to arrange it—I mean fill the place that Cary Ross did six years ago. She would meet all sort of interesting people doing it and I had an idea of suggesting it as her work for this August, but the war pushes art into the background. At least people don’t buy anything.
I am sending you Gertrude Stein’s new book52 which Max Perkins sent me. I am mentioned in it on some page—anyhow I’ve underlined it. On the back of the wrapping paper I’ve addressed it and stamped it to Scottie. She might like to look it over too. It’s a melancholy book now that France has fallen, but fascinating for all that.
Ten days more to go on the Temple picture.
With dearest love,
1403 N. Laurel Avenue
Hollywood, California
PRIVATE AND PERSONAL
Please write me a few lines about your mother’s health. Is she well in general? Is she active, I mean does she still go down town, etc. or does she only go around in automobiles and tell me why you didn’t go to Carolina this year. Was it lack of funds or is the trip a little too much for her.
296. TO SCOTT
[c. July 24, 1940]
ALS, 2 pp.
[Montgomery, Alabama]
Dearest Scott:
The birthday flowers were beautiful: a colossal treasure box filled with dahlias and gladioli and all the grandiose beauties of midsummer gardens. You were sweet to think of me: being in Montgomery reminds me so often of the early days we knew each other. The vogue of the casual café seems to have vanished and the young people entertain themselves on a more formal, and even commendable scale. The South, apparantly from my somewhat remote observations is at last seeing the light of the popular romance on the score. I am so glad that Scottie had such a good time while here: it is gratifying that one is not completely forgotten even after so long a time.
Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda Page 37