ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In preparing this book, we received assistance from a number of people. Ronald Goldfarb and Kristen Auclair found us a publisher. At St. Martin’s Press, Diane Higgins, our editor, was a consistent voice of support and encouragement, along with her assistant, Nichole Argyres. Carol Edwards not only copyedited our manuscript expertly; she improved it significantly. Mary C. Hartig, Marc Singer, Sarah Barks, and David Bryan Barks helped prepare the text. Eleanor Lanahan, Wendy Schmalz, AnnaLee Pauls, Don C. Skemer, Ruth Prigozy, Judith Baughman, Tom Adams, David Bryan Barks, Rosemary Mizener Colt, Mary Anne Neeley, and Lisa Hartjens assisted us in securing photographs.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD published his first novel, This Side of Paradise, in 1920. That same year he married Zelda Sayre and for the next decade the couple lived in New York, Paris, and on the Riviera. Fitzgerald’s novels include The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby, and Tender Is the Night. He died at the age of forty-four while working on The Last Tycoon. ZELDA FITZGERALD was born in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1900. She and Scott had a daughter, Frances “Scottie” Fitzgerald. Zelda is the author of several short stories and novels, including Save Me the Waltz.
JACKSON R. BRYER is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Maryland. He has also edited the Fitzgerald-Maxwell Perkins correspondence.
CATHY W. BARKS teaches American literature at the University of Maryland.
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BY F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
NOVELS
THE LAST TYCOON (Unfinished)
TENDER IS THE NIGHT
THE GREAT GATSBY
THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED
THIS SIDE OF PARADISE
STORIES
BITS OF PARADISE
uncollected stories by F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald
THE BASIL AND JOSEPHINE STORIES
edited and with an introduction by Jackson R. Bryer and John Kuehl
THE PAT HOBBY STORIES
edited and with an introduction by Arnold Gingrich
TAPS AT REVEILLE
SIX TALES OF THE JAZZ AGE AND OTHER STORIES
with an introduction by Frances Fitzgerald Smith
FLAPPERS AND PHILOSOPHERS
with an introduction by Arthur Mizener
THE STORIES OF F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
a selection of 28 stories, with an introduction by Malcolm Cowley
BABYLON REVISITED AND OTHER STORIES
THE SHORT STORIES OF F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
edited and with a preface by Matthew J. Bruccoli
I’D DIE FOR YOU AND OTHER LOST STORIES
edited and with an introduction by Anne Margaret Daniel
STORIES AND ESSAYS
THE CRACK-UP
edited by Edmund Wilson
AFTERNOON OF AN AUTHOR
with an introduction and notes by Arthur Mizener
THE FITZGERALD READER
with an introduction by Arthur Mizener
LETTERS
THE LETTERS OF F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
with an introduction by Andrew Turnbull
CORRESPONDENCE OF F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli and Margaret M. Duggan
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD: A LIFE IN LETTERS
edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli
LETTERS TO HIS DAUGHTER
edited by Andrew Turnbull and with an introduction by Frances Fitzgerald Lanahan
AS EVER, SCOTT FITZ—: LETTERS BETWEEN F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
AND HIS LITERARY AGENT, HAROLD OBER
edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli and Jennifer McCabe Atkinson
DEAR SCOTT/DEAR MAX: THE FITZGERALD-PERKINS CORRESPONDENCE
edited by John Kuehl and Jackson Bryer
DEAR SCOTT, DEAREST ZELDA
edited by Jackson R. Bryer and Cathy W. Barks
POEMS
POEMS, 1911–1940
with an introduction by James Dickey
AND A COMEDY
THE VEGETABLE
with an introduction by Charles Scribner III
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ENDNOTES
Preface
1. When, in January of 1934, Zelda’s paintings were shown in New York, she used the French aphorism Parfois la Folie Est la Sagesse (Sometimes Madness Is Wisdom) as the title for her exhibition (see color insert).
Part I: Courtship and Marriage: 1918–1920
1. Scott sent Zelda a chapter from his novel, “The Romantic Egotist,” the summer that they first met. Although Scribners returned Scott’s manuscript the same month (August 1918), Maxwell Perkins, who would become his editor, wrote Scott an encouraging letter, suggesting that he revise and resubmit the novel.
2. All wires in the book are reproduced as transmitted by the telegraph service. Misspellings, such as those in Zelda’s name here, have not been corrected.
3. Francis Stubbs, with whom Zelda had a date, was one of Auburn University’s star football players. Scott, discharged from the military, was on his way to New York when he wired Zelda, who was at Auburn with Stubbs, perhaps hoping to ensure her fidelity by expressing trust in her.
4. Prank calls to boys they knew who were attending southern colleges—the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, and Auburn University in Alabama—and were a part of the social circuit of football games and parties.
5. Actor who starred in sixty-seven movies from 1912 to 1947; his 1919 films included The Girl-Woman, Caleb Piper’s Girl, and Common Clay.
6. Zelda had sent Scott pictures of herself.
7. Clothilde, the third of Zelda’s three older sisters, married to John Palmer; she was to join him in New York.
8. Scott sent Zelda a gift of a glamorous pair of pajamas.
9. Livye Hart, a popular friend of Zelda’s, whose family, along with the Sayres, belonged to Montgomery’s society club, Les Mysterieuses, an organization that planned entertainments and balls featuring the town’s eligible young women.
10. Unlike most of the other telegrams from Scott that Zelda pasted in her scrapbook, this one was not fully in capital letters. See also no. 27.
11. Scott sent Zelda an engagement ring that had been his mother’s.
12. Scott wrote this note to Zelda on his calling card and enclosed it with the engagement ring.
13. Rosalind, the second of Zelda’s three older sisters.
14. Newman Smith, Rosalind’s husband, who served in France during the war.
15. Stephan Parrott, a friend of Scott’s, whom he met at the Newman School, a Catholic prep school in New Jersey.
16. Either May Inglis, a popular girl who graduated from Sidney Lanier High School with Zelda in 1918, or May Steiner, a Montgomery girl whom Scott was dating when he met Zelda.
17. Zelda’s father, Judge Anthony Dickinson Sayre, was sometimes called “A.D.”
18. A friend of Zelda’s from high school. In the “Composite Picture of an Ideal Senior Girl,” Zelda was voted the best mouth and Eleanor the wittiest.
19. Scott visited Zelda’s sister Clothilde in New York while looking for an apartment for himself and Zelda.
20. The Sayres’ cat, which apparently moved to New York with
Clothilde.
21. Same as Tootsie, Zelda’s sister Rosalind.
22. Newman Smith, Rosalind’s husband.
23. The Hotel Exchange in Montgomery, where Scott bought a bottle of gin when he visited Zelda.
24. Scott took this romantic description of a graveyard and used it nearly verbatim as the thoughts of the protagonist Amory Blaine, a thinly disguised fictional version of himself, in the final two pages of This Side of Paradise.
25. Nancy Milford says that Scott, “[t]ouched by the beauty of” Zelda’s previous letter (letter 20), “sent her a marvelous flamingo-colored feather fan. It was the perfect gift for Zelda, frivolous and entirely beautiful; she was delighted by it” (Zelda 46).
26. Scott’s maiden aunt, who had helped finance his education.
27. Les Mysterieuses: Zelda’s mother and sister Rosalind wrote a skit for the April “Folly Ball,” in which Zelda performed.
28. The local Junior League put on a variety show, the proceeds of which were to be sent to “the Alabama boys in France.”
29. The philosopher and emperor of ancient Rome, who wrote Meditations, a classic work of stoicism.
30. This two-page handwritten note from Zelda’s mother to her daughter was enclosed.
31. A novel by the popular English writer Compton Mackenzie.
32. When Scott returned to New York after his April 15 visit to Zelda, he wrote in his Ledger: “Failure. I used to wonder why they locked princesses in towers” (Ledger 173). He apparently liked the sentence so much that he used it in letters to Zelda as well.
33. Whatever Zelda’s mother had given her has been lost. Mrs. Sayre, however, was in the habit of giving her daughter clippings of news articles about failed writers, and perhaps this was one.
34. A regiment that had been serving in France.
35. Twenty-three of the men in her brother-in-law’s regiment died in France.
36. Zelda had her picture taken in her costume for the April “Folly Ball” in her backyard, sitting among Mrs. Sayre’s rose bushes, and sent it to Scott.
37. Ironically, Highland Hospital—where Zelda was a patient in the 1930s and 1940s and where she died tragically in a fire in 1948—was in Asheville, North Carolina.
38. Mrs. Francesca, a local spiritualist, who claimed to receive messages from the “other world” on a Ouija board.
39. Snappy Stories, a popular bimonthly pulp magazine, published formulaic short stories, articles, cartoons, and reviews of movies and plays.
40. Perhaps Scott had sent her his short story “Babes in the Woods”; he had just sold the story to The Smart Set for thirty dollars, out of which he bought a sweater for Zelda and white flannel trousers for himself.
41. At this point in the letter, Zelda drew a picture of two stick figures dancing.
42. Zelda inserted “I’ll never learn the combination” above “Chummying” and drew an arrow circling these words and pointing to the two stick figures that she had drawn.
43. When Zelda returned home from Georgia Tech, she was pinned to the golfer Perry Adair but she soon regretted it and returned Adair’s fraternity pin by mail. She inadvertently mixed up a “sentimental” note she had written to him with a letter she was writing to Scott. Unfortunately, Scott got the note intended for Adair and was so hurt and angry that Zelda had been disloyal to him that he demanded that she never write to him again. Zelda could not comply, and she sent this brief explanation and apology. After receiving this letter, Scott made a frantic trip to Montgomery to try to patch up the relationship. He begged Zelda to marry him immediately, but she refused and broke their engagement. There were no more letters until they resumed their relationship in the fall.
44. These brackets were supplied by Zelda.
45. Most likely the heroine of her story.
46. Concerned about tuberculosis, Scott went to New Orleans in January to write and to avoid the St. Paul winter. While there, he visited Zelda in Montgomery twice, during which Scott and Zelda made love, probably for the first time. Scott moved back to New York in February; then, toward the end of February, he moved to the Cottage Club at Princeton to await the publication of This Side of Paradise.
47. Perhaps Scott was asking Zelda to send him the story that she was working on (mentioned in letter 35).
48. Nancy Milford dates this letter March 1920 and believes that it was the last letter Zelda wrote to Scott before their marriage. Scott’s biographer Matthew J. Bruccoli, however, believes that the letter was written earlier in February. The editors agree with the February date because Zelda’s writing “and next time I’m going back with you” indicates that Scott was still making trips to Montgomery.
49. When Scott sold “Head and Shoulders” to the movies for $2,500, he sent Zelda a $600 platinum and diamond watch.
50. These brackets were supplied by Zelda.
51. In McTeague (1899), a novel by Frank Norris, who belonged to the literary school of naturalism, the protagonist is a dentist smitten by a young woman named Trina, whose gaping smile he corrects with bridges and crowns, after which he marries Trina, then murders her. Zelda apparently found Norris’s naturalism so repulsive as to be amusing.
52. Zelda mistakenly believed that she might be pregnant.
53. This Side of Paradise was published on March 26, 1920.
54. John Palmer (Clothilde’s husband) and Rosalind (Zelda’s sister) apparently helped Scott with the last-minute wedding arrangements. Zelda’s other sister, Marjorie, accompanied her to New York for the wedding. Neither Scott’s nor Zelda’s parents attended. The small wedding party consisted of Zelda’s three sisters; her brothers-in-law, Newman Smith and John Palmer; and Scott’s best man, Ludlow Fowler, his friend from Princeton. Scott was so nervous he began the ceremony before John and Clothilde arrived.
Part II: The Years Together: 1920–1929
1. Scott may never have sent this letter.
2. Charles MacArthur, American playwright and, later, screenwriter and husband of actress Helen Hayes. Scott had met and caroused with MacArthur on the Riviera during the summer of 1926.
3. Mrs. Winthrop Chanler, a wealthy society matron whom Scott had first met when he was a young man.
4. Scott’s second cousin, daughter of his cousin Cecilia Taylor.
5. King Vidor, Hollywood movie director, whom Scott met in Paris in the summer of 1928 and with whom he briefly planned to make a movie.
6. Mademoiselle Delplangue was Scottie’s governess.
7. Hadley Richardson, Hemingway’s first wife.
8. Scott introduced King Vidor to Gerald Murphy and the two later collaborated on the film Hallelujah! (1929), Hollywood’s first all-black movie.
9. Newman Smith, Zelda’s brother-in-law.
10. Ludlow Fowler, Townsend Martin, Alexander McKaig, and William Mackie were friends of Scott’s from his time at Princeton University.
11. George Jean Nathan, critic and coeditor with H. L. Mencken of The Smart Set and American Mercury literary magazines.
12. “Dice, Brass Knuckles & Guitar,” one of Scott’s short stories; but it was not written until 1923.
13. Broadway producer.
14. This motor trip provided material for Scott’s humorous essay “The Cruise of the Rolling Junk,” published in February, March, and April 1924 issues of Motor.
15. Donald Ogden Stewart, American humorist and, later, successful screenwriter.
16. Zoë Akins, American playwright, with whom Zelda apparently quarreled about the parlor game Botticelli.
17. Broadway playwright and producer.
18. Lynne Overman, actor in movies and on the stage.
19. John Peale Bishop, American poet and critic, who was Scott’s classmate at Princeton.
20. Irish-Anglo critic, whom Scott had met as a young man and who recommended the first draft of This Side of Paradise to Scribners.
21. A humorous song Scott wrote.
22. Xandra Kalman, a childhood friend of Scott’s.
23. Oscar Kalm
an.
24. The Fitzgeralds met Prince Vladimir N. Engalitcheff, whose father was the former Russian vice-counsul in Chicago, in 1921 on the way to Europe on the Aquitania. E. E. Paramore was a writer who later worked with Scott in Hollywood. Edmund “Bunny” Wilson, leading American man of letters, met Scott at Princeton, where Wilson was a class ahead of Scott.
25. Charles Cary Rumsey, artist and sportsman.
26. Glenn Hunter, a movie actor who was in Grit (1924), for which Scott wrote the scenario.
27. Edouard Jozan, French aviator with whom Zelda had a romantic relationship in July 1924.
28. While in Rome in the fall of 1924, Scott was briefly jailed, due to his drunken behavior. The Fitzgeralds attended a Christmas party for the cast of Ben-Hur, which was being filmed there, and Zelda asked writer and newspaperman Howard Coxe to take her home.
29. A sedative which contained alcohol.
30. Injections.
31. Raquel Meller, renowned Spanish singer.
32. Grace Moore was an American opera singer; Ruth Ober-Goldbeck-de Vallombrossa was an American who was the wife of the Count de Vallombrosa; Charles MacArthur.
33. Walker Ellis, a friend of Scott’s from Princeton days.
34. It was in the Riviera town of St. Paul-de-Vence where dancer Isadora Duncan flirted with Scott at a party.
35. Lois Moran.
36. Carl Van Vechten, American novelist and photographer.
37. Richard Knight, New York lawyer whom Zelda, according to Milford, met and was attracted to at a party for Scott’s cousin, Cecilia Taylor, in the fall of 1927. Paul Morand was a French novelist and essayist.
38. French taxi driver brought to the United States by the Fitzgeralds to be their chauffeur.
39. Philip Barry, American playwright.
40. Dorothy Parker.
41. Nemtchinova, a famous Russian ballerina.
42. The French word for a medical procedure for drawing blood.
Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda Page 41