84 Virginia, by contrast: Pauline Pfeiffer’s biographer Ruth Hawkins reports that “as the more athletic of the sisters, Virginia found his stories interesting and followed him into the kitchen, where she spent much of the evening pumping him for more information—much to Ernest’s delight.” Ruth A. Hawkins, Unbelievable Happiness and Final Sorrow: The Hemingway-Pfeiffer Marriage (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2012), 3.
84 “I’d like to”: Cannell, “Scenes with a Hero,” 146.
84 “They remarked with”: Ibid.
84 “See, here is”: Sokoloff, Hadley, 82.
84 possibly even an affair: Making a case for this possible liaison, Pauline Pfeiffer’s biographer Ruth Hawkins cites a “suggestive” incident in which Virginia joined Hemingway at a dinner with Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas soon after these first meetings. At the end of the meal, Virginia and Hemingway were said to have left together; he allegedly squired her back to her home. Decades later, Hawkins interviewed several of Virginia’s surviving friends, who claimed that she had indicated to them that she and Hemingway had become involved with each other shortly after they met, and that the Pfeiffers’ wealth had motivated his initial interest in her and eventually in Pauline. Ruth Hawkins, Unbelievable Happiness and Final Sorrow. One friend recalled a conversation in which he asked Virginia, “So, you could have been Mrs. Ernest Hemingway?” Her response: “I also had an Uncle Gus, didn’t I?” Uncle Gus was the Pfeiffers’ generous and wealthy uncle Augustus Pfeiffer. Ruth Hawkins, interview with the author, October 13, 2014. Hemingway and Pauline’s second son, Patrick Hemingway, says that he finds the idea of an early relationship between his father and his aunt plausible, stating that in the case of two attractive, close-knit sisters, “it’s almost too much to expect a man” to marry one and “not be attracted to the sister.” Patrick Hemingway, interview with the author, September 26, 2014. He also pointed out that “there wasn’t much future in that relationship” despite its purported early romantic tenor, as it later became clear that Virginia was gay—or “preferred the company of women,” as Hawkins puts it.
85 “I heard a”: Loeb, The Way It Was, 249.
85 long, lean woman: Although it has generally been implied that Duff Twysden towered over her suitors, one friend recalled that she actually stood about five foot seven. Yet she was fetchingly long-limbed: expat heiress Nancy Cunard once described her as having “beaucoup de cran [guts] and beaucoup de branche [branches, that is, arms and legs].” Baker, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, 144, 588. Not to be confused with a flapperish bob, Twysden’s haircut was known as an Eton crop—a boyish cut recalling the playing fields of Eton. It had become a modish look around that year. Hamish Bowles, interview with the author, April 16, 2015; and Valerie Steele, interview with the author, March 6, 2014. Twysden was said to have always worn a jauntily angled masculine hat. One Twysden admirer described it as “a cross between a Basque beret and a Scotch tam-o’-shanter.” James Charters, “Pat and Duff: Some Memories,” Connecticut Review 3, no. 2 (1970), reprinted in Sarason, Hemingway and the Sun Set, 243. Others recalled that she was more closely associated with a man’s fedora. Whether it was “a man’s felt hat, or a matador’s hat, maybe even a lamp shade . . . she had a kind of style sense that allowed her to wear with dignity and chic almost anything,” contended Donald Stewart. St. John, “Interview with Donald Ogden Stewart,” 197.
85 “certain aloof splendor”: Loeb, The Way It Was, 250. In his memoir, Loeb assigned her a transparent pseudonym: “Lady Duff Twitchell.” Her lover Pat Guthrie was given the name “Pat Swazey.”
85 “I wondered how”: Ibid.
85 “We were all”: St. John, “Interview with Donald Ogden Stewart,” 70–71.
85 didn’t bother to bathe: On the subject of Twysden’s personal hygiene, Carlos Baker cites testimony given to him in the early 1960s by Donald Ogden Stewart, W. B. Smith, and Mr. and Mrs. John Rogers (Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, 588).
86 her ensembles: Twysden’s wardrobe of jersey sweaters would have proved exciting to her suitors in the mid-1920s. At that time, the jersey for women was a new and controversial garment, then being popularized by French designer Coco Chanel. “She took it very much from menswear,” states fashion historian Valerie Steele. Before the 1920s, she adds, “sweaters were still associated with being a man’s garment, and jersey in particular was a man’s material.” It was a defiant, sexy attempt to co-opt elements from the masculine realm. Valerie Steele, interview with the author, March 6, 2014.
86 “listening to her”: Morrill Cody, “The Sun Also Rises Revisited,” Connecticut Review 4, no. 2, 1971, reprinted in Sarason, Hemingway and the Sun Set, 267.
86 “darling”: Loeb, The Way It Was, 274.
86 Iris Storm: Nancy Cunard’s biographer Lois Gordon contends that Iris Storm was based exclusively on Cunard. “Arlen . . . was blind with adoration for her; she was his heroine, his goddess,” she says. Email from Lois Gordon to the author, April 4, 2014; and Lois Gordon, interview with the author, April 25, 2014.
86 “it won’t shape”: Mary Butts, journal entry, June 24, 1932, in The Journals of Mary Butts, ed. Nathalie Blondel (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 390.
86 “She was not”: Loeb, The Way It Was, 250–51.
87 “Poor Pat”: Cody, “The Sun Also Rises Revisited,” 267.
87 “[Duff] was really”: St. John, “Interview with Donald Ogden Stewart,” 195.
87 the Twysden-Guthrie union: Bartender Jimmie Charters, who was close with both Twysden and Guthrie, maintained that their relationship was the “most famous love affair and romance of the Quarter.” Charters, “Pat and Duff, Some Memories,” 246. Writer Morrill Cody called it a “romance of the gods which everyone knew about and everyone enjoyed.” Cody, “The Sun Also Rises Revisited,” 267.
87 “handsome in a”: Loeb, The Way It Was, 250.
87 “a kind of”: St. John, “Interview with Donald Ogden Stewart,” 195.
87 Ritz benders: Loeb, The Way It Was, 270. Jimmie Charters often stepped in when Twysden and Guthrie were broke: “I could never say no or refuse Pat or Duff drink, food, or cigarettes, in that order, though it was a strain on me as I had to bear most of the credit out of my own pocket.” Charters, “Pat and Duff, Some Memories,” 244. He claimed that Guthrie owed him eight thousand francs at one point. Even Charters’s patience wore thin sometimes; when he threatened to cut off Guthrie’s credit, Guthrie would fill his pockets with toilet paper and rustle it “to make it sound like five-pound bank notes” and proclaim, “James, I feel frightfully rich!” Presumably Charters then succumbed to his charm, but landlords may have been less gullible: a few years later, Guthrie reportedly became homeless; another bar proprietor gave him shelter in her boîte, where he used a loaf of bread as a pillow. Guthrie and Twysden were far from being the only ornamental deadbeats in town. Charters contended that “the unpaid bills over a nine-year period in the Dingo totaled half a million francs, despite efforts at care,” and that nightlife impresario “Zelli” had “whole drawers full of bad checks.” Charters, This Must Be the Place, 68, 13, 24.
88 “I made my way”: Loeb, The Way It Was, 248, 253.
88 “Her early memories”: Ibid., 254.
88 ignoble whisperings: Twysden’s former sister-in-law Aileen Twysden told biographer Bertram Sarason that Duff Twysden’s father “kept a wine shop in Darlington,” County Durham, and later amended its location to Richmond, Yorkshire. Sarason investigated further and found a local who recalled a wine store owned by a family named Smurthwaite—Duff Twysden’s maiden name—but Sarason ultimately concluded that the evidence was suggestive rather than conclusive. Bertram Sarason, “Hemingway and the Sun Set,” in Sarason, Hemingway and the Sun Set, 34.
89 “I made a”: Loeb, The Way It Was, 254.
89 “I’ll get the”: Ibid., 255.
89 “I [introduced] Hemingway”: Robert McAlmon to Norman Holmes Pearson, quoted in Sarason, Hemingway and the Sun Set, 227. Various peo
ple claimed to have introduced Hemingway and Twysden, including writer Michael Arlen. His son described an incident in which, years later, he and his father ran into Hemingway at the 21 Club in New York City. “I still owe you a favor, Michael,” Hemingway said. When Arlen’s son queried his father about the favor, Arlen replied: “One autumn in Paris, I introduced Ernest to a girl I was with, Duff Twysden. Ernest later made that book around her.” Michael Arlen, Exiles (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1970), 226.
89 “[It] looked like love”: Robert McAlmon to Norman Holmes Pearson, quoted in Sarason, Hemingway and the Sun Set, 227.
89 “We are fond”: Ernest Hemingway to Sherwood Anderson, May 23, 1925, reprinted in Defazio, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 2:340.
90 “written so tight”: Ernest Hemingway to Horace Liveright, March 31, 1925, reprinted ibid., 295.
90 “I’ve always felt”: Gilot and Lake, Life with Picasso, 73.
90 “no one who”: Ernest Hemingway to Horace Liveright, March 31, 1925, reprinted in Defazio, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 2:295.
91 “Your method is”: Maxwell Perkins to Ernest Hemingway, February 21, 1925, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
91 “would likely have”: Maxwell Perkins to Ernest Hemingway, February 26, 1925, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
91 “It makes it”: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, April 15, 1925, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
91 “rotten luck”: Maxwell Perkins to Ernest Hemingway, April 28, 1925, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
92 unofficial talent scout: Fitzgerald was certainly not the only author to scout on behalf of his house; publishers fairly regularly treated their authors as field men, especially those abroad, and relied on them for leads. Both Harold Stearns and Sherwood Anderson introduced authors to Liveright, for example. But Fitzgerald proved an especially enthusiastic introducer; he would even try to pave the way for actor Leslie Howard (soon to be made world famous as Ashley Wilkes in the 1939 film Gone with the Wind) to enter the world of letters, telling Perkins that Howard had “considerable writing talent also which he is turning, at present toward short stories.” F. Scott Fitzgerald to Maxwell Perkins, May 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
92 “most humorous man”: Groucho Marx, “My Poor Wife,” Collier’s, December 20, 1930, reprinted in The Essential Groucho Marx: Writings By, For, and About Groucho Marx, ed. Stefan Kanfer (New York: Vintage, 2000), 138.
92 “[He] was selflessly”: Dos Passos, The Best Times, 176. Fitzgerald’s granddaughter Eleanor Lanahan describes his impulse to promote others as stemming from his “broad spirit of inclusion and wanting to bringing out the best in people” (interview with the author, September 15, 2014).
92 “E[a]rnest Hemmingway”: F. Scott Fitzgerald to Maxwell Perkins, ca. October 10, 1924, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
92 “intelligable at all”: F. Scott Fitzgerald to Maxwell Perkins, ca. December 27, 1924, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
92 “the reader who”: Maxwell Perkins to F. Scott Fitzgerald, October 18, 1924, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
93 “Ernest seemed on”: Callaghan, That Summer in Paris, 31.
93 three movies: The films adapted from Fitzgerald short stories were The Chorus Girl’s Romance (from “Head and Shoulders”), The Husband Hunter (from “Myra Meets His Family”), and The Offshore Pirate (from a story of the same name). Matthew J. Bruccoli, Scottie Fitzgerald Smith, and Joan P. Kerr, eds., The Romantic Egoists: Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974), 74. The Beautiful and Damned was made into a 1922 film by Warner Brothers. This Side of Paradise was optioned but not produced. Ibid., 98.
93 “[He] was making”: MacLeish, Reflections, 60.
93 “the recognized spokesman”: “Fitzgerald, Flappers and Fame: An Interview with F. Scott Fitzgerald,” The Shadowland (January 1921), reprinted in Bruccoli, Smith, and Kerr, The Romantic Egoists, 79.
93 “My point of”: F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Early Success,” quoted ibid., 76.
93 “They were celebrities”: Dos Passos, The Best Times, 147.
94 “I want to”: F. Scott Fitzgerald to Maxwell Perkins, July 1922, quoted in Bruccoli, Fitzgerald and Hemingway, 10.
94 “something really NEW”: F. Scott Fitzgerald to Maxwell Perkins, May 1, 1925, reprinted in F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters, ed. Matthew Bruccoli (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1994), 108.
94 “[He] wrote me”: F. Scott Fitzgerald to Maxwell Perkins, February 20, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
94 “one of the”: Edmund Wilson, foreword to F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Last Tycoon (New York: Penguin Classics, 2010), ix.
94 “made a special”: Flanner, introduction to Paris Was Yesterday, xviii.
94 “Poor Scott was”: Beach, Shakespeare and Company, 116.
94 “a Negress with”: Ibid., 116–17.
95 “We liked him”: Ibid., 116.
95 “some completely worthless”: Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, 125.
95 “It was all”: Ibid., 126.
95 “Don’t talk like”: Ibid., 127.
96 “looked up Hemminway”: F. Scott Fitzgerald to Edmund Wilson, May 1925, reprinted in Bruccoli, F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters, 110. Hemingway’s published version of their first meeting was likely embellished or even invented by its author. For one thing, Fitzgerald’s friend Dunc Chaplin—who supposedly accompanied him at this first encounter—later asserted that he hadn’t even been in Paris in 1925, and furthermore, that he never met Hemingway at any time. Bruccoli, Fitzgerald and Hemingway, 1. Sara Mayfield—a friend of the Fitzgeralds during this time—recalled that the Fitzgerald and Hemingway meeting was actually prearranged by Donald Stewart. Sara Mayfield, Exiles from Paradise: Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald (New York: Delacorte Press, 1971), 105. Fitzgerald expert Matthew Bruccoli reportedly uncovered several different accounts of the meeting in Hemingway’s Moveable Feast draft material. In one version, Hemingway and Hadley are dining at the Dingo when Fitzgerald imposes on them. In another version, Zelda Fitzgerald is also in attendance; Hemingway finds her unattractive in person but has an erotic dream about her that night and duly tells her about it. She was supposedly pleased. Bruccoli, Fitzgerald and Hemingway, 23, footnote. It is unclear what material Bruccoli is citing, as he does not provide further information on his sources, but no alternative versions of the meeting appear to have been included in the definitive Moveable Feast files in the Ernest Hemingway Collection at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, which houses draft and fragment material pertaining to the manuscript. Valerie Hemingway—Hemingway’s assistant when he was working on Moveable Feast—says that she does not recall these alternative versions, but she does remember Hemingway recounting the Zelda dream story later without specifying when the event took place (email to the author, September 21, 2014). Even though questions surround the veracity of the published Moveable Feast account, some parts of the story did ring true to Fitzgerald’s and Hemingway’s contemporaries, especially Fitzgerald’s alleged inquisition about Hemingway’s sex life. “Scott had an outrageous way of asking the wrong (actually the right) questions about one’s most private feelings—questions which one just didn’t ask,” remembered Donald Stewart (By a Stroke of Luck! 87). Also, no one ever appears to have denied that drinking often brought out the worst in Fitzgerald. “Alcohol turned him foolish, destructive, truculent, [and] childish,” as Bruccoli puts it (Fitzgerald and Hemingway, 12).
96 “quite a lot”: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, June 9, 1925, reprinted in Defazio, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 2:348.
96 “the company of”: Hemin
gway, A Moveable Feast, 131.
96 “he looked like”: Ibid., 141. Fitzgerald’s inability to maintain his composure—or even his consciousness—when drinking appears to have particularly appalled Hemingway. “He saw it as weakness,” says Valerie Hemingway, “and Ernest hated weakness” (interview with the author, December 20, 2014).
96 “hate at first”: Sheila Graham, College of One: The Story of How F. Scott Fitzgerald Educated the Woman He Loved (Brooklyn: Melville House Publishing, 2013), 178.
97 “as silently as”: Mayfield, Exiles from Paradise, 108.
97 “I learned to”: Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, 154. This portrayal of Zelda still unnerves her descendants today. “It was a character smear,” says the Fitzgeralds’ granddaughter Eleanor Lanahan (interview with the author, September 15, 2014).
97 “Zelda is crazy”: Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, 163.
97 “should have swapped”: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, July 27, 1932, reprinted in Baker, Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters, 364–65.
97 “phony he-man”: Zelda Fitzgerald quoted in Matthew J. Bruccoli, Scott and Ernest: The Authority of Failure and the Authority of Success (New York: Random House, 1978), 21.
97 “Ernest . . . was an”: F. Scott Fitzgerald to Zelda Fitzgerald, summer 1931, reprinted in Bruccoli, F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters, 187.
98 “literary crush”: Dos Passos, The Best Times, 176.
98 to meet Gertrude Stein: Unlike Hemingway, Fitzgerald may have been indifferent to Stein’s art collection and deemed her work unsaleable, but he was intrigued by Stein’s literary theories. Fitzgerald pleased and impressed Stein in return; he would “be read when many of his well known contemporaries are forgotten,” she declared later, and credited his debut novel, This Side of Paradise, with “creat[ing] for the public the new generation.” Stein, Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, 218.
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