Salute the new Mrs. Wilson for me (my God, I just noticed this accidental justaposition—forgive me) and remember you’re never long absent from the sollicitudes of
Your Old Friend
Scott
It was nice of you, + like you, to write Zelda.
TO: Maxwell Perkins
c. September 1, 1930
ALS, 2 pp. Princeton University
Geneva, Switzerland
Dear Max:
All the world seems to end up in this flat and antiseptic smelling land—with an overlay of flowers. Tom Wolfe is the only man I’ve met here who isn’t sick or hasn’t sickness to deal with. You have a great find in him—what he’ll do is incalculable. He has a deeper culture than Ernest and more vitality, if he is slightly less of a poet that goes with the immense surface he wants to cover. Also he lacks Ernests quality of a stick hardened in the fire—he is more susceptible to the world. John Bishop told me he needed advice about cutting ect, but after reading his book I thought that was nonsense. He strikes me as a man who should be let alone as to length, if he has to be published in five volumes. I liked him enormously.
I was sorry of course about Zelda’s stories—possibly they mean more to me than is implicit to the reader who doesn’t know from what depths of misery and effort they sprang. One of them, I think now, would be incomprehensible without a Waste-Land footnote. She has those series of eight portraits that attracted so much attention in College Humor and I think in view of the success of Dotty Parkers Laments1 (25,000 copies) I think a book might be got together for next Spring if Zelda can add a few more during the winter.
Wasn’t that a nice tribute to C.S.2 from Mencken in the Mercury?
The royalty advance or the national debt as it might be called shocked me. The usual vicious circle is here—I am now exactly $3000. ahead which means 2 months on the Encyclopedia. I’d prefer to have all above the $10,000 paid back to you off my next story (in October). You’ve been so damn nice to me.
Zelda is almost well. The doctor says she can never drink again (not that drink in any way contributed to her collapse), and that I must not drink anything, not even wine, for a year, because drinking in the past was one of the things that haunted her in her delerium.
Do please send me things like Wolfe’s book when they appear. Is Ernest’s book a history of bull-fighting? I’m sending you a curious illiterate ms written by a chasseur at my bank here. Will you skim it + see if any parts, like the marines in Central America, are interesting as pure data? And return it, if not, directly to him? You were absolutely right about the dollar books—its a preposterous idea and I think the author’s league went crazy
Always Yours
Scott
This illness has cost me a fortune—hence that telegram in July. The biggest man in Switzerland gave all his time to her— + saved her reason by a split second.
TO: Harold Ober
Received November 11, 1930
ALS, 1 p. Lilly Library
Paris
Dear Harold:
I havn’t written for so long to you because I’ve been swamped with worries + anxieties here. Zelda has been in a hell of a mess, still in the sanitarium—she came within an ace of losing her mind + isn’t out of the woods yet. We had a frantic time last spring + in midsummer from the combination of worry + work my lungs sprang a leak. That’s all right now thank heaven—I went up to Caux + rested for a month. All this is between you + me—even Max doesn’t know. Then Scotty fell ill + I left at midnight by plane for Paris to decide about an immediate appendix operation. In short its been one of those periods that come to all men I suppose when life is so complicated that with the best will in the world work is hard as hell to do. Things are better, but no end in sight yet. I figure I’ve written about 40,000 words to Forel (the psychiatrist) on the subject of Zelda trying to get to the root of things, + keeping worried families tranquil in their old age + trying to be a nice thoughtful female mother to Scotty—well, I’ve simply replaced letters by wires wherever possible.
About Zelda’s sketches, have you tried Century? They printed my little skit on Scotty. But better still—send them to the New Republic, attention of Edmund Wilson, under the blanket title of Stories from a Swiss Clinique. Failing that I’ll try This Quarter here in Paris. Unfortunately Transition has quit. Sorry about the Enerson thing.
About money. Having wired you last week that The Hotel Child was sent, I found on its return from the typist that it needed revision + amputation. That is done + it is back there but won’t be ready till day after tomorrow. I’m sure you’ll like it. I thought the last Josephine was feeble. If I press you too hard about money please try to arrange advance1 from Lorimor, telling him frankly I’ve never worked under such conditions of expense + pressure in my life, for when I wire you it means trouble for me if deposit isn’t made. What this seems to amount too is that I am an average outstanding loan of yours of about $2000. I hope to God things will be better soon. How are things going with you. Write me
Ever Yours Gratefully
Scott Fitzg—
Thought very little of Swanson offer. Havn’t touched novel for four months, save for one week.
TO: Judge and Mrs. A. D. Sayre
CC, 3 pp. (fragment)
Princeton University
Paris, the 1st December 1930.
My dear Judge Sayre and Mrs. Sayre,
Herewith a summary of the current situation shortly after I wrote you: at length I became dissatisfied with the progress of the treatment—not from any actual reason but from a sort of American hunch that something could be done, and maybe wasn’t being done to expedite the cure.
The situation was briefly that Zelda was acting badly and had to be transferred again to the house at Praugras reserved for people under restraint—the form in her case being that if she could go to Geneva alone she would “see people that would get her out of her difficulties.”
When Forel told me this I was terribly perturbed and had the wires humming to see where we stood. I wrote Gros who is the head of the American hospital in Paris and the dean of American medecine here. Through the agency of friends I got opinions from medical specialists of all sorts and the sum and substance of the matter was as follows:
1°—That Forel’s clinique is as I thought the best in Europe, his father having had an extraordinary reputation as a pioneer in the field of psychiatry, and the son being universally regarded as a man of intelligence and character.
2°—That the final rescourse in such cases are two men of Zürich—Dr. Jung and Dr. Blenler,1 the first dealing primarily with neurosis and the second with psychosis, which is to say, that one is a psychoanalist and the other a specialist in insanity, with no essential difference in their approach.
With this data in hand and after careful consideration I approached Dr. Forel on the grounds, that I was not satisfied with Zelda’s progress and that I had always at the back of my mind the idea of taking her home, and asked for a consultation. I think he had guessed at my anxiety and he greeted the suggestion with a certain relief and thereupon suggested the same two men I had already decided to call in—so that it made a complete unit. I mean to say there was nothing left undone to prove that I was dealing with final authorities.
After much, much talk I decided on Blenler rather than Jung—this was important because these consultations cost about five hundred dollars and one can’t be complicated by questions of medical etiquette. He came down a fortnight ago, spent the afternoon with Zelda and then the evening with Forel and me. Here is the total result.
1°—He agreed absolutely in principle with the current treatment.
2°—He recognized the case (in complete agreement with Forel) as a case of what is known as skideophranie, a sort of borderline insanity, that takes the form of double personality. It presented to him no feature that was unfamiliar and no characteristic that puzzled him.
3°—He said in answer to my questions that over a field of many thousands of such
cases three out of four were discharged, perhaps one of those three to resume perfect functioning in the world, and the other two to be delicate and slightly eccentric through life—and the fourth case to go right down hill into total insanity.
4°—He said it would take a whole year before the case could be judged as to its direction in this regard but he gave me hope.
5°—He discussed at length the possibility of an eventual discovery of a brain tumor for the moment unlikely and the question of any glandular change being responsible. Also the state of American medical thought on such matters. (Forel incidently was at the Congress of Psychiatrists at Johns Hopkins last spring). But he insisted on seeing the case as a case and to my questioning answered that he did not know and no one knew what were the causes and what was the cure. The principles that he believes in from his experience are those that he and the older Forel, the father, (and followed by Myers1 of John Hopkins) evolved are rest and “re-education,” which seems to me a vague phrase when applied to a mind as highly organized as Zelda’s. I mean to say that it is somewhat difficult to teach a person who is capable now of understanding the Einstein theory of space, that 2 and 2 actually make four. But he was hardboiled, regarded Zelda as an invalid person and that was the burden of his remarks in this direction.
6°—The question of going home. He said it wasn’t even a question. That even with a day and night nurse and the best suite on the Bremen, I would be taking a chance not justified by the situation,—that a crisis, a strain at this moment might make the difference between recovery and insanity, and this question I put to him in various forms i.e. the “man to man” way and “if it were your own wife”—and he firmly and resolutely said “NO”—not for the moment. “I realize all the possible benefits but no, not for the moment.”
7°—He changed in certain details her regime. In particular he felt that Forel was perhaps pushing her too much in contact with the world, expediting a little her connection with me and Scotty, her shopping expeditions to Geneva, her going to the opera and the theatre, her seeing the other people in the sanitarium (which is somewhat like a hotel).
8°—He not only confirmed my faith in Forel but I think confirmed Forel’s own faith in himself on this matter. I mean an affair of this kind needs to be dealt with every subtle element of character. Humpty Dumpty fell off a wall and we are hoping that all the king’s horses will be able to put the delicate eggshell together.
9°—This is of minor importance and I put it in only because I know you despise certain weaknesses in my character and I do not want during this tragedy that fact to blur or confuse your belief in me as a man of integrity. Without any leading questions and somewhat to my embarrassment Blenler said “This is something that began about five years ago. Let us hope it is only a process of re-adjustment. Stop blaming yourself. You might have retarded it but you couldn’t have prevented it.
My plans are as follows. I’m staying here on Lake Geneva indefinately because even if I can only see Zelda once a fortnight, I think the fact of my being near is important to her. Scotty I see once a month for four or five days,—it’s all unsatisfactory but she is a real person with a life of her own which for the moment consists of leading a school of twenty two French children which is a problem she set herself and was not arbitarily
TO: Dr. Oscar Forel
CC, 7 pp. Princeton University
Paris
29th January, 1931.
Dear Dr. Forel,
After this afternoon I am all the more interested in my own theory.
I hope you will be patient about this letter. A first year medical student could phrase it better than I, who am not sure what a nerve or a gland looks like. But despite my terminological ignorance I think you’ll see I’m really not just guessing.
I am assuming with you and with Dr. Bleuler that the homosexuality is merely a symbol—something she invented to fill her slowly developing schizophenie. Now let me plot the course of her illness according to my current idea.
Youth & early womanhood Age 15–25
She has a nervous habit of biting to the bleeding point the inside of her mouth. With all her talents she is without ambition. She has been brought up in a climate not unlike the French Riviera but even there she is considered a lazy girl. A lovely but faulty complexion with blemishes accentuated by her picking at them.
Age 26–28
First appearance of definitely irrational acts (burning her old clothes in bath-tub in February 1927, age 26 years, 7 months). At this time she began to go into deep long silences and husband felt he has lost her confidence. Began dancing at age 27 and had two severe attacks of facial eczema cured by electric ray treatment. A feeling that she wasn’t well provoked tests for metabolism. Results normal.
Age 28–291/2
First mention of homosexual fears August 1928. This coincides with complete and never entirely renewed break of confidence with husband. From this time on work is intensive every day with extraordinary sweating, so much so that in the summers of ’28 and ’29 I have seen literal wet pools on the floor when watching her lessons.
April 29th, 1930
Collapse—and quick physical recovery. After two weeks’ rest at Malmaison she seemed better than she does now.
April–June
A confused period about which my own judgment is not reliable. Then comes
June–July
Hysteria, madness with moments of brilliance (her short stories etc.) Schizophrania well divided so that her Doctor finds her charming at one moment and yet is forced to confine her to the Eglantine1 the next. The good effect of this last measure. This period culminates with the visit of her daughter. Two very stirring experiences which have a marked effect on accentuating her best side—until—
August
Finding her to be ripe the doctor intensifies the process of reeducation, aiming at, for one thing, reconciliation with the husband. Things apparently progress. She writes nice and pleasant letters. She has good will again and hope and your interest in her case and hope for her is at its strongest. Suddenly as things reach a point where the meeting with husband and the resumption of serious life is a week off, when she has reached the point when the doctor has been able to try, though unsuccessfully, psycho-analysis she breaks out with virulent eczema. In this eczema she becomes necessarily more the invalid, the weakling, more self-indulgent. Her will power decreases. When the postponed meeting with the husband occurs she
September
brings to it only enough balance in favor of normality to last an hour and a renewed attack of eczema succeeds it.
Now I want to interrupt the sequence here to insert my idea. The original nervous biting, followed by the need to sweat might indicate some lack of normal elimination of poison. This uneliminated poison attacks the nerves.
When I used to drink hard for several days arid then stopped I had a tendency toward mild eczema—of elimination of toxins through the skin. (Isn’t there an especially intimate connection between the skin and the nerves, so that they share together the distinction of being the things we know least about?) Suppose the skin by sweating eliminated as much as possible of this poison, the nerves took on the excess—then the breakdown came, and due to the exhaustion of the sweat glands the nerves had to take it all, but at the price of a gradual change in their structure as a unit.
Now (I know you’re regarding this as the wildest mysticism but please read on)—now just as the mind of the confirmed alcoholic accepts a certain poisoned condition of the nerves as the one to which he is the most at home and in which, therefore, he is the most comfortable, Mrs. F. encourages her nervous system to absorb the continually distilled poison. Then the exterior world, represented by your personal influence, by the shock of Eglantine, by the sight of her daughter causes an effort of the will toward reality, she is able to force this poison out of the nerve cells and the process of elimination is taken over again by her skin.
In brief my idea is this. That the eczema is
not relative but is the clue to the whole business. I believe that the eczema is a definite concurrent product of every struggle back toward the normal, just as an alcoholic has to struggle back through a period of depression.
October
To resume the calendar for a moment:
She is obviously making an effort. But at the same time comes the infatuation for the red-haired girl. At first I thought that caused the third attack of eczema but now I don’t. Isn’t it possible that it was her resistance, her initial shame at the infatuation and the consequent struggle that brought on the third eczema? This is supported by the fact that the infatuation continued after the eczema had gone. The eczema may have proceeded from the struggle toward reality rather than from the excitation itself.
The whole system is trying to live in equilibrium. When her will dominates her she doesn’t find it. I can’t help clinging to the idea that some essential physical thing like salt or iron or semen or some unguessed at holy water is either missing or is present in too great quantity. But to continue
November
Physical health fine but more in the hallucination. Growing vagueness and almost complete lack of effort. No eczema—but no effort. Her second infatuation does not cause eczema and neither does the
December
First visit of child. Because she behaves badly at my behest she makes an effort to think before the second visit and there is immediate eczema.
One more note and then I’ll draw my conclusions.
When she was discharged as cured from Malmaison she had facial eczema which we attributed to drugs. But it did not appear at Valmont or in early days at Prangins in spite of drugs at Valmont and disintoxication at Prangins for she was sunk safely in her insane self on both occasions.
My conclusions.
A Life in Letters Page 23