But the question of her work I must perforce regard from a wider attitude. I make these efforts possible and do my own work besides. Possibly she would have been a genius if we had never met. In actuality she is now hurting me and through me hurting all of us.
First, by the ill-will with which she regards any control of her hours.
Second, by the unbalanced egotism which contributes to the above, and which takes the form of an abnormal illusion cherished from her ballet days: that her work’s success will give her some sort of divine irresponsibility backed by unlimited gold. It is still the idea of an Iowa high-school girl who would like to be an author with an author’s beautiful care-free life. It drives her to a terrible pressing hurry.
Third, by her inferiority complex caused by a lack of adaptation to the fact that she is working under a greenhouse which is my money and my name and my love. This is my fault—years ago I reproached her for doing nothing and she never got over it. So she is mixed up—she is willing to use the greenhouse to protect her in every way, to nourish every sprout of talent and to exhibit it—and at the same time she feels no responsibility about the greenhouse and feels that she can reach up and knock a piece of glass out of the roof at any moment, yet she is shrewd to cringe when I open the door of the greenhouse and tell her to behave or go.
Fourth, by her idea that because some of us in our generation with the effort and courage of youth battered a nitch in an old wall, she can make the same kind of crashing approach to the literary life with the frail equipment of a sick mind and a berserk determination.
With one more apology for this—my God, it amounts to a booklet!—I arrive at my last question.
Doesn’t Dr. Meyer think it might be wise to let Zelda have the feeling for a minute of being alone, of having exhausted everyone’s patience—to let her know that he is not essentially behind her in any way for she interprets his scientific impersonality as a benevolent neutrality?
Otherwise the Fitzgerald’s seem to be going out in the storm, each one for himself, and I’m afraid Scotty and I will weather it better than she.
Yours gratefully always, and in extremis
TO: Dr. Adolf Meyer
Spring 1933
AL (draft), 6 pp. Princeton University
“La Paix,” Towson, Maryland
Dear Dr. Myer:
Thanks for your answer to my letter—it was kind of you to take time to reply to such an unscientific discussion of the case. I felt that from the difference between my instinctive-emotional knowledge of Zelda, extending over 15 years, and your objective-clinical knowledge of her, and also from the difference between the Zelda that everyone who lives a hundred consecutive hours in this house sees and the Zelda who, as a consumate actress, shows herself to you—from these differences we might see where the true center of her should lie, around what point its rallying ground should be. When you qualify or disqualify my judgement on the case, or put it on a level very little above hers on the grounds that I have frequently abused liquor I can only think of Lincoln’s remark about a greater man and heavier drinker than I have ever been—that he wished he knew what sort of liquor Grant drank so he could send a barrel to all his other generals.
This is not said in any childish or churlish spirit of defying you on your opinions on alcohol—during the last six days I have drunk altogether slightly less than a quart and a half of weak gin, at wide intervals. But if there is no essential difference between an overextended, imaginative, functioning man using alcohol as a stimulus or a temporary aisment and a schitzophrene I am naturally alarmed about my ability to collaborate in this cure at all.
Again I must admit that you are compelled to make your judgements apon the basis of observed behavior but my claim is that a true synthesis of the totality of the behavior elements in this case has not yet been presented to you.
If you should for example be in a position to interview an indefinate number of observers—let me say at random my family as opposed to hers, my particular friends as opposed to hers, or even my instinctive protection of Zelda as opposed to her instinctive protection of me—you could formulate simply nothing—you would have to guess, rather like a jury sitting on the case of a pretty girl and a plausible man. Or if as you say (and I must disagree) that this is a dual “case” in any sense further than that it involves the marriage of two artistic temperments, you should interview Dr. Squires or any of Zelda’s nurses while she was in Phipps—there would be the fault of Zelda being the subject and me becoming the abstraction so that there would be real play of subjective forces between us to be observed.
But if, to follow out my (fable) there should be another series of people to be examined to whom our life bares a nearer relation in its more basic and more complex terms, I mean terms that are outside “acting” and personal charm because they are in each case qualified by a hard an objective reality—you might be confronted with my child and what she thinks; by any professional writer of the first rank (say Dos Passos, Lewis, Mencken, Hemmingway, any real professional) on being told that their amateur wives were trying to cash in secretly on their lust for “self expression” by publishing a book about your private life with a casual survey of the material apon which you were currently engaged; by my business associates a publisher each of fourteen years standing; by every employee, secretaries, nurses, tennis-instructors, governesses; and by every servant almost without exception—if you could meet an indefinate series of these people extending back long before Zelda broke down I think there would be less doubt in your mind as to whence this family derives what mental and moral stamina it possesses. There would be a good percentage who liked her better than me and probably a majority who found her more attractive (as it should be); but on the question of integrity, responsibility, conscience, sense of duty, judgment, will-power, whatever you want to call it—well, I think that 95% of this group of ghosts; their judgment would be as decided as Solomon pronouncing apon the two mothers.
This beautiful essay (I find that manic-depressives go in for such lengthy expositions and I suspect myself + all authors of being incipient manic-depressives) is another form of my old plea to let me sit apon the bench with you instead of being kept down with the potential accomplices—largely on the charge of criminal associations.
The witness is weary of strong drink and until very recently He had had the matter well in hand for four years and has it in hand at the moment, and needs no help on the matter being normally frightened by the purely physical consequences of it. He does work and is not to be confused with the local Hunt-Club-Alcoholic and asks that his testimony be considered as of prior validity to any other.
Sincerely
P.S. Please don’t bother to answer the above—its simply a restatement anyhow. In answer to your points—I can concieve of giving up all liquor but only under conditions that seem improbable—Zelda suddenly a helpmate or even divorced and insane. Or, if one can think of some way of doing it, Zelda marrying some man of some caliber who would take care of her, really take care of her This is a possibility Her will to power must be broken without that—the only alternative would be to break me and I am forwarned + forearmed against that
P.S. All I meant by the difference between the Teutonic + American ideas of marriage is expressed in the differences between the terms Herr + Frau and the terms Mr + Mrs
TO: John O’Hara1
RCC, 1 p.(fragment). Princeton University
La Paix, Rodgers’ Forge,
Towson, Maryland,
July 18, 1933.
Dear O’Hara:
I am especially grateful for your letter. I am half black Irish and half old American stock with the usual exaggerated ancestral pretensions. The black Irish half of the family had the money and looked down upon the Maryland side of the family who had, and really had, that certain series of reticences and obligations that go under the poor old shattered word “breeding” (modern form “inhibitions”). So being born in that atmosphere of crack, wisecrack and c
ountercrack I developed a two cylinder inferiority complex. So if I were elected King of Scotland tomorrow after graduating from Eton, Magdalene to the Guards with an embryonic history which tied me to the Plantagonets,2 I would still be a parvenue. I spent my youth in alternately crawling in front of the kitchen maids and insulting the great.
I suppose this is just a confession of being a Gael though I have known many Irish who have not been afflicted by this intense social self-consciousness. If you are interested in colleges, a typical gesture on my part would have been, for being at Princeton and belonging to one of its snootiest clubs, I would be capable of going to Podunk on a visit and being absolutely booed and over-awed by its social system, not from timidity but simply because of an inner necessity of starting my life and my self justification over again at scratch in whatever new environment I may be thrown.
The only excuse for that burst of egotism is that you asked forrit. I am sorry things are breaking
TO: Scottie Fitzgerald
CC, 3 pp. Princeton University
La Paix, Rodgers’ Forge,
Towson, Maryland,
August 8, 1933.
Dear Pie:
I feel very strongly about you doing duty. Would you give me a little more documentation about your reading in French? I am glad you are happy—but I never believe much in happiness. I never believe in misery either. Those are things you see on the stage or the screen or the printed page, they never really happen to you in life.
All I believe in in life is the rewards for virtue (according to your talents) and the punishments for not fulfilling your duties, which are doubly costly. If there is such a volume in the camp library, will you ask Mrs. Tyson to let you look up a sonnet of Shakespeare’s in which the line occurs “Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.”
Have had no thoughts today, life seems composed of getting up a Saturday Evening Post story. I think of you, and always pleasantly; but if you call me “Pappy” again I am going to take the White Cat out and beat his bottom hard, six times for every time you are impertinent. Do you react to that?
I will arrange the camp bill.
Halfwit, I will conclude. Things to worry about:
Worry about courage
Worry about cleanliness
Worry about efficiency
Worry about horsemanship
Worry about. . .
Things not to worry about:
Don’t worry about popular opinion
Don’t worry about dolls
Don’t worry about the past
Don’t worry about the future
Don’t worry about growing up
Don’t worry about anybody getting ahead of you
Don’t worry about triumph
Don’t worry about failure unless it comes through your own fault
Don’t worry about mosquitoes
Don’t worry about flies
Don’t worry about insects in general
Don’t worry about parents
Don’t worry about boys
Don’t worry about disappointments
Don’t worry about pleasures
Don’t worry about satisfactions
Things to think about:
What am I really aiming at?
How good am I really in comparison to my contemporaries in regard to:
(a) Scholarship
(b) Do I really understand about people and am I able to get along with them?
(c) Am I trying to make my body a useful instrument or am I neglecting it?
With dearest love,
P.S. My come-back to your calling me Pappy is christening you by the word Egg, which implies that you belong to a very rudimentary state of life and that I could break you up and crack you open at my will and I think it would be a word that would hang on if I ever told it to your contemporaries. “Egg Fitzgerald.” How would you like that to go through life with “Eggie Fitzgerald” or “Bad Egg Fitzgerald” or any form that might occur to fertile minds? Try it once more and I swear to God I will hang it on you and it will be up to you to shake it off. Why borrow trouble?
Love anyhow.
TO: Maxwell Perkins
TLS, 4 pp. Princeton University
La Paix, Rodgers’ Forge,
Towson, Maryland,
September 25, 1933.
Dear Max:
The novel has gone ahead faster than I thought. There was a little set back when I went to the hospital for four days1 but since then things have gone ahead of my schedule, which you will remember, promised you the whole manuscript for reading November 1, with the first one-fourth ready to shoot into the magazine (in case you can use it) and the other threefourths to undergo further revision. I now figure that this can be achieved by about the 25th of October. I will appear in person carrying the manuscript and wearing a spiked helmet.
There are several points and I wish you would answer them categorically.
1. Did you mean that you could get the first fourth of the story into the copy of the magazine appearing late in December and therefore that the book could appear early in April?1 I gathered that on the phone but want to be sure. I don’t know what the ocean travel statistics promise for the spring but it seems to me that a May publication would be too late if there was a great exodus and I should miss being a proper gift book for it. The story, as you know, is laid entirely in Europe—I wish I could have gotten as far as China but Europe was the best I could do, Max (to get into Ernest’s rhythm).
2. I would not want a magazine proof of the first part, though of course I would expect your own proof readers to check up on blatant errors, but would want to talk over with you any small changes that would have to be made for magazine publication—in any case, to make them myself.
3. Will publication with you absolutely preclude that the book will be chosen by the Literary Guild2 or the Book of the Month? Whatever the answer the serial will serve the purpose of bringing my book to the memory and attention of my old public and of getting straight financially with you. On the other hand, it is to both our advantages to capitalize if possible such facts as that the editors of those book leagues might take a fancy to such a curious idea that the author, Fitzgerald, actually wrote a book after all these years (this is all said with the reservation that the book is good.) Please answer this as it is of importance to me to know whether I must expect my big returns from serial and possibly theatrical and picture rights or whether I have as good a chance at a book sale, launched by one of those organizations, as any other best seller.
Ober is advancing me the money to go through with it (it will probably not need more than $2,000 though he has promised to go as far as $4,000) and in return I am giving him 10% of the serial rights. I plan to raise the money to repay him (if I have not already paid him by Post stories) by asking a further advance on the book royalties or on my next book which might be an omnibus collection of short stories or those two long serial stories about young people that I published some time ago in the Post as the Basil stories and the Josephine stories—this to be published in the fall.
You are the only person who knows how near the novel is to being finished, please don’t say a word to anyone.
4. How will you give a month’s advance notice of the story—slip a band on the jacket of the December issue? I want to talk to you about advertising when I see you in late October so please don’t put even the publicity man at any work yet. As to the photographs I have a snap-shot negative of the three of us with a surfboard, which enlarges to a nice 6 × 10 glossy suitable for rotogravures and also have a fine double profile of Zelda and me in regular cabinet photograph size and have just gotten figures from the photographer. He wants $18.00 for twelve, $24.00 for twenty-four and $35.00 for fifty and says he does not sell the plates, though I imagine he could be prevailed upon if we give him a “take it or leave it” offer. How many would you need? These two photographs are modern I don’t want any of the old ones sent out and I don’t want any horrors to be dug up out
of newspaper morgues.
Tell me how many you would need to cover all the press? Would it be cheaper if I sat when I came up there—the trouble is that in only one out of any three pictures is my pan of any interest.
5. My plan, and I think it is very important, is to prevail upon the Modern Library, even with a subsidy, to bring out Gatsby a few weeks after the book publication of this novel.1 Please don’t say that anybody would possibly have the psychology of saying to themselves “One of his is in the Modern Library therefore I will not buy another”, or that the two books could be confused. The people who buy the Modern Library are not at all the people who buy the new books. Gatsby—in its present form, not actually available in sight to book buyers, will only get a scattering sale as a result of the success of this book. I feel that every time your business department has taken a short-sighted view of our community of interest in this matter, which is my reputation, there has been no profit on your part and something less than that on mine. As for example, a novel of Ernest’s in the Modern Library and no novel of mine, a good short story of Ernest’s in their collection of the Great Modern Short Stories and a purely commercial story of mine. I want to do this almost as much as I want to publish this novel and will cooperate to the extent of sharing the cost.
There will be other points when I see you in October, but I will be greatly reassured to have some sort of idea about these points so that I can make my plans accordingly. I will let you know two or three days in advance when you may expect me.
One last point: Unlike Ernest I am perfectly agreeable to making any necessary cuts for serial publication but naturally insist that I shall do them myself.
You can imagine the pride with which I will enter your office a month from now. Please do not have a band as I do not care for music.
Ever yours,
F. Scott Fitzgerald
This document refers to Tender Is the Night. Jackson was the Fitzgeralds’ cook; Owens was Fitzgerald’s secretary at “La Paix” and in Baltimore.
A Life in Letters Page 27