TO: Rosalind Sayre Smith2
CC, 8pp. Princeton University
1307 Park Avenue,
Baltimore, Maryland,
August 8, 1934.
Dear Rosalind:
Your letter unsettled my intentions, or rather my idea of the means by which to put them into effect. I was trying to do so many things in New York that I must have been confused in leaving with the idea that you approved of the governess business. I had foreseen the difficulties attendant upon such a radical step as this but had determined to overcome them somehow. The problem of Scottie was so adequately solved during Zelda’s sickness in Switzerland by the combination of the Cours Dieterlen and Mlle. Sereze3 that I hoped to repeat it on a larger scale this winter.
Let me list first what is impractical about the present regime and about alternatives:
1. There is no probability (let alone certainty) that Zelda and I will be able to make a place for her in the east beyond that of bearing a well known name.
2. I would not want to deliberately make of her a middle-westerner, or a southerner.
3. So the purely social education that she is now getting is essentially directionless.
4. All indications point to the fact that in the next generation there ain’t going to be any young millionaires to snatch off.
5. Scottie has an essentially artistic temperament; though at present she is at the most conventional of all ages; I can’t see her settling down at eighteen into a conventional marriage.
6. The actual objections to her going to day-school here are that either she would be living alone with me—with unending work ahead of me and not too much good time to give to a child—or else with Zelda and me in case it is recommended that Zelda spend the fall and winter in a new attempt to brave the world. In either case the atmosphere will not be conducive to the even tenor advisable for a child at that important age.
7. Such social alternatives as a straight country boarding school, or semi-boarding school in New York (such as you suggest) or else Spence or Brierly—all these lead into the same blank alley. Scottie has no talent such as a musical one that could be developed locally at the Peabody here or the Boston Conservatory.
To isolate Scottie with a governess wasn’t my idea. The governess would serve as chaperone, teacher, and general guide, to a planned regime which I would constantly oversee; Scottie would go to a “social” dancing class in New York, and also to some sort of gymnastic association or club where she could have swimming and basket-ball. She would pass the week-ends either here or with friends in New York—I have friends there who have children exactly her age and if she managed to find so many friends in Paris among foreign people the question of her being lonely in New York is absolutely non-existent.
Now let me list what is in favor of my plan as conceived:
1. Scottie seems to have a varied talent which may express itself in any one of a number of ways. The theatre is the great universal of all talents. In the modern theatre every single bent is represented and by starting in early she would be learning the fundamentals not of one career but of half a dozen.
2. One of the reasons that the world shows little practical achievement by sons and daughters of talented people—with notable exceptions, of course—is that the son or daughter of a man who has sung an opera, written a book, or painted a picture, is inclined to think that that achievement will stand in place of any effort of his own. It is much easier for Scottie to play being the daughter of a writer than to get down and write something herself, and I have noticed increasing tendencies toward that under present conditions. She used to write, with real pleasure and pride, little poems or stories for our Christmases and anniversaries. Now she’s inclined to say, “What’s the use? Daddy will do my writing for me”—Beyond that, Rosalind, she accepts the idea of most American children that Constance Bennett will do her acting for her and Bing Crosby her crooning. If I didn’t see Scottie grimacing, posing, practising in front of mirrors and dressing herself up to the gills on all possible occasions, I would conclude that she had no desire for a public existence, but the contrary is true. She wants a lime-light and the question is whether it will be a healthy one of effort, or else one of these half-botched careers like Zelda’s—of running yourself ragged for purely social ends and then trying to give the broken remnants to people and getting melancholia because people won’t snap at it.
My point here is, that, as far as I can judge, Scottie is by nature and destiny a potential artist.
3. Broke off here for a moment to discuss the question with Mrs. Owens and was reminded of the fact that Scottie can always change from an artistic to a social career but the reverse is very difficult. (My God, Rosalind! if you would see the manuscripts that come my way from idle lawyers and bored housewives, who decided that they would take up literature in their “spare time”! It’s as if I rushed into Johns Hopkins this afternoon, asking for a scalpel and an appendicitis patient, on the basis that I had an uncle who was a doctor, and people told me in my youth that I would make a good surgeon.) The pith of this is that only professionals function—capably within a profession—just as the time to begin ballet is about eleven years old, so the age to get used to the stage is at about thirteen or fourteen.
4. New York is the only possible center for Show Business (the boys and girls of Broadway persist in leaving the definite article out of that phrase.) The position of amateur teachers in society schools is less than nothing. To put Scottie with some defeated actress teaching for Miss This-Or-Thats would be to devitalize the whole idea. The moment Zelda entered Eglarova’s ballet school she saw the difference between amateur and professional training. The fact that the shift from play to work led to disaster in Zelda’s case has no bearing on this situation; if at any moment I find that Scottie has not the physical or nervous vitality to stand the rigors of real work, I shall snatch her out as quick as a blink.
But in the case of Miss Duff-Robinson1 I think of how the Renaissance artists trained men in their studios and trained them well because the pupils did a great portion of their work for them—the system of apprenticing in the middle ages derives its value from that fact. Her whole livelyhood depends not on any fake “diplomas” but on the actual accomplishments of her pupils. As for the amateur teachers—well, I could teach Scottie as much about the stage here in our own parlor.
5. Having gone this far with the French I want to keep it up, and with a few more years of this part-time tutoring she will inevitably lose her bilinguality that I spent thousands of dollars sustaining by importing governess, etc. Even the private tutoring here has started to slip, insofar as her accent and vocabulary are concerned, though her constructions are still holding up well enough.
And now to discuss such factors as might militate against this plan:
1. Child snatched from healthy home influences, neighborhood activities, etc. thrown immature into the great world. But where are these healthy home influences, neighborhood activities, etc? Though I forbid a radio in the house she can go around the corner at any moment and sit in with other innocents on “Oh You Nasty Man” and other bucolic classics.
2. As to friends: with every move we make Scottie has kicked about leaving tried and true friends behind her. In the upshot, however, it is a struggle to get her to so much as answer the letters of her late pals. She makes friends so easily and has so much curiosity about people that she is not essentially a loyal child or one who is ever liable to be very lonely. She has been to two camps from here without any untoward sense of pining away. Only once in her life have I seen her actively miss anyone for more than a few days and that was in the case of Mlle. Sereze.
3. She will be less outdoors but she will have compensatory indoor exercise. One can’t have everything.
I wish you would read this letter a couple of times, because I have written it partly to help me make up my own mind about Scottie’s year, and I’ve spent a conscientious morning at it. If you see any loop-holes in my reasoning, pl
ease let me know. I am always ready to reconsider and there is a whole month before I will get to the actual engaging of a governess. (By the way she will have to be an actual native born Frenchwoman.) Miss Duff-Robinson, in tentatively agreeing to take her, made a point of her advantage in having that language. Zelda, in a clear-thinking moment was enthusiastic about the idea (though of course she would rather have had ballet for which Scottie is totally unfitted both physically and rhythmically.)
Best wishes to you both and hopes that your annoying uncertainty of domicile will be shortly liquidated.
TO: Christian Gauss
Original unlocated. Text reprinted from Turnbull
1307 Park Avenue
Baltimore, Maryland
September 7, 1934
Dear Dean Gauss:
This is a wild idea of mine, conditioned by the fact that my physician thinks I am in a solitary rut and that I ought to have outside interests. Well, outside interests generally mean for me women, liquor or some form of exhibitionism. The third seems to be most practical at the present moment, wherefore I would like to give a series of lectures at Princeton, say eight, on the actual business of creating fiction. There would be no charge and I would consider it a favor if I were allowed to do this in a University lecture hall. (Incidentally, to safeguard you from my elaborate reputation, I would pledge my word to do no drinking in Princeton save what might be served at your table if you should provide me with luncheon before one of these attempts.)
The lectures I’ve not planned but they would be, in general, the history of say:
1. What Constitutes the Creative Temperament.
2. What Creative Material Is.
3. Its Organization.
And so forth and so on.
This would be absolutely first-hand stuff and there might be a barrier to crash in regard to the English Department, and if you don’t think this is the time to do it don’t hesitate to let me know frankly. So many bogus characters have shown up in Princeton trying to preach what they have never been able to practice, that I think even if I reach only half a dozen incipient talents the thing might be worthwhile from the scholastic point of view, and will be selfishly worthwhile to me—I would like to time these lectures so that they would come on the afternoon or eve of athletic events that I would like to see.
You will know best how to sound out the powers-that-be in the English Department. I have a hunch that Gerould rather likes me and I like Root1 whether he likes me or not. . . .
This is an arrow in the dark. I feel I never knew so much about my stuff as I now know, about the technique concerned, and I can’t think of anywhere I would like to disseminate this egotistic feeling more than at Princeton.
This all might come to something, you know!
Hope you had a fine summer abroad. With my respects to Mrs. Gauss.
Ever yours,
F. Scott Fitzg
P.S. Naturally, after my wretched performance at the Cottage Club2 you might be cynical about my ability to handle an audience, but my suggestion is that the first lecture should be announced as a single, and if there is further demand we could go from thence to thither.
TO: Christian Gauss
Original unlocated. Text reprinted from Turnbull
1307 Park Avenue
Baltimore, Maryland
September 26, 1934
Dear Dean Gauss:
I know about “The Club” and they asked me last year to come and lecture. What I have against that is that it is sponsored by undergraduates which detracts from speaking under the authoritative aegis of the University, and second, because my plan was a series of lectures and not one that I could develop in a single evening. Also they were meant to be pretty serious stuff, that is, written out rather than spoken from notes, straight lectures rather than preceptorials. However, if the powers-that-be feel it inadvisable I can only yield the point and postpone the idea until a more favorable year.1
Glad you enjoyed your rest abroad and escaped Miriam Hopkins’jumping out of the second-story window onto your shoulders. But I suppose you’ve been kidded to death about that already and I know you took it with your usual sense of humor.
Best wishes always,
F. Scott Fitzgerald
TO: Marie Hersey Hamm
TLS, 3 pp. Princeton University
1307 Park Avenue,
Baltimore, Maryland,
October 4, 1934.
Dear Marie:
It seems late to answer your letter as at the time it was written you were in heavy marital difficulties about your two children and were still sailing under the name of Carroll. Since then I hear sensational news about you, but not from you, and worry sometimes if the kidnappers will get you, as you seem to move largely in an atmosphere of kidnappers, both of children and adults. I suppose that you are settled down in St. Paul for good. For a long time I have wanted to come back to spend a few weeks but life seems to get crowded in the late thirties and I don’t know when the chance will come.
Scottie has become acclimated to Baltimore but I’d like to have her pull a sort of Gertrude Harris a little later to the extent of having a debut out there. So a few years may see us settled there for at least a summer. This in spite of the fact that, having rambled so much, I no longer regard St. Paul as my home any more than the Eastern seaboard or the Riviera. This is said with no disloyalty but simply because after all my father was an Easterner and I went East to college and I never did quite adjust myself to those damn Minnesota winters. It was always freezing my cheeks, being a rotten skater etc.—though many events there will always fill me with a tremendous nostalgia. Anyhow all recent reports paint it as a city of gloom and certainly the ones from the remnants of the McQuillan family are anything but cheerful. Baltimore is very nice, and with plenty of cousins and Princetonians if I were in a social mood, and I can look out the window and see a statue of the great, great uncle,1 and all three of us like it here. There, have I rambled on long enough?
I send you this letter as a desperate bid for some news of St. Paul and the following people: the Kalmans, Flandraus, Jacksons, Clarks and Kid Ordway. I suppose Dud and Grace are now completely expatriated to Chicago and I know that Joe and Lou will most likely never return. Who runs things now? So many of us have emigrated, Katharine Tighe, etc. and so many new names keep popping up whenever I get hold of a St. Paul paper that I cling in spirit to the few friends I still have there.
With affection from Zelda and love always from me,
Scott
P.S. Don’t omit to add news mostly about yourself.
TO: Maxwell Perkins
TLS, 5 pp. Princeton University
1307 Park Avenue,
Baltimore, Mayland,
November 8, 1934.
Dear Max:
In further reference to my telegram of Tuesday night: first, I am sending you the third story in its proper place ready to go into the book. The thing that worried me when I did it was whether the proofreader is going to be able to release a lot of type, because due to the fact that the end of one and the beginning of another were run on one galley, he will have to scrap half the type in the galley and yet retain the other half—this because the stories were not set up in proper order. I know this is a terrible and costly mess and I take full responsibility, nevertheless, I did think the stories would be set up separately and getting at them is as if the chapters of a book were set up any-which-way like I, VII, II, V, III, VI, and it all has to be straightened out each time. As you know that is fatiguing work and can best be done when one is fresh, and is hard to do at night.
My big mistake was in thinking I could possibly deliver this collection for this fall. I should have known perfectly well that, in debt as I was to the tune of about $12,000 on finishing “Tender,” I should have to devote the summer and most of the fall to getting out of it. My plan was to do my regular work in the daytime and do one story every night, but as it works out, after a good day’s work I am so exhausted that I drag out the w
ork on a story to two hours when it should be done in one and go to bed so tired and wrought up, toss around sleepless, and am good for nothing next morning except dictating letters, signing checks, tending to business matters ect; but to work up a creative mood there is nothing doing until about four o’clock in the afternoon. Part of this is because of ill health. It would not have seemed so difficult for me ten years, or even five years ago, but now just one more straw would break the camel’s back.
I have about half a dozen of these done but I am determined this time to send them in only in the proper order and not add further confusion either in my own mind or that of the printer’s. The trouble began when I sent you two stories to be set up which were nowhere near each other in the book. If I told a story about a boy of sixteen years old and sixty pages on the reader came upon a story of the same boy at thirteen it would make no sense to him and look like careless presentation, and which, as you know, I dislike nothing more.
As you may have seen I took out “A New Leaf” and put in “Her Last Case.” You didn’t tell me whether or not you read it or liked it.
I know you have the sense that I have loafed lately but that is absolutely not so. I have drunk too much and that is certainly slowing me up. On the other hand, without drink I do not know whether I could have survived this time. In actual work since I finished the last proof of the novel in the middle of March, eight months ago, I have written and sold three stories for the Post, written another which was refused, written two and a half stories for the Redbook, rewritten three articles of Zelda’s for Esquire and one original for them to get emergency money, collaborated on a 10,000 word treatment of “Tender Is the Night,” which was no go, written an 8,000 word story for Gracie Allen, which was also no go, and made about five false starts on stories which went from 1,000 to 5,000 words, and a preface to the Modern Library edition of “The Great Gatsby,” which equalizes very well what I have done in other years. I am good for just about one good story a month or two articles. I took no vacation this summer except three or four one-night trips to Virginia and two business trips to New York, each of which lasted about four or five days. Of course this is no excuse for not making more money, because in harder times you’ve got to work harder, but as it happens I am in a condition at the moment where to work extra hard means inevitably that I am laid up for a compensatory time either here or in the hospital. All I can say is that I will try to do two or three of these all at once after finishing each piece of work, and as I am now working at the rate of a story each ten days for the Redbook series I should finish up the ten I have left to do in about one hundred days and deliver the last of them in mid-February. Perhaps if things break better it may be a month sooner.
A Life in Letters Page 31