I certainly have this one more novel, but it may have to remain among the unwritten books of this world. Such stray ideas as sending my daughter to a public school, putting my wife in a public insane asylum, have been proposed to me by intimate friends, but it would break something in me that would shatter the very delicate pencil end of a point of view. I have got myself completely on the spot and what the next step is I don’t know.
I am going to New York around Thanksgiving for a day or so and we might discuss ways and means. This general eclipse of ambition and determination and fortitude, all of the very qualities on which I have prided myself, is ridiculous, and, I must admit, somewhat obscene.
Anyhow, that you for your willingness to help me. Thank Charlie for me and tell him that the assignments he mentioned have only been waiting on a general straightening up of my affairs. My God, debt is an awful thing!
Yours,
F Scott Fitzgerald
Heard from Mrs Rawlins + will see her.
TO: Scottie Fitzgerald
TLS, 2 pp. Princeton University
Grove Park Inn
Asheville, N.C.
October 20, 1936
Dearest Scottina:
I had already decided to go up Thanksgiving which I will do, God willing, and so on your own suggestion I have killed the idea of going up on your birthday. You seem to understand the fact that I cannot afford at the moment to make two trips within the same month; so I know you won’t be unduly disappointed.
To finish up news of me, the arm is really definitely out of danger and I am going to be able to use it again, which I doubted for three or four weeks. Went out to football game with the Flynns last Saturday, the same sort of game exactly that we went to last fall at very much the same time. Lefty was his usual handsome self and Nora was charming as always. They asked about you repeatedly, and not because they thought they ought to but because they have a real affection for you, and I mean both of them. They were so happy to know that you are getting along so well at your school.
Confirming my Christmas plans, they are, briefly: that we shall have a party for you in Baltimore at the Belvedere or the Stafford, if we can afford it! Then the actual Christmas day will be spent either here with your mother (it won’t be like that awful Christmas in Switzerland), or else you and your mother and the trained nurse will go to Montgomery and spend Christmas with your grandmother; perhaps with a little time afterwards in Baltimore before you go back to school.
Don’t be a bit discouraged about your story not being tops. At the same time, I am not going to encourage you about it, because, after all, if you want to get into the big time, you have to have your own fences to jump and learn from experience. Nobody ever became a writer just by wanting to be one. If you have anything to say, anything you feel nobody has ever said before, you have got to feel it so desperately that you will find some way to say it that nobody has ever found before, so that the thing you have to say and the way of saying it blend as one matter—as indissolubly as if they were conceived together.
Let me preach again for a moment: I mean that what you have felt and thought will by itself invent a new style, so that when people talk about style they are always a little astonished at the newness of it, because they think that it is only style that they are talking about, when what they are talking about is the attempt to express a new idea with such force that it will have the originality of the thought. It is an awfully lonesome business, and as you know, I never wanted you to go into it, but if you are going into it at all I want you to go into it knowing the sort of things that took me years to learn.
Why are you whining about such matters as study hall, etc., when you deliberately picked this school as the place you wanted to go above all places? Of course it is hard. Nothing any good isn’t hard, and you know you have never been brought up soft, or are you quitting on me suddenly? Darling, you know I love you, and I expect you to live up absolutely to what I laid out for you in the beginning.
Scott
TO: Scottie Fitzgerald
TLS, 2 pp. Princeton University
GROVE PARK INN
Asheville, N.C.
November 17, 1936
Dearest Pie:
I got a School Letter saying that Thanksgiving Day is best, and it is better for me that way. There is no particular advantage in going out two or three times rather than one, without particular objectives; the idea is to go out once and have a good time. I’ll be delighted to meet whoever you want, and our engagement is on Thanksgiving Day.
(This is a parenthesis: I got the little charms that you sent me for my birthday: the bells dangling and the mule, and appreciated your thought of me—you little donkey!)
Park Avenue girls are hard, aren’t they? Usually the daughters of “up-and-coming” men and, in a way, the inevitable offspring of that type. It’s the “Yankee push” to its last degree, a sublimation of the sort of Jay Gould who began by peddling bad buttons to a county and ended, with the same system of peddler’s morals, by peddling five dollar railroads to a nation.
Don’t mistake me. I think of myself always as a Northerner—and I think of you the same way. Nevertheless, we are all of one nation and you will find all the lassitude and laziness there that you despise, enough to fill Savannah and Charleston, just as down here you will find the same “go getter” principle in the Carolinas.
I don’t know whether you will stay there another year—it all depends on your marks and your work, and I can’t give you the particular view of life that I have, (which as you know is a tragic one,) without dulling your enthusiasm. A whole lot of people have found life a whole lot of fun. I have not found it so. But, I had a hell of a lot of fun when I was in my twenties and thirties; and I feel that it is your duty to accept the sadness, the tragedy of the world we live, in with a certain esprit.
Now, insofar as your course is concerned, there is no question of your dropping mathematics and taking the easiest way to go into Vassar, and being one of the girls fitted for nothing except to reflect other people without having any particular character of your own. I want you to take mathematics up to the limit of what the school offers. I want you to take physics and I want you to take chemistry. I don’t care about your English courses or your French courses at present. If you don’t know two languages and the ways that men chose to express their thoughts in those languages by this time, then you don’t sound like my daughter. You are an only child, but that doesn’t give you any right to impose on that fact.
I want you to know certain basic scientific principles, and I feel that it is impossible to learn them unless you have gone as far into mathematics as coordinate geometry. I don’t want you to give up mathematics next year. I learned about writing from doing something that I didn’t have any taste for. If you don’t carry your mathematics such as coordinate geometry (conic sections), you will have strayed far afield from what I had planned for you. I don’t insist on the calculus, but it is certainly nothing to be decided by what is easiest. You are going into Vassar with mathematical credits and a certain side of your life there is going to be scientific.
Honey, I wish I could see you. It would be so much easier to go over these important matters without friction, but at a distance it seems rather tough that you are inclined to slide into the subjects that are easy for you, like modern languages.
No more until I see you Thanksgiving.
With dearest love,
F. Scott Fitz——
P.S. Sorry you are on bounds—feel as if I had been the same for six months. However I have bought an ancient Packard roadster and get out more now. I always allow for your exuberance but I hope this doesn’t come from a feud with any special teacher, or from any indiscretion of speech, a fault you should be beginning to control.
TO: Maxwell Perkins
Wire. Princeton University
ASHEVILLE NCAR 1936 DEC 3 PM 7 44
CANT EVEN GET OUT OF HERE UNLESS YOU DEPOSIT THE REMAINING THOUSAND STOP IT IS ONLY FOR
A COUPLE OF MONTHS STOP I HAVE COUNTED ON IT SO THAT I HAVE CHECKS OUT AGAINST IT ALREADY STOP PLEASE WIRE ME IF YOU HAVE WIRED IT TO THE BALTIMORE BANK STOP THE DOCTORS THINK THAT THIS SESSION OF COMPARATIVE PROSTRATION IS ABOUT OVER
SCOTT FITZGERALD.
TO: Harold Ober
1937
ALS, 2 pp. Lilly Library
Jan 2nd
Johns Hopkins Hospital Baltimore.
But Stafford Hotel after tomorrow.
Dear Harold:
I’ve owed you a letter a long time.
1st as to money. I arranged another loan but I hope to God this new story1 (last version now at typists) will sell quick as I have enough for a fortnight only + am at the end of borrowing on mother’s little estate until it’s settled in April.
2nd I can do no more with Thumbs Up. I think I told you that it’s shifting around was due to my poor judgement in founding it arbitrarily on two unrelated events in father’s family—the Thumbs Up and the Empresses Escape. I dont think I ever put more work on a story with less return. Its early diffuseness was due, of course, to my inability to measure the length of dictated prose during the time my right arm was helpless—that’s why it strung out so long.
I suggest this—send it to Esquire—I owe them $500. See if they’ll accept this in full payment—maybe something more. They paid me 200–250 for a mere appearance (1000 to 2000 wds of any sort in any genre)—but at least twice they’ve published Hemmingway long stories—one of 6000 + one that must have been 9000 or over. At least it would clear up that debt + in dire emergency I could get a couple of hundred there instead of having to go to mechanics loan offices as has been the case this last terrible year. 3d Scottie I’d promised to give Scotty a little tea dance + arranged it should cost $60. Every child in Baltimore came, it seemed to me + brought their friends. Immediately afterwards she went to the country with her friend Peaches—and I came to the hospital with 104° + raging flu to spend Xmas to New Years.
I’m all right now—(back on the absolute wagon by the way) + could have gone out today except that it’s sleety. My plan is have Scottie join me at The Stafford tomorrow for a day or so—I’ve seen nothing of her + in any case the Baltimore schools open Monday so her friends can’t keep her or rather they would but none of the adults are close enough to me so that she would feel quite at home there.
The alternative arises—either she comes south with me at extra expense of time + money for a week (My God why do they open these schools the 11th!) or she visits you or Max—I couldn’t send her to what would for her be strangers just now unless it were urgent. But I know how Xmas leaves anyone, you + Anne included + be frank with me. Her aunt, Mrs Smith, is under the surgeons knife + that’s out + I’m so out of touch with all other New York friends that I don’t know who to ask. She has one standing invitation—but it is to a tuberculosis Chateau! (Gerald + Sara Murphy of whom you’ve heard me speak.
Anyhow I’ll be at the Stafford all Monday anyhow finishing the last infinitismal details of mother’s affairs. Let me know what. Then I’ve got to go see Zelda.
This last is general: I can live cheaper at a hotel I know in Tryon N.C. (Oak Hall), than at Grove Park (Ashville). As far as I can plan ahead it seems better to go to the former place for a few months. It is warmer and I am still in such wretched health that such a fact means a lot. The arm has healed right + I should be thankful. Perhaps I shall be pushing you along more hopeful indications before the first grass pushes up. Anyhow wire me (Stafford) about Scottie
F.S.F.
TO: Maxwell Perkins
Late February 1937
ALS, 2 pp. Princeton University
Tryon, North Carolina
Dear Max:
Thanks for your note and the appalling statement. Odd how enormous sums of $10,000 have come to seem lately—I can remember turning down that for the serialization of The Great Gatsby—from College Humor.
Well, my least productive + lowest general year since 1926 is over. In that year I did 1 short story + 2 chaps, of a novel—that is two chaps, that I afterwards used. And it was a terrible story. Last year, even though laid up 4 mos. I sold 4 stories + 8 Esq. pieces, a poor showing God knows. This year has started slowly also, some damn lack of interest, staleness, when I have every reason to want to work if only to keep from thinking. Havn’t had a drink since I left the north (about six weeks, not even beer) but while I feel a little better nervously it doesn’t bring back the old exuberance. I honestly think that all the prizefighters, actors, writers who live by their own personal performances ought to have managers in their best years. The ephemeral part of the talent seems, when it is in hiding so apart from one, so “otherwise,” that it seems it ought to have some better custodian than the poor individual with whom it lodges and who is left with the bill. My chief achievement lately has been in cutting down my and Zelda’s expenses to rock bottom; my chief failure is my inability to see a workable future. Hollywood for money has much against it, the stories are somehow mostly out of me unless some new of material springs up, a novel takes money + time—I am thinking of putting aside certain hours and digging out a play, the ever-appealing mirage. At 40 one counts carefully one’s remaining vitality and rescourses and a play ought to be within both of them. The novel + the autobiography have got to wait till this load of debt is lifted.
So much, + too much, for my affairs. Write me of Ernest + Tom + who’s new + does Ring still sell + John Fox + The House of Mirth. Or am I the only best seller who doesn’t sell?
The account, I know, doesn’t include my personal debt to you. How much is it please?
I don’t know at all about Brookfield. Never have heard of it but there are so many schools there. Someone asked me about Oldfields where Mrs. Simpson went + Id never heard of that. Please write me—you are about the only friend who does not see fit to incorporate a moral lesson, especially since the Crack Up stuff. Actually I hear from people in Sing Sing + Joliet all comforting + advising me.
Ever Your Friend
Scott
TO: Maxwell Perkins
c. March 19, 1937
ALS, 1 p. Princeton University
Tryon, North Carolina
Dear Max:
Thanks for the book—I don’t think it was very good but then I didn’t go for Sheean1 or Negley Farson either. Ernest ought to write a swell book now about Spain—real Richard Harding Davis reporting or better. (I mean not the sad jocosity of P.O. M.2 passages or the mere callender of slaughter.) And speaking of Ernest, did I tell you that when I wrote asking him to cut me out of his story he answered, with ill grace, that he would—in fact he answered with such unpleasantness that it is hard to think he has any friendly feeling to me any more. Anyhow please remember that he agreed to do this if the story should come in with me still in it.
At the moment it appears that I may go to Hollywood for awhile, and I hope it works out. I was glad to get news of Tom Wolfe though I don’t understand about his landlady. What?3
Ever yours
Scott
Write me again—I hear no news. On the wagon since January + in good shape physically.
TO: Harold Ober
Received March 23, 1937
ALS, 2 pp. Lilly Library
Tryon, North Carolina
Going to country dog shows isn’t my daily occupation—it was my single appearance of that kind. I wanted you to see how different I look from Xmas.1
Dear Harold:
Here, or herewith is the revision of Thumbs Up. Maybe it’ll go. It’s an odd story—one editor says cut the thumbs episode, another says cut everything else—I’ve done the latter and shortened it to about 5500 words (from 8000) + revised it thoroughly + written a new scene.
Thanks for the money—as time passes my position becomes more + more ludicrous, I mean generally. I just got a book (Books + Battles of the Twenties)2 in which I am practically a leading character, my birthday is two column front page news as if I were 80 instead of 40—and I sit worrying about next
weeks $35.00 hotel bill! I really mean it that I’d like to go to Hollywood + let them see me. I wish you could see me. Weight 160 instead of 143 which was it last Xmas. And the dullest dogs making 1000 a week in Hollywood. Something has got to be done—this will end in slow ruination. Anyhow I’ve begun the football story but God knows where the next two weeks rent come from. I will owe $105 by Thurs. + will need cash—all in all $150. I was going to Max as a last rescourse but you have tapped that. What in hell shall I do? I want to write the football story unworried + uninterrupted. Since going on the wagon I will have written two originals, rewritten two stories (Thumbs + the cartoon story) and written 3 little Esquire pieces (two of them mediochre) to live on. That will be a hard two 1/2 mos work. But reward there is none.
In fatalistic optimism,
Scott
Look at this Margaret Banning3 next to me—covered with rings, lives in a mansion + owns it. Ah me—well, perhaps I’ve learned wisdom at forty at last. If I ever get out of this mess!
TO: Corey Ford1
ALS, 1 p. Princeton University
That always reminds me of you + your Oak Hall
Rover Boys—didn’t you read Dave
Tryon, N.C.
Porter too?2
April 1937
Dear Corey:
I think you have read or heard that I’ve been in a somewhat bitter temper for a year, and that led you to say to yourself “It might cheer the poor bastard up to think he’s not forgotten.” Whatever was the impulse that made you write it did cheer me up and the idea that people have such thoughts + do something so concrete about it is the most cheering thought of all.
I had been sick as hell for a year and took an extra one to get over it morally for as a child of the bitch goddess I began trying to fight it with 2 quarts a day + got into an awful psychological jam. However I came back to life last January after the newspapers began cracking at me (it was rather a shock—nobody ever tried to interfere with Ring Lardner’s utterly private life, but I had myself to blame with those indiscreet Esquire articles) and decided to be an example to myself. I now admire myself almost as much as Wm Seabrook, Mary McLane3 and Casanova.
A Life in Letters Page 37