A Life in Letters

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

  (After about two days of this rigmarole, I added to the general confusion by getting drunk, whereupon she adopted the course of telling all and sundry that I was a dangerous man and needed to be carefully watched. This made the whole trip one of the most annoying and aggravating experiences in my life. I had been physically run down and under a doctor’s supervision for two months, working with the help of injections of calsium, sodium, iron and liver, living on too much caffeine by day and sleeping on clorol at night and touching no liquor; and I was looking forward to this as a much needed rest. In fact, the doctor who is apprehensive that the trouble in my lungs is about to flare up again, begged me to go to the country or someplace near here and rest for a week. But because I had been held here Christmas and New Years, I was anxious to see my daughter at least once. I think she was the only one on our corridor of the hotel that Zelda did not convince that I was a madman. Luckily I sent Scottie off to Baltimore before matters attained their final pitch of the ridiculous—on the boat coming up from Norfolk where I had some words with the idiotic trained nurse whom, by the way, Zelda had invited to accompany her on her exit into the world. All this isn’t pretty on my part, but if I had been left alone, would have amounted to a two day batt—in fact, I sobered myself up the second I had gotten Zelda off for Carolina and caught the plane from Washington that night, arriving here Monday and reporting for work.)

  One thing is apparent: that my present usefulness is over in the case. Living a vegetable life in Tryon, I got along with her all right; even had some fairly good times together—now our relations are about as bad as at any time in our lives—even worse on my part, for I am unable to feel any of the pity which usually ameliorated whatever she did. In the old days, I could interpose someone between her and our daughter; now, the rasp of temperament between the two simply makes me want to shut her up violently; makes daughter and I feel like conspirators when we can have a minute alone together away from the sing-song patronage which she thinks is the proper method of addressing children. The daughter in turn treats her like an individual, and over it all the well-meant hypocrisy of trying to pretend we are just a happy family, is hard to keep up. The daughter is sorry for her mother, but they are very different in temperament and if more than a few hours together, Mrs. Fitzgerald runs to me with her face red, talking about Scottie as if she were a potential criminal for not having exactly the same interests. To Zelda’s mind, I have separated them—the fact is that life has done it beyond my power to add or detract by the tiniest fraction.

  Beyond all this, Zelda made a concrete effort during all the mornings and most of the afternoons toward a sort of sweetness which, to me, seemed thin and which apparently my cousins in Norfolk found winning and quite normal. This was even exerted toward me at times, but toward the end I was so irritated that I was unable to judge whether it was sincere or a complete mask, because the moment its objects were out of sight, she had no good words for anyone in particular.

  I am enclosing check for the bill received April 1st. I do not know how far this runs.

  Meanwhile I await hearing from you, even a note as to what condition you feel she is in and what your plans for her are, so I will be able to estimate what the financial obligations will be. She considers the sum Dr. Carroll wanted her to have as ridiculously inadequate, not realizing the proportion of my salary, my only income, which is going back to pay former debts run up over these years of sickness and trouble. As I told you, at the very best, it will take me two years to be out of debt; and during the second of these years, I want also to put aside some sum which will give me a year off to write a novel. In case of her making trips, I should infinitely prefer you to regulate what she should spend, and I am sorry if these two extravagant flights, which were an attempt to make up for the long time apart from her, gave her any ideas of my scale of living. I am still driving a 1934 Ford and shall probably continue to drive it, as far as I can see ahead.

  Sincerely,

  TO: Scottie Fitzgerald

  Spring 1938

  Retyped copy, 1 p. Princeton University

  Hollywood, California

  Dearest;

  I hope Mary Earle wont find the trip too expensive. It is if you are not going to Vassar, but if you are I think it will be such a worthwhile thing and I wish to God I could go over with you.

  We have reached a censorship barrier in Infidelity to our infinite disappointment. It wont be Joan’s next picture and we are setting it aside awhile till we think of a way of halfwitting halfwit Hayes and his legion of decency. Pictures needed cleaning up in 1932–33 (remember I didn’t like you to see them?) but because they were suggestive and salacious. Of course the moralists now want to apply that to all strong themes—so the crop of the last two years is feeble and false, unless it deals with children. Anyhow we’re starting a new story and a safe one.

  About adjectives: all fine prose is based on the verbs carrying the sentences. They make sentences move. Probably the finest technical poem in English is Keats’ Eve of Saint Agnes. A line like:

  The Hare limped trembling through the frozen grass, is so alive that you race through it, scarcely noticing it, yet it has colored the whole poem with its movement—the limping, trembling, and freezing is going on before your own eyes. Would you read that poem for me, and report?

  I’m having a controversy with the Highlands Hospital. They want to keep your mothere there with only six weeks out a year and a few trips with Dr. and Mrs. Carroll. I cant see it—I think she should be out from one-fourth to one-half the time, using the hospital only as a base. If I insist, they threaten to realease her althogether to me which would be simply a catastrophe—I cant work and look after her. And she wouldnt obey any companion unless the hospital has authority back of the companion. Mrs. Sayre wants her to come and sit beside what will soon be a deathbed and I cant see that as promising any future (I dont mean Mrs. Sayre is sick but she is almost so) She (your mother) wants to come to your commencement with Newman and Rosalind—O.K. if it can be arranged for a nurse to take her to and from N.Y.

  I dont dare at the moment to tell your mother about the Alice Lee Myers trip or the fact that I’ve taken a shack at the beach here (address Garden of Allah still). She would feel as if we were happy and she was in prison. If only old Carroll was less obstinate—however it should be solved within a few weeks—I may have to go East but God forbid.

  A letter from Miss Walker—never has my intuition so surely informed me of a thing than now, that you are walking on a most delicate line there. No matter how you feel I should play a “straight” role for five weeks, lest they mistake any action for a frivolous attitude. All through life there are such games to play—mine for instance, when I first came here, to keep away from any bars, even though I wasnt tempted to drink. The connection of “Bar-drunk” was too easy to establish in people’s minds after my past performances. But dont tell your best friend that you are playing a sober role—such things travel fast and far. You will be smart in playing nun for the time being—five weeks will win you many months.

  Dearest Love always.

  Daddy

  TO: Maxwell Perkins

  TLS, 4 pp. Princeton University

  Garden of Allah stationery.

  Hollywood, California

  PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL

  April 23, 1938

  Dear Max:

  I got both your letters and appreciate them and their fullness, as I feel very much the Californian at the moment and, consequently, out of touch with New York.

  The Marjorie Rawlings’ book1 fascinated me. I thought it was even better than “South Moon Under” and I envy her the ease with which she does action scenes, such as the tremendously complicated hunt sequence, which I would have to stake off in advance and which would probably turn out to be a stilted business in the end. Hers just simply flows; the characters keep thinking, talking, feeling and don’t stop, and you think and talk and feel with them.

  Fitzgerald inscribed this boo
k for Sheilah Graham after an alcoholic episode in the fall of 1937 (Princeton University).

  As to Ernest, I was fascinated by what you told me about the play, touched that he remembered me in his premonitory last word, and fascinated, as always, by the man’s Byronic intensity. The Los Angeles Times printed a couple of his articles, but none the last three days, and I keep hoping a stray Krupp shell hasn’t knocked off our currently most valuable citizen.

  In the mail yesterday came a letter from that exquisitely tactful co-worker of yours, Whitney Darrow, or Darrow Whitney, or whatever his name is. I’ve never had much love for the man since he insisted on selling “This Side of Paradise” for a dollar fifty, and cost me around five thousand dollars; nor do I love him more when, as it happened the other day, I went into a house and saw someone reading the Modern Library’s “Great Modern Short Stories” with a poor piece of mine called “Act Your Age”1 side by side with Conrad’s “Youth,” Ernest’s “The Killers” because Whitney Darrow was jealous of a copyright.

  His letter informs me that “This Side of Paradise” is now out of print. I am not surprised after eighteen years (looking it over, I think it is now one of the funniest books since “Dorian Gray” in its utter spuriousness—and then, here and there, I find a page that is very real and living), but I know to the younger generation it is a pretty remote business, reading about the battles that engrossed us then and the things that were startling. To hold them I would have to put in a couple of abortions to give it color (and probably would if I was that age and writing it again). However, I’d like to know what “out of print” means. Does it mean that I can make my own arrangements about it? That is, if any publisher was interested in reprinting it, could I go ahead, or would it immediately become a valuable property to Whitney again?

  I once had an idea of getting Bennett Cerf to publish it in the Modern Library, with a new preface. But also I note in your letter a suggestion of publishing an omnibus book with “Paradise,” “Gatsby” and “Tender.” How remote is that idea, and why must we forget it? If I am to be out here two years longer, as seems probable, it certainly isn’t advisable to let my name slip so out of sight as it did between “Gatsby” and “Tender,” especially as I now will not be writing even the Saturday Evening Post stories.

  I have again gone back to the idea of expanding the stories about Phillippe, the Dark Ages knight, but when I will find time for that, I don’t know, as this amazing business has a way of whizzing you along at a terrific speed and then letting you wait in a dispirited, half-cocked mood when you don’t feel like undertaking anything else, while it makes up its mind. It is a strange conglomeration of a few excellent over-tired men making the pictures, and as dismal a crowd of fakes and hacks at the bottom as you can imagine. The consequence is that every other man is a charlatan, nobody trusts anybody else, and an infinite amount of time is wasted from lack of confidence.

  Relations have always been so pleasant, not only with you but with Harold and with Lorimer’s Saturday Evening Post, that even working with the pleasantest people in the industry, Eddie Knopf and Hunt Stromberg, I feel this lack of confidence.

  Hard times weed out many of the incompetents, but they swarm back—Herman Mankiewicz, a ruined man who hasn’t written ten feet of continuity in two years, was finally dropped by Metro, but immediately picked up by Columbia! He is a nice fellow that everybody likes and has been brilliant, but he is being hired because everyone is sorry for his wife—which I think would make him rather an obstacle in the way of making good pictures. Utter toughness toward the helpless, combined with super-sentimentality—Jesus, what a combination!

  I still feel in the dark about Tom Wolfe, rather frightened for him; I cannot quite see him going it alone, but neither can I see your sacrificing yourself in that constant struggle. What a time you’ve had with your sons, Max—Ernest gone to Spain, me gone to Hollywood, Tom Wolfe reverting to an artistic hill-billy.

  Do let me know about “This Side of Paradise.” Whitney Darrow’s, or Darrow Whitney’s letter was so subtly disagreeable that I felt he took rather personal pleasure in the book being out of print. It was all about buying up some second-hand copies. You might tell him to do so if he thinks best. I have a copy somewhere, but I’d like a couple of extras.

  Affectionately always,

  Scott

  TO: D. Mildred Thompson1

  CC, 2 pp. Princeton University

  MGM stationery.

  Culver City, California

  June 12th, 1938

  My dear Dean Thompson:

  Some two years ago I wrote you entering my daughter for Vassar. One week ago, after her graduation from the Ethel Walker School, there occurred something in the nature of a catastrophe which you will have to examine before determining her qualifications for entrance. By now the school has probably written you—after the graduation week-end was over and the honor system put aside, my daughter and another girl went to New Haven in violation of the regulations, had dinner with two Yale students and were caught coming back at nine o’clock that night. One of the undergraduates was the “fiance” of the other girl—my daughter knew neither of them. The other girl telephoned to the fraternity house of her friend and they met in a restaurant, after which the boys immediately drove them back to Sims-bury. The Walker School were particularly annoyed that they had “picked up a ride” to New Haven,—this was by no means the first time it had been done at the school, but it was the first time for my daughter and she was the first one caught. It was broad daylight and they chose a car with a single man in it, so they didn’t feel it was risky—an adult has an entirely different reaction. Mrs. Smith telephoned me that she could not let my daughter remain for the rest of the Board preparations. I agreed and have no resentment whatever toward the school which had treated her with every kindness.

  The picture at first glance is in perfect focus—the kind of a girl on whom a college education is wasted, probably boy-crazy, irresponsible, almost delinquent. Now compare it with this—a judgement of contemporaries, those who lived with her in the school for two years. A month ago her class of thirty-odd voted their likes and dislikes. Among them I copy these from the school paper:

  Most likely to succeed

  Fitzgerald (1st)

  Most entertaining

  Fitzgerald (1st)

  Most artistic

  Fitzgerald (2nd)

  Most original

  Fitzgerald (1st)

  Frankest

  Fitzgerald (2nd)

  In the choice for the composite “Most Perfect Girl” I find:

  Personality

  Fitzgerald (1st)

  The two pictures simply do not go together, for the above represents, I think, the sort of girl who does deserve a college education. Editing the school magazine and writing the school musical play took away from her marks somewhat this year but such things do indicate an active mind and a useful surplus of energy.

  If I were able to take the blame for an act which the child herself is now trying desperately to understand, I would, but she is sixteen and must stand on her own feet. That she has been motherless for ten years and homeless for five is no explanation, for such a deprivation should make a girl more, not less mature. It is more to the point that this is only the second trouble she ever got into in her life—the other being a piece of insolence which culminated a long friction with a housemother at Miss Walker’s.

  But I’d like the two pictures to stand on their merits. Just as you now take more into account than the mere numerical aspect of a grade, so I wanted to present to you the other face of this coin. Because I don’t know what one does in a case like this. To the majority of Walker girls the answer would be a debut in New York, but every arrow in this child points toward a career, points away from an idle, shiftless life. And at the very moment when school seems behind and the gates seem opening, she yields to this uncalculated impulse—something that a week later would have deserved no more than a strong rebuke from me. If this
closes the gates where does all that talent and personality go from here? Only a month ago, she was “most likely to succeed.” What is she now?

  Sincerely,

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  P.S. I need not add that she is not now the same child who did this rash thing, and will never be again.

  TO: Scottie Fitzgerald

  Typed copy, 4 pp. Princeton University

  Hollywood, California

  July 7th, 1938

  Dearest Scottie:

  I don’t think I will be writing letters many more years and I wish you would read this letter twice—bitter as it may seem. You will reject it now, but at a later period some of it may come back to you as truth. When I’m talking to you, you think of me as an older person, an “authority,” and when I speak of my own youth what I say becomes unreal to you—for the young can’t believe in the youth of their fathers. But perhaps this little bit will be understandable if I put it in writing.

  When I was your age I lived with a great dream. The dream grew and I learned how to speak of it and make people listen. Then the dream divided one day when I decided to marry your mother after all, even though I knew she was spoiled and meant no good to me. I was sorry immediately I had married her, but being patient in those days, made the best of it and got to love her in another way. You came along and for a long time we made quite a lot of happiness out of our lives. But I was a man divided—she wanted me to work too much for her and not enough for my dream. She realized too late that work was dignity and the only dignity and tried to atone for it by working herself but it was too late and she broke and is broken forever.