A Life in Letters

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Harold Ober (1881–1959) was Fitzgerald’s agent for magazine writings. Most of Fitzgerald’s income came from the magazines, and through Ober’s efforts The Saturday Evening Post paid Fitzgerald his peak price of $4,000 per story in 1929. Ober received a ten-percent fee. The Ober-Fitzgerald financial relationship was complex with Ober acting as Fitzgerald’s banker, making interest-free loans against unsold and even unwritten stories. The Obers became Scottie’s surrogate parents during her prep-school and Vassar years. Fitzgerald broke with Ober in 1939 over the agent’s refusal to commence a new cycle of loans after Fitzgerald had paid his debts.

  Maxwell E. Perkins (1884–1947), editorial director at Charles Scribner’s Sons, was Fitzgerald’s generous friend and closest literary adviser. He fought for the publication of Fitzgerald’s first novel, This Side of Paradise, and thereafter provided encouragement and financial backing. At Scribners Perkins assembled a great stable of writers that included Ring Lardner, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe. His literary judgment and commitment to his writers have become legendary. See A. Scott Berg, Max Perkins: Editor of Genius (New York: Dutton/Congdon, 1978).

  Charles Scribner’s Sons. Founded by the first Charles Scribner in 1846, the firm achieved literary prestige under Charles Scribner II, president from 1879 to 1928. During the 1920s editor Maxwell Perkins altered the reputation of the House of Scribner from a conservative publisher to a firm receptive to innovative work. See Charles Scribner III, A History of Charles Scribner’s Sons (Cleveland: Rowfant Club, 1985), and Charles Scribner, Jr., In the Web of Ideas (New York: Scribners, 1993).

  Edmund Wilson (1895–1972) was a class ahead of Fitzgerald at Princeton and encouraged him to write for the Nassau Literary Magazine. Wilson became a distinguished literary and social critic, and Fitzgerald wrote of him that “For twenty years a certain man had been my intellectual conscience.” Wilson played a key role in the reassessment of Fitzgerald, editing The Last Tycoon (1941) and The Crack-Up (1945). See Wilson, The Twenties: From Notebooks and Diaries of the Period (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1945).

  Introduction

  1New York: New Directions.

  2New York: Scribners.

  1New York: Scribners.

  2Philadelphia & New York: Lippincott.

  3New York: Random House.

  4Washington, D.C.: Bruccoli Clark/NCR-Microcard Editions.

  5Edited by Scottie Fitzgerald Smith, Bruccoli, and Joan P. Kerr. New York: Scribners.

  Chapter 1

  1The earliest dated letter by Fitzgerald.

  2The St. Nicholas, a popular children’s magazine.

  1Fitzgerald’s sister was five years younger than he.

  2“Bernice Bobs Her Hair,” The Saturday Evening Post (May 1, 1920).

  1Ginevra King, celebrated beauty with whom Fitzgerald was in love when he was at Princeton; she provided a model for his debutante characters.

  1St. Paul friend with whom Fitzgerald corresponded when they were both away at school.

  1Wealthy Princeton classmate of Fitzgerald’s later a movie writer and producer.

  2Professors Christian Gauss and Gordon Hall Gerould.

  3Poet Stephen Vincent Benet, then a Yale undergraduate.

  4Katharine Fullerton Gerould, Yale Review (October 1917).

  5Compton Mackenzie, James M. Barrie, G. K. Chesterton, Arnold Bennett, H. G. Wells—contemporary British novelists.

  6This poem was not published by Poet Lore.

  1Father Cyril Sigourney Webster Fay had befriended Fitzgerald at the Newman School. He was the model for Monsignor Darcy in This Side of Paradise.

  2Characters in novels by William Makepeace Thackeray, Barrie, and Mackenzie.

  1Katherine Tighe, St. Paul friend of Fitzgerald; she became one of the dedicatees of Fitzgerald’s The Vegetable.

  1T. K. Whipple became a literary critic.

  1Booth Tarkington, G. K. Chesterton, Robert W. Chambers, H. G. Wells, and Robert Hugh Benson were contemporary novelists; Rupert Brooke was a young British poet killed in World War I.

  2Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812–1818) was a partially autobiographical heroic poem by George Gordon Byron, Lord Byron.

  1H. G. Wells’s novel Tono-Bungay (1909) portrayed the corruption of English society.

  1Changing Winds (1917) was by St. John Greer Ervine.

  2John Davys Beresford, Hugh Walpole, and Ervine were contemporary British novelists.

  3The Soul of a Bishop (1917), Tono-Bungay (1909), and The New Machiavelli (1910) were by H. G. Wells; Youth’s Encounter was the American title for the first volume of Compton Mackenzie’s Sinister Street (1913); Manalive (1912) was by G. K. Chesterton.

  1John Galsworthy and George Moore were realistic British novelists.

  2Benson, son of an Archbishop of Canterbury, converted to Catholicism.

  3Fitzgerald alludes to lines from Leslie’s “The Dead Friend,” Verses in Peace & War (1917): “And drunk with the sunset for lamp/—Myself and the dead.”

  1Fitzgerald was in New York trying to succeed in the advertising business in order to marry Zelda Sayre.

  1An engagement ring.

  Chapter 2

  1Holder Hall, Princeton University dormitory.

  1Dangerous Days (1919), by Mary Roberts Rinehart; Ramsey Milholland (1919), by Booth Tarkington.

  1American man of letters to whom the sixteen-year-old Fitzgerald had been introduced by Father Fay and Shane Leslie.

  2The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, ed. Henry Festing Jones (1912), which Fitzgerald once described as “The most interesting human document ever written.”

  3Robert Bridges, editor of Scribner’s Magazine.

  1Charles Scribner II, head of Charles Scribner’s Sons at this time.

  2St. Paul friend with whom Fitzgerald corresponded while she was at college.

  1Charles G. Norris; Salt appeared in 1918.

  21913 novel by Hugh Walpole.

  31908 novel by Arnold Bennett.

  1The Journal of a Disappointed Man (1919), by W. N. P. Barbellion.

  1Norris’s Salt, James Branch Czbell’s Jurgen (1919), and Theodore Dreiser’s Jennie Gerhardt (1911) were controversial novels in their time.

  1Made as The Chorus Girl’s Romance by Metro Pictures (1920).

  2President of Princeton University; Hibben’s letter to Fitzgerald had expressed concern about Fitzgerald’s treatment of Princeton in This Side of Paradise and had praised his story “The Four Fists,” published in the June 1920 Scribner’s Magazine.

  1Strater had been one of the leaders of a movement during the spring 1917 term to abolish eating clubs at Princeton on the grounds that they were undemocratic.

  2Editor of Movie Weekly.

  1The Beautiful and Damned.

  1Paul Revere Reynolds literary agency, of which Harold Ober was a partner.

  1Dorothy Gish, sister of Lillian Gish, was a silent-movie actress; D. W. Griffith was a legendary director. Fitzgerald’s scenario for Gish was rejected.

  2Boyhood friend of Fitzgerald’s in St. Paul.

  1Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street (1920) satirized small-town, midwestern values.

  2Donald Ogden Stewart became a successful humorist and screenwriter.

  3Wilson’s New Republic article on Mencken, which Mencken had commended.

  1Alexander McKaig, Princeton ’17.

  2The Undertaker’s Garland (1922), a collection of verse and prose by Wilson and Bishop.

  3Poet Edna St. Vincent Millay.

  1W. Collins Sons, British publisher of Fitzgerald’s first two novels and first two story collections.

  2On the birth of the Fitzgeralds’ daughter, Scottie.

  3John V. A. Weaver, poet and reviewer; Floyd Dell, novelist best known for Moon-Calf (1920).

  1E. E. Paramore, friend of Wilson, and, later, Fitzgerald’s collaborator on Three Comrades.

  2George Jean Nathan, co-editor with Mencken of The Smart Set; he was the model for Maury Noble in The Beautiful and Damned.

&
nbsp; 31921 novel by John Dos Passos.

  4Mark Twain: A Biography, 3 vols. (1912), by Albert Bigelow Paine.

  51921 story collection by Sherwood Anderson.

  6Bishop and Stewart.

  1“The Diamond as Big as the Ritz.”

  2Wilson’s “F. Scott Fitzgerald,” The Bookman (March 1922).

  1Wilson’s burlesque of the final meeting of Anthony Patch and Maury Noble reads: “It seemed to Anthony that Maury’s eyes had a fixed glassy stare; his legs moved stiffly as he walked and when he spoke his voice had no life in it. When Anthony came nearer, he saw that Maury was dead!”

  2Unidentified incident during Fitzgerald’s army service.

  3Sinclair, whose novels and nonfiction books treated controversial subjects, was frequently attacked in the press.

  1Edna St. Vincent Millay had compared Fitzgerald to a stupid old woman with whom someone had left a diamond.

  2Bishop reviewed The Beautiful and Damned in the March 5, 1922 New York Herald.

  1Bishop had reviewed the serialization in the Baltimore Evening Sun (October 8, 1921).

  2The “well-known author” was probably Joseph Hergesheimer.

  3The Beautiful and Damned was serialized in Metropolitan Magazine (September 1921-March 1922).

  1Columnist and critic Burton Rascoe.

  2George Horace Lorimer, editor of The Saturday Evening Post.

  11897 novel by Henry James.

  2Wilson’s published Bookman article did not mention Fitzgerald’s drinking.

  1Printed letterhead.

  2Wilson had submitted Fitzgerald’s play to the Theatre Guild and to actor/producer Frank Craven. Neither produced the play.

  1Broadway producer William Harris.

  1Thomas Boyd, whose first novel, Through the Wheat, was published by Scribners in 1923 at Fitzgerald’s recommendation.

  2This projected novel became The Great Gatsby.

  1Arthur Hopkins, Broadway producer.

  21921 play by Eugene O’Neill.

  3Alexander Pope’s satirical poem (1728) on literary figures.

  41922 novel by Joseph Hergesheimer.

  5Fitzgerald is punning on Frank Harris, author of self-aggrandizing autobiographical works.

  6Pseudonym used in The Saturday Review of Literature.

  1Zoë Akins, dramatist.

  2Edward J. O’Brien produced an annual collection of best stories originally published in magazines; he also rated with stars other good stories appearing that year. Williams was an anthologist who specialized in the short story.

  3Retitled The Vegetable before it was produced.

  1“We Nominate for the Hall of Fame,” Vanity Fair (March 1923). The published caption reads: “Because he is quite unaware of the approval he is receiving in erudite circles; because he is covered with bruises from representing the Yale football team against his Harvard-bound boys; and finally, because with a rare true ear he has set down for posterity the accents of the American language.”

  1Presumably The Vegetable, which was published by Scribners in April 1923.

  2Scribners advertising manager.

  3The movie of This Side of Paradise was not produced.

  4St. Paul friend of the Fitzgeralds.

  1A ring from a wet glass.

  1Novelist and critic.

  2British critic.

  3Rosenfeld’s Port of New York: Essays on Fourteen American Modems (1924) treated writers, artists, and musicians.

  11924 novel by Boyd.

  Chapter 3

  1Great Neck friend of the Fitzgeralds.

  2Muckraking journalist who wrote sensational “inside” stories about such institutions as asylums and prisons; she is primarily remembered for her 1890 account of her successful attempt to travel around the world within eighty days.

  3As a boy Kerr had been befriended by yachtsman Edward Gilman, and Fitzgerald drew upon Kerr’s experiences for Gatsby’s association with Dan Cody.

  4For How to Write Short Stories (1924); Fitzgerald had convinced Lardner and Perkins to assemble this collection of Lardner’s stories and had provided its title.

  5Ariel: The Life of Shelley (1924), by André Maurois.

  1Arthur Train, Scribners author of extremely popular stories and novels about a lawyer named Ephraim Tutt.

  2Poet and novelist published by Scribners.

  1Wilson’s wife Mary Blair had played the female lead in Eugene O’Neill’s All God’s Chillun Got Wings (1924).

  2“Absolution,” American Mercury (June 1924).

  1Fowler, a Newman School and Princeton classmate of Fitzgerald, was the model for Anson Hunter in “The Rich Boy.”

  2Charles W. Donahoe, Newman School and Princeton classmate of Fitzgerald.

  1Scribners was negotiating for the Lardner volumes previously published by Bobbs-Merrill and Doran.

  2What of It? (Scribners, 1925).

  3Critic Gilbert Seldes.

  4This remark has generated disagreement. The published jacket art by Francis Cugat depicts a woman’s face above an amusement park night scene. It is not known whether Fitzgerald saw the final art or an earlier version. See “Appendix 3: Note on the Dust Jacket,” The Great Gatsby, ed. Bruccoli (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 209–10.

  1Balisand (1924).

  2The Making of Americans (1925).

  3Young aspiring St. Louis writer whose fan letter initiated an extended correspondence.

  1Village near Cambridge; setting for Rupert Brooke’s poem “The Old Vicarage, Grantchester.”

  2Author of the 1923 novel Wife of the Centaur.

  3John N. Wheeler, editor of Liberty.

  1Movie studio.

  2Probably in our time, published by the Three Mountains Press in the spring of 1924. Ezra Pound had encouraged Hemingway in his work.

  3Plumes (1924), a World War I novel by Laurence Stallings.

  1Editor of Hearst’s International; The Great Gatsby was not serialized before book publication.

  1Sidney Howard, playwright whose They Knew What They Wanted opened on Broadway in 1924 and won a Pulitzer Prize for drama.

  1Trimalchio was an ostentatious party giver in Petronius’ Satyricon.

  1Boyd’s Portraits: Real and Imaginary (1924) contained an article on Fitzgerald.

  2Perkins’s November 18 and November 20 letters reporting his responses to the typescript of The Great Gatsby are included to document the editor’s role in the revision of the novel.

  1Louise Perkins, Maxwell Perkins’s wife.

  1Cowboys North and South (1924), by Will James.

  2Fitzgerald regarded this popular 1921 novel by Robert Keable as immoral; the protagonist is an army chaplain who becomes involved in passionate episodes.

  1Ferber’s So Big (1924) and Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt (1922).

  2Writer published by Scribners.

  3Edward M. Fuller and William F. McGee, partners in a stock brokerage firm, were convicted of embezzlement; Arnold Rothstein—the model for Meyer Wolfshiem in The Great Gatsby—was allegedly involved in their peculations.

  4Golfer who had been a school friend of Ginevra King.

  1Howard’s stories “Transatlantic” and “Mrs. Vietch” had been collected in his Three Flights Up (1924); Ruth Suckow was known for her stories and novels of midwestern life.

  2“whose” in the previous paragraph.

  3Peggy Boyd, wife of Thomas Boyd, wrote under the name Woodward Boyd.

  1The White Monkey (1924), by John Galsworthy, was published by Scribners, as was Will James’s Cowboys North and South. Neither Raymond Radiguet nor Gertrude Stein was published by Scribners.