Mr. Fate
Can’t berate
Mr. Scott.
He is not
Marking time:…
on the news of the acceptance of his novel was as effervescent as the young lieutenant who had promised Zelda New York with “all the iridescence of the beginning of the world.”
When he left Montgomery he gave Zelda a manuscript copy of This Side of Paradise. After she had read it she wrote him: “Why can’t I write? I’d like to tell you how fine I think the book is and how miserably and and completely and—a little unexpectedly—I am thine.” In another letter, probably written a few days later, she added: “I am very proud of you— I hate to say this, but I don’t think I had much confidence in you at first …. It’s so nice to know that you really can do things—anything— And I love to feel that maybe I can help just a little— I want to so much—… I’m so damn glad I love you— I wouldn’t love any other man on earth— I believe if I had deliberately decided on a sweetheart, he’d have been you—”
Scott had already begun to make plans for where they would live and Zelda asked him not to “accumulate a lot of furniture. Really, Scott, I’d just as soon live anywhere—and can’t we find a bed ready-made? Someday, you know we’ll want rugs and wicker furniture and a home— I’m terribly afraid it’ll just be in the way now. I wish New York were a little tiny town—so I could imagine how it’d be. I haven’t the remotest idea of what it’s like, so I am afraid to make any suggestions.” But she did tell him that she imagined their apartment decorated with large orange and black fruits on the walls and bright yellow ceilings.
Her sister Rosalind sent her a program from the Follies in New York, telling Zelda that she looked enough like Marilyn Miller to be her twin. Zelda wrote Scott that it “upset me so I couldn’t do anything but act and dance for a day or two—” But, despite the glimmer of ambition, she saw her own limitations with a good deal of perception. “I hope I’ll never get ambitious enough to try anything. It’s so much nicer to be damned sure I could do it better than other people—and I might not could if I tried—that, of cource, would break my heart—”
Scott was not content to suppose that he could do anything better than the next man; he was out to prove that he was a writer of the first water. Stimulated by the sale of This Side of Paradise, he was working hard, old stories were refurbished and tightened, and he wove fresh material into fiction almost as soon as something happened to him. All of it began to sell. He had acquired an agent in New York, the young Harold Ober, who worked for the Reynolds Agency, and it was Ober who sold Scott’s story “Head and Shoulders” to the Saturday Evening Post for $400. The first sale to the Post was important to Scott, for he intended to make money, a lot of it, and he knew that the smaller magazines or the more literary ones, like The Smart Set, to which he had sold a few stories, couldn’t be expected to pay as the Post would.
Each time a story was taken he wired Zelda of his success and he drank to celebrate it; he even acquired his own bootlegger, which was a bit of a novelty in those early days of Prohibition. Four pages of Zelda’s scrapbook are filled with these wires, which with very few exceptions coupled an assurance to her of his love with the latest news of his literary sales, “THE SATURDAY EVENING POST HAS JUST TAKEN TWO MORE STORIES PERIOD ALL MY LOVE.” “I HAVE SOLD THE MOVIE RIGHTS OF HEAD AND SHOULDERS TO THE METRO COMPANY FOR TWENTY FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS I LOVE YOU DEAREST GIRL.” At this point in their lives Zelda was already committed to him and these wires were sent more for Scott’s satisfaction than hers. Perhaps he realized that Montgomery acquaintances were saying that of course it was nice that Scott was a writer and had sold things to the Saturday Evening Post, but it wasn’t really a position. By January, 1920, a combination of the emotional strain he put himself through in order to write and the drinking had worn him out, and he decided to go to New Orleans to rest and to search for new story material. He would also be only a few hours from Zelda. In his Ledger he wrote that by the 10th of January he had made $ 1,700.
Although Zelda told Scott that it would break her heart to try to do something and find out that she could not, and that faced with that choice she would rather not try, she was nevertheless aware that Scott had drawn on some of her own writing in This Side of Paradise, and half seriously, she suggested maybe she would try to write, too. In a letter to Scott she revealed something of her own ambivalence about the effort involved, and something of her idea of herself:
Yesterday I almost wrote a book or story, I hadn’t decided which, but after two pages on my heroine I discovered that I hadn’t even started her, and, since I couldn’t just write forever about a charmingly impossible creature, I began to despair. “Vamping Romeo” was the name, and I guess a man would have had to appear somewhere before the end. But there wasn’t any plot, so I thought I’d ask you how to decide what they’re going to do. Mamma answered my S.O.S. with one of O. Henry’s, verbatum, which I discarded because he never created people—just things to happen to the same old kind of folks and unexpected ends, and I like stories with all the ladies like Constance Talmadge and the men just sorter strong, silent characters or college boys—… And so you see, Scott, I’ll never be able to do anything because I’m much too lazy to care whether it’s done or not— And I don’t want to be famous and feted—all I want is to be very young always and very irresponsible and to feel that my life is my own—to live and be happy and die in my own way to please myself—
She also added a remarkably sensible reply to Scott’s anxiety about the lost intensity of their love. She said he was trying too hard to convince himself that they were like old people who had lost their most precious possession. “We really haven’t found it yet— And only weaklings… who lack courage and the power to feel they’re right when the whole world says they’re wrong, ever lose—” If Scott was worried about losing the fire and sweetness of desire, Zelda was not. “That first abandon couldn’t last, but the things that went to make it are tremendously alive,” and she asked him not to mourn for a memory when they had each other.
Scott made two trips to Montgomery during January, and after one of them he sent Zelda a lavish platinum-and-diamond wristwatch. He bought it with the $2,500 from the sale of “Head and Shoulders” to the movies. Zelda, who adored any gift but especially one which was like none anyone else in Montgomery possessed, was delighted with it. She said, “I’ve turned it over four hundred times to see ‘from Scott to Zelda,’ “which was inscribed on its back.
Mamma came in with the package, and I thought maybe it might interest her to know, so she sat on the edge of the bed while I told her we were going to marry each other pretty soon. She wants me to come to New York, because she says you’d like to do it in St. Patrick’s. Now that she knows, everything seems mighty definite and nice, and I’m not a bit scared or shaky— What I dreaded most was telling her— Somehow I just didn’t think I could— Both of us are very splashy, vivid pictures, those kind with the details left out, but I know our colors will blend, and I think we’ll look very well hanging beside each other in the gallery of life.
She added in brackets that this was “not just another one of my ‘subterranean river’ thoughts.” She even loved him enough, she reported, to read a novel by Frank Norris, McTeague, which Scott had recommended very highly to her.
It certainly makes a miserable start—… All authors who want to make things true to life make them smell bad—like McTeague’s room— and that’s my most sensitive sense. I do hope you’ll never be a realist— one of those kind that thinks being ugly is being forceful—
When my wedding’s going to be, write to me again—and if you’d rather have me come up there I will— I told Mamma I might just come and surprise you, but she said you mightn’t like to be surprised about “your own wedding”— I rather think it’s MY wedding—
During Scott’s trips up from New Orleans they resumed their affair. In February Scott left New Orleans for New York to await the publication of his novel.
On the 26th of February, while staying at Cottage Club in Princeton, he wrote a friend of his who knew only that Scott and Zelda’s engagement had been broken the previous June. This friend had recently written Scott to tell him that he had been right in breaking off the relationship. The timing of the letter was, of course, awkward. Scott replied that candor compelled him to admit that it was Zelda and not he who had broken their earlier engagement. He said that he realized his friends were unanimous in advising him against marriage to Zelda and that he was used to it.
No personality as strong as Zelda’s could go without getting criticism …. I’ve always known that, any girl who gets stewed in public, who frankly enjoys and tells shocking stories, who smokes constantly and makes the remark that she has “kissed thousands of men and intends to kiss thousands more,” cannot be considered beyond reproach even if above it.… I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity and her flaming self respect and its these things I’d believe in even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn’t all that she should be.… I love her and that’s the beginning and end of everything. You’re still a catholic but Zelda’s the only God I have left now.
He then wired Zelda, who had sent him a photograph of herself: “THE PICTURE IS LOVELY AND SO ARE YOU DARLING.”
Lawton Campbell, a tall, blond, and rather elegant young gentleman from Montgomery, who had gone to Princeton with Scott, ran into him in New York while lunching at the Yale Club, where the Princeton Club had temporary quarters that March. As Campbell started up the stairs to the second floor Scott was coming down, beaming.
He had in his hand a color-illustrated jacket cover of a book. On seeing me, with almost childish glee and radiating good news he said, “Look what I have here!”
He showed me the cover. I read “This Side of Paradise. F. Scott Fitzgerald. Charles Scribner and Sons.”…
“It’s all about Princeton,” Scott said in that breathless way he spoke when he was excited. “You’ll probably recognize some of your friends. You might even recognize something of yourself.”
Then he added, “It’ll be out before the end of the month.”
Zelda flashed across my mind. I told him I had seen her when I was in Montgomery and had put in a good word for him. He thanked me and then looked at the jacket-cover. He knitted his brow a minute as if to indicate that the months of hard labor on the book would be rewarded in more ways than one. He smiled and said:
“I phoned her long distance last night. She’s still on the fence and I may have to go to Montgomery to get her but I believe this will do the trick.”
By March, of course, the trick had already been turned, but perhaps Scott was no longer taking anything for granted. At this point the only thing Scott and Zelda were on the fence about was the exact date of their marriage.
The Sayres announced Zelda’s engagement on March 20, and Scott sent her a corsage of orchids, her first. Scott had moved to his club in Princeton to await Zelda’s arrival and while there went to the prom and completed work on a story called “May Day.” Zelda wrote Scott one last letter before she came to him for good.
Darling Heart, our fairy tale is almost ended, and we’re going to marry and live happily ever afterward just like the princess in her tower who worried you so much—and made me so very cross by her constant recurrence— I’m sorry for all the times I’ve been mean and hateful—for all the miserable minutes I’ve caused you when we could have been so happy. You deserve so much—so very much—
I think our life together will be like these last four days—and I do want to marry you—even if you do think I “dread” it— I wish you hadn’t said that— I’m not afraid of anything. To be afraid a person has either to be a coward or very great and big. I am neither. Besides, I know you can take much better care of me than I can, and I’ll always be very, very happy with you—except sometimes when we engage in our weekly debates—and even then I rather enjoy myself. I like being very calm and masterful, while you become emotional and sulky …. I’m absolutely nothing without you— Just the doll that I should have been born— You’re a necessity and a luxury and a darling, precious lover—and you’re going to be a husband to your wife—
This Side of Paradise was published on March 26. Scott took rooms at the Biltmore Hotel and waited for Zelda to arrive from Montgomery with her sister Marjorie; he was still not certain of the exact date of her arrival. At last they decided to marry on Saturday, April 3, and Scott wired her on March 30: “… WE WILL BE AWFULLY NERVOUS UNTIL IT IS OVER AND WOULD GET NO REST BY WAITING UNTIL MONDAY FIRST EDITION OF THE BOOK IS SOLD OUT.”
Zelda was giddy with excitement the night before she left Montgomery and stayed up until morning laughing and devising fantastic schemes with Eleanor Browder about what she would do as the wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald in Manhattan. Her plots ran to turning cartwheels in hotel lobbies and sliding down the banisters of the great hotels. Right up to the last moment one of her beaus thought she might reconsider his proposal and not marry Scott. When friends of her mother’s saw her shopping for her trousseau and asked her if the lucky young man was indeed Scott Fitzgerald as they had heard, she winked at one of them and said, “It might be and it might be Red Ruth.”
Her friends thought she had made a brilliant match, but her family was still anxious about her marriage. Neither the Judge nor Mrs. Sayre went with Zelda to New York. Other members of the family thought that her parents would not have been happy about the prospect of a Catholic marriage in Montgomery.
The day before Easter Sunday, April 3, 1920, Scott and Zelda met in the rectory of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The entire wedding party was to consist of eight people—Marjorie, Clothilde and John Palmer, Rosalind and Newman Smith, and Scott’s best man, Ludlow Fowler. They were to be married at noon, but Scott grew fidgety before the appointed time and insisted that the ceremony begin immediately, before the Palmers had arrived. Zelda wore a suit of midnight blue with a matching hat trimmed with leather ribbons and buckles; she carried a bouquet of orchids and small white flowers. It was a brilliantly sunny day and when they stepped outside the cathedral Zelda looked for all the world like a young goddess of spring, with Scott at her side as consort.
TWO
The Twenties
So you see that old libel that we were cynics
and skeptics was nonsense from the
beginning. On the contrary we were the
great believers.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, “My Generation”
6
ZELDA AND SCOTT PUT THEIR FIRST wedding present, a Tiffany chocolate set, on the dresser in their Biltmore suite 2109, and beside it a wilting Easter lily, which remained in place throughout their honeymoon. One of the first things that Zelda did as the wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald was to go shopping with a friend of Scott’s from St. Paul, Marie Hersey. Zelda’s trousseau had been put together in Montgomery with only the sketchiest notion of the fashionable requirements of cosmopolitan life. Somewhat painfully Scott saw Zelda for the first time against the background of the restrained chic of the East, and as he later wrote: “… no sooner does a man marry his reproachless ideal than he becomes intensely self-conscious about her.” Zelda had organdy dresses with great flounces and ruffles, and a glorious pair of velvet lounging pants, but very little that was appropriate for New York. Scott felt she needed the tactful guidance of Miss Hersey’s taste, and together they bought her a smart Patou suit. Zelda said it felt strange to be charging things to Scott.
Zelda seemed to be amenable to the shopping lesson, but her resentment was simply hidden. She wrote later: “It was the first garment bought after the marriage ceremony and again the moths have unsymmetrically eaten the nap off the seat of the skirt. This makes fifteen years it has been stored in trunks because of our principle of not throwing away things that have never been used. We are glad—oh, so relieved, to find it devastated at last.”
But in the spring of 1920 the Fitzgeralds were just beginning; they were young and hap
py, This Side of Paradise was becoming a brilliant success, and for the moment the angels were on their side. Zelda called Scott her “King of the Roses,” and themselves “The Goofos,” and ordered fresh spinach and champagne for midnight snacks at the Biltmore. Those days in New York were gaudy ones, and Zelda caught the spirit of the city when she wrote about it later,
Vincent Youmans wrote the music for those twilights just after the war. They were wonderful. They hung above the city like an indigo wash…. Through the gloom, the whole world went to tea. Girls in short amorphous capes and long flowing skirts and hats like straw bathtubs waited for taxis in front of the Plaza Grill; girls in long satin coats and colored shoes and hats like straw manhole covers tapped the tune of a cataract on the dance floors of the Lorraine and the St. Regis. Under the sombre ironic parrots of the Biltmore a halo of golden bobs disintegrated into black lace and shoulder bouquets.… It was just a lot of youngness: Lillian Lorraine would be drunk as the cosmos on top of the New Amsterdam by midnight, and football teams breaking training would scare the waiters with drunkenness in the fall. The world was full of parents taking care of people.
But there were no overseeing parents in Scott and Zelda’s world to protect them, and in 1920 they would have scoffed at the idea of needing any, for no young couple rode the crest of good fortune with more flair than they. Scott undressed at the Scandals, Zelda, completely sober, dived into the fountain at Union Square, and when they moved from the Biltmore to the Commodore they celebrated by spinning around in the revolving doors for half an hour. As she wrote in Save Me the Waltz, “No power on earth could make her do anything, she thought frightened, any more, except herself.”
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