Zelda

by Nancy Milford

  One can imagine the Judge’s glacial attitude toward the life Scott and Zelda were leading. The Sayres’ visit was not a success and they left a full week earlier than they had anticipated.

  At the end of August Zelda and Scott reappear prominently in McKaig’s diary:

  MIDNIGHT. Fitz & Zelda blew in noisily and offensively drunk as usual. Fitz advised me to stick to advertising business plus literature. Said I ought to make half a million a year. Said that everybody was now laughing at me and booing me since I had begun to sell stuff just as they did at him. Practically every one of us did boo him but I never did…. Fitz again told me I would never be able to do anything worth while in literature.

  AUGUST 31: Discussing with John [Bishop] the fact that of entire group of 8 or 10 only one man believes in another—Wilson in him. Springs from the fact they were friends in college, not because of similarity in literary tastes, ideals, beliefs.

  SEPTEMBER 4: Fitzgeralds came in, drunk. Scott says John Biggs sent him first four chapters of his novel and they are great…. Fitz having declared John Biggs has done something wonderful John Bishop declares he knew it all along (he never said a word about it). We discussed what a boon for Princeton it would be if we all came through. In regard to passion and wisdom in American literature he said Amy Lowell was interested only in light and color and play of words; Frost had only weather wisdom of New England farmer; Masters a little superficial irony about the overtones of life but not nearly as much [in] his whole books as Masefield in one poem. Louis Untermeyer devoted part strength to jewelry and part to poetry so that both suffered—etc. Declared passion in literature impossible in America with its passion for business minutiae. I said it was impossible with England in its passion for conventions.

  SEPTEMBER 11: Dinner with Bunny Wilson. Read his “Death of the Welfare Expert” for “Undertakers Garland.” Great stuff…. Then he read me the intro.—which I don’t believe in at all. Says modern American civilization is death. I certainly will be glad when this book is finished. I’m sick of having unfinished portions read to me…. Fitz second book out “Flappers and Philo”… Bunny W and I at” dinner bewailed the misconception of his character (the omission of his Byronic trait which he claims but no one else sees except Edna Millet)

  Met Edna Milley for a minute at Bunny Wilson’s, light dim. She seemed pleasant and better looking than I had been led to believe. Bunny evidently much in love with her. Not much chance to get impression from her myself though I think from her verse she must be a genius. Modern Sappho. 18 love affairs and now Bunny is thinking of marrying her.

  SEPTEMBER 15: In the evening Zelda—drunk—having decided to leave Fitz & having nearly been killed walking down RR track, blew in. Fitz came shortly after. He had caught same train with no money or ticket. They threatened to put him off but finally let him stay on—Zelda refusing to give him any money. They continued their fight while here…. Fitz should let Zelda go & not run after her. Like all husbands he is afraid of what she may do in a moment of caprice. None of the men, however, she knows would take her for a mistress. Trouble is—Fitz absorbed in Zelda’s personality—she is the stronger of the two. She has supplied him with all his copy for women. —Fitz argued about various things. Mind absolutely undisciplined but guesses right,—intuition marvelous. Knows me better than any of the rest. Senses the exact mood & drift of a situation so surely & quickly—much better at this than any of rest of us.

  What Scott’s friends did not see in Zelda was that part of her where she was not the stronger of the two. Shortly after the incident McKaig refers to, Zelda wrote Scott a letter, a fragment of which exists, in which she tried to express her dependence on him. (Scott was to work portions of her letter as well as the episode itself into The Beautiful and Damned.)

  I look down the tracks and see you coming—and out of every haze & mist your darling rumpled trousers are hurrying to me— Without you, dearest dearest I couldn’t see or hear or feel or think—or live— I love you so and I’m never in all our lives going to let us be apart another night. It’s like begging for mercy of a storm or killing Beauty or growing old, without you. I want to kiss you so—and in the back where your dear hair starts and your chest— I love you—and I cant tell you how much— To think that I’ll die without your knowing—Goofo, you’ve got to try [to] feel how much I do—how inanimate I am when you’re gone— I can’t even hate these damnable people— Nobodys got any right to live but us—and they’re dirtying up our world and I can’t hate them because I want you so— Come Quick— Come Quick to me— I could never do without you if you hated me and were covered with sores like a leper—if you ran away with another woman and starved me and beat me— I still would want you / know—

  Lover, Lover, Darling—

  Your Wife

  Increasingly, their friends were Scott’s friends, the pace of their life was being set by the demands of Scott’s work and his success, and Zelda, who had established the tone of their courtship, must have felt their marriage slipping precariously into unknown regions in which she might become lost. The passion of her letter, the wild and intense description of her love for Scott, was an indication not only of her need for him but also of her uncertainty about herself within the life they were leading. The woman who realized that she wanted to be two simple people at once was finding the “one who wants a law to itself” in ascendance in her marriage. Zelda was becoming entangled in the crosscurrents of a complex of opposing roles, making an effort to be both daring and loving, to not give a damn and to care deeply, to be proud of Scott’s drawing on her for his fiction while resenting it.

  In January, 1921, when Scott was interviewed for a slick magazine called Shadowland, he drew a direct contrast between “the sexless animals writers have been giving us,” and his own wife. “Girls, for instance, have found the accent shifted from chemical purity to breadth of viewpoint, intellectual charm and piquant cleverness… we find the young woman of 1920 flirting, kissing, viewing life lightly, saying damn without a blush, playing along the danger line in an immature way—a sort of mental baby vamp…. Personally, I prefer this sort of girl. Indeed, I married the heroine of my stories. I would not be interested in any other sort of woman.” That Zelda might find it a strain to be always this startling creature of Scott’s fiction, much as she also relished the attention it brought her, or that it placed her under a burden of performance, did not seem seriously to trouble either of the Fitzgeralds.

  The day after McKaig’s entry about their quarrel and trip to New York he saw them again.

  SEPTEMBER 16: Zelda came in & woke me sleeping on couch at 7:15 for no reason. She has no sense of decencies of living…. Fitz picture and an article to go in Vanity Fair. Autobiographical note about him in Metropolitan this month—got $900 for it and had unhappy ending! His vogue is tremendous.

  SEPTEMBER 17: Bunny Wilson and Edna Millet in intolerable situation. He wants her to marry him. She tempted because of her great poverty and the financial security he offers (he has private income). However, in addition to curse of Apollo she has curse of Venus. While her heart is still in the grave of one love affair she is making eyes at another man. It nearly kills her but she can’t help it.

  SEPTEMBER 20: Bunnie has repeated to Edna… things John [Bishop] said about her…. John is very distressed. I’ve come to think he’s damn stupid—interested only in himself, poetry, & women, and loves most the sound of his own voice, & liquor, & adulation (when he can get it).

  SEPTEMBER 27: John spent weekend at Fitz—new novel sounds awful—no seriousness of approach. Zelda interrupts him all the time—diverts in both senses. Discussed his success complex—artists desire for flattery & influence—member of financially decadent family (“Four Fists”). John says my success complex more healthy—striving—test of powers (that’s wrong). Fitz bemoaning fact can never make more than hundred thousand a year—to do that have to become a Tarkington.

  SEPTEMBER 28: One of younger Millay girls told this anecdote of h
is [Wilson’s] visit to them last summer— Offered coffee, Bunny declared he never drank coffee, a cigarette, Bunny said he never smoked—offered a drink, Bunny said he never drank. Other guest at dinner—a stranger— turned and said—“Ah—he must write the minor poetry.” (Bunny has never told this anecdote about himself.)

  OCTOBER 7: Bunny came for evening—we discussed John’s lack of ideas & borrowing them. Bunny, being under stress & strain, did parlor magic tricks. Says he does them for hours in front of glass to quiet his nerves, instead of smoking. We discussed unreality of college—reality of army & navy life. Bunny said he did not think himself badly off having to work at Vanity Fair. Regrets lack of will power lately to work nights—since meeting Edna. She certainly has played hell with him.

  In the late fall the Fitzgeralds moved back into New York and took a tiny apartment on West Fifty-ninth Street, which was conveniently close to the Plaza Hotel. Scott summarized his impression of the year’s progress in his Ledger: “Work at the beginning but dangerous at the end. A slow year, dominated by Zelda & on the whole happy.” There were first nights at the theater with Nathan (who had been forgiven), and they continued to see Alec McKaig. One evening Zelda and McKaig dropped in at Lawton Campbell’s apartment: she had come, she told Campbell, so that “Scott could write.”

  “She would stretch out on the long sofa in my living room with her eyes to the ceiling and recount some fabulous experience of the night before or dream up some strange exploit that she thought would be a ‘cute idea.’ One day she came in with the queerest looking hat. My mother asked her where she had found it. Zelda replied quite casually, ‘Oh, I made it myself… out of blotting paper.’” No one knew whether she actually had or whether she was pulling their legs. Campbell says, “If her remarks were occasionally non sequitur one didn’t notice it at the time. She passed very quickly from one topic to another and you didn’t question her. It wouldn’t occur to you to stop her and ask what she meant.”

  McKaig continued to record the undercurrents of discontent he noticed between Scott and Zelda.

  OCTOBER 12: Went to Fitzgeralds. Usual problem there. What shall Zelda do? I think she might do a little housework—apartment looks like a pig sty. If she’s there Fitz can’t work—she bothers him—if she’s not there he can’t work—worried what she might do. Discussed her relations with other men. I told her she would have to make up her mind whether she wanted to go in movies or get in with young married set. To do that would require a little effort & Zelda will never make an effort. Moreover, she and Fitz like only aristocrats who don’t give a damn what the world thinks or clever bohemians who don’t give a damn what the world thinks. That narrows the field. Nathan came and then Ludlow. Nathan left. Lud and Zelda went to a delicatessen store & got a good cold dinner—ate it in apartment. Fitz read me his bookshop story. Damn good. And part of his novel—fair…. Walked home with Ludlow afterwards— great gross wonderfully human and sympathetic Ludlow. Fitzg makes a good criticism of himself—does not see more than lots of other people but is able to put down more of what he sees.

  OCTOBER 13: Fitz made another true remark about himself… cannot depict how any one thinks except himself & possibly Zelda. Find that after he has written about a character a while it becomes just himself again.

  OCTOBER 17: Fitz has been on wagon 8 days, talks as if it were a century. Zelda increasingly restless—says frankly she simply wants to be amused and is only good for useless, pleasure-giving pursuits; great problem—what is she to do? Fitz has his writing of course—God knows where the two of them are going to end up.

  OCTOBER 18: Millay’s response to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s saying he wrote “The Camels Back” between 8 P.M. and 2 A.M. “Fitz affects all the attributes he believes a genius should have.”

  OCTOBER 20: Fitz is hard up now but Zelda is nagging him for a $750 fur coat & she can nag. Poor devil.

  OCTOBER 21: Went up to Fitzgeralds to spend evening. They just recovering from an awful party. Much taken with idea of having a baby. Have just planned a good baby and a bad baby—former has Scott’s eyes, Zelda’s nose, Scott’s legs, Zelda’s mouth etc. Latter has Zelda’s legs, Scott’s hair, etc. Scott hard up for money in spite of fact he has made $20,000 in past 12 months.

  OCTOBER 25: Follies with Scott & Zelda. Fitzg very cuckoo. Lost purse with $50.00 & then after every one in place hunted for it, found it. He did not have enough money to pay check of course. Home 3 A.M.

  NOVEMBER 7: Evening at Fitzgeralds. Tremendous argument—men of thought v. men of action. To decide, took characteristics of good minds—memory, attention, clarity (intelligence), imagination, curiousity and influence. Then selected 6 men of action and 6 men of thought and graded them. Results 26 to 27 favor men of thought…. A very interesting talk. We both bawled out Bishop for his unassimilated literary patter. Damned interesting. Fitz admitted he had no “attention.”

  NOVEMBER 13: Spent evening at Fitzgeralds. Scott told me how he had cried over two of his stories.

  NOVEMBER 27: Fitz making… speeches before select audiences. I spent evening shaving Zelda’s neck to make her bobbed hair look better. She is lovely—wonderful hair—eyes and mouth.

  NOVEMBER 28: Suggested to Scott and Zelda they save—they laughed at me. Scott said—to go through the terrible toil of writing man must have belief his writings will be eagerly bought forever. Terrific party with two Fitz….

  DECEMBER 4: Lunch at Gotham. T. [Townsend Martin?] Zelda, Scott & I. Then took Zelda to cocktail party at John Coles and then tea in Biltmore. In taxi Zelda asked me to kiss her but I couldnt. I couldnt forget Scott—he’s so damn pitiful. Went to see “Enter Madame.” Zelda fell off seat—actors complained of our behaviour. Zelda got mad and left followed by Scott. I stayed. When I got home found telephone message from Scott to call him up. I did so. He said most awful thing had happened, just come up immediately—it would be a test of friendship. I rushed up expecting to find a death or serious accident. When I got there he was talking to Bernard. He said hello casually & went on talking. I asked him in Christs name what the matter was—it seemed they had a quarrel. Zelda went into the bathroom, turned on the water to hide noise of footsteps 8c walked out the door. Instead of trying to find her himself he sat in the middle of floor & telephoned all his friends. Finally Zelda called up & I went for her—she having had many adventures.

  DECEMBER 11: Evening at Fitz. Fitz and I argued with Zelda about notoriety they are getting through being so publicly and spectacularly drunk. Zelda wants to live life of an “extravagant.” No thought of what world will think or of future. I told them they were headed for catastrophe if they kept up at present rate.

  DECEMBER 18: John read me “Death of God.” Great stuff. Stupendous. Best thing he’s done…. We discussed glamor of Fitz phrases. I mentioned his intuition. Also his dissipation all aimed to hand down Fitzgerald legend. His claiming now to be great grandson of Frances Scott Key is part of it. Never claimed that till recently—now it is being press-agented. I think he is really a grand nephew.

  JANUARY 17 [1921]: Saw Fitz. He is drunk every night, but mentally is expanding and maturing rapidly.

  FEBRUARY 6: Zelda, Fitz 8c 1 out for dinner. Very heated discussion about reality: if a girl has a crooked nose but sufficient charm to give her face an appearance of beauty, which is truthful, a photograph showing the girl ugly with her crooked nose or a painting showing her beautiful because of her charm. Fitz & I said painting—Zelda said photo.

  APRIL 17: Fitz confessed this evening at dinner that Zelda’s ideas entirely responsible for “Jelly Bean” & “Ice Palace.” Her ideas largely in this new novel. Had a long talk with her this evening about way fool women can rout intelligent women with men. She is without doubt the most brilliant & most beautiful young woman I’ve ever known.

  Zelda and Scott had spent a lonely Christmas together in New York and as Scott later wrote, “Finding no nucleus to which we could cling, we became a small nucleus ourselves and gradually fitted our disr
uptive personalities into the contemporary scene of New York.” On Valentine’s Day Zelda discovered she was pregnant and took a trip to Montgomery to visit her parents. While she was in Montgomery she was asked to take part in the annual Les Mysterieuses ball, which she did. This time a Hawaiian pageant was put on with the stage banked in palms and tropical plants. As it happened Lawton Campbell, who was also in Montgomery visiting his relatives, had been invited to attend the ball. He remembers Zelda’s part in it:

  During this number, the audience began to notice that one masker was doing her dance more daring than the others. All eyes were concentrated on her. Finally the dancer in question turned her back to the audience, lifted her grass skirt over her head for a quick view of her pantied posterior and gave it an extra wiggle for good measure. A murmur went over the auditorium in a wave of excitement and everybody was whispering “That’s Zelda!” It was Zelda and no mistake! She wanted it known beyond a doubt and she was happy with the recognition.

  By the end of April Scott had nearly completed The Beautiful and Damned. It was the story of a ruined marriage, and it was not, Scott insisted, autobiographical. Serial rights were bought by the Metropolitan Magazine. With Zelda only two months pregnant, they decided to take a trip to Europe before the baby was born. During their courtship Zelda had wanted to go to Italy with Scott; now they would visit England and France as well, and stay perhaps until early fall.

  Before their departure they accidentally ran into Lawton Campbell at the Jungle Club, a fashionable speakeasy with an elegant bar, dancing floor, and head waiters in white tie and tails. It also had a formidable bouncer. Campbell remembers: