Zelda

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Zelda Page 53

by Nancy Milford


  342 “I wish you read books…”: Letters, p. 115.

  342 “I should have said in my letter…”: Ibid., p. 117.

  343 “I don’t write; and I don’t paint…”: ZSF to FSF, n.d.

  343 He wrote Zelda: “You remember your old idea…”: Ibid., pp. 118–119.

  343 Later on the same day, June 7, Scott wrote Scottie…: Ibid., p. 77.

  344 For it seemed to him that she was at last proving…: Ibid., p. 78.

  344 “Your mother’s utterly endless mulling…”: Ibid., pp. 78–79.

  344 “Twenty years ago This Side of Paradise…”: Ibid., p. 119.

  344 “I WON’T BE ABLE TO STICK THIS…”: ZSF to FSF, June 18, 1940 (11:50 A.M.).

  344 “DISREGARD TELEGRAM AM FINE…” ZSF to FSF, June 18, 1940 (2:46 P.M.).

  344 “There’s a point beyond which families…”: FSF to Scottie, June 19, 1940.

  345 Relieved, Fitzgerald wrote them … : Letters, p. 83.

  345 When Scottie left for Cambridge Zelda felt…: ZSF to FSF, n.d. (ca. end of June 1940).

  345 “I do wish you were sketching…”: Letters, p. 121.

  346 “I know it will be dull going…”: Ibid, p. 89.

  346 “Things are so different than when I was young…”: ZSF to FSF, n.d. (ca. summer 1940).

  346 “I have been as an Angel with Halo…”: Scottie to FSF, n.d. (ca. summer 1940).

  346 “What proms and games?…”: Letters, p. 62.

  347 He asked her to question herself…: Ibid., p. 91.

  347 All he really cared about…: Ibid., p. 98.

  347 “It was partly that times changed…”: Letters, p. 128.

  346 On September 28, 1940, Scott wrote…: Ibid., p. 125.

  346 Zelda had forgotten his birthday…: ZSF to FSF, n.d. (ca. end September 1940).

  347 In his next weekly letter Scott…: Letters, p. 126.

  347 He still complained of a fever…: Ibid.

  348 “I am deep in the novel, living in it…”: Letters, p. 128.

  348 In the nostalgic mood which now often imbued…: ZSF to FSF, n.d.

  348 Scott’s life with Sheilah Graham was a quiet one…: Sheilah Graham to NM, interview, September 13, 1968.

  348 Sometimes they talked about Zelda…: Ibid.

  349 “Everything is my novel now…”: Letters, p. 131.

  349 “It is odd that the heart is…”: Ibid., p. 132.

  349 In order to avoid the strain of climbing…: The description of Scott’s death is based on Beloved Infidel, pp. 322–330.

  350 Harold Ober called Zelda…: Mrs. Ober to NM, interview, March 3, 1964.

  350 “In retrospect it seems as if he…”: ZSF to Harold Ober, December 24, 1940.

  350 “I have been so terribly shocked by Scott’s death…”: Edmund Wilson to ZSF, December 27, 1940.

  351 Never again “with his pockets full of promise…”: ZSF to Edmund Wilson, January 1. 1941.

  351 She said Scott would be remembered…: ZSF to Rosalind Smith, n.d.

  352 Maxwell Perkins showed Edmund Wilson the manuscript of The Last Tycoon…: Edmund Wilson to NM, January 19, 1968.

  352 When he was finished he placed Fitzgerald…: See Mr. Wilson’s Foreword to The Last Tycoon, p. xi.

  352 In the review he struck a note that has reverberated…: Stephen Vincent Benét, “The Last Tycoon” (The Saturday Review, 1941) in F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Man and His Work, edited by Alfred Kazin, pp. 131–132.

  352 He would have agreed completely with a note Scott…: General notes for The Last Tycoon.

  352 After Zelda read the novel she wrote Wilson…: ZSF to Edmund Wilson, November 5, 1941.

  353 “I confess I don’t like the heroine…”: ZSF to Mrs. Bayard Turnbull, November 13, 1941.

  Chapter 20

  354 “Although you may not like it…”: ZSF to FSF, n.d.

  354 By the summer of 1942 she was writing Mrs. Turnbull…: ZSF to Mrs. Bayard Turnbull, n.d.

  355 Later in the manuscript the Judge says a new wing…: CT, Chapter I, p. 18. The pagination of Caesar’s Things is not at all orderly. For example, the title page of the manuscript is preceded by a torn page of typescript. The title page reads (and this is handwritten in pencil):

  Caesar’s Things —

  Chapter I

  by

  Zelda Fitzgerald

  child —

  clarify the Epic

  There are then five handwritten pages, a quarter-page of typescript followed by twenty-one pages of typescript of varying size. There are three page ones. Chapter IV begins on page 18. Rather than this stew of pages, I will give chapter and pagination as Zelda has it.

  356 “The child was dead from strain and effort…”: CT, Chapter I, p. 20.

  356 “What right have you to stop me?…”; Ibid.

  356 “Before she could say anything…”: Ibid., p. 21.

  356 “That God would let this happen…”: Ibid.

  357 “Janno was dead, and dying…”: CT, Chapter I. There is no page number given to this brief slip of typescript. It falls between pp. 22 and 23.

  357 The Judge is saying, “You’ve ruined her…”: Ibid., p. 22.

  357 “A successful life is able to summon…”: Ibid., p. 23.

  358 A voice speaks to her from the well…: CT, Chapter III, p. 7.

  358 Then there are more voices and they turn grim…: Ibid., p. 8.

  358 …to a “golden kingdom asleep…”: Ibid.

  358 It becomes a theatre curtain, the curtain “melts…”: Ibid., p. 9.

  358 “Seduction, theft, kid-napping…”: Ibid., p. 10.

  358 One of the men is in uniform…: Ibid.

  358 The men accuse her of looking “dissolute…”: Ibid., p. 11.

  359 The scene is summarized: “The weak dark men…”: Ibid.

  359 At one point Janno is sitting on a throne…: Ibid., p. 12. It is entirely possible, I believe, to read a good deal of this novel as a fantasized memoir, a sort of parable about madness itself. In order to read it at all you have to float—I can think of no other way to express it—on the surfaces of Zelda’s prose.

  360 “Janno…wished that her mother had told her…”: CT, Chapter IV, p. 22.

  360 “Then something happened…”: Ibid.

  360 Later in the manuscript Zelda writes that what happened to Janno…: Ibid., p. 23.

  360 “In some of the dreams he lived in a dark…”: Ibid., p. 29.

  360 She has been equivocal about marrying…Ibid., p. 32.

  361 “So they were desperately in love…”: CT, Chapter V, p. 44.

  361 Zelda calls this phase of Janno’s life…: Ibid., p. 32.

  361 And Janno, who is not content to become Jacob’s “evocateur…”: Ibid., p. 33.

  361 “He hated his sister…largely because…”: Ibid.

  361 “Jacob went on doing whatever it was…”: Ibid., first page is not numbered.

  361 She envies New York, where they are living…: Ibid., p. 37.

  361 Suddenly Jacob decides to go to Europe…: Ibid., p. 45.

  362 “She was grateful and devoted…”: Ibid., p. 47.

  362 Janno is busy “re-decorating…”: CT, Chapter VI, p. 46.

  362 “Everybody liked them as standard millionaires…”: Ibid., p. 48.

  362 At the parties among the rich…: Ibid., p. 49.

  362 “Janno had always been jealous…”: Ibid., p, 50.

  363 “During the first shock of infidelities…”: Ibid., p. 51.

  363 Janno calls it “a gala emblem…”: Ibid., no page number given.

  363 “He and Charity put much effort into human…”: Ibid., p. 53.

  363 The Comings give wonderful dinners…: Ibid.

  363 He perfects “his garden, his gadgets…”: Ibid., p. 58.

  363 “Corning said, ‘I want all these people to love…””: Ibid., no page number given. It falls between pp. 58 and 55.

  364 “Now this was paradise…”: CT., Chapter VII, p. 1.

 
364 Janno and Jacob have met the son of an advocate…: Ibid.

  364 “Janno was vaguely baffled…”: Ibid., p. 2.

  364 Jacob is rather bored; he “didn’t really like sitting…”: Ibid.

  364 The villa on the Mediterranean becomes…: Ibid., p. 3.

  364 “She said she would; she was horrified…”: Ibid., p. 4.

  365 “She could not bring herself to deny…”: Ibid.

  365 “Jacob littered his fireplace…”: Ibid., p. 5.

  366 “How was she going to live…”: Ibid.

  366 Then suddenly Jacob acts: “‘I’ll get out of here…’” Ibid.

  367 “He was gone…they had been much in love…”: “The Big Top,” consists of 7 typewritten pages, but the pagination begins at page 10. This quotation is from pp. 13–14.

  367 “Nobody has ever measured, even the poets…”; Ibid., p. 15.

  Chapter 21

  368 The inside of the cottage was simply furnished…; I am grateful to Dan Piper, Paul McLendon and Sayre Noble Godwin for their impressions of the inside of the house on Sayre Street.

  369 In May and again in December of 1942…; Newspaper clippings as well as a typed program for both shows are in ZSF’s clipping album.

  369 She glares full face out of the painting…: See second section of illustrations The painting is watercolor over a pencil sketch.

  370 “I trust that life will use you far less…”; ZSF to Scottie, n.d.

  370 In February, 1943, Scottie married…: Mrs. Harold Ober to NM, interview, March 3, 1964.

  370 “Giving Scottie away must have brought…”: ZSF to Harold Ober, February 22. 1943.

  370 To Anne Ober, who made all of the wedding…: ZSF to Mrs. Harold Ober, postmarked February 22. 1943.

  370 “Do not consider these mine; your life…”: ZSF to Scottie, n.d. (ca. spring 1943).

  371 Andrew Turnbull, who had just become…: Andrew Turnbull to NM, interview, August 6, 1964.

  371 She wrote Anne Ober…: ZSF to Mrs. Harold Ober, August II, 1943.

  371 Lucy Goldthwaite remembers seeing Zelda at a garden…: Miss Lucy Goldthwaite to NM, interview, May 20, 1965.

  372 In February she wrote Wilson: “You should redeem…”: ZSF to Edmund Wilson, February 1, 1944.

  372 “You are much to be respected…”: ZSF to Edmund Wilson, March 6, 1944.

  372 Within a few months she was writing Scottie…: ZSF to Scottie, n.d.

  372 She told Scottie: “Scott would have been so pleased…”: ZSF to Scottie, n.d. (ca. spring 1944).

  373 Sometimes she got tired of making the best…: ZSF to Scottie, n.d.

  373 “I always feel that Daddy was the key-note…”: ZSF to Scottie, n.d.

  373 She wrote Mrs. Ober: “I used to feel desperately sad…”: ZSF to Mrs. Harold Ober. June 26, 1945.

  373 She told Scottie to avoid…: ZSF to Scottie, n.d. (ca. summer? 1945).

  374 At the beginning of 1946 she returned to Highland…: Landon Ray to NM, interview, July 25, 1963.

  374 Immediately after the birth of Timothy…: ZSF to Scottie, n.d. (ca. late April 1946).

  374 She felt dated; “it brought back our honey-moon…”: ZSF to Scottie, n.d. (ca. May 1, 1946).

  374 “It is completely incredible to me…”: ZSF to Ludlow Fowler, n.d.

  375 Mrs. Biggs recalls that she had picked some berries…: Mrs. Anna Biggs to NM, interview, June 9, 1963.

  375 Mrs. Biggs remembers: “John mentioned that it was time…”: Ibid.

  375 “She was a marvelous woman, big…”: Mrs. Harold Ober to NM, interview, March 3, 1964.

  375–6 She wrote Anne Ober that she would despair…: ZSF to Mrs. Harold Ober, October 29, 1946.

  376 It kept her from sleeping half the night…: ZSF to Mrs. Harold Ober, November 5, 1946.

  376 Paul McLendon met Zelda for the first time…: Paul McLendon to NM, November 6, 1965.

  376 “I am not au-courrant with the affairs &…”: ZSF to Paul McLendon, May 24, 1946.

  377 “…the world is fair game to the greedy…”: ZSF to Paul McLendon, October 16, 1946.

  377 Paul realized that Zelda enjoyed his company…: Paul McLendon to NM, November 6 and 27, 1965.

  377 Once after Paul had invited her for a day at Tuscaloosa…: ZSF to Paul McLendon, November 5, 1946.

  377 But one afternoon Mrs. Sayre told him Zelda couldn’t…: Paul McLendon to NM, November 27, 1965.

  378 “The time was early, early spring…”: Ibid.

  378 “He sends His angels to help…”: ZSF to Paul McLendon, March 10, 1947.

  378 Henry Dan Piper was discharged from the Army…: I am especially indebted to Mr. Piper for his generosity in allowing me to draw freely from his own interview with Zelda on March 13 and 14, 1947. I interviewed MR. Piper on November 17, 1965.

  381 When they were finished they returned to her little house…: It was at this point, Mr. Piper recalls, that Zelda told him about the companion portrait of Scott which she said Condé Nast had. Before giving him the self-portrait she had showed him a number of her paintings, then she said something to this effect: “Maybe you’d like something really big. Would you like a self-portrait?” Mr. Piper says that she then unrolled it. “I told her I thought it ought to be at Princeton, and she seemed quite flattered by my interest.”

  382 Mrs. Sayre, Marjorie. and Livye Hart…: Mrs. Harry Ridgeway to NM, interview, June 1, 1968.

  382 She wanted to get home, she said, to see “our lillies…”: ZSF to Mrs. A. D. Sayre, n.d. (ca. March 1948).

  382 Zelda told her she had gained twenty pounds…: ZSF to Scottie, n.d. (postmarked March 9, 1948).

  382 “Anyhow, today there is promise of spring…”: Ibid.

  383 Zelda died with them…: The nurse who first discovered the fire said in a newspaper report that “on the night of the fire she had personally given sedatives to…Mrs. F. Scott Fitzgerald.” The Asheville Times, March 27, 1948, p. 11.

  383 Her body was identified by a charred slipper…: It was further identified by recent dental work.

  383 It was St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 1948…: Mrs. Bayard Turnbull to NM, September 30, 1965.

  * Dates of sales are given in order to approximate when the stories were written.

  Index

  The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use the search feature of your e-book reader.

  Accel, 120

  Addison, Mrs. Everet (Eleanor Browder), 13, 22, 45, 47, 62

  Zelda, letter from, 140

  Allen, Kiki, 153, 218

  American Mercury, The, 138

  Anderson, Sherwood, 93

  Angoff, Charles, 138, 139

  Arlen, Michael, 121, 252

  The Green Hat, 121

  Bakst, Léon, 105

  Ballet Russe (Diaghilev Ballet), 105, 136–37, 140, 155, 157

  Baltimore Sun, 256

  Barrymore, John, 128

  Beautiful and Damned, The (F. Scott Fitzgerald; early title The Flight of the Rocket), 70, 81, 87, 88, 89–90, 94, 98, 102, 183, 234, 278

  Bishop, John Peale, on, 90–91

  Zelda as Gloria, 83, 88, 89, 90, 92, 238

  Zelda’s material used, 35, 76, 81, 89

  Zelda’s review, 89, 90, 91

  Bellando, 108

  Benchley, Robert, 182

  Benét, Stephen Vincent, The Last Tycoon reviewed by, 352

  Biggs, Judge John, Jr., 28, 75, 131, 143, 350, 375, 376

  as Scott’s literary executor, 368, 380

  on Zelda’s painting, 291

  Biggs, Mrs. John, Jr. (Anna), 136, 375, 376

  Bishop, John Peale, 28, 67, 80, 96, 157, 182

  on The Beautiful and Damned, 90–91,

  letters: Scott, 113, 115

  Zelda, 257–58

  McKaig, Alexander, on, 75, 77, 80

  on Scott, 90

  on Zelda, 47

  Bleuler, Dr. Paul Eugen, 179–80, 285

&nbs
p; Bookman, 88

  Braque, Georges, 105

  Brinson, Mrs. Marjorie (Marjorie Sayre), 6, 7, 11, 18–19, 62, 164, 198, 369, 382

  Brinson, Marjorie, 18, 19

  Browder, Eleanor, see Addison, Mrs. Everet

  Bruccoli, Matthew J, 139, 172, 287

  Bryant, Gordon, 91

  Caesar’s Things (Zelda Fitzgerald), 103, 234, 354–66, 372, 379–80

  Jozan as French aviator, 355, 364, 366

  Murphy, Gerald and Sara, in, 363

  Callaghan, Morley, 148–49

  on Scott, 154

  on Zelda, 149

  Campbell, C. Lawton, 60–61

  McKaig, Alexander, on, 79

  on Scott and Zelda, 61, 68, 82, 104–05

  on Zelda, 78, 81

  Carroll, Dr. Robert S., 309–11, 312, 313, 325, 326, 327, 328, 335, 336, 337, 343

  letters: Rennie, Dr. Thomas, 312

  Sayre, Mrs. Anthony D., 321–22, 337, 338

  Scott, 316, 317, 318–19, 325, 332, 333, 334, 337, 338

  Meyer, Dr. Adolf, on, 310

  Champson, André, 250

  Chanler, Mrs. Margaret Winthrop, 181

  Chanler, Theodore, 249

  Churchill, Lady Randolph Spencer, 83

  Churchill, Winston, 83

  Cobb, Buff, 348

  College Bazaar, 345

  College Humor, 149–50, 152, 176, 298

  Collier’s, 333

  Conrad, Joseph, 95, 110–11

  Cowley, Malcolm:

  on Save Me the Waltz, 264

  Scott, letter to, 264

  on Zelda, 281–82

  Crowninshield, Frank, 95

  Dalmita, Lily, 198

  Diaghilev Ballet (Ballet Russe), 105, 136–37, 140, 155, 157

  The Dial, 97, 116

  Dos Passos, John, 96, 106, 137, 370

  on Scott and Zelda, 133

  Three Soldiers, 93

  on Zelda, 93–94

  Drew, Georgia, 5

  Duncan, Isadora, 117

  Egorova, Madame Lubov (Princess Troubetskoy), 135, 140

  Scott, letters from and to, 166

  and Zelda, 140, 141, 147–48, 158, 165–66, 169

  Zelda on, 168, 250, 252

  on Zelda, 166

  Elgin, Dr. William, 302, 303

  Eliot, T. S., on The Great Gatsby, 116

 

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