Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise

by Sally Cline

  May, who entered Zelda’s close-knit set when later she became Katherine Elsberry’s sister-in-law, also entered Scott’s fiction. Naturally he heightened their drama, so that in The Beautiful and Damned (1922) May, as Dorothy Raycroft, has an affair with Anthony Patch (the Scott hero), who jilts her when she becomes seriously ill.

  Zelda, unaware also of Scott’s romance with a second woman called Helen Dent,56 was more significantly kept in the dark about his brief but passionate affair in New York with Rosalinde Fuller, an English actress. Scott’s Ledger entry for October 1919 states: ‘Went to see Zelda. New York. Rosalind.’ Biographers have generally assumed this referred to Zelda’s sister, but it is more likely to have been Fuller.

  Rosalinde, at twenty-seven four years Scott’s senior, was small, dark, with something of Ginevra’s pert attraction. Edmund Wilson later told Rosalinde that Scott had considered his sexual encounter with her to be ‘his first serious love affair’. At their first meeting at a Plaza Hotel party, Scott introduced himself, then suggested they leave at once. Unlike Zelda who refused late dates with fast workers, Rosalinde, an emancipated believer in free love, agreed immediately. Fitzgerald called a hansom cab, jumped his date inside, pulled a rug around their legs, and according to Rosalinde’s racy account ‘the clip-crop of the horse’s hoofs made a background to our discovery of each other’s bodies’.57

  In the cab Scott’s ‘eager hands’ felt ‘in warm secret places under the old rug’. Once out of the hansom he met Rosalinde frequently for brief but intensely sexual assignations. Though in 1935 Scott told Tony Buttitta that he had had no sexual experience before Zelda, Rosalinde’s diary refutes this: ‘We made love everywhere, in theatre boxes, country fields, under the sun, moon and stars … no end to our delight and discovery of one another.’ Rosalinde temporarily succeeded in abolishing Fitzgerald’s sexual inhibitions.58

  Though Scott ceased to correspond with Rosalinde after their affair, its repercussions continued. The erotic hansom cab ride enters his fiction. His story ‘Myra Meets His Family’ (1920) includes the heroine’s romantic carriage ride up Fifth Avenue. In another 1920 story, ‘The Lees of Happiness’, his heroine Roxanne Milbank, known as the ‘Venus of the Hansom Cab’, was at least partly based on Rosalinde. In The Great Gatsby (1925) the narrator, Nick Carraway, chooses a hansom cab ride through Central Park in which to kiss Jordan Baker. In 1934 in Tender Is The Night, Dick Diver (partly based on Scott) is in a Paris cab when he kisses Rosemary Hoyt, the young woman who comes between Dick and Nicole Diver (partly based on Zelda).

  Whether Scott wished to retaliate for Zelda’s flirtatiousness or whether he wanted a final fling before marriage, he felt a ‘sense of shame at having let himself go so far in yielding to his physical proclivities’.59 Curiously, Scott records no sense of shame about deceiving Zelda while berating her for what were, according to relevant Montgomery beaux, far less sexually explicit flirtations.

  It is interesting to speculate on Zelda’s response had she known. She might well not have minded. For when Scott, attempting to make her jealous, dwelt on an attractive girl in New York, she parried with: ‘if she’s good-looking, and you want to, one bit – I know you could and love me just the same’.60

  But what Zelda might have minded was his self-righteous deceit.

  In June 1919 the climax to their roller-coaster romance came with Zelda’s involvement with Perry Adair, an Atlanta golfer. Invited by him to the Georgia Tech dance, she returned home wearing a fraternity pin as a sign of their commitment. Realizing she had gone too far, she returned his fraternity pin with a warm note. Unfortunately, possibly by mistake, possibly not, she sent Adair a letter to Scott and posted Scott the note to the golfer. Fitzgerald was incensed and told her to cease writing to him.61

  In June 1919, still angry with Zelda, with his lack of success and with himself, Scott swung into the Sayres’ parlour where he tried to intimidate Zelda into an instant marriage, first with threats, then with tears. She could not bear to see him demean himself. Marriage and New York was how Zelda planned to change her life, but she would not stand for any change founded on failure. Sad but resolute, she returned his ring and told him to leave.

  He commemorated his personal tragedy first with a three-week binge, during which time he quit his advertising job and returned to St Paul,62 later with a fine story, ‘The Sensible Thing’, ‘about Zelda + me’,63 in which the anti-hero George O’Kelly seized Jonquil Cary in his arms ‘and tried literally to kiss her into marrying him at once’. When that failed he broke into a long monologue of self-pity and ceased only when he saw he had made himself ‘despicable in her sight’.64

  Though Scott would never forget Zelda’s rejection, he used it to his best advantage as he metamorphosed from amateur to professional. During July and August ‘I dug in and wrote my first book.’65 In rewriting he discovered his style, his voice and his subject.

  Scribners finally accepted This Side of Paradise on 16 September 1919. Scott wrote immediately to Perkins asking for a fast publication: ‘I have so many things dependent on its success – including of course a girl.’66

  In November Wilson, Scott’s literary mentor, suggested that Fitzgerald cease the cheap effects of commercial stories and substitute the serious work necessary for high art.67 Temporarily ignoring this issue, Scott recalled his words to Wilson when they left Princeton: ‘I want to be one of the greatest writers who ever lived, don’t you?’ Now on his way, he needed to see Zelda again.

  In October he wrote asking if he could come to Montgomery, telling her of his success. She responded she was ‘mighty glad’ he was coming. ‘I’ve been wanting to see you … but I couldn’t ask you.’ With her old wicked touch she told him she was recovering from a ‘wholesome amour’ with Auburn’s ‘startling quarter back’ and asked him for a ‘quart of gin’. He might find her mentally ‘dreadfully deteriorated’ but ‘you never seemed to know when I was stupid and when I wasn’t, anyway … ’S funny, Scott, I don’t feel a bit shaky and “do-don’t”ish like I used to when you came – I really want to see you – that’s all – Zelda.’68

  Zelda had taken pride in men not being able to fathom her intelligence. She had already written to Scott: ‘Men think I’m purely decorative, and they’re just fools for not knowing better … I love being rather unfathomable … Men love me cause I’m pretty – and they’re always afraid of mental wickedness – and men love me cause I’m clever and they’re always afraid of my prettiness – One or two have even loved me cause I’m lovable, and then, of cource, I was acting.’69

  She believed Scott was the one person who knew and loved all of her. He wasn’t quite so sure.

  In November 1919 he became a client of Harold Ober at the Reynolds Agency, who remained his friend and agent for years. Ober’s coup was to persuade the prestigious Saturday Evening Post to buy Scott’s story ‘Head and Shoulders’ for $400 before Scott left for Montgomery in late November.70 Thus he went with some triumph and some trepidation, but the reality of encountering Zelda could not live up to five months’ fantasies. Scott wanted to repeat the past, but realized that ‘There are all kinds of love in the world, but never the same love twice.’71

  Although informally they renewed their engagement, Scott left Montgomery feeling they had lost what they had. Though Zelda wrote saying she would release him from any marriage obligation, she was the more optimistic. Earlier she had told a friend that she was not romantically in love with Scott but that she felt it was her mission to help him realize his potential as a writer.72 Unlike Scott, she now felt a more realistic romantic resurgence. She felt they were building their love castle on firmer foundations. That first abandonment couldn’t last. She thought it foolish to mourn for a memory when they had each other. ‘“When love has turned to kindliness” doesn’t horrify me like it used to – It has such a peaceful sound – like something to come back to and rest – and sometimes I’m glad we’re not exactly like we used to be.’73

  Between November 1919
and February 1920 Scott’s stories about bright upper-class adolescents were accepted fast. The Smart Set published ‘The Debutante’ in November, ‘Porcelain and Pink’ in January, ‘Benediction’ and ‘Dalyrimple Goes Wrong’ in February. He cabled Zelda with each success.

  In December she read This Side of Paradise. Her response was: ‘Why cant I write? I’d like to tell you how fine I think the book is and how miserably and completely and – a little unexpectedly – I am thine.’74

  By January Scott had made sufficient money to leave cold New York for warm New Orleans, from where he visited Zelda.75 When he said she had inspired his novel she responded: ‘It’s so nice to know you really can do things – anything – and I love to feel that maybe I can help just a little.’76

  Scott wrote formally to the Judge for her hand77 and they resumed their sexual relationship. During February Zelda suspected she was pregnant. Earlier, on seeing Katharine’s baby, Zelda had told Scott: ‘It’s darling … I felt like I’d sorter like to have it’,78 but faced with a possible baby herself she was initially unsure whether she would ‘sorter like to have it’.

  Yet when Scott, who was very sure he did not want the responsibility of fatherhood, sent her pills for an abortion Zelda refused to take them. ‘I wanted to, for your sake, because I know what a mess I’m making and how inconvenient it’s all going to be – but I simply can’t and won’t take those awful pills – so I’ve thrown them away. I’d rather take carbolic acid … I’d rather have a whole family than sacrifice my self-respect … I’d feel like a damn whore if I took even one.’79

  Before Zelda discovered that she was after all not pregnant, Scott had already repeated Zelda’s key phrase ‘self-respect’ in a note to a friend’s sister. If a young woman smokes and drinks in public, tells hair-raising stories to shock people and admits that she has kissed thousands of male admirers and certainly does not intend to stop, that girl is hardly a lady. But Scott confessed he had fallen for Zelda’s bravery, honesty and ‘flaming self-respect.’80

  Between March and May Ober sold ‘Myra Meets His Family’, ‘The Camel’s Back’, ‘Bernice Bobs Her Hair’, ‘The Ice Palace’ and ‘The Offshore Pirate’ to the Saturday Evening Post, which raised his fee to $500.

  Scribner’s Magazine paid Scott $150 for ‘The Cut-Glass Bowl’ and ‘The Four Fists’, more serious pieces. Then in February, having sold movie rights of ‘Head and Shoulders’ for a staggering $2,500, he sent Zelda a diamond and platinum wristwatch. She wrote back exuberantly: ‘O, Scott, it’s so be-au-ti-ful – and the back’s just as pretty as the front … I’ve turned it over four hundred times to see “from Scott to Zelda”.’81

  Myth says the success of This Side of Paradise reassured Zelda so that she decided to marry him. Zelda said it was because Scott had renewed confidence in himself. When his novel was accepted she knew nothing about it. When she agreed to marriage it had still not been published and she had no way of knowing its outcome.

  Six days before Scribner’s published on 26 March 1920, Scott sent H. L. Mencken a review copy inscribed on the flyleaf with the words: ‘This is a bad book full of good things, a book about flappers written for philosophers, an exquisite burlesque of Compton Mackenzie with a pastiche of Wells at the end.’82

  Five days before it was published, the Montgomery Advertiser celebrated the twin achievements of two Montgomery Belles. It announced Zelda’s engagement, and on the front page of the society section of the same 21 March issue it ran the headline: ‘Sara Haardt elected to Phi Beta Kappa.’ On Sara’s graduation in June, the Goucher yearbook hailed her as ‘a soulful highbrow’.83 The two women writers-to-be had decisively taken different paths.

  Scott sent Zelda her first corsage of white orchids. She sent him her most loving letter:

  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 …

  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.

  Then, perhaps feeling she had tipped her hand a bit, she hastily finished with another courtly codeline: ‘I’m absolutely nothing without you – Just the doll that I should have been born – You’re a necessity and a luxury … you’re going to be a husband to your wife.’84

  Zelda’s wedding was to take place in New York, where Scott insisted on being married in the Catholic church. He favoured St Patrick’s Cathedral because he had a cousin, Father William B. Martin, on the staff there who would marry them. Zelda’s family had always attended Montgomery’s Church of the Holy Comforter, where Minnie played the organ, Rosalind had sung in the choir, Marjorie had been married, and Zelda herself who went regularly to Sunday School had been baptized, a little late, in 1910. Zelda told Sara Mayfield she did not feel sentimental about the Holy Comforter and thought it more exciting to be married in Manhattan. The Sayres, who avoided the turmoil and expense of a Southern wedding, apparently raised no objections.

  Zelda left Montgomery wearing a Confederate-grey suit, almost – according to Sara Mayfield – the colour of her eyes. ‘Some of the people with her thought they had never seen her look so beautiful before‚’ said Sara.85 A crowd of her friends laden with flowers for her saw her off at the station. Astonishingly, not one of Zelda’s many friends had been invited to the wedding. Apart from the bride and groom there were to be only Zelda’s three sisters – Marjorie Sayre Brinson, Clothilde (and her husband John Palmer), Rosalind (and her husband Newman Smith) and Scott’s Princeton friend Ludlow Fowler. He was to be best man while Rosalind stood as matron of honour.

  Zelda’s parents had decided not to attend. They were not overtly opposed to a Catholic wedding, as long as it was in the North. Family members thought that as devout Episcopalians they would have felt uncomfortable about a Catholic ceremony in Montgomery. The Sayres’ main concern was that Zelda should be accompanied by her sister Marjorie and would stay with her sister Clothilde. Indeed, the announcement in the Montgomery Advertiser stated that Zelda and Marjorie would be guests of Clothilde and John Palmer.86 Events did not turn out as the Sayres had planned.

  Zelda and Marjorie were met by Rosalind and Newman Smith at Pennsylvania Station, but instead of going to Clothilde’s home in nearby Tarrytown, they found Scott had arranged for them to stay at the Biltmore Hotel.87

  Zelda and Scott were married on 3 April 1920 in the Rectory of St Patrick’s Cathedral. Scott, nervy and impatient, insisted that the wedding start even before the time at which Clothilde and John Palmer were due to arrive.

  Zelda wore a blue-grey spring suit adorned by the single corsage of white orchids Scott had sent her. She had a matching hat trimmed with leather ribbons and buckles. She was the only ornament at her own wedding – for there was no music, no flowers, no photographer, and no lunch for the out-of-town visitors. After the ceremony the priest said: ‘You be a good episcopalian, Zelda, and, Scott, you be a good catholic, and you’ll get along fine.’ Scott said later to Ludlow Fowler that it was the last advice he got from a priest.88

  Immediately after the wedding, Zelda and Scott hurried away to suite 2109 at the Biltmore Hotel, a favourite amongst Princetonians. It was noticeable that Scott had not thought to ask any Princetonians apart from Fowler to his wedding.

  Zelda, who had been treated as a princess most of her life, must have been shocked by the tiny, hurried wedding about which she had barely been consulted and in which her family had not been taken into account. She was painfully aware that Rosalind, Marjorie and especially Clothilde were disconcerted, distressed and angry. ‘Scott had done all the planning wi
thout consulting me,’ said Rosalind. ‘Marjorie and the Palmers, and Newman and I lunched together, then Marjorie went home with Tilde.’89

  Years later Scott described his emotions as a bridegroom: ‘The man with the jingle of money in his pocket who married the girl a year later would always cherish an abiding distrust, an animosity, toward the leisure class – not the conviction of a revolutionist, but the smouldering hatred of a peasant.’90

  Zelda never openly described her emotions. But she would have known, then, that her family’s feelings were not important to her new husband.

  Notes

  1 Zelda Sayre to FSF, 1919, CO187, Box 42, Folders 18, 11, 10, PUL.

  2 Zelda Sayre to FSF, early 1919, CO187, Box 42, Folder 31, PUL.

  3 Ibid.

  4 ZSF, Waltz, Collected Writings, p. 29.

  5 For war benefits.

  6 Sara Haardt/ZSF interview, 1928, unpublished.

  7 Recalled years later by Zelda. ZSF to FSF, 13 Feb. 1940, Romantic Egotists, p. 225.

  8 FSF, Notebook G, ‘Descriptions of Girls’.

  9 Rosalind Sayre to Sara Mayfield, Mayfield Collection, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.

  10 Zelda Sayre to FSF, 1919, CO187, Box 42, Folder 11, PUL.

  11 FSF, ‘Handle with Care’, Crack-Up, p. 47.

  12 Mayfield, Exiles, p. 44. Scott was given the post of aide-de-camp to General J. A. Ryan. He was discharged Feb. 1919.

  13 Meyers, Scott Fitzgerald, p. 49.

  14 FSF to Scottie Fitzgerald, 7 July 1938, The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald, ed. Andrew Turnbull, Penguin, 1968, p. 48.

  15 Zelda and Eleanor also ran the street-car all day until they got fired.

  16 FSF to Ruth Sturtevant, 4 Dec. 1918, Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald, ed. Turnbull, p. 474. Turnbull (p. 474) says that Scott had made Ruth Sturtevant of Washington a confidante in his romance with Zelda. Later (in 1920) it was Ruth Sturtevant who organized somewhere for Scott and Zelda to stay on the shores of Lake Champlain before they settled on the Wakeman house in Westport, Connecticut. André Le Vot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Allen Lane, London, 1984, p. 86.