Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise

by Sally Cline

  Zelda’s first return to the Asheville hospital is reputed to be August 1943 to end of February 1944: a six-month sojourn. Zelda did spend part of that August in Asheville, but she stayed with Tom Wolfe’s mother at 48 Spruce Street, from where she wrote regularly to Biggs, telling him she had run into former hospital ‘cell-mates’ on the street. She picnicked, swam, and would have stayed longer, ‘but the house is so dirty I think it best to go before atrification sets in. It seems remarkable that the vitality and inclusive metaphor and will-to-live of Wolff’s prose should have known these origins.’32 Back at Minnie’s house, her letters to Biggs until Christmas 1943 show she did not enter hospital until the new year 1944, when she stayed only eight weeks.

  Her second hospitalization is generally held to be from early 1946 to late summer/early fall: this would have been another eight-month incarceration, again suggesting serious illness. However her correspondence with Biggs throughout winter, spring and summer 1946, written from and received at 322 Sayre Street, Montgomery, shows otherwise. She did not re-enter hospital until the start of July 1946 and she left 23 September: a period of only twelve weeks.33

  Rosalind’s assessment of Zelda’s health is more realistic: ‘She remained a highly nervous person and occasionally had to return to the hospital to get herself under control, but she also had many long good periods when she was able to follow her interests, keep up with her friends, and live a fairly normal life.’34

  Let us scrutinize Zelda’s last seven years to see how she fared before her third, final, hospitalization.

  We find her in January 1941 still living at the Rabbit Run, her mother’s small white bungalow at 322 Sayre Street. Zelda’s old upright piano and rocking chairs offered a place for repose in the chintzy sitting room. Zelda divided her time between her sister Marjorie next door, her mother, old friends like Livye and a young disabled girl she befriended.

  Her years at Sayre Street were years of struggle.

  Her first battle was with encroaching poverty.

  Although Biggs remarked that Scott left the estate of a pauper and the will of a millionaire,35 Fitzgerald was not quite as destitute as legend suggests. His 1940 earnings had been $14,570. He left $738.16 in the bank, $486.34 in cash and his personal possessions. Those apart, the bulk of his estate was a mere $44,225.15, the reduced value of his insurance policy.36 He died owing $4,067.14 to Highland, $5,456 to Scribner’s, more than $1,500 to Perkins, and $802 to Ober who waived nearly $3,000 in accumulated interest on loans. Those debts were paid out of the estate. Biggs used the remaining amount of less than $35,000 from the insurance policy to set up a trust for Zelda and Scottie for the next seven years.37 An annuity purchased for Zelda gave her just under $50 a month and she qualified for a $35 monthly pension as a veteran’s widow.38 When Biggs reassured her that Scott had left enough to take care of her on the same basis as before, she replied stoutly: ‘The idea of poverty is not a new one and I am well-conversant with its exigence.’39

  She confessed to Biggs that ‘to encompass the fact that he [Scott] wont be getting off the train any more bringing the promise of happiness and the possibilities of new purposes makes my heart-break. His pockets were always full of good times and his heart full of silly songs about what wonderful things there were to do, and I will miss him.’40

  She missed Scott particularly for his protective role towards her, so Biggs took over that function too. In January 1941, Zelda, worried that there was insufficient money to keep Scottie at Vassar, told Biggs ‘she can start looking around for a job – or maybe Max could find her something to do at Scribners. She is intelligent and beautiful and there must be some way of supporting the youth when they are as deserving as herself.’ Biggs immediately organized Ober, Perkins and Murphy to pay jointly for Scottie to finish college.

  Anna Biggs also became Zelda’s good friend, often inviting her to their gracious Wilmington house with its ‘haunted terrace and bounteous windows’.41 John, however, let Zelda down in two significant ways. When his secretary, who posted Zelda’s regular monthly cheques, was on holiday, he would frequently forget to post them himself. Biggs, as a wealthy lawyer soon to be Senior Circuit Judge of the 3rd Circuit,42 could not comprehend that the poor live from hand to mouth without reserves to draw upon.43 Many times Zelda was forced to endure the humiliation of reminding him. Though her correspondence shows a new businesslike competence (she even dates some letters) there is still the familiar undertone of the housewife-dependent who is ‘devoted and grateful’.

  When she accumulated debts her letters became wittier: ‘Dear John, Scottie tells me that the streets in Heaven only are paved with gold: a matter which really should receive more attention from the local civic authorities. However, she says that you most generously will take care of a staggering and involved array of debts which I have, unsuspectingly, accrued.’ Among debts to Minnie for board ($20), to a jewellery store for a wedding gift ($10), to a dressmaker for what in Scottie’s eyes was an ‘acceptable’ suit-kimona ($30) and to the bank to replace some pension back-pay she had ‘borrowed’ ($100) lurked a highly intriguing ‘spiritual debt’ of $42 which she owed the Lord.44 On that occasion Biggs, not wishing Zelda to fall out with God, took care of the debts; but he wrote a typically admonishing letter warning Zelda to live within her means.45 The problem for Zelda was that the means were insufficient to live within, despite the fact that she rarely went to the hairdresser or movies, did not drink, smoked six cigarettes at most a day, had four friends whom she seldom saw, bought only one Victrola album a month ($5), a mere $5 worth of paints a month, and went to bed at nine to save electricity.46

  Biggs’s second failure was in not recognizing how much Zelda’s art meant to her. In January 1941 Zelda asked him to send to Montgomery her paintings which were stored with Scott’s possessions.47 It was the first of many similar requests for fifteen months during which Biggs ignored the issue. Only in January 1942, when the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts wanted to give Zelda a show, did he deal with the matter. Even then she did not receive the paintings until 18 March.48

  Though surrounded by family, Zelda struggled with a particular kind of loneliness. She missed the stimulation of old friends but was unsure how to preserve them in the light of her new spiritual ideas and her medically dampened-down personality.

  Gerald and Sara, saddened at her absence from Scott’s funeral, had told her of its grace. In reply she sent them a poignant letter: ‘Those tragic ecstatic years when the pockets of the world were filled with pleasant surprizes and people still thought of life in terms of their right to a good time are now about to wane … That he won’t be there to arrange nice things and tell us what to do is grievous to envisage.’49

  But beneath the overt text, it is as if Zelda was saying farewell not only to Scott but to the Fitzgeralds’ fifteen-year friendship with the Murphys.

  Ernest, who had dumped Pauline in favour of the journalist Martha Gellhorn, now his third wife, also said an appreciative farewell to the Fitzgerald-Murphy friendship, indicating it had hinged on Scott: ‘Poor Scott,’ he wrote to Sara. ‘No one could ever help Scott but you and Gerald did more than anyone.’50

  That year, however, the Murphys were having their own share of personal problems. The deaths of their two sons had left them struggling with complex griefs. Sara turned to no one. Gerald, in 1940, turned to a young homosexual Rhodes scholar, Alan Jarvis, a sculptor and art historian. Gerald, who shared the blond youth’s passion for Manley Hopkins and Bach, initially became his mentor, then his beloved soulmate. Their relationship may not have been physical but on Gerald’s side was intense and consuming. Though Sara noticed and became edgy the strength of their marriage, unlike the Fitzgeralds’ under a similar tension, was able to accommodate this.51

  When Zelda visited the Murphys in New York, both she and they were less at ease than they had been when Scott was alive. Perhaps it was because the Murphys had access to information about Scott’s last years in Hollywood with Sheilah that Zelda o
nly suspected. Or perhaps the Murphys’ emotional difficulties made them defensive. The bonds, still there, were rooted now in memories.

  As Zelda turned the Murphys into her wealthy fictional couple, the Comings, in Caesar’s Things, she cast a cooler satirical glance at her friends than their old affection warranted. The Comings, who offer Janno and her husband Jacob (the Zelda and Scott characters) Bacardi cocktails before brilliant dinners for ‘the stars … migratory Americans and … French people of consequence’, have a treasure-house in St-Cloud which Zelda with her new anti-materialistic stance found disturbing.

  Van Vechten, her former ribald buddy, was another who came under her axe for over-indulgences. ‘There is much need of faith and charity in this aching world where there is so much spiritual destitution,’ she admonished him.52

  Zelda found it easier to keep in regular contact with Perkins, firstly because they focused on publishing Scott’s posthumous writings, and secondly because he became her consultant in 1941 when she made serious plans to publish a book of her paper dolls.53

  Zelda was more able to deal with new acquaintances, for brief periods, because they had fewer preconceived ideas about her. She enjoyed meeting Alabama University student Paul McLendon, who visited regularly in the early Forties to discuss literature. Later a Princeton undergraduate, Henry Dan Piper, arrived in Montgomery to conduct several interviews with Zelda about her life with Scott. Piper recalls Zelda itemizing her four most traumatic life events: her broken relationship with Lubov Egorova; her brother Anthony’s suicide; her own suicide attempts at Sheppard Pratt; and her marriage breakdown. It is interesting, in the light of her continuous fictional reworking in Caesar’s Things of the unconsummated romance with Jozan, that he does not get a mention. For both Fitzgeralds it seems the Jozan incident was significant solely in literary terms. Perhaps it was another example of Gerald’s comment to Scott that only the invented parts of life were meaningful.

  Zelda showed Piper her manuscript, took him to the Montgomery Museum of Fine Art to see her paintings, then to honour their new friendship gave him a self-portrait. Nor was he the only recipient of her paintings. She sent oils to the Kalmans, painted the Montgomery Capitol on a compact for Sara Mayfield, decorated a cocktail tray for Anna Biggs, gave Lawton Campbell a watercolour of a rhododendron in bloom and painted bowls with scenes of Great Neck, St Raphaël, Ellerslie, La Paix and Felder Avenue for Scottie.

  In December 1941 the United States entered World War Two. Virginia Cody, sister of Zelda’s old beau Dan, who was organizing an élite Red Cross unit, asked Zelda to attend first aid classes then work for the unit.

  The war, with its inevitable death toll of young people, made Zelda more conscious of her role as sole parent to Scottie, who in 1942 had graduated from Vassar to become a journalist on the temporary staff of the New Yorker. After that she took a fulltime post at Radio City Hall as a publicist but lasted only ten weeks. Despite her ignorance about sports she braved a Time magazine job as sports reporter. After abysmal coverage of baseball, boxing, tennis, golf and harness racing she moved speedily to Time’s radio news programme, followed later by a spell on Fortune magazine.

  Throughout her daughter’s ever-changing career Zelda struggled to establish an acceptable mother-role. She loved Scottie, she admired her, but she never quite got it right.

  She begged Scottie to say her prayers, but in case she didn’t, she prayed for her. Tentatively she offered housekeeping advice: ‘In choosing arrangements, decide first on a theme … grandeur, simplicity, casualness or some studied harmony. These qualities are spiritual … Choose cheap Platonic concepts of furniture: split bottom chairs, kitchen chairs and wicker rather than imitation decorators items. A pewter pot or an earthenware crock is more appropriate to garden roses … Lamps are a major item: one should be able to see by them.’54 All highly sound, but in Scottie’s view out of date and unasked for!

  In 1942 they argued about Scott’s library (largely contemporary fiction), bequeathed to Zelda in his will. Zelda, impecunious, did not want ‘this testimonial of our generation to be moth eaten and worn away fruitlessly when it might be serving some purpose’ and wished to sell it to Princeton University Library. Scottie disagreed furiously. ‘Even millionaires are disposing of their goods,’ Zelda wrote in exasperation to Biggs. ‘When Christ taught “Store not up for yourselves treasures on earth” – He was not just making pretty phrases by giving us a way of salvation. He said: “Go sell everything and follow me” and that is what He meant.’55 Scottie now had the Lord against her as well; and within days John Biggs also. He thought that Scott’s own papers should be sold to give Zelda sorely-needed funds as well as to provide a permanent memorial to Scott. Such an idea, he said, would have given Scott no end of a kick!56 Zelda, who agreed, generously asked John to send Scottie half the money.57

  Their relationship improved after Scottie married Ensign Samuel Jackson (Jack) Lanahan, whom she had dated since she was at Vassar and he at Princeton. Son of a wealthy stockbroker, like Scott a graduate of St Paul Academy, he was serving on the USS Card in the Atlantic as assistant navigator. During his leave, their wedding took place at the Church of St Ignatius Loyola, New York, on 13 February 1943. The Obers planned both the wedding, for which Anne bought Scottie’s dress and at which Harold gave Scottie away, and the reception at the Barclay Hotel. Shortly after the wedding Jack returned to overseas duty.

  Although the wedding announcement, embossed with the Fitzgerald coat of arms, read: ‘Mrs Francis Scott Fitzgerald has the honor of announcing the marriage of her daughter …’ Zelda was conspicuously absent. Most biographers write off her non-attendance as another sick episode. The truth is more complex. Scottie failed to invite her early enough. ‘I felt guilty’, Scottie wrote later, ‘about having left notifying my mother until it was too late for her to plan to come, but she was not well enough at the time and I feared that if she was in one of her eccentric phases it would cast a pall over the affair.’58 It must have seemed to Zelda like a rerun of Scottie’s graduation where she was made to feel unwelcome, or even her own wedding. This was worse.

  Zelda wrote one sad letter to Anne Ober thanking her for the wedding cake, which she had shared with Dos Passos who had briefly called on her in Montgomery. Zelda said how sorry she was ‘she couldn’t be of any service’ at her daughter’s wedding.59

  Then with great fortitude Zelda returned to forgiving her spirited daughter.60 The hospital experiences Zelda had endured would have made many people bitter but astonishingly Zelda seemed to have become more compassionate. In June 1943 she asked Biggs to burn all the hospital correspondence, Scott’s copies of which were then in the estate files, as she thought they would upset her daughter. Her own distress at reading not only the medical reports but also Scott’s private letters about her condition can be imagined, but she never revealed it to Scottie.

  To compensate for the wedding debacle, Scottie invited Zelda to Scarsdale, New York, for a week during summer 1943. Zelda had to ask Biggs for $100 for the trip. She said she felt ‘very selfish at asking vacation while the Belgians die of starvation and degradation stifles the French and the British hang on by shell-shock and delusions of grandeur.’61

  When Scottie accepted another reporting job at the New Yorker in February 1944, Zelda frequently sent her watercolours which Scottie showed to staff writer Brendan Gill. Though Gill tried to get them published, their ‘nonrepresentational diagonal slashes, triangles and other geometric forms … the expression of a violent, undischarged rage … [were] works radically unsuited to the New Yorker.’62

  Scottie herself suited the magazine very well. Gill described her as ‘exceptional in energy and in her sunny good nature – none of the series of misfortunes that had dogged her parents appeared to have cast the least shadow over her.’63

  Shadows that did lurk between mother and daughter were swept into the background by the news of Scottie’s pregnancy. On 26 April 1946, when Thomas Addison Lanahan was born, Zelda wrote: ‘Sco
ttie darling, I am so happy about the baby; So glad he is a little boy and so rejoiced that you are well + going to be happy with a family + love + happiness which you deserve. It’s wonderful to be a grandmother. I haven’t been so beaming in years and I can’t wait to hold him and see how he works etc … isn’t it swell to have a grandson? I can’t think of anything more to the point and I am so full of happiness for you and all the love a heart can hold.’64 She wrote proudly to Ludlow Fowler to announce her grandson’s arrival, reminding him of the excited telegrams they had exchanged at Scottie’s birth. Entirely positive about her new role, she decided that ‘without small children now one seems out of tempo with the world as human relationships seem to have survived the more pressingly than the impersonal aspects of civilization.’65 In May she wrote to Biggs: ‘I long to see my grandchild who is surely miraculous and will try to get to New York this summer … human relationships mean more than they did.’66

  Before Zelda was able to see her grandson, again she grappled with ill health. During her hospitalization from 1 July to 23 September 1946, Zelda wrote to Biggs to say she was folk dancing and hiking outdoors while silver throated birds flew in protest over the mountains. ‘I will bend all my resources,’ she said stoutly, ‘to conforming and try to get off the debit-side as soon as I can.’67 Her optimism increased when John sent her money from the movie rights of Tender Is The Night and when Scottie sent her ‘darling pictures of the baby’. Highland told Scottie Zelda had adjusted well and ‘at no time [had they] had any trouble with her’.68

  They suggested it would be unwise for Zelda to live alone, but she should not be supervised so closely that she was unable to express her own personality.69 After leaving hospital, Zelda stayed on in Asheville whence she wrote to Biggs that she was now ‘in wonderful physical shape’ and was sketching and played tennis with two entertaining friends.70

  On 3 October she visited Scottie at 310 West 94th Street, New York, and was so delighted with baby Tim that they arranged for Scottie and Jack to bring the baby to Montgomery the following June, when Zelda would give a party for them and twenty guests at the Blue Moon restaurant.