Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated)

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

  I want to contrast this sharply with the feeling of those who have merely gypped another person’s empire away from them like the four great railroad kings of the coast… or the feeling that — — would have. He’s not interested in it because he owns it He’s interested in it as an artist because he has made it, and mixed up with his great feeling of triumph and happiness there must inevitably be a feeling of sadness with all acts of courage — a feeling that it is to someextent a finished thing, and doubt as to the next step as to how Ear he can go.

  After the plane comes down, it may be best to finish the chapter with that fireworks — repeat my own fear when I landed in Los Angeles with the feeling of new worlds to conquer in 1937 transferred to Stahr, or it may be best to end with a cacophony of a rival.

  Chapter II

  Page 24. Fitzgerald had written Only fair opposite the paragraph which begins, “Robby’ll take care of everything when he comes,” Stahr assured Father. This was to have been the first appearance of a character who was to play an important role, and the author wanted presumably, at this casual introduction, to give a sharper impression of him. His notes on Robinson will be found below among the preliminary sketches for the characters.

  Chapter III

  This chapter had not been cut and organized to the author’s complete satisfaction. It is given here as it stands in the manuscript, with only a few changes to make it self — consistent.

  In the manuscript, the passage on page 46 reads as follows:

  Probably the attack was planned, for Popolos, the Greek, took up the matter in a sort of double talk that reminded Prince Agge of Mike Van Dyke, except that it tried to be and succeeded in being clear instead of confusing.

  The author had written a scene with which he was dissatisfied, in which the Prince had encountered Mike Van Dyke, the old gagman; but the double talk, of Mike Van Dyke was intended to figure in some other place. The passages that deal with it follow:

  “Hello, Mike,” said Monroe. He introduced him to the visitor: “Prince Agge, this is Mr. Van Dyke. You’ve laughed at his stuff many times. He’s the best gag — man in pictures.”

  “In the world,” said the saucer-eyed man gravely, “ — the funniest man in the world. How are you, Prince?…”

  Immediately the Prince found himself engaged in conversation with Mike Van Dyke. He answered politely without quite getting the gist of his words. Something about the commissary, where Mr. Van Dyke thought he had seen the Prince trying to order what sounded like “twisted fish and acat’s handlebar,” though the Prince was certain he misunderstood.

  He tried to explain that he had not been to the commissary, but by this time they were so far into the subject that he thought the quickest way was to admit that he had, and merely parry Mr. Van Dyke’s mistaken statements as to what he had done there. Mr. Van Dyke was not so much insistent as convinced, and he seemed to talk very fast….

  The Prince was introduced to Mr. Spurgeon and to Mr. and Mrs. Tarleton, but he was now so involved in the conversation with Mr. Van Dyke that he heard himself stammering, “I’m glad to meet me,” because he was explaining to Van Dyke that he had not seen Technigarbo in Gretacolor. Again he had misunderstood. Was his name Albert Edward Butch Arthur Agge David, Prince of Denmark? “That’s my cousin,” he almost said, his head reeling.

  Stahr’s voice, clear and reassuring, brought him back to reality.

  “That’s enough, Mike — That was ‘double — talk,” he explained to Prince Agge. “It’s considered funny here in the lower brackets. Do it slow, Mike.”

  Mike demonstrated politely.

  “In an income at the gate this morning — “ He pointed at Stahr. “ — or did he?”

  Baffled, the Dane bit again.

  “What? Did he what?” Then he smiled: “I see. It is like your Gertrude Stein.”

  Chapter IV

  Fitzgerald has the following note on the episode with the director at the beginning of this chapter:

  What is missing in Ridingwood scene is passion and imagination, etc. What an extraordinary thing that it should all have been there for Ridingwood and then not there.

  Chapter V

  Page 97. After the words, And so he had learned tolerance, kindness, forbearance, and even affection like lessons, the author has written for his own guidance: (Now the idea about young and generous).

  Note following the section that ends on page 98:

  This may not be terse and clear enough here. Or perhaps I mean strong enough. It may be the place for the doctor’s verdict. I would like to leave him on a stronger note.

  The Short Story Collections

  The house where Fitzgerald spent most of his early years, Summit Avenue, St Paul

  FLAPPERS AND PHILOSOPHERS

  This is Fitzgerald’s first collection of short stories, published in 1920 and containing eight stories.

  Fitzgerald, 1912

  CONTENTS

  The Offshore Pirate

  The Ice Palace

  Head and Shoulders

  The Cut-Glass Bowl

  Bernice Bobs Her Hair

  Benediction

  Dalyrimple Goes Wrong

  The Four Fists

  The Offshore Pirate

  I

  This unlikely story begins on a sea that was a blue dream, as colorful as blue-silk stockings, and beneath a sky as blue as the irises of children’s eyes. From the western half of the sky the sun was shying little golden disks at the sea — if you gazed intently enough you could see them skip from wave tip to wave tip until they joined a broad collar of golden coin that was collecting half a mile out and would eventually be a dazzling sunset. About half-way between the Florida shore and the golden collar a white steam-yacht, very young and graceful, was riding at anchor and under a blue-and-white awning aft a yellow-haired girl reclined in a wicker settee reading The Revolt of the Angels, by Anatole France.

  She was about nineteen, slender and supple, with a spoiled alluring mouth and quick gray eyes full of a radiant curiosity. Her feet, stockingless, and adorned rather than clad in blue-satin slippers which swung nonchalantly from her toes, were perched on the arm of a settee adjoining the one she occupied. And as she read she intermittently regaled herself by a faint application to her tongue of a half-lemon that she held in her hand. The other half, sucked dry, lay on the deck at her feet and rocked very gently to and fro at the almost imperceptible motion of the tide.

  The second half-lemon was well-nigh pulpless and the golden collar had grown astonishing in width, when suddenly the drowsy silence which enveloped the yacht was broken by the sound of heavy footsteps and an elderly man topped with orderly gray hair and clad in a white-flannel suit appeared at the head of the companionway. There he paused for a moment until his eyes became accustomed to the sun, and then seeing the girl under the awning he uttered a long even grunt of disapproval.

  If he had intended thereby to obtain a rise of any sort he was doomed to disappointment. The girl calmly turned over two pages, turned back one, raised the lemon mechanically to tasting distance, and then very faintly but quite unmistakably yawned.

  “Ardita!” said the gray-haired man sternly.

  Ardita uttered a small sound indicating nothing.

  “Ardita!” he repeated. “Ardita!”

  Ardita raised the lemon languidly, allowing three words to slip out before it reached her tongue.

  “Oh, shut up.”

  “Ardita!”

  “What?”

  “Will you listen to me — or will I have to get a servant to hold you while I talk to you?”

  The lemon descended very slowly and scornfully.

  “Put it in writing.”

  “Will you have the decency to close that abominable book and discard that damn lemon for two minutes?”

  “Oh, can’t you lemme alone for a second?”

  “Ardita, I have just received a telephone message from the shore — — “

  “Telephone?” She showed for the first
time a faint interest.

  “Yes, it was — — “

  “Do you mean to say,” she interrupted wonderingly, “‘at they let you run a wire out here?”

  “Yes, and just now — — “

  “Won’t other boats bump into it?”

  “No. It’s run along the bottom. Five min — — “

  “Well, I’ll be darned! Gosh! Science is golden or something — isn’t it?”

  “Will you let me say what I started to?”

  “Shoot!”

  “Well it seems — well, I am up here — “ He paused and swallowed several times distractedly. “Oh, yes. Young woman, Colonel Moreland has called up again to ask me to be sure to bring you in to dinner. His son Toby has come all the way from New York to meet you and he’s invited several other young people. For the last time, will you — — “

  “No,” said Ardita shortly, “I won’t. I came along on this darn cruise with the one idea of going to Palm Beach, and you knew it, and I absolutely refuse to meet any darn old colonel or any darn young Toby or any darn old young people or to set foot in any other darn old town in this crazy state. So you either take me to Palm Beach or else shut up and go away.”

  “Very well. This is the last straw. In your infatuation for this man. — a man who is notorious for his excesses — a man your father would not have allowed to so much as mention your name — you have rejected the demi-monde rather than the circles in which you have presumably grown up. From now on — — “

  “I know,” interrupted Ardita ironically, “from now on you go your way and I go mine. I’ve heard that story before. You know I’d like nothing better.”

  “From now on,” he announced grandiloquently, “you are no niece of mine. I — — “

  “O-o-o-oh!” The cry was wrung from Ardita with the agony of a lost soul. “Will you stop boring me! Will you go ‘way! Will you jump overboard and drown! Do you want me to throw this book at you!”

  “If you dare do any — — “

  Smack! The Revolt of the Angels sailed through the air, missed its target by the length of a short nose, and bumped cheerfully down the companionway.

  The gray-haired man made an instinctive step backward and then two cautious steps forward. Ardita jumped to her five feet four and stared at him defiantly, her gray eyes blazing.

  “Keep off!”

  “How dare you!” he cried.

  “Because I darn please!”

  “You’ve grown unbearable! Your disposition — — “

  “You’ve made me that way! No child ever has a bad disposition unless it’s her fancy’s fault! Whatever I am, you did it.”

  Muttering something under his breath her uncle turned and, walking forward called in a loud voice for the launch. Then he returned to the awning, where Ardita had again seated herself and resumed her attention to the lemon.

  “I am going ashore,” he said slowly. “I will be out again at nine o’clock to-night. When I return we start back to New York, wither I shall turn you over to your aunt for the rest of your natural, or rather unnatural, life.” He paused and looked at her, and then all at once something in the utter childness of her beauty seemed to puncture his anger like an inflated tire, and render him helpless, uncertain, utterly fatuous.

  “Ardita,” he said not unkindly, “I’m no fool. I’ve been round. I know men. And, child, confirmed libertines don’t reform until they’re tired — and then they’re not themselves — they’re husks of themselves.” He looked at her as if expecting agreement, but receiving no sight or sound of it he continued. “Perhaps the man loves you — that’s possible. He’s loved many women and he’ll love many more. Less than a month ago, one month, Ardita, he was involved in a notorious affair with that red-haired woman, Mimi Merril; promised to give her the diamond bracelet that the Czar of Russia gave his mother. You know — you read the papers.”

  “Thrilling scandals by an anxious uncle,” yawned Ardita. “Have it filmed. Wicked clubman making eyes at virtuous flapper. Virtuous flapper conclusively vamped by his lurid past. Plans to meet him at Palm Beach. Foiled by anxious uncle.”

  “Will you tell me why the devil you want to marry him?”

  “I’m sure I couldn’t say,” said Audits shortly. “Maybe because he’s the only man I know, good or bad, who has an imagination and the courage of his convictions. Maybe it’s to get away from the young fools that spend their vacuous hours pursuing me around the country. But as for the famous Russian bracelet, you can set your mind at rest on that score. He’s going to give it to me at Palm Beach — if you’ll show a little intelligence.”

  “How about the — red-haired woman?”

  “He hasn’t seen her for six months,” she said angrily. “Don’t you suppose I have enough pride to see to that? Don’t you know by this time that I can do any darn thing with any darn man I want to?”

  She put her chin in the air like the statue of France Aroused, and then spoiled the pose somewhat by raising the lemon for action.

  “Is it the Russian bracelet that fascinates you?”

  “No, I’m merely trying to give you the sort of argument that would appeal to your intelligence. And I wish you’d go ‘way,” she said, her temper rising again. “You know I never change my mind. You’ve been boring me for three days until I’m about to go crazy. I won’t go ashore! Won’t! Do you hear? Won’t!”

  “Very well,” he said, “and you won’t go to Palm Beach either. Of all the selfish, spoiled, uncontrolled disagreeable, impossible girl I have — — “

  Splush! The half-lemon caught him in the neck. Simultaneously came a hail from over the side.

  “The launch is ready, Mr. Farnam.”

  Too full of words and rage to speak, Mr. Farnam cast one utterly condemning glance at his niece and, turning, ran swiftly down the ladder.

  II

  Five o’clock robed down from the sun and plumped soundlessly into the sea. The golden collar widened into a glittering island; and a faint breeze that had been playing with the edges of the awning and swaying one of the dangling blue slippers became suddenly freighted with song. It was a chorus of men in close harmony and in perfect rhythm to an accompanying sound of oars dealing the blue writers. Ardita lifted her head and listened.

  “Carrots and Peas,

  Beans on their knees,

  Pigs in the seas,

  Lucky fellows!

  Blow us a breeze,

  Blow us a breeze,

  Blow us a breeze,

  With your bellows.”

  Ardita’s brow wrinkled in astonishment. Sitting very still she listened eagerly as the chorus took up a second verse.

  “Onions and beans,

  Marshalls and Deans,

  Goldbergs and Greens

  And Costellos.

  Blow us a breeze,

  Blow us a breeze,

  Blow us a breeze,

  With your bellows.”

  With an exclamation she tossed her book to the desk, where it sprawled at a straddle, and hurried to the rail. Fifty feet away a large rowboat was approaching containing seven men, six of them rowing and one standing up in the stern keeping time to their song with an orchestra leader’s baton.

  “Oysters and Rocks,

  Sawdust and socks,

  Who could make clocks

  Out of cellos? — — “

  The leader’s eyes suddenly rested on Ardita, who was leaning over the rail spellbound with curiosity. He made a quick movement with his baton and the singing instantly ceased. She saw that he was the only white man in the boat — the six rowers were negroes.

  “Narcissus ahoy!” he called politely.

  “What’s the idea of all the discord?” demanded Ardita cheerfully. “Is this the varsity crew from the county nut farm?”

  By this time the boat was scraping the side of the yacht and a great bulking negro in the bow turned round and grasped the ladder. Thereupon the leader left his position in the stern and before Ardita had realized his intent
ion he ran up the ladder and stood breathless before her on the deck.

  “The women and children will be spared!” he said briskly. “All crying babies will be immediately drowned and all males put in double irons!” Digging her hands excitedly down into the pockets of her dress Ardita stared at him, speechless with astonishment. He was a young man with a scornful mouth and the bright blue eyes of a healthy baby set in a dark sensitive face. His hair was pitch black, damp and curly — the hair of a Grecian statue gone brunette. He was trimly built, trimly dressed, and graceful as an agile quarter-back.

  “Well, I’ll be a son of a gun!” she said dazedly.

  They eyed each other coolly.

  “Do you surrender the ship?”

  “Is this an outburst of wit?” demanded Ardita. “Are you an idiot — or just being initiated to some fraternity?”

  “I asked you if you surrendered the ship.”

  “I thought the country was dry,” said Ardita disdainfully. “Have you been drinking finger-nail enamel? You better get off this yacht!”

  “What?” the young man’s voice expressed incredulity.

  “Get off the yacht! You heard me!”

  He looked at her for a moment as if considering what she had said.

  “No,” said his scornful mouth slowly; “No, I won’t get off the yacht. You can get off if you wish.”

  Going to the rail be gave a curt command and immediately the crew of the rowboat scrambled up the ladder and ranged themselves in line before him, a coal-black and burly darky at one end and a miniature mulatto of four feet nine at to other. They seemed to be uniformly dressed in some sort of blue costume ornamented with dust, mud, and tatters; over the shoulder of each was slung a small, heavy-looking white sack, and under their arms they carried large black cases apparently containing musical instruments.