1403 North Laurel Avenue
Hollywood,
California August 3, 1940
Dear Scottie:
Jane Perkins passed through and happened to mention that she had taken that Blake-to-Keats course - I became less enthusiastic about it because she said they studied Amy Lowell’s biography which is a saccharine job compared to Colvin’s. However, in the catalogue I see a course called #217 in verse writing. It says, ‘limited to twelve members - permission required’ and it gives only one point. Is that at all practical? I imagine there would be some latitude in the poets that you would read. There is also that Shakespeare course (165) and one in French Poetry (240), one point. Some of the history and philosophical courses look good to me but - oh, hell I can’t advise you from this distance. I’m just sorry you can’t read some poetry.
It isn’t something easy to get started on by yourself. You need, at the beginning, some enthusiast who also knows his way around - John Peale Bishop performed that office for me at Princeton. I had always dabbled in ‘verse’ but he made me see, in the course of a couple of months, the difference between poetry and non- poetry. After that one of my first discoveries was that some of the professors who were teaching poetry really hated it and didn’t know what it was about. I got in a series of endless scraps with them so that finally I dropped English altogether.
Poetry is either something that lives like fire inside you - like music to the musician or Marxism to the Communist - or else it is nothing, an empty, formalized bore around which pedants can endlessly drone their notes and explanations. ‘The Grecian Urn’ is unbearably beautiful with every syllable as inevitable as the notes in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony or it’s just something you don’t understand. It is what it is because an extraordinary genius paused at that point in history and touched it. I suppose I’ve read it a hundred times. About the tenth time I began to know what it was about, and caught the chime in it and the exquisite inner mechanics. Likewise with ‘The Nightingale’ which I can never read through without tears in my eyes; likewise the ‘Pot of Basil’ with its great stanzas about the two brothers, ‘Why were they proud, etc.’; and ‘The Eve of St Agnes,’ which has the richest, most sensuous imagery in English, not excepting Shakespeare. And finally his three or four great sonnets, ‘Bright Star’ and the others.
Knowing those things very young and granted an ear, one could scarcely ever afterwards be unable to distinguish between gold and dross in what one read. In themselves those eight poems are a scale of workmanship for anybody who wants to know truly about words, their most utter value for evocation, persuasion or charm. For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.
You still have that French typewriter in storage, haven’t you? Would it be any good? We rent one here and it costs only $5.00 for three months. You threaten to send me money! If you have any extra, pay your bills in Poughkeepsie. My suggestion is that after you visit Miss Doyle, you go to Lake Forest and from there go South to Montgomery. I’m afraid the latter seems to be necessary. Your mother most particularly asked to see you again and the only alternative would be to send her North to see you, which means sending two people. I know it will be dull going into that hot little town early in September - but you are helping me. Even invalids like your mother have to have mileposts - things to look forward to and back upon. It gives her more pride there in Montgomery if you come to see her, something to talk about. Only think how empty her life is and you will see the importance of your going there. Will you figure out what the fare to Chicago will be?
You wrote me such a full letter that I haven’t answered it all even now. When we get some breathing space here I’ll have Frances figure how much you cost this year.
Dearest love.
Daddy
P.S. Be careful about showing my letters - I mean to your mother for instance. I write you very freely.
1403 North Laurel Avenue
Hollywood,
California August 12, 1940
Dearest Scottina:
I’m sorry I didn’t mention the story - I’m glad you sold it but I thought you were disappointed that you didn’t sell it to a big magazine. I suggested disposing of it to some Vassar paper - do you remember? - just for the sake of getting into print and getting some opinions on it. I’m glad you got some money too. I thought it as a sort of practice composition but I felt a personal interest in it, not having forgotten the nights we worked over it.
I saw your picture in Harper’s Bazaar and I’m glad you got the job. Working among the poor has differing effects on people. If you’re poor yourself you get their psychology and it’s broadening - for example, when a boy of the bourgeoise ships before the mast on a tramp-schooner where he has to endure the same privations as the seamen, undoubtedly he achieves something of their point of view forever. On the contrary, a Bennington girl spending a month in slum work and passing weekends at her father’s mansion in Long Island gets nothing at all except a smug feeling that she is Lady Bountiful.
I was interested in your Cape Cod conquest. Theoretically a girl has her widest range of choice from about 19 years, 6 months, to 20 years, 6 months - or so I figure. The 18-year-old girl seems to have, because she has a stag line after her, but actually she has probably collected less eligibles than a slightly older girl. Of course, with the war there may be a tendency among your generation to rush into things. There were lots of quick marriages in 1918. Most of the men came back - but there are a few ‘class boys’ from my class at Princeton who never saw their fathers.
Enclosed is a Vassar paper about the Spanish. Do remember that, with a new language, the first week when you Iearn the structure is the important time. I believe that if you study Spanish hard for a fortnight, even at the expense of everything else, you can coast along on it pretty easily the rest of the year, but if you don’t get the verb forms right and the declensions it will start getting mountainously hard inside of a month and will become your cross. I discovered this in Italian at Princeton - neglecting it and then trying to catch up too late. Result: I flunked it hopelessly and never did learn it. However, I’m glad you’re taking a chance.
With dearest love, always,
Daddy
1403 North Laurel Avenue
Hollywood,
California August 24, 1940
Dearest Scottina:
I can imagine the dinner party. I remember taking Zelda to the young — ‘s when we were first married and it was a pretty frozen dish, though in general the places we went to even from the beginning were many flights up from the average business man’s menage. Business is a dull game and they pay a big price in human values for their money. They are ‘all right when you get to know them.’ I liked some of the young Princeton men in business but I couldn’t stand the Yale and Harvard equivalents because we didn’t even have the common ground of the past. The women are empty twirps mostly, easy to seduce and not good for much else. I am not talking about natural society women like Mary Harriman Rumsey and Sara Murphy and some others who made their lives into pageants, almost like actresses.
However, you seem wise enough to see that there is something in — ‘s angle. College gives you a head start, especially a girl, and people are not in any hurry to live and think your way. It’s all a question of proportion: if you married an army officer you would live half a lifetime of kow-towing to your inferiors until your husband made his way to the top. If, as the chances are, you marry a business man - because for the present business absorbs most of the energetic and attractive boys - you will have to play your cards properly in the business hierarchy. That was why I have always hoped that life would throw you among lawyers or men who were going into politics or big-time journalism. They lead rather larger lives.
Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero. It is simply a means of making dubious promises to a credu
lous public. (But if you showed this letter to — it would be the end of everything in short order, for a man must have his pride and the more he realizes such a situation the less he can afford to admit it.) If I had been promoted when I was an advertising man, given enough money to marry your mother in 1920, my life might have been altogether different. I’m not sure though. People often struggle through to what they are in spite of any detours - and possibly I might have been a writer sooner or later anyhow.
You haven’t given me much idea of — . Would he object to your working - outside the house I mean? Excluding personal charm, which I assume, and the more conventional virtues which go with success in business, is he his own man? Has he any force of character? Or imagination and generosity? Does he read hooks? Has he any leaning toward the arts and sciences or anything beyond creature comfort and duck-shooting? In short, has he the possibilities of growth that would make a lifetime with him seem attractive? These things don’t appear later - they are either there latently or they will never be there at all.
I’m not asking these questions to be answered, but only to suggest again that if he is a fairly standardized article, you will find plenty of them during the next year - more than you ever met before - and eighteen is still young to commit yourself.
I think I have a job with 20th Century, which may be a long one. I will know Monday. I’m deducing that you received some money from Harper’s because you give me no idea of the state of your finances. Anyhow I’m enclosing $15.00. When you get this letter please night letter me how much it will cost to get to Montgomery. I would suggest that you go as follows: take the evening boat from New York to Norfolk, spending a day or night with Ceci, and then go from there to Montgomery or to Atlanta as you like. Certainly before you see all those walking neuroses you can spend a day with the Taylors who have always liked you so much. The trip to Norfolk by boat from New York is really damn nice. You come into Chesapeake Bay and Hampton Roads from a different angle - almost like an ocean voyage and the ship is larger and nicer than the little ferry boats from Baltimore. Also the price is reasonable - less than railroad.
Dear, even in joking I don’t like you to use the expression ‘nervous breakdown’ about any emotional struggle you may have to pass through in the next couple of years. Is your generation so soft that they talk of going to pieces if life doesn’t always present itself in terms of beautiful, easy decisions? Most girls of your generation and your mother’s and your grandmother’s have had to decide difficult things at your age and it is silly to think that it is any strain peculiar to yourself. The young men are just as bad - some of them talk about having nervous breakdowns if they are conscripted. But you didn’t cut your milk teeth on an aspirin tablet and I hate that raspberry sundae diction. Face what you’ve got to face and keep your chin where it belongs.
With dearest love, always,
Daddy
P.S. In your telegram please say also if you are going to Norfolk, and when.
1403 North Laurel Avenue
Hollywood,
California September 5, 1940
Dearest Scottie:
I’m going into a huddle on this script and probably won’t be able to write you again at length before Vassar starts. I read the story in College Bazaar and was very pleased with it. You’ve put in some excellent new touches and its only fault is the jerkiness that goes with a story that has often been revised. Stories are best written in either one jump or three, according to the length. The three-jump story should be done on three successive days, then a day or so for revise and off she goes. This of course is the ideal - in many stories one strikes a snag that must be hacked at but, on the whole, stories that drag along or are terribly difficult (I mean a difficulty that comes from a poor conception and consequent faulty construction) never flow quite as well in the reading. However, I’m glad you published this one. It was nice to see your name.
About names, I don’t quite know what to do. You calling yourself Frances Scott Fitzgerald does push me a little into the background. It calls attention to my being of my generation, which is not too good since I hope to have a big book out in a year. That is my only objection. There are three Van Dorens who write and people have long ago given up telling which is Rita, which is Mark, and which is Carl. I’m afraid that Frances Scott Fitzgerald is likely to lead to a certain confusion. What do you think?
You never told me why you stayed in New York so long - I lather gather somebody was married, possibly my Favorite Glamorist. All girls from 18 to 19 take the marriage of a friend as a heavy body blow but don’t let it worry you, kid. Remember your old book, ‘Men Are Like Street Cars.’ Anyhow panic about such things is completely endemic to your age and has no basis in reality. God willing, you will have at least fifteen more years of being highly attractive to attractive men. And all this because you’ve never shaved your legs, plucked your eyebrows or criticized your father! —
A last thought about other people’s weddings - you don’t have to be right about your objectives at the moment - only about your ways and means, learning Spanish, for instance, getting to know poetry. Honestly the ends will take care of themselves.
With dearest love,
Daddy P.S. Also saw your account of a weekend at Yale, Harvard and Princeton. It was very colorful. Things don’t seem to have changed much. Have you ever been to Cornell? Aw, tell me the truth, I won’t dock your allowance. How much does College Bazaar pay you? If you remember, will you write me the name of a picture- frame store at Vassar and I’ll have those Princeton etchings of Don Swann’s framed for you before college starts.
1403 North Laurel Avenue
Hollywood, California
September 17, 1940
Dearest Scottina:
I hope they won’t gun for you at college this year but from the tenor of the letter they sent about your work improving, I gather that they will. There was just a hint in it. You must try to realize their point of view and compromise with it. They feel they give you a lot and don’t want you to use the place as simply a proving ground for individual egotisms -
- which, of course, is what you and I would like it to be. I went back to junior year with Princeton in my pocket and it took them four months to take it all away from me - stripped of every office and on probation - the phrase was ‘ineligible for extra-curricular activities.’ I was in the hospital besides.
Don’t let it happen to you. It isn’t necessary. Start well with your work - the old ‘initial impression.’ But if you took the whole play on your shoulders, as you threaten, you’ll have to get straight B’s to make them think you’re doing any studying - can’t you find some bright sophomores to do the work while you play the executive - bring them along ‘to inherit,’ so to speak? If any one man tried to do the Triangle he’d have a beautiful breakdown - it’s a complex organization built up over years.
This is really such sensible advice - you’ve founded the club, you want to perpetuate it. All right - draw up an organization that will really divide the creative work, which is to say the hard work. For you to write, cast, direct, ballyhoo and manage - and do any work or reading besides is an idiotic program. I know what effort is and I respect it but aren’t you verging on the extravagant - you who pride yourself on your common sense?
When I set out to write a big novel at 21 it was ambitious and difficult - but when your mother started to catch up with Pavlova at 28 it was fantastic and impossible. Your trying to juggle this thing without a director or organization, with your Harper’s Bazaar and your admirers and the games and parties, would lead to disaster. It doesn’t take any prophet to make that observation - it just takes the most casual onlooker. No possible triumph is worth the loss of your health.
I could almost bet that you’ve done very little work on the play this summer - that it’s uppermost on your mind now. That is just the beginning of the great confusion in which you will find yourself if you don’t sit down now and decide what you can do and what you can’t - and find othe
rs to delegate it to. Believe me - they’ll let you do all the work - and heartily admire you - like they did me. They sent flowers too - but not to the footlights, where I expected them - only to the infirmary.
Your affectionate but somewhat concerned Daddy
P-S. This is an advance on your next week’s allowance as I know all your trips leave you penniless.
1403 North Laurel Avenue
Hollywood,California
October 5, 1940
Dearest Scottie:
Glad you liked Death in Venice. I don’t see any connection between that and Dorian Gray except that they both have an implied homosexuality. Dorian Gray is little more than a somewhat highly charged fairy tale which stimulates adolescents to intellectual activity at about seventeen (it did the same for you as it did for me). Sometime you will re-read it and see that it is essentially naive. It is in the lower ragged edge of ‘literature,’ just as Gone with the Wind is in the higher brackets of crowd entertainment. Death in Venice, on the other hand, is a work of art, of the school of Flaubert - yet not derivative at all. Wilde had two models for Dorian Gray: Balzac’s Le Peau de Chagrin and Huysman’s A Rebours.
After which literary lecture I can only sympathize with the practically desolate state of Vassar and assure you that many of those that have left will lament through their lives that they didn’t go on. In that connection, by the way, aren’t there many transfers from other colleges in junior year? I should think after this past year everything would indeed be anti-climax. You’ve had almost everything you wanted - in Vassar, in Baltimore, and in general. But it’s rather lucky that in life we don’t go on repeating. Certainly you should have new objectives now - this of all years ought to be the time of awakening for that nascent mind of yours. Once one is caught up into the material world not one person in ten thousand finds the time to form literary taste, to examine the validity of philosophic concepts for himself, or to form what, for lack of a better phrase, I might call the wise and tragic sense of life.
Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated) Page 441