Let me hear some news of you and yours. Scottie seems to be settling down at last at Vassar, but I would never again want to undertake the education of a girl of whom boys have made a sort of adolescent fetish. I don’t think that down in her heart she likes it much either.
With affection,
Scott
To Christian Gauss
Edgemoor, Delaware Ellerslie
February 1, 1928
Dear Dean Gauss:
This is in elaboration of my excited telegram. As it happened I left Princeton in company with two different types and in both cases I worked the discussion around to the honor system. The freshman, a football man with whom I rode to the Junction, told me specifically (for I didn’t ask for opinions) that his roommate knew of two cases of absolute violations during tests, one man twice and another once, and ‘didn’t know whether to report it or not.’ He had known for some months. In other words the honor system no longer included his personal honor but seemed opposed to it.
I rode from the Junction to Phila with the president of a very prominent club, not my own, a Princetonian of the rather old- line, conservative, very gentlemanly type. He said he’d often participated in discussions as to whether he would report a case - and his conclusion was he didn’t know. But he knew of cases where violations had not been reported. The implication was that these were many. The utter stupidity of the business on the part of the undergraduates is what excited and depressed me to the extent of wiring you. I wanted to come back and see you but there was a whole house party here at home.
Now it seems to me that if one complete generation goes through with this attitude, that is if next year there is no class which hasn’t felt it as part of them, the chain is eternally broken and something has gone out of the life and pride of every Princeton man. But I can’t believe it could happen surreptitiously. What is behind it? I heard some talk about the ‘spirit of the honor system’ and an implication that it was being stretched too far, to cover themes, etc. If this has been done then I can understand it and the people who stretched it have, I believe, been in grave error. For after all it was a bargain, as all honor is until it becomes a tradition, and if it applied to themes what does the undergraduate get out of it? The other way he gets freedom from supervision, but themes were never written under supervision. As delicate a thing as the honor system is not at anyone’s willful and arbitrary control.
Don’t you think that, if that is so, it means that it should be redefined in its original and simplest form? Then perhaps an appeal might be made all at once, in the Prince, student council, by alumni (my occasionally eloquent pen is at your service) to show them the utterly perverted stupidity of what they are doing? I feel helpless and ignorant. Please enlighten me.
Always yours cordially and admiringly,
Scott Fitzg —
P.S. I’m so sorry you were let in for my ‘speech’ the other night. It was my first and last public appearance and the awful part of it was that I really did have something to say.
La Paix, Rodgers’
Forge Towson,
Maryland
February 2, 1933
Dear Mr Gauss:
I had no special reason for calling you beyond that of friendship. I was up there for a couple of days because Gregg Dougherty was checking over some chemistry data I had in a story. I observed the disappearance of the rah-rah boy and thought Princeton in sweaters was quite becoming to itself. If this depression wasn’t so terrible it wouldn’t be so bad at all.
I am still at the novel and hope to God it can be finished this spring as I am very tired of being Mr Lorimer’s little boy year after year, though I don’t know what I’d do without him.
Will certainly call on you when I next come to Princeton. With best regards to Mrs Gauss and your beautiful red headed progeny, I am, as always,
Your friend,
F. Scott Fitzgerald
1307 Park Avenue
Baltimore,
Maryland
April 23, 1934
Dear Mr Gauss:
Your full and generous letter reached me just before I went off on a three-day vacation. I cannot tell you how it pleased me.There comes a time when a writer writes only for certain people and where the opinion of the others is of little less than no importance at all and you are one of the people for whom I, subconsciously, write. From the time that you put in a good word for my first book, then bound for Scribners, I have appreciated your opinion and advice. I remember the one thing you said against The Great Gats by in Paris some seven years ago when we saw something of each other with Ernest Hemingway; the fact that I had over-used the expression of ‘windows blooming with light’ has stuck with me to the present day, and I think had a large and valuable influence in some of my problems.
I wish to God I could join you and Bunny on your junket but I am simply swamped by the hangover of the book and with domestic affairs so I don’t think I will see Princeton before June, and, believe me, I regret it very much because there is much more that I want to talk to you about than literature.
Scribners writes that they are sending me your book which I think I have read almost entire in its scattered form but which I will pursue again with deep pleasure.
With best regards to Mrs Gauss and admiration for your beautiful red-headed progeny, I am
Ever yours, (even in red crayon, the only thing available)
Scott Fitzg —
1307 Park Avenue
Baltimore,
Maryland
September 7, 1934
Dear Dean Gauss:
This is a wild idea of mine, conditioned by the fact that my physician thinks I am in a solitary rut and that I ought to have outside interests. Well, outside interests generally mean for me women, liquor or some form of exhibitionism. The third seems to be most practical at the present moment, wherefore I would like to give a series of lectures at Princeton, say eight, on the actual business of creating fiction. There would be no charge and I would consider it a favor if I were allowed to do this in a University lecture hall. (Incidentally, to safeguard you from my elaborate reputation, I would pledge my word to do no drinking in Princeton save what might be served at your table if you should provide me with luncheon before one of these attempts.)
The lectures I’ve not planned but they would be, in general, the history of say:
1.What Constitutes the Creative Temperament 1. — What Creative Material Is.
2. — Its Organization.
And so forth and so on.
This would be absolutely first-hand stuff and there might be a barrier to crash in regard to the English Department, and if you don’t think this is the time to do it don’t hesitate to let me know frankly. So many bogus characters have shown up in Princeton trying to preach what they have never been able to practice, that I think even if I reach only half a dozen incipient talents the thing might be worthwhile from the scholastic point of view, and will be selfishly worthwhile to me -I would like to time these lectures so that they would come on the afternoon or eve of athletic events that I would like to see.
You will know best how to sound out the powers-that-be in the English Department. I have a hunch that Gerould rather likes me and I like Root whether he likes me or not....
This is an arrow in the dark. I feel I never knew so much about my stuff as I now know, about the technique concerned, and I can’t think of anywhere I would like to disseminate this egotistic feeling more than at Princeton. This all might come to something, you know I Hope you had a fine summer abroad. With my respects to Mrs Gauss.
Ever yours,
F. Scott Fitzg
P.S. Naturally, after my wretched performance at the Cottage Club you might be cynical about my ability to handle an audience, but my suggestion is that the first lecture should be announced as a single, and if there is further demand we could go from thence to thither.
1307 Park Avenue
Baltimore,
Maryland
Sep
tember 26,1934
Dear Dean Gauss:
I know about The Club’ and they asked me last year to come and lecture. What I have against that is that it is sponsored by undergraduates which detracts from speaking under the authoritative aegis of the University, and second, because my plan was a series of lectures and not one that I could develop in a single evening. Also they were meant to be pretty serious stuff, that is, written out rather than spoken from notes, straight lectures rather than preceptorials. However, if the powers-that-be feel it inadvisable I can only yield the point and postpone the idea until a more favorable year.
Glad you enjoyed your rest abroad and escaped Miriam Hopkins’ jumping out of the second-story window onto your shoulders. But I suppose you’ve been kidded to death about that already and I know you took it with your usual sense of humor.
Best wishes always,
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Hotel Stafford
Baltimore,
Maryland
September 30, 1935
Dear Dean Gauss:
This is an imposition coming at the very beginning of the term when I know you are busy, so if you can grant this favor please do it at your leisure. As you know my daughter was brought up in France and I have conscientiously labored to keep her bilingual. This is now reduced to fortnightly conversations with a French woman and to supplement this I wanted some work in grammar - I mean advanced grammar. She is rather widely read in French (Hugo, Dumas, Molière, etc., and the classic poets) and I’d like to have for her some junior and senior French examination papers which I can have administered to her here. Is it within your power to have a sheaf of old ones dug up for me, or can you tell me where I can find some?
This is an odd request coming from such a wretched linguistic scholar as I was.
With best wishes to you always and with high hopes of seeing you sometime this fall,
Ever yours,
Scott Fitzg
To Harold Ober
599 Summit Avenue
St Paul,
Minnesota
January 8,
1920
Dear Mr Ober:
You could have knocked me over with a feather when you told me you had sold ‘Myra’ - I never was so heartily sick of a story before I finished it as I was of that one.
Enclosed is a new version of ‘Barbara,’ called ‘Bernice Bobs Her Hair’ to distinguish it from Mary Rinehart’s ‘Bab’ stories in the Post. I think I’ve managed to inject a snappy climax into it. Now this story went to several magazines this summer - Scribner’s, Woman’s Home Companion and the Post - but it was in an entirely different, absolutely unrecognizable form, single-spaced and none of ‘em kept it more than three days except Scribner’s, who wrote a personal letter on it. Is there any money in collections of short stories? This Post money comes in very handy - my idea is to go South - probably New Orleans - and write my second novel. Now my novels, at least my first one, are not like my short stories at all, they are rather cynical and pessimistic - and therefore I doubt if as a whole they’d stand much chance of being published serially in any of the uplift magazines at least until my first novel and those Post stories appear and I get some sort of a reputation.
Now I published three incidents of my first novel in Smart Set last summer and my idea in the new one is to sell such parts as might go as units separately to different magazines, as I write them, because it’ll take ten weeks to write it and I don’t want to run out of money. There will be one long thing which might make a novelette for the Post called The Diary of a Popular Girl, half a dozen cynical incidents that might do for Smart Set and perhaps a story or two for Scribner’s or Harper’s. How about it - do you think this is a wise plan - or do you think a story like C. G. Norris’ Salt or Cabell’s Jurgen or Dreiser’s Jennie Gerhardt would have one chance in a million to be sold serially? I’m asking you for an opinion about this beforehand because it will have an influence on my plans.
Hoping to hear from you I am,
Sincerely
F. Scott Fitzgerald
P.S. The excellent story I told you of probably won’t be along for two or three weeks. I’m stuck in the middle of it.
Salies de Bearn God knows where
Received March 15,1926
Dear Ober:
This is one of the lousiest stories I’ve ever written. Just terrible! I lost interest in the middle (by the way the last part is typed triple-space because I thought I could fix it - but I couldn’t).
PIease - and I mean this - don’t offer it to the Post. I think that as things are now it would be wretched policy. Nor to the Red- book. It hasn’t one redeeming touch of my usual spirit in it. I was desperate to begin a story and invented a business plot - the kind I can’t handle. I’d rather have $1000 for it from some obscure place than twice that and have it seen. I feel very strongly about this!
Am writing two of the best stories I’ve ever done in my life.
As ever,
Scott Fitz —
Villa St Louis Juan-les-Pins Alpes MaritimeFrance
Received June 3, 1926
Dear Ober:
Well, it’s rather melancholy to hear that the run was over. However as it was something of a succès d’estime and put in my pocket seventeen or eighteen thousand without a stroke of work on my part I should be, and am, well content.
A thousand thanks for your courtesy to my father. You went out of your way to be nice to him and he wrote me a most pleased and enthusiastic letter. He misses me, I think, and at his age such an outing as that was an exceptional pleasure. I am, as usual, deeply in your debt, and now for a most pleasant and personal reason. His own life after a rather brilliant start back in the seventies has been a ‘failure’ - he’s lived always in mother’s shadow and he takes an immense vicarious pleasure in any success of mine. Thank you.
Yours always,
Scott Fitzgerald
No stories sent since ‘Your Way and Mine’
10 rue Pergolèse Paris, France
Received November 16, 1929
Dear Harold:
Sorry this has been so delayed. I had another called The Bamaby Family’ that I worked on to the point of madness and may yet finish, but simply lost interest. The enclosed (I mean to say separate package) is heavy but, I think, good. Is it too heavy?
Now to answer questions, etc.
(1) As to Hemingway. You (I speak of you personally, not the old firm) made a mistake not to help sell his stuff personally 2 years ago - if any success was more clearly prognosticated I don’t know it. I told him the present situation and I know from several remarks of his that he thought at first he was being approached by the same agents as mine - but he is being fought over a lot now and is confused and I think the wisest thing is to do nothing at present. If any offer for moving pictures of his books for $20,000 or more came to you however don’t hesitate to wire him as he’s not satisfied with present picture offers. Simply wire him Garritus - he knows quite well who you are, etc. Please don’t in any correspondence with him use my name - you see my relations with him are entirely friendly and not business and he’d merely lose confidence in me if he felt he was being hemmed in by any coalition. My guess is, and I’m not sure, that he is pretty much deferring definite action for the present on stories and serials but this may not be true by the time this reaches you and may not be at this moment.
(2) — I note cable formula and will save $25 or $50 a year thereby.
(3) — Post stories all available here - don’t send Post.
(4) — World offer seems small ($300). Will answer refusing it politely myself.
(5) — Of new authors this Richard Douglass author of The Innocent Voyage (called High Wind in Bermuda) in England is much the best bet but a lot of editors may have thought of that. Maybe not though! Will try to keep you informed at the same time I usually do Scribners of anybody new I hear of as, if he interests me, I like to give him a chance for a hearing; but there’s nobody now - but may wri
te about that later! America will from now on give about one-half its book-buying ear to serious people or at any rate to people who have a backing from the sophisticated minority.
(6) — New Yorker offers O.K. but uninteresting - as for Mrs —
— (whoever she is) I will gladly modify my style and subject matter for her but she will have to give me her beautiful body first and I dare say the price is too high.
(7) — Did McCall’s like the article ‘Girls Believe in Girls?’
(8) — Now I have two uninterrupted months on the novel and will do my best. There is no question of my not trying for the serial right and never has been.
(9) — About The Woman’s Home Companion, you know.
Yours ever in Masonry and Concubinage,
Scott Fitzg
4 rue Herran Paris, France
Received May,3.1930
Dear Harold: —
First, I will be mailing a new story about the 25th. Glad you liked ‘A Nice Quiet Place.’ Did you ask about the corrected proof of ‘First Blood?’ (Addenda of letter covers this.) - I do so want to have it. Glad you put up a kick about the illustrations - they were awful, with all the youthful suggestion of a G.A.R. congress.
Thanks for the statements. I’m about where I feared I was.
Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated) Page 462