I’ve spent the morning writing this letter because I am naturally disappointed about the Post’s not liking the Gwen story and must rest and go to work this afternoon to try to raise some money somehow, though I don’t know where to turn.
Scott
Oak Hall Hotel
Tryon,North Carolina
Received March 23, 1937
Dear Harold;
Here, or herewith, is the revision of ‘Thumbs Up.’ Maybe it’ll go. It’s an odd story - one editor says cut the thumbs episode, another says cut everything else - I’ve done the latter and shortened it to about 5500 words (from 8000) and revised it thoroughly and written a new scene.
Thanks for the money - as time passes my position becomes more and more ludicrous, I mean generally. I just got a book (Books and Battles of the Twenties) in which I am practically a leading character; my birthday is two-column front page news as if I were 80 instead of 40 - and I sit worrying about next week’s $35.00 hotel bill! I really meant it that I’d like to go to Hollywood and let them see me. I wish you could see me. Weight 160 instead of 143 which was it last Xmas. And the dullest dogs making $1000 a week in Hollywood. Something has got to be done - this will end in slow ruination. Anyhow I’ve begun the football story but God knows where the next two weeks’ rent comes from. I will owe $105 by Thursday and will need cash - all in all $150. I was going to Max as a last resource but you have tapped that. What in hell shall I do? I want to write the football story unworried and uninterrupted. Since going on the wagon I will have written two originals, rewritten two stories (‘Thumbs’ and the cartoon story) and written 3 little Esquire pieces (two of them mediocre) to live on. That will be a hard two and a half months’ work. But reward, there is none.
In fatalistic optimism,
Scott
Going to the country dog-shows isn’t my daily occupation - it was my single appearance of that kind. I wanted you to see how different I look from Xmas.
Look at this — * next to me - covered with rings, lives in a mansion and owns it. Ah me - well, perhaps I’ve learned wisdom at 40 at last. If I ever get out of this mess!
5521 Amestoy Avenue
Encino,
California
August 2, 1939
Dear Harold:
I have been and still am somewhat shocked by your sudden and most determined reversal of form. Only six months ago you were telling me ‘not to be in too much of a hurry to pay you back’ but instead try to save some money. It was something of a counter-blast to find that my credit was now worth much less than I loaned Charles Warren and other young authors last year.
Your advice that I should have ‘taken on some movie work’ with a lung cavity and a temperature of 102° was a new slant. The cavity evidently began to form about the time I started on Air Raid, and your implication that I had been loafing must have been based on those two-day binges in New York, several months apart. Anyhow, when the temperature was still a hundred and the cavity still crackling I was asking Swanie to get me work and meanwhile putting in five hours a day on a bed-desk.
Being in need, I make no apology for having sent the original of the enclosed directly to the Post, with the request that they communicate by wire to me as well as by letter to you. I had a fifteen-day wait on ‘Temperature’ - it is hard to remember there was a time your cables reached me in North Africa. Sending a story direct may be bad policy but one doesn’t consider that when one is living on money from a hocked Ford - every day counts, less in the material matter of eating than in the inestimable question of morale. Swanie turned down a dozen jobs for me when I was sick in bed - but there just haven’t been any since the cavity began to heal.
I don’t have to explain that even though a man has once saved another from drowning, when he refuses to stretch out his arm a second time the victim has to act quickly and desperately to save himself. For change you did, Harold, and without warning - the custom of lending up to the probable yield of a next short story obtained between us for a dozen years. Certainly you haven’t just discovered that I’m not any of the things a proper business man should be? And it wasn’t even a run-around - it was a walk-around that almost made me think the New York telegraph was closed. Finally I had to sell a pair of stories to Esquire, the longer one of which (2800 words) might have brought twice as much from Liberty.
Whatever I am supposed to guess, your way of doing it, and the time you chose, was as dispiriting as could be. I have been all too hauntingly aware during these months of what you did from 1934 to 1937 to keep my head above water after the failure of Tender, Zelda’s third collapse and the long illness. But you havemade me sting nevertheless. Neither Swanson nor Sheilah nor Eddie Knopf have any idea but that I have labored conscientiously out here for twenty months and every studio (except Wanger, but including Metro!) asked for, according to Swanson, me at some time during April and May.
Your reasons for refusing to help me were all good, all praiseworthy, all sound - but wouldn’t they have been equally so any time within the past fifteen years? And they followed a year and a half in which I fulfilled all my obligations If it is of any interest to you I haven’t had a drink in two months but if I was full of champagne I couldn’t be more confused about you than I am now.
Ever yours,
Scott
P.S. Temperature’ turned up yesterday at the Van Nuys Railway Express - and in case you think that’s incredible I forward the evidence.
5521 Amestoy Avenue
Encino,
California
October 7, 1939
Dear Harold:
Thanks for your letter. Thanks for taking care of Scottie. And your saying that you had written me several letters and torn them up did something to clarify what I had begun to interpret as some sadistic desire to punish me. I sent the stories to Colliers for the simple reason that it seemed difficult to deal with someone who treats you with dead silence. Against silence you can do nothing but fret and wonder. Your disinclination to back me is, of course, your own business, but representing me without communication (such as returning a story to me without even an airmail stamp) is pretty close to saying you were through with me.
I communicated directly with Colliers and wrote a series of pieces for Esquire because we have to live and eat and nothing can interfere with that. Can’t you regard this trouble as a question of a man who has had a bad break and leave out the moral problem as to whether or not or how much it is his own fault? And if you think I can’t write, read these stories. They brought just two hundred and fifty apiece from Esquire, because I couldn’t wait to hear from you, because I had bank balances of five, ten and fifteen dollars.
Anyhow I have ‘lived dangerously’ and I may quite possibly have to pay for it, but there are plenty of other people to tell me that and it doesn’t seem as if it should be you.
I don’t think there is any chance of fixing up that other story. It just isn’t good.
Sincerely,
Scott
P.S. Could you mail me back these stories? I have no copies. Don’t you agree that they are worth more than $250.00? One of them was offered to Colliers in desperation - the first Pat Hobby story - but Littauer wired that it ‘wasn’t a story.’ Who’s right?
To Mrs Richard Taylor
PrincetonUniversity
Princeton,
New Jersey
June 10,1917
Dear Cousin Ceci: Glad you liked the poem. Here are two others.
ON THE SAME PLAY - TWICE SEEN
Here in the figured dark I watch once more There with the curtain rolls a year away A year of years - There was an idle day Of ours when happy endings didn’t bore Our unfermented souls - and rocks held ore, Your little face beside me, wide-eyed, gay, Smiled its own repertoire, while the poor play Reached me as a faint ripple reaches short -
Yawning and wondering an evening thru I watch alone and chatterings of course Spoil the one scene which somehow did have charms You wept a bit, and I grew sad for you R
ight there - where Mr K. defends divorce And What’s-her-name falls fainting in his arms.
Here’s another one, very recent, that’s rather better. It’s called:
WHEN WE MEET AGAIN
The little things we only know We’ll have forgotten, Put away Words that have melted with the snow And dreams begotten This today And dawns and days we used to greet That all could see and none could share Will be no bond - and when we meet
We shall not care - We shall not care.
And not a tear will fall for this
A little while hence
No regret
Will rise for a remembered kiss
Nor even silence
When we’ve met
Can give old ghosts a waste to roam
Or stir the surface of the sea
If grey shapes drift beneath the foam
We shall not see - We shall not see.
When life leaps deathward as a flame
Love at the scorching
Of its breath
Casts his mad heart into the same
Fires that are torching
Life to Death
Though cracks may widen in the tomb
Chords from still heart to moving ear
Tremble and penetrate the gloom
We shall not hear - We shall not hear
Colours of mine have filled your eyes.
Light from the morn
Of our last sea
Has gathered to you till the wise
Think love so born
Eternity.
But wisdom passes - yet the years
Will feed you wisdom; age will go Back to the old - For all your tears
We shall not know - We shall not know.
I can’t resist putting in two more.
ON A CERTAIN MAN
He loved me too much, I could not love him
Opened so wide my eyes I could not see,
For all I left unsaid I might not move him
He did not love himself enough for me.
He kissed my hand and let himself, unruddered,
Drift on the surface of my ‘youth’ and ‘sin’
His was the blameless life, and still I shuddered
Seeing the dark spot where his lips had been.
‘How you must hate me, you of joy and brightness
Who have no sentiment - Ah - I’m a bore -’
I smile and lie and pray the God, politeness;
I’ll sicken if his curled hair nears once more.
Trembling before the fire, I gasp and rise.
Yawn some and drawl of sleep, profess to nod,
And weird parallels image on my eyes
A devil screaming in the arms of God.
He’d gone too far, had merged his heart somewhere
In my mean self, and all that I could see
Was a raw soul that labored, grovelled there.
I loathed him for that soul - that love of me.
Here’s the last one. Do you remember what I said about my capacity for hero worship? Well -
CLAY FEET
Still on clear mornings I can see them sometimes -
Men, gods and ghosts, queens, girls and graces,
Then that light fades, noon sickens, and there come times
When I can see but pale and ravaged places
That they have left in exodus; and seeing
My whole soul falters, as an invalid
Too often cheered. Did something in their being
That was fine pass when my ideal did?
Men, gods and ghosts, damned so by my own damning,
Whether you knew or no, saw or nay,
Either were weak or failed a bit in shamming -
Yet had I known a freedom that could weigh
So much, hung round the heart, I’d sought protection
Once more in those warm dreams, lest you should fall
From that great height to this great imperfection -
So do I mourn - so do I hate you all.
I’m writing a lot now - especially poetry - also drilling and preparing to go to this second camp - Damn this war!
Had I met Shane Leslie when I last saw you? Well, I’ve seen a lot more of him - He’s an author and a perfect knockout - On the whole I’m having a fairly good time - but it looks as if the youth of me and my generation ends sometime during the present year, rather summarily - If we ever get back, and I don’t particularly care, we’ll be rather aged - in the worst way. After all, life hasn’t much to offer except youth and I suppose for older people the love of youth in others. I agree perfectly with Rupert Brooke’s men of Grantchester
‘Who when they get to feeling old
They up and shoot themselves I’m told.’
Every man I’ve met who’s been to war - that is this war - seems to have lost youth and faith in man unless they’re wine-bibbers of patriotism which, of course, I think is the biggest rot in the world.
Updike of Oxford or Harvard says ‘I die for England’ or ‘I die for America’ - not me. I’m too Irish for that - I may get killed for America - but I’m going to die for myself.
I’m going to visit in West Virginia and I may stop by Norfolk for a day. Will you give me lunch on say about the twentieth - or will you be away?
Do read The End of a Chapter and The Celt and the World by Shane Leslie - you’d enjoy them both immensely.
I suppose Tom has come and gone -I hear reports of him all over the country. He certainly seems to carry faith and hope with him. He’s the old fashioned Jesuit - the kind they got continually when the best men in the priesthood were all Jesuits.
Went to a reception last week at the Duke de Richelieu’s in New York where I consumed great quantities of champagne and fraternized with most of the prominent Catholics - due to champagne. I used to wonder how terribly stiff and formal receptions were possible but I see now that it is the juice of the grape.
One more thing - the most sincere apologies for the cold you got listening to my inane ramblings (of course I don’t really think they were inane) on the porch of the Cairo.
Give my best to Sally Cecilia Tommy Ginny. And love to Aunt Elise.
Yours etc.,
F. Scott Fitz
The Ambassador Hotel Los Angeles, California
Winter, 1927
Dear Cousin Ceci:
If you can imagine the rush from France to Italy to New York to Montgomery to New Orleans and then to - to be plunged immediately into movie-making you’ll understand this delayed Christmas card. Please believe how much I want to see you all. And do send me Sally’s address because we want to send her our delayed wedding present when we get back to New York.
My God! how hard they work out here! This is a tragic city of beautiful girls - the girls who mop the floor are beautiful, the waitresses, the shop ladies. You never want to see any more beauty. (Always excepting yours.)
Love,
Scott
S.S. Olympic
February 23,1931
My dearest Ceci:
I don’t know what in hell I’d have done unless you had come up. The trip South was not so fortunate as it might have been, but it didn’t blot out my sense of you and how much I have always loved you and depended on you. Thank you for your second note. I have always wanted, if anything happened to me while Zelda is still sick, to get you to take care of Scottie.
All those days in America seem sort of blurred and dreamlike now. Sometimes I think of Father, but only sentimentally; if I had been an only child I would have liked those lines I told you about of William McFee over his grave:-
‘O staunch old heart that toiled so long for me: I waste my years sailing along the sea.’
Life got very crowded after I left you, and I am damned glad to be going back to Europe where I am away from most of the people I care about, and can think instead of feeling.
Gigi wrote me such a sweet letter, especially because it said that you liked me.
Dearest love to you,
/> Scott
1307 Park Avenue
Baltimore,
Maryland
Postmarked August 17,1934
Dearest Ceci:
Mrs Owens says you asked her about the picture - I did get it Didn’t you get yours? Let me know.
Everything here goes rather badly. Zelda no better - your correspondent in rotten health and two movie ventures gone to pot - one for Grade Allen and George Burns that damn near went over and took 2 weeks’ work and they liked and wanted to buy - and Paramount stepped on. It’s like a tailor left with a made-to- order suit - no one to sell it to. So back to the Post. (By the way I have a new series in the Redbook.) Hope to hell the whoopies are well, and all the kids.
Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated) Page 464