Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated)

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

  I just wanted to talk to someone who knew him as I knew him.

  Sincerely,

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  American Red Cross Base Hospital Camp Sheridan, Alabama

  Late January, 1919

  Dear Mr Leslie:

  Your letter seemed to start a new flow of sorrows in me. I’ve never wanted so much to die in my life. Father Fay always thought that if one of us died the other would, and now how I’ve hoped so.

  Oh, it all seemed so easy - life, I mean, with people who understood satisfied needs. Even the philistines seemed very good and quiet, always ready to be duped or influenced or something, and now my little world made to order has been shattered by the death of one man.

  I’m beginning to have a horror of people: I can quite sympathize with your desire to be a Carthusian.

  This has made me nearly sure that I will become a priest. I feel as if in a way his mantle had descended upon me - a desire, or more, to some day recreate the atmosphere of him. I think he was the sort of man St Peter was, so damned human.

  Think of the number of people who in a way looked to him and depended on him. His faith shining thru all the versatility and intellect.

  I think I did feel him but I can’t tell you of it in a letter. It was rather ghastly.

  I’m coming to New York in February or March to write or something. I’ll come and see you then.

  If there’s anything about him in any magazine I wish you’d send them.

  I’ve been here in the hospital with influenza.

  As ever,

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Westport, Connecticut August 6,1920

  Dear Mr Leslie:

  Your letter came today and I hasten to assure you that you were one of the half dozen chosen to whom I sent autographed first editions. I am sorry as the deuce, not to say humiliated, that it never reached you as you were my first literary sponsor, godfather to this book, and my original intention was to dedicate it to both of you. I sent it to your New York address as I’d lost your letter from Ireland.

  I am married and living rustically in Connecticut - working on a second novel. I married the Rosalind of the novel, the southern girl I was so attached to, after a grand reconciliation.

  The book has sold 30,000 copies here and will be published immediately in England and Australia.

  I apologize for the spelling of Dr Fay’s name; also - did you notice - for an almost excerpt from one of your letters with an account of the funeral. I didn’t see it myself and had to describe it. I credited you with it in the copy I sent you.

  I have written numerous short stories to be published by Scribners this fall, under the title of Flappers and Philosophers. I am living royally off the moving picture rights of these same stories.

  I will certainly send you a first edition of my new book which includes that story ‘Benediction,’ since published in the Smart Set - and next time I’m in New York I’ll send you the 7th edition of This Side of Paradise just to show you I’m not like republics ungrateful, and that the correction in Dr Fay’s name has been corrected.

  Stephen Parrott was staying with us last week and we talked much of both you and Dr Fay. I certainly made use of his letters and the poem in the book but I’m sure he would fully approve, don’t you?

  When are you coming to America?

  Sincerely,

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  P.S. My best regards to Mrs Leslie.

  The Catholic papers here seem to think my book was a subtle attack on the American clergy. I can’t think why! I’m sure the most sympathetic character in it was Monsignor Darcy.

  Westport, Connecticut September 17, 1920

  Dear Mr Leslie:

  The book is appearing in England next spring. Williams Collins Sons & Co. are bringing it out. Did I tell you? I sent a tracer after the book I sent you last spring and today I forwarded an 8th edition of Paradise and a first of my new one, Flappers and Philosophers, a collection of short stories. I am now working on my second novel - much more objective this time and hence much harder sledding. But the bourgeoisie are going to stare 1

  The three letters and the poem of Dr Fay’s possibly should not have followed the dedication but I really don’t think he’d have minded. I was married quite liturgically and canonically - I mean only the latter, tho, for it took place in the rectory of St Patrick’s Cathedral.

  We are coining abroad in January and will certainly come and have a long talk with you, ‘Rosalind’ was tremendously impressed with ‘10, Talbot Square, Hyde Park, London, England.’ And I would like to see Fr Hemmick again. How I’ll watch for that review in the Dublin Review!

  I liked Tom Kettle’s poem but I really don’t think it’s extraordinary. I’m trying to get hold of his book.

  I’m taking your advice and writing very slowly and paying much attention to form. Sometimes I think that this new novel has nothing much else but form.

  There’s no use concealing the fact that my reaction a year ago last June to apparent failure in every direction did carry me rather away from the church. My ideas now are in such wild riot that I would flatter myself did I claim even the clarity of agnosticism. If you knew the absolute dirth of Catholic intelligentsia in this country! One Catholic magazine, America, had only one prim comment on my book - ‘a fair example of our non-Catholic college’s output.’ My Lord! Compared to the average Georgetown alumnus Amory is an uncanonized saint. I think I laundered myself shiny in the book!

  Faithfully,

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  38 West 59th Street New York City November 16, 1920

  Dear Mr Leslie:

  Thanks for the article. It seems a pity that something even more exhaustive can’t be written about Dr Fay. He always told me to save his letters and some day we’d all publish them anonymously in some form. I found, however, that he’d written me less than he thought so the three letters that occur in the book are largely pieced together and even considerably added to from memories of remarks he’d made to me plus even a few things I thought he might have said.

  The entire funeral description you quoted was culled from your letter except that ‘he would have enjoyed his own funeral’ and ‘making all religion a thing of lights and shadows, etc.’ I apologize most humbly. I think the influences of your style on me are traceable in various other portions of the book.

  I met Fr Hemmick in the Biltmore and he looked at me as the he saw the horns already sprouting. Do you know that the story ‘Benediction’ that I sent you and that also received the imprimatur of the most intelligent priest I know has come in for the most terrible lashing from the American Catholic intelligentsia? It’s too much for me. It seems that an Englishman like Benson can write anything but an American had better have his works either pious tracts for nuns or else disassociate them from the church as a living issue.

  I am coming to see you when we cross this winter.

  Yours ever,

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Paris, France May 24,1921

  Dear Mr Leslie:

  Just a word to thank you for your courtesies to us. I think Zelda enjoyed her trip through Wapping more than anything that’s happened so far.

  We had dinner with Galsworthy the night before we left and I was rather disappointed in him. I can’t stand pessimism with neither irony nor bitterness. Incidentally, I tried all over London to get you The Mysterious Stranger by Twain but evidently it’s not published in England. I am almost through with Manning and intend to review him in The Bookman.

  France is a bore and a disappointment, chiefly, I imagine, because we know no one here. Italy on Wednesday.

  Faithfully,

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  TO SALLY POPE TAYLOR

  45th Infantry Camp Taylor, Kentucky

  March 10, 1918

  Dear Sally Pope:

  Much obliged for the Easter postcard - I’d have loved to have come down for Easter but as you know we haven’t much say as to what we can do and wh
at we can’t.

  My first novel is now in the hands of Scribner and Co. Whether they’ll publish it for me I don’t know yet. It’s called The Romantic Egotist and most of the adventures in it have happened to me in my short but eventful life. Your mother probably won’t let you read it until you’re sixteen, Sally, and she’s perfectly right. However this is premature as it hasn’t been accepted yet.

  I often think of you all down there and it’s good to think that in this muddled hurly-burly of a world some little corners still preserve their peace and sanity. We’re going to be moved from CampTaylor soon but where we’re going I don’t know. I’m anxious to get to France but probably won’t for a long, long time. Tell your mother to read Changing Winds by St John Ervine. It is anti-Catholic rather, but Rupert Brooke is one of the characters in it and I rather think she’d like it.

  I hope you read a most tremendous lot, Sally - you’ve got a keen mind and just feed it with every bit of reading you can lay your hands on, good, poor or mediocre. A good mind has a good separator and can peck the good from the bad in all it absorbs. My best wishes to everyone.

  Love,

  Scott F.

  TO SALLY POPE TAYLOR

  45th Infantry Camp Sheridan, Alabama

  June 19,

  1918

  I did enjoy your letter, Sally, and I believe you’re going to be quite a personage. A personage and a personality are quite different - I wonder if you can figure the difference. Your mother, Peter the Hermit, Joan of Arc, Cousin Tom, Mark Antony and Bonnie Prince Charlie were personalities. You and Cardinal Newman and Julius Caesar and Elizabeth Barrett Browning and myself and Mme de Staël were personages. Does the distinction begin to glimmer on you? Personality may vanish at a sickness; a personage is hurt more by a worldly setback. Of you four sisters, you and Tommy are personages, Celia is a personality and Virginia may be either - or both, as Disraeli was.

  Do you know, Sally, I believe that for the first time in my life I’m rather lonesome down here - not lonesome for family and friends or anyone in particular but lonesome for the old atmosphere - a feverish crowd at Princeton sitting up until three discussing pragmatism or the immortality of the soul - for the glitter of New York with a tea dance at the Plaza or lunch at Sherries - for the quiet respectable boredom of St Paul.

  What a funny way to write a girl of thirteen, or is it fourteen?

  Thy cousin,

  Scott

  TO RUTH STURTEVANT

  67th Infantry Camp Sheridan, Alabama 1st of Winter

  Nineteen hundred and Eighteen

  Postmarked December 4,1918

  Dear Ruth:

  Just a line to tell you how much I enjoyed Sonia - If you like that sort of book you should read Youth’s Encounter (Mackenzie), Changing Winds (Ervine), and The New Machiavelli and Tono Bungay (H. G. Wells) -

  My affair still drifts - But my mind is firmly made up that I will not, shall not, can not, should not, must not marry - still, she is remarkable - I’m trying desperately exire armis -

  As ever,

  Scott Fitzg —

  TO C. EDMUND DELBOS

  17th Brig. Headquarters Camp Sheridan, Alabama

  January 13,

  1919

  Dear Mr Delbos:

  Your telegram was the greatest shock I have ever known. Like so many others I looked to Dr Fay before anyone in the world - and I’ll think of the days when I came back to school to join his circle before the fire as the happiest of my life.

  I can’t realize that he has gone - that all of us who loved him have lost him forever and that that side of life is over, the great warmth and atmosphere he could cast over youth - the perfect understanding. - When I begin to think about him and what he meant to me I can hardly see the paper.

  I can’t get leave, but all day Tuesday I’ll devote to his memory just as I suppose I will all my life. The best is over -I feel like the dregs of a cup.

  Sincerely,

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  TO MRS EDWARD FITZGERALD

  FortLeavenworth,

  Kansas

  Winter, 1919

  Dear Mother: I wrote you a letter yesterday but lost it somewhere.

  (1) — Candy was fine but best not send it in a long box again as it gets smashed a little.

  (2) — Checks came - Thanks.

  (3) — Am very well.

  (4) — My novel is autobiographical in point of view but I’ve borrowed incidents from all my friends’ experience.

  (5) — It’s too much trouble to send my flannels home to be washed.

  (6) — I want suitcase back.

  (7) — Will you ask father to show you those quotations about ‘Lord Alfred’ in ‘Lucille’ - and copy them out and send them to me -I need them in my book.

  (8) — I am bored but not weary.

  (9) — This is the coldest state in the Union.

  Love, Scott

  TO RUTH STURTEVANT

  New York City

  June 24,

  1919

  Dear Ruth:

  I feel I ought to tell you something because you’re the only person in the world that knows the other half. I’ve done my best and I’ve failed - it’s a great tragedy to me and I feel I have very little left to live for because until everything is as it should be I’ll have that sense of vacancy that only this can give.

  I wish you’d tear up this letter and I know you’ll never say what I told you in an hour of depression. Unless someday she will marry me I will never marry.

  As ever,

  Scott

  TO ALIDA BICELOW

  1st Epistle of St Scott to the Smithsonian Chapter the I Verses the I to the last -

  (599 Summit Ave)

  In a house below the average

  Of a street above the average

  In a room below the roof

  With a lot above the ears

  I shall write Alida Bigelow

  Shall indite Alida Bigelow

  As the world’s most famous goof

  (This line don’t rhyme)

  (September 22, 1919)

  What’s a date! —

  Mr Fate —

  Can’t berate —

  Mr Scott. — —

  He is not — —

  Marking time:

  It’s too late So, in rhyme, To the dot!

  Tho I hate To berate; Such a lot Father time, Keep a date, Stop this rot What’s a date, Mr Fate?

  S’ever Scott

  Most beautiful, rather-too-virtuous-but-entirely-enchanting Alida:

  Scribners has accepted my book. Ain’t I smart!

  But hic jubilatio era t tot am spoiled for meum par lisant une livre, une novellum (novum) nomine Salt par Herr C. G. Morris - a most astounding piece of realism, it makes Fortitude look like an antique mental ash-can and is quite as good as The Old Wives’ Tale.

  Of course I think Walpole is a weak-wad anyhow. Read Salt, young girl, so that you may know what life B.

  In a few days I’ll have lived one score and three days in this vale of tears. On I plod - always bored, often drunk, doing no penance for my faults - rather do I become more tolerant of myself from day to day, hardening my crystal heart with blasphemous humor and shunning only toothpicks, pathos, and poverty as being the three unforgivable things in life.

  Before we meet again I hope you will have tasted strong liquor to excess and kissed many emotional young men in red and yellow moonlights - these things being chasteners of those prejudices which are as gutta percha to the niblicks of the century.

  I am frightfully unhappy, look like the devil, will be famous within one 12-month and, I hope, dead within 2, Hoping you are the same, I am With excruciating respect,

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  P.S. If you wish, you may auction off this letter to the gurls of your collidge - on condition that the proceeds go to the Society for the Drownding of Armenian Airedales.

  Bla!

  TO RUTH STURTEVANT

  The Allerton East 39th St
reetNew York City

  February, 1920

  Dear Ruth:

  I should have written you many moons ago to congratulate you but life sort of picked me up and whirled me along beginning last June and it’s only recently that I’m on my feet - so I’m hoping you’ll forgive me and sending you a belated wedding present. I have a vague memory of writing you a wild letter when my world collapsed last June -I wonder if you ever got it.

  I seem, at present, to be a fairly well established author, with six stories appearing in The Saturday Evening Post beginning with the issue of February 21st, stories regularly in Smart Set and some in Scribner’s, and a novel coining out in April, published by Scribners. I’m probably going to get married in March - the same girl, of course - but we haven’t any idea where we’re going to live. I am immeasurably older, Ruth; I rather want to talk to you sometime - maybe we’ll be able to have an eventual bicker while our respective husband and wife chatter of the weather in the corner.

  I told you an astounding thing last April -I shouldn’t have told you but at the time I simply had to tell someone. Life is so damn odd I Faithfully,

  F. Scott Fitz —

  P.S. Is that your right name - ‘Curt’ - or is it ‘Curtis?’ Or maybe it’s Kirt, Kurt or Kirk.

  TO RUTH STURTEVANT