Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (21 page)

When the lightning strikes one of us it strikes both: you had hardly arrived at the port of embarkation when I got my papers to start for Rome, and I am waiting every moment to be told where to take ship. Even before you get this letter I shall be on the ocean; then will come your turn. You went to war as a gentleman should, just as you went to school and college, because it was the thing to do. It’s better to leave the blustering and tremulo-heroism to the middle classes; they do it so much better.

Do you remember that week-end last March when you brought Burne Holiday from Princeton to see me? What a magnificent boy he is! It gave me a frightful shock afterward when you wrote that he thought me splendid; how could he be so deceived? Splendid is the one thing that neither you nor I are. We are many other things — we’re extraordinary, we’re clever, we could be said, I suppose, to be brilliant. We can attract people, we can make atmosphere, we can almost lose our Celtic souls in Celtic subtleties, we can almost always have our own way; but splendid — rather not!

I am going to Rome with a wonderful dossier and letters of introduction that cover every capital in Europe, and there will be “no small stir” when I get there. How I wish you were with me! This sounds like a rather cynical paragraph, not at all the sort of thing that a middle-aged clergyman should write to a youth about to depart for the war; the only excuse is that the middle-aged clergyman is talking to himself. There are deep things in us and you know what they are as well as I do. We have great faith, though yours at present is uncrystallized; we have a terrible honesty that all our sophistry cannot destroy and, above all, a childlike simplicity that keeps us from ever being really malicious.

I have written a keen for you which follows. I am sorry your cheeks are not up to the description I have written of them, but you
will
smoke and read all night —

At any rate here it is:

A Lament for a Foster Son, and He going to the War Against the King of Foreign.

 “Ochone

  He is gone from me the son of my mind

    And he in his golden youth like Angus Oge

  Angus of the bright birds

    And his mind strong and subtle like the mind of Cuchulin on

      Muirtheme.

  Awirra sthrue

  His brow is as white as the milk of the cows of Maeve

    And his cheeks like the cherries of the tree

  And it bending down to Mary and she feeding the Son of God.

  Aveelia Vrone

  His hair is like the golden collar of the Kings at Tara

    And his eyes like the four gray seas of Erin.

  And they swept with the mists of rain.

  Mavrone go Gudyo

  He to be in the joyful and red battle

    Amongst the chieftains and they doing great deeds of valor

  His life to go from him

    It is the chords of my own soul would be loosed.

  A Vich Deelish

  My heart is in the heart of my son

    And my life is in his life surely

  A man can be twice young

    In the life of his sons only.

  Jia du Vaha Alanav

  May the Son of God be above him and beneath him, before him and

      behind him

    May the King of the elements cast a mist over the eyes of the

      King of Foreign,

  May the Queen of the Graces lead him by the hand the way he can

      go through the midst of his enemies and they not seeing him

  May Patrick of the Gael and Collumb of the Churches and the five

      thousand Saints of Erin be better than a shield to him

  And he got into the fight.

    Och Ochone.”

Amory — Amory — I feel, somehow, that this is all; one or both of us is not going to last out this war.... I’ve been trying to tell you how much this reincarnation of myself in you has meant in the last few years... curiously alike we are... curiously unlike. Good-by, dear boy, and God be with you. THAYER DARCY.

EMBARKING AT NIGHT

Amory moved forward on the deck until he found a stool under an electric light. He searched in his pocket for note-book and pencil and then began to write, slowly, laboriously:

 “We leave to-night...

    Silent, we filled the still, deserted street,

      A column of dim gray,

    And ghosts rose startled at the muffled beat

      Along the moonless way;

    The shadowy shipyards echoed to the feet

      That turned from night and day.

    And so we linger on the windless decks,

      See on the spectre shore

    Shades of a thousand days, poor gray-ribbed wrecks...

      Oh, shall we then deplore

    Those futile years!

                      See how the sea is white!

    The clouds have broken and the heavens burn

      To hollow highways, paved with gravelled light

    The churning of the waves about the stern

      Rises to one voluminous nocturne,

                         ... We leave to-night.”

A letter from Amory, headed “Brest, March 11th, 1919,” to Lieutenant T. P. D’Invilliers, Camp Gordon, Ga.

DEAR BAUDELAIRE: —

We meet in Manhattan on the 30th of this very mo.; we then proceed to take a very sporty apartment, you and I and Alec, who is at me elbow as I write. I don’t know what I’m going to do but I have a vague dream of going into politics. Why is it that the pick of the young Englishmen from Oxford and Cambridge go into politics and in the U. S. A. we leave it to the muckers? — raised in the ward, educated in the assembly and sent to Congress, fat-paunched bundles of corruption, devoid of “both ideas and ideals” as the debaters used to say. Even forty years ago we had good men in politics, but we, we are brought up to pile up a million and “show what we are made of.” Sometimes I wish I’d been an Englishman; American life is so damned dumb and stupid and healthy.

Since poor Beatrice died I’ll probably have a little money, but very darn little. I can forgive mother almost everything except the fact that in a sudden burst of religiosity toward the end, she left half of what remained to be spent in stained-glass windows and seminary endowments. Mr. Barton, my lawyer, writes me that my thousands are mostly in street railways and that the said Street R.R. s are losing money because of the five-cent fares. Imagine a salary list that gives $350 a month to a man that can’t read and write! — yet I believe in it, even though I’ve seen what was once a sizable fortune melt away between speculation, extravagance, the democratic administration, and the income tax — modern, that’s me all over, Mabel.

At any rate we’ll have really knock-out rooms — you can get a job on some fashion magazine, and Alec can go into the Zinc Company or whatever it is that his people own — he’s looking over my shoulder and he says it’s a brass company, but I don’t think it matters much, do you? There’s probably as much corruption in zinc-made money as brass-made money. As for the well-known Amory, he would write immortal literature if he were sure enough about anything to risk telling any one else about it. There is no more dangerous gift to posterity than a few cleverly turned platitudes.

Tom, why don’t you become a Catholic? Of course to be a good one you’d have to give up those violent intrigues you used to tell me about, but you’d write better poetry if you were linked up to tall golden candlesticks and long, even chants, and even if the American priests are rather burgeois, as Beatrice used to say, still you need only go to the sporty churches, and I’ll introduce you to Monsignor Darcy who really is a wonder.

Kerry’s death was a blow, so was Jesse’s to a certain extent. And I have a great curiosity to know what queer corner of the world has swallowed Burne. Do you suppose he’s in prison under some false name? I confess that the war instead of making me orthodox, which is the correct reaction, has made me a passionate agnostic. The Catholic Church has had its wings clipped so often lately that its part was timidly negligible, and they haven’t any good writers any more. I’m sick of Chesterton.

I’ve only discovered one soldier who passed through the much-advertised spiritual crisis, like this fellow, Donald Hankey, and the one I knew was already studying for the ministry, so he was ripe for it. I honestly think that’s all pretty much rot, though it seemed to give sentimental comfort to those at home; and may make fathers and mothers appreciate their children. This crisis-inspired religion is rather valueless and fleeting at best. I think four men have discovered Paris to one that discovered God.

But us — you and me and Alec — oh, we’ll get a Jap butler and dress for dinner and have wine on the table and lead a contemplative, emotionless life until we decide to use machine-guns with the property owners — or throw bombs with the Bolshevik God! Tom, I hope something happens. I’m restless as the devil and have a horror of getting fat or falling in love and growing domestic.

The place at Lake Geneva is now for rent but when I land I’m going West to see Mr. Barton and get some details. Write me care of the Blackstone, Chicago.

              S’ever, dear Boswell,

                                  SAMUEL JOHNSON.

BOOK TWO — The Education of a Personage

CHAPTER 1. The Debutante

The time is February. The place is a large, dainty bedroom in the Connage house on Sixty-eighth Street, New York. A girl’s room: pink walls and curtains and a pink bedspread on a cream-colored bed. Pink and cream are the motifs of the room, but the only article of furniture in full view is a luxurious dressing-table with a glass top and a three-sided mirror. On the walls there is an expensive print of “Cherry Ripe,” a few polite dogs by Landseer, and the “King of the Black Isles,” by Maxfield Parrish.

Great disorder consisting of the following items: (1) seven or eight empty cardboard boxes, with tissue-paper tongues hanging panting from their mouths; (2) an assortment of street dresses mingled with their sisters of the evening, all upon the table, all evidently new; (3) a roll of tulle, which has lost its dignity and wound itself tortuously around everything in sight, and (4) upon the two small chairs, a collection of lingerie that beggars description. One would enjoy seeing the bill called forth by the finery displayed and one is possessed by a desire to see the princess for whose benefit — Look! There’s some one! Disappointment! This is only a maid hunting for something — she lifts a heap from a chair — Not there; another heap, the dressing-table, the chiffonier drawers. She brings to light several beautiful chemises and an amazing pajama but this does not satisfy her — she goes out.

An indistinguishable mumble from the next room.

Now, we are getting warm. This is Alec’s mother, Mrs. Connage, ample, dignified, rouged to the dowager point and quite worn out. Her lips move significantly as she looks for IT. Her search is less thorough than the maid’s but there is a touch of fury in it, that quite makes up for its sketchiness. She stumbles on the tulle and her “damn” is quite audible. She retires, empty-handed.

More chatter outside and a girl’s voice, a very spoiled voice, says: “Of all the stupid people — “

After a pause a third seeker enters, not she of the spoiled voice, but a younger edition. This is Cecelia Connage, sixteen, pretty, shrewd, and constitutionally good-humored. She is dressed for the evening in a gown the obvious simplicity of which probably bores her. She goes to the nearest pile, selects a small pink garment and holds it up appraisingly.

CECELIA: Pink?

ROSALIND: (Outside) Yes!

CECELIA:
Very
snappy?

ROSALIND: Yes!

CECELIA: I’ve got it!

(She sees herself in the mirror of the dressing-table and commences to shimmy enthusiastically.)

ROSALIND: (Outside) What are you doing — trying it on?

(CECELIA ceases and goes out carrying the garment at the right shoulder.

From the other door, enters ALEC CONNAGE. He looks around quickly and in a huge voice shouts: Mama! There is a chorus of protest from next door and encouraged he starts toward it, but is repelled by another chorus.)

ALEC: So
that’s
where you all are! Amory Blaine is here.

CECELIA: (Quickly) Take him down-stairs.

ALEC: Oh, he
is
down-stairs.

MRS. CONNAGE: Well, you can show him where his room is. Tell him I’m sorry that I can’t meet him now.

ALEC: He’s heard a lot about you all. I wish you’d hurry. Father’s telling him all about the war and he’s restless. He’s sort of temperamental.

(This last suffices to draw CECELIA into the room.)

CECELIA: (Seating herself high upon lingerie) How do you mean — temperamental? You used to say that about him in letters.

ALEC: Oh, he writes stuff.

CECELIA: Does he play the piano?

ALEC: Don’t think so.

CECELIA: (Speculatively) Drink?

ALEC: Yes — nothing queer about him.

CECELIA: Money?

ALEC: Good Lord — ask him, he used to have a lot, and he’s got some income now.

(MRS. CONNAGE appears.)

MRS. CONNAGE: Alec, of course we’re glad to have any friend of yours —

ALEC: You certainly ought to meet Amory.

MRS. CONNAGE: Of course, I want to. But I think it’s so childish of you to leave a perfectly good home to go and live with two other boys in some impossible apartment. I hope it isn’t in order that you can all drink as much as you want. (She pauses.) He’ll be a little neglected to-night. This is Rosalind’s week, you see. When a girl comes out, she needs
all
the attention.

ROSALIND: (Outside) Well, then, prove it by coming here and hooking me.

(MRS. CONNAGE goes.)

ALEC: Rosalind hasn’t changed a bit.

CECELIA: (In a lower tone) She’s awfully spoiled.

ALEC: She’ll meet her match to-night.