Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (594 page)

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.

Love always,

Scott

P.S. Apropos of our conversation it will interest you to know that I’ve given up politics. For two years I’ve gone half haywire trying to reconcile my double allegiance to the class I am part of, and the Great Change I believe in - considering at last such crazy solutions as the one I had in mind in Norfolk. I have become disgusted with the party leadership and have only health enough left for my literary work, so I’m on the sidelines. It had become a strain making speeches at ‘Leagues Against Imperialistic War,’ and their treatment of the Negro question finished me. This is confidential, of course.

Grove Park Inn

Asheville,

North Carolina

June
11,1935

Dearest Ceci:

By now the Result-of-an-Irresistible-Impulse will be among you. I am enclosing a check with which I hope you will buy her as much gayety as she deserves. Don’t let her go out with any sixteen-year-old boys who have managed to amass a charred keg and an automobile license as their Start-in-Life. Really I mean this. My great concern with Scottie for the next five years will be to keep her from being mashed up in an automobile accident. I love you as always - and that is no perfunctory statement. Isn’t Mother a funny old wraith? Didn’t you get a suggestion of the Witches’ Cave from several of the things that she said that night at 2400?

Always affectionately,

Scott

P.S. I mean that, about any unreliable Virginia boys taking my pet around. I will never forget that it was a Norfolk number (later drowned in the South American swamps) who gave me my first drink of whiskey. Scottie hasn’t got three sisters - she has only got me. Watch her
please!

What a typist this one turned out to be!

Oak
Hall

Hotel

Tryon, North Carolina

Spring
, 1937

Dearest Ceci:

Zelda is at Highland’s Hospital, Asheville, N.C.

She is much much better. So am I.I stopped drinking in January and have been concentrating on other mischief, such as work, which is even duller, or seems so to me at present. But Scottie must be educated and Zelda can’t starve. As for me I’d had enough of the whole wretched mess some years ago and seen thru a sober eye find it more appalling than ever.

With dearest love always,

Scott

En route to
Hollywood

Postmarked July
5,1937

Dear Ceci:

Just a line about my whereabouts. I’m going out here for two years on a big contract financially. My health’s equal to it now and the movie people are convinced I’m on the wagon and worth buying.

It’s a hell of a prospect in every other way except money but for the present and for over 3 years the creative side of me has been dead as hell. Scottie is in New York; Helen Hayes and Charlie MacArthur are bringing her out to me in July. Helen isn’t working, as she has 40 more weeks as Queen Victoria on the road, so she’s keeping an eye on Scottie out here while Charlie and I work.

Could Scottie spend a few days with you in September? I think you’d like her a lot now. She took her preliminaries for Vassar this spring.

Dearest love always,

Scott

1403
North Laurel Avenue

Hollywood,

California

August 14,
1940

Dearest Ceci:

Aunt Elise’s death was a shock to me. I was very fond of her always - I was fond of Aunt Annabel and Aunt Elise, who gave me almost my first tastes of discipline, in a peculiar way in which I wasn’t fond of my mother who spoiled me. You were a great exception among mothers - managing by some magic of your own to preserve both your children’s love and their respect. Too often one of the two things is sacrificed.

With Father, Uncle John and Aunt Elise a generation goes. I wonder how deep the Civil War was in them - that odd childhood on the border between the states with Grandmother and old Mrs Scott and the shadow of Mrs Suratt. What a sense of honor and duty - almost eighteenth century rather than Victoria. How lost they seemed in the changing world - my father and Aunt Elise struggling to keep their children in the
haute bourgeoisie
when their like were sinking into obscure farm life or being lost in the dark boarding houses of Georgetown.

I wrote Scottie to stop by and say hello to you on her way South to see her mother next month. I would so like to see you all myself. Gigi wrote me such a nice letter from Richmond.

With dearest love always,

Scott

To Edmund Wilson

593 Summit Avenue

St Paul,

Minnesota

September 26,
1917

Dear Bunny:

You’ll be surprised to get this but it’s really begging for an answer. My purpose is to see exactly what effect the war at close quarters has on a person of your temperament. I mean I’m curious to see how your point of view has changed or not changed -

I’ve taken regular army exams but haven’t heard a word from them yet. John Bishop is in the second camp at Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indiana. He expects a ist Lieutenancy. I spent a literary month with him (July) and wrote a terrific lot of poetry mostly under the Masefield-Brooke influence. Here’s John’s latest.

BOUDOIR

The place still speaks of worn-out beauty of roses, And half retrieves a failure of Bergamotte, Rich light and a silence so rich one all but supposes The voice of the clavichord stirs to a dead gavotte

For the light grows soft and the silence forever quavers, As if it would fail in a measure of satin and lace, Some eighteenth century madness that sighs and wavers Through a life exquisitely vain to a dying grace.

This was the music she loved; we heard her often Walking alone in the green-clipped garden outside. It was just at the time when summer begins to soften And the locust shrills in the long afternoon that she died.

The gaudy macaw still climbs in the folds of the curtain; The chintz-flowers fade where the late sun strikes them aslant. Here are her books too: Pope and the earlier Burton, A worn Verlaine; Bonheur and the
Fêtes Galantes.

Come - let us go -I am done. Here one recovers Too much of the past but fails at the last to find Aught that made it the season of loves and lovers; Give me your hand - she was lovely - mine eyes blind.

Isn’t that good? He hasn’t published it yet I sent twelve poems to magazines yesterday. If I get them all back I’m going to give up poetry and turn to prose. John may publish a book of verse in the spring. I’d like to but of course there’s no chance. Here’s one of mine.

TO CECILIA

When Vanity kissed Vanity

A hundred happy Junes ago,

He pondered o’er her breathlessly,

And that all time might ever know

He rhymed her over life and death,

‘For once, for all, for love,’ he said...

Her beauty’s scattered with his breath

And with her lovers she was dead.

Ever his wit and not her eyes,

Ever his art and not her hair.

‘Who’d learn a trick in rhyme be wise

And pause before his sonnet there.’

So all my words however true

Might sing you to a thousandth June

And no one ever know that you