The Best Early Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald (33 page)

Hill School:
boys’ prep school in Pottstown, Pennsylvania.

Hiram Johnson:
A founder of the Progressive Party, Hiram Johnson served as governor of California (1911–17), then as a U.S. senator until his death in 1945. He opposed America’s entry into World War I, as well as its joining the League of Nations and the World Court.

Ty Cobb:
outstanding baseball player who played for the Detroit Tigers (1905–26) and then the Philadelphia Athletics, retiring in 1928. He led the league in batting from 1907 to 1915 and 1917 to 1919. His lifetime batting average was .367.

red penny:
Pennies from 1787 were made from copper or, beginning in 1856, an alloy of copper with nickel or zinc. Fresh from the mint, the coins were red, though they would later turn reddish brown or brown. From 1859 to 1909 pennies featured the head of an American Indian.

Annie Fellows Johnston:
Johnston (1863–1931) was a children’s author, best known for the Little Colonel books, a series of thirteen novels dating from 1896. The sentimental, nostalgic novels dealt with the aristocracy of Old Kentucky.

“Little Women”:
Louisa May Alcott’s successful novel (1868–69) depicting family life in nineteenth-century New England.

League of Nations:
The League of Nations was formed after World War I to promote world peace and diplomacy.

amuse people or feed ’em or shock ’em:
from the third act of Irish dramatist Oscar Wilde’s 1893 play
A Woman of No Importance.
Lord Illingworth: “To get into the best society, nowadays, one has to either feed people, amuse people, or shock people—that is all.”

Marie Antoinette:
Marie Antoinette (1755–93), Queen of France, wife of Louis XVI.

THE OFFSHORE PIRATE

Fitzgerald began writing “The Offshore Pirate,” originally entitled “The Proud Piracy,” in late January 1920, during which time he lived in a New Orleans boardinghouse and made frequent trips to Montgomery, Alabama, finally convincing Zelda to resume their engagement. When he returned to New York he continued work on the story while awaiting publication of his first novel,
This Side of Paradise.
He mailed a version of the piece to Ober in late January, describing it as “a very odd story” and suggesting that Ober cut the ending if he thought it lacked “pep.” Ober, likely in consultation with
Post
editor George Horace Lorimer, asked Fitzgerald to change the ending, which he did, sending the revised story back to Ober with the comment that “the required Jazz ending” contained “one of the best lines I’ve ever written.” The
Post
bought the new story for $500 and published it in the May 29, 1920, issue, less than two months after Scott and Zelda were married in the rectory of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York and began their honeymoon at the Biltmore Hotel. In an odd twist, the
Post
had cut Fitzgerald’s “Jazz ending” in the magazine version, perhaps because they thought that it might be confusing to their readers, and substituted what was, in effect, a third one. But whatever its ending, “The Offshore Pirate” is one of Fitzgerald’s most beautifully dreamy and delightful stories; and Ardita Farnam is perhaps his most exemplary flapper. In her exchanges with the pirate, she spells out the details of the flapper creed based on faith in herself, freedom from family and social expectations, and courage: “courage as a rule of life,” she says, and “[a] sort of insistence on the value of life and the worth of transient things”—a creed that could have been spelled out in words and actions close to Ardita’s (as it likely was in those months of the story’s composition) by his fiancée Zelda, the living embodiment of the Fitzgerald flapper. Fitzgerald included “The Offshore Pirate” as the first story in
Flappers and Philosophers
with its “Jazz ending” restored, and this is the version reprinted here.

The Revolt of the Angels, by Anatole France:
Jacques-Anatole-François Thibault (1844–1924), winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1921 and better known under the pseudonym Anatole France, was a witty French critic, historian, novelist, and poet.
The Revolt of the Angels
(1914) is a satire on Christianity. A skeptic like Voltaire, France mocked both church and state, attacking ignorance and superstition.

statue of France Aroused:
monument to French heroism in World War I erected on Marne battlefield by American sculptor Frederick MacMonnies.

“Narcissus ahoy!”:
In Greek mythology Narcissus, son of the river god Cephissus, rejected the advances of the nymph Echo, who then pined away until nothing was left but her voice. As punishment Narcissus was compelled to fall in love with his own image, and he too pined away until he was transformed into the flower narcissus.

Stonewall Jackson:
Thomas Jonathan Jackson (1826–63) was a Confederate general and Civil War hero regarded as a great tactical genius. Richard Taylor in
Destruction and Reconstruction: Personal Experiences of the Late War
(1879) noted that Jackson liked to suck on lemons. Historian James I. Robertson says that this is a myth and that Jackson just ate whatever fruit was available.

Sing Sing:
New York state penitentiary at Ossining, New York.

Winter Garden and the Midnight Frolic:
The Winter Garden at Broadway and 50th Street was one of the Great White Broadway Theaters. The
Midnight
Frolic
shows were performed on the roof garden of the New Amsterdam Theater, 214 West 42nd Street. Florenz Ziegfeld staged the
Ziegfeld Follies
at New Amsterdam (1913–27), and showgirls from the
Follies
performed in the
Midnight Frolic
shows, which started at midnight and featured dance music between acts. The
Frolic
shows depended on drink sales after the performances. After Prohibition the Frolic shows became the Nine O’Clock
Revue,
shows that were sustained instead by admission charges.

Orpheum circuit:
a chain of theaters making up a major vaudeville circuit in the Midwest and on the West Coast. Vaudeville was family entertainment in contrast to burlesque, which was characterized by bawdy style. Entertainers sought jobs on the Orpheum circuit, where they were assured of a long run going from theater to theater.

Plattsburg:
World War I training center in Plattsburg, New York.

Booker T. Washington:
Booker T. Washington (1856–1915), the founder of Tuskegee Institute in 1881, was a black leader and educator. His autobiography is entitled
Up from Slavery
(1901).

Callao:
port in Peru near Lima.

rajah:
prince from India.

Catharine of Russia:
Catherine the Great (1729–96) was born Sophie Augusta Fredericka. Empress of Russia (1762–96), she was regarded as an enlightened despot.

Biddeford Pool to St. Augustine:
popular East Coast resorts. Biddeford Pool was in Maine, St. Augustine in Florida.

Pollyanna:
from the novel
Pollyanna
(1913) by Eleanor H. Porter. The main character, Pollyanna, is a child who always looks for something to be glad about despite troubles. The name has come to refer to foolish cheerfulness.

“Oh, blessed are the simple rich, for they inherit the earth!”:
A reference to the Beatitudes, Matthew 5:1–2; Luke 6:20–26. From Matthew: “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” From Luke: “Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of heaven.”

MAY DAY

“May Day” was composed in March 1920 on the threshold of “The happiest year since I was 18,” as Fitzgerald put it in his
Ledger.
His first novel,
This Side of
Paradise,
was to be published on March 26, and Zelda Sayre would become his bride on April 3. But this long, intricately woven story that Fitzgerald thought of as a novelette originated in the dark spring of 1919, when everything he wrote was rejected, his job writing copy for an advertising agency was disheartening, and his only escape was to throw himself into drunken parties with former college friends and just-met acquaintances who were, like him, living and wandering aimlessly in New York, their prewar idealism quickly fading to disenchantment. As the now-famous May Day riots of 1919, described vividly in the story, were taking place in New York and all over the country, Fitzgerald scarcely seemed to have taken notice of things beyond his own personal tribulations. Less than a year later, however, he brought his recollections of the spring and early summer of 1919—of the May Day riots, of his drunken escapades, and of his personal despair—together in the story of his partially autobiographical persona, Gordon Sterrett, in “May Day.” In the table of contents of
Tales of the Jazz Age,
he describes the three central episodes of the story, which appeared in the July 1920 issue of
The Smart Set,
as having taken place “in the spring of the previous year.” The events were “unrelated, except by the general hysteria of that spring which inaugurated the Age of Jazz,” but he wove them together into “a pattern which would give the effect of those months in New York as they appeared to at least one member of what was then the younger generation.” When Fitzgerald collected “May Day” in
Tales of the Jazz
Age
he included it, for no obvious reason other than its general sense of finality, in the section entitled “My Last Flappers,” and he changed the ending of the
Smart Set
version to the much less ambiguous one that we have in the
Tales of
the Jazz Age
version reprinted here.

Biltmore Hotel:
large, elegant hotel at Madison and 43rd Street in New York City. It was gutted and rebuilt as the Bank of America Building.

Delmonico’s:
elegant restaurant at Fifth Avenue and 44th Street. It opened at that location in 1898 and closed in 1923.

Welsh Margotson collars . . . the “Covington”:
Welch Margetson was a London haberdashery. The “Covington” was a detachable shirt collar.

J. P. Morgan: J. P. Morgan (1837–1913) was an American banker, influential in the financing and management of most of the U.S. railroads in the late nineteenth century. With Andrew Carnegie he organized and financed the United States Steel Corporation.

John D. Rockerfeller:
John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937) was an American oil financier. He and his brother William formed the Standard Oil Company. He was one of the richest men in the world, with a fortune estimated at a billion dollars.

Bolsheviki:
the most radical of the Russian Marxist groups led by Nikolai Lenin. The Bolsheviks advocated war against the bourgeoisie and dictatorship of the proletariat. After the Revolution in 1917, the party was referred to as the Communist Party.

Shell hole:
slang for coward.

Key:
In
Tales of the Jazz Age
Rose is the speaker. Since this response is to Rose’s earlier remark, Fitzgerald likely intended the speaker here to be Key.

inconnu: unknown person, stranger.

Boche-lovers:
Boche is a slang term for German.

Childs’:
Childs’ Quick Lunch restaurants introduced the self-service cafeteria concept in 1889 with a chain of restaurants catering to downtown businesses.

Columbus Circle:
Intersection of Broadway, Eighth Avenue, and 59th Street at the southwest corner of Central Park. A statue of Christopher Columbus was erected in the center of the circle in 1892.

Maxfield Parrish moonlight:
Parrish (1870–1966) was a popular American painter and illustrator. He illustrated books and magazines, and his prints and calendars gave him wide exposure to the public. He used pure, transparent, thin oil glazes in combination with thin layers of varnish, giving his colors a great luminosity. His brilliant, cobalt-blue skies were known as “Maxfield Parrish blue.”

Commodore:
The Commodore Hotel was on the northwest corner of 42nd Street and Lexington. It was gutted and rebuilt as the New York Grand Hyatt.

It . . . Hudson:
This sentence in
Tales of the Jazz Age
reads, “It must have been thirty seconds after he perceived the sunbeam with the dust on it and the rip on the large leather chair that he had the sense of life close beside him, and it was another thirty seconds after that before that he realized that he was irrevocably married to Jewel Hudson.”

THE JELLY-BEAN

Though Fitzgerald records in his
Ledger
the composition date of “The Jelly-Bean” as May 1920, he likely began writing it in late January or February while he was awaiting the publication of
This Side of Paradise.
He wrote Ober that he was sending along a story that was the second in a series of “Jellybean stories (small southern town stuff ) of which The Ice Palace was the first.” The
Post
rejected the story, as did several other magazines, but after the publication of
This
Side of Paradise
in March, Fitzgerald revised and returned the story to Ober in June with the setting changed from Tarleton, Georgia, to “a little city . . . in southern Mississippi,” so that it would not be considered “a series with The Ice Palace.”
Metropolitan
bought “The Jelly-Bean” for $900 in June 1920 and published it in the October issue. Fitzgerald included it as the lead story in his second story collection,
Tales of the Jazz Age,
changing its setting back to Tarleton and including it in the category of “My Last Flappers.” Nancy Lamar, the Southern belle–flapper in “The Jelly-Bean,” is undeniably in the line of descent of Sally Carrol Happer in “The Ice Palace” (years later Fitzgerald would describe “The Jelly-Bean” as “the first story to really recreate the modern southern belle”); but Nancy’s extraordinary impulsiveness points to a self-destructive streak just below the surface of the free-spirited, fun-loving Fitzgerald heroine, a quality that had not been evident before in his earlier flappers or belles.
Metropolitan
commented in a headnote to the story that Fitzgerald was known for writing about “the young American flapper”; but as it also pointed out, “Here is a new story which shows another side of Fitzgerald’s realistic gift.”