Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise (29 page)
Read Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise Online
Authors: Sally Cline
In July to Zelda’s delight Scottie began talking, and as Scottie developed Zelda found motherhood easier. Visitors swarmed the house: John Biggs, Scott’s lawyer friend, and Max Perkins visited in May and July, Scott’s Aunt Annabel and Don Ogden Stewart arrived in August.
Suddenly Scott forswore his role as Demon Lover. Zelda wrote
sadly to Xandra: ‘Scott has started a new novel and retired into strict seclusion and celibacy. He’s horribly intent on it.’
72
Left on her own, Zelda appreciated Montgomery visitors, who included Livye Hart’s mother and Eleanor Browder in June, and Rosalind in July and August. Several visits were disasters. Eleanor was appalled by Gateway Drive notices that announced ‘Visitors are requested not to break down doors in search of liquor, even when authorized to do so by the host and hostess.’ When Mrs Hart invited Zelda and Scott to tea at New York’s Astor Hotel, they arrived separately, too drunk to locate each other in the hotel lobby. Horrified, Mrs Hart forbade Livye, still at home in Montgomery, to visit Zelda.
Rosalind’s visits were worse. The first involved a ‘happening’ comparable to that which had greeted the Sayres in Westport; the second a raucous overnight party which Scott refused to leave. When Zelda and Rosalind, thoroughly exasperated, left without him, Zelda whispered: ‘I never did want to marry Scott.’
73
Though Zelda did not explain or repeat the remark it was one her sister never forgot.
Montgomery visitors told Zelda that Sara Haardt had left her teaching post to return to Goucher as their youngest English instructor.
74
In July 1922 her ‘Strictly Southern’ sketches of Alabama folk were bought by Emily Clark’s
The
Reviewer,
whose advisers were James Branch Cabell, Joseph Hergesheimer and Mencken. The following spring Sara met Mencken for the first time when he presented the prize for the Goucher Freshman short story contest, won by Sara Mayfield.
Mencken, about to give his lecture ‘The Trade of Letters’ to the ‘250 virgins’ in the hall, suddenly spotted amongst the ‘no less than 27 appetizing cuties’
75
the exquisite japonica-pale Sara Haardt. Instantly he changed his talk to ‘How to Catch a Husband’. Then he asked Sara Haardt to chaperone young Sara Mayfield (usually called Little Sara) for dinner with him.
Over dinner the Sage said diplomatically: ‘Miss Haardt, didn’t you send me a story for
The
Smart
Set
once?’ Sara’s diplomacy matched his: ‘Yes, and you read it very promptly.’ Mencken began their seven-year courtship: ‘As I recall, I found it most impressive. Unfortunately it didn’t fit our needs just then. Send me some more stories and mark them for my personal attention.’ Their conversation turned to Zelda: ‘What a girl!’ Mencken said. ‘Cleverer than Scott, if the truth were known.’
The following day Sara Haardt showed Little Sara Mencken’s
In
Defense
of
Women,
which she found brazenly anti-women. Despite this, Sara Haardt was soon lunching with Mencken.
76
Unlike the Fitzgeralds, Haardt and Mencken were each cynical about love and marriage. Mencken defined love as ‘the delusion that one woman differs from another’ while Sara said: ‘I would advise any woman to wait. There is so much in life — so much for a woman to see and do … marriage is a career, but it isn’t life, it isn’t everything.’
77
Nevertheless stumpy dishevelled middle-aged Mencken and young reticent Sara were soon a familiar sight in Baltimore’s bars. That October Mencken bought Sara’s first story for
The
Smart
Set.
78
One month later Zelda finished
her
first serious story. She wrote the bulk of ‘Our Own Movie Queen’; Scott added the climax and revised it. Its satirical underlying message is that Hollywood stardom does not require brains or talent. Zelda’s heroine Gracie Axelrod was the daughter of a disreputable Swede, ‘the sole owner of a tumbledown shanty where fried chicken of dubious antecedents might be washed down by cold beer.’ Gracie’s talent was she ‘fried the chicken with such brown art that complaints were unknown’. Zelda’s talent was to show with wit, metaphors and intellectual bite that a nonentity in that society could rise to become the city’s movie queen.
79
Though written in November 1923 the story was not published in the
Chicago
Sunday
Tribune
until 1925, when it won two stars in O’Brien’s short story collection. Zelda however received no credit at all. Her story was published under Scott’s name and Scott received $1,000, minus 10 per cent, which he shared with Zelda.
At the time Zelda made no comment but after publication she scored out Scott’s solo by-line and wrote in heavy black print ‘
ZELDA
’.
80
Both Sara Haardt’s and Zelda’s stories were clever: the difference was not in their fiction but in their identity as writers. Sara’s serious work had been bought by a leading critic. Zelda’s work was still being produced under Scott’s by-line.
Zelda, Sara Haardt, Sara Mayfield and Tallulah Bankhead were products of a youthful upper-middle class that had ‘fermented since 1900 [and] exploded with passionate fervour during the 1920s’.
81
Though Mayfield saw them as rebels born in a smug time and an ultraconservative place in which revolt was long overdue,
82
Zelda’s three contemporaries were already practising the disciplines of their trade which would shape their rebellion while Zelda was not.
Scott’s Ledger noted his writing assistance to Zelda but he did not
keep a similar record of Zelda’s assistance to him. This was doubtless due to their respective positions as professional and amateur. Professionals record and often charge for the help they give. Amateurs don’t.
83
He used Zelda as a model, trusted her editorial skills, leant on her literary judgements and confessed he should stop ‘referring everything to Zelda – a terrible habit; nothing ought to be referred to anybody until it’s finished’.
84
They were again $5,000 in debt, so Scott hibernated all winter in a chill room over the garage until he had produced eleven stories which netted him $17,000, enough to pay his debts and return to the novel.
By Christmas 1923 Sara Mayfield, in Montgomery, told Zelda that Sara Haardt had succumbed to the first of her serious illnesses; for months she would write little. The Fitzgeralds spent Christmas Day with Esther Murphy, Gilbert Seldes, Dos Passos and Mary and Edmund Wilson. Bunny wrote to Bishop: ‘I like Zelda better and better every year and they are among the only people now that I am always glad to see.’
85
He spoke for most of the Fitzgeralds’ friends when he said: ‘the lively imaginations and entertainment value of Scott and Zelda preserved them through a certain amount of trouble making.’
86
But Scott, tired of his friends, wrote: ‘The most miserable year since I was 19, full of terrible failures and acute miseries.’
87
By April 1924, exhausted with drink and debt, they rented their house and sailed for France, where they felt they could live more cheaply and have better adventures.
88
1
Scott hoped Nathan would read his
Vegetable
script while they were there.
2
ZSF
, ‘Show Mr and Mrs F. to Number –’,
Collected
Writings,
p. 420. First Published
Esquire,
May–June 1934, as by F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald but credited to
ZSF
in Scott’s Ledger.
3
Wilson,
Letters
on
Literature
and
Politics,
pp. 78–9.
4
FSF
to Wilson,
c
. Mar. 1922.
5
ZSF
to
FSF
, late summer/early fall 1930,
Life
in
Letters,
p. 191.
6
Mayfield,
Exiles,
p. 80. Mayfield later also told her cousin Camella this.
7
FSF
, Notebooks No. 1564.
8
This would confirm the notion of several abortions about which Camella Mayfield, who typed her cousin Sara’s manuscript of the Fitzgeralds, is both convinced and convincing. Mayfield,
Exiles,
p. 80; Camella Mayfield, Tuscaloosa, USA, to the author, series of
conversations,
1999 and 2000.
9
FSF
,
Beautiful
and
Damned,
p. 169.
10
FSF
,
Beautiful
and
Damned,
earlier MS version,
CO
187, Box 3,
PUL
.
11
Xandra Kalman to Milford, Sep. 1964, Milford,
Zelda,
p. 93.
12
Conversations between Xandra Kalman and Lloyd Hackl; between Hackl and the author, 1999.
13
Lloyd Hackl’s oral portrait of Fitzgerald in St Paul based on interviews with Xandra Kalman; Lloyd Hackl to the author, Minnesota, 1999.
14
Wilson to
FSF
, 26 May 1922, Wilson,
Letters,
p. 85. Margaret eventually purchased for Bishop and herself the Château de Tressancourt at Orgeval, Seine-et-Oise.
15
FSF
to Wilson, postmarked 30 May 1922, Yale University.
16
Xandra Kalman to Milford, Sep. 1964, Milford,
Zelda,
pp. 92–3.
17
ZSF
to Oscar Kalman, 1940, author’s collection and Minnesota Historical Society.
18
Xandra Kalman to Milford, Sep. 1964, Milford,
Zelda,
p. 93.
19
Ibid.
20
Xandra Kalman to Hackl, Sep. 1975; Hackl to the author, 1999.
21
The three friends were Sara Mayfield, Sara Haardt and Sara Murphy. It was Sara Murphy who pointed out Zelda s pronunciation of the name, as did the late Honoria Murphy Donnelly in interviews with the author, 1997 and 1998.
22
Xandra Kalman to Hackl and conversations between Hackl and the author, 1999.
23
A possible reason why the official history of the club has not listed their names.
24 Lloyd Hackl,
F.
Scott
Fitzgerald
and
St
Paul,
p. 56.
25
Probably because of its serialization.
26
Tales
of
the
Jazz
Age
included: Stories: My Last Flappers: ‘The Jelly Bean’, ‘The Camel’s Back’, ‘May Day’, ‘Porcelain and Pink’; Fantasies: ‘The Diamond as Big as the Ritz’, ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’, ‘Tarquin of Cheapside’, ‘O Russet Witch!’; Unclassified Masterpieces: ‘The Lees of Happiness’, ‘Mr Icky’, ‘Jemina’.
27
The film starred Marie Prevost and Kenneth Harlan.
28
Wilson to Bishop, 22 Sep. 1922, Wilson,
Letters,
p. 96.
29
At the Plaza (Sep. 1922): Sara Mayfield was en route back from Europe.
30
Mayfield,
Exiles,
p. 82.
31
Gilbert Seldes to Milford, 27 May 1965, Milford,
Zelda,
p. 97.
32
ZSF
,
Waltz,
Collected
Writings,
p. 47.
33
Dos Passos was the illegitimate son of a Portuguese-American corporation lawyer.
34
Dos Passos,
Best
Times,
p. 127.
35
Bishop to Wilson, 1921, Yale University.
36
Dos Passos told Bishop that the only two reviews he cared for were the ones by Bishop and Fitzgerald, Mellow,
Invented
Lives,
p. 162.
37
Dos Passos,
Best
Times,
pp. 128, 130.
38
Ibid., p. 128.
39
Dos Passos to Milford, 17 Oct. 1963, Milford,
Zelda,
p. 93.
40
Dos Passos,
Best
Times,
p. 128.
41
Lardner, formerly a sports columnist and wit for the
Chicago
Tribune,
had moved to Long Island to write a syndicated column and comic strip based on his successful short story collection
You
Know
Me
Al
(1916).
42
Dos Passos,
Best
Times,
p. 129.
43
Mellow,
Invented
Lives,
p. 165.
44
Dos Passos,
Best
Times,
p. 130.
45
Dos Passos to Milford, 17 Oct. 1963, Milford,
Zelda,
pp. 93–4.
46
Dos Passos,
Best
Times,
p. 130.
47
ZSF
to Xandra Kalman,
c
. 13 Oct. 1922, author’s collection and Minnesota Historical Society.
48
ZSF
to
FSF
, late summer/early fall 1930,
Life
in
Letters,
p. 191.
49
ZSF
to Xandra Kalman,
c.
Oct. 1922, author’s collection and Minnesota Historical Society.
50
FSF
to Wilson, letter postmarked 13 July 1922.
51
19 Nov. 1923.
52
Mayfield,
Exiles,
p. 87.
53
FSF
,
Afternoon
of
an
Author,
ed. Mizener, pp. 93, 94. The disastrous one-week run in November left the Fitzgeralds in deeper debt. Help came through Townsend Martin, now a partner in the Film Guild. Scott wrote a script for $2,000 from which the Clara Bow film
Grit
was made.
54
FSF
and
ZSF
to Xandra and Oscar Kalman, after 17 Nov. 1923.
55
Ring Lardner Jnr to the author, June 1999.
56
ZSF
to the Kalmans, undated, author’s collection and
CO
183, Box 5, Folder 5,
PUL
.
57
ZSF
to
FSF
, late summer/early fall 1930,
Life
in
Letters,
p. 191.
58
ZSF
to the Kalmans, Oct. 1922,
CO
183, Box 5, Folder 5,
PUL
.
59
Scott Donaldson,
Fool
for
Love,
p. 53.
60
ZSF
to
FSF
, late summer/early fall 1930,
Life
in
Letters,
p. 191.
61
Ibid.
62
FSF
to Thomas Boyd,
Correspondence
of F.
Scott
Fitzgerald,
p. 138.
63
Quoted in Mellow,
Invented
Lives,
p. 272. Forty years later when Zelda had been labelled Scott’s mad wife, West produced a description of Zelda’s appearance quite unlike anyone else’s: ‘my impression [was] that she was very plain … I would almost go so far as to say that her face had a certain craggy homeliness. There was a curious unevenness about it, such as one sees in Géricault’s pictures of the insane … We got on quite well … There was something very appealing about her. But frightening’ (West to Milford, 10 Aug. 1963, Milford,
Zelda,
p. 99).
64
Ring Lardner,
What
Of
It?,
Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1925, pp. 18, 59. In return Zelda drew a dinner party place card for Ring on which a redheaded nude wearing a grey fedora kicks her scarlet slipper towards his name.
65
ZSF
, Scrapbook,
CO
183, Box 7,
PUL
.
66
ZSF
to the Kalmans, Oct. 1922, author’s collection and
CO
183, Box 5, Folder 5,
PUL
.
67
‘What a “Flapper Novelist” Thinks Of His Wife’,
Baltimore
Evening
Sun,
7
Oct. 1923, section 5, p. 2. This interview was syndicated to the
Louisville
Courier-Journal,
30 Sep. 1923. Reproduced in
Romantic
Egoists,
p. 112. See also Milford,
Zelda,
pp. 100–1.
68
FSF
, Ledger, summary of the year to Sep. 1922.
69
Anita Loos,
Kiss
Hollywood
Good-by,
Viking Press, New York, 1974, pp. 121, 122. Another version of the anecdote is in Turnbull,
Scott
Fitzgerald,
p. 130.
70
FSF
, Ledger, Apr. 1923. Zelda confirmed ‘We drank always’ (
ZSF
to
FSF
, late summer/early fall 1930,
Life
in
Letters,
p. 191).
71
Scott often watched Tommy play championship polo matches at Meadow Brook Club on Long Island. Like Jay Gatsby Hitchcock had done two terms at Oxford. He married a steel heiress and became a successful banker.
72
ZSF
to Xandra Kalman, summer 1923,
CO
183, Box 5, Folder 5,
PUL
. Scott had long been haunted by the lure of the flesh versus Catholic ruminations on sexual abstinence and the idea of ‘the dark celibacy of greatness’ appealed. See also Wilson’s letter to Bishop, 22 Sept. 1922 about ‘seminal juice’ (note 28 above).
73
Milford,
Zelda,
p. 100.
74
Sara was also taking an advanced degree in psychology at Johns Hopkins.
75
Mayfield,
Constant
Circle,
p. 3; Ann Henley, Introduction,
Southern
Souvenirs,
p. 8.
76
Mayfield,
Constant
Circle,
pp. 5, 56.
77
Rodgers,
Mencken
and
Sara,
p. 1.
78
Sara Haardt, ‘Joe Moore and Callie Balsingame’,
Smart
Set,
Oct. 1923.
79
ZSF
, ‘Our Own Movie Queen’,
Collected
Writings,
pp. 273–292. The story is set in Minnesota where dull watery people ‘grew mushrooms and made incompetent whiskey’. Minnesota has several significant Swedish-American communities.
80
Seen and recorded by this author in the Princeton archives.
81
Wayne J. Flynt,
Montgomery:
An
Illustrated
History,
Windsor Publications, Woodland Hills, California, 1980, p. 69.
82
Mayfield,
Constant
Circle,
p. 25.
83
To discover the constant editorial assistance Zelda rendered him, one has to read in detail his letters to editor and agent and check his notebooks.
84
FSF
to
MP
,
c.
10 Apr. 1924,
Life
in
Letters,
p. 67. That year Zelda offered criticism on
The
Vegetable
and insisted Scott keep the title
Tales
of
the
Jazz
Age.
85
Wilson to Bishop, 15 Jan. 1924, Wilson,
Letters,
pp. 118–19.
86
Wilson,
The
Twenties,
p. 95.
87
FSF
, Ledger, summing up 1923.
88
Ring sent Zelda a farewell poem. Part of it ran: ‘Zelda, fair queen of Alabam’,/ Across the waves I kiss you! /You think I am a stone, a clam; / You think that I don’t care a damn, /But God! How I will miss you!/ …/ So, dearie, when your tender heart / Of all his coarseness tires, / Just cable me and I will start / Immediately for Hyères’ (
ZSF
, Scrapbook,
CO
183, Box 7,
PUL
).