Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (606 page)

Villa St Louis Juan-les-Pins
France

Summer,
1926

Dear Carl:

Nigger Heaven is great! Your best to date, though my affection for
The
Bow Boy will never die. I can’t tell you of our enthusiasm, but suffice to say I read it in one night and Zelda read it the next. It seems, outside of its quality as a work of art, to sum up subtly and inclusively, all the direction of the northern nigger or, rather, the nigger in New York. Our civilization imposed on such virgin soil takes on a new and more vivid and more poignant horror as if it had been dug out of its context and set down against an accidental and unrelated background. This is a lousy sentence but I hope it expresses a small part of our delight in the book.

Always your friend,

Scott Fitz —

TO CECILIA TAYLOR

Ellerslie
Edgemoor, Delaware

August, 1927

Dear Cecilia:

This is to remind you about September. We’ll be having some sort of party here and then we’ll go to New York for a day or two and see some shows. So save a week for us. When is your vacation?

We’re just leaving for Long Island to visit Tommy Hitchcock and watch the polo (Zelda prays nightly that the Prince of Wales will come down from Canada), then we’re visiting some people in Genesee and back here by the eighteenth. We talk of you all so often - I can’t tell you how proud of you I am for being such exceptionally gorgeous people, or how much I enjoyed being with you and feeling pleasantly linked up with you. I know when I say how few people in the world really count at all, it seems to you a mere piece of snobbishness, but to me it’s simply a bare, cold, unpleasant fact. People have always subconsciously recognized this by letting vitality atone for many more sins than charity can. You five t are among those ‘for whom the physical world exists.’I For most people it simply glides by in a half-comprehended and unenjoyed dream. And
We
Both Love You.

Scott

TO GILBERT SELDES

Ellerslie Edgemoor, Delaware

Probably Fall, 1927

Dear Gilbert:

The doll was beautiful. I sleep with it. You are the dearest grandmother a little girl ever had.

As I sit here in my spacious twenty-room mansion, hearing the howling of the winds outside and the groans of my toiling servants below, I think of how wonderful it is to be born a German prince- let. The letter I wrote is in our very owniest dialect, Iranian- Ruthanian, or, allowing for the Cyrillic alphabet, Chinese Basque, altho some philologists and restaurateurs admit nothing of the sort.

Tell Amanda that we have not taken up Behaviorism but are going to govern our child’s life by the cipher concealed in the Sears, Roebuck catalogue which proves that Julian Rosenwald wrote the works of Edgar Guest. I don’t blame either of you for being disgusted with our public brawl the other day - but the manhole is on again; we are sober and almost the nicest people I ever met.

How about the Dial reprints for $30.00! Have you forgotten - we are yearning for them and if you send them I can sell two other sets.

We’d love to have you for Christmas or New Year’s or both. We are on the wagon till then and our difference of opinion, which had been going on for a miserable fortnight for two weeks before we came to New York and led to all the unpleasantness, is settled and forgotten.

Zelda wrote you a letter but mailed it to 82nd St without the number.

Love to you both,

Scott

TO THOMAS LINEAWEAVER

Ellerslie
Edgemoor, Delaware

1927 or 1928

Dear Tom:

I’ve been meaning to write you for months. I’m afraid I was the world’s greatest bore last night. I was in the insistent mood - you know the insistent mood? I’m afraid I irritated both you * Lineaweaver, a college friend, and his wife Eleanor had been to a party at the Fitzgeralds’.

and Eleanor, and I wanted to please you more than anyone there. It’s all very dim to me but I remember a lot of talk about fairies and the managing kind of American woman, whatever that means. It’s possible that I may be apologizing to the wrong people - anyway if I was lousy, please forgive me and tell Eleanor I can be almost human when sober.

We are on the wagon. If you come down to Roseleaf or Rosen- bloom or whatever that place is please come over! We are always here weekends. I’m awfully anxious to see you and bicker with you under more favorable circumstances. Tell Eleanor I love her and I want to marry her. Does that fix everything?

Scott

TO ZOE AKINS

Ellerslie Edgemoor, Delaware

February,
1928

Dear Zoë: Darling Zoë:

Are you, by any chance, so to speak, here? If you are, perhaps you’d come out Sunday to lunch - Thornton Wilder and some others are coming down.

Perhaps, even, you and Miss Taylor  would come out after the performance for a small revel Saturday night -? If we sent the car for you? We are just five minutes from the Dupont Hotel. Will you phone 5859? We do so want to see you.

Always Your Slave,

F. Scott Fitzgerald Zelda is in Philadelphia at ballet school for the afternoon so I’m writing this for her.

I hear The Furies t is great. We are seeing it tonight - Friday.

TO JULIAN STREET

c/o
Guaranty Trust (en route
to Paris)

Postmarked
July 1,
1928

Dear Julian Street:

My best to you! My contempt for Tarkington extends only to his character of being ashamed of his early sins and thus cutting out of his experience about one-half of life. He woke up one morning sober and 40, and thought that no one had ever been lascivious or drunk or vain except himself, and turned deliberately back to the illusions of his boyhood.

Delighted that you liked Wilder - do read Hemingway - what do you mean by a
theme?
‘Begin with an individual and you have created a type. Begin >yith a type and you have created nothing,’ as an humble writer once said.  Books called ‘oil’ or ‘money’ - surely the author of Sunbeams, Inc t couldn’t mean what you seem to mean. War
and Peace
is one man’s point of view always. Excuse this lousy pen.

Yours cordially, Scott Fitzgerald That clipping was fine and am having it duplicated to send to young writers who ask for advice.

TO BETTY MARKELL

c/o Guaranty Trust
4 Place dé la Concorde Paris, France

September
16, 1929

Dear Betty Markell:

I haven’t answered your letter before because it’s one of the nicest letters I’ve ever received, and it came when I was in a mood of tremendous dejection and I wanted to wait until I was a human being again before answering it. About five years ago I became, unfortunately, interested in the insoluble problems of personal charm and have spent the intervening time on a novel that’s going to interest nobody and probably alienate the remaining half dozen who are kind enough to be interested in my work. Unfortunately my sense of material is much superior to my mind or my talent and if I ever survive this damned thing I shall devote my life to musical comedy librettos or become swimming instructor to the young Mikadesses of Japan.

The Basil Lee stories were a mistake - it was too much good material being shoved into a lousy form. I’m glad you liked them - I thought they were rather better than the response they had. I am going to be in New York from January 5th-March 1st. If you make trips East and can stand disillusion about people I’d love to meet you. I have no address yet, save care of my publishers. With most sincere hopes of meeting you, Yours,

F. Scott Fitzgerald

TO MRS EDWARD FITZGERALD

Beau-Rivage
PalaceOuchy-Lausanne

June, 1930

Dear Mother:

My delay in writing is due to the fact that Zelda has been desperately ill with a complete nervous breakdown and is in a sanitarium near here. She is better now but recovery will take a long time. I did not tell her parents the seriousness of it so say nothing - the danger was to her sanity rather than her life.

Scottie is in the apartment in Paris with her governess. She loved the picture of her cousins. Tell Father I visited the and thought of the first poem I ever heard, or was it The Raven?’ Thank you for the Chesterton.

Love,

Scott

TO MRS EDWARD FITZGERALD

Switzerland

June, 1930

Dear Mother:

I’ve thought of you both a lot lately and I hope Father is better after his indigestion. Zelda’s recovery is slow. Now she has terrible eczema - one of those mild but terrible diseases that don’t worry relations but are a living hell for the patient. If all goes as well as it did up to a fortnight ago we will be home by Thanksgiving.

According to your poem I am destined to be a failure. I re- enclose it.

(1) — All big men have spent money freely. I hate avarice or even caution.

(2) — I have never forgiven or forgotten an injury.

(3) — This is the only one that makes sense.

(4) — If it’s worth doing. Otherwise it should be thrown over immediately.

(5) — No man’s criticism has ever been worth a damn to me.

These would be good rules for a man who wanted to be a chief clerk at 50.

Thanks for the check but really you mustn’t. I re-enclose it. The snap I’ll send to Scottie. The children are charming. Address me care of my Paris bank though I’m still by Father’s Castle of Chil- lon. Have you read Maurois’ Life
of Byron?
And Thomas Wolfe’s
Look
Homeward, Angel?

Much love to you both,

Scott

TO DAYTON(?) KOHLER

819
Felder AvenueMontgomery, Alabama

January
25, 1932

Dear Mr Kohler:

The reason for my long delay in writing you is this - shortly after receiving your letter I left France for Switzerland in terrible confusion because of the sickness of my wife. My current correspondence was packed by mistake in a crate - which has only just been opened. I am terribly sorry.

I was delighted naturally with your article about me. You cover me with soothing oil and make me feel more important than I have for ages.

I am mid-channel now in a double-decker novel which I hope will justify some of the things that you say. Perhaps Swanson of
College Humor or
someone there might be interested - for the moment I am
vieux jeu
and completely forgotten by the whole new generation which has grown up since I published my last book in ‘26. So since there has been no published development since then, I think the article would be for the present hard to sell.

I am doubly grateful for your interest and again I apologize for my apparent discourtesy in not answering you before.

If you are ever in Montgomery, Alabama, I would love to see you. My address is 819 Felder Avenue.

Sincerely,

F. Scott Fitzgerald

TO GERTRUDE STEIN

Hotel Rennert
Baltimore,

Maryland

April
28, 1932

Dear Gertrude Stein:

You were so nice to think of me so far off and send me your book. Whenever I sit down to write I think of the line that you drew for me and told me that my next book should be that thick.

So many of your memorable remarks come often to my head, and they seem to survive in a way that very little current wisdom does.

I read the book, of course, immediately, and was half through it for the second time (learning a lot as we all do from you) when my plans were upset by my wife’s illness, and by an accident it was consigned to temporary storage.

I hope to be in Europe this summer and to see you. I have never seen nearly as much of you as I would like.

Yours always, admiringly and cordially,

F. Scott Fitzgerald

TO ANDREW TURNBULL

La Paix, Rodgers’
Forge Towson, Maryland

August
2,
1932

Reputed Bantling:

In deponing and predicating incessantly that you were a ‘Shakespearean clown’ I did not destinate to signify that you were a wiseacre, witling, dizzard, chowderhead, Tom Nody, nizy, radoteur, zany, oaf, loon, doodle, dunderpate, lunkhead, sawney, gowk, clod-poll, wise man of Boeotia, jobbernowl or mooncalf but, subdititiously, that you were intrinsically a longhead, luminary, ‘barba tenus sapientes,’ pundit, wrangler, licentiate learned The- ban and sage, as are so many epigrammatists, wit-worms,
droits de corp,
sparks, merry-andrews, mimes, posture-masters, pucinellas, scaramouches, pantaloons, pickle-herrings and persifleurs that were pullulated by the Transcendent Skald.

Unequivocally,

F. Scott Fitzgerald

TO ANDREW TURNBULL

La Paix, Rodgers’ Forge
Tow son,
Maryland

August 18, 1932

Dear Andronio:

Upon mature consideration I advise you to go no farther with your vocabulary. If you have a lot of words they will become like some muscle you have developed that you are compelled to use, and you must use this one in expressing yourself or in criticizing others. It is hard to say who will punish you the most for this, the dumb people who don’t know what you are talking about or the learned ones who do. But wallop you they will and you will be forced to confine yourself to pen and paper.

Then you will be a writer and may God have mercy on your soul.

No! A thousand times no! Far, far better confine yourself to a few simple expressions in life, the ones that served billions upon countless billions of our forefathers and still serve admirably all but a tiny handful of those at present clinging to the earth’s crust. Here are the only expressions you need: