Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (603 page)

Most admiringly and gratefully,

F. Scott Fitzgerald

TO MR AND MRS PHILIP MCQUILLAN

38 West 59th StreetNew
York City

December
28, 1920

Dear Aunt Lorena and Uncle Phil:

The steak set is fine! We were in a furnished cottage all summer so we bought no silver so this will come in awfully handy whenever we have dinner in our apartment. We won’t have to bring the bread knife on the table any more. We certainly are much obliged.

I am just putting the finishing touches on my novel,
The Beautiful Lady
Without Mercy, which is the story of a young couple who rapidly go to pieces. It is much more carefully written than the first one and I have a good deal of faith in it the it’s so bitter and pessimistic that I doubt if it’ll have the popular success of the first. Still, as you know, I really am in this game seriously and for something besides money and if it’s necessary to bootlick the pet delusions of the inhabitants of Main Street (Have you read it? It’s fine!) to make money I’d rather live on less and preserve the one duty of a sincere writer - to set down life as he sees it as gracefully as he knows how.

I have a contract you know with the Metropolitan Magazine to serialize my next novel for $7000 but I’m sure if they tried to do this one their circulation would drop. You know the stuff they want! My current idol, H. L. Mencken, says about it:

‘If you yearn to uplift and like a happy comfortable sobbing, an upward rolling of eyes and a vast blowing of noses it will please you - on the other hand if you are a carnal fellow as I am, with a stomach ruined by alcohol, it will gag you.’

So within several years you’ll probably hear that I’ve been hung by an earnest delegation of 100% Americans.

I am waiting to hear from a scenario I outlined on Griffith’s order for — who is a colorless wench in the life as is her pal, — . But I am not averse to taking all the shekels I can garner from the movies. I’ll roll them joy pills (the literary habit) till doomsday because you can always say, ‘Oh, but they put on the movie in a different spirit from the way it was written!’

When I collect from Scribners this winter we expect to go abroad and spend a year or so. Why don’t you come East? The best liquor in New York is only $8.00 a quart. I thought of sending you and Uncle Alley and Father a bottle each but I decided it was too risky. I imagine you’d pay about $18.00 for anything drinkable out there.

Thanks again and luck to the redoubtable David.

As ever,

Scott

TO JAMES BRANCH CABELL

38 West 59
th
StreetNew York City

December
30, 1920

Dear Mr Cabell:

Can’t resist telling you that I have finished
Jurgen
and think on the whole that it’s a finer novel than
The
Revolt
of the Anqels
- the at present I’m inclined to rank your work as a whole below both Conrad and Anatole France. However you’re a much younger man.

My wife doesn’t agree - you are by all odds her favorite novelist.

Please don’t bother to answer this but if you’d let us know next time you’re in New York we’d both be very flattered.

Yours,

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Then Joe read us... his poem at which both David... and I laughed appreciatively.

I’m sending a cable to Cabell

To cavil at callow callants

Who callously carped at the rabble

For caring for amours gallantes

For each pious burg out in Bergen

(a county in Jersey) has spoke

For jerking the joy out of
Jurgen

And judging
The Genius
a joke!’

TO SINCLAIR LEWIS

38 West 59th StreetNew
York City

January 26, 1920

1921

Dear Mr Lewis:

I want to tell you that Main
Street
has displaced
Theron Ware
in my favor as the best American novel. The amount of sheer data in it is amazing! As a writer and a Minnesotan let me swell the chorus - after a third reading.

With the utmost admiration,

F. Scott Fitzgerald

TO JAMES BRANCH CABELL

38 West 59th Street

New York City

February 23,

1921

Dear Mr Cabell:

I was delighted to get
Figures of Earth.
I had just ordered it at the bookstore, which copy I shall present to some unworthy charity.

I am cancelling all engagements to read it today and tomorrow. Having finished my second novel née
The
Beautiful
Lady
Without Mercy but now known as The Beautiful
and Damned
I am about to sell my soul — and go to the coast to write one moving picture — ‘Well,’ as Codman says in his touching monograph on Anchovies, ‘there is no movie in
Jurgen.
It just won’t fillum.’ Incidentally given free rein, wouldn’t it be a treat to see it unex- purgated in the movies?

That was an idiotic review of The
Cords of
Vanity by Richard Le Gallienne - which reminds me I must order France’s new book,
The Fall of the Angels.
It must be a sequel to The Revolt
of the Angels.

Still hoping that we may meet soon.

Faithfully,

F. Scott Fitzgerald

TO FRANCES NEWMAN

38 West 59th
Street

New York
City

February
26, 1921

My dear Miss Newman:

While it astonished me that so few critics mentioned the influence of Sinister
Street
on
This Side of Paradise,
I feel sure that it was much more in intention than in literal fact. It occurred to me to write an American version of the history of that sort of young man - in which, no doubt, I was hindered by lack of perspective as well as by congenital shortcomings. But I was also hindered by a series of resemblances between my life and that of Michael Fane which, had I been a more conscientious man, might have precluded my ever attempting an autobiographical novel. I have five copies of Youth’s Encounter at present in my library, sent me by people who stumbled on the book and thought that it was an amusing parallel to my own life. When I was twenty-one and began This Side of
Paradise
my literary taste was so unformed that Youth’s Encounter was still my ‘perfect book.’ My book quite naturally shows the influence to a marked degree. However, I resent your details. Both Shane Leslie in the Dublin Review and Maurice Francis Egan in the Catholic
World
took me to task for painting ‘Monsignor Darcy’ from the life. He was, of course, my best friend, the Monsignor Sigourney Fay to whom the book was dedicated. He was known to many Catholics as the most brilliant priest in America. The letters in the book are almost transcriptions of his own letters to me.

Amory Blaine’s mother was also an actual character, the mother of a friend of mine, whose name I cannot mention. There is such an obvious connection between her early career and that of the cook in Youth’s Encounter that I appreciate your pointing it out. You see I object to being twice blamed - once for transcribing a character from life and once for stealing him from another author. I have had numerous comments from Princeton about putting J — into the book as Thomas P. D’Invilliers,’ and now I am told that I borrowed the dilettante aesthete Wilmot from Mackenzie. ‘Spires and Gargoyles’ was possibly suggested by ‘Dreaming Spires’ but the terms ‘slicker’ and ‘big men’ were in use at Princeton when I first went there - before Youth’s Encounter was written.

It seems to me that you have marred a justified criticism by such pettinesses as comparing the names ‘Blaine’ and ‘Fane,’ and by remarking on the single occurrence of the word ‘narcissus’ in Sinister Street. You seem to be unconscious that even Mackenzie had his sources such as
Dorian Gray
and None Other Gods and that occasionally we may have drunk at the same springs. Incidentally Michael’s governess did not tease him about G. A. Henty.

This is the first letter of any kind I have ever written to a critic of my book and I shall probably regret this one before the day is over. I sent the novel to Mencken with the confession that it derived itself from Mackenzie, Wells and Tarkington, with half a dozen additional overtones, but there are comparisons you brought up that make me as angry as my book evidently made you. It is as if I accused Floyd Dell of being a plagiarist because both our mooncalfs wrote poetry and both walked toward a dark town at the last, whispering of their lost loves - or said that Cabell’s
Jurgen
is an imitation of
The
Revolt of
the
Angels, or even, to use another Tristan and Irene comparison, compared your article with p. 138 of Mencken’s
Prejudices,
ist Series.

Yours very truly,

F. Scott Fitzgerald

TO MISS VAS

Dellwood
White
Bear Lake, Minnesota

September 14, 1921

My dear Miss Vas:

Your teacher is probably an ass - most of them are, I’ve found. Your details about me are correct but your spelling is as incorrect as mine. There were 125 misspellings in the 1st printing of
Paradise.

I would enjoy seeing your review - also your novel. There is no such thing as ‘getting your values straightened out’ except for third-class minds who are willing to accept the latest jitney interpretation of the universe by some Illinois or South Carolina messiah.

Sincerely,

F. Scott Fitzgerald

TO GEORGE JEAN NATHAN

626
Goodrich
Avenue

St Paul,

Minnesota

Winter, 1922

Dear George:

Thanks for your note. In the same mail came a letter from Harris’ office about my play. I suppose they would be best as,.

according to Zoe Akin, Hopkins is a bad financier and John Williams is on the rocks. The play is, like most of my stuff, a very bad performance full of exceedingly good things. It varies between comedy and burlesque and is composed of three intermediate fanciful scenes strung together not too securely between a very solid first and last act.

I shall probably be sending you an exquisite novelette within the month - the best thing I’ve ever done - something really remarkable.

By now you’ve read my book and though I know it amused and entertained you I’d give anything to talk with you and hear what you thought of its artistic merits. Bunny (Edmund B.) Wilson is doing an article on me for the March
Bookman
in which he dissects me cruelly and completely. I can’t tell you how I enjoyed it. He has a fine mind, George, and except for Aldous Huxley and Dos Passos he’s worth all the rest of the ‘younger generation’ put together.

A long time ago when Donald Stewart first met you he wondered if you recognized him as the man whom we brought to your apartment once and who went on a party with Ruth, Zelda, you and me.

We’re coming East for a fortnight in March. I read
The
Critic
and the Drama
with the greatest interest, though I had read most if not all of it in the
Smart Set.
Best to Mencken.

As ever,

F. Scott Fitzgerald

TO JAMES BRANCH CABELL

626 Goodrich
Avenue

St Paul,

Minnesota

February,
1922

Dear Mr Cabell:

I feel that by asking your permission to quote a private letter I have not acted in the best of taste. There have been, of course, innumerable precedents of late, but that does not excuse it. I appreciate your exceeding kindness and courtesy.

It seems that Perkins of Scribners had heard from some editor in Richmond that you liked the book. He had tried to get in touch with that editor to see if it was quotable - realizing how invaluable a word from you might be. For some reason he evidently failed, and he wired me Monday night - or Sunday - asking me if I had a letter from you which was quotable. I wired you immediately.

I’ve had the pleasure of a three day amour with an Exquisite Case of Spanish Influenza, and like all such illicit affairs it has left me weak and chastened. I hope you are not the same.

Faithfully,

F. Scott Fitzgerald

TO JAMES BRANCH CABELL

626
Goodrich
Avenue

St Paul,

Minnesota

March 4,
1922

Dear Mr Cabell:

Thank you for your letter. I am tremendously sorry you followed
The Beautiful and Damned
in the serial because it was cut to pieces. But I appreciate the compliment of your doing so. And the final book version was considerably revised. However it isn’t worth going through again, for you, I mean.

Hergesheimer, that charming egotist, came through this swollen Main Street awhile back. He didn’t like it When do we meet?

I have just finished a comedy for the commercial stage. When do you publish another book? Please do soon as I am bored with all current fiction including my own.

Yours faithfully,

F. Scott Fitzgerald

I appreciate your kindness in saying those things about the book. I cut part of the ending in the final revision, as you notice. I hope it wasn’t the part you liked. I liked the other ending but it seemed to spoil the general
hardness
of the book.

TO JAMES BRANCH CABELL

The
Plaza
New York City

March 27,1922

Dear Mr Cabell:

Am dictating this and it is the most profound agony I have ever gone through. The stenographer embarrasses me because I feel that I have got to think quickly and in consequence everything comes in broken clauses. But I simply cannot let your very kind letter go unanswered any longer. You were very nice to allow me to place such an endorsement in the advertisements of my book. It has gone up beyond 30,000, in fact it will touch 40,000 within the week, but I doubt very much if as many people will like it who liked
This
Side
of Paradise.
I saw Mencken and Nathan for a minute the other morning. Mencken seemed nervous and tired, but Nathan is his usual self, albeit developing a paunch and losing a bit of his remarkable youthfulness. Why do not you publish a geography of the lands of your own creating on the inside, front and back covers of your next book, much as Conrad has in the last edition of Victory? I think it would be very amusing both for you and for your public, or would it, in the case of an imaginative country, appear too obvious?