Zelda (7 page)

^*
This Ledger contains, among other records, his “Outline Chart of My Life,” an astonishingly accurate personal monthly account of his life, which he began in 1922 and continued into the middle of the 1930’s.

4

T
HROUGHOUT THE SPRING OF
1919 their letters crossed, written in that first flush of romance and absence keenly felt. Eagerly each awaited the other’s reply, and the letters were in turn amorous and promising, filled with the news of what they did, wanted to do, and might yet accomplish. Unfortunately, Scott’s letters have not survived, except for several wires, which Zelda pasted in her scrapbook, and his calling card sent with a special present. But Scott did keep Zelda’s, and just as he had carefully noted in his Ledger when he had fallen in love, because there was “something in his mind that catalogued and classified,” so it was his instinct to preserve her love letters to him. She wrote in pencil usually, quickly and carelessly, not bothering to date her letters, nor to punctuate them, except for the characteristic school-girlish dash that separated each thought, or the occasional word underlined for emphasis. Her hand was large and round and upright; she called it her “sun-burned, open-air looking script.”

These letters form the only record we have of her side of the affair. In them are the clues, in her own words rather than through Scott’s interpretation, of what she was at eighteen. The only other written record that Zelda had kept up to this point in her life was her diary. And that apparently was lost or destroyed a long time ago. Scott had taken it with him to New York and showed it to at least one friend of his that spring, who said that it was “a very human document, but somehow I cannot altogether understand it.”

Zelda’s letters provide a key to her side of their romance. She had a striking ability with words that had nothing to do with formal education; her thoughts drifted, swerved, and tumbled in peculiarly swift transitions all her own; they teetered sometimes on the edge of that special guile she could wield toward Scott. But in these letters she could also be utterly open with him; they are like conversations held in the dark between lovers when they chart the small maneuvers and upheavals of their love.

Once in New York, Scott told his parents about his love for Zelda and asked his mother to write a letter of welcome. At the end of February Zelda told him: “I s’pose you knew your Mother’s anxiously anticipated epistle at last arrived— I really am so glad she wrote— Just a nice little note—untranslatable, but she called me ‘Zelda’—”

Scott knew that a few days after he left for New York Zelda was invited to Auburn for the week of February 22. Her date was Auburn’s football hero Francis Stubbs, one of the most skillful and attractive players the champions of the Southern League possessed. No two men could have differed more than Stubbs and Fitzgerald and no man could have seemed a more formidable suitor in Scott’s eyes than the dashing and superbly confident Stubbs. For her scrapbook, Zelda clipped a photograph of him standing indolently with the great letter A upon his jersey, his soft leather helmet hanging loosely from his hand. At the bottom of his invitation to Auburn he had written: “Have a date with you Saturday P.M. Look out.” Today he remembers Zelda as “a very popular and beautiful young lady and she was not what is known as wild… but she was very much full of life and pep.” He had not fallen in love with her, but his roommate had and kept a life-size photograph of her in his room and “thought he was going to marry her right up to the time she married
Scott Fitzgerald.” In Zelda’s honor a special society was formed at Auburn, known waggishly as Zeta Sigma; its initiation rites included pilgrimages to 6 Pleasant Avenue in Montgomery, and its members, five football players, were, according to a newspaper clipping in her scrapbook, “noted for their almost rabid devotion to the principles of their fraternity.”

Understandably, Scott was worried. But Zelda rather blithely reassured him: “Sweetheart, please don’t worry about me— I want to always be a help—You know I am all yours and love you with all my heart.”

Still, her trip had disconcerted him, for while he was trying to break into journalism in New York his girl was not exactly cooling her heels at home. He had arrived in the city and presented his calling card “to the office boys of seven city editors asking to be taken on as a reporter. I had just turned twenty-two, the war was over, and I was going to trail murderers by day and do short stories by night. But the newspapers didn’t need me.” So he settled on writing advertising copy for ninety dollars a month and was not happy with his compromise. (He came up with only one snappy jingle, for a steam laundry in Iowa.) He wrote during every bit of spare time that he had and began a collection of rejection slips, which he carefully pinned on the walls of his rented room in the cheap and unfashionable Upper West Side. Zelda had promised to write every day.

Darling, I’ve nearly sat it off in the Strand to-day and all because W. E. Lawrence of the Movies is your physical counter-part. So I was informed by half a dozen girls before I could slam on a hat and see for myself— He made me so homesick— I thought at first waiting must grow easier later—but every day I want you more… I am acquiring myriad wrinkles pondering over a reply to your Mother’s note— I’m so dreadfully afraid of appearing fresh or presuming or casual— Most of my correspondents have always been boys, so I am at a loss—now in my hour of need— I really believe this is my first letter to a lady—… An old flame from the Stone Ages is calling to-night— He’ll probably leave in disgust because I just must talk about you— I love you so, and I’m
so
lonesome—

Her sister Clothilde was leaving for New York the following day to rejoin her husband, who had returned from service. The whole Sayre family got up before dawn to see Clothilde off.

It’s the first time I’ve seen early morning in a terribly long time— The sun all yellow and red, like a huge luminous peach hanging on a
black shadow-tree—just visible thru the mist—and the family all sleepy-eyed and sad. Cold toes and tangled hair—I don’t think I’ll forget this morning. It’s so much nicer to wake up early— I’ve felt so clean and wholesome all day because I saw the sun rise—

She took her first swim in the icy spring waters, and she reminded Scott:

Remember last summer how hard we tried to get a swim to-gether? Tilde [Clothilde’s nickname] informed me that I’d certainly do all my swimming in a bath-tub in New York—So please have a huge one, big enough for us both—

Darling, your love is so wonderful—I even believe you do as much as I do—Cource I will come—as soon as you’re ready for me— There’s nothing
on
earth I want like you—and you know I am yours—forever—

Then she told him about a prize fight she’d gone to, her first, and how exciting she found it, and about the loan a boy had made her of his motorcycle:

… it’s most exhilirating—and I love flying thru the sand on the road where we walked once—and fussed about the woods—

March came and Scott sent her a glorious pair of pajamas, which she said made her feel like a
Vogue
cover: “… I feel sure I’ll never be able to keep off the street in ’em”; and he told her he adored short hair.

You really mustn’t say short hair thrills you— Just after I’ve lived in Vaseline, thereby turning mine dark, to make it long like you wanted it— But anyway, it didn’t grow, so I really am glad you’re becoming reconciled to the ways of convenience— I still think how nice the back of my neck
would
feel—

More seriously she told him:

Darling, I guess—I know—Mamma knows that we are going to be married
some
day— But she keeps leaving stories of young authors, turned out on a dark and stormy night, on my pillow— I wonder if you hadn’t better write to my Daddy—just before I leave— I wish I were detached—sorter without relatives. I’m not exactly
scared
of ’em, but they
could
be so unpleasant about what I’m going to do—

adding a little cryptically:

But you know we will, my Sweetheart—when you’re ready—… I don’t see how you can-carry around as much love as I’ve given you—

But Scott’s life in New York was not going as smoothly as he had expected; his work bored and irritated him and, although there were parties and pleasant suppers in the evening with old friends from Princeton, he was no closer to having Zelda with him than when he left Montgomery. He was melancholy over his lack of funds and his inability to sell any of his stories, and his letters to Zelda reflected his unhappiness. Was she willing to wait for him and for how long could he count on her? Weren’t her letters less frequent than before? Zelda tried to reassure him, and if she too was worried by his uneasiness, she concealed it as best she could.

Sweetheart,

Please, please don’t be so depressed— We’ll be married soon, and then these lonesome nights will be over forever—and until we are, I am loving, loving every tiny minute of the day and night— Maybe you won’t understand this, but sometimes when I miss you most, it’s hardest to write—and you always know when I make myself— Just the ache of it all—and I CAN’T tell you. If we were together, you’d feel how strong it is—you’re so sweet when you’re melancholy. I love your sad tenderness—when I’ve hurt you—That’s one of the reasons I could never be sorry for our quarrels—and they bothered you so— Those dear, dear little fusses, when I always tried so hard to make you kiss and forget—

Scott—there’s nothing in all the world I want but you—and your precious love—All the material things are nothing. I’d just hate to live a sordid, colorless existence—because you’d soon love me less—and less—and I’d do anything—anything—to keep your heart for my own— I don’t want to live—I want to love first, and live incidentally— Why don’t you feel that I’m waiting— I’ll come to you, Lover, when you’re ready— Don’t—don’t ever think of the things you can’t give me— You’ve trusted me with the dearest heart of all—and it’s so damn much more than anybody else in all the world has ever had—

How can you think deliberately of life without me—If you should die— O Darling—darling Scot— It’d be like going blind. I know I would, too,—I’d have no purpose in life—just a pretty—decoration. Don’t you think I was made for you? I feel like you had me ordered—and I was delivered to you—to be worn— I want you to wear me, like a watch—charm or a button hole boquet—to the world. And then, when we’re alone, I want to help—to know that you can’t do
anything
without me.

I’m glad you wrote Mamma.
^*
It was such a nice sincere letter—and
mine to St Paul was very evasive and rambling. I’ve never, in all my life, been able to say anything to people older than me—Somehow I just instinctively avoid personal things with them—even my family. Kids are so much nicer.

It was an extraordinary letter, for it revealed Zelda’s perception of Scott in relation to herself and to money; they were inextricably bound together. That she seems to have understood something of that link was remarkable. Scott was far more aware of the power of money than Zelda; he wanted it badly. Once he had it he would treat it with indifference, but its possession, as well as the people who possessed it, would become major elements of his fiction. Zelda’s letter reassures Scott that while money, or “All the material things,” didn’t matter to her, she knew that they did to him, and that because they did so deeply he would love her less were she not embellished by them. The extravagant language of Zelda’s letter also expressed her feeling that without Scott she was nothing. It was through him, through private possession of him (“to know that you can’t do
anything
without me”), that she spoke of their love. It was unfortunate that she thought of herself as having been “ordered… to be worn” by Scott. She would accept being his creation, his fictional girl; she would match his ideal to the letter, if she could.

Buoyed by her letter, Scott offered Zelda an engagement ring which had been his mother’s. On March 22 he wired her: “
DARLING… THE RING ARRIVED TONIGHT AND I AM SENDING IT MONDAY I LOVE YOU AND I THOUGHT I WOULD TELL YOU HOW MUCH ON THIS SATURDAY NIGHT WHEN WE OUGHT TO BE TOGETHER DONT LET YOUR FAMILY BE SHOCKED AT MY PRESENT
.” When the small package arrived Rosalind inadvertently opened it. Enclosed along with the ring was Scott’s calling card with this note written across it: “Darling—I am sending this just the way it came—I hope it fits and I wish I were there to put it on. I love you so much, much, much that it just hurts every minute I’m without you—Do write every day because I love your letters so—Goodbye, My own Wife.” Scott had also written a letter to Judge Sayre, which he rather inappropriately intended Zelda to deliver for him. She read it and wrote Scott: “I like your letter to A. D. and I’m slowly mustering courage to deliver it— He’s so blind, it’ll probably be a terrible shock to him, but it seems the only straightforward thing to do.” Scott again wired her: “…
BETTER GIVE LETTER TO YOUR FATHER IM SORRY YOURE NERVOUS DONT WRITE UNLESS YOU WANT TO I LOVE YOU DEAR EVERYTHING WILL BE MIGHTY FINE ALL MY LOVE.”

Zelda was delighted with the ring and told Scott it was beautiful. “Every time I see it on my finger I am rather startled— I’ve never worn a ring before, they’ve always seemed so inappropriate— —but I love to see this shining there so nice and white like our love— And it sorter says ‘Soon’ to me all the time— Just sings it all day long.” That Saturday night she wore it to a dance at the country club to everyone’s astonishment. “You can’t imagine what havoc the ring wrought,” she reported. “A whole dance was completely upset last night—… I am so proud to be your girl—to have everybody know we are in love— It’s so good to know you’re always loving me—and that before long we’ll be together for all our lives—”

Opinion in Montgomery was, however, by no means as simple as Zelda expressed it to Scott. Privately more than one swain wondered just how long their long-distance romance would endure. Zelda was not known for the longevity of her amours and Scott had already been gone for more than a month. The Sayres did not consider Zelda seriously engaged to Scott, and among themselves hoped that she wouldn’t be. Although Mrs. Sayre genuinely liked Fitzgerald, her notes to Zelda about impoverished writers unable to make their way took the effect they were intended to. Fitzgerald was a charming and attractive but uncertain young man; he had not graduated from Princeton, he was Irish, he had no career to speak of, he drank too much, and he was a Catholic.