And the Rest Is History (13 page)

15

1918

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

S
cott and Zelda, after nine decades, remain the golden couple of a golden age, their romance immortalized in Fitzgerald's flawless prose. They serve as legends of their era, the embodiment of the triumph and tragedy of the Roaring Twenties, dwelling, for a time, this side of paradise.

Zelda Sayre was born in Montgomery, Alabama, into a prominent family; her father was a justice of the supreme court of Alabama. Her indulgent mother named her after a gypsy princess from a romance novel; it was to prove an apt moniker. She had an unappeasable appetite for attention; for example, the teenager (the antithesis of Southern propriety) wore a tight, flesh-colored bathing suit to fuel rumors that she swam nude. Not surprisingly, she and her childhood friend Tallulah Bankhead left Montgomery with no shortage of gossip. Her high school yearbook encapsulated her philosophy : “Let's think only of today and not worry about tomorrow.” Even the imaginative girl could not have envisioned what a roller coaster her tomorrow would hold when her life merged with a self-proclaimed romantic egotist.

Zelda's destiny, Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, was born into an Irish Roman Catholic family in St. Paul, Minnesota. A disinterested student, he dropped out of Princeton to enlist in World War I, hoping the experience would provide material for the novels he aspired to pen. Ironically, his stint in the army introduced him to the passion that would drive his books, many of which were to become American classics.

The first time Zelda met Scott was when he was stationed at Camp Sheridan and received a coveted invitation to an exclusive country club, where he saw a “golden girl.” She was swaying to the song “Dance of the Hours,” and the twenty-one-year-old first lieutenant was mesmerized. He asked her to dance, of which experience she would later say, “He smelled like new goods ... being close to him with my face in the space between his ears and his stiff army collar was like being initiated into the subterranean reserves of a fine fabric store.”

Scott attempted to impress her by telling her that one day he would be a famous writer and she his novel's heroine, and that he was named after his famous second cousin twice removed, Francis Scott Key, who had composed “The Star-Spangled Banner.” However, as Zelda thirsted for more material tangibles, Scott departed for New York City to establish a career. Before he left, Zelda presented him with a silver hip flask engraved with the words
Forget-me-not
.

After obtaining employment at an advertising agency, Scott sent Zelda his mother's ring. Zelda, however, did what mice do when the cat's away and resumed her flirtations, one with a university star quarterback. Involved with the two men, she sent them both her autographed picture; however, she placed them in the wrong envelopes and Scott was enraged to receive her photograph inscribed to another. Zelda claimed she had done so accidentally; however, it may have been a ruse to incite jealousy. The result was a violent argument, and they ended their relationship. He told his friend, “I wouldn't care if she died, but I couldn't stand to have anyone else marry her.”

Nevertheless, desperate to win her back, Scott revised his manuscript
The Romantic Egotist
and recast it as
This Side of Paradise
. The twenty-three-year-old author wrote his publisher, Maxwell Perkins, imploring for its immediate release: “I have so many things dependent on its success—including of course a girl.” Their engagement was resumed, and Zelda wrote her fiancé, “Both of us are very splashy, vivid pictures, those kind with the details left out. But I know our colors will blend.”

On April 30, 1920, before a small wedding party in St. Patrick's Cathedral, Scott finally possessed the embodiment of his ideal. He told a reporter, “I married the heroine of my stories.” They honeymooned in the city's Biltmore Hotel, where, because of noise complaints, they were asked to leave.

After their nuptials, the Fitzgeralds became the enfants terribles of the Jazz Age because of their hedonistic lifestyle, unconventionality, and commitment to the pursuit of happiness. As literary celebrities they rubbed shoulders with Gloria Swanson and Douglas Fairbanks. Every one of their outrageous, drunken escapades (despite Prohibition) became tabloid fodder, such as the time Zelda jumped into the fountain at the Plaza Hotel. When Dorothy Parker first met them, when they were sitting atop a taxi (which is how they often rode down Fifth Avenue), she said, “They did both look as though they had just stepped out of the sun; their youth was striking.” William Randolph Hearst enlisted a reporter to write solely about them. Actress Lillian Gish said, “They didn't make the 20s; they were the 20s.” For a time, the Fitzgeralds basked in the limelight; always at Scott's side was the woman he had termed “the first American flapper.”

On Valentine's Day, 1921, while Scott was working on
The Beautiful and the Damned
, their only daughter, Frances Scott (“Scottie”) was born. This did not turn Zelda into a domestic diva. When a magazine asked her to contribute an article for
Famous Recipes from Famous People
, she supplied one for burnt toast. Her lack of household skills posed no problem, as the Fitzgeralds employed a cook, a housekeeper, and a nanny.

Tragically, the Fitzgeralds' relationship began to unravel, as they were beset by problems. Although
This Side of Paradise
brought in staggering royalties, they spent it as quickly as it came in. The situation was exacerbated by their chronic drinking: Scott employed his own personal bootlegger, and Zelda did her utmost to keep up. Soon, instead of riding atop taxis, inebriated they were brought home in one. Their relationship no longer blended; instead, it had become a folie à deux. Desperate for money, Scott, though he felt he was prostituting his talent, took to writing for magazines.

Of their mounting marital tensions Zelda stated, “When we meet in the hall, we walk around each other like a pair of stiff-legged terriers spoiling for a fight.” Still devoted to each other despite their tensions, they decided to join the American expatriate community in France, which Gertrude Stein christened the Lost Generation. Zelda was thrilled at the prospect. Their daughter Scottie later said of her mother that she “never liked a room without an open suitcase in it.”

In Paris the pair socialized with Pablo Picasso and Cole Porter and were frequent visitors in Gertrude Stein's salon. Scott and Hemingway forged a bond as writers and fellow drinkers and frequented the American Bar. Hemingway, after meeting Zelda, in his customary terse style, pronounced her insane. His advice to Scott was to forgo his emotionally draining marriage for an alternative agenda of “hard drink and easy sex.” For her part, jealous of his time with her husband, she accused Hemingway and Scott of being lovers and goaded Scott by calling him a fairy.

Despite the domestic turbulence, Scott was able to complete his magnum opus,
The Great Gatsby
, thereby fulfilling his initial pledge to Zelda to one day make her the heroine of his novel. Its dedication:
Once Again to Zelda.
She, however, felt he had exploited her to create his characters and told a magazine that apparently “plagiarism begins at home.” Moreover, bored while he was writing, Zelda began an affair with a young French pilot, Edouard Jozan. Scott responded by locking her in the house; bereft, he wrote, “That September of 1924, I knew that something had happened that could never be repaired.”

Zelda matched her husband in jealousy as well as alcohol. One evening, while dining, Scott was introduced to Isadora Duncan. Ever dramatic, he dropped to his knees at her feet, whereby she began to stroke his hair and called him “my centurion.” This was too much for Zelda, and she threw herself down a series of stone steps. Of the unreal haze that hovered over their lives, Scott wrote, “Sometimes I don't know whether Zelda and I are real or whether we are characters in one of my novels.”

Finally perceiving what was apparent to all else, a devastated Scott admitted Zelda into a series of psychiatric hospitals, where she would spend most of the remainder of her life. Her sorrow is laid bare in her words, “Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.” Scott's heartache was evident: “I left my capacity for hoping on the little roads that led to Zelda's sanatorium.” While in one of the hospitals, Zelda wrote
Save Me the Waltz.
Two years later Fitzgerald wrote
Tender Is the Night
; the two books provide contrasting portrayals of their legendary marriage.

Although they were never to live together again, their bond remained strong. Scott moved to Hollywood and wrote screenplays he despised to keep Zelda from the horror of state-run institutions. He visited regularly and sent a letter calling her “the finest, loveliest, tenderest, most beautiful person I have ever known.” She described him as “the best friend a person could have been to me.”

In 1940, Scott was a recovering alcoholic, unemployed screen-writer, living with gossip columnist Sheilah Graham. While taking some notes, he suddenly rose from his chair, clutched the mantel-piece, and fell to the floor, victim of a heart attack. Zelda, who during their courtship had written to him, “We will die together,” received the devastating news in her sanatorium, while living three thousand miles away, in the Southern city where their love story had begun.

Eight years later, Zelda perished in a hospital fire; in her room were all of Scott's love letters. As much as she had been able, Zelda had always saved Scott the waltz.

16

1922

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

F
rida Kahlo served as Diego Rivera's muse; he acted as her maestro, and together they became Mexico's most colorful couple. Their romance was a magnet; they were alternately attracted and repelled by one another. Despite, or because of, their love-hate relationship, they managed to create some of the most compelling visual images of the twentieth century. In the process, their love story possessed all the exoticism and eroticism of a Frida Kahlo canvas.

In a house symbolically named La Casa Azul (“The Blue House”), Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón, referred to as Frida, was born to a Hungarian-Jewish father and a devout Catholic mother. A poster child for Freud's theories, she adored her father and resented her mother. Her childhood was punctuated by gunfire outside her home from the Mexican Revolution as well as about of polio that left her confined to her room for nine months and resulted in a withered right leg. Her classmates taunted her by calling her “Peg-Leg Frida,” and to disguise her deformity, she later took to wearing long, colorful skirts, which enhanced her exotic appearance, as did her trademark unibrow. At age fifteen she enrolled in the prestigious Escuela National Preparatoria, where she developed her passion for communism and met her larger-than-life love.