Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (548 page)

The editor of
Colliers
wants me to write for them (he’s here in town), but I tell him I’m finishing my novel for myself and all I can promise him is a look at it. It will, at any rate, be nothing like anything else as I’m digging it out of myself like uranium - one ounce to the cubic ton of rejected ideas. It is a novel
à la Flaubert
without ‘ideas’ but only people moved singly and in mass through what I hope are authentic moods.

The resemblance is rather to
Gatsby
than to anything else I’ve written. I’m so glad you’re well and reasonably happy.

With dearest love,

Scott

P.S. Please send Scottie’s story back in your next letter - as it seems utterly impossible to get duplicates and I shall probably want to show it to authors and editors with paternal pride.

1403 North Laurel Avenue

Hollywood,

California December 6,
1940

Dearest Zelda:

No news except that the novel progresses and I am angry that this little illness has slowed me up. I’ve had trouble with my heart before but never anything organic. This is not a major attack but seems to have come on gradually and luckily a cardiogram showed it up in time. I may have to move from the third to the first floor apartment but I’m quite able to work, etc., if I do not overtire myself.

Scottie tells me she is arriving South Xmas Day. I envy you being together and I’ll be thinking of you. Everything is my novel now - it has become of absorbing interest. I hope I’ll be able to finish it by February.

With dearest love,

1403
North Laurel Avenue

Hollywood,

California December
13, 1940

Dearest Zelda:

Here’s why it would be foolish to sell the watch. I think I wrote you that over a year ago when things were very bad indeed I did consider pawning it as I desperately needed $200.00, for a couple of months. The price offered, to my astonishment, was $20.00, and of course I didn’t even consider it. It cost, I believe, $600.00. The reason for the shrinkage is a purely arbitrary change of taste in jewelry. It is actually artificial and created by the jewelers themselves. It is like the Buick we sold in 1927 - for $200.00 - to come back to America in ‘31 and buy a car of the same year and much more used for $400.00. If you have no use for the watch I think it would be a beautiful present for Scottie. She has absolutely nothing of any value and I’m sure would prize it highly. Moreover she never loses anything. If you preferred you could loan it to her as I think she’d get real pleasure out of sporting it.

The novel is about three-quarters through and I think I can go on till January 12 without doing any stories or going back to the studio. I couldn’t go back to the studio anyhow in my present condition as I have to spend most of the time in bed where I write on a wooden desk that I had made a year and a half ago. The cardiogram shows that my heart is repairing itself but it will be a gradual process that will take some months. It is odd that the heart is one of the organs that does repair itself.

I had a letter from Katharine Tighe the other day, a voice out of the past. Also one from Harry Mitchell who was my buddy at the Barron G. Collier Advertising Agency. And one from Max Perkins who is keen to see the novel and finally one from Bunny Wilson who is married now to a girl named Mary McCarthy who was an editor of
The New
Republic. They have a baby a year old and live in New Canaan.

I will write you again early next week in time for Christmas.

Dearest love.

P.S. I enclose the letter from Max, in fact two letters only I can’t find the one that just came. They will keep you
au courant
with the publishing world and some of our friends.

1403 North Laurel Avenue

Hollywood,

California
December
19, 1940

Dearest Zelda:

This has to be a small present this year but I figure Scottie’s present as a gift to you both and charge it off to you accordingly.

I am very anxious for Scottie to finish this year of college at least, so please do not stress to her that it is done at any inconvenience. The thing for which I am most grateful to my mother and father are my four years at Princeton, and I would be ashamed not to hand it on to another generation so there is no question of Scottie quitting. Do tell her this.

I hope you all have a fine time at Christmas. Much love to your mother and Marjorie and Minor and Nonny and Livy Hart and whoever you see.

Dearest love.

Scott

To Ernest Hemingway

14 rue de Tilsitt

Paris, France

Postmarked November 30,1925

Dear Ernest:

I was quite ashamed of the other morning. Not only in disturbing Hadley, but in foisting that — alias — upon you. However it is only fair to say that the deplorable man who entered your apartment Saturday morning was not me but a man named Johnston who has often been mistaken for me.

Zelda, evidences to the contrary, was not suffering from lack of care but from a nervous hysteria which is only relieved by a doctor bearing morphine. We both went to Belleau Wood next day to recuperate.

For some reason I told you a silly lie - or rather an exaggeration - silly because the truth itself was enough to make me sufficiently jubilant.
The
Saturday Evening Post raised me to $2750 and not $3000, which is a jump of $750.00 in one month. It was probably in my mind that I could not get $3000 from the smaller magazines. The Post merely met the Hearst offer, but that is something they seldom do.

What garbled versions of the McAlmon episode or the English orgy we lately participated in I told you, I don’t know. It is true I saved McAlmon from a beating he probably deserved and that we went on some wild parties in London with a certain Marchioness of Milford Haven whom we first met with Tallulah Bankhead. She was about half royalty, I think. Anyhow she was very nice - anything else I may have added about the relations between the Fitzgeralds and the house of Windsor is pure fiction.

I’m crazy to read the comic novel. Are you going to the Mac- Leishes’ Tuesday? I hope Hadley is well now. Please believe me that we send our best wishes to Ernest M. Hemingway.

Scott

Villa St Louis

Juan-les-Pins

August or
September,
1926

Dear Ernest:

Sorry we missed you and Hadley. No news. I’m on the wagon and working like hell. Expect to sail for N.Y. December 10th from Genoa on the Conte
Biancamano.
Will be here till then. Saw bullfight in Fréjus. Bull was euneuch (sp.). House barred and dark.

Front door chained. Have made no enemies for a week. —

domestic row ended in riot. Have new war books by Pierrefeu. God is love.

Signed, Ernestine Murphy

Did you read in the N.Y.
Herald
about ‘... Henry Carpenter, banker, and Willie Stevens, half wit,...’

Villa St Louis

Juan-les-Pins

Fall, 1926

We were in a back-house in Juan-les-Pins. Bill had lost control of his sphincter muscles. There were wet MaFins in the rack beside the door. There were wet E
claireurs de Nice
in the rack over his head. When the King of Bulgaria came in, Bill was just firing a burst that struck the old limeshit twenty feet down with a
splat-tap.
All the rest came just like that The King of Bulgaria began to whirl round and round.

The great thing in these affairs -’ he said.

Soon he was whirling faster and faster. Then he was dead.

At this point in my letter my 30th birthday came and I got tight for a week in the company of such fascinating gents as Mr Theodore Rousseau and other ornaments of what is now a barren shore.

Ernest of little faith, I hope the sale of ‘The Killers’ will teach you to send every story either to Scribners or an agent. Can’t you get Today Is Friday’ back? Your letter depressed and rather baffled me. Have you and Hadley permanently busted up, and was the necessity of that what was on your soul this summer? Don’t answer this unless you feel like it. Anyhow I’m sorry everything’s such a mess and I do want to see you if you come to Marseille in October.

We saw the--- — s before they left, got stewed with them (at their party) - that is we got stewed - and I believe there was some sort of mawkish reconciliation. However they’ve grown dim to me and I don’t like them much any more. — s too have grown shadowy - he’s so nice, but she’s a club woman at heart and made a great lot of trouble in subtle ways this summer. We saw — the day she left and the huge Garoupe standing desolate, and her face, and the pathetic bales of
chiclets
for the Garoupe beach in her bedroom are the strongest impression I have left of a futile and petty summer. It might all have happened at Roslyn, Long Island.

Swimming’s almost over now. We have our tickets for America December 10th on the Conte Bi
ancamano
- we’ll spend the winter in New York. — was here with his unspeakably awful wife.

He seems anemic and washed out, a memory of the past so far as I’m concerned.

I’m glad as hell about the story and I hope it’s the first of many. I feel too much at loose ends to write any more tonight Remember - if I can give you any financial help let me know.

Always your friend,

Scott

I had a lot more to say but it’s 3:30 A.M. and I’ve been working since 11 this morning and it’s very hazy. Have you read
The Spanish Farm
and
Sixty-four, ninety-four!
by Mottram? Wonderful war books. Much better than Ford Madox Ford. In fact the best thing I’ve read this summer. Met your cousin from Princeton!

Villa St Louis
Juan-les-Pins

December,
1926

Dear Ernest:

We leave this house Tuesday for Genoa and New York. I hope everything’s going better for you. If there is anything you need done here as in America - anything about your work, or money, or human help under any head - remember you can always call on Your devoted friend,

Scott

S.S. Conte Biancamano

En route New York

Postmarked December
23, 1926

Dear Ernest:

Your letter depressed me - illogically because I knew more or less what was coming.

I wish I could have seen you and heard you, if you wished, give some sort of version of what happened to you. Anyhow I’m sorry for you and for Hadley and for Bumby and I hope some way you’ll all be content and things will not seem so hard and bad.

I can’t tell you how much our friendship has meant to me during this year and a half - it is the brightest thing in our trip to Europe for me. I will try to look out for your interests with Scribners in America, but I gather that the need of that is past now and that soon you’ll be financially more than on your feet.

I’m sorry you didn’t come to Marseille. I go back with my novel still unfinished and with less health and not much more money than when I came, but somehow content, for the moment, with motion and New York ahead and Zelda’s entire recovery - and happy about the amount of my book that I’ve already written.

I’m delighted with what press I’ve already seen of
The Sun, etc.
Did not realize that you had stolen it all from me but am prepared to believe that it’s true and shall tell everyone. By the way I liked it in print even better than in manuscript.

1st printing was probably 5000. 2nd printing may mean that they’ve sold 4500 so have ordered up 3000 more. It may mean any sale from 2500 to 5000, tho.

College Humor
pays fine. No movie in Sun Also unless book is big success of scandal. That’s just a guess.

We all enjoyed
‘La vie
est
beau avec Papa.’
We agree with Bumby.

Always yours affectionately,

Scott

Write
me care of Scribners.

Hotel RooseveltWashington, D.C.

March,
1927

Dear
Ernest:

A line in terrible haste. Lunched with Mencken in Baltimore yesterday. He is just starting reading
The Sun, etc. -
has no recollection of having seen ‘BigTwo-Hearted River’ and admits confusion about two In Our Times. Got him to say he’d pay you $250.00 for anything of yours he could use. So there’s another market.

Told him about how you were going to beat him up. He’s a ‘peach of a fellow’ (no irony; just a slip of the pen). He’s thoroughly interested and utterly incapable of malice. Whole thing was simply rather sloppy, as he’s one of the busiest men in America.

The Killers’ was fine.

Your devoted friend,

Scott

Ellerslie

Edgemoor, Delamare

Postmarked April
18, 1927

Dear
Ernest:

Your stories were great (in April Scribners). But like me you must beware Conrad rhythms in direct quotation from characters, especially if you’re pointing a single phrase and making a man live by it ‘In the fall the war was always there but we did not go to it any more’ is one of the most beautiful prose sentences I’ve ever read.

So much has happened to me lately that I despair of ever assimilating it - or forgetting it, which is the same thing.

I hate to think of your being hard up. Please use this if it would help.
The
Atlantic will pay about $200.00, I suppose. I’ll get in touch with Perkins about it when he returns from vacation (1 week). Won’t they advance you all you need on the book of stories? Your title is fine by the way. What chance of your crossing this summer? My novel to be finished July1st.