Flapper (43 page)

¹
“brown-shingled building”:
Sara Mayfield,
Exiles from Paradise: Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald
(New York: Delacorte Press, 1971), 1.

²
“sophisticated for her age”:
Mayfield,
Exiles
, 1–2.

³
climbed to the roof:
James R. Mellow,
Invented Lives: F. Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984), 5.

⁴
Stutz Bearcat:
Mayfield,
Exiles
, 24.

⁵
“most popular girl”:
Mayfield,
Exiles
, 24.

⁶
pear trees:
Nancy Milford,
Zelda: A Biography
(New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 9.

⁷
cut school:
Milford,
Zelda
, 22.

⁸
“I do love my Charlie so”:
Milford,
Zelda
, 12.

⁹
“the last to deny”:
Mayfield, Exiles, 22–23.

¹⁰
During the summer:
Milford,
Zelda
, 16.

¹¹
legendary Christmas bop:
Matthew J. Bruccoli,
Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald
, rev. ed, 1993 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981), 104.

¹²
“I never let them down”:
Zelda Fitzgerald,
Save Me the Last Waltz
, in Matthew J. Bruccoli and Mary Gordon, eds.,
Zelda Fitzgerald: The Collected Writings
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1991), 32.

¹³
“the agreeable countenance”:
Thomas Alexander Boyd, “Scott Fitzgerald Here on Vacation: ‘Rests’ by Outlining New Novels,”
St. Paul Daily News
, August 28, 1921, E6; also reprinted in Matthew J. Bruccoli and Judith S. Baugham, eds.,
Conversations with F. Scott Fitzgerald
(Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi, 2004), 3.

¹⁴
leave from the army:
Bruccoli,
Some Sort of Epic Grandeur
, 96–97.

¹⁵
most eligible debutantes:
Mayfield,
Exiles
, 1.

¹⁶
“great animal magnetism”:
Mellow,
Invented Lives
, 7.

¹⁷
“two kinds of girls”:
Milford,
Zelda
, 17.

¹⁸
“late dates with fast workers”:
Mayfield,
Exiles
, 2–3.

¹⁹
“the handsomest boy”:
Mayfield,
Exiles
, 3.

²⁰
“like new goods”:
Zelda Fitzgerald,
Save Me the Last Waltz
, in Bruccoli and Gordon, eds.,
Zelda Fitzgerald: The Collected Writings
, 39.

²¹
“break up the stag lines”:
Mayfield,
Exiles
, 45.

²²
Zelda’s attention:
Milford,
Zelda
, 22.

²³
passed their days:
Milford,
Zelda
, 33–34.

²⁴
“this dusty time”:
ZSF to FSF, undated [summer 1935], in Jackson R. Bryer and Cathy W. Barks, eds.,
Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald
(New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2002), 214–15.

²⁵
An entry from 1935:
Bruccoli,
Some Sort of Epic Grandeur
, 106.

C
HAPTER
2: S
EX
o’C
LOCK IN
A
MERICA

¹
“ ‘no ladies’ ”:
Sara Mayfield,
Exiles from Paradise: Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald
(New York: Delacorte Press, 1971), 11–12.

²
sexual habits:
Alfred Kinsey,
Sexual Behavior in the Human Female
(Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders, 1953), 298, 339. In his study of one hundred married men and one hundred married women who were born before 1900, G. V. Hamilton found that 67 percent of women born between 1886 and 1890 but only 30 percent of women born between 1891 and 1900 were virgins at marriage. Hamilton’s study is probably skewed by its small sample size and by the unusually active sex lives of its participants. See G. V. Hamilton,
A Research in Marriage
(New York: A. & C. Boni, Inc., 1929), 43–44.

³
“Sex o’clock”:
“Sex o’Clock in America,”
Current Opinion
55 (August 1913): 113–14; Agnes Repplier, “The Repeal of Reticence,”
Atlantic Monthly
113 (March 1914): 297–304.

⁴
noted with disapproval:
James R. McGovern, “The American Woman’s Pre–World War I Freedom in Manners and Morals,”
Journal of American History
55, no. 2 (September 1968): 326.

⁵
“Where Is Your Daughter”:
McGovern, “The American Woman’s Pre–World War I Freedom,” 324.

⁶
magazine exposé:
Page Smith,
Redeeming the Time: A People’s History of the 1920s and the New Deal
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1987), 9, 49.

⁷
“You dare me”:
McGovern, “The American Woman’s Pre–World War I Freedom,” 323.

⁸
“Take It from Me!”:
McGovern, “The American Woman’s Pre–World War I Freedom,” 323.

⁹
“
I DO NOT DOUBT YOU
”: FSF to ZSF, February 21, 1919, in Jackson R. Bryer and Cathy W. Barks, eds.,
Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald
(New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2002), 11.

¹⁰
“
DARLING HEART
”:
FSF to ZSF, February 22, 1919, in Bryer and Barks, eds.,
Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda
, 12.

¹¹
dust from the Auburn incident:
Mayfield,
Exiles
, 46–47.

¹²
“soft, warm nights”:
ZSF to FSF, undated [March 1919], in Bryer and Barks, eds.,
Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda
, 13.

¹³
“don’t be so depressed”:
ZSF to FSF, undated [March 1919], in Bryer and Barks, eds.,
Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda
, 15.

¹⁴
122 rejection letters:
Matthew J. Bruccoli,
Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald
, rev. ed. 1993 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981), 111.

¹⁵
“about as much control”:
F. Scott Fitzgerald,
The Crackup
(New York: New Directions, 1945), 25.

¹⁶
“I must leave now”:
ZSF to FSF, undated [March 1919], Bryer and Barks, eds.,
Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda
, 21.

¹⁷
“Bill LeGrand and I”:
ZSF to FSF, undated [April 1919], in Bryer and Barks, eds.,
Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda
, 24.

¹⁸
“ ‘Red’ said”:
ZSF to FSF, undated [May 1919], in Bryer and Barks, eds.,
Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda
, 31–32.

¹⁹
“awfully silly”:
ZSF to FSF, undated [April 1919], in Bryer and Barks, eds.,
Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda
, 24.

²⁰
“Please please”: ZSF to FSF, undated [late May 1919], in Bryer and Barks, eds.,
Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda
, 32–33.

²¹
“Is that all …?”:
Mayfield,
Exiles
, 75.

²²
“added whiskey”:
Minnie Sayre to ZSF, enclosed in ZSF to FSF, undated [April 1919], in Bryer and Barks, eds.,
Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda
, 28.

²³
“asked me not to write”:
ZSF to FSF, undated [June 1919], in Bryer and Barks, eds.,
Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda
, 37.

²⁴
Victrola records:
Nancy Milford,
Zelda: A Biography
(New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 51.

²⁵
“While my friends”:
Fitzgerald,
The Crackup
, 25–26.

C
HAPTER
3: W
ILL
S
HE
T
HROW
H
ER
A
RMS
A
ROUND
Y
OUR
N
ECK AND
Y
ELL
?

¹
economic and demographic forces:
Lynn Dumenil,
Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s
(New York: Hill and Wang, 1995), 112–18; Joanne J. Meyerowitz,
Women Adrift: Independent Wage-Earners in Chicago, 1880–1930
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 4–5.

²
real money … real freedom:
Paula S. Fass,
The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920s
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 24.

³
industrialization and urbanization:
Howard P. Chudacoff and Judith E. Smith,
The Evolution of American Urban Society
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1995), 69–70, 111–12; William E. Leuchtenberg,
The Perils of Prosperity: 1914–1932
, rev. ed. (New York: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 225; James T. Patterson,
America in the Twentieth Century: A History
(New York: Harcourt College Publishers, 2000), 146.

⁴
“the farmer’s daughter”:
Meyerowitz,
Women Adrift
, 9, 19.

⁵
“money for clothes”:
Meyerowitz,
Women Adrift
, 18–19.

⁶
“up to that time”: Meyerowitz,
Women Adrift
, 18–19. Italics added for emphasis.

⁷
“mysteries of darkness”:
David Nasaw,
Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusements
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), 6.

⁸
Across America:
Nasaw,
Going Out
, 1–9.

⁹
more money and more time:
Roy Rosenzweig,
Eight Hours for What We Will: Workers & Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870–1920
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 179–180. Thanks to mechanization, the work week of the average urban blue-collar worker plummeted from 55.9 hours in 1900 to 44.2 in 1929; at the same time, real wages adjusted for inflation rose 25 percent in the first two decades of the new century.