Zelda (10 page)

’S funny, Scott, I don’t feel a bit shaky and “do-don’t”ish like I used to when you came— I really want to see you—that’s all—

After he heard from Zelda, he wrote to Ludlow Fowler, in whom he had confided about his affair: “Hope you’ve guarded well the great secret. God! Lud I’ll never get over it as long as I live. There’s still a faint chance. Thank fortune.” It was less than five months since he and Zelda had last seen each other, and Scott went to Montgomery that November in 1919 to see if he wanted her as badly as he once had. Before he left he again wrote Fowler: “… not even the family knows I’m going to Montgomery so keep it dark…. God knows tho’, Lud, I may be a wreck by the time I see you. I’m going to try to settle it definitely one way or the other.”

Certainly Scott was returning to Zelda triumphantly, but as they sat in the front room of the Sayres’ house everything looked smaller than he remembered it. In a story called “The Sensible Thing” Scott described how he felt that afternoon as he realized that for himself the first fresh exhilaration of love was a perishable sensation: “Well, let it pass, he thought …. There are all kinds of love in the world, but never the same love twice.” He had fought for his rare girl; his novel, he could now tell her, would be published; but he wanted to force the scene of their reconciliation into a greater intensity than it could yield. He had had five months in which to let his imagination play over this meeting and the reality of it could not match his expectations. Nonetheless, before he left her for New York they had renewed their engagement; they decided to marry as soon as his book was published.

Zelda understood him better than he thought, for after he left Montgomery she wrote to him that if he felt he had lost his feeling for her, if he’d be happier without their marrying, she would release him from whatever promises had once been made. And she added: “Somehow ‘When love has turned to kindliness’ doesn’t horrify me like it used to— It has such a peaceful sound—like something to come back to and rest—and sometimes I’m glad we’re not exactly like we used to be—and I can’t help feeling that it would all come again.”

Whether the timing of their marriage date was Zelda’s or Scott’s idea is unknown. What is certain is that Zelda could not possibly have agreed to marry him, as he later thought, on the basis of his having made money. He had made very little by November, 1919. But what she did see quite clearly was that Fitzgerald was no longer unsure of himself or the direction of his career. The cheeky young man who wrote (to a girl he knew in St. Paul),

          Mr. Fate

           Can’t berate

            Mr. Scott.

             He is not

              Marking time:…

on the news of the acceptance of his novel was as effervescent as the young lieutenant who had promised Zelda New York with “all the iridescence of the beginning of the world.”

When he left Montgomery he gave Zelda a manuscript copy of
This Side of Paradise.
After she had read it she wrote him: “Why can’t I write? I’d like to tell you how fine I think the book is and how miserably and and completely and—a little unexpectedly—I am thine.” In another letter, probably written a few days later, she added: “I am very proud of you— I hate to say this, but I don’t
think
I had much confidence in you at first …. It’s so nice to know that you really
can
do things—
anything
— And I love to feel that maybe I can help just a little— I want to so much—… I’m so damn glad I love you— I wouldn’t love any other man on earth— I believe if I had deliberately decided on a sweetheart, he’d have been you—”

Scott had already begun to make plans for where they would live and Zelda asked him not to “accumulate a lot of furniture. Really, Scott, I’d just as soon live
anywhere
—and can’t we find a bed ready-made? Someday, you know we’ll want rugs and wicker furniture and a home— I’m terribly afraid it’ll just be in the way now. I wish New York were a little tiny town—so I could imagine how it’d be. I haven’t the remotest idea of what it’s like, so I am afraid to make any suggestions.” But she did tell him that she imagined their apartment decorated with large orange and black fruits on the walls and bright yellow ceilings.

Her sister Rosalind sent her a program from the
Follies
in New York, telling Zelda that she looked enough like Marilyn Miller to be her twin. Zelda wrote Scott that it “upset me so I couldn’t do anything
but
act and dance for a day or two—” But, despite the glimmer of ambition, she saw her own limitations with a good deal of perception. “I hope I’ll never get ambitious enough to try anything. It’s so
much
nicer to be damned sure I
could
do it better than other people—and I might not could if I tried—that, of cource, would break my heart—”

Scott was not content to suppose that he could do anything better than the next man; he was out to prove that he was a writer
of the first water. Stimulated by the sale of
This Side of Paradise
, he was working hard, old stories were refurbished and tightened, and he wove fresh material into fiction almost as soon as something happened to him. All of it began to sell. He had acquired an agent in New York, the young Harold Ober, who worked for the Reynolds Agency, and it was Ober who sold Scott’s story “Head and Shoulders” to the
Saturday Evening Post
for $400. The first sale to the
Post
was important to Scott, for he intended to make money, a lot of it, and he knew that the smaller magazines or the more literary ones, like
The Smart Set
, to which he had sold a few stories, couldn’t be expected to pay as the
Post
would.

Each time a story was taken he wired Zelda of his success and he drank to celebrate it; he even acquired his own bootlegger, which was a bit of a novelty in those early days of Prohibition. Four pages of Zelda’s scrapbook are filled with these wires, which with very few exceptions coupled an assurance to her of his love with the latest news of his literary sales,
“THE SATURDAY EVENING POST HAS JUST TAKEN TWO MORE STORIES PERIOD ALL MY LOVE.” “I HAVE SOLD THE MOVIE RIGHTS OF HEAD AND SHOULDERS TO THE METRO COMPANY FOR TWENTY FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS I LOVE YOU DEAREST GIRL.
” At this point in their lives Zelda was already committed to him and these wires were sent more for Scott’s satisfaction than hers. Perhaps he realized that Montgomery acquaintances were saying that of course it was
nice
that Scott was a writer and had sold things to the
Saturday Evening Post
, but it wasn’t really a
position.
By January, 1920, a combination of the emotional strain he put himself through in order to write and the drinking had worn him out, and he decided to go to New Orleans to rest and to search for new story material. He would also be only a few hours from Zelda. In his Ledger he wrote that by the 10th of January he had made $ 1,700.

Although Zelda told Scott that it would break her heart to try to do something and find out that she could not, and that faced with that choice she would rather not try, she was nevertheless aware that Scott had drawn on some of her own writing in
This Side of Paradise
, and half seriously, she suggested maybe she would try to write, too. In a letter to Scott she revealed something of her own ambivalence about the effort involved, and something of her idea of herself:

Yesterday I almost wrote a book or story, I hadn’t decided which, but after two pages on my heroine I discovered that I hadn’t even started
her, and, since I couldn’t just write forever about a charmingly impossible creature, I began to despair. “Vamping Romeo” was the name, and I guess a man would have had to appear somewhere before the end. But there wasn’t any plot, so I thought I’d ask you how to decide what they’re going to do. Mamma answered my S.O.S. with one of O. Henry’s, verbatum, which I discarded because he never
created
people—just things to happen to the same old kind of folks and unexpected ends, and I like stories with all the ladies like Constance Talmadge and the men just sorter strong, silent characters or college boys—… And so you see, Scott, I’ll never be able to do anything because I’m much too lazy to care whether it’s done or not— And I don’t want to be famous and feted—all I want is to be very young always and very irresponsible and to feel that my life is my own—to live and be happy and die in my own way to please myself—

She also added a remarkably sensible reply to Scott’s anxiety about the lost intensity of their love. She said he was trying too hard to convince himself that they were like old people who had lost their most precious possession. “We really haven’t found it yet— And only weaklings… who lack courage and the power to feel they’re right when the whole world says they’re wrong, ever lose—” If Scott was worried about losing the fire and sweetness of desire, Zelda was not. “That first abandon couldn’t last, but the things that went to make it are tremendously alive,” and she asked him not to mourn for a memory when they had each other.

Scott made two trips to Montgomery during January, and after one of them he sent Zelda a lavish platinum-and-diamond wristwatch. He bought it with the $2,500 from the sale of “Head and Shoulders” to the movies. Zelda, who adored any gift but especially one which was like none anyone else in Montgomery possessed, was delighted with it. She said, “I’ve turned it over four hundred times to see ‘from Scott to Zelda,’ “which was inscribed on its back.

Mamma came in with the package, and I thought maybe it might interest her to know, so she sat on the edge of the bed while I told her we were going to marry each other pretty soon. She wants me to come to New York, because she says you’d like to do it in St. Patrick’s. Now that she knows, everything seems mighty definite and nice, and I’m not a bit scared or shaky— What I dreaded most was telling her— Somehow I just didn’t think I could— Both of us are very splashy, vivid pictures, those kind with the details left out, but I know our colors will blend, and I think we’ll look very well hanging beside each other in the gallery of life.

She added in brackets that this was
“not
just another one of my ‘subterranean river’ thoughts.” She even loved him enough, she reported, to read a novel by Frank Norris,
McTeague
, which Scott had recommended very highly to her.

It certainly makes a miserable start—… All authors who want to make things true to life make them
smell bad
—like McTeague’s room— and that’s my most sensitive sense. I do hope you’ll never be a realist— one of those kind that thinks being ugly is being forceful—

When my wedding’s going to be, write to me again—and if you’d rather have me come up there I will— I told Mamma I might just come and surprise you, but she said you mightn’t like to be surprised about “your own wedding”— I rather think it’s MY wedding—

During Scott’s trips up from New Orleans they resumed their affair. In February Scott left New Orleans for New York to await the publication of his novel. On the 26th of February, while staying at Cottage Club in Princeton, he wrote a friend of his who knew only that Scott and Zelda’s engagement had been broken the previous June. This friend had recently written Scott to tell him that he had been right in breaking off the relationship. The timing of the letter was, of course, awkward. Scott replied that candor compelled him to admit that it was Zelda and not he who had broken their earlier engagement. He said that he realized his friends were unanimous in advising him against marriage to Zelda and that he was used to it.

No personality as strong as Zelda’s could go without getting criticism …. I’ve always known that, any girl who gets stewed in public, who frankly enjoys and tells shocking stories, who smokes constantly and makes the remark that she has “kissed thousands of men and intends to kiss thousands more,” cannot be considered beyond reproach even if above it.… I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity and her flaming self respect and its these things I’d believe in even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn’t all that she should be.… I love her and that’s the beginning and end of everything. You’re still a catholic but Zelda’s the only God I have left now.

He then wired Zelda, who had sent him a photograph of herself:
“THE PICTURE IS LOVELY AND SO ARE YOU DARLING.”

Lawton Campbell, a tall, blond, and rather elegant young gentleman from Montgomery, who had gone to Princeton with Scott, ran into him in New York while lunching at the Yale Club, where the Princeton
Club had temporary quarters that March. As Campbell started up the stairs to the second floor Scott was coming down, beaming.

He had in his hand a color-illustrated jacket cover of a book. On seeing me, with almost childish glee and radiating good news he said, “Look what I have here!”

He showed me the cover. I read
“This Side of Paradise.
F. Scott Fitzgerald. Charles Scribner and Sons.”…

“It’s all about Princeton,” Scott said in that breathless way he spoke when he was excited. “You’ll probably recognize some of your friends. You might even recognize something of yourself.”

Then he added, “It’ll be out before the end of the month.”

Zelda flashed across my mind. I told him I had seen her when I was in Montgomery and had put in a good word for him. He thanked me and then looked at the jacket-cover. He knitted his brow a minute as if to indicate that the months of hard labor on the book would be rewarded in more ways than one. He smiled and said:

“I phoned her long distance last night. She’s still on the fence and I may have to go to Montgomery to get her but I believe this will do the trick.”

By March, of course, the trick had already been turned, but perhaps Scott was no longer taking anything for granted. At this point the only thing Scott and Zelda were on the fence about was the exact date of their marriage.