Scott Fitzgerald: A Biography (64 page)

16.
Milford,
Zelda,
pp. 318–319; Interview with Scottie’s friend Marie Jemison, Birmingham, Alabama, January 12, 1992; Fitzgerald, “Outside the Cabinet-Maker’s,”
Afternoon of an Author,
pp. 138, 141.

17.
Zelda Fitzgerald, “Show Mr. and Mrs. F. to Number——,”
Crack-Up,
pp. 51–52; Interview with Ellen Barry; Henry Dan Piper’s interview with John Biggs, Wilmington, June 22, 1945, courtesy of Professor Piper; Quoted in Milford,
Zelda,
p. 130.

18.
Quoted in Turnbull,
Scott Fitzgerald,
p. 173; Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
p. 241.

Chapter Nine: Madness

1.
Fitzgerald, “Echoes of the Jazz Age,”
Crack-Up,
p. 21;
Arthur Miller and Company,
ed. Christopher Bigsby (London, 1990), p. 201; Fitzgerald,
Notebooks,
p. 204. For a chronology of Zelda’s illness, see Appendix II.

2.
Quoted in Turnbull,
Scott Fitzgerald,
p. 199; Quoted in Bruccoli,
Some Sort of Epic Grandeur,
p. 293; Fitzgerald,
Tender Is the Night,
p. 183.

3.
Quoted in Turnbull,
Scott Fitzgerald,
pp. 199–200; Fitzgerald,
Tender Is the Night,
p. 181; Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
p. 253.

4.
The information about Dr. Oscar Forel, who has hitherto been a shadowy figure, is based on a long letter of June 4, 1992, from his son, Dr. Armand Forel, to Jeffrey Meyers, and on Armand Forel’s fascinating autobiography,
Médecin et homme politique: Entretiens avec Jean-Bernard Desfayes
(Lausanne: Éditions de L’Aire, 1991), which he kindly sent me. See also “Oscar Louis Forel,”
Macmillan Biographical Encyclopedia of Photographic Artists and Innovators,
ed. Turner Browne and Elaine Partnow (New York, 1983), p. 202.

5.
Quoted in Milford,
Zelda,
p. 222; Quoted in Thomas Campbell,
Dr. Campbell’s Diary of a Visit to England in 1775,
ed. James Clifford (Cambridge, England, 1947), p. 58.

6.
Quoted in Milford,
Zelda,
pp. 205–207; Fitzgerald,
Tender Is the Night,
p. 183; Quoted in Milford,
Zelda,
pp. 226, 213, 209, 217.

7.
Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
pp. 247–248; Quoted in Elizabeth Spindler,
John Peale Bishop: A Biography
(Morgantown, West Virginia, 1980), p. 223; Fitzgerald,
Letters,
pp. 46, 117, 95.

8.
Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
p. 279; Dos Passos,
Best Times,
pp. 209–210; Quoted in Milford,
Zelda,
p. 228; Fitzgerald,
Notebooks,
p. 131; Quoted in Turnbull,
Scott Fitzgerald,
pp. 201–202.

9.
Fitzgerald, “One Trip Abroad,”
Afternoon of an Author,
p. 161. Fitzgerald’s statement was also prophetic, for a great many foreign writers, seeking both refuge and first-rate doctors, have ended their lives in Switzerland: Rilke, Stefan George, Joyce, Musil, Mann, Hesse, Remarque, Nabokov, Silone, Irwin Shaw, Borges, Simenon and Graham Greene.

10.
Fitzgerald,
Letters,
p. 364; Fitzgerald, “One Trip Abroad,”
Afternoon of an Author,
p. 162; Thomas Wolfe,
Letters,
ed. Elizabeth Nowell (New York, 1956), p. 263; Sinclair Lewis, quoted in Hamilton Basso, “Thomas Wolfe,” in
After the Genteel Tradition,
ed. Malcolm Cowley (New York, 1937), p. 202; Hemingway,
Selected Letters,
p. 726.

11.
Dear Scott/Dear Max,
p. 168; Fitzgerald,
Letters,
p. 572; Thomas Wolfe,
You Can’t Go Home Again
(New York, 1941), p. 715.

12.
Compton Mackenzie,
First Athenian Memories
(London, 1931), p. 320; Letter from Anthony Blond to Jeffrey Meyers, September 7, 1992; For a portrait of Lord Alington, see John Rothenstein,
Augustus John
(Oxford, 1945), plate 53;
As Ever, Scott Fitz,
p. 174.

13.
The intriguing Bijou has received very little attention from Fitzgerald’s biographers. Mizener, Turnbull, Milford and Mellow do not even mention her. Bruccoli devotes one sentence, LeVot and Donaldson one paragraph each to her. My account of Bijou’s life is based primarily on her taped interview,
Bijou O’Conor Remembers Scott Fitzgerald
(London: Audio Arts, 1975) and on interviews in England during August 1992 with her cousins The Earl of Minto and Sir Brinsley Ford; her son, Michael O’Conor; her former daughter-in-law, Gillian Plazzota; and her great-nephew, Sir William Young.

Bijou, a great gossip, told Fitzgerald many interesting stories about her cosmopolitan background. He refers to two of them, as well as to her imperious character, in his
Notebooks,
pp. 219, 104, 18: “Sir Francis Elliot, King George, the barley water and champagne”; “Bijou as a girl in Athens meeting German legacy [?Legation] people in secret. Representing her mother”; “Bijou, regarding her cigarette fingers: ‘Oh, Trevah! Get me the pumice stone.’ “ For more on Bijou, see Appendix III.

14.
Fitzgerald, “The Hotel Child,”
Bits of Paradise,
ed. Matthew Bruccoli (1974; New York, 1976), pp. 273–274, 289.

15.
Arthur Miller and Company,
p. 15; Fitzgerald,
Tender Is the Night,
pp. 203–204; Fitzgerald, “On Your Own,”
The Price Was High,
p. 325; Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
p. 262. Matthew Bruccoli, “Epilogue: A Woman, a Gift and a Still Unanswered Question,”
Esquire,
91 (January 30, 1979), 67, reproduces a photograph of Bert Barr.

16.
Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
p. 254; Letter from Scottie Fitzgerald Lanahan to Mizener, March 10, 1950, Princeton; Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
p. 488; Helen Blackshear, “Mama Sayre, Scott Fitzgerald’s Mother-in-Law,”
Georgia Review,
19 (Winter 1965), 467.

17.
Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
p. 236; Letter from Fitzgerald to Rosalind Smith, n.d. (c. June 1930), Princeton.

18.
Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
p. 255; Letter from Scottie Fitzgerald Lanahan to Mizener, July 5, 1950, Princeton; Quoted in Milford,
Zelda,
p. 269.

19.
“Babylon Revisited,”
The Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald,
ed. Malcolm Cowley (New York, 1951), pp. 386, 391, 396, 399, 402.

20.
Zelda Fitzgerald,
Save Me the Waltz, Collected Writings,
p. 181; Interview with Budd Schulberg; Interview with Ring Lardner, Jr.; Fitzgerald,
Poems,
p. 141; Dwight Taylor,
Joy Ride
(New York, 1959), pp. 242, 244–246.

21.
Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
p. 282; Anita Loos,
Cast of Thousands
(New York, 1977), p. 113; Samuel Marx,
A Gaudy Spree: Literary Life in Hollywood in the 1930s
(New York, 1987), p. 66; Fitzgerald,
Letters,
p. 31.

22.
Fitzgerald, “Crazy Sunday,”
Stories of Scott Fitzgerald,
pp. 407, 408–409, 415, 416.

23.
Zelda Fitzgerald,
Save Me the Waltz,
pp. 9, 181; Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
p. 308; Zelda Fitzgerald,
Save Me the Waltz,
p. 180; Quoted in Milford,
Zelda,
p. 255.

24.
Sir David Henderson, Introduction to
The Collected Papers of Adolf Meyer
(Baltimore, 1950–52), 2:ix–x; Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
pp. 380, 382, 285; Quoted in Bruccoli,
Some Sort of Epic Grandeur,
p. 351. For more on Rennie, see his obituary in the
New York Times,
May 22, 1956, p. 33.

25.
Dear Scott/Dear Max,
pp. 166–167; Zelda Fitzgerald,
Save Me the Waltz,
p. 180; Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
p. 286.

26.
Hemingway,
The Sun Also Rises,
p. 22; Zelda Fitzgerald,
Save Me the Waltz,
p. 127;
As Ever, Scott Fitz,
p. 249.

Chapter Ten: La Paix and
Tender Is the Night

1.
Quoted in Turnbull,
Scott Fitzgerald,
p. 214; Interview with Frances Turnbull Kidder, April 4, 1992; Turnbull,
Scott Fitzgerald,
p. 229.

Andrew, dutifully following Fitzgerald’s advice, attended Princeton. He served in World War II, earned a doctorate at Harvard and taught for a while at MIT. He also edited Fitzgerald’s letters and published a life of Thomas Wolfe. Though he adored his mother and two daughters, Andrew suffered severe depression for many years, could not cope with the pain of living and killed himself in 1970.

2.
Fitzgerald,
Letters,
p. 365 and deleted phrase quoted in Bruccoli,
Some Sort of Epic Grandeur,
p. 345; Quoted in Matthew Bruccoli,
F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Descriptive Bibliography,
Revised Edition (Pittsburgh, 1987), p. 93; Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
p. 324.

3.
Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
p. 338; Scottie Fitzgerald Smith, Foreword to
Bits of Paradise,
p. xiii; Interview with Margaret “Peaches” Finney McPherson, May 14, 1992.

4.
Fitzgerald,
Tender Is the Night,
p. 257; Sheilah Graham,
The Real Scott Fitzgerald,
pp. 94, 72.

5.
Turnbull,
Scott Fitzgerald,
p. 237; Quoted in Mizener,
Far Side of Paradise,
p. 258; Zelda Fitzgerald, “Auction—Model 1934,”
Crack-Up,
p. 62; Turnbull,
Scott Fitzgerald,
p. 244 (Zelda’s odd title was taken from Ernest Boyd’s essay, “Aesthete, Model 1924,” which appeared in the first issue of Mencken’s
American Mercury
); Scottie Fitzgerald Smith, [Foreword to]
Zelda,
exhibition catalogue (Montgomery: Museum of Fine Arts, 1974), n. p.

6.
Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
p. 336; Quoted in Milford,
Zelda,
p. 346; Quoted in Turnbull,
Scott Fitzgerald,
p. 266; Fitzgerald,
Letters,
p. 588.

7.
Fitzgerald,
In His Own Time,
p. 283; Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
p. 474; Fitzgerald,
Letters,
p. 406.

8.
Quoted in Turnbull,
Scott Fitzgerald,
p. 200; Letter from Dr. Benjamin Baker to Jeffrey Meyers, October 10, 1992; H. L. Mencken,
Diary,
ed. Charles Fecher (New York, 1989), p. 63.

9.
Quoted in Milford,
Zelda,
p. 347; “Work of a Wife,”
Time,
23 (April 9, 1934), 44. Though Zelda’s portraits of Scott were lost, her pencil drawing of him, in a letter of October 1934, appears in Bruccoli,
Some Sort of Epic Grandeur,
p. 383. A number of her paintings and drawings are reproduced in color in
The Romantic Egoists,
following page 190.

10.
Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
p. 318; Marion Meade,
Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell is This?
(New York, 1988), p. 235.

11.
Yeats, “The Choice,”
Collected Poems,
p. 242; Quoted in Mizener,
Far Side of Paradise,
pp. 345–346. The phrase “spoiled priest” appears in Joyce,
Ulysses,
p. 427. Fitzgerald,
Tender Is the Night,
p. 304.

12.
Fitzgerald,
Tender Is the Night,
pp. 301, 87, 64, 88.

13.
Ibid.,
pp. 217, 219; Fitzgerald,
Notebooks,
p. 172; Fitzgerald,
Tender Is the Night,
p. 112.

14.
Fitzgerald,
Tender Is the Night,
pp. 192, 201, 301, 82, 271.

15.
Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
pp. 339, 358; Gilbert Seldes, “True to Type—Scott Fitzgerald Writes Superb Tragic Novel,” New York
Evening Journal,
April 12, 1934, p. 23; John Chamberlain, “Books of The Times,”
New York Times,
April 13, 1934, p. 17.

16.
Mary Colum, “The Psychopathic Novel,”
Forum and Century,
91 (April 1934), 219–223; D. W. Harding, “Mechanisms of Misery,”
Scrutiny,
3 (December 1934), 318;
Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease,
82 (July 1935), 115.

17.
Fitzgerald,
Letters,
p. 327; Hemingway,
Selected Letters,
p. 407; Fitzgerald,
Letters,
p. 443; Fitzgerald,
Correspondence,
p. 425; Hemingway,
Selected Letters,
p. 483.

Chapter Eleven: Asheville and “The Crack-Up”

1.
As Ever, Scott Fitz,
p. 222; Fitzgerald,
Letters,
p. 550; Henry Dan Piper, Interview with Nora Flynn, Tryon, North Carolina, February 10, 1947, courtesy of Professor Piper; Henry Dan Piper, Interview with Margaret Banning, Tryon, North Carolina, April 7, 1947.