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F. Scott Fitzgerald
THE LETTERS OF F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
Published by
Books
- Advanced Digital Solutions & High-Quality eBook Formatting -
2017 OK Publishing
ISBN 978-80-272-0086-3
Table of Contents
To Zelda Fitzgerald
5521 Amestoy Avenue
Encino, California May 6, 1939
Dearest Zelda:
Excuse this being typewritten, but I am supposed to lie in bed for a week or so and look at the ceiling. I objected somewhat to that regime as being drastic, so I am allowed two hours of work every day.
You were a peach throughout the whole trip and there isn’t a minute of it when I don’t think of you with all the old tenderness and with a consideration that I never understood that you had before. Because I can never remember anything else but consideration from you, so perhaps that sounds a little too much like a doctor or someone who knew you only when you were ill.
You are the finest, loveliest, tenderest, most beautiful person I have ever known, but even that is an understatement because the length that you went to there at the end would have tried anybody beyond endurance. Everything that I said and that we talked about during that time stands - I had a wire from daughter in regard to the little Vassar girl, telling me her name, and saying that the whole affair was washed out, but I don’t feel at home with the business yet.
There was a sweet letter waiting here from you for me when I came.
With dearest love,
Scott
5521 Amestoy Avenue
Encino, California June 8, 1939
Dearest Zelda:
I have two letters from you, one the airmail in regard to Scottie’s operation and the other evidently posted before you had received mine. While she is in Baltimore I am having a re-check by my old friend, Dr Louis Hamman. I gather that she has had several ‘attacks.’ On the other hand, I want to be absolutely sure that the operation is imperative. I tell you this because though she will come to Asheville in any case - I think you’d better not make absolute arrangements until I get the report Dr Hamman. She reaches Baltimore today the 8th (unless she stays over a day with Harold Ober or someone else in New York) and I should get the report from Dr Hamman about the 15th or 16th - that is a few days before she is due to arrive in Asheville I will airmail you immediately and then you can clinch whatever arrangements you find advisable.
Remember, I will take care of the business of notifying her, breaking the news by airmail as soon as I hear how long she expects to remain in Baltimore. I am glad, just as you are, that since this seems to be necessary, you will be able to be at her side.
I am awfully sorry about the news concerning your mother. This seems to be a big year for illness in our family. I shall certainly plan for you to go down to see her around your birthday time as soon as the matter of Scottie’s visit - with or without operation - is disposed of. Perhaps if by chance Dr Hamman doesn’t think the operation advisable we can think up some combination scheme.
In the meantime I see from your last letter you were still worried about my health. Only last night I saw the doctor who tells me that I am already 60% better (I quote him exactly) than I was a month ago - and during that time I have blocked out a novel, completed and sold a story to Colliers magazine and over half-finished what will be a two-parter for The Saturday Evening Post - so you see I cannot possibly be very sick. What is the matter with me is quite definite and quite in control - the cause was overwork at the studios, and the cause being removed the illness should decrease at a faster rate than that at which it was contracted.
I am sitting outdoors as I dictate this and the atmosphere has just a breath of the back country plains in it, dry and hot, though the surrounding landscaped gardens are green and cool, very different from Asheville mountains, but I never had your gift for seeing nature plainly and putting her into vivid phrasing so I am afraid I can’t explain to you exactly what kind of country it is until you come here and see. Now Hollywood seems far away though it is just over the mountains and you seem very near always.
Devotedly,
5521 Amestov Avenue
Encino, California
August, 1939
Dearest:
I know you’re going to miss Scottie and I hope August passes quickly for you. it seems strange that it’s here - this last month has been too much of a hell for me to help much, but now I can see light at the end of the passage. It was like 1935-1936 when no one but Mrs Owens and I knew how bad things were and all my products were dirges and elegies. Sickness and no money are a wretched combination. But, as I told you, there has not at least been an accumulation of debt and there are other blessings. I see that only the rich now can do the things you and I once did in Europe - it is a tourist-class world - my salary out here during those frantic 20 months turned out to be an illusion once Ober and the governments of the U.S. and Canada were paid and the doctors began.
Keep well. I’m going to try to. I’m glad your mother’s illness was a false alarm.
Have arranged for Scottie to have a piano nearby, the not in this cottage. She seems to have had a happy time with you. I have written two long and two short stories and wait daily for Swanson to find me a studio job that won’t be too much of a strain - no more 14-hour days at any price. By the time you get this I hope I’ll be paying the small (not formidable) array of bills that have accumulated. Here is another check to be used most sparingly. - not on presents but necessities of Scottie’s