Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise Read online

  ZELDA FITZGERALD

  Her Voice in Paradise

  SALLY CLINE

  This book is dedicated

  to Marmoset Adler

  Vic Smith, Esme Ashley-Smith, A. Het Shackman

  ‘Everybody was so young’ (Sara Murphy)

  to Ba Sheppard

  ‘They were banking in gods those years’ (Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald)

  to Marion Callen

  ‘Once Again to Em’ (after F. Scott Fitzgerald)

  to Rosemary Smith

  ‘[S]he knew everything’ (Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald)

  In memory of Larry Adler 10 February 1914–7 August 2001

  ‘Life seemed so promissory always when he was around’

  (Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald)

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Illustrations

  Acknowledgements

  Abbreviations and Notes on Endnotes

  ‘Zelda’ by Helen Dunmore

  INTRODUCTION:

  MYTHICAL VOICES: MAPPING THE MYTH

  PART I SOUTHERN VOICE 1900–April 1920

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  PART II NORTHERN VOICE April 1920–April 1924

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  PART III FOREIGN VOICES May 1924–December 1926

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  PART IV CREATIVE VOICES January 1927–1929

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  PART V OTHER VOICES 1929–1940

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  PART VI IN HER OWN VOICE 1941– March 1948

  Chapter 25

  Bibliography

  Index

  Plates

  Copyright

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  1. Minnie Machen Sayre, Montgomery

  2. Judge Anthony Sayre, 1880

  3. Church of the Holy Comforter, Montgomery, 1998

  4. Marjorie Sayre

  5. Rosalind (Tootsie) Sayre

  6. Clothilde (Tilde) Sayre

  7. Anthony Sayre Jnr

  8. Zelda aged about 18 in dance costume, Montgomery

  9. Katharine Elsberry Steiner

  10. Out of school picnic, Montgomery, 1918

  11. Scott Fitzgerald, Dellwood, 1921–2

  12. Zelda and Scott at Compo Beach, Westport Conn., July 1920

  13. Zelda on auto trip south to Montgomery, 1920

  14. Zelda and Scott, Hearst’s International Magazine, 1923

  15. Marie Hersey, St Paul, Minnesota

  16. Xandra Kalman c. 1921, St Paul

  17. Sara Haardt

  18. H. L. Mencken

  19. Annabel Fitzgerald aged 18, 1919

  20. Zelda, Scott and Scottie swimming, early 1920s

  21. Lubov Egorova, Paris, 1928

  22. Romaine Brooks, 1925

  23. Natalie Barney and Djuna Barnes, Nice, France 1928–30

  24. Emily Vanderbilt

  25. Gerald and Sara Murphy, Etienne and Edith de Beaumont at La Garoupe, c. 1924

  26. Ernest Hemingway, 1931

  27. Max Perkins

  28. Zelda Sayre, Montgomery, June 1918

  29. ‘Birth of a Flapper’, Zelda’s bookjacket design for The Beautiful and Damned, 1921

  30. ‘Family in Underwear’, early paper doll series by Zelda, c. 1927

  31. Times Square, New York (gouache on paper, 13½” × 17⅝”) c. 1944

  32. Scott with Scottie, Rome, 1924

  33. The Fitzgeralds embarking for France, 1928

  34. Zelda, 1931

  35. Scottie at her graduation, 1938

  36. Dr Irving Pine, 1990

  37. Zelda and her grandson Tim, shortly before her death in 1948

  38. Zelda playing volley ball with fellow patients at Highland Hospital

  39. The fire at Highland Hospital, 11 March 1948

  Readers who wish to see Zelda Fitzgerald’s paintings can:

  read Zelda: An Illustrated Life, ed. Eleanor Lanahan, Harry N. Abrams Inc., New York, 1996;

  contact the Visual Materials Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library, where there are copies of the slides of Zelda’s paintings;

  contact Sally Cline (c/o John Murray (Publishers) Ltd) who also has copies of the slides.

  The author and publisher would like to thank the following for their kind permission to reproduce illustrations: 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 12, 13, 14, 20, 28, 29, 33, 34, 35: pho tographs from the F. Scott Fitzgerald archives at Princeton University Library used by permission of Harold Ober Associates as agents for the Fitzgerald Trustees, reproduced courtesy of Princeton University Library; 3: by permission of Sally Cline, Cambridge, UK; 9: courtesy of Edward Pattillo, Montgomery, Alabama; 10: Estate of the late Grace Gunter Lane, courtesy of Fairlie Lane Haynes, Montgomery, Alabama; 11, 19, 32: by kind permission of Pat Sprague Reneau, California; 15, 16: Lloyd C. Hackl, Center City, Minnesota; 17, 18: courtesy of Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore. Reproduced by permission; 22: © 1997 Meryle Secrest, Washington DC; 23: Papers of Djuna Barnes, Special Collections, University of Maryland Libraries; 25: copyright 2002 Estate of the late Honoria Murphy Donnelly, courtesy of John C. Donnelly, Florida; 26: courtesy of the Bruccoli Collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Cooper Library, The University of South Carolina; 27: from the Scribner Archives. Courtesy Scribner/Simon & Schuster (reproduced courtesy of Princeton University Library); 30: used by permission of Harold Ober Associates as agents for the Fitzgerald Trustees, courtesy of Cecilia Ross (also courtesy of Princeton University Library); 31: used by permission of Harold Ober Associates as agents for the Fitzgerald Trustees, courtesy of Samuel J. Lanahan Jnr (also courtesy of Princeton University Library); 36: (photograph by Koula Svokos Hartnett, Columbus, Ohio, 1990) copyright Koula Svokos Hartnett in Zelda Fitzgerald and the Failure of the American Dream for Women, 1991, Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York; 37: used by permission of Harold Ober Associates as agents for the Fitzgerald Trustees, courtesy of Eleanor Lanahan; 38: courtesy of Mary Parker, North Carolina; 39: North Carolina Collection, Pack Memorial Public Library, Asheville, North Carolina.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  This is in no way an authorized biography but without the unstinting support of Zelda Fitzgerald’s granddaughter Bobbie (Eleanor) Lanahan, and through her the Fitzgerald family and Estate, it could not have been adequately researched. My most significant acknowledgement is therefore to Bobbie, herself a painter, for showing me Zelda’s paintings, analysing her artwork, sharing her knowledge, spending several weeks talking to me and giving me photographs and slides of Zelda’s paintings. For five years she has facilitated my access to the wide network of Fitzgerald friends and relations across the USA. Bobbie did not necessarily agree with my findings but with rare generosity she guided me, removed obstacles from my path and was a constant source of encouragement.

  An initial interest in my work came from Henry Dunow of the Fitzgerald Estate, which was followed by unprecedented help from Zelda’s other granddaughter Cecilia Lanahan Ross who exchanged ideas and gave me the gift of Scottie’s memoir. I am further indebted to their father the late Samuel Lanahan, to their brother Samuel Lanahan Jnr and to Scott Fitzgerald’s nieces Courtney Sprague Vaughan and
Pat Sprague Reneau, for photographs, paintings, memoirs and family information. I am most appreciative to Chris Byrne of the Harold Ober Literary Agency for his initial help over permissions and to Craig Tenney, also of Harold Ober, in the later stages.

  I have been fortunate in being given seven awards for this biographical research. I owe special debts of gratitude to the British Academy for their Independent Scholar’s Research Award; to the Society of Authors initially for their Writer’s Award and in the last stages of the book for a further award; and to the Eastern Arts Board for three bursaries, all of which enabled me to travel and work in Europe and America with time to peruse archives, to live in cities inhabited by the Fitzgeralds and to view Zelda’s paintings in private collections and museums throughout the USA.

  I thank Princeton University for their Fellowship and two years’ access to the Rare Books Department in the Firestone Library where the major Fitzgerald archives and photographs are held. The Rare Books Curator of Manuscripts, Don Skemer, shared with me his invaluable knowledge and came to my aid warmly and cleverly many times. Great gratitude is given to John Delaney (Chairman, Fellowship Committee), Ben Primer (Fellowship Committee) and to William Joyce (former Associate University Librarian) most especially for his generosity over permissions for the use of slides and photos. I thank also Jennifer Bowden, Chris Dupin, Charles Eyre Greene (Keeper of the Reading Room), Monica Ruscil, Jane Snedeker, Susan Waterman. For AnnaLee Paul’s hours of patient photoduplication and her lasting friendship I am very appreciative. Above all I thank Peggy Sherry, the Reference Librarian and Archivist, who gave me several months of professional help and who, together with Stuart Rich, made my long stay in Princeton feel like home. During my Princeton sojourn I was fortunate in meeting the scholar Raymond Cormier, who enlivened my days with fascinating ideas on Zelda and who untiringly maintained a further three-year stimulating correspondence.

  I thank John Hurley and Jane Raper for helping me find accommodation in Princeton, Judy Thompson and Al and Betty Cohen for providing it, Ann and Mitsuru Yasuhara and Liz Socolow for their local knowledge and hospitality.

  I wish to thank those Fitzgerald scholars and biographers who have gone before me from whom I received illuminating insights. They include the premier Fitzgerald scholar Matthew J. Bruccoli and his assistant Judith Baughman who were constantly courteous and informative, Jackson R. Bryer, Scott Donaldson (a memorable lunchtime talk on Hemingway and Fitzgerald), Koula Svokos Hartnett (five years’ discussions and communications), Nancy Milford (who put aside her own writing for a lengthy interview), Ted Mitchell for a riveting exchange of ideas over Caesar’s Things and Zelda’s death, Ruth Prigozy (who gave me food, drink, contacts, articles, information, advice and guidance), Frances Kroll Ring (two long interviews and two years’ correspondence), Jacqueline Tavernier-Courbin (several Save Me The Waltz discourses), and James West. The late James Mellow’s biography of Zelda and Scott was a constant source of inspiration.

  From the many people involved in the Fitzgeralds’ lives who showered me with kindness, conversation and counsel I would mention particularly Waverly Barbe, Tony Buttitta (who gave me two long interviews and a marvellous tea when he was gravely ill), Lucy Dos Passos Coggin, Carol Lobman Hart, the late Grace Gunter Lane, Ring Lardner Jnr, the late Ida Haardt McCulloch, Sally Wood Millsap, Mary Parker, the late Dr Irving Pine, Landon Ray, Budd Schulberg, Joanne Turnbull and Janie Wall. Exceptional help in the shape of family photographs, afternoon teas, tapes, slides, videos, letters, documents, memories and conversational enchantments came from Fanny Myers Brennan and the late Honoria Murphy Donnelly.

  Institutions, librarians, curators, archivists, journalists, academics who have contributed information, interviews, materials include: Alabama Department of Archives and History; Anglia Polytechnic University Library, Cambridge; Arbury Court Library, Cambridge; Asheville Chamber of Commerce; Asheville Charter Hospital; Asheville Citizen Times; Asheville Fire Department; Atlanta Constitution and Journal; Atlanta Fulton Public Library; Birmingham Public Library, Alabama; Cambridge University Library; Lana Burgess (Assistant Curator, Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts); Mitchell Dakelman (Hoorman Library, Wagner College, New York); Harvard University; Vincent Fitzpatrick and Averil Kadis (Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore) for wonderful photographs and information on the Menckens; Kim Korby Fraser (Ladies Home Journal, New York); Chandler W. Gordon (Captain’s Bookshelf, Asheville); Antonia Hodgson (for help with Dolly Wilde information); Chris Jakes and his team at the Cambridgeshire Collection, Cambridge Central Library, who provided weeks of help with archival microfilms; the John F. Kennedy Library; Journal of the American Medical Association; Frances Kessler (Esquire); Dr Levington, Medical Superintendent, Charter Hospital (formerly Highland Hospital); Nancy Magnuson (Librarian, Julia Rogers Library, Goucher College); Malaprop’s Bookstore, Asheville; Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore; Nancy McCall (Archivist, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions); the endlessly helpful out-of-print team at Micawber Bookstore, Princeton; Minnesota Historical Society; the Montgomery Advertiser; New York Public Library; Don Noble (University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa); the Princeton Packet; Princeton University Bookstore team; Rebecca Roberts (Sara Mayfield Collection, University of Alabama); Shannon Scarborough (Birmingham News, Alabama); Kathy Shoemaker (Special Collections, Woodruff Library, Emory University, Atlanta); Dr James Stephenson (Assistant Dean, University of West Virginia); Town Topics, Princeton; Troy State University, Montgomery; University of Georgia Library; J. Willis (New York Times); Ann S. Wright (Special Collections Librarian, Asheville Buncombe Library).

  For manuscript reading, advice, networking, medical help, and encouragement of many kinds I thank: Tim Barnwell (for exceptional photos of the fire), Davina Belling, Larry Belling, Carl Brandt, Stephen Bristow, Heidi Bullock (Zelda’s art), the Cambridge Women Readers Group, Tracy Cams (for her enthusiasm over a Zelda lunch), Gwynneth Conder, Kirk Curnutt (discourse on fundamentalism and madness), Heather Dearnaley, Michelle Dodsworth, Kay Dunbar, Olga Foottit, Mary Gordon, Wayne Greenhaw, Katherine Grimshaw, Allan Gurganus (for the typed version of his talk on ‘Sacrificial Couples’), Ann Henley, Jan Hensley (for recovering news reports and making me tapes), Jane Jaffey, Joel Jaffey, Carol Jones, Jean Kesler, Stella King, Heidi Kuntz, Cheryl Lean, Alan Margolies, Nancy Marlen, Josie McConnell, Eileen McGuckian, Bonnie McMullen, Graham Metson, Jane Miller, Linda Patterson Miller, James Moody, Kathy Mullen, Erin Murphy, Andrea Porter, Aliye Seif, Ruth Shaw, Gail Sinclair, Keith Soothill, Deborah Thorn, Eleanor Vale (who in my absence sustained my house during a massive burglary with great courage), Nancy VanArsdale (many interesting talks in Asheville), Linda Wagner-Martin, Ralph Ward, Alison West, Alisa Hornung Weyman. I owe special thanks to Kathy Bowles and Chris Carling for their unending enthusiasm, encouragement and wise counsel.

  The infectious optimism of several writers and artists has sustained me: I thank the Cambridge Women Writers Group (Joy Magezis, Chris Carling, Geraldine Ryan, Marion Callen), Julia Darling, Millicent Dillon (for six years’ long distance writerly support), Helen Dunmore (for the gift of her ‘Zelda’ poem), Kathryn Hughes, Christina Johnson, Neil McKenna, Cliff McNish, Marion Meade (for spirited discussions about Dorothy Parker), Wendy Mulford, Michelle Spring, and especially Marion Elizabeth Rodgers for her intriguing biographical insights into H. L. Mencken and Sara Haardt and her constant optimism. I am also grateful to Andrew Lownie and the stimulation of the Biographers’ Club. For advice on Zelda’s art I thank Frankie (Frances) Borzello, Julia Ball, Carolyn Shafer and Jane S. Livingston.

  In Montgomery I thank Julian and Leslie McPhillips, who direct the Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum, for accommodation, entertainment, enormous Southern hospitality and constant chauffeuring, and at the Museum Elena Aleinikov for her valuable assistance and several meals. I owe a major debt of gratitude to Eddie Pattillo, my encyclopaedic wise and funny guide, who more than anyone helped me to comprehend the nature of the Deep South. In Tuscaloosa Camella Mayfield (literary executor
of the Sara Mayfield Collection) spent many months minutely tracking documents and offering personal and professional insights into the relationship between Zelda, Sara Mayfield and Tallullah Bankhead.

  In St Paul and Center City Minnesota I am grateful to Lloyd Hackl and Barbara Paetznick for city tours, historical research, a folder of unpublished Kalman letters, accommodation and incredible warmth and hospitality. Lloyd trod in Scott’s trails with me and helped me understand Scott’s community. In Burlington, Vermont, I am grateful to Susan O’Brien for accommodation, information and the freedom to write and roam through her lovely house. In New York I thank Anne Gurnett and Jonathan Bander for accommodation, unstinting guidance, laughter and several exciting art tours. For five years’ writing space in Sennen Cove, Cornwall, where much of this book was written, I thank Jean Adams and Susan Willis.

  I feel remarkably fortunate that John Murray, my London publishers, genuinely love books and are concerned for their authors’ well-being. Thank you to John Murray, Grant McIntyre, Stephanie Allen and my patient resourceful copy editor Anne Boston. Caroline Westmore has stood between me and trouble many times with delightful good humour and superb skill. My editor Caroline Knox is always courteous, sometimes critical (usually correct!) and knows just how to get the best from her author.

  Barbara Levy, my good friend and perceptive literary agent, has rigorously read and analysed every chapter. I thank her and her lively helpful assistant Lindsay Schusman for critical comments, tact and always being on my side. For typing, photocopying and editorial assistance I thank Caroline Middleton and Stephanie Croxton Blake in Britain and Karen S. Doerstling in Princeton, and for hours of hard work on the bibliography I thank Jo Wroe.

  I have relied on the excellence of my talented research assistant Rosemary Smith more than on anyone else. Scholarly, clever and kind, she has an encyclopaedic memory for detail and with perseverance and meticulous craft she has transcribed hundreds of tapes, typed all the research notes, devised charts, organized research systems, sorted photographs, done sterling work on the bibliography, cut, edited and helped structure every draft and the final version and kept me afloat.