Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (601 page)

Westport, Connecticut August 6,
1920

Dear Mr Leslie:

Your letter came today and I hasten to assure you that you were one of the half dozen chosen to whom I sent autographed first editions. I am sorry as the deuce, not to say humiliated, that it never reached you as you were my first literary sponsor, godfather to this book, and my original intention was to dedicate it to both of you. I sent it to your New York address as I’d lost your letter from Ireland.

I am married and living rustically in Connecticut - working on a second novel. I married the Rosalind of the novel, the southern girl I was so attached to, after a grand reconciliation.

The book has sold 30,000 copies here and will be published immediately in England and Australia.

I apologize for the spelling of Dr Fay’s name; also - did you notice - for an almost excerpt from one of your letters with an account of the funeral. I didn’t see it myself and had to describe it. I credited you with it in the copy I sent you.

I have written numerous short stories to be published by Scribners this fall, under the title of
Flappers and Philosophers.
I am living royally off the moving picture rights of these same stories.

I will certainly send you a first edition of my new book which includes that story ‘Benediction,’ since published in the
Smart Set
- and next time I’m in New York I’ll send you the 7th edition of T
his Side of Paradise
just to show you I’m not like republics ungrateful, and that the correction in Dr Fay’s name has been corrected.

Stephen Parrott was staying with us last week and we talked much of both you and Dr Fay. I certainly made use of his letters and the poem in the book but I’m sure he would fully approve, don’t you?

When are you coming to America?

Sincerely,

F. Scott Fitzgerald

P.S. My best regards to Mrs Leslie.

The Catholic papers here seem to think my book was a subtle attack on the American clergy. I can’t think why! I’m sure the most sympathetic character in it was Monsignor Darcy.

Westport, Connecticut September
17, 1920

Dear
Mr Leslie:

The book is appearing in England next spring. Williams Collins Sons & Co. are bringing it out. Did I tell you? I sent a tracer after the book I sent you last spring and today I forwarded an 8th edition of
Paradise
and a first of my new one,
Flappers and Philosophers,
a collection of short stories. I am now working on my second novel - much more objective this time and hence much harder sledding. But the bourgeoisie are going to stare 1

The three letters and the poem of Dr Fay’s possibly should not have followed the dedication but I really don’t think he’d have minded. I was married quite liturgically and canonically - I mean only the latter, tho, for it took place in the rectory of St Patrick’s Cathedral.

We are coining abroad in January and will certainly come and have a long talk with you, ‘Rosalind’ was tremendously impressed with ‘10, Talbot Square, Hyde Park, London, England.’ And I would like to see Fr Hemmick again. How I’ll watch for that review in the Dublin Review!

I liked Tom Kettle’s poem but I really don’t think it’s extraordinary. I’m trying to get hold of his book.

I’m taking your advice and writing very slowly and paying much attention to form. Sometimes I think that this new novel has nothing much else but form.

There’s no use concealing the fact that my reaction a year ago last June to apparent failure in every direction did carry me rather away from the church. My ideas now are in such wild riot that I would flatter myself did I claim even the clarity of agnosticism. If you knew the absolute dirth of Catholic intelligentsia in this country! One Catholic magazine, America, had only one prim comment on my book - ‘a fair example of our non-Catholic college’s output.’ My Lord! Compared to the average Georgetown alumnus Amory is an uncanonized saint. I think I laundered myself shiny in the book!

Faithfully,

F. Scott Fitzgerald

38 West 59th Street New
York
City
November 16,
1920

Dear Mr Leslie:

Thanks for the article. It seems a pity that something even more exhaustive can’t be written about Dr Fay. He always told me to save his letters and some day we’d all publish them anonymously in some form. I found, however, that he’d written me less than he thought so the three letters that occur in the book are largely pieced together and even considerably added to from memories of remarks he’d made to me plus even a few things I thought he might have said.

The entire funeral description you quoted was culled from your letter except that ‘he would have enjoyed his own funeral’ and ‘making all religion a thing of lights and shadows, etc.’ I apologize most humbly. I think the influences of your style on me are traceable in various other portions of the book.

I met Fr Hemmick in the Biltmore and he looked at me as the he saw the horns already sprouting. Do you know that the story ‘Benediction’ that I sent you and that also received the imprimatur of the most intelligent priest I know has come in for the most terrible lashing from the American Catholic intelligentsia? It’s too much for me. It seems that an Englishman like Benson can write anything but an American had better have his works either pious tracts for nuns or else disassociate them from the church as a living issue.

I am coming to see you when we cross this winter.

Yours ever,

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Paris, France May 24,1921

Dear
Mr Leslie:

Just a word to thank you for your courtesies to us. I think Zelda enjoyed her trip through Wapping more than anything that’s happened so far.

We had dinner with Galsworthy the night before we left and I was rather disappointed in him. I can’t stand pessimism with neither irony nor bitterness. Incidentally, I tried all over London to get you
The Mysterious Stranger
by Twain but evidently it’s not published in England. I am almost through with Manning and intend to review him in The Bookman.

France is a bore and a disappointment, chiefly, I imagine, because we know no one here. Italy on Wednesday.

Faithfully,

F. Scott Fitzgerald

TO SALLY POPE TAYLOR

45
th Infantry Camp Taylor, Kentucky

March 10,
1918

Dear Sally Pope:

Much obliged for the Easter postcard - I’d have loved to have come down for Easter but as you know we haven’t much say as to what we can do and what we can’t.

My first novel is now in the hands of Scribner and Co. Whether they’ll publish it for me I don’t know yet. It’s called
The Romantic Egotist
and most of the adventures in it have happened to me in my short but eventful life. Your mother probably won’t let you read it until you’re sixteen, Sally, and she’s perfectly right. However this is premature as it hasn’t been accepted yet.

I often think of you all down there and it’s good to think that in this muddled hurly-burly of a world some little corners still preserve their peace and sanity. We’re going to be moved from CampTaylor soon but where we’re going I don’t know. I’m anxious to get to France but probably won’t for a long, long time. Tell your mother to read
Changing
Winds by St John Ervine. It is anti-Catholic rather, but Rupert Brooke is one of the characters in it and I rather think she’d like it.

I hope you read a most tremendous lot, Sally - you’ve got a keen mind and just feed it with every bit of reading you can lay your hands on, good, poor or mediocre. A good mind has a good separator and can peck the good from the bad in all it absorbs. My best wishes to everyone.

Love,

Scott F.

TO SALLY POPE TAYLOR

45th
Infantry Camp Sheridan, Alabama

June
19,

1918

I did enjoy your letter, Sally, and I believe you’re going to be quite a personage. A personage and a personality are quite different - I wonder if you can figure the difference. Your mother, Peter the Hermit, Joan of Arc, Cousin Tom, Mark Antony and Bonnie Prince Charlie were personalities. You and Cardinal Newman and Julius Caesar and Elizabeth Barrett Browning and myself and Mme de Staël were personages. Does the distinction begin to glimmer on you? Personality may vanish at a sickness; a personage is hurt more by a worldly setback. Of you four sisters, you and Tommy are personages, Celia is a personality and Virginia may be either - or both, as Disraeli was.

Do you know, Sally, I believe that for the first time in my life I’m rather lonesome down here - not lonesome for family and friends or anyone in particular but lonesome for the old atmosphere - a feverish crowd at Princeton sitting up until three discussing pragmatism or the immortality of the soul - for the glitter of New York with a tea dance at the Plaza or lunch at Sherries - for the quiet respectable boredom of St Paul.

What a funny way to write a girl of thirteen, or is it fourteen?

Thy cousin,

Scott

TO RUTH STURTEVANT

67th
Infantry Camp Sheridan, Alabama 1st of
Winter

Nineteen
hundred
and
Eighteen

Postmarked December 4,1918

Dear Ruth:

Just a line to tell you how much I enjoyed Sonia - If you like that sort of book you should read Youth’s Encounter (Mackenzie),
Changing
Winds (Ervine), and
The New Machiavelli
and Tono
Bungay
(H. G. Wells) -

My affair still drifts - But my mind is firmly made up that I will not, shall not, can not, should not, must not marry - still, she
is
remarkable - I’m trying desperately
exire armis -

As ever,

Scott Fitzg —

TO C. EDMUND DELBOS

17th
Brig. Headquarters Camp Sheridan, Alabama

January
13,

1919

Dear Mr Delbos:

Your telegram was the greatest shock I have ever known. Like so many others I looked to Dr Fay before anyone in the world - and I’ll think of the days when I came back to school to join his circle before the fire as the happiest of my life.

I can’t realize that he has gone - that all of us who loved him have lost him forever and that that side of life is over, the great warmth and atmosphere he could cast over youth - the perfect understanding. - When I begin to think about him and what he meant to me I can hardly see the paper.

I can’t get leave, but all day Tuesday I’ll devote to his memory just as I suppose I will all my life. The best is over -I feel like the dregs of a cup.

Sincerely,

F. Scott Fitzgerald

TO MRS EDWARD FITZGERALD

Fort
Leavenworth,

Kansas

Winter, 1919

Dear Mother: I wrote you a letter yesterday but lost it somewhere.

(1) — Candy was fine but best not send it in a long box again as it gets smashed a little.

(2) — Checks came - Thanks.

(3) — Am very well.

(4) — My novel is autobiographical in point of view but I’ve borrowed incidents from all my friends’ experience.

(5) — It’s too much trouble to send my flannels home to be washed.

(6) — I want suitcase back.

(7) — Will you ask father to show you those quotations about ‘Lord Alfred’ in ‘Lucille’ - and copy them out and send them to me -I need them in my book.

(8) — I am bored but not weary.

(9) — This is the coldest state in the Union.

Love, Scott

TO RUTH STURTEVANT

New York City

June
24,

1919

Dear Ruth:

I feel I ought to tell you something because you’re the only person in the world that knows the other half. I’ve done my best and I’ve failed - it’s a great tragedy to me and I feel I have very little left to live for because until everything is as it should be I’ll have that sense of vacancy that only this can give.

I wish you’d tear up this letter and I know you’ll never say what I told you in an hour of depression. Unless someday she will marry me I will never marry.

As ever,

Scott

TO ALIDA BICELOW

1st Epistle of St Scott to the Smithsonian Chapter the I Verses the I to the last -

(599 Summit Ave)

In a house below the average

Of a street above the average

In a room below the roof

With a lot above the ears

I shall write Alida Bigelow

Shall indite Alida Bigelow

As the world’s most famous goof

(This line don’t rhyme)

(September 22, 1919)

What’s a date! —

Mr Fate —

Can’t berate —

Mr Scott. —  —

He is not —  —

Marking time:

It’s too late So, in rhyme, To the dot!

Tho I hate To berate; Such a lot Father time, Keep a date, Stop this rot What’s a date, Mr Fate?

S’ever Scott

Most beautiful, rather-too-virtuous-but-entirely-enchanting Alida:

Scribners has accepted my book. Ain’t I smart!

But
hic jubilatio era t tot am
spoiled for
meum par lisant une livre, une novellum (novum) nomine
Salt
par
Herr C. G. Morris - a most astounding piece of realism, it makes
Fortitude
look like an antique mental ash-can and is quite as good as
The Old Wives’ Tale.

Of course I think Walpole is a weak-wad anyhow. Read Salt, young girl, so that you may know what life B.