Villa America (43 page)

“The moment of truth,” he said.

“I hit something hard,” Baoth yelled, his ruddy face full of joy.

Honoria stood impatiently watching the shoveling; Patrick just kept his wise little head still, focused.

And then, all at once, there it was: the pirate’s treasure chest.

The children seemed stunned to actually see it, as if they’d willed it out of their imagination into existence and were awed by the power of their own fancy.

“I think your mother should open it,” Gerald said, handing her the skeleton key.

“No,” she said, “I think Owen should open it.” She handed it to him.

Owen looked at it, turned it over in his hand, felt its weight.

“Yes,” Honoria said. “Open it.”

He bent down and fit the key into the lock. It made a small click.

“The lid’s going to be heavy,” he said. “I think we’ll need to open it together.”

The children, along with their parents, each put a hand on the lid and pushed. The lid fell back on its hinges and all was revealed: stones and beads of every color, cuffs of gold and silver, garnets and bloodstones and turquoise, deep enough to push your whole hand through, brilliant and glittering in the French summer sun.

“Rubies,” Honoria said.

“And diamonds and emeralds,” Patrick said. “How many do you think there are?”

“There’s enough for everyone,” Sara said, straightening up.

The children would never know about that treasure, how Gerald had searched out old parchment paper from the galleries on the rue La Boétie in Paris. How Sara had hunted all over the Left Bank for a treasure chest and combed the flea markets for jewelry and beads. How Owen had gathered it all up in his plane on his return from Berlin and flown it down to Antibes. How Vladimir had gone on a mission to bury the chest and the box weeks in advance.

And while Honoria and Baoth and Patrick marveled at what Captain Kidd had left behind, Sara and Gerald and Owen stood watching.

The morning had broken clear up in the hills, and they could see straight over the pines and palms and olive trees, bending like women curtsying, out over the sea to the three islands in the gulf, the Iles d’Or. The Golden Isles, shining in the distance, just out of reach.

Writing a historical novel based on the lives of real people is a tricky business. Lines between the writer’s imagination and biographical fact become blurred, and the past becomes ambiguous. One of the major differences between historical fiction and biography is that, in biography, gaps in the known narrative can be filled only with supposition, whereas in fiction, the gaps are where the story lives. The author’s job is to dramatize what the biographer is permitted only to guess at. The result is a work that is framed by fact but is ultimately fiction.
Villa America
is such a novel.

But first, the facts—for this book wouldn’t exist without the painstaking and brilliant research undertaken by a group of journalists, biographers, and family members.

I initially became aware of the existence of Sara and Gerald Murphy while writing my MA thesis on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s
Tender Is the Night,
which was—and remains—one of my favorite novels. Intensely romantic and tragic, it is dedicated
To Gerald and Sara, Many Fêtes
.

As I began my investigation, I realized that the Gerald and Sara to whom he was referring were the Murphys, great friends of Fitzgerald’s and the models, he claimed, for Dick and Nicole Diver in the novel. I would also discover that the Murphys themselves, particularly Sara, found that claim absurd—even slightly insulting.

My real introduction to their lives, however, came through reading Calvin Tomkins’s beautiful and heartbreaking
Living Well Is the Best Revenge.
The book is expanded from a
New
Yorker
article he wrote based on his extensive interviews with the Murphys, who happened to be his neighbors. And because he knew them and quoted them at length, his account was my first taste of their unusual voices, their way with language. And I fell in love with them. Here I found the story of how Gerald first knew he wanted to be a painter, walking down the rue La Boétie one day; of the beginning of his friendship with Cole Porter at Yale; of the infamous scene at Villa America where Scott threw wineglasses and, ultimately, a punch and was banned. It was my first glimpse of Vladimir and his White Russian background and of the way Villa America looked in the 1920s and of Zelda throwing herself off a parapet or jumping off Eden Roc.

Living Well Is the Best Revenge
is a gem, small and perfectly formed and, for anyone interested in the lives of the Murphys, a must-read.

However, for a fulsome biography of Sara and Gerald, Amanda Vaill’s amazing
Everybody Was So Young
is the first and last word on the Murphys. Meticulously researched and brilliantly written, it manages to bring to life all the texture—from the delicate details to the sweeping glamour to the awful tragedies—of their lives.

Her book informed much of what I know about the early years of the Murphys, of their youth and courtship. And her thoughtful interpretation of their marriage and their family life, as well as the complicated nature of some of their friendships, greatly inspired my treatment of them in
Villa America.

And it was while I was reading Vaill’s account of the caviar-and-champagne party given in honor of Ernest Hemingway that the idea of the character of Owen Chambers was born. She notes in her biography that the caviar had to be flown in from the Caspian Sea by a pilot, and it was in that small gap—an unknown pilot—that the fictional narrative began.

That Gerald Murphy struggled with his sexuality is well documented through letters he wrote to both Sara and his friends. However, what exactly that struggle consisted of is unknown. There is no suggestion that he ever engaged in a love affair with anyone outside of his marriage. The invention of Owen and their subsequent relationship is part of that shadowland where historical fiction lives; the affair is a way of dramatizing Gerald’s struggle, of writing action where only absence exists.

For readers who wish to peruse those letters, I highly recommend
Letters from the Lost Generation,
edited by Linda Patterson Miller. That collection, which skillfully illuminates the web of friendships among this group of talented and difficult people, inspired many of the letters that appear in the novel.

Aside from Vaill and Miller, another rich source of letters is the memoir penned by Sara and Gerald’s daughter, Honoria Murphy Donnelly,
Sara & Gerald: Villa America and After.
Providing a firsthand account of life at Villa America as well as documenting a treasure trove of correspondence, Donnelly’s book was indispensable in my gaining a clear and realistic picture of the Murphys, of the details of their everyday life, of their love and affection for their children. In particular, Honoria’s extremely moving descriptions of the tin-soldier battle at Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald’s villa and the treasure hunt that makes up the final section of the novel were crucial.

The letters in
Villa America
are, for the most part, invented. However, some of them echo real letters, some of them contain a line from a real letter, and a few of them are reprints of the originals.

For example, in the series of letters exchanged between Sara and Gerald while she was visiting India, his comment that “I can’t very well chat about such a small thing with the men I know without being thought effeminate. About Wilson, Panama, and the Cadillac 1914, yes” was inspired by a line in a real letter to her, quoted in Vaill, that reads: “How few men there are with whom I am able to carry on more than a five minute conversation…These diners out, during coffee,—get so far with the Panama situation, or Wilson,—or the 1914 Cadillac vs. the 1914 Ford,—and then sit back…Any mention of some important exhibition, concert, book…is at once allied with effeminacy.”

Similarly, Sara’s letter to Gerald dated March 20, 1914, in the novel is based on a real letter she penned him from Rome. In the original letter, Sara says: “What do you mean by never writing?…What have you all been doing, and what were your costumes like at the costume balls? Having been to the ends of the earth, we’d like some news…India was the wildest success.” The fictional letter clearly echoes the real one; however, in the novel, this letter is intended to cover up the fact that she and Gerald have been writing in secret to each other, which colors the tone.

The fictional letter Gerald writes Sara saying that he is coming to ask her father for her hand in marriage was inspired by three separate letters he wrote to her shortly before declaring his intentions. In the first, he describes a meeting from the previous evening that “left me impressed, uplifted, awed (no word!) as I have never been. It may be strange,” he continues, “for a
man
to admit of this:—but I could never take what occurred to us last night casually.” In the second, he says that “I cannot live alone with this feeling much longer.” And in the third, Gerald writes that he can no longer bear to have their courtship kept a secret and that he will come to “ply my suit with your respected male parent.”

And in the next letter in the novel, the line “Think of a relationship that not only does not bind, but actually so
lets loose
the imagination! Think of it, my love—and thank heaven” comes directly from a line Gerald wrote to Sara when they first became secretly engaged, the only variation being the substitution of
my love
for the original
Sal.

Similarly, in the novel, the letter Gerald writes to Sara from San Antonio was greatly inspired by part of a real letter he wrote to her when he was at the training camp in which he said: “It gives me such courage now to think of us established as a little family. I believe so in us—it is my creed—we can do anything with ourselves.”

In other cases, expressions and words that Sara and Gerald favored have been used in the letters, such as the description of their future children as “humorous, lithe, and clean,” their referring to the decorating fashion of the day as “smart apt,” and Gerald’s feeling of being “inspected” when with a group of men.

In the other large series of letters in the novel, the ones exchanged between 1928 and 1937, there are several cases where real letters have been used. First, the lines by Archie MacLeish that Gerald includes in the fictional letter to Owen, beginning “This land is my native land” comes from a real letter MacLeish wrote to Gerald upon his return to the United States. MacLeish later turned the letter into a poem, “American Letter,” that appears in the collection
New Found Land
.

MacLeish’s heartbreaking letter to Patrick Murphy about the sick baby squirrel he finds in the woods is a real letter he wrote to the boy with a few lines cut to make it shorter; it appears in Donnelly’s memoir. Finally, Fitzgerald’s poignant letter to the Murphys upon the death of Patrick Murphy, which begins “The telegram came today and the whole afternoon was so sad with thoughts of you,” is an original letter. A few lines have been cut for brevity.

Other letters in this series in the novel, while crafted by the author to advance the narrative, were inspired in part by real missives as well as by the general style of the various writers to whom they are fictionally attributed. Gerald’s letter to Owen describing his time in Los Angeles, for example, contains echoes of a letter Gerald wrote to MacLeish in which he commented on the infantile nature of the culture (as evidenced by the silly restaurant names) and his experience with the racial stereotyping on the set of
Hallelujah!
In similar fashion, Dorothy Parker’s letter to Bob Benchley about her time with the Murphys in Switzerland draws from Parker’s actual letter describing that experience.

Other letters inspired by real-life writings include Donald Stewart’s letter to Phil Barry, which draws on Stewart’s letter to Calvin Tomkins describing a visit to the Murphys; it can be found in Stewart’s autobiography,
By a Stroke of Luck!
Archie MacLeish’s letter to his wife, Ada, quoting a part of a letter from Gerald also falls into this category.

Similarly, Fitzgerald’s fictional letter to Ernest Hemingway describing his feelings about Sara echo words Fitzgerald wrote to her in a real letter several months after Baoth’s death. The short fictional letter Zelda Fitzgerald writes to Scott was inspired by a letter, cited in Nancy Milford’s fantastic biography
Zelda,
that she wrote to her husband during the period when she was living at the psychiatric facility Highland Hospital.

One of Hemingway’s fictional letters to Sara was inspired by a letter he wrote to her in 1934, after a trip to Africa, in which he offered her a stuffed impala’s or gazelle’s head, insisting that it was “clean and light and quite beautiful to look at when you’re in bed,” and described impalas as being “the ones that float in the air when they jump.”

All the works cited above were invaluable to the writing of this novel and I am indebted and extremely grateful to their authors for setting me upon this frustrating and wonderful and heartrending journey. I cannot recommend these works enough:
Living Well Is the Best Revenge, Everybody Was So Young, Letters from the Lost Generation,
and
Sara & Gerald
. Read them.

I also owe thanks to the staff at Yale’s Beinecke Library, which houses the Sara and Gerald Murphy Papers, for their help in my research and their patience in teaching me how to handle rare manuscripts.

There may be nothing harder for a writer than writing into the void: it’s a lonely business at the best of times, but when no one gives a damn, it’s even lonelier. Conversely, there is nothing more joyous than writing a novel amid the cheering sound of encouragement and support. And when it comes to support for this book, my cup runneth over.

I am evermore indebted to my editors Kate Harvey at Picador and Judy Clain at Little, Brown, who washed this novel with all the taste and style and brilliance in their arsenal. Whatever its flaws are lie with me; but when it comes to any of the high, gleaming moments, so much credit goes to those two talented women. Thank you, thank you—I can’t say it enough.

My agent, Caroline Wood, a woman of truly startling honesty, has been an amazing shield and an incredible companion on the path we’ve traveled together over the last four years. Thank God I found you.

So much gratitude goes to my U.K. publicist—and my friend—Emma Bravo, who wages one hell of a campaign. Long may our capers continue. And also to my U.S. publicist, the incomparable Sabrina Callahan, whose humor and tirelessness have made tromping around the United States a real joy.

My thanks to the whole team at Picador, who’ve become a bit like my very own pirate gang, and in particular to my lovely publisher, Paul Baggaley, for all his gracious support of this novel.

To the folks at Little, Brown—I send my heartiest thanks and devotion from this side of the pond for the hard work, eagle-eyed attentiveness, and astounding support.

Also deserving of so much love and acclamation are the long-suffering writers in my workshop group: Emma Chapman, Tom Feltham, Liz Gifford, Carolina Gonzalez-Carvajal, and Kat Gordon.

Finally, to my family: Thank you. I love you.