Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise (47 page)

Zelda ignored Scott’s antipathy to her ballet classes and also worked on her remaining three stories, ‘The Girl The Prince Liked’, ‘The Girl With Talent’ and ‘A Millionaire’s Girl’. All three heroines possess talent or energetic driving ambition but still have not found appropriate outlets for a satisfying career.

Helena, heroine of ‘The Girl The Prince Liked’, has her father’s ambition, mystic deep-set eyes and eight million dollars. This allows her to dominate her husband, two children, people of importance ‘whom Helena wore like a string of glass beads’ and a golf course at which she collects second prizes.
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Ultimately she collects the Prince of Wales with whom she has an affair. Zelda satirizes England’s most romantic hero to reveal Helena’s triumphant story as essentially tragic. The Prince goes away, as princes do, leaving her a memory and a bracelet that she is acute enough to have valued. Inherently sharp, Helena realizes meaningful work, not money or contacts, might have given her life fulfilment.

Encouraged by the Murphys, the Fitzgeralds decided to leave Paris and spend the summer on the Riviera. From July till October they rented the Villa Fleur des Bois on boulevard Eugène Gazagnaive, in Cannes, where Zelda finished ‘The Girl The Prince Liked’ while studying under Nevalskaya. She also danced professionally in several engagements in Nice and Cannes.
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Gerald, who
constantly urged Zelda to meet prima ballerina Nemchinova in Antibes, reported Zelda looked haggard and had a strange laugh. On one occasion they went to see a documentary film about underwater life shot in an aquarium. When an octopus moved into view Zelda shrieked and threw herself against Gerald, screaming ‘What is it? What is it!’ Gerald saw nothing frightening and wondered whether Zelda saw it as a distortion of something horrific.
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Zelda, unable to explain, seemed to be withdrawing into a private world. Yet she completed the ‘Prince’ story in late August.

On 23 September 1929 her ballet endeavours were rewarded. She received a formal invitation from Julie Sedowa to join the San Carlo Opera Ballet Company in Naples, Italy. Her
Aïda
debut at San Carlo, which Sedowa described as ‘a very worthwhile solo number’, would be followed by other solo performances as the season progressed. Sedowa wrote that if Zelda stayed for the whole season she would received a monthly salary. She told Zelda the theatre was magnificent, it would be useful experience to accept this offer, life in Naples was not expensive and she could have full board and lodging for 35 lire a day.
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It was the chance Zelda had been waiting for.

Inexplicably she turned it down. She had agonized over whether or not to accept. If she went to Naples she would go alone. The idea scared her, as did leaving Scottie, now almost eight, entirely in Scott’s custody. Since girlhood she had been dependent on Scott. Could she live alone on a meagre salary and succeed without his backing? Could she face his anger? She had worked for months to reach this point, only to be suddenly assailed by self-doubt. Her sister Rosalind vividly recalled not only Zelda’s ambivalence but also Scott’s implacable disapproval. ‘This frantic effort on Zelda’s part, towards a professional career in the thing she did best, was motivated by the uncertainty of their situation … perhaps also by unhappiness, which she refused to admit … beneath an always brave front, and by her desire to put herself on her own. She told me that she received an offer from one of the Italian Opera companies as a première ballerina, but that Scott would not allow her to accept it.’
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Only a few years earlier, Zelda would rebelliously have gone ahead and overruled Scott. Her strange passivity at this critical moment implies an emotional fatigue from many months of professional subservience to him.

Scott never acknowledged, at the time or later, not only how close Zelda had come to a serious ballet career but how he had stopped her.

The scorn Zelda had shown towards Helena in ‘The Girl The Prince Liked’ for not making use of her ambitions and skills turned inward on herself for not having the courage to take the long-awaited opportunity. Zelda’s guilt and confusion over rejecting the San Carlo offer are hinted at in ‘The Girl With Talent’, completed in October 1929 and sold only weeks later.

Lou, the dancer heroine, has genuine talent, a good job in New York, a rich successful husband, a baby. Like Zelda she is not domestic so the baby is largely cared for by the nanny. She is the one heroine of the six whose dreams of stardom in the dance field are attainable. So what does she do? In the middle of an ‘unprecedented hit’ she runs off to China with a tall blond Englishman with whom she has a second beautiful baby. Her dream
could
have come true, as could Zelda’s. Only weeks before this event Lou told the narrator: ‘I am going to work so hard that my spirit will be completely broken, and I am going to be a very fine dancer … I have a magnificent contract in a magnificent casino on the Côte d’Azur, and I am now on my way to work and make money magnificently.’ The narrator did not believe her: ‘those were excellent defense plans that would never be carried out because of lack of attack.’ Is that what Zelda felt about her own self-destructive action? In the story Zelda makes one of her most characteristic comments: ‘To my mind, people never change until they look different.’
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Lou had looked exactly the same. The photos of Zelda in May 1929 and September 1929 also look much the same: tense and frozen-faced. But Zelda was a mistress of deceptive appearances and elusive effects.

Zelda’s remorse over rejecting Sedowa’s offer turned to raging grief when she learnt that Sergei Diaghilev had died in Venice. ‘Diaghilev died,’ wrote Zelda. ‘The stuff of the great movement of the Ballets Russes lay rotting in a French law court … some of his dancers performed round the swimming pool of the Lido to please the drunk Americans … some … worked in music-hall ballets; the English went back to England. What’s the use?’
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For Zelda, whose dreams of dancing with the Ballets Russes had died with Diaghilev, nothing was of use.

That October, while Scott was driving along the Corniche, the most treacherous stretch of road in that locality, Zelda grabbed the steering wheel and attempted to force the car off the cliff. She almost killed herself and her husband. Later she said the car acted wildly on its own.

There is an obvious and illuminating connection, which has not previously been made, between these three events: firstly, Zelda’s
rejection of the ballet company offer; secondly, Diaghilev’s death; and thirdly, the steering-wheel incident. One of Zelda’s biographers, Milford, omits Diaghilev’s death and even reverses the chronology of job offer and steering-wheel incident, so that no psychological sense can be made of it.
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There is also the highly significant fact that all three events occurred during a period of enormous literary productivity for Zelda, every piece of which was published under Scott’s name as well as hers or under Scott’s name alone.

In October 1929 the Fitzgeralds returned to Paris where Zelda continued writing, working on her sixth story, ‘The Millionaire’s Girl’, which would be sold in March 1930. The story, Zelda’s witty answer to Scott’s fictionalized treatment of the Lois Moran romance, is generally considered her best.
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Caroline, its heroine, is lower down the social register than her fiancé Barry. ‘You could see that he was rich and that he liked her, and you could see that she was poor and that she knew he did.’ But Barry’s father likes her not, tries to buy her off. When Caroline accepts his cheque without realizing she is expected to break her engagement Barry, furious, does it for her, at which point Caroline decides to become a Hollywood superstar! Her reason, however, is not to find remunerative fulfilling work but to bring back the errant Barry. Though her first film is a big hit he doesn’t return until she makes a dramatic suicide bid. As Zelda comments acidly: ‘She married him, of course, and since she left the films on that occasion, they have both had much to reproach each other for.’
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It sounded familiar even at the time.

Throughout the ‘Girl’ series the narrator has remained unidentified either by name or gender. But there is a nice touch in this sixth story: Caroline and Barry drive out to see their narrator friend on Long Island. On arrival Caroline asks: ‘Is this Fitzgerald’s roadhouse?’, ensuring that readers now suspect that the narrator is either Zelda or Scott.
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Rereading the series, particularly ‘Southern Girl’, it becomes obvious the narrator, too, is a Southern Girl: Zelda.

Zelda said she wrote these stories to pay for her dancing so that she would not be financially dependent on Scott. The money was good. But the deal organized by Scott on Zelda’s behalf was not. Harold Ober recorded the transaction Scott made with
College
Humor
for Zelda’s stories. ‘SF said that Z would do six articles for
College
Humor,
that he would go over them … and that the articles would be signed with both their names.’
62

Although
College
Humor
had already bought two of Zelda’s articles and considered her talented in her own right, five of the six
stories were published with joint by-lines. Scott’s justification for joint credits was not only that they would reap a higher fee, but that even if he didn’t actually write the stories he might have done so at any moment! He assured Ober that most of the stories were ‘pretty strong draughts on Zelda’s and my common store of material. This [the heroine of ‘The Girl With Talent’] is Mary Hay for instance + the “Girl The Prince Liked” was Josephine Ordway – both of whom I had in my notebook to use.’
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He probably did. However, he did not in fact take Mary or Josephine out of his notebook and turn them into fiction, whereas Zelda took two role models out of her notebook and
did
turn them into stories.

‘The Original Follies Girl’ was sold in March 1929 to
College
Humor
for $400. Published in July 1929, it was credited to Scott and Zelda. Scott had made no revisions. It was the cause of a fight between them. Zelda had finished it in the Philadelphia library, after which she celebrated with some women from the dance school, got drunk in an Italian restaurant and returned home to find Scott furious. Scott delivered it to Ober instead of a Basil story that was due. ‘This is a poor substitute,’ Scott wrote, ‘tho it is a beautifully written thing.’
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That story and the next four were highly praised by Swanson, the editor.

‘Poor Working Girl’ was sold to
College
Humor
via Ober in April 1929 for $500. Published in January 1931, it was credited to Scott and Zelda, but written entirely by Zelda.

‘Southern Girl’ followed in June, was sold to
College
Humor
for $500, published in October 1929, credited to Scott and Zelda but written entirely by Zelda.

‘The Girl the Prince Liked’ was sold to
College
Humor
in September 1929 for $500, published in February 1930, credited to both Fitzgeralds but written entirely by Zelda. Scott asked Ober: ‘Don’t you think that Zelda’s Girl-the-Prince-liked thing is good?’
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‘The Girl With Talent’ was sold to
College
Humor
October 1929 for $800, published April 1930, credited to both Fitzgeralds but written by Zelda.

The credit surrounding ‘A Millionaire’s Girl’ was even more contentious. Both Ober and Scott behaved in a shockingly high-handed manner. It was sold to the
Saturday
Evening
Post
in March 1930 for $4,000, and published on 17 May. Though it was entirely written by Zelda, the name under the story was F. Scott Fitzgerald alone. Scott’s reason was that the
Post
had offered to pay $4,000 if Zelda’s name was omitted. Ober later said that when he had received it he believed it to be one of Scott’s and sent it off to the
Post,
which
accepted it On 5 March 1930 Ober wrote to Scott: ‘Dear Scott, A Millionaires Girl has just come in and I have just finished reading it. I like it a lot and some of your lines about California are very amusing, indeed.’

As soon as the error was discovered Ober cabled Scott that the
Post
would only pay that amount if Zelda’s name was dropped.
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Scott agreed. Ober managed an apologetic line: ‘I really felt a little guilty about dropping Zelda’s name from that story … but I think she understood that using two names would have tied the story up with the
College
Humor
stories and might have got us into trouble.’ Ober insisted it was so good that it ‘would have been recognized as your [Scott’s] story no matter under what name it was published’. Attempting to placate Zelda, who might not have understood the Ober–Scott view that what mattered was the highest possible fee, Ober asked Scott to tell Zelda that it was ‘a mighty good piece of work’.
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By publication in mid-May 1930 Zelda was terribly ill, so Scott on her behalf told Ober: ‘Zelda was delighted with your compliments about the Millionaires Girl!’
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Later, Scott confessed that the story ‘appeared under my name but actually I had nothing to do with it except for suggesting a theme and working on the proof of the completed manuscript’. He also admitted to taking over the other material published ‘under our joint names’. He said: ‘I had nothing to do with the thing from start to finish except supplying my name.’
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One view of these events is that Scott lent his name to Zelda’s work in order to help her, to reap more money for them as a couple, that Zelda did not mind, indeed was proud to be the recipient of such a famous name on her work, and that Scott had no hidden malevolent agenda. This is the view taken by most of Scott’s male biographers.

The opposing view is that Scott ruthlessly took fraudulent credit for Zelda’s work, partly instigated by his own insecurities due to his own procrastination over his novel
Tender
Is
The
Night.
The events are seen as entirely selfish literary poaching.