Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise (77 page)

When not engaged on the novel, Zelda gave editorial advice about several publications of Scott’s work, and urged Wilson to edit
The
Last
Tycoon
and Max Perkins to publish it until finally, in October 1941, it appeared in print. She gave seminars about Scott’s writings to English literature students at Huntington College,
24
lectured
on religion and led a spiritual discussion at the Bluestockings,
25
took ballet lessons from Amelia Harper Rosenberg, a former pupil of George Balanchine, and (under John Biggs’s
auspices
) began to dabble in stocks and shares on the New York Stock Exchange.
26

That she was intensely preoccupied with religion is indisputable. She spent hours writing religious tracts for family and friends or sending concerned spiritual messages, some of which verged on the apocalyptic.
27

Baffled biographers have used Zelda’s evangelical approach as a synonym for insanity. Even Minnie Sayre thought her daughter had ‘gone off the deep end about religion’, due to Zelda’s studious
interest
in the Book of Revelation and to her increased use of imagist and metaphorical language.

Her religious preoccupations, however, can be viewed
not
as a symptom of mental illness but as a way of optimistically dealing with the tragedies of the previous decade. The scholar Kirk Curnutt points out that Zelda’s doctrinaire faith, far from being a
manifestation
of madness, was something that relieved the psychological instability she had long suffered.
28
Rosalind would have agreed. Zelda, she said, had become ‘a person of the utmost rectitude who spent her time at her art and in trying bravely to rehabilitate herself and in doing good for others’.
29

When Zelda used religious symbolism in her
Biblical
Tableaux
and throughout
Caesar’s
Things,
she was attempting something akin to
Scott’s purpose and methodology in
The
Crack-Up
essays. Curnutt suggests that her fundamentalism or conversion was an experiment to achieve a similar ‘clean break’ from her past.
30
Like Scott, she wanted to burn away traumas and start anew. That she was able to make so productive a start whilst still facing recurrences of ill-health is because, as Rosalind rigorously emphasized, Zelda was
not
an invalid. ‘I find the description of her as “frail” unfitting. She had great physical endurance and energy. And even in her last years at our mother’s here, she walked miles every day and worked the garden … She was too vital to appear delicate.’
31

Yet, in order to present Zelda systematically both as ‘an invalid’ and as ‘invalid’, biographers have stated that she returned to Highland several times for very long periods each time. Hospital bills and correspondence between Zelda and John Biggs show
conclusively
that those dates are inaccurate and the stated lengths of internment false.

Zelda’s first return to the Asheville hospital is reputed to be August 1943 to end of February 1944: a six-month sojourn. Zelda
did
spend part of that August in Asheville, but she stayed with Tom Wolfe’s mother at 48 Spruce Street, from where she wrote regularly to Biggs, telling him she had run into former hospital ‘cell-mates’ on the street. She picnicked, swam, and would have stayed longer, ‘but the house is so dirty I think it best to go before atrification sets in. It seems remarkable that the vitality and inclusive metaphor and
will-to-live
of Wolff’s prose should have known these origins.’
32
Back at Minnie’s house, her letters to Biggs until Christmas 1943 show she did
not
enter hospital until the new year 1944, when she stayed only eight weeks.

Her second hospitalization is generally held to be from early 1946 to late summer/early fall: this would have been another
eight-month
incarceration, again suggesting serious illness. However her correspondence with Biggs throughout winter, spring and summer 1946, written from and received at 322 Sayre Street, Montgomery, shows otherwise. She did not re-enter hospital until the start of July 1946 and she left 23 September: a period of only twelve weeks.
33

Rosalind’s assessment of Zelda’s health is more realistic: ‘She remained a highly nervous person and
occasionally
had to return to the hospital to get herself under control, but she also had many long good periods when she was able to follow her interests, keep up with her friends, and live a fairly normal life.’
34

Let us scrutinize Zelda’s last seven years to see how she fared before her third, final, hospitalization.

We find her in January 1941 still living at the Rabbit Run, her mother’s small white bungalow at 322 Sayre Street. Zelda’s old upright piano and rocking chairs offered a place for repose in the chintzy sitting room. Zelda divided her time between her sister Marjorie next door, her mother, old friends like Livye and a young disabled girl she befriended.

Her years at Sayre Street were years of struggle.

Her first battle was with encroaching poverty.

Although Biggs remarked that Scott left the estate of a pauper and the will of a millionaire,
35
Fitzgerald was not quite as destitute as legend suggests. His 1940 earnings had been $14,570. He left $738.16 in the bank, $486.34 in cash and his personal possessions. Those apart, the bulk of his estate was a mere $44,225.15, the reduced value of his insurance policy.
36
He died owing $4,067.14 to Highland, $5,456 to Scribner’s, more than $1,500 to Perkins, and $802 to Ober who waived nearly $3,000 in accumulated interest on loans. Those debts were paid out of the estate. Biggs used the remaining amount of less than $35,000 from the insurance policy to set up a trust for Zelda and Scottie for the next seven years.
37
An annuity purchased for Zelda gave her just under $50 a month and she qualified for a $35 monthly pension as a veteran’s widow.
38
  When Biggs reassured her that Scott had left enough to take care of her on the same basis as before, she replied stoutly: ‘The idea of poverty is not a new one and I am well-conversant with its exigence.’
39

She confessed to Biggs that ‘to encompass the fact that he [Scott] wont be getting off the train any more bringing the promise of
happiness
and the possibilities of new purposes makes my heart-break. His pockets were always full of good times and his heart full of silly songs about what wonderful things there were to do, and I will miss him.’
40

She missed Scott particularly for his protective role towards her, so Biggs took over that function too. In January 1941, Zelda, worried that there was insufficient money to keep Scottie at Vassar, told Biggs ‘she can start looking around for a job – or maybe Max could find her something to do at Scribners. She is intelligent and
beautiful
and there must be some way of supporting the youth when they are as deserving as herself.’ Biggs immediately organized Ober, Perkins and Murphy to pay jointly for Scottie to finish college.

Anna Biggs also became Zelda’s good friend, often inviting her to their gracious Wilmington house with its ‘haunted terrace and bounteous windows’.
41
John, however, let Zelda down in two
significant ways. When his secretary, who posted Zelda’s regular monthly cheques, was on holiday, he would frequently forget to post them himself. Biggs, as a wealthy lawyer soon to be Senior Circuit Judge of the 3rd Circuit,
42
could not comprehend that the poor live from hand to mouth without reserves to draw upon.
43
  Many times Zelda was forced to endure the humiliation of
reminding
him. Though her correspondence shows a new businesslike competence (she even dates some letters) there is still the familiar undertone of the housewife-dependent who is ‘devoted and
grateful
’.

When she accumulated debts her letters became wittier: ‘Dear John, Scottie tells me that the streets in Heaven only are paved with gold: a matter which really should receive more attention from the local civic authorities. However, she says that you most generously will take care of a staggering and involved array of debts which I have, unsuspectingly, accrued.’ Among debts to Minnie for board ($20), to a jewellery store for a wedding gift ($10), to a dressmaker for what in Scottie’s eyes was an ‘acceptable’ suit-kimona ($30) and to the bank to replace some pension back-pay she had ‘borrowed’ ($100) lurked a highly intriguing ‘spiritual debt’ of $42 which she owed the Lord.
44
On that occasion Biggs, not wishing Zelda to fall out with God, took care of the debts; but he wrote a typically admonishing letter warning Zelda to live within her means.
45
The problem for Zelda was that the means were insufficient to live within, despite the fact that she rarely went to the hairdresser or movies, did not drink, smoked six cigarettes at most a day, had four friends whom she seldom saw, bought only one Victrola album a month ($5), a mere $5 worth of paints a month, and went to bed at nine to save electricity.
46

Biggs’s second failure was in not recognizing how much Zelda’s art meant to her. In January 1941 Zelda asked him to send to Montgomery her paintings which were stored with Scott’s
possessions
.
47
It was the first of many similar requests for fifteen months during which Biggs ignored the issue. Only in January 1942, when the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts wanted to give Zelda a show, did he deal with the matter. Even then she did not receive the paintings until 18 March.
48

Though surrounded by family, Zelda struggled with a particular kind of loneliness. She missed the stimulation of old friends but was unsure how to preserve them in the light of her new spiritual ideas and her medically dampened-down personality.

Gerald and Sara, saddened at her absence from Scott’s funeral,
had told her of its grace. In reply she sent them a poignant letter: ‘Those tragic ecstatic years when the pockets of the world were filled with pleasant surprizes and people still thought of life in terms of their right to a good time are now about to wane … That he won’t be there to arrange nice things and tell us what to do is grievous to envisage.’
49

But beneath the overt text, it is as if Zelda was saying farewell not only to Scott but to the Fitzgeralds’ fifteen-year friendship with the Murphys.

Ernest, who had dumped Pauline in favour of the journalist Martha Gellhorn, now his third wife, also said an appreciative
farewell
to the Fitzgerald-Murphy friendship, indicating it had hinged on Scott: ‘Poor Scott,’ he wrote to Sara. ‘No one could ever help Scott but you and Gerald did more than anyone.’
50

That year, however, the Murphys were having their own share of personal problems. The deaths of their two sons had left them
struggling
with complex griefs. Sara turned to no one. Gerald, in 1940, turned to a young homosexual Rhodes scholar, Alan Jarvis, a
sculptor
and art historian. Gerald, who shared the blond youth’s passion for Manley Hopkins and Bach, initially became his mentor, then his beloved soulmate. Their relationship may not have been physical but on Gerald’s side was intense and consuming. Though Sara noticed and became edgy the strength of their marriage, unlike the Fitzgeralds’ under a similar tension, was able to accommodate this.
51

When Zelda visited the Murphys in New York, both she and they were less at ease than they had been when Scott was alive. Perhaps it was because the Murphys had access to information about Scott’s last years in Hollywood with Sheilah that Zelda only suspected. Or perhaps the Murphys’ emotional difficulties made them defensive. The bonds, still there, were rooted now in memories.

As Zelda turned the Murphys into her wealthy fictional couple, the Comings, in
Caesar’s
Things,
she cast a cooler satirical glance at her friends than their old affection warranted. The Comings, who offer Janno and her husband Jacob (the Zelda and Scott characters) Bacardi cocktails before brilliant dinners for ‘the stars … migratory Americans and … French people of consequence’, have a
treasure-house
in St-Cloud which Zelda with her new anti-materialistic stance found disturbing.

Van Vechten, her former ribald buddy, was another who came under her axe for over-indulgences. ‘There is much need of faith and charity in this aching world where there is so much spiritual destitution,’ she admonished him.
52

Zelda found it easier to keep in regular contact with Perkins, firstly because they focused on publishing Scott’s posthumous
writings
, and secondly because he became her consultant in 1941 when she made serious plans to publish a book of her paper dolls.
53

Zelda was more able to deal with new acquaintances, for brief periods, because they had fewer preconceived ideas about her. She enjoyed meeting Alabama University student Paul McLendon, who visited regularly in the early Forties to discuss literature. Later a Princeton undergraduate, Henry Dan Piper, arrived in Montgomery to conduct several interviews with Zelda about her life with Scott. Piper recalls Zelda itemizing her four most
traumatic
life events: her broken relationship with Lubov Egorova; her brother Anthony’s suicide; her own suicide attempts at Sheppard Pratt; and her marriage breakdown. It is interesting, in the light of her continuous fictional reworking in
Caesar’s
Things
of the
unconsummated
romance with Jozan, that he does not get a mention. For both Fitzgeralds it seems the Jozan incident was significant solely in literary terms. Perhaps it was another example of Gerald’s comment to Scott that only the
invented
parts of life were
meaningful
.