Fitzgerald:
Revisited
“He
wanted not association with glittering things and glittering people — he wanted
the glittering things themselves.” (Fitzgerald).
Fame and fortune has been known to drastically change
some people’s lives. From child stars who went from sweethearts to drug abusers
and middle class people who became depressed after winning the lottery, people
can flip one-eighty. This world-wide phenomenon can be seen in some of the world’s
great writers such as Ernest Hemingway who ended up committing suicide. Francis
Scott Key Fitzgerald was also affected by his sudden shove into the proverbial
limelight. From his innocent and introverted childhood, to his pursuit for
love, to the beginning of his fame and troubles, all leading to the ending
years of his life, we can see that fame had certainly gotten the best of F.
Scott Fitzgerald in the end.
Fitzgerald’s
early childhood was a normal one for the 1900’s. Two sisters, ages one and three,
died of influenza right before F. Scott was born driving his mother to be
overprotective of him. (Caudle). He grew up moving between Buffalo, New York
and Syracuse, New York because of his father’s job. The Fitzgeralds lived a
modest life though keeping work was hard for F. Scott’s father. At the age of
twelve, the family moved to St. Paul to live off the inheritance that F.
Scott’s deceased grandmother left for her daughter. With this money, his father
and mother sent him to St. Paul Academy where he stayed for two years. This is
when he was first published; it was in the school newspaper. At age fifteen, F.
Scott was sent to the Newman School in New Jersey, a prestigious Catholic
preparatory school. (Biography). He moved on to pursue his artistic abilities
in writing at Princeton University. Soon enough, Fitzgerald’s regular
coursework began to suffer, he was placed on academic probation, and dropped
out of school to enlist in the army in 1917.
Making
his way up to the command of a second lieutenant in the infantry and being
stationed at Montgomery, Alabama changed the course of his life forever. (Willett).
Afraid of dying in war, F. Scott wrote The
Romantic Egotist. The publishers turned his book down, but encouraged him
to revise it and try again. In July of 1918 at a country club dance in
Montgomery, Fitzgerald met Zelda Sayre. It was love at first sight for
Fitzgerald. Then on November 11th World War I ends before Fitzgerald
ever gets the chance to leave the U. S. This would become one of his greatest
regrets from his life. Looking to eventually marry Zelda, Fitzgerald moves to
New York and takes up the job in advertising. Not being rich or famous enough for her, Zelda
breaks off the courtship that they had and also breaks his heart. A biographer
of Fitzgerald wrote, “Unwilling to wait while Fitzgerald succeeded in the
advertisement business and unwilling to live on his small salary, Zelda Sayre
broke their engagement.” (Bruccoli). Determined to be the man of her dreams,
Fitzgerald quits his job and moves back to St. Paul to continue with his
writing career. He returned to The
Romantic Egotist revising it over and over again. This time when turned
into the same publishers it was accepted; it was revised to be entitled This Side of Paradise. He wrote to the
publisher pleading for an accelerated release. “‘I have so many things
dependent on its success—including of course a girl.’” (Milford 54). Finding
fame and fortune overnight from his new book, Fitzgerald went back to Zelda and
they married a week later in New York in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. (Shmoop).
Fitzgerald had everything in life he could want at this point: the woman of his
dreams, money, and a home in the Commodore, the newest and best hotel.
Then
the money started getting to their heads. They were kids with more money than
they knew what to do with. “They filled their first weeks with antics, and the
newspapers filled their pages with the Fitzgeralds. Scott undressed at George
White’s Scandals, Zelda dived fully
dressed in the Washington Square fountain. The media watched as the Fitzgeralds
lived life on the wind.” (Cline 87). They got kicked out of two hotels, one
being the Commodore, for their drunkenness. Their whole social life was driven
with alcoholic drinks. In public this meant falling asleep in a drunken state
at parties, but in their personal lives arguments broke out and bitter fights
were waged. (Bruccoli). Even though their lives seemed to be a huge party, they
were still just young kids in love. They had a daughter, Frances Scott
(Scottie), born in 1921. When Scottie was three, the family moved to France so
F. Scott could work on his book The Great
Gatsby. (Greatest). “Among their closest expatriate friends were Gerald and
Sara Murphy, whose daughter Honoria … remembers the Fitzgeralds as ‘a very
romantic unit. What stays with me is the way Scott looked at her with this
totally admiring look on his face. And she did look ravishing. She always wore
a peony on her left shoulder.’” (Greatest). This is how they lived there life
until 1930.
In
1930 Zelda had her first mental breakdown. F. Scott always attributed it to
Zelda’s zealous ballet practices. She would habitually practice ten hours a day
starting in 1927. After her breakdown, Zelda was admitted into then Malmaison
Clinic outside Paris. She eventually was diagnosed as a schizophrenic and told
by her doctors to stop dancing. (Americans). Having Zelda so far from F. Scott
strained their relationship and they became estranged from one another. He was
forced to stop the work on his book and start working for Hollywood as a
screenwriter to pay all of the hospital bills. In Hollywood, F. Scott took up
an affair with Sheilah Graham, a gossip columnist. In the meanwhile, Zelda was
moving to different mental hospitals up and down the East coast of the United
States. F. Scott’s and Graham’s affair lasted less than three years, ending
only at the end of his life at age forty. Sheilah Graham was with F. Scott when
he had a heart attack and died. Though his last moments were with Graham,
people still remember his heart always belonging to and being with his wife,
Zelda. (Greatest). A letter written to Zelda by the hand of F. Scott states
that he knows the happy ever after isn't there anymore but he gives the sense
that he wishes things would have turned out differently and that he still
thinks of her often. It was written the same year F. Scott died. “‘It’s odd
that my old talent for the short story vanished. It was partly that times
changed, editors changed, but part of it was tied up somehow with you and
me—the happy ending…’” (Steinkellner). Zelda and F. Scott’s daughter recalls
that even in the last days of Zelda’s life that Zelda still wrote beautiful
letters about him. “‘The tenderness is the point. That survived everything.’” (Greatest).
F.
Scott’s Fitzgerald’s life was changed by the fame and fortune that his writing
career and book publications brought him. Much like other celebrities from
today’s time, F. Scott Fitzgerald took a turn for the worst in the middle of
his walk in the limelight. In Fitzgerald’s quiet childhood he was the only kid
of his parents; his courtship to Zelda was serious and passionate. Then his
life became one big party after fame struck, changing drastically from the life
he lived before. All this lead to the estrangement from his wife and an early
death. His fame had taken over his life. But does anyone really get out of this
world without being tainted by the bright lights and the want for their name
immortalized anyway? Will you?
Works
Cited
Biography. A+E
Television Networks. Web. 24 Apr. 2013.
Bruccoli, Matthew Joseph.
Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald.
2nd ed. Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 2002. Print.
Caudle, Barb. Comcast.net. 8 June 2010. Web. 24 Apr.
2013.
Cline, Sally. Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise.
New York: Arcade, 2004. Print.
Croasdaile, Caroline. Americans in Paris. University of
Richmond, 12 Nov. 2010. Web.
26 Apr. 2013.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. “Winter
Dreams.” Metropolitan Magazine. Dec.
1922. Print.
“The Greatest Love
Stories of the Century.” People 12
Feb.1996: 163. Print.
Milford, Nancy. Zelda: A Biography. New York: Harper
& Row, 1970. Print.
Shmoop.com.
Shmoop University, Inc., n.d.. Web. 25 Apr. 2013.
Steinkellner, Kit. Bookriot.com. Book Riot, 18 Feb. 2013.
Web. 26 Apr. 2013.
Willett, Erika. Pbs.org. KQED Inc.. n.d.. Web. 24 Apr.
2013.
