1931

Archibald MacLeish
Fortune Magazine
Chrysler Building
New York

January 1931

Ada MacLeish
Uphill Farm
Conway, MA

My darling Ada,

It can’t be too soon until I get back to you and our farm and our garden. I am beginning to wonder how I ever let Henry Luce seduce me into this god-awful job of reporting on all the squalid desperation that our government and the stock market and fate and even the weather is now inflicting on this country’s citizens. It can make a man sick to his very bones, the despair. But enough. You’ve heard this diatribe before and no doubt you’ll hear it again. I miss your voice singing in the music room, making me feel as if not all the lovely things have been leeched out of this place we call America. Because there is you.

I did not see Gerald on his trip here after all. He skulked around like Lon Chaney in The Phantom of the Opera. Instead, I received a letter. And what a doozy it was. Of course, I think I know what he’s saying. But does one ever really know about another person? I wish you were here to read it over my shoulder. But I am including the most relevant parts:

I owe you an apology for avoiding you when I visited New York last. It was a cowardly thing to do, and I’m sorry if I hurt you. But you see, in one moment, in one infected breath, my whole life changed—all the joy, all the things that went into making it a life have been sucked out. And I find myself more a cutout than a living, breathing man.

I do not say this because I pity myself; I have only myself to blame. I have concealed myself, my true nature, from almost everyone who loves me, and now when I need strength and nourishment from those friendships, I cannot receive it, because I haven’t been honest. I am coming to realize that I have not had one real, honest, full relationship in my life.

I have been aware of my defects since the age of fifteen, when I made a deal with life: I would fight these defects, scotch them as best I could, and in return, life would look the other way. Not for one second have I been free from the feelings of those defects. Despite all the beautiful things that filled my world, despite Sara. But I tried my best to find a way. Now, though, life has broken with me, and my shortcomings seem to be all I have left. I am morally bankrupt.

So, not seeing you or Ada on that visit was a way of preserving our friendship, the way you see it, of keeping it safe from my own realities. I hope you can understand that. That you can understand what I am trying to tell you.

One more thing. Don’t worry about anything I’ve said. Everything is perfectly all right. Frankly, I am long since bored by my own unhappiness.

So, my love. Put your fine mind to that. I will be back soon…

 

Scott Fitzgerald
Les Rives de Prangins
Lake Geneva
Switzerland

September 1931

Ernest Hemingway
L-Bar-T Ranch
Wyoming

Dear Ernest,

I am waiting at the clinic to take Zelda away from this place, this clinic that has been our home for a year. She is so much better. Not only am I told this but I feel it too, and Dr. Forel says that her condition may be kept on an even keel if she avoids conflicts. I will do my best to help her with that, but she has always had her own will in these things. Are these conflicts of ours continually to be laid at my doorstep?

From here we will motor to Paris and hope to recover or rediscover some of that which sustained us in our early, happier years together.

We have recently returned from a visit to the Murphys at a house they took for the summer in Bad Aussee, Austria. A great big hunting lodge sort of establishment, with sanded floors and animal heads (though not a patch on your specimens). And we swam in the lake and rode bicycles like madmen. It was, overall, a wonderful time and Zelda handled everything beautifully, except at the end. And of course I got blamed for that.

There was a situation over the bathwater, where it seemed the nurse was bathing Scottie in the dirty water left over from the Murphy children. Zelda looked calm, but it was up to me to kick up a fuss, and it turned out that it was bath salts in the water, not dirt. But the damage was done, and Zelda spent the night locked in a circle of thought about Scottie falling ill. I took her away very early, before anyone was up. I hope we can just forget about it and that it won’t prove something that will prey on her mind later down the road.

How did I find the Murphys? I found them better than you described from your visit at Christmas. But, well, they are different and they are the same. Sara is as beautiful as ever and she has real courage, always taking the hardest road even when all her resources are spent. But I believe her resources are spent, and I’m not talking only about money.

We stayed up very late one night talking, and even through her own pain, she managed to speak so eloquently on the subject of Zelda. She said: “Zelda has a violence that I sympathize with. I believe she has been thinking terrible, dangerous secret thoughts. Keeping in pent-up rebellions. But who doesn’t?” This she said with those intense, slanted eyes, hair golden brown. Then: “Hers, I suppose, are just more impenetrable.”

Words like that, Ernest. There are so many things I wished at the moment to tell Sara, in return, about herself: That if all her world possessions were taken from her, if she was stripped of everything she loved, everything she’d created, if it was all burned on the pyre of life, she would go on. Because she is part of our times, of who we are. Perhaps I will tell her this one day. I tell you only because I know you feel the same. For now, all I can say is that my time with her has gone further to help with the novel, bolstering it, giving it shape…she is in there, by God, in every line.

As for Gerald, well…he sleeps in a separate bedroom, one of the maid’s rooms, all cloistered up, like a monk. But I will never forget his great tenderness in coming to see Zelda at Prangins this past spring. He was the first person, apart from myself and Scottie, that she asked to see. And I know he was terrified, but he was kind and asked her about her basket-weaving and was generally the gentle soul I know him to be. Even if there is—and always will be—something of the hysteric in him.

I do think that his affliction, which we’ve discussed, goes on. I heard some whisperings from the Riviera about that American pilot, the one who was always so silent—morbidly silent, if you want my opinion. You, of course, saw it first. But you’ve always been so right about people. Still, there’s no indication that the connection survived their move to Switzerland, so that’s one thing to be thankful for, if only for Sara’s sake. Christ, the couples this universe makes up for us.

Oh, one last note. Hoytie Wiborg’s visit coincided with ours. God, what a bitch (and I know you always thought her so). One afternoon, I’d agreed to go with the children and Hoytie in the car into town to pick up some supplies. She insisted on driving. And then, because she has absolutely no talent for it, she rammed into some Austrian fellow’s car. Well, instead of just apologizing and driving on, she got out and started yelling “Jude! Jude!” at the man.

Whether he was a Jew or not, this really got him sore, and he leaped out of his own car and made a run at her. Sadly, Hoytie was too quick and managed to get back in and drive off before anything else happened. But when this little episode was reported to Sara, there were fireworks, as you can well imagine, knowing Sara as you do. She insisted Hoytie track down the man and apologize. We didn’t stay long enough to find out how that one ended. But I knew you’d get a kick out of it…

 

Vladimir Orloff
Chalet La Bruyère
Montana-Vermala
Switzerland

December 1931

Owen Chambers
Chambers Field
La Fontonne
Antibes
France

My dear friend,

I was happy to get your letter and to hear your flying business hasn’t been destroyed by what seems to be a great tide sweeping over the world and swallowing everyone’s riches. I hope you will remain safe and not take chances in the rising swells.

I understand that you have not written to Gerald. Sometimes he asks for news of you, but I have not known what to say or if one should say anything at all. I would not like to give advice on this matter, only to tell you that I have seen with my own eyes many letters begun, with your name on them, that have ended crumpled in the basket in his solitary room.

I am not a spy but a mere helpless observer. I remember a time, years ago, when I thought you and I had become like two old men on a porch, watching the world go by, with no stake in this game, only a search for peace after the tumult and destruction of war. But I was naive. I see that now, my friend. You were waiting to live, for once truly and fully, and I…perhaps I was just waiting to be swept along on my next adventure.

It is sad here, to see these lives still together but now so divided. I will go away soon, to Normandy where I will pick up the new boat, the Weatherbird, named after that piece of jazz music they love so much and that they still dance to from time to time. I will sail her down the coast, through storms, no doubt, to bring her home to Antibes. You will not believe this creation—there is a refrigerator and bathtub below deck. Such comforts, after the simplicity of the Honoria. Life changes, does it not?

Villa America will not sell, it seems, and so Sara and Honoria will go down in the spring to stay.

Gerald is just back from America, his father lying cold in the grave. He died as Gerald was crossing the Atlantic. And while this loss seems to have been absorbed in the black hole of his spirit, he is very angry over the inheritance. It seems the company, which is all there is, was left in the charge of Mr. Murphy’s mistress of many years, a one Lillian Ramsgate. She is now president of the company, and Gerald resigned. I wonder at the prudence of this. Only time will tell.

And Patrick…there is the heart of all this. He gets better, then he gets worse. The bad lung is very bad, and he is once again confined to his bed. But he is a brave boy and finds things to keep himself amused. At present he seems interested only in statistics, statistics of any kind: sports, hunting, any sort of probability. It is his battle with death and that probability, I believe, that has brought him to this.

I will be sailing the Weatherbird into Antibes at the end of March or beginning of April. I will wire and let you know before I set off. Will you fly your plane over me as I come in, to greet an old friend…?