A Short Autobiography
(with Acknowledgments to Nathan)
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
1913
The four defiant Canadian Club whiskeys at the Susquehanna in Hackensack.
1914
The Great Western Champagne at the Trent House in Trenton and the groggy ride back to Princeton.
1915
The Sparkling Burgundy at Bustanoby’s. The raw whiskey in White Sulphur Springs, Montana, when I got up on a table and sang, “Won’t you come up,” to the cowmen. The Stingers at Tate’s in Seattle listening to Ed Muldoon, “that clever chap.”
1916
The apple brandy nipped at in the locker-room at the White Bear Yacht Club.
1917
A first Burgundy with Monsignor X at the Lafayette. Blackberry brandy and whiskey with Tom at the old Nassau Inn.
1918
The Bourbon smuggled to officers’ rooms by bellboys at the Seelbach in Louisville.
1919
The Sazzarac Cocktails brought up from New Orleans to Montgomery to celebrate an important occasion.
1920
Red wine at Mollat’s. Absinthe cocktails in a hermetically sealed apartment in the Royalton. Corn liquor by moonlight in a deserted aviation field in Alabama.
1921
Leaving our champagne in the Savoy Grill on the Fourth of July when a drunk brought up two obviously Piccadilly ladies. Yellow Chartreuse in the Via Balbini in Rome.
1922
Kaly’s creme de cacao cocktails in St. Paul. My own first and last manufacture of gin.
1923
Oceans of Canadian ale with R. Lardner in Great Neck, Long Island.
1924
Champagne cocktails on the Minnewaska, and apologizing to the old lady we kept awake. Graves Kressman at Villa Marie in Valescure and consequent arguments about British politics with the nursery governess. Porto Blancs at a time of sadness. Mousseux bought by a Frenchman in a garden at twilight. Chambery Fraise with the Seldes on their honeymoon. The local product ordered on the wise advice of a friendly priest at Orvieto, when we were asking for French wines.
1925
A dry white wine that “won’t travel,” made a little south of Sorrento, that I’ve never been able to trace. Plot coagulating—a sound of hoofs and bugles. The gorgeous Vin d’Arbois at La Reine Pedauque. Champagne cocktails in the Ritz sweatshop in Paris. Poor wines from Nicolas. Kirsch in a Burgundy inn against the rain with E. Hemingway.
1926
Uninteresting St. Estephe in a desolate hole called Salies-de-Bearn. Sherry on the beach at La Garoupe. Gerald M.’s grenadine cocktail, the one flaw to make everything perfect in the world’s most perfect house. Beer and weenies with Grace, Charlie, Ruth, and Ben at Antibes before the deluge.
1927
Delicious California “Burgundy-type” wine in one of the Ambassador bungalows in Los Angeles. The beer I made in Delaware that had a dark inescapable sediment. Cases of dim, cut, unsatisfactory whiskey in Delaware;
1928
The Pouilly with Bouillabaisse at Prunier’s in a time of discouragement.
1929
A feeling that all liquor has been drunk and all it can do for one has been experienced, and yet—“Gargon, un Chablis-Mouton 1902, et pour commencer, une petite carafe de vin rose. C’est ca—merci.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald
Published in New Yorker magazine (May 25, 1929).
Not illustrated.