Dear Scott/Dear Max
Correspondence of Scott Fitzgerald and Maxwell Perkins

Chapter 1: The Flight of the Rocket (1919 - January 1924)

1. FROM: Charles Scribner's Sons1

Aug. 19, 1918.

Charles Scribner's Sons letterhead New York City

TLS, 1 p. Scrapbook. Princeton University; Correspondence.

Lieutenant F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hq. Co. 67th Infantry, Camp Sheridan, Ala.

Dear Sir:

We have been reading “The Romantic Egoist” with a very unusual degree of interest;—in fact no ms. novel has come to us for a long time that seemed to display so much originality, and it is therefore hard for us to conclude that we cannot offer to publish it as it stands at present. Of course, in this we are considerably influenced by the prevailing conditions, including a governmental limitation on the number of publications and very severe manufacturing costs which make profitable publication far more difficult than ordinarily; but we are also influenced by certain characteristics of the novel itself. We generally avoid criticism as beyond our function and as likely to be for that reason not unjustly resented by an author but we should like to risk some very general comments this time because, if they seemed to you so far in point that you applied them to a revision of the ms., we should welcome a chance to reconsider its publication.

The chief of these is that the story does not seem to us to work up to a conclusion;—neither the hero's career nor his character are shown to be brought to any stage which justifies an ending. This may be intentional on your part for it is certainly not untrue to life; but it leaves the reader distinctly disappointed and dissatisfied since he has expected him to arrive somewhere either in an actual sense by his response to the war perhaps, or in a psychological one by “finding himself” as for instance Pendennis is brought to do. He does go to the war, but in almost the same spirit that he went to college and school,— because it is simply the thing to do. It seems to us in short that the story does not culminate in anything as it must to justify the reader's interest as he follows it; and that it might be made to do so quite consistently with the characters and with its earlier stages.

It seems to us too that not enough significance is given to some of those salient incidents and scenes, such as the affairs with girls. We do not suggest that you should resort to artificiality by giving a significance inconsistent with that of the life of boys of the age of the hero, but that it would be well if the high points were heightened so far as justifiable; and perhaps this effect could partly be gained by pruning away detail you might find could be spared elsewhere. Quite possibly all that we have said is covered by your own criticism of the ms, as at present a little “crude” and that the revision you contemplate will itself remove the basis of our criticism, and if when you make this you allow us a second reading we shall gladly give it. We do not want anything we have said to make you think we failed to get your idea in the book,—we certainly do not wish you to “conventionalize” it by any means in either form or manner, but only to do those things which it seems to us important to intensify its effect and so satisfy a reader that he will recommend it,—which is the great thing to accomplish toward a success.

We know how busy you are and how absorbed you must be in your present work, and it is rather difficult to think of you as being able to do this revising too; but as you have yourself spoken of it we have less hesitation in making suggestions toward it and in sending back the ms;—we hope we shall see it again and we shall then reread it immediately,—in fact our present delay was due to a misapprehension which led us to think you did not care about an early decision.

Very truly yours, Charles Scribner's Sons

Notes:

1 This letter was probably written by Maxwell Perkins, who accepted This Side of Paradise in 1919.

2. To Perkins

599 Summit Ave. St. Paul, Minnesota

July 26th, 1919 1

Dear Mr. Perkins:

After four months attempt to write commercial copy by day and painful half-hearted imitations of popular literature by night I decided that it was one thing or another. So I gave up getting married and went home.

Yesterday I finished the first draft of a novel called
THE EDUCATION OF A PERSONAGE

It is in no sense a revision of the ill-fated Romantic Egotist* but it contains some of the former material improved and worked over and bears a strong family resemblance besides.

But while the other was a tedius, disconnected casserole this is definate attempt at a big novel and I really believe I have hit it, as immediately I stopped disciplining the muse she trotted obediently around and became an erratic mistress if not a steady wife.

Now what I want to ask you is this—if I send you the book by August 20th and you decide you could risk its publication (I am blatantly confident that you will) would it be brought out in October, say, or just what would decide its date of publication?

This is an odd question I realize especially since you havn't even seen the book but you have been so kind in the past about my stuff that I venture to intrude once more upon your patience.

Sincerely

Notes:

* The title of the first book-length manuscript which Fitzgerald had submitted to Scribners in 1918.

1. F. Scott Fitzgerald's association with Charles Scribner's Sons began on May 6, 1918, when Shane Leslie, an Irish novelist and critic whom Fitzgerald had met through Father Sigourney Webster Fay of the Newman School (the prep school Fitzgerald had attended), sent Charles Scribner the manuscript of The Romantic Egotist, a novel which Fitzgerald had written while he was in the army. Scribners returned the manuscript to its author in August. The cover-letter, according to Fitzgerald biographer-critic Arthur Mizener, “was almost certainly written by Maxwell Perkins.” It contained considerable encouragement but noted “a governmental limitation on the number of publications” and admitted “we are also influenced by certain characteristics of the novel itself.” The letter concluded with a number of detailed suggestions, urging Fitzgerald to make them and resubmit the novel. Fitzgerald made the revisions and sent the manuscript back to Scribners, which in October, 1918, rejected the book finally, with only Maxwell Perkins favoring its publication. Perkins, in fact, liked the book so much that he unsuccessfully tried to interest two other publishers in it. After his discharge from the service, Fitzgerald went to New York, worked as an advertising copy writer during the day, and wrote fiction at night. Between April and June, 1919, he wrote nineteen short stories, but they were all turned down by magazine editors, including, in several instances, Robert Bridges of Scribner's Magazine. On July 4, 1919, Fitzgerald returned to his family's home in St. Paul to rewrite The Romantic Egotist, so that he could become the famous novelist he yearned to be and so that he could win the hand of Zelda Sayre, the beautiful and ambitious southern belle from Montgomery, Alabama, with whom he had fallen in love while he was in the army. By the end of July, he had finished the revision.

Also Turnbull.

3. To Fitzgerald

July 28, 1919

Dear Mr. Fitzgerald:

Your letter about “The Education of a Personage” (which strikes us as an excellent title) arouses a great curiosity to see the manuscript. But there is one thing certain: no publisher could publish this book in October without greatly injuring its chances; for the canvasing of the trade for the fall season began several months ago, and the book sellers have invested their money in fall books, and would now order grudgingly, and in much lesser quantities than they would at the beginning of a season. Your book for its own advantage ought to be published after January 1st, all the more because you will be a new author and should have every advantage of carefully prepared publicity. The book should be talked up ahead of its appearance to the trade: they should see sheets in advance, etc. This is the plain truth of the matter. The book should be published in February or March, and the selling of it should begin before Christmas.

But we hope you will let us see this manuscript. Ever since the first reading of your first manuscript we have felt that you would succeed. Did Mr. Bridges* write you how much he liked your last story? And how near to taking it he came?

Sincerely,

Notes:

* Robert Bridges, poet and essayist, then editor of Scribner's Magazine.

4. To Perkins

599 Summit Ave. St. Paul, Minn.

August 16th, 1919

Dear Mr. Perkins:

I appreciated both your letters+ and I'm sure you wont be dissapointed in the book when you get it. It is a well-considered, finished whole this time and I think its a more crowded (in the best sense) piece of work than has been published in this country for some years.

It is finished, except for one last revision or rather correction and the typewriting, so I think you'll get it before September 1st. As to sample chapters—it seems hardly worth while to send them to you now. The title has been changed to

This Side of Paradise from those lines of Rupert Brookes

… Well, this side of paradise

There's little comfort in the wise.

About two chapters are from my old book, completely changed and rewritten, the rest is new material.

On the next page I've written the chapter names.

BOOK I
The Romantic Egotist

Chapter I Amory, son of Beatrice

” II Spires and Gargoyles

” III The Egotist considers

Interlude
March 1917—February 1919

BOOK II
The Education of a Personage

Chapter I The Debutante

” II Experiments in Convalescense

” III Young Irony

” IV The Supercillious Sacrifice

” V The Egotist becomes a Personage

Book One contains about 35,000 words

The Interlude 4,000 words

Book Two 47,000 words

Total 86,000 words

about publication—I asked you the chances of an early publication (in case you take it) for two reasons: first—because I want to get started both in a literary and financial way; second—because it is to some extent a timely book and it seems to me that the public are wild for decent reading matter—“Dangerous Days”* and “Ramsey Milholland”+—My God!

Thanking you again for past favors—I am

Sincerely

Notes:

+ Perkins had written Fitzgerald again, on August 13th, urging him to send along chapters of the novel as they were completed.

* By Mary Roberts Rinehart.

+ By Booth Tarkington.

5. To Perkins

599 Summit Ave. St. Paul, Minn.

Sept. 4th 1919.

Dear Mr. Perkins:

I sent the book today under a separate cover. I want to discuss a few things in connection with it.

You'll notice that it contains much material from the Romantic Egotist.

(1) Chapter II Bk. I of the present book contains material from “Spires & Gargoyles, Ha-Ha Hortense, Babes in the Wood & Crecendo”—rewritten in third person, cut down and re-edited

(2) Chapter III Bk I contains material from “Second descent of the Egotist and the Devil.” rewritten ect.*

(3) Chapter IV Bk I contains material from “The Two Mystics, Clara & the End of Many Things”

(4) Chapter III Bk II is a revision of Eleanor in 3d person—with that fur incident left out.

Chap I Bk I, & Chaps I, II, IV, & V of Bk II are entirely new.

You'll see that of the old material there is all new use, outside the revision in the 3d person. For instance the Princeton characters of the R.E.** -Tom, Tump, Lorry, Lumpy, Fred, Dick, Jim, Burne, Judy, Mcintyre and Jesse have become in this book—Fred, Dick, Alec, Tom, Kerry & Burne. Isabelle & Rosalind of the R.E. have become just Isabelle while the new Rosalind is a different person.

Beatrice is a new character—Dr. Dudly becomes Monsignor Darcy; is much better done—in fact every character is in better perspective.

The preface I leave to your discretion—perhaps its a little too clever-clever; likewise you may object to the literary personalities in Chap II & Bk II and to the length of the socialistic discussion in the last chapter. The book contains a little over ninety thousand words. I certainly think the hero gets somewhere.

I await anxiously your verdict.

Sincerely

P.S. Thorton Hancock is Henry Adams—I didn't do him thoroughly of course—but I knew him when I was a boy.

Notes:

* Fitzgerald frequently misspelled etc. to read ect.

** The Romantic Egotist.

Also Turnbull.

6. To Fitzgerald

Sept. 16, 1919

Dear Mr. Fitzgerald:

I am very glad, personally, to be able to write to you that we are all for publishing your book, “This Side of Paradise”. Viewing it as the same book that was here before, which in a sense it is, though translated into somewhat different terms and extended further, I think that you have improved it enormously. As the first manuscript did, it abounds in energy and life and it seems to me to be in much better proportion. I was afraid that, when we declined the first manuscript, you might be done with us conservatives. I am glad you are not. The book is so different that it is hard to prophesy how it will sell but we are all for taking a chance and supporting it with vigor. As for terms, we shall be glad to pay a royalty of 10% on the first five thousand copies and of 15% thereafter,—which by the way, means more than it use to now that retail prices upon which the percentage is calculated, have so much advanced.

Hoping to hear from you, we are,

Sincerely yours,

P.S. Our expectation would be to publish your book in the early Spring. Now, if you are ready to have us do this, and have the time, we should be glad to have you get together any publicity matter you could for us, including a photograph. You have been in the advertising game long enough to know the sort of thing.

7. To Perkins

599 Summit Ave. St. Paul, Minn

Sept 18th, 1919

Dear Mr. Perkins:

Of course I was delighted to get your letter and I've been in a sort of trance all day; not that I doubted you'd take it but at last I have something to show people. It has enough advertisement in St. Paul already to sell several thousand copies & I think Princeton will buy it (I've been a periodical, local Great-Expect[at]ions for some time in both places.)

Terms ect I leave to you but one thing I can't relinquish without at least a slight struggle. Would it be utterly impossible for you to publish the book Xmas—or say by February? I have so many things dependent on its success—including of course a girl—not that I expect it to make me a fortune but it will have a psychological effect on me and all my surroundings and besides open up new fields. I'm in that stage where every month counts frantically and seems a cudgel in a fight for happiness against time. Will you let me know more exactly how that difference in time of publication influences the sale & what you mean by “early Spring”?

Excuse this ghastly handwriting but I'm a bit nervous today. I'm beginning (last month) a very ambitious novel called “The Demon Lover” which will probably take a year also I'm writing short stories. I find that what I enjoy writing is always my best—Every young author ought to read Samuel Butler's Note Books.

I'm writing quite a marvellous after-the-war story. Does Mr. Bridges*** think that they're a little passe or do you think he'd like to see it?

I'll fix up data for advertising and have a photo taken next week with the most gigantic enjoyment (I'm trying H.G. Well's use of vast garagantuan [sp.]* words)

Well thank you for a very happy day and numerous other favors and let me know if I've any possible chance for earlier publication and give my thanks or whatever is in order to Mr. Scribner or whoever else was on the deciding committee.

Probably be East next month or Nov.

Sincerely

(over for P.S.)**

P.S. Who picks out the cover? I'd like something that could be a set—look cheerful and important like a Shaw Book. I notice Shaw, Gales-worthy & Barrie do that. But Wells doesn't—I wonder why. No need of illustrations is there? I knew a fellow at College who'd have been a wonder for books like mine—a mixture of Aubrey Beardsly, Hogarth & James Montgomery Flagg. But he got killed in the war.2

Excuse this immoderately long and rambling letter but I think you'll have to allow me several days for recuperation.

Yrs.

Notes:

* These brackets are Fitzgerald's.

** The postscript to this letter appears on the other side of the page, in the original.

*** Robert Bridges, editor of Scribner's Magazine.

2. In a letter dated September 24th, Perkins replied, “We are not for illustrations. As a matter of fact, while they are necessary in novels of adventure, they are not used as a general thing to-day in novels of this kind.”

Also Turnbull.

8. FROM Max Perkins TO F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

Sept. 23, 1919

Dear Mr. Fitzgerald:

I was very glad to get your letter of the 18th and to know that everything was ready with regard to “This Side of Paradise”;1 and we are now making an estimate upon the book preliminary to putting it in hand, which we shall do within a short time if the printers’ strike does not make it impossible to put anything in hand.

It is this way about publishing before Christmas: there are two book seasons in the year and the preparations for each one are begun long before the season opens. The publishers’ travelers go out in July and August over the country with trunks filled with dummies and samples of the Fall books, which are to have their greatest sale in the Christmas season. The Advertising Department and the Circularizing Department get up their material in August and early September to make these books known considerably before publication and at the very time of publication. The advertising that is done from the first of September on is supposed to have its great effect in December, although the book may have appeared in August or September or October and may have sold considerably then. Now, if a book is accepted after all this preliminary work is done and comes out in November, as yours would have to do at the earliest, it must make its own way altogether: it will get no preliminary advertising; it will not be presented to the trade by salesmen on the basis of a dummy; and it will come to the bookseller, who is already nearly mad with the number of new books and has already invested all the money he can in them, as a most unwelcome and troublesome thing and will suffer accordingly. Even if it is a book by an author who has been selling well for years, it will be very considerably injured by this.

The next book publishing season is the Spring season. The moment the Christmas rush is ended, the travelers go out once more and see all the booksellers, equipped with samples, etc. The bookseller has made his money out of the previous season and is ready to begin afresh and to stock up on new books. The Advertising and Circularizing departments have prepared their work on it, and their accounts of the author, etc., and have advertised it in the trade magazines to reinforce the salesmen’s selling argument. Then, when the book does appear in February, March or April, the trade is ready for it and knows about it and it can be competently advertised because the publicity force of the house has become familiar with it.

These are the reasons why there is no question but it would damage your book exceedingly to try to rush it out before Christmas. Whether or not it can be printed in February we cannot yet say, but it certainly can be published in that month or March and we shall remember that you want it to be as early as possible.

About the story,1 I know that Mr. Bridges2  would want to read it. He has been much interested in you and what you have done already and I hope he may have a chance at this.

“The Demon Lover”3 sounds good. Everybody ought to read

Samuel Butler’s “Note Books.”

Sincerely yours,

Notes

[1] Fitzgerald had written Perkins that he was writing “quite a marvellous after-the-war story” and inquired whether Bridges would care to see it.

2  Robert Bridges (1858-1941), poet and essayist, then editor of Scribner's Magazine.

3 Tentative title of a novel Fitzgerald was at work on. It was published by Scribners in 1922 as The Beautiful and Damned.

9. Inscription on Samuel Butler's Notebooks

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Princeton
April 14, '17

The most interesting human document ever written
FSF
Sep. 19th '19.

Two inscriptions by Fitzgerald.

10. To Perkins

Sept. 27th, 1919

599 Summit Ave. St. Paul.

Dear Mr. Perkins:

I am returning herewith your copy of the contract.

Now in regard to a little matter—“Babes in the Woods” was published in Smart Set in August. I have written them for their release of it. Also a preliminary form of part of the chapter “The Debutante” just the boudoir scene will be published in Smart Set on Oct 15th. I sent it to them before I began the novel and afterwards they seemed to want to use it very much. I will get their release in writing on both things & send it to you.

I notice the contract is headed St. Louis, Missouri. I've changed it to St. Paul, Minnesota on my copy. I am relieved that you feel as I do in regard to illustrations. I'm against 'em. Will I have a whack at the proof?—I have a few very minor changes—or I could make 'em in Nov. when I come east.

Lets see—Oh yes—I'll send you photo & data within a month. I don't suppose there's any particular hurry.

…

Sincerely

11. To Perkins

599 Summit Ave. St. Paul, Minn.

[ca. November 15, 1919 ?]

Dear Mr. Perkins:

Thanks a lot for your letter. I feel I've certainly been lucky to find a publisher who seems so interested generally in his authors. Lord knows this literary game has been discouraging enough at times.

…

My book plans have changed or rather enlarged. I'm going to obey my own mandate and write every book as if it were the last word I'd have on earth. I think Wells does that. So I think that the ms. I send you about next April or May will be rather a lively bolt!

As Ever

You see I'm trying to make myself out as a poet and play-write, as well as a novelist and short story writer! Innocuous humor!

12. To Fitzgerald

 [December 1919]

Dear Mr. Fitzgerald:

I do not know whether I wrote you that the publicity material you sent has come together with the picture, which will do very well indeed; as 'The Four Fists” will appear before the novel, we have put this in the hands of the magazine to use in part by way of announcement. “The Four Fists” is certainly a very fine story told in an entirely independent way. It seems to me most promising. So too do the other stories, although the magazine did not find them exactly adapted to our needs. You certainly will have no difficulty in placing them at all and they seem to me to indicate that you are pretty definitely lodged as a writer of short stories. The great beauty of them is that they are all alive. Ninety percent of the stories that appear are derived from life through the rarifying medium of literature. Yours are direct from life it seems to me. This is true also of the language and style: it is that of the day. It is free of the conventions of the past which most writers love along with them to their great inconvenience. I hope when you have occasion to write again you will tell me where your stories are appearing. I want to try to keep track of them.

Sincerely yours,

13. To Fitzgerald

Jan. 6, 1920

Dear Mr. Fitzgerald:

We have your book in hand and shall soon begin to send you proof. Hill has done a picture for the wrap, and it is very successful we think, particularly the girl in it. He also spoke very highly of the book which he had read through although that was not nominated in the bond: he need only have read enough to get at its general character but it interested him very much and he finished it. He was very curious to know about you and I told him of your short stories. I put forward your views about the binding, etc. but we felt, after consultation, that there would be great risk in getting the book out in that way. It would look too essay like, too esoteric. We want it to look popular. I will send you a cover as soon as we have one ready.

Mr. Bridges tells me you wrote him a rather pessimistic letter to the effect that you had had a slump in inspiration; but that did not worry me.

Sincerely yours,

14. To Perkins

 [599 Summit Avenue] [St. Paul, Minn.]

[ca. January 10, 1920]

Dear Mr. Perkins:

I was delighted to hear from you—and tickled to death that W.E. Hill liked my book & has done the cover. I admire him more than any artist in the country. I can hardly wait to see it.

I came home in a thoroughly nervous alcoholic state & revised two tales that went the complete rounds of magazines last April.* I did 'em in four days & sent 'em to Reynolds^ in hopes he could get enough for 'em so that I could go south because I'm afraid I'm about to develop tuberculosis. Last Monday he sent me a check for a thousand from the Post for 'em so I'm leaving for New Orleans tomorrow night. I'll write you my adress when I have one—meanwhile anything sent here will be forwarded.

Now for several questions. When would a novel have to be finished to have it published serially & then brought out by you for the fall season? Do you think a book on the type of my first one would have any chance of being accepted for serial publication by any magazine? I want to start it but I don't want to get broke in the middle & start in and have to write short stories again—because I don't enjoy it & just do it for money. There's nothing in collections of short stories is there? About how many copies of John O'May* were sold?

Everything goes serenely except that I feel written out on this short stuff. I've had two vaudeville offers for my current play in Smart Set^ & I've just sent $1000 worth of movies to the metro people. I have two stories for Mr. Bridges both stuck in the middle & two Post stories cut off in their first paragraphs.

My Drunkards Holiday and Dairy of a Literary Failure are also defunct.

The more I think of that advertisement I wrote for my book the more I dislike it. Please dont use it unless you have it already set up in which case I'll make a few small changes in proof & it'll have to go.

I'm deadly curious to see if Hill's picture looks like the real “Rosalind”.** I suppose he did either the boudoir scene or the mellow parting. May be in New York in March if I can get rid of this damn cough. By the way I liked Maxwell Burt's Cup of Tea^^ so well that I wrote him a note about it & got a very pleasant one in return. He's a sort of Richard Harding Davis only literary instead of journalistic-but he's the only real romantiscist there is—we have the daughters of Henry James—Gerrould,* Glaspell^ & the other female phychological hair-splitters & the Yiddish descendents of O Henry—Fanny & Edna** and that's all—except Burt, so I like him.

As Ever

Notes:

* One of these was certainly “Myra Meets His Family,” originally composed in April, 1919, under the title “Lilah Meets His Family” and published in the Post on March 20th. The other was probably “Head and Shoulders,” which the Post published on February 21st.

^ Paul R. Reynolds, then Fitzgerald's literary agent.

* A collection of short stories by Maxwell Struthers Burt.

^ “Porcelain and Pink.”

** Rosalind, in This Side of Paradise, was modelled on Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald.

^^ A short story published in Maxwell Struthers Burt's collection, John O'May.

* Novelist and critic Katharine Fullerton Gerould.

^ Novelist Susan Glaspell, founder with her husband, George Cram Cook, of the Province-town Playhouse, where the plays of Eugene O'Neill were first presented.

** Fannie Hurst and Edna Ferber.

Also Turnbull.

15. To Fitzgerald

Jan. 17, 1920

Dear Mr. Fitzgerald:

Your New Orleans address has just come and I am sending you quite a large batch of the galleys of “This Side of Paradise”. I will be able to send you a wrap in two or three days, as well. The rest of the proof will follow rapidly. In your question about serialization, I do not know whether you were thinking of the matter in general or entirely of our magazine. We hope you will give us a chance to consider any novel you write from this angle; but we may as well say in advance that as we can only serialize one novel a year and there are generally one, two or three under way which are destined for our pages, we often have to let a good thing go when we do not want to because we should otherwise have to postpone it much longer than the author would think wise. If we could not serialize your novel for any reason, we should want to help you to place it elsewhere, partly because it would be advantageous to the book to have it serialized in any magazine but those of the very largest circulation. The question of time is a hard one because it all depends on what a magazine already has under way. They usually cannot begin serialization until several months after acceptance and if a long novel they would require about six to eight months more to complete serialization. According to this you would have to finish a novel very soon indeed to make book publication in the Fall possible. We could publish as late as November first—although that would be later than we would like. This would mean that the serialization must end in the November number and would have to begin in the April number. It would therefore only be by making exactly the right connections all around, so to speak, that the thing could be managed. But it is almost useless to speculate on the question when so few facts are known. The best thing would be just to finish the novel as quickly as possible and then take up the question of serialization.

As to short stories, it is generally true that collections of them do not constitute selling books; but there are exceptions such as Davis, Kipling, and Henry as you know. The truth is, it has seemed to me that your stories were likely to constitute an exception, after a good many of them had been printed and your name was widely known. It seems to me that they have the popular note which would be likely to make them sell in book form. I wish you did care more about writing them because of this, and also because they have great value in making you a reputation and because they are quite worthwhile in themselves. Still we should not like to interfere with your novels.

Sincerely yours,

16. To Perkins

2900 Prytania Street, New Orleans, La.

Jan 21st 1920.

Dear Mr. Perkins:

I am returning herewith the first batch of proofs, corrected. There is one change I would like to have you make if you can possibly see your way clear to doing it. It is in regard to the type used in those sub-headings throughout the chapters, such as “A kiss for Amory” and “Preparatory to the great adventure”—you know what I mean.

Now I have a very strong instinct about having those in a different sort of type. It may seem a small point but I got the idea originally from the Shaw prefaces & the exact sort of type does make a difference. Those sub-headings are intended as commentaries, sort of whimsical commentaries rather more than they are intended as titles and the correct type would be that sort used in the first two words of the book. The words “Amory Blaine” that begin chapter one are in exactly the sort of type I mean. I dont know what you call it but it has capitals slightly bigger than the ones in the present sub-headings and the first letter of the important words is slightly bigger.

I should have explained that to you before—you see I think that this sort of type I mean gives the sort of effect of a marginalia—really doesn't break it up as much as these small, severe headings you're using now.

Of course this is my fault but I feel very strongly about [it] so if it can be done without inconvenience I wish you'd have it fixed up.

As Ever

P.S. It looks damn good. Thanks for your letter. O Henry said this was a story town—but its too consciously that—just as a Hugh Walpole character is too consciously a character.

Notes:

Also Turnbull.

17. To Perkins

2900 Prytania St. New Orleans

February 3d [1920]

Dear Mr. Perkins:

I certainly touched the depths of depression tonight. The action on that book Madeline, has knocked hell out of my new novel “Darling Heart” which turned completely on the seduction of the girl in the second chapter. I was afraid all along because of Susan Lennox,* and the agitation against Drieser but this is the final blow. I don't know what I'll do now—what in hell is the use of trying to write decent fiction if a bunch of old women refuse to let anyone hear the truth!

I've fallen lately under the influence of an author who's quite changed my point of view. He's a chesnut to you, no doubt, but I've just discovered him—Frank Norris.3 I think McTeage & Vandover are both excellent. I told you last November that I'd read Salt by his brother Charles and was quite enthusiastic about it. Odd! There are things in “Paradise” that might have been written by Norris—those drunken scenes for instance—in fact all the realism. I wish I'd stuck to it throughout! Another of my discoveries is H.L. Menken who is certainly a factor in present day literature. In fact I'm not so cocksure about things as I was last summer-this fellow Conrad seems to be pretty good after all.

I've decided I'd rather not use Nathan's* name at all in connection with my book and in fact that whole forward strikes me as being rather weak. Couldn't one of your advertising men write it?

I'm glad you're fixing it up about those sub-titles.^ I'm anxiously awaiting the cover.

Those stories I sold the Post will start to appear Feb. 21st. I have Dalyrimple & Bendiction in the current Smart Set & I had a one act play in the January number which got several vaudeville offers. Read it if you can. It was called Porcelain & Pink and its excellent. Smart Set, Scribners & Post are the only three magazines.

I'm going to break up the start of my novel & sell it as three little character stories to Smart Set. I'll only get $40 apiece but no one else would take them, I don't think—and besides I want to have Menken & Nathan hot on my side when my book comes out. As soon as I've done that I'm going to do two or three stories for Mr. Bridges. If I give up the idea of “Darling Heart” which I've practically decided to do, at least as a serial and plan not to start my fall novel until June & finish it in August, my idea will be to do 3 stories a month, one for Smart Set, one for Scribners, and one for the Post. The latter are now paying me $600.00 which is a frightful inducement since I'm almost sure I'll get married as soon as my book is out.

Have you any idea of the date yet? And when my short stories will begin to appear?

Faithfully Yours

P.S. Please forward any mail that may come there for me. I expect to be in New York about the 24th—leave here the 20th.

Notes:

* By David Graham Phillips.

* Critic George Jean Nathan.

^ Perkins had written, on January 28th, that as soon as the proof sheets were returned, he would have the section heads changed.

3. On August 23, 1921, Perkins wrote Fitzgerald that he had just read McTeague “with great rapidity and interest.”

Also Turnbull.

18. To Perkins

The Allerton House 143 E. 39th St.

[ca. February 21, 1920]

Dear Mr. Perkins -

Excuse the pencil—I'm just enclosing you the typing of Zelda's diary. This is verbatim but is only about half. You'll recognize much of the dialogue. Please don't show it to anyone else.

Both last week & this noon at lunch I tried to say this but both times couldn't get started because you personally have always been so awfully good to me—but Mr. Perkins I really am very upset about my book not coming out next month. I explained to you the reasons financial, sentimental & domestic but more than any of these its for the psychological effect on me. Seeing my story today in the Sat. Eve. Post* raised my spirits greatly—I think there's some nessesity for an author to see his work occasionally outside & be critisized and I won't feel safe until the darn thing is out.

So if it can possibly be done in March I do wish you'd move it up.

Moved into the Allerton this aft. I don't like it here.

Yours Sincerely the most bothersome man this side of Paradise

Notes:

* “Head and Shoulders.”

19. To Perkins

Cottage Club [Princeton, N.J.] [ca. March 10, 1920]

Dear Mr. Perkins:

Can't work here so have just about decided to quit work and become an ash-man. Still working on that Smart Set novellette.

Everyone in college—I mean literally everyone in college seems to have read Head & Shoulders so I wish you'd have the following ad inserted in “The Daily Princetonian” the first two days after my book appears

THE FIRST NOVEL OF
F. Scott Fitzgerald '17
THIS SIDE OF PARADISE

A story about a Princeton man
Chas. Scribners Sons $1.75 Princeton Univ Store

See you about the 17th

20. To Fitzgerald

March 26, 1920

Dear Mr. Fitzgerald:

Your book is out today. The pyramid which we have made of it in one of our windows is striking; and I have myself seen two copies sold in the store. I think we shall have some considerable reviews very soon in the papers as we have talked to a good many of the literary editors hereabouts and they will be prompt in looking into the copy we have sent. Now we shall see what comes of it, but at any rate you have had and have the enthusiastic support of our entire staff.

Sincerely yours,

21. To Perkins

The Commodore Hotel, New York City,

 April 29, 1920.

Dear Mr. Perkins:

I am sending herewith eleven stories, with my own selection of the seven best for publication in book form. As you will see from the suggested table of contents, I am also sending six poems, three of which drew quite a bit of notice in the Second Rook of Princeton Verse. The other three have never been published. All the stories have been published or will be before June 1st. They average about 8000 words.

Beside the title Flappers & Philosophers, here are several others in the order of my choice: (2) We are Seven. (3) Table D'hote. (4) A La Carte. (5) Journeys and Journey's End. (6) Bittersweet. (7) Short Cake

If you think the book would go better without the poems, with more stories, with different stories, in a different arrangement or under a different title it will be O.K. with me.

Sincerely,

P.S. I find I have no copy of “The Four Fists” (June, Scribners)

22. To Fitzgerald

June 29, 1920

Dear Mr. Fitzgerald:

I am sending you a copy of “The Ordeal of Mark Twain” by Van Wyck Brooks, because while reading it, views which you had expressed frequently came to my mind. He is a brilliant chap and very attractive and if you do care for the book I would like to have you meet him at lunch some day.

I hope Westport* is becoming more interesting.

As ever,

Notes:

* Early in May, the Fitzgeralds had rented a house in Westport, Connecticut.

23. TO: Maxwell Perkins

July 7th 1920

Westport, Conn.

Postcard. Princeton University; Correspondence.

F.P.A.1 is at it again. Here is his latest list

Old

New Ones

juvenalia

Christie Mathewson

bom for borne

Confectionary

Cellini

Lyoff Tolstoi

Samuel Johnston

forborne

 

inexplicably for inextricably

 

Mont Martre

 

tetotalling

 

stimulous

Havn't my copy of the book so don't know where these occur

Sincerely F Scott Fitzgerald

Notes:

1 Franklin P. Adams printed lists of errors in This Side of Paradise in his New York Tribune column, “The Conning Tower.” Scribners made a total of forty-two alterations in the plates of the novel for the fourth and seventh printings.

24. To Perkins

Westport, Conn.

July 7th 1920

Dear Mr. Perkins:

In regard to this English edition of Paradise4 I want to ask you a favor. It seems to me that if the book appears there in a land of much more intense scholarship with approximately 100 mispellings and misprints it would hurt it.

…

As I told you over the phone I'm delighted over the English edition. My novel5 ought to be finished about Sept. 15th & I will send you a copy. The Metropolitan will probably begin to serialize it right off after that so if you care to I imagine it will be eligible for book publication in the spring.

I can't tell you how I liked “The Ordeal of Mark Twain.” Its one of the most inspirational books I've read and has seemed to put the breath of life back in me. Just finished the best story I've done yet & my novel is going to be my life masterpiece.

Is there any new dope on Paradise—further editions I mean? Menken is giving it a very favorable review in the next Smart Set. If I finish my novel by Sept 15th I plan to go abroad with the serial money about October 15th & also with the money that will have accrued from Paradise by that time. Including seven thousand for the serial & at least three thousand more from the book (?) I ought to be able to stay over six months. I think it would give me a better perspective on the U.S. & broaden my outlook.

Sincerely

Notes:

4. On June 30th, Perkins had reported that William Collins, Sons & Co., Ltd. of London, had expressed interest in publishing an English edition of This Side of Paradise.

5. In his letter of August 12th to Charles Scribner, Fitzgerald explained: “My new novel, called 'The Flight of the Rocket concerns the life of one Anthony Patch between his 25th and 33rd years (1913-1921). He is one of those many” with the tastes and weaknesses of an artist but with no actual creative inspiration. How he and his beautiful young wife are wrecked on the shoals of dissipation is told in the story. This sounds sordid but it's really a most sensational book & I hope won't dissapoint the critics who liked my first one.”

25. TO: Maxwell Perkins

July 16th, 1920

Westport, Conn.

ALS, 2 pp. Princeton University; Correspondence.

Dear Mr. Perkins:

Last week in the Tribune F.P.A. balled out my book and gave a long list of mispellings—I find by looking at the sixth edition that many of those first list of corrections havn't been made—for instance juvenalia (twice) in the section called “Tom the Censor” in “Experiments in Convalescense.” I really think it has been a mistake to let it go so long.

Met a friend of yours the other day named Amee Stone who said she had admired you ever since your Cambridge days. The novel1 progresses

Sincerely F Scott Fitz—

F.P.A finds the following new misspellings

Frank on the Mississippi should be Frank on the Lower Mississippi Chap I

Collar + Daniel's First-year Latin (mispelt) Chap I

Cut a swathe (mispelt) Chap II Poems + Ballades should be Poems + Ballads (Chap II)

Fanny Hurst should be Fannie Hurst

Lorelie (mispelt)

Ghunga Dhin (mispelt)

Flambuoyant (mispelt Come Into the Garden, Maude (mispelt?)

Notes:

1 Published as The Beautiful and Damned (1922).

26. To Fitzgerald

Oct. 13, 1920

Dear Fitzgerald:

I enclose a review of “Flappers and Philosophers”* which you will probably not get from your clipping bureau. It is curious how much diversity of opinion there is as to which stories are the best.

I am also sending you a copy of Galsworthy's “The Country House” and one of the sequel to it, “In Chancery”. We are to begin a third book in the series in the January Scribner's. Galsworthy sustains his theme throughout these three large volumes and carries the same people through all of them. I think it is a really astonishing accomplishment in fiction. I think you will be interested in these if you have time to read them.

Sincerely yours,

Notes:

* Published late in September.

27. FROM Max Perkins TO JAMES HUNEKER

Nov. 5, 1920

Dear Mr. Huneker:

We have been asked to bring two authors to the Authors’ Night at the National Arts Club in connection with the annual book exhibition there on November 17. I know you generally avoid such affairs but you will only have to autograph some copies of your books and perhaps—though probably not—make a very little speech. Your “Steeplejack”4 is very well represented there and it is regarded as one of the very finest books of the year, on all accounts. I hope we may count on you. I hope to get Scott Fitzgerald to go and one reason is that I want him to meet you; and I think you will find him an interesting personality. You know he is the author of “This Side of Paradise,”5 and he is a very attractive fellow.

If you will only say that you will go, we can arrange the details later.

Sincerely yours,

Notes

4 Scribners, 1920, 2 volumes.

5 Scribners, 1920.

28. To Perkins

38 W 59th St. New York City

[ca. November 7, 1920]

Dear Mr. Perkins:

It'll be O.K. I've forgotten the date, though. Will you drop me a line telling me?*

About another matter. This Side of Paradise came out March 24th. Statement due Sept 24th—money due Jan 24th. Now I've already had about $3000—I'm not sure exactly. Anyway though the date is 2 1/2 months off I'm going to request $1500. more. This would be still way within the amount for at the seventh printing my share had reached about $7500.

If you think this plan is unfeasable please don't ask Scribners for me but I hate to knock off the novel again & my family seem to need a furcoat ect.

Leslie told me about his review.^ I was glad to see it. I love his prose style. Hovey of the Met.** says he could begin the novel in February & thus you could publish in Oct.

Faithfully and only too consistently
in your debt

Notes:

* Fitzgerald was to make a speech at the National Arts Club.

^ Shane Leslie reviewed This Side of Paradise in the Fall, 1920, issue of the Dublin Review.

** Carl Hovey, editor of Metropolitan Magazine.

29. To Perkins

Nov 10th, 1920

38 W. S9tb St.

Dear Mr. Perkins:

I thank you very much for the $1500.00.1 thought as there have been 41,000 printed the sales would be more than 33,796 but I suppose there are about five thousand in stock and two thousand given away or sold at cost.6

The novel goes beautifully. Done 15,000 words in last three days which is very fast writing even for me who write very fast. My record is still 12,000 words “The Camel's Back” begun eight o'clock one morning and finished at seven at night & then copied between seven and half past four & mailed at 5 in the morning. That's the story the O. Henry Memorial people are using in their second collection.

I'm awfully mixed on this Art society thing. I remember they wrote me asking me to come on Thurs the 18th (I think) & I accepted. But I have a note in my note-book about the 11th & your letter says the seventeenth. I'd just as soon go twice if necessary but I sure am mixed up.

Sincerely

Notes:

6. With a letter dated November 9th, Perkins had enclosed the $1500 and indicated that the total sales to date of This Side of Paradise were 33,796.

30. To Perkins

December 2nd 1920

38 W. 59th St.

Dear Mr. Perkins:

With the settlement still over a month away I'm begging for another thousand! This will still leave me a balance of twenty-six hundred.

I've taken two weeks out to write a scenario for Dorothy Gish on order—for which I hope to get a lot of money. So it sets my novel back until Jan. 1st

Can this nth advance be arranged?

Faithfully

31. To Fitzgerald

Dec. 6, 1920

Dear Fitzgerald:

We gladly send you the check for a thousand dollars herewith. I hope that Dorothy Gish scenario turns out satisfactorily.

By the way, I am going to Boston at the end of this week and it occurred to me that I might do well to call on Biggs,* the author of that book which you have told us about. I suppose I could find him in Cambridge, it might interest him to talk over the possibilities. It would certainly interest me to see him but still, it might be better to leave the matter entirely in your hands and you will be the best judge. If you think it would be a good idea, will you let me know before Thursday on which day I go.

As ever,

Notes:

* John Biggs, a friend whom Fitzgerald had met at Princeton, where they were undergraduates together.

32. To Perkins

 [ca. December 8, 1920]

38 West 59th Street New York City

Dear Mr. Perkins:

Less than a month now & you'll be quit of the financial embarrasments of the w.h. F. Scott. Because there's only about $1400 left I think—and if I could have $1000 of it I think I could pay for my Xmas presents.

My novel approaches completion. I hope you're going to like Bigg's book.

As Ever (ah! too monotonously as ever)

33. To Fitzgerald

Dec. 27, 1920

Dear Fitzgerald:

Here is the check for one thousand. But I hope we shall soon owe you a lot more money and I suppose “Flappers and Philosophers” must have earned quite a bit.

Biggs brought his book in and we shall read it right away. I do not think I ever saw any writing that was more vivid. The letter to Mr. Scribner from Shane Leslie speaks of his review of “Paradise” in the Dublin Review and then asks what the Catholic papers said about it over here. Have you received any reviews from these papers that are interesting, particularly on account of Monseigneur Fay of course. I do not think I have seen anything in particular from Catholic sources. Mr. Scribner wants to tell Leslie what the Catholic reaction was if it has been distinctive in any respect.

Yours as ever,

34. To Perkins

38 W 59th St. New York City

Dec 31st, 1920

Dear Mr. Perkins:

The bank this afternoon refused to lend me anything on the security of stock I hold—and I have been pacing the floor for an hour trying to decide what to do. Here, with the novel within two weeks of completion, am I with six hundred dollars worth of bills and owing Reynolds $650 for an advance on a story that I'm utterly unable to write. I've made half a dozen starts yesterday and today and I'll go mad if I have to do another debutante which is what they want.

I hoped that at last being square with Scribner's I could remain so. But I'm at my wit's end. Isn't there some way you could regard this as an advance on the new novel rather than on the Xmas sale which won't be due me till July? And at the same interest that it costs Scribner's to borrow? Or could you make it a month's loan from Scribner & Co. with my next ten books as security? I need $1600.00

Anxiously

Notes:

Also Turnbull.

35. To Fitzgerald

Feb. 1, 1921

Dear Fitzgerald:

Here is the check. We shall simply charge it against your account. But, while I have not reckoned up what your books have earned, I know it is more than this, I think very considerably. You ought to have told me about this at lunch yesterday.

Yours as ever,

36x. To Perkins

38 W. 59th St. New York City

Feb 13th, 1921

Dear Mr. Perkins:

Bunny Wilson * is reading Part II. Part III is still being worked over. I paid Reynolds back his $6S0 so I wouldn't have to write a short story so with the income tax impending I'm again short of money. Is there as much as another thousand cleared on Flappers and Philosophers?

The Inevitable Beggar

Notes:

* Edmund Wilson.

37. To Fitzgerald

Feb. 17, 1921

Dear Fitzgerald:

Herewith I enclose your royalty reports since the last rendering on “This Side of Paradise” and since publication on “Flappers and Philosophers” which was a little less than five months ago. You see that there is still to your credit here the amount of $2602 so that you need not hesitate to call on us as you need more.

I am delighted to know that I shall be able to read the second third of the novel over Sunday.

Yours very truly,

38. To Perkins

6 Pleasant Ave Montgomery, Ala

March 30th, 1921

Dear Mr. Perkins -

Will you please deposit $1000. of the remaining $1400. to my account at the Chatham and Phenix Bank, 33d St at 5th Ave?

I brought the completed novel south with me but when I got the last chapter from the typists I sat down & began to do that chapter over. I've changed the ending. Its too obvious to have him go crazy.

About the wrap—please don't let Hill start the wrap until I see him. I'm afraid he'll make it too “flapperish”, too light as he did with the last one. And I don't want to give buyers the wrong impression. Will be in New York by the 6th

Sincerely

39. To Perkins

April 20, 1921

Dear Fitzgerald:

I just happened to have so many things on my hands at the moment you called up yesterday that I am a little indefinite as to what we arranged. There is one very important thing though, and that is that we should know at the earliest moment possible about serialization. It is hard for me to believe that the Metropolitan will easily forego the publication, but if they do, and the instant we know it, we must put the book into the fall list and get together with Hill and so on. So I am only writing to impress the importance of our knowing at the first possible moment.

As ever,

P.S. We have made a cover, uniform with that of Paradise.

40. To Perkins

April 21st 1921

Dear Mr. Perkins:

Part I goes to Metropolitan today with my letter, Part II tomorrow, Part III Monday. I am asking them to let me know at the latest by a week from Sat. which is the last day of April. I feel sure they will not serialize it but I think Cosmopolitan would. However I am saying definately to Reynolds that if Metropolitan doesn't take it. It must be done in 4 monthly parts if at all so that it will be free to publish by October. I am requesting Hovey not to take it.

I am glad about the cover.

I have to get some steamer tickets* I've reserved tomorrow & I wonder if you could advance six hundred. This of course would be repaid in one week in case of any change in publishing plans as I could not expect any advance from you and the Metropolitan too.

I am greatly improving the book. I'll bring it in Monday.

Yours

Notes:

* The Fitzgeralds were preparing to sail for Europe.

41. To Fitzgerald

May 2, 1921

Dear Fitzgerald:

You left your copy of the contract* here and I enclose it with this letter as you ought to have it. I take this opportunity, in order that the thing may be set down in writing, that we are only not agreeing to any advance on the understanding that you are free to call on us to any reasonable extent against your general account with us. That is, we shall always be ready to advance, not only amounts equivalent to what your books have already earned, although the payments may not then be due, but amounts which may be considered reasonable estimates of what it may be anticipated that they will earn. In other words, the only reason why we are not making you a very handsome advance is that the figure is perhaps a little difficult to fix upon, but chiefly because we thought that in view of our previous association, an arrangement by which you were free to draw against your account here and reasonably in excess of it, would be more convenient and satisfactory.

I enclose also a letter to Galsworthy whom I hope you will see, and a letter to Mr. Kingsley^ who may be able to help you one way or another.

I hope it will be a great trip both for you and your wife.

As ever,

Notes:

* For the publication of The Beautiful and Damned.

^ Charles Kingsley, Scribners London representative.

42. To Perkins

Royal Danielli, Venice

May 26th [1921]

Dear Mr. Perkins:

After a wonderful time in England and a rotten time in France, we're in Venice & enjoying ourselves hugely. Galesworthy had us to dinner. St. John Irvine** was also there & needless to say a good time was had by Scott & Zelda. My book++ comes out in England today.

The most beautiful spot in the world is Oxford, without a doubt.

Will you send one of those new pictures of me—the one writing (I gave you two of each, I think, to the Metropolitan?

Now, as usual, I'm going to ask for gold—because the rest of the Metropolitan money doesn't come until July, I mean.

I'd like to get it this way if its not too much trouble.

$200 to the Chatham & Phenix Bank, 33d St to my account $800 deposited by wire to my credit at the American Express at Rome to be handed over to me upon proper identification. We'll call this the advance[.] I won't ask for more until November. Can it be done?

I'm writing a movie & intend to start a new book in July. I met Kingsley & went to tea where he lives in the old Richmond Palace. I liked him mighty well.

I'll write later

Yours always

Notes:

* Irish playwright, critic and novelist.

++ This Side of Paradise.

43. To Perkins

June 13, 1921

Dear Fitzgerald:

I was mighty glad to get yours of the 26th with its evidences that you and Mrs. Fitzgerald are enjoying yourselves. If at any time you should feel inclined to write about the things that are happening, do it because nothing would interest me more than to know of them. Moreover, I should make the information into discreet but effective publicity. I have sent out a couple of notes about your trip already.

The wire of eight hundred dollars ($800) went this morning to Rome and a check for two hundred dollars ($200) will go this afternoon or tomorrow to the Chatham and Phoenix.

Yours as ever,

P.S. Delighted that you are soon to begin a new book. Everybody I see asks about “The Beautiful and Damned” and about what you are doing in general.

44. To Perkins

6 Pleasant Ave. Montgomery, Ala

July 30th 1921

Dear Mr. Perkins:

I have been intending to write you the following letter for some months and I've been deterred for many causes—chief among which were the facts that any letter from me on this subject would sound like impertinent & unsollicited critisism and secondly because I have been the recipient of so many favors and courtesies from Scribners that it was scarcely my place to cavil at what I considered ultra-conservatism in their marketing and editorial policies. But in most business nowadays a box is set aside for employees suggestions and so perhaps even from outside you won't resent it if I speak whats on my mind.

What prompted this letter was the clipping on page D.* which I took from the Tribune. I happen [to] know that two weeks ago Mooncalf had not reached 50,000 copies. And I know also that it has not had nearly the vogue of my book in the libraries as is apparent from The Bookman's monthly score. Yet my novel so far as I have seen got not one newspaper add, not one Times or Tribune add or Chicago add since six months after publication. And Knopf has forcibly kept Mooncalf in the public eye for twice that long. What notoriety my book has preserved as well as what notoriety it got in the beginning, it got almost unaided. It's adds were small and undistinguished and confined almost entirely to college magazines and to Scribners. The only add from among my nine or ten suggestions that was used (except the “novel about flappers written for philosophers”) was ruined by Black's “Make it a Fitzgerald Christmas.” The adds gotten up in the office were small and so scattered as to have no follow up or reiterative punch. Don't gather from this that I have the idea that my book was slighted: on the contrary I think Whitney Darrow^ & Rodgers & everyone who had anything to do with it there gave it much more personal attention than any book they were handling. Nevertheless the following facts remain

(1) Mooncalf, on its issue, was advertised in Montgomery, Ala. This Side of Paradise, tho it sold fifty or more copies here on Zelda's reputation was not once advertised. Mooncalf was advertised two months in St. Paul. This Side of Paradise appeared in the papers 3 times in adds. It sold itself largely on personal home town unsollicited notices about me. This was also true to a great extent in Chicago. From the advertising section of the Chi daily news which I have on file together with the numbers of the Chi. Tribune during the weeks when my book was heading the list, I discover about eleven adds. It ran 18 wks as best seller in Chi. During that time it should have been advertised in 2 papers at least every other week. From my slight experience in advertising I know that much about campaignes. Mooncalf (not to mention Lulu Bett [and] The Age of Innocence** neither of which had 1/10th the initial publicity of my book & both of which are still selling, ect) has been adver[t]ised almost every week for 8 mos in Chicago papers and usually in both. Knopf runs almost daily adds for books that he believes in that may not sell 10,000 copies (like Zell^^ for instance) in the Tribune. The greatest selling point my book had, Mencken's statement quoted on the wrapper (together with an entirely neutral statement from Phelps)* was allowed to be forgotten with one exception, one add. Knopf would be using it still, and keeping the book talked about by means of it. Sinclair Lewis's remark in the Tribune “In Scott Fitzgerald we have an author who will be the equal of any young European” was absolutely unused.^

Notes:

* Reference is to a Knopf advertisements of Zell and Mooncalf, a recent novel by Floyd Dell, in which it was called “the most brilliantly successful first novel of many years.” Fitzgerald commented, “You've let everyone forget that my book once had this title. Knopf's statement goes quite unchallenged.”

^ In charge of sales and promotion at Scribners.

** Novels by Zona Gale and Edith Wharton, respectively.

 ^^ Novel by Henry G. Aikman, the pen name of Harold Hunter Armstrong.

* Critic William Lyon Phelps.

^ The letter breaks off here, unsigned.

Also Turnbull.

45. To Fitzgerald

August 3, 1921

Dear Fitzgerald:

I just got your letter about the advertising, on the edge of a vacation and I am terribly hurried in getting things into shape so I can leave Friday night; so I am writing you very hurriedly. But I do hope you will take me in complete sincerity when I say that you must freely express any points of dissatisfaction.

As for the next book, I can promise you that your suggestions will not only be gladly considered but will generally be followed: I know how good the ones you made on “Paradise” were. I can say too that we will map out our campaign a month or more in advance, so as to show all the dates, places, and advertisements, up to a certain date, to be agreed upon; and the more you help us in connection with the make-up of these advertisements, the better.

I think we did more advertising, very probably, than you were aware of, but it was not as effective or as plainly visible as it should have been. But we have now a man with excellent experience whom we believe will do the work with skill and vigor. It is true that the book should have been advertised more largely also in Montgomery and in St. Paul, but I do not want to go into detail now. I only want to ask you always to criticize freely—I am afraid you disliked writing this letter—and to convince you that, in the case of “The Beautiful and Damned” we will work the scheme out with you so that you will know all its details and will feel satisfied both with the copy and with the campaign.

…

Yours as ever,

P.S. …

46. To Perkins

Dellwood, White Bear Lake Minn,

Aug 25th 1921

Dear Mr. Perkins -

Excuse the pencil but I'm feeling rather tired and discouraged with life tonight and I havn't the energy to use ink—ink the ineffable destroyer of thought, that fades an emotion into that slatternly thing, a written down mental excretion. What ill-spelled rot!

About the novel—which after my letters I should think you'd be so bored with you'd wish it had never existed: I'd like very much if it came out in England simultaneously with America. You have the rights to it have you not? If you do not intend to place it would you be willing to turn them over to me on the same 10% basis as Paradise. So I could place it either with Collins* or thru Reynolds?

Hope you're enjoying New Hampshire—you probably are. I'm having a hell of a time because I've loafed for 5 months & I want to get to work. Loafing puts me in this particularly obnoxious and abominable gloom. My 3d novel, if I ever write another, will I am sure be black as death with gloom. I should like to sit down with 1/2 dozen chosen companions and drink myself to death but I am sick alike of life, liquor and literature. If it wasn't for Zelda I think I'd dissapear out of sight for three years. Ship as a sailor or something & get hard—I'm sick of the flabby semi-intellectual softness in which I flounder with my generation.

Notes:

* William Collins Sons & Co., the English publisher.

Also Turnbull.

47. TO: Maxwell Perkins

Sept 13th 1921

Dellwood, White Bear Lake Minn,

ALS, 1 p. Princeton University

Dear Mr. Perkins:

Enjoyment of Poetry came today.1 I have often heard of it as the best book of its sort ever written by an American—but I had no idea you published it. I'll read it with the greatest interest.

I wrote you yesterday asking for more alms—$650.00. I note it here so if my other letter went astray Writing like a streak. Would it be imposing on your time to ask you to ask Wilcox downstairs to send me a 1st edition of Ben Hetch's Eric Dorn?

I'll read Eastman within the week—have just been reading a book you gave me last spring—Robert Lynde's essays.2 They're slick

Faithfully F Scott Fitzg—

Notes:

1 By Max Eastman, published in 1913.

2 Robert Lynd, The Art of Letters (1921).

48. Max Perkins TO JOHN GALSWORTHY

August 2, 1921

Dear Mr. Galsworthy:

Your letter and the proof of the short plays1 arrived yesterday and we are today estimating upon it in the idea of putting it immediately in hand. It arrived just in time to let us make an announcement of the volume in our Fall list. I think we should do well with it.

We already have completed copies of “To Let,”2 which we publish September 2, at the same time that it appears in England. I enclose herewith a number of our advertisements.

Scott Fitzgerald, returning to this country much sooner than he had expected, turned up the other day and spoke with the very greatest enthusiasm and interest of dining at your house and of the kindness of Mrs. Galsworthy and you. He told me of what you talked. He has the not very usual faculty of remembering things and turning them over in his mind, so that he gets much good out of anything that suggests an idea to him. I am delighted that he saw you and am very grateful to you for having allowed me to introduce him. I think it may turn out to have done him a great deal of good, for he needs steering.

I heard on all sides that the summer has been very uncomfortable and trying in England but I hope it may have been comfortable for you and Mrs. Galsworthy.

Very sincerely yours,

Notes

1 Six Short Plays, Scribners, 1921.

2 By John Galsworthy, Scribners, 1921.

49. To Perkins

Dellwood, White Bear Lake, Minn

[ca. October 1, 1921]

Dear Mr. Perkins -

I appreciate your courtesy and thoughtfulness in telegraphing me.7 Zelda recieved the letter and is awaiting the book* with interest. In setting up the book are they including that table “By F Scott Fitzgerald” with my multitudinous & voluminous numbered beneath.

I have not seen one single review for 2 months but here are my prognostications for the fall. I have only read the 1st of these books.

(1) Brass by Charles Norris.—Worthy, honest thorough but fundamentally undistinguished

(2) Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos—the book of the autumn

(3) Eric Dorn by Ben Hetch [Hecht]—probably the second best book of the autumn

(4) The Beginning of Wisdom by Stephen Vincent Benet. Beautifully written but too disjointed & paternless. Critics will accuse him of my influence but unjustly as his book was written almost simultaenously with mine

(5) The Briary Bush. Another rotten novel by Floyd Dell, which, because it is without a touch of grace or beauty or wit will be hailed as a masterpiece by all the ex-policemen who are now critics.

Will you send me that Brentano sketch** when it appears?

Sincerely,

Notes:

* To Let by John Galsworthy.

** “Three Cities,” Brentano's Book Chat, September-October, 1921.

7. On September 12th, Fitzgerald had asked for $650 and Perkins had wired on September 15th that he had deposited it.

Also Turnbull (there the date is listed as [Before October 7, 1921] meaning that in the Scribners' files this undated letter immediately precedes Perkins' letter to Fitzgerald dated October 7, 1921.)

50. To Fitzgerald

Oct. 7, 1921

Dear Fitzgerald:

The page proofs of “The Beautiful and Damned” are beginning to come up. I shall send them on to you but you will not need to read them very carefully unless you wish to. Just look them over.

Of the books you speak of in your letter which shall have a marked success this season, I have only read “Three Soldiers.” I think it descriptively a very remarkable book. Few books written about war have presented it as vividly in its physical aspect,—perhaps only “War and Peace”; and the characters too, have reality. I think as a complete presentation of the effect of the war on typical individuals, it is very incomplete,—I judge not so much from what people say as from what, it seems to me, is bound to be the case. These three men must have been exceptions rather than types. But there will be great controversy about the book and I think it will have a great sale. I read some of “The Beginning of Wisdom” in the Bookman and was disappointed. That part was about college and I did not think it so well written,—rather sprawly and immature, it seemed to me. But I don't doubt the book itself is an interesting one. Even the portion I saw shows that it has vitality,—that it is close to life. I am not so much interested in “The Briary Bush” because a survey of “Moon Calf” which I got at pretty late, did not make me think highly of Floyd Dell's future.

I sent you the Brentano sketch and I very much hope you will get around to doing an article for Bridges on those lines. It would be a most refreshing article.

Hoping all goes well with Zelda, I am,

Yours as ever,

51. To Fitzgerald

Oct. 10, 1921

Dear Fitzgerald:

I am sending you the first of the page proofs. You asked me about what dormitory Anthony should live in and I said Claverly without thinking of the implication of the context.* A boy with a good income would be likely to land in Claverly but that would be socially where he should land and you want him to be somewhat out of the center as one ignorant of the social system. I therefore suggest changing it to Beck Hall which a generation ago was fashionable but is so no longer and is rather out of the way. It would be just the sort of a place that a man of this kind would be likely to room in if he had no knowledge of the social system.

Sincerely yours,

Notes:

* Anthony Patch, the protagonist of The Beautiful and Damned, like Perkins, attended Harvard University.

52. To Perkins

Oct 14th 1921

New adress—> The Commodore Hotel Western Ave. St. Paul

Dear Mr. Perkins:

Thanks for the tip about Beck Hall. I shall change it. I am so glad you like Three Soldiers. I was rather curious to know if you would. The Beginning of Wisdom was something of a dissapointment to me. Three matters I want to speak of

(1.) There was no table of “works” in the front of the proof you sent me. I want one.

(2) Are you going to have Hill draw the jacket? with a light blue back instead of orange.

(3) You have already advanced me about $1400. on the book. I am going to ask you for another thousand as Zelda expects the chee-ild in a fortnight and its going to cost. If that is O.K. will you put [it] in the Chatham & Phenix bank for me right away.

I see you have no date of publication on the book. Now the serial's last installment comes out Feb 14th. Do you intend to publish in Feb. or say on the 1st of March.8

The Brentano sketch came & I thank you.

As Ever

Notes:

8. Perkins answered Fitzgerald in a letter dated October 20th. He explained that the “table of works” to which Fitzgerald referred (which Perkins called “the card plate”) was always inserted by the publisher “at the last minute” and thus was not in the proof the author had seen. On the question of publishing the novel in February, Perkins said that he would have to rely on the advice of the Wholesale Department and their estimate of the book's sales prospects. Finally, he reported that he had that morning deposited $1000 in Fitzgerald's account in the Chatham & Phoenix Bank.

53. To Perkins

Oct 20th 1921

The Commodore Hotel

Dear Mr. Perkins –

Thank you very much for the money.

Several things: (1st) I hope you'll have the card plate like the one I sent you. It looks as if I have a lot of works. (2nd) John Black wrote Who's Who to ask them to put me in. About November I recieved blanks from them & filled them out. I noticed that I wasn't in the book published last Spring. Now I don't care specially whether I'm in or not—nevertheless I'd like to know this. Do you have to pay for insertion of your name? I've heard recently that you did and I know I didn't pay anything. Didn't know you had to. Will you ask someone in the office there who's in it whether you do or not?9

My novel looks awfully good to me. Its almost a different book from the one you read in sections—I've made so many changes at various times. I hope to God that Hill draws a good looking girl—also that if there's a man he'll keep his tie outside his collar.

Sincerely

Notes:

9. On November 22nd, Perkins wrote that he had looked into the Who's Who matter and discovered that no payment was required. On the contrary, he explained, “they pride themselves on their entire independence in the matter,” adding that he had written the publisher of the volume, presumably advising him to include Fitzgerald in the next edition. During this period also, on October 28th, Fitzgerald wrote Perkins that Zelda “had a girl day before yesterday. Both are doing excellently well.” Perkins replied on November 1st, offering his congratulations and observing, “I know Zelda will be delighted about the sex and perhaps you will, but if you are like me you will need some slight consolation and having had great experience with daughters—four of them, I can forecast that you will be satisfied later on.” Also during the first week of November, Fitzgerald asked for an additional $700 toward his advance on the novel, and Perkins, on November 10th, deposited the money.

54. TO: Maxwell Perkins

Before 28 October 1921

599 Summit Ave St. Paul, Minnesota

ALS, 4 pp. Princeton University

Dear Mr. Perkins:

One more thing I forgot to ask you about.

Which would be best. To have Flappers appear in England in the Spring or my new book.1 The thing is I don't want to discourage them. Give me your advice.

As to this Reynold's business. It's grown complicated. How he ever got mixed up in it I don't quite understand. If Collins is sticking by me close enough to risk a book of short stories I'd rather keep on having him. In the first place why should I pay Reynolds 10% for changing publishers for me, maybe getting me $50 or so more advance royalty. I see no use of changing publishers anyhow—Collins are established and, moreover, they are darn good I think. And having books scattered around with different publishers, like James + Edith Wharton for instance, stands in the way of ever having collected editions if I ever get to that stage which I of course hope.

On the other hand he's been very good to me, advanced me nearly all that Metropolitan money even tho they havn't paid him very promptly. So if he wants to offer it in England I don't begrudge him the 10% and we can arrange it that the full 10% due to Scribners reaches you anyway. But I wouldn't want him to offer it to anyone but Collins, Why, suppose they brought out Flappers + someone else the new novel both this spring. It'd be silly!

Please advice me what to do. In any case send him the page proof + not the galley to offer to the movies as you see I've made many corrections.

I've written three short stories2 since I've been here but havn't heard from any of them.

Sincerely
F Scott Fitzg—

Notes:

1 Flappers and Philosophers was published in London by Collins in March 1922; The Beautiful and Damned was published by Collins in November 1922.

2 “Two for a Cent,” “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz,” and probably “The Popular Girl.”

55. TO: Maxwell Perkins

Oct 28th, 1921

The Commodore Hotel St. Paul, Minn

AL, 1 p. Princeton University

Dear Mr. Perkins:

Zelda had a girl day before yesterday. Both are doing excellently well.

I note what you say about the book + think you are entirely right about Collins. I'd appreciate it if you would, as you suggest, write Reynolds a letter explaining the contract (which, by the way, I had forgotten) to him when you send him the page proof.

I think the stenographer probably took the proof out to lunch because she couldn't decipher the corrections on an empty stomach. Maybe she didn't bring it back—you never can tell!

Faithfully

56. To Perkins

New Address Permanent! 626 Goodrich Ave St. Paul, Minn.

[ca. December 1, 1921]

Dear Mr. Perkins -

I've always hated & been ashamed of that damn story The Four Fists. Not that it is any cheaper than The Off Shore Pirate because it isn't but simply because its a mere plant, a moral tale & utterly lacks vitality.

Here's the point—I'd like Collins to substitute for it in his version* The Camel's Back which appeared in this years O. Henry memorial collection. How about it. Suppose I send it to him & let him decide. Also I hope to God his copy of Flappers had that ghastly error of mine corrected, the “let it lay” in The Ice Palace. Had I better write them? Practically every critic in America has spoken of it. Thank Heaven my new book is at least letter perfect.

I have just recieved $1500.00 from the Sat. Eve. Post for one short story, ^ my highest price so far. I think I may be able to use my European impressions a little later but at present except for that acidulous (and rather silly) explosion in The Book-chat I havn't many ideas on the subject. However I'll try again.

Bigg's story** is fine. Knopf is going to take Bishop's & Wilson's books,+ simply, they believe, so he can have them on his lists. A glance at The Briary Bush convinces me that its one of the worst novels ever written by a civilized man.

Sincerely

P.S. Do you think I improved the chapter I hacked at so?

Notes:

* The English edition of Flappers and Philosophers.

^ “The Popular Girl,” published in the issues of February 11th and 18th, 1922.

** “Corkran of the Clamstretch,” Scribner's Magazine, December, 1921.

+ Possibly The Undertaker's Garland by John Peale Bishop and Edmund Wilson, published by Knopf in 1922.

57. To Perkins

Dec. 6, 1921

Dear Fitzgerald:

I think almost every change you have made in “The Beautiful and Damned” has been a good one except that passage about the Bible.** I made a comment on the proof on that point, and I cannot add much to it. I think I know exactly what you mean to express, but I don't think it will go. Even when people are altogether wrong, you cannot but respect those who speak with such passionate sincerity. You may think Carlyle is all rubbish, for instance but you cannot but admire him, or at least feel strong—about him. What Maurey says is quite consistent with his character but this will seem to have been your point of view and I don't think it would be that.

As to the Collins matter, I think it would be just as well if you wrote them. For one thing, I think it would help you to be in personal touch with them. I rather think that they won't want to give up “The Four Fists” themselves. Collins' address is 48 Pall Mall, London, S. W., England.

As for the article on Europe, I think it is only a trifle, and it would be much better if you should give your time to something bigger, toward beginning a new novel. I heard from somebody, I think Nathan, that you were writing a play. Did anyone receive more than $1500 for a single short story? I think that is wonderful. I hope it will appear about the time or shortly before “The Beautiful and Damned” appears.

Thanks for the advertising suggestions. We shall be able to use them, all except the joke one which we do not object to as such, but which we do not think would be as effective as the other sort. Hill has done an excellent picture for the wrap of which I shall send you the first reproduction we have.

Yours as ever,

Notes:

** The passage in The Beautiful and Damned where Maury Noble calls the Bible the work ancient skeptics, whose primary goal was their own literary immortality.

58. To Perkins

626 Goodrich Ave. St. Paul, Minn

[ca. December 10, 1921]

Dear Mr. Perkins -

Have just received your letter in re Bible anecdote** in novel and I'm rather upset about it. You say:

“Even when people are wrong you cannot but respect those who speak with such passionate sincerity about it.”

Now in that remark lies, I think, the root of your objection—except to substitute “be intimidated by” for “respect.” I don't suppose any but the most religious minded people in the world believe that such interludes as The Song of Solomon, the story of Ruth have or ever had even in the minds of the original chroniclers the faintest religious significance. The Roman church insists that in the song of Solomon the bride is the church & the lover is Christ but it is almost universally doubted if any such thing was even faintly intended.

Now I feel sure that most people will know that my sketch refers to the old testament, and to Jehovah, the cruel hebrew God again[s]t whom such writers as even Mark Twain not to mention Anatole France & a host of others have delivered violent pyrotechnics from time to time.

As to the personal side of it don't you think all changes in the minds of people are brought about by the assertion of a thing—startling perhaps at first but later often becoming, with the changes of the years, bromidic. You have read Shaw's preface to Androcles and the Lion—that made no great stir—in fact to the more sophisticated of the critics it was a bit bromidic. His preface, moreover, is couched with very little reverence even tho it treats of Christ who is much less open to discussion than merely that beautiful epic of the bible. If you object to my phrasing I could substitute “deity” for “godalmighty” & get a better word than bawdy—in fact make it more dignified—but I would hate to cut it out as its very clever in its way & Mencken—who saw it—and Zelda were very entheusiastic about it. It's the sort of thing you find continually in Anatole France's Revolt of the Angels—as well as in Jurgen & in Mark Twain's Mysterious Stranger. The idea, refusing homage to the Bible & it's God, runs thru many of Mark Twain's essays & all through Paine's biography.*

In fact Van Wyke Brooks in The Ordeal ^ critisizes Clemens for allowing many of his statements to be toned down at the request of Wm. Dean Howells or Mrs. Clemens. If it was an incident which I felt had no particular literary merit I should defer to your judgement without question but that passage belongs beautifully to that scene and is exactly what was needed to make it more than a beautiful setting for ideas that fail to appear. You say:

“Even when people are altogether wrong, you cannot but respect those who speak with such passionate sincerity.”

I can imagine that remark having been made to Gallileo and Mencken, Samuel Butler & Anatole France, Voltaire and Bernard Shaw, George Moore and even, if you will pardon me, in this form once upon a time.

“You don't like these scribes and pharisees. You call them whitened sepulcheres but even when people are altogether wrong—ect”

I havn't seen the proof with your notation and have only read your letter. But I do feel that my judgement is right in this case. I do not expect in any event that I am to have the same person for person public this time that Paradise had. My one hope is to be endorsed by the intellectually elite & thus be forced on to people as Conrad has. (Of course I'm assuming that my work grows in sincerity and proficiency from year to year as it has so far). If I cut this out it would only [be] because I would be afraid and I havn't done that yet & dread the day when I'll have to.

Please write me frankly as I have you—and tell me if you are speaking for yourself, for the Scribner Co. or for the public. I am rather upset about the whole thing. Will wait until I hear from you

As Ever

See next page *

P.S. Besides, as to the position of the thing in the story. It is nessesary to show the growth of Maury's pessimism and to do this I have invented a fable in which the hoi poloi do more than refuse to believe their wise men—but they twist the very wisdom of the wise into a justification of their own maudlin and self-satisfactory creeds. This would discourage anyone.

Notes:

* Mark Twain by Albert Bigelow Paine.

^ The Ordeal of Mark Twain by Van Wyck Brooks.

** The passage in The Beautiful and Damned where Maury Noble debunks the Bible as the work of ancient skeptics, whose sole aim was the literary immortality they achieved.

* The postscript was written on a separate sheet.

Also Turnbull.

59. To Fitzgerald

Dec. 12, 1921

Dear Fitzgerald:

Don't ever defer to my judgment. You won't on any vital point, I know, and I should be ashamed, if it were possible to have made you; for a writer of any account must speak solely for himself. I should hate to play (assuming V.W.B.'s position to be sound) the W. D. Howells to your Mark Twain.^

It is not to the substance of this passage that I object. Everyone of any account, anyone who could conceivably read this book, under forty, agrees with the substance of it. If they did not there would be less objection to it in one way—it would then startle them as a revelation of a new point of view which, by giving a more solid kind of value, would lessen the objection on account of flippancy (I hate the word. I hate to be put in the position of using such words as “respect” and “flippancy” which have so often enraged me, but there is some meaning in them). The old testament ought not to be treated in a way which suggests a failure to realize its tremendous significance in the recent history of man, as if it could simply be puffed away with a breath of contempt, it is so trivial. That is the effect of the passage at present. It is partly so because Maury is talking and is talking in character;—and that is the way men do talk too, so far as ability enables them, even when they fully appreciate every side of the matter. It is here that the question of the public comes in. They will not make allowance for the fact that a character is talking extemporaneously. They will think F. S. F. is writing deliberately. Tolstoi did that even, and to Shakespeare. Now, you are, through Maury, expressing your views, of course; but you would do so differently if you were deliberately stating them as your views. You speak of Gallileo: he and Bruno showed themselves to have a genuine sense of the religious significance of the theories they broke down. They were not in a state of mind to treat the erroneous beliefs of men with a light contempt. France does not so treat Christ in that story of Pilate in his old age. And a “Whited Sepulchre” is an expression of a high contempt, although applied to an object which had no such quality of significance as the Bible.

My point is that you impair the effectiveness of the passage—of the very purpose you use it for—by giving it that quality of contempt and I wish you would try so to revise it as not to antagonize even the very people who agree with the substance of it. You would go a long way toward this if you cut out “God Almighty” and put “Deity”. In fact if you will change it on the line indicated by that change you will have excised the element to which I object.

I do agree that it belongs in Maury's speech; that it does bring it to a focus. But you could so revise it that it would do this without at the same time doing the thing to which we object.

I hope this gets over to you. If I saw you for ten minutes I know you would understand and would agree with me.

As ever,

Notes:

^ In The Ordeal of Mark Twain, the influence of Howells on Twain is depicted as largely a restrictive and injurious one.

60. To Perkins

626 Goodrich Ave [St. Paul, Minn.]

[ca. December 16, 1921]

Dear Mr. Perkins -

Your second letter came and I want to apologize to you for mine. I might have known you did not mean what in haste I imagined you did. The thing •was flippant—I mean it was the sort of worst of Geo. Jean Nathan. I have changed it now—changed “godalmighty” to deity, cut out “bawdy” & changed several other words so I think it is all right.

Why, really, my letter was so silly with all those absurd citations of “Twain”, Anatole France, Howells ect was because I was in a panic because I was afraid I might have to cut it out and as you say it does round out the scene.

I hope you'll accept my apology.

Is the girl beautiful in the W. E. Hill picture? Are you going to have a light blue background on the jacket as I suggested—I mean like you had for your Lulu Ragdale book two years ago? And did you catch that last correction I sent you before it was too late?

I have put a new ending on the book—that is on the last paragraph, instead of the repitition of the Paradise scene of which I was never particularly fond. I think that now the finish will leave the “taste” of the whole book in the reader's mouth as it didn't before—if you know what I mean.

I can't tell you how sorry I am about that silly letter. I took that “Oh Christ” out as you suggested. As you say “Oh, God” won't fill the gap but “oh my God” does it pretty well.10

With my changing of the extreme last & fixing up the symposium I am almost, but not quite, satisfied with the book. I prophecy that it will go about 60,000 copies the first year — that is, assuming that Paradise went about 40,000 the first year. Thank God I'm thru with it.

As ever

Notes:

10. Perkins wrote, on December 20th, that he was “glad” that Fitzgerald had changed Maury's speech, but admitted that “my comments were not properly expressed.” He added, “I always want you to speak out your mind on things and I am glad you did it in this case.”

Also Turnbull.

61. TO: Maxwell Perkins

Late 1921

St. Paul, Minnesota

ALS, l p. Princeton University

Dear Mr. Perkins—

I recieved your letter. Thank you for the information about Who's Who. Has Hill1 done the cover—or are you waiting until he can see the galley proofs. I agree with you about Eric Dorn but at least Hetcht has vitality + can write. If Mooncalf is a good book then Eric Dorn is a masterpiece.

As to the adds—I think they should be dignified. I am apending a few suggestions on the next page.3 I took out “soulecism” as you suggested. I do not like to italisze newspapers ect—I save italics entirely for emphasis, I hope you thinked I improved the midnight symposium.2

I don't know when I'll get east—next fall perhaps.

As Ever Scott Fitz—

Am sending a picture you might use some time.

Notes:

1 The dust jacket for The Beautiful and Damned was illustrated by W. E. Hill.

2 Perkins had asked Fitzgerald to revise the “Symposium” section of The Beautiful and Damned, which included satirical comments on religion and the Bible.

3 Missing.

62. TO: Maxwell Perkins

Wire. Princeton University

STPAUL MINN 1111A DEC 23 1921

LILDA THINKS BOOK SHOULD END WITH ANTHONYS LAST SPEECH ON SHIP SHE THINKS NEW ENDING IS A PIECE OF MORALITY LET ME KNOW YOUR ADVICE IF YOU AGREE LAST WORD OF BOOK WOULD BE I HAVE COME THROUGH OR DO YOU PREFER PRESENT ENDING I AM UNDECIDED JACKET IS EXCELLENT1
F SCOTT FITHMERALD

Notes:

1 Perkins wrote on this wire: “I agree with Zelda.” The original ending of the novel, as published in the serial, was a two-paragraph analysis of Anthony's and Gloria's idealism: “Their fault was not that they had doubted but that they had believed.”

63. TO: Maxwell Perkins

Before 27 December 1921

ALS, 2 pp. Princeton University

Dear Mr. Perkins—

Charlie Flandrau1 has been reading my new book + either has an awful line of blarney or is tremendously impressed with it. Hope you liked the new ending. Also that you approved what I did to the sketch about the bible.

I have had my full advance of $3000 and the book won't be out for two months yet but I'm hoping enough has accumulated since September on the other two for you to let me have $500.00. Can you? And will you deposit it if you can. In the Chatham + Phenix as usual?

I am writing an awfully funny play2 that's going to make me rich forever. It really is. I'm so damned tired of the feeling that I'm living up to my income.3

As Ever F Scott Fitz—

626 Goodrich Ave. St. Paul, Minn.

Notes:

1 St. Paul writer who was married to novelist Grace Flandrau; author of The Diary of a Freshman (1901) and Harvard Episodes (1897).

2 Published as The Vegetable (1923).

3 See Perkins' 27 December letter to Fitzgerald in Dear Scott/Dear Max, ed. John Kuehl and Jackson Bryer (New York: Scribners, 1971), hereafter referred to as Scott/Max.

64. To Fitzgerald

Dec. 27, 1921

Dear Fitzgerald:

We are depositing the five hundred dollars your letter* asked for in the Chatham & Phenix today. I am having a statement made up on your account so that you will know just how things are. We did not delay the check to do this.

I telegraphed you this morning, “I agree with Zelda”, after considerable hesitation. I did not hesitate though on the question of which ending was intrinsically the best. I think she is dead right about that. Anthony's final reflection is exactly the right note to end upon. My hesitation was purely on the popular side—whether from that viewpoint a pointing of the moral was not desirable. But finally I did not think the advantage was such as to overcome the artistic effect of the other end of it. Shall I therefore, cut out the last half page?11

As ever,

Notes:

* Written about December 24th.

11. On December 23rd, Fitzgerald had wired that Zelda thought The Beautiful and Damned should end “with Anthony's last speech on ship. She thinks new ending is a piece of morality. Let me know your advice.” Fitzgerald replied, on December 28th, to Perkins' December 27th letter, that everything beginning with the phrase “That exquisite heavenly irony” should be cut.

65. To Fitzgerald

Dec. 31, 1921

Dear Fitzgerald:

The letter from Reynolds which you sent and which I return is rather pathetic, but so far as it concerns your writing, I think it represents a temporary condition. The time ought to come when whatever you write will go through and where its irony and satire will be understood. They will know what you stand for in writing and they do not really know yet. It is in recognition of this that I want very much to have this book so announced in our lists and so on, that it will be regarded as “important” as well as the other things.

There is especially in this country, a rootless class of society into which Gloria and Anthony drifted,—a large class and one which has an important effect on society in general. It is certainly worth presenting in a novel. I know that you did not deliberately undertake to do this but I think “The Beautiful and Damned” has in effect, done this; and that this makes it a valuable as well as brilliant commentary upon American society. Perhaps you have never even formulated the idea that it does do this thing, but don't you think it is true? The book is not written according to the usual conventions of the novel, and its greatest interest is not that of the usual novel. Its satire will not of itself be understood by the great simple minded public without a little help. For instance, in talking to one man about the book, I received the comment that Anthony was unscathed; that he came through with his millions, and thinking well of himself. This man completely missed the extraordinarily effective irony of the last few paragraphs.

As ever,

66. To Perkins

626 Goodrich Ave. St. Paul,

Jan 9th, 1921 [1922]

Dear Mr. Perkins –

I see what you mean about the book and I am in entire accord with you. When the Metropolitan advertised it as “a novel of the Revolt of American Youth” I was wild.12

As to the “rootless” idea in your pentultimate letter—I think it would be ideal if you can get across the rootless idea without in any way giving the impression that it is a novel of Bohemian life, which of course it isn't. Do you remember how the subtitle “A novel about Flappers written for Philosophers[”] was bruited about—perhaps something like that could be done with “A novel of the Rootless”—or would that be punned upon as a novel of the fruitless or given meanings still more grotesque & Rabelaisian.

And the flapper idea—God knows I am indebted to it but I agree with you that its time to let it go. There is only one type of advertisement for which I (& the general public too, I believe) have a profound aversion—one that contains the phrase “Surely the book of the Spring”. However Scribners never sins in this respect.

I see by the memo that I have had a $3,143.00 advance—(more really because its been ahead. I have been working for two months on a play & will be at it three weeks more. Could I have $500.00 more? Shades of John Fox! * But this absolutely, positively the last. If O.K. will you deposit for me in the Chatham & Phenix, 33d?^

Sincerely

Notes:

* A best-selling Scribners author. Fitzgerald signed this letter “F. John Scott Fox Fitzgerald Jr.”

^ On January 11th, Perkins wrote that he had deposited the $500.

12. On January 6th, Perkins noted that the general public, while being “hugely entertained” by Fitzgerald's writings, had not “regarded them as having the literary significance to which they are entitled.” He added, “We ought to try to impress this—to get away altogether from the flapper idea.”

67. To Perkins

626 Goodrich Ave. St. Paul, Minn.

[ca. January 18, 1922]

Dear Mr. Perkins:

Thank you for the deposit. I am in a mood of terrific depression which nothing will lift except the enormous success of my book. I wish I didn't have to be here when it appears as the philistine pressure is terrific and I shall probably be gazed at stonily by many robust dowagers. We expect to come east March 15th—which is the date set for the baby's weaning. I never knew how much I cared for New York. My play13 is a gem but I can't do the last act. What do you think of Sideshow or A Sideshow as the title for my book of short stories next fall?

Idea: If you are advertising Flappers on the wrap-edge of my new book why not do it this way.

'Contains the famous 'Head & Shoulders' story.” There was a caption in the Times rotogravure section last week which included the phrase Head & Shoulders” in quotes. It really was much read & the movie advertised it—I think a reference like I suggest on the wrap is better than the conventional “contains eight of Mr. F.'s best short stories.” Is March 1st the definate date?14

…

As Ever

Notes:

13. Earlier in the month, Fitzgerald had written Perkins, “I am writing an awfully funny play that's going to make me rich forever. It really is. I'm so damned tired of the feeling that I'm living up to my income.”

14. In a reply dated January 23rd, Perkins explained that he could not adopt Fitzgerald's suggestion about the wrap because it was already printed; but he added, “we did better than simply to speak of 'Eight of the Best Stories.' “ He also told him that the date of publication was March 3rd.

68. TO: Maxwell Perkins

25 January 1922

626 Goodrich Ave. St. Paul, Minn

ALS, 1 p. Princeton University

Dear Mr. Perkins:

Since This Side of Paradise came out I have given out about 1/2 dozen interviews + not one but has made me wince later when touched by the reportorial hand. If I give this Ward a good one it will use up material I can use myself shortly—if it is a bad one I will blush shamefully.1 However once again I fall before the lure of the press. I will send tomorrow a picture of Zelda + one of me. I enclose two photos that he's got to return.

I expect to have this thing come out yellow as hell but I'll take the risk

Sincerely
F. Scott Fitzgerald.

P.S. For God's sake read this over. I give you my full permission to strike out or amend anything which Quirk2 might twist to make an idiot out of me. I know what the newspaper men have done to Upton Sinclair + I dread them—not when they critisize me but when they twist my own words, with no ill intentions, but simply to make a sensational story. Please impress this on him. Am enclosing other pictures. Let him take his pick but I've got to have them all back.

I hope you give him a tremendous figure on the Paradise sales.

The Mind in the Making3 has arrived + looks very interesting. Thanks immensely. I'm going to start it tonight

Notes:

1 The Ward interview has not been located.

2 James Quirk, editor of Photoplay.

3 James H. Robinson, The Mind in the Making: The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform (1921).

69. TO: Maxwell Perkins

30 January 1922

626 Goodrich Ave. St. Paul, Minn

ALS, 3 pp. Princeton University

Dear Mr. Perkins—

I wired you today because Edmund Wilson wrote me that he had recieved a copy of The Beautiful + Dammed. I was afraid it might go out to the newspapers + they'd review it too soon. There is a good sized article on me in March Bookman.1

I wish that the advertising man would be sure that review copies go to the following people2

 

 

The Review

 

V

 

“ Freeman (Van Wyck Brooks)

 

V

 

” Literary Review (N.Y. Evening Post)

 

V

 

F.P.A.

World

 

X

Heywood Broun

 

X

Hanson

Chi. News

 

X

Benchley

Life

 

X

Sherwood

“

V

 

Boyd

St. Paul Daily News

 

X

Publishers Weekly

 

V

 

Harry Dounce

 

 

X

Carl Van Doren

c/o The Nation

V

 

Benjamin de Casseres—

Judge

V

 

Ludwig Lewisohn

c/o The Nation

 

X

Percy Hammond

N.Y. Tribune

V

X

John Farrar

The Bookman

V

 

New Republic

 

 

X

Max Eastman—

Liberator

V

V

Gilbert Seldes

Dial

V

 

Yale Lit Magazine—

 

 

X

Fanny Butcher

 

V

 

Harvard [Lit]

 

V

 

Nassau Lit

 

 

X

John A. V. Weaver—

Brooklyn Eagle

 

X

Edward Paramore

—Fashion Art

 

X

John Bishop

—Vanity Fair

V

X

H. L. Mencken

—Smart Set.

 

 

 

 

V

 

Don Maquis—Sun

If you think advisable.

V

 

Christopher Morley—Post

 

X

Burton Rascoe

V

 

Dorothy Parker—

The ones checked should go as soon as possible

I will need 25 copies myself. I wish you'd send them as soon as possible—and charge me with nineteen of them. I'm allowed six, am I not?

No doubt the above list has already been attended to. Still I've followed closely the people who have kept my name in mind + think they should each recieve a copy. If I were in New York I'd autgraph all of them.

My twenty five are all for family, authors who have sent books + personal friends. Am getting quite excited

F Scott Fitzg—

Notes:

1 “The Literary Spotlight,” The Bookman (March 1922), an unsigned article by Edmund Wilson.

2 Annotations on this letter in other hands have not been transcribed.

70. To Perkins

 [626 Goodrich Avenue] [St. Paul, Minn.]

[ca. January 31, 1922]

Dear Mr. Perkins -

The books came* & I'm delighted with the blurb on the back which I suspect you wrote yourself. I think it strikes exactly the right note, gives a moral key to the stupider critics on which to go, and justifies the book to many who will think it is immoral! Thank you.

I like the way it is got up—it surprised me to find that it is half again as long as Paradise.

I wired you last night about the color of the jacket which has come out, in my copies at least, a sickly yellow. It was a deep reddish orange, you remember, in the jacket you sent me before.

The more I think of the picture on the jacket the more I fail to understand his drawing that man. The girl is excellent of course—it looks somewhat like Zelda but the man, I suspect, is a sort of debauched edition of me. At any rate the man is utterly unprepossessing and I do not understand an artist of Hill's talent and carefullness going quite contrary to a detailed description of the hero in the book.

Note these divergences -

1. Anthony is “just under six feet”—Here he looks about Gloria's height with ugly short legs

2. “ “ dark haired—this bartender on the cover is light haired

3. Anthony's general impression is described on page 9.—in not a single trait does this person on the jacket conform to that impression. He looks like a sawed-off young tough in his first dinner-coat.

Everybody I've talked to agrees with me and I'm a little sore. When a book has but one picture to give the impression the illustrater ought to be careful. The Metropolitan illustrations were bad enough God knows but at least the poor botch of an illustrater tried to give Anthony the physique and atmosphere assigned to him.

As you can see I'm an ill-natured crabber. I ought not to be. The girl is excellent & I suppose Hill thought it would please me if the picture looked like Zelda & me. But I'd rather have the man on the Paradise jacket even with his tie tucked neatly under his collar in the Amherst fashion. Hill has done about 9 figures for my covers altogether and I suppose 8 good out of 9 is a good average.

Excuse this letter—its just to get rid of an inhibition of anger so I can get back to my play this morning. Wilson's article about me in the March 1st Vanity Fair** is suberb. It's no blurb- not by a darn sight—but its the first time I've been done at length but [by] an intelligent & sophisticated man and I appreciate it—jeers and all.

As Ever

Notes:

* Advance copies of The Beautiful and Damned.

** Fitzgerald apparently is referring to Wilson's unsigned essay in the March 1922, issue The Bookman.

Also Turnbull.

71. To Perkins

626 Goodrich Ave. St. Paul, Minn.

Feb 6th 1922

Dear Mr. Perkins -

I was delighted with your letter, the quotation from Syd Howard & the encouraging news generally.^ In the same mail came a wonderful letter from Howard himself, even more entheusiastic. I am glad—for after so committing himself on the wrap it would be ghastly if he thot the bk. was rotten. My deadly fear now is not the critics but the public. Will they buy—will you & the bookstores be stuck with forty thousand copies on your hands? Have you overestimated my public & will this sell up to within seven thousand of what Paradise has done in two years? My God! Suppose I fell flat! I feel that in your blurbs so far you have struck exactly the right note, a moral note almost, with no rah-rah-ing about “The Revolt of American Youth” as Hovey couldn't keep from doing. Either your advertising man is as keen as hell or you have been engineering all this yourself—in which case I congratulate you on what I consider an astute tack.

But I have a guilty feeling that its all much ado about nothing, and will have until it starts to go—if it does. If it doesn't—may the saints intercede for me to the Christian God who comforteth the afflicted.

The Selling Point thing seems to me excellent. It makes me swell with pomposity.

…

I see that Jackson Gregory * has also borrowed your name for his title page. I think its a crime the timidity Doran is showing over Three Soldiers. Never in my knowledge has a book had more free publicity than that (possibly excepting Main Street) and less paid advertising. Doran, too, is usually a voluminous advertiser.

The wrap grows better. I guess you are right about the review copies.15

I don't suppose there's any hurry but next fall when my new book comes out, the table of works which is in the B.&D. should go in all four of my books.

Also I've caught a few more errors in the B.&D. But I'll wait until the 40,000 sell before I send you a list of them. I'm sending a copy to Collins. I hope a copy went to Mencken & Nathan both as I havn't sent one to either of them.

About my new book. Here it is.

Title –“In One Reel”

Contents—Fantasies
[These are in my “new” manner]
The Diamond in the Sky (Smart Set?)
The Russet Witch (Met. Feb '21)
Tarquin of Cheapside (Smart Set Feb '21)
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Met?)

My Last Flappers
May Day (Smart Set, June '20)
The Camel's Back (Post, April '20)
The Jellybean (Met. Sept. '20)

Comedies
Mr Icky (Play) (Smart Set, Jan '20)
Porcelain & Pink (Play) (Smart Set, Mar '20)
Jemima (Vanity Fair, Jan 21)

And So Forth
The Crusts of Love (Chi Tribune, Nov '20)
Two for a Cent (Met.?)

This includes all my stuff to date except two stories I left purposely out of Flappers (Myra Meets Her Family, [Post] and A Smile for Sylva [Smart Set) and this $1,500 story I just sold the Post (appears this week) which is too cheap to print.+

The others are all excellent, much better than Flappers, except The Camel's Back which was in the O Henry Memorial collection & is funny tho cheap.

May Day & The Diamond in the Sky * are novellettes. Smart Set will publish the latter soon. Two for a Cent & Curious Case of Benjamin Button will appear in the Metropolitan this summer. I am going over the lot of them this Spring & will send them on. They are, almost all of them, tremendously original and I think will go better than Flappers because all the fantasies are something new & the critics will fall for them. What do [you] think of the new title. I agree with you Sideshow is no good.16

Remember me to Mrs. Perkins.

As Ever

Notes:

+ On February 3rd, Perkins had sent Fitzgerald a letter praising The Beautiful and Damned Playwright, critic and novelist Sidney Howard.

* American novelist, writer of Western and detective stories.

+ 'The Popular Girl.”

* Published as “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz.”

15. Fitzgerald had written Perkins late in January expressing hope that review copies of The Beautiful and Damned would not be sent too early. On February 1st, Perkins had replied that there was “an advantage in getting a book of this kind into the reviewers hands a long time before the book comes out besides that of a prompt review. These men … are not only writers, but they are talkers. They are the center from which interest and appreciation of books is diffused. Each one is the center of a little circle. Whatever they say about a book is to its advantage and that talk which they do after seeing and reading a book, among themselves, and with other people, counts for a great deal.”

16. On February 3rd, Perkins had written that he didn't like “Sideshow” as a title: “It does not seem to me to have much life. ... It suggests something of secondary importance which I suppose a collection of stories is really; but we do not want to emphasize the fact.”

72. To Perkins

626 Goodrich Ave, St. Paul, Minn

[ca. February 10, 1922]

Dear Mr. Perkins:

Knapp^ came through here yesterday. I took him to lunch & we had a long bicker. He sold 1050 copies in St. Paul & hopes to do the same in Minneapolis. If the sale was in that ratio all over the country the original 40,000 would be gone the day of publication. I realize of course that it won't be in that ratio. I have finished the Mind in the Making** and agree with you about it. But I think the man has read his Wells “not wisely but too Wells”—to make a rotten epipun (also a new word).

As you've probably noticed my story leads off the current Post which delights me. I wish it were a better story. It has fine illustrations. I do not expect ever to reprint it.

The Kilmarnock Books here have ordered 250 copies of my book & may order more. They are spending $216.00 on an advertising moving picture to be shown in all St. Paul theatres, which will have a picture of me, of the store with the windows full of the B.&D., a close up of the book & the title in big letters. It will be quite a thing. They would appreciate any advertising data your Mr. Myers could send them. T. A. Boyd++ who is only 22 is owner of the shop. It is his wife who wrote The Love Legend concerning which I wired you.17 He also runs the book page in The St. Paul Daily News, which he has made the best book page west of the Hudson. Altogether, according to my scrapbook my name has appeared on it over forty times since I came to St. Paul. (These two sentences look funny together! Ha-Ha!) He has advertised me in a hundred ways & will do so much more—special announcements of my book, and a big two column review to appear when the book comes out. Do you think you could manage to have an add or two for the book appear in his page on consecutive Sundays?

As to the advertising. It seems to me that after the first blurb in The New Repub[l]ic & periodicals of that class it would be best to concentrate on the newspapers—say the N.Y. World on the page with Broun & F.P.A. or the Chi Tribune on Hanson's * page or even the N. Y. Tribune, tho I believe the book buyers of the latter (followers of Broun & F.P.A.) have switched to the World. What I mean is that the readers of the literary periodicals know me pretty well by this time and any extended campaigne in The Bookman ect would be carrying coals to Newcastle—anyways I think it would. What do you think.

The Forsyte Saga is quite an achievement in the way its gotten up. The more I think of that selling points you wrote for the B.&D. the more I think it ought to be included in the book itself. Its a wonder! Knapp thinks so too & everyone I've shown it to.

Someone told me the other day that they thot the Metropolitan would fail—someone who's pretty close to gossip down there. But Reynolds doesn't think so & keeps shovelling my stories at them. They have one now they accepted in September they havn't paid a cent for & Reynolds has just sent them another. I have two weeks more work on my play—which is a perfect sure-fire marvel—and I am at my wits end how to carry on until I finish it. With fear and trembling I approach you for $500.00—which would, if you could give it to me, make a total of about $4,500 above the sales to date of Paradise & Flappers. I am aware that this constitutes a large advance, but with the book at $2.00 it is only an advance on a sale of 13,000 copies—and as you have printed up about 40,000 it is really not much of a risk with publication less than two weeks off.

Will you wire me only if you can not deposit $500.00 in the Chatham & Phenix Bank, 33d St.

(How many times have I written that sentence!)

Yours Ever

Notes:

^ A Scribners salesman, assigned to the Midwest.

** By James Harvey Robinson.

++ Novelist and critic Thomas A. Boyd, most famous for his Through the Wheat, published by Scribners in 1923.

* Heywood Broun, Franklin P. Adams and Harry Hansen, respectively, all of whom were columnists and book reviewers.

17. Perkins had inquired, on February 8th, about The Love Legend by Woodward Boyd, about which the St. Paul Daily News had reported that Fitzgerald was enthusiastic. On February 9th, Fitzgerald replied by telegram that the book was “a good first novel somewhat on the style of Rose McCauley [Macaulay] and better than Edna Ferber,” it was “too talky and needs some revision,” but it would soon be sent to Scribners for their consideration.

73. TO: Maxwell Perkins

22 February 1922

626 Goodrich Ave. St. Paul, Minn

ALS, 2 pp. Princeton University

Dear Mr. Perkins:

By this time you'll have recieved The Love Legend.1 It strikes me as a pretty fair first novel. Nothing wonderful but good stuff. Perhaps it needs more cutting tho I had her rip 10,000 words out of it.

You've never answered my question about an add in the St. Paul Daily News.

I found that thing by Anatole France very interesting. It's the same thing that Mencken says about Hardy + Conrad + Drieser the thing that lives them above the “cerberal” novelists like Wells—the profound gesture of pity.

Bishop's been asked to do 2500 words for the Herald.2

I have not heard anything from my book of importance—Nothing at all from [Cab] ell tho I sent him a copy Will let you know when I do—though the blurb notices have become so frequent on covers that I doubt if they have the effect they used to. Still its worth doing.

I'm glad that was O.K. about the syndicate. I really think it will do me more good in the American + I don't trust these newspapers much. I was sorry though that you had gone to all that trouble about it. Needless to say I'm very much obliged to you. Will you return the photos? Saw the pictures Whitney3 got out. They're excellent.

I am glad Biggs has sold you another story

We arrive east on March 9th for two weeks in New York.

As Ever Scott Fitz.

Notes:

1 By Woodward Boyd, Thomas Boyd's wife. Scribners published the novel in 1922; Fitzgerald reviewed it in the New York Post (28 October 1922).

2 John Peale Bishop, “Mr. Fitzgerald Sees the Flapper Through,” New York Herald (5 March 1922).

3 Whitney Darrow, advertising manager for Scribners.

74. TO: Maxwell Perkins

After 4 March 1922

St. Paul, Minnesota

ALS, 1 p. Princeton University

Dear Mr. Perkins—

By now you've seen Morley's little did in the Post1 as well as the ambiguous review in the Book Review.2 The last sentence in the latter might do to quote. I suppose it's too early to catch the wave of the book—my one hope is that the Metropolitan didn't hurt it violently.

Arrive Tuesday—Hope to God there'll be encouraging news by then. Two St. Paul stores + one Minneapolis have given big displays. One store sold 33 by three oclock the first day.

Scott Fitz—
Thank you for the thousand.

Notes:

1 Christopher Morley's review has not been found. The Beautiful and Damned was reviewed in the New York Evening Post by Henry Seidel Canby.

2 R. S. Lynd wrote in the Book Review. “Mr. Fitzgerald continues to be one of the most original of our novelists, and reading him is an exhilerating experience, like zooming along in an airplane.” This statement was used in Scribners promotional material.

75. TO: Maxwell Perkins

Wire. Princeton University

STPAUL MINN 1922 MAR 5 PM 11 48

PLEASE HOLD ALL MAIL THINK YOU COULD USE LAST SENTENCE IN BOOK REVIEW NOTICE ABOUT READING HIM IS AN EXHILIRATING EXPERIENCE ETC FANNY BUTCHER1 DOES NOT LIKE BOOK AM WORRIED AS THE DEUCE WILL ARRIVE THURSDAY
F SCOTT FITZGERALD.

Notes:

1 Book reviewer for the Chicago Tribune.

76. To Perkins

626 Goodrich Ave. St. Paul, Minn.

[ca. March 5, 1922]

Dear Mr. Perkins -

This is to thank you for the money.18 I was in a tight place—had actually cashed a bad check & didn't know it. However the Metropolitan has begun to pay a little & I think I'm out of the woods.

When I wrote you about The Mind in the Making I'd only read two chapters. I have finished it & entirely changed my views on its importance. I think its a thoroughly excellent book. It states the entire case for modernity's lingering hope of progress. It is a depressing book, I think, as are Well's & Shaw's late things and all those of that brave company who started out in the nineties so full of hope and joy in life and faith in science and reason. Thomas Hardy survives them all. I think when I read Upton Sinclaires The Brass Check I made my final descision about America—that freedom has produced the greatest tyrrany under the sun. I'm still a socialist but sometimes I dread that things will grow worse and worse the more the people nominally rule. The strong are too strong for us and the weak too weak. I shall not right another novel for a year but when I do it will not be a realistic one. At least I don't think it will.

The more I think of the B & D's chances the more I think that your blurb will save it if anything can.19

Nathan writes me: “A very substantial performance. There is a wealth of sound stuff in it. You are maturing rapidly. It pleases me to have so good a piece of work dedicated in part to me.20 You have done a first rate job.”

I don't want to use this though as he's funny about that sort of thing.

I've read my book over and I've decided that I like it fine. I think it is as good as Three Soldiers—which is high praise from me.

The Knopf man was here awhile ago & I had quite a talk with him in Boyd's bookstore. It seemed to me that he was personally dishonest & utterly disloyal to his company—that is he was trying to sell one of his sample books and he said that “Knopf was as honest as any publisher” with a wink! I doubt if Knopf gives his authors a full 15% on those $2.50 books -of course he shouldn't as they cost more. I had an interesting time with Hergeshiemer*—he came through & came to dinner. However what I started to say was how favorably Knapp compared with the Knopf man.

Please don't get the impression that I was fooled by the size of the St. Paul orders. I knew they were chiefly “on sale”. I think I'm going to have a great non-fiction book ready for you about next January. And if my play is a big success will you bring it out in book form—or do you think its best to wait until I have three of them, as O'Niell has done following Shaw & Barrie & Galesworthy.

I'm glad you liked “In One Reel”. Wait till you see the stories. You havn't seen half of them. Read “Chrome Yellow”.** Best to Roger.*** Knapp seemed devoted to you, which was our chief bond of union.

Yours Ever

Notes:

* Novelist Joseph Hergesheimer.

** A novel by Aldous Huxley.

*** Probably Roger Burlingame, a Scribners editor.

18. Late in February, Fitzgerald had written asking for $1000, which Perkins, on March 2nd, wrote that he had deposited for him.

19. Fitzgerald is probably referring to the extended appreciative summary of the book which appeared on the back of the dust jacket and which expressed sentiments very much like those in the second paragraph of Perkins' letter of August 3, 1921.

20. The Beautiful and Damned was dedicated to Shane Leslie, Nathan, and Perkins “in appreciation of much literary help and encouragement.”

Also Turnbull.

77. TO: Maxwell Perkins

Spring 1922

626 L'Avenue Goodrich Sainte Paul, Minnesota

ALS, 1 p. Princeton University

Dear Mr. Perkins—

Ici est l'article. Ne plus de la vin. Seulement de la travaille. Tout est bien. Notre mieux a Mme. Perkins et vous, a moi et Zelda.

Si vous ne comprenez pas cette lettre, le donnez a le departement Francais de Scribner pour la translation. Les petit histoires arriverez bientot

Tout A Vous
F. Scott Fitzgerald
auteur de “Cette cote de la paradis.”

78. To Fitzgerald

April 17, 1922

Dear Fitzgerald:

“The Beautiful and Damned” is going on at about the same pace it held when you were here. It has sold about 33,000 copies actually. I doubt if we can hope that it will be an overwhelming success now, but when you speak of me as being disappointed,21 you're wrong. I think the book has consolidated your position, so to speak,—has convinced people that as Sidney Howard says, “This Side of Paradise” was very far indeed from being all. Of course I wanted it to sell a hundred thousand or more and I hoped that the extraordinary exhilaration of your style from paragraph to paragraph might make it do so in spite of the fact that it was a tragedy and necessarily unpleasant because of its nature, so that its principal elements were not of such a kind as in themselves to recommend it to the very great mass of readers who read purely for entertainment and nothing else. Now, at least this book is going to have a pretty large sale. The trade are going to get rid of it easily. It has made a stir among the discriminating and has therefore been all to the good except from the most purely commercial viewpoint. I know that that is an important viewpoint to you as well as to us; but for our part we are backing you for a long race and are more than ever convinced that you will win it.

…

As ever,

Notes:

21. In a letter written about April 10th, Fitzgerald had said, “I deduce from your retiscense on the subject of the B.&D. that it is still a disappointment.”

79. TO: Maxwell Perkins

After 17 April 1922

St. Paul, Minnesota

ALS, 2 pp. Princeton University

Dear Mr. Perkins

Your letter telling me that the B+D has not picked up is somewhat depressing but not very. I still think that it is going up to 50,000 and perhaps over within a year.1

I am returning the contract.2 Of course for a novel I would not ask such high terms as for a book of short stories as there should be leeway for your advertising. I am enclosing a letter to Mr. Scribner.3 Read it over and if it is bunk tear it up. If you think its worth doing, show it to him.

There is a heavy blizzard going on here + the world is dark and cold.4

As Ever F Scott Fitzgerald

Notes:

1 The Beautiful and Damned probably reached 50,000 copies with the third printing in April 1922.

2 The contract for Tales of the Jazz Age dated 12 April 1922 stipulated a 15 percent royalty on the list price on the first 20,000 copies, with an escalation to 20 percent after 40,000 copies.

3 On 19 April Fitzgerald sent Scribner a plan for a reprint series to compete with The Modern Library. See Letters, pp. 155-57.

4 See Perkins' 17 April letter to Fitzgerald in Scott/Max.

80. TO: Maxwell Perkins

Postmarked 21 April 1922

626 Goodrich Ave. St. Paul, Minn.

ALS, 1 p. Princeton University

Dear Mr. Perkins:

I return the proofs herewith.1 I have followed your suggestion about cutting the Henry James episode.2 I have cut the dates of the stories except the recent ones and except in the case of May Day, for I want to show that it was published before Three Soldiers. When did I ever call you “astute”? And is it a slam? Also I have spared O'brien a bit.3 Tell me if you think its all right. And I've inserted a dedication4

Did you see the review of the B+D in Town and Country?5 Is there any new dope on the sale? I sold the movie rights to Warner Bros. for $2500.00 which seems a small price. But it was the best I could do. If you can think of some better typographical arrangement go ahead. And please strike out “Three Preposterous Plays” from the table of works. And please don't tell anyone what I got for the B.+D from the movies.

As Ever F Scott Fitzgerald

Notes:

1 For the annotated table of contents for Tales of the Jazz Age.

2 On 12 April Perkins commented on Fitzgerald's note for “The Lees of Happiness”: “... I don't think Henry James had anything in the world to do with you at all, and so is not appropriate—but in all but details this material is admirable for our purposes.” Fitzgerald probably revised the material, which appeared in Tales of the Jazz Age as “melodramas carefully disguised by early paragaphs in Jamesian manner which hint dark and subtle complexities to follow.”

3 Edward J. O'Brien, editor of the Best Short Stories series, which Fitzgerald frequently ridiculed.

4 “Quite Inappropriately to My Mother.”

5 By William Curtis (15 April 1922).

81. TO: Maxwell Perkins

After 30 April 1922

St. Paul, Minnesota

ALS, 2 pp. Princeton University

Dear Mr. Perkins:

Seven things:

(1) Write me when you've got to have the next copy on The Jazz Age

(2) Did you see that ghastly thing in the Tribune about Dr Bridges + me? I can't imagine who made up such a story out of thin air. If you ever see Mr. Stokes do ask him about it.

(3) The book business is dead out here. Nothing selling—but my book as well as any.

(4) Could you ask the retail dept. why they don't replace the defective copy of The Revolt of the Angels1 that I sent them?

(5) I suppose you saw the good reviews in Town + Country + The Freeman + the bad one in the Bookman.2 I suppose too that the books going as badly as ever

(6) Will you ask Darrow Whitney3 if he has any pictures of me to send me one as I have to give it to somebody—almost any kind will do.

(7) I'm sure you skipped to the end to see if I wanted money— but for once I don't. Sold the movie rights of B+D for $2,500—did I tell you?—with the proviso of $1250 more if it did $250,000 gross business.4 Poor price. Keep it dark. Warner Bros bought it—they're the people who bought Brass + Main Street

As Ever
F Scott Fitzg—
626 Goodrich Ave.

We're going to White Bear for the summer again.

Notes:

1 By Anatole France.

2 By Mary M. Colum in The Freeman (26 April 1922) and Burton Rascoe in The Bookman (May 1922).

3 Whitney Darrow.

4 Fitzgerald did not receive the bonus.

82. To Perkins

May 11th, [1922]

626 Goodrich

Dear Mr. Perkins:

After careful consideration by The Fitzgerald ménage, two book sellers & several friends I am strongly in favor of keeping the “Jazz Age” title.22 Here's my line of reasoning

(1.) If it were a novel I should say the salesmen were undoubtedly right—the word flapper or jazz would be passe & kill a big sale.

 (2.) Short stories do not sell and “Flappers” was an exception chiefly on account of my 1st novel & what was then the timeliness of the title.

(3.) I do not expect the new collection to have an advance sale of more than four or five thousand & the total will never reach more than nine or ten thousand (that is the first year or so.

(4) It will be bought by my own personal public, that is by the countless flappers and college kids who think I am a sort of oracle.

(5) The question of Jazz or not Jazz is a Sylla & Charbydis anyhow. If I use such a title as Half Portions ect or Chance Encounters no one will buy it anyhow—it will just be another book of short stories. It is better to have a title & a title-connection that is a has-been than one that is a never-will-be. The splash of the flapper movement was too big to have quite died down—the outer rings are still moving.

(6) If I could think of a wonderful selling title unconnected with Jazz I'd use it but I can't, so we better use a safe one that has a certain appeal. Short story collections are the hardest things on earth to name—to get a title which is at once arresting, inviting, applicable and inclusive and doesn't sound like a rehash of the titles of O. Henry, or isn't an aenemic Namby Pamby wishy-washy phrase.

(7.) In any case I think it will be wise to under-sell the booksellers—a few, I fear from your silence, are going to be stuck with The B. & D. and though Flappers seems to be still trickling along there are two bookstores in St Paul that have quite a few left—

(8) The only possible other title I can think of is The Diamond as Big as the Ritz—and other stories. I hate titles like Sideshow and In One Reel & Happy End They have begun to sound like viels [veils] and apologies for bringing out collections at all. Only good short story titles lately are Limbo & Seven Men.* I might possibly call my book Nine Humans and Fourteen Dummies if you'd permit such a long title (in this case I'd have to figure out how many humans & how many dummies there are in the collection) -but if you feel awfully strongly against “Jazz Age”, I insist that it be an arresting title if it spreads over half the front cover.

Please let me know at once what you think.

I'm sure in any case the stories will be reviewed a great deal, largely because of the Table of Contents. **

Wire me if nessessary.

As Ever

If you are really considering the library, don't forget The White Mice by Gouverneur Morris.

Notes:

* By Aldous Huxley and Max Beerbohm, respectively.

** The Table of Contents was annotated with Fitzgerald's comments on each story.

22. Perkins had reported, in a letter of May 8th, that at a meeting of the Scribners book salesmen “there were loud and precipitous criticisms of the title, 'Tales of the Jazz Age'. They feel that there is an intense reaction against all jazz and that the word whatever implication it actually has, will itself injure the book.”

Also Turnbull.

83. TO: Maxwell Perkins

13 May 1922

626 Goodrich Ave. St Paul, Minn

ALS, 1 p. Princeton University

Dear Mr Perkins:

By this time you have got the letter defending my title.1 The jacket is wonderful, the best yet and exactly what I wanted.2 I wouldn't change the title for anything now.

Thanks. F Scott Fitzgerald

Notes:

1 Tales of the Jazz Age.

2 The dust jacket, by John Held, Jr., showed a dance scene.

84. TO: Maxwell Perkins

28 May 1922

ALS, 3 pp. Princeton University

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
HACK WRITER AND PLAGIARIST
SAINT PAUL MINNESOTA *

Dear Mr. Perkins:

Your letter is at hand. I am glad you are taking the little man off the cover + all the jazz lettering and making it absolutely uniform with my other books (My God! There are almost four of them now!

I am thinking of starting a new novel this summer.

Use any typography you want for the Jazz Age. You can count on it running pretty close to a hundred thousand words.

As I am inserting two new things I will want another proof on the Table on Contents. Who did I dedicate it to? I've forgotten. It will reach you sure before the 15th.

Greatly to my distress I am compelled to ask you for money—for $1500.00 if it is convenient and O.K. If all right will you deposit it right away in The Chatham + Phenix Bank, 33d St.

How do you like my stationary?

What is the date on Jazz Age. First I was strong for Nov 15th but on thinking it over perhaps Oct 15th or even September would be better. What do you think?

As Ever Scott Fitzg—

Notes:

* Printed letterhead.

85. TO: Maxwell Perkins

14 June 1922

ALS, 1 p. Princeton University

Dear Mr. Perkins:

I have the Jazz Age corrected all save one story + am sending it on Friday (day after tommorrow). Personally I think it's a million miles ahead of Flappers + a darn good book.

I have been lazy this month, trying to outline a new novel—consequently I am financially barren. Do you suppose ect? and Is it possible? ect. Am I good for another $1000.00. If I am I wish you'd deposit it for me in The Chatham + Phenix. If not, let me know by wire as I want to start to draw against it.

Is there any news on the B.+D.? If you see Tom Boyd tell him I've written Wilson about him + Wilson's address is 777 Lexington. As Ever

F Scott Fitzg—

Yatch Club, White Bear Lake, Minn.

86. To Perkins

The Yatch Club, White Bear Lakes, Minn.

[ca. June 20, 1922]

Dear Mr. Perkins:

The first four stories, those that will comprise the section “My Last Flappers” left here several days ago. The second four, “Fantasies” leave either this afternoon or tomorrow morning. And the last three “And So Forth” will leave here on the 24th (Sat.) & should reach you Tuesday without fail. I'm sorry I've been so slow on this—there's no particular excuse except liquor and of course that isn't any. But I vowed I'd finish a travel article & thank God its done at last.

Don't forget that I want another proof of the Table of Contents. There's been one addition to the first section and one substitution in the 3d. Its damn good now, far superior to Flappers & the title, jacket & other books ought to sell at least 10,000 copies and I hope 15,000. You can see from the ms. how I've changed the stories. I cut out my last Metropolitan story not because it wasn't technically excellent but simply because it lacked vitality. The only story about which I'm in doubt is The Camel's Back. But I've decided to use it—it has some excellent comedy & was in one O. Henry Collection—though of course that's against it. Here are some suggested blurbs.

1. Contains the famous “Porcelain and Pink Story”-the bath-tub classic—as well as “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and nine other tales. In this book Mr. F. has developed his gifts as a satiric humorist to a point rivalled by few if any living American writers. The lazy meanderings of a brilliant and powerful imagination.

2. TALES OF THE JAZZ AGE
Satyre upon a Saxaphone by the most brilliant of the younger novelists. He sets down “My Last Flappers” and then proceeds in section two to fresher and more fantastic fields. You may like or dislike his work but it will never bore you.

3. TALES OF THE JAZZ AGE
Have you met “Mr. Icky” and followed the ghastly carreer of “Benjamin Button”? A medly of Bathtubs, diamond mountains, Fitzgerald Flappers and Jellybeans.
Ten acts of lustrous farce—and one other.

That's probably pretty much bunk but I'm all for advertising it as a cheerful book and not as “eleven of Mr. Fitzgerald's best stories by the y.a. of T.S.O.P.”

*********

Thank you immensely for the $1000.00. and also for the Phila. Ledger picture. Has the book gone over 40,000 yet? I'm delighted you like Boyd.* He hasn't a very original mind—that is: he's too young to be quite his own man intellectually but he's on the right track & if he can read much more of the 18th century—and the middle ages and ease up on the moderns he'll grow at an amazing rate. When I send on this last bunch of stories I may start my novel and I may not. Its locale will be the middle west and New York of 1885 I think. It will concern less superlative beauties than I run to usually & will be centered on a smaller period of time. It will have a catholic element. I'm not quite sure whether I'm ready to start it quite yet or not.23 I'll write next week & tell you more definate plans.

As Ever

Notes:

* Thomas A. Boyd.

23. Perkins had asked, on May 26th, whether Fitzgerald was “thinking any more about a new novel,” adding, “I suspect the next book will be a wonder.”

87. TO: Maxwell Perkins

25 June 1922

White Bear Lake, Minnesota

ALS, 2 pp. Princeton University

Sunday,

Dear Mr Perkins:

The third section went to you Saturday + has no doubt reached you by this time. I neglected to put the section titles on separate pages and sending them.

The first title should, of course, come on a page before the first story. It is
My Last Flappers.

The second title should come on the page before The Diamond as Big as the Ritz. It is
Fantasies.

The third title which should come before the story The Lees of Happiness, has been changed from “And So Forth” to
Unclassified Masterpieces.

This arrangement may not seem seem to jibe with the table of contents but I have it all straight + will correct the Table of Contents as soon as you send me a proof of it.

I have numbered the 11 stories in order.

I hope you will be able to read the galley proofs and offer me any suggestions about cutting.

As Ever
F Scott Fitzgerald

88. TO: Maxwell Perkins

July 1922

White Bear Lake, Minnesota

ALS, 4 pp. Princeton University

Dear Mr Perkins:

I suspect you're on your vacation so I wrote the edit. dept. to deposit $1000.00 for me if possible.

The coupons were recieved but only two.1 If its not two much trouble I wish your secretary would clip all that are due up to now. The proof of the Table of Contents came and I will correct it as you suggest. They did not send me the one which I had already partly corrected so I will put in both the new corrections and the old ones + return it tomorrow.

Thanks for the list of money remitted in 1921. As I feared I underestimated my earnings by $2,600. I will make the correction sometime this year

Were Paradise and Flappers published by the same people as the B+D in Canada + Austrailia respectively?2 Also, another matter—you remember that Collins was to pay an advance on This Side of Paradise. Do you remember how much it was? And will you let me know if you have it on record?

Whatever it was I recieved it in England, minus 10%. Now whether you got that 10% or whether it went to an English agent and you are still due 10% from the money I recieved I do not know.

Collins writes me that Flappers has not gone so well but that he hopes for the B+D.

Will the Jazz Age sell for $2.00? And what do you imagine will be its date?

I am asking you 1,000,000 questions, I know, but I am rather at sea about everything and they all bear on my problems. I have been working on a variety of things. Have written a remarkable play which just needs 2 wks. work to go on B'way next fall + have to get that started to write a novel. Also am bickering with 2 men who want to do Paradise as a movie with Zelda + I. in the leading rolls. Do not think it best to start a novel until I recieve a large amount either from play or movie or stories and have plenty of liesure. Especially as The B.+D. was not a big financial success and Tales of the Jazz Age probably will not be.

In fact I'm rather discouraged. Our expenses seem to grow bigger and my earning capacity smaller. I wish to God The B.+D. would pass the 40,000 mark + don't understand why it doesn't. I still get clippings showing it in demand all over the country.

Zelda sends her best. Don't forget to answer all questions

As Ever. Scott Fitzg

Notes:

1 Fitzgerald had invested in a bond.

2 The Beautiful and Damned was published in Canada by Copp, Clark, and sold in Australia by Collins. This Side of Paradise was sold in Canada by Copp, Clark, and in Australia by Whitcombe & Tombs. Flappers and Philosophers was sold in Canada by Copp, Clark, and in Australia by Whitcombe & Tombs.

89. TO: Maxwell Perkins

July 1922

White Bear Lake, Minnesota

ALS, 1 p. Princeton University

Dear Mr. Perkins:

Enclosed are the revised proofs. If you have the other set I corrected please them so that there will be no confusion. I'm sorry I've had to do this. Please charge me with whatever it costs. I think that with the title, the jacket + the table of contents the Jazz Age will get a lot of publicity and may sell ten or fifteen thousand copies.1 I don't suppose such an assorted bill-of-fare as these eleven stories, novellettes, plays + 1 burlesque has ever been served up in one book before in the history of publishing.

You mentioned in one letter that you did not like the type arrangement of The Table of Contents.2 I think myself that there is something the matter with it—but I think the trouble proceeds from too many story titles + section titles. And I doubt if it could be repaired except by leaving out the section titles which of course I don't want to do.

As Ever.
F Scott Fitzgerald

Notes:

1 The first printing was 8,000 copies, followed by two printings in 1922; the total number of copies is not known.

2 Fitzgerald wrote humorous annotations for the contents page.

90. TO: Maxwell Perkins

Mid-July 1922

The Yatch Club, White Bear Lake.

ALS, 1 p. Princeton University

Dear Mr. Perkins:

Glad you liked the addenda to the Table of contents. I feel quite confident the book will go. How do you think The Love Legend will sell? You'll be glad to know that nothing has come of the movie idea + I'm rather glad myself. At present I'm working on my play—the same one. Trying to arrange for an Oct. production in New York. Bunny Wilson (Edmund Wilson Jr.) says that it's without doubt the best American comedy to date (that's just between you and me.)

Did you see that in that Literary Digest contest I stood 6th among the novelists? Not that it matters. I suspect you of having been one of the voters.

Will you see that the semi-yearly account is mailed to me by the 1st of the month—or before if it is ready? I want to see where I stand. I want to write something new—something extraordinary and beautiful and simple + intricately patterned.

As Usual
F Scott Fitzgerald

91. To Fitzgerald

August 2, 1922

Dear Fitzgerald:

The proof girl—the girl you admired for hirsute reasons—the girl someone said looked like 'a lighted match'—whose mind is preoccupied with tennis racquets and bathing suits just now—sent those galleys back to the press instead of to you;24 so they went into pages and you will so see them and are justified in making free with corrections.

But here is a matter: will you omit “Tarquin of Cheapside?” I never before read it and I think it would shock many people not because of the particular crime recorded, but because of the identity of the man accused of it.+ The crime is a peculiarly repugnant one for it involves violence, generally requires unconsciousness, is associated with negroes. All this would make no difference, or little, if the story were artistically convincing: I don't think it is. The narrative is not adequate to the ending. The poem, with its philosophical beginning and all, does not suggest (I think) the psychology of an author in the situation you present. Anyhow, this is my view,—for your consideration, if you will give it.

As ever,

Notes:

+ William Shakespeare, who is depicted as a rapist.

24. In an undated letter, written late in July, Fitzgerald had confirmed the fact that several of the proof sheets of Tales of the Jazz Age had never reached him and asked Perkins why this was so.

92. To Perkins

The Yatch Club, White Bear Lake, Minn

[ca. August 12, 1922]

Dear Mr. Perkins -

I've labored over these proofs for a week and feel as if I never want to see a short story again. Thanks [for] the information about Canadian and Australian publishers. You ought to penalize the lighted-match-girl twenty yards.

Now as to Tarquin of Cheapside. It first appeared in the Nassau Literary Magazine at Princeton and Katherine Fullerton Gerrould reviewing the issue for the Daily Princetonian gave it high praise, called it “beautifully written” and tickled me with the first public praise my writing has ever had. When Mencken printed it in the Smart set it drew letters of praise from George O'Niell, the poet and Zoe Akins. Structurally it is almost perfect and next to The Off-Shore Pirate I like it better than any story I have ever written.

If you insist I will cut it out though very much against my better judgement and Zelda's. It was even starred by O'Brien* in his year book of the short story and mentioned by Blanche Colton Williams in the preface to the last O. Henry Memorial Collection. Please tell me what you think.

As to another matter. My play, Gabriel's Trombone** is now in the hands of Arthur Hopkins. It is, I think, the best American comedy to date & undoubtedly the best thing I have ever written. Noting that Harpers are serializing “The Intimate Strangers”, a play by Booth Tarkington I wonder if Scribners Magazine would be interested in serializing Gabriel's Trombone that is, of course, on condition that it is to be produced this fall. Will you let me know about this or shall I write Bridges.

Also, last but not least, I have not yet recieved a statement from you. I am awfully hard up. I imagine there's something over $1000.00 still in my favor. Anyways will you deposit a $1000.00 for me when you recieve this letter. If there's not that much due me will you charge off the rest as advance on Tales of the Jazz Age? After my play is produced I'll be rich forever and never have to bother you again.

Also let me know about the Tarquin matter & about Gabriel's Trombone.

As Ever

P.S. Thanks for the Fair & Co. check.

Notes:

* Edward O'Brien, who annually published a collection of the year's best short fiction which had originally appeared in magazines and used a system of stars to rate other outstanding stories which he did not reprint.

** Afterward, The Vegetable.

Also Turnbull.

93. To Fitzgerald

August 15, 1922.

Dear Fitzgerald:

I enclose herewith royalty report due on August 1st, and as I wired yesterday, I have deposited the money in your bank.

I'm mightily interested to hear about the play. It would be most unusual if we should publish a play in Scribner's, but we have no rule against it and would like to consider the possibility. I'll tell you,—send it to me for I'm eager to read it, and let me take it up with Mr. Bridges. Perhaps you haven't a copy now but whenever you can give me one. We'll see what can be done.

As for “Tarquin”, I have left it in. If it has not affected those you name in the way I feared it certainly should please the public. My objections anyway are in a sense extraneous to the story. They simply arise from the fact that people have a sort of reverence for Shakespeare, although of course they know that he was none too well behaved.

As ever,

94. To Fitzgerald

 [ca. December 26, 1922]

COMMENT ON “FROST”25

(To save space I've omitted most of the “I thinks,” “It seems to mes,” and “I may be wrong buts”: they should, however, be understood)

I've read your play three times and I think more highly of its possibilities on the third reading than ever before;—but I am also more strongly convinced that these possibilities are far from being realized on account of the handling of the story in the second act. The reader feels, at the end, confused and unsatisfied:—the underlying motive of the play has not been sent home. And yet this motive, or idea, has been sufficiently perceived to prevent the play from being a sheer burlesque, like a comic opera. In the second act it seems to me that you yourself have almost thought it was that.

The underlying idea, a mighty good one, is expressed, or should be, in the story of Jerry Frost.

God meant Jerry to be a good egg and a postman; but having been created, in a democratic age, Free and Equal, he was persuaded that he ought to want to rise in the world and so had become a railroad clerk against his taste and capacity, and thought he ought to want to become President. He is therefore very unhappy, and so is his wife, who holds the same democratic doctrine.

Your story shows, or should, that this doctrine is sentimental bunk; and to do this is worthwhile because the doctrine is almost universal: Jerry and his wife are products of a theory of democracy which you reduce to the absurd. The idea is so good that if you hold to it and continuously develop it, your play, however successful simply as fun, will be deeply significant as well.

Moreover, the means you have selected to develop the idea are superb—the bootlegger, the super-jag his concoction induces, Jerry thereby becoming President, etc. (and dreams have a real validity nowadays on account of Freud). In fact all your machinery for expressing the idea is exactly in the tune of the time and inherently funny and satirical.

But when you come to the second act, which is the critical point in the play, and so in the expression of your idea, you seem to lose sense of your true motive. Partly, this is because you have three motives here, the main motive of Jerry's story and its meaning, and two subordinate motives—(1) of conveying through the fantastic visions and incidents which are the stuff of a dream caused by a 1923 prohibition brew, the sense of a comic nightmare, and (2) of satirizing the general phenomena of our national scene. You have, I think, simply got more or less lost in the maze of these three motives by a failure to follow the green line of the chief one—Jerry's actual story, or that stage of it which shows him that he doesn't want to be President. Satirize as much as you can, the government, the army, and everything else, and be as fantastic as you please, but keep one eye always on your chief motive. Throughout the entire wild second act there should still be a kind of wild logic.

Aside then from imparting in this act the sense of a dream, you are using the difficult weapon of double edged satire—you are satirizing the conception held by Jerry and his like of the High Offices of President, Secretary of the Treasury, etc., and you are at the same time satirizing those high offices themselves. You begin excellently by making all the appertenances of the Presidency, like the house, white; and the behavior of Jerry's wife and sister-in-law are all within the scope of your purpose. The conduct of Dada as Secretary of the Treasury seems as though it ought to be a fine piece of two edged satire cutting both against the popular idea of the business of that official and against the official himself as he usually is, but the psychology of it is not made quite comprehensible; and the best instance of double satire is seen when General Pushing appears with fifer and drummer and medals—that is just the right note. Why couldn't you do the same for bankers, and senators, etc.?

Maybe I can better express what I mean by examples. The selection of so obscure a man as Jerry for President is itself the stuff of satire in view of present political methods, and much could be made of it. The coffin episode as you use it results as things do in a dream from Jerry's talk with Fish etc. and so it helps to give the sense of a dream, and that is all it does. But suppose coffins were being cornered by “The He-Americans Bloodred Preparedness League” as a preparedness measure, and that this was tied up with General Pushing's feeling that a war was needed:—that would be a hit at extravagant patriotism and militarism as well as having its present value as part of a dream. Suppose the deal over the Buzzard Isles resulted in the Impeachment of Jerry—what a chance that would give to treat the Senate as you have the general and the Army, and also to bring Jerry's affairs to a climax. You could have Jerry convicted, and then (as a hit at a senatorial filibuster) you could have his party place the Stutz-Mozart Ourangatang Band outside the Capitol (it would have appeared for the wedding of Fish), and every time the Justices of the Supreme Court began in chorus to pronounce the sentence, Stutz-Mozart would strike up the National Anthem in syncopated time and everyone would have to stand at attention. At present, the narrative of the second act lacks all logic; the significance of the approaching end of the world eludes me,—except as a dreamer's way of getting release from a desperate situation.

I've now used a great many words to make this single point:—each part of the second act should do three things—add to the quality of a fantastic dream, satirize Jerry and his family as representing a large class of Americans, and satirize the government or army or whatever institution is at the moment in use. And my only excuse for all this verbiage is, that so good in conception is your motive, so true your characters, so splendidly imaginative your invention, and so altogether above the mere literary the whole scheme, that no one could help but greatly desire to see it all equalled in execution. If it were a comparative trifle, like many a short story, it wouldn't much matter.26

Notes:

25. Although unsigned, this “Comment” is probably by Perkins. On December 26th, he wrote Fitzgerald, “I wrote out some comments on the play [later published as The Vegetable] and I would like to see you about them.”

26. In an undated reply to this analysis, Fitzgerald agreed that “Jerry's political enemies should not despise him—they should think of the poor ineffectual egg as a dangerous, vicious man—letting the audience themselves discover this is harmless.”

95. To Perkins

[January 1923]

IDEAS FOR “FROST” *

Cover by John Held—Either

(1) Cover something like the Jazz Age, with a different color background and little figures—Dada, Jerry, Doris, Charlotte, Fish, Snooks and Gen Pershing scattered over it

or (2) A Jazz picture of the proposed set for Scene I, Act II—with small figures of the principles in a characteristic scene on the lawn of the White House

****

Book bound, of course, like my others & made thick. It must be more than 40,000 words long and it seems to me could be made as thick as Gale's Lulu Bett which is only 30,000, rather than thin like the original thin edition of Ethan Fromme which is about the same length.

*******

To be advertised, it seems to me rather as a book of humor, like the Parody outline of History or Seventeen than like a play—because of course it is written to be read.

*******

I suggest that I write a preface to it—we can discuss this immediately

********

To be printed, it seems to me, rather as “Dulcy” was printed than as a Shaw play is printed. I mean with lots of space. I havn't seen a Barrie play recently but I suppose your own method is probably the best. At any rate the way the typist has prepared this with the capitalizing of all “He's” ect. is all wrong as you'll see.

A page to be inserted, reading

By F. Scott Fitzgerald

Novels

This Side of Paradise

The Beautiful & Damned

Stories

Flappers & Philosophers

Tales of the Jazz Age

And a Comedy Frost

If its not too late I'd like the subtitle “or from President to postman” (note small p.) put on title page. At least it should be used in advertising.

On the next page is a suggested blurb to be used either on the back of the jacket if not too late or on a mimeographed loose notice put in the front of each book sent to a critic. If used on the back of the [jacket] it could be run together with the blurb you already have. I want to talk to you about this.

On second thoughts I have not mentioned Wilson or Nathan by name in the blurb. Their support will be more valuable later.

Incidently God help the poor typesetter!

Notes:

* Although undated and unsigned, this page is written in Fitzgerald's handwriting.

96. TO: Maxwell Perkins

January 1923

ALS, 1 p. Princeton University

Great Neck, Long Island

Great Necking

Dear Mr. Perkins:

Thanks for “The hole in the sky”—its supreme.1 Poor Andy. It opens up a vista—Jerry's2 political enemies should not despise him—they should think of the poor ineffectual egg as a dangerous, vicious man—letting the audience themselves discover this is harmless.

Just finished my first Hearsts story3 and am going to read Magic Lanterns4 last of this week.

You evidently forgot to inclose the vitagraph letter5

Sincerely Thine F Scott Fitz—

Notes:

1 Unidentified.

2 Jerry Frost in The Vegetable.

3 In December 1922 Fitzgerald contracted with the Hearst magazines for an option on his 1923 story output. The first story submitted was “Dice, Brass Knuckles & Guitar,” Hearst's International (May 1923).

4 A 1923 collection of plays by Louise Saunders, Perkins' wife, published by Scribners.

5 Vitagraph was a movie company.

97. TO: Maxwell Perkins

Early 1923

ALS, 2 pp. Princeton University

Great Neck, Long Island

Dear Mr. Perkins:

I read Jackolanterns1 and enjoyed it enormously—while I don't think [Jackolanterns] is a very good selling title I've wracked my brains to think of a better one which would convey the spirit of the plays, and without success.

It really is an excellent book—quite Dunsanyesque: I liked them in the following order

(1) King + Commoner

(all except the “jester” part which seemed a little obvious

(2) Poor Maddalena

(3) Our kind

(which I had read before in the S.S.)

It strikes me as being enormously witty

(4) Figureheads

(5) See-saw (which I didn't like nearly so well as the others.

If the plays had been on the order of Our Kind as I thought they were, I would certainly have reccomended a Shavian title—but as the proportions of fantasies are three to two the name has got to be in keeping with them.

It seems to me they ought to sell, but of course they'll be in competition with these three anthologies of one-acters which I see are on the market. As in the case of the Dunsany things an attempt to sell them by Babbitry would merely vulgarize them.

“Saunders hits bull's eye with red-blooded fantasy.”

—So I am out of my province. I've enjoyed reading them immensely + want to talk to you about them when I come in this week.

Sincerely
F Scott Fitzgerald

Notes:

1 Magic Lanterns.

98. To Perkins

6 Pleasant Ave. Montgomery, Ala.

[ca. March 1923}

Dear Mr. Perkins:

I'm awfully curious to hear any new opinions on the book* so when Whitney Darrow or anyone else who hasn't read it, reads it, do let me know. I expect to be here about a week or 10 days longer. I'm working on the “treatment” + of This Side of Paradise. They've paid me $1000. and are to pay $9000. more on delivery of this so I'm anxious to get it down by the first.

I'll want two extra galley proofs of the play if its convenient, to send to the managers.

I have a few changes for Act III, bits of polyphonic prose that I'm going to insert. Its good weather here but I'm rather miserable and depressed about life in general. Being in this town where the emotions of my youth culminated in one emotion makes me feel old and tired. I doubt if, after all I'll ever write anything again worth putting in print.

As Ever

Notes:

* Fitzgerald's play The Vegetable, which Scribners published in May of 1923.

+ For the movies.

99. To Perkins

Great Neck.

[ca. November 5, 1923]

Dear Max:

I have got myself into a terrible mess. As you know for the past month I have been coming every day to the city to rehearsals** and then at night writing and making changes on the last act and even on the first two. Its in shape at last and everybody around the theatre who has seen it says its a great hit. I put aside the novel three weeks ago and wrote a short story but it was done under such pressure that it shows it and Hovey* doesn't want it. I am so hard pressed now for time trying to write another for him that I'm not even going [to] the Harvard Princeton game Saturday. The show opens in Atlantic City a week from Monday.

I went up to the American Play Company yesterday and tried to get some money on the grounds that the show was in rehearsal. They sighed and moaned a little but said firmly that it was against their rules.

I'm at the end of my rope—as the immortal phrase goes. I owe the Scribner Company something over $3,500.00 even after deducting the reprint money from the Beautiful and Damned. I owed them more than that before the B. & D. was published but that was garanteed by the book being actually in your hands.

Could this be done. Could I assign the 1st royalty payments on the play to you to be paid until the full amount be cleared up? I meant to pay some of it if there was a margin anyhow on account of the delay in the novel. But this would at least garantee it.

What I need to extricate myself from the present hole is $650.00 which will carry me to the 15th when Hovey will have my next story. And the only grounds on which I can ask for this additional is for me to assign you those rights up to the figure outstanding and to include also the interest on the whole amount I owe you.

If I don't in some way get $650 in the bank by Wedensday morning I'll have to pawn the furniture. Under the assignment of the royalties to you the full amount would be paid back at between 500.00 and 1,100.00 a week before January 15th.

I don't even dare come up there personally but for God's sake try to fix it.

Yours in Horror

Notes:

** Of his play The Vegetable.

* Carl Hovey, editor of Metropolitan Magazine.

Also Turnbull.

100. Menu with Ring Lardner's Stories

11 December 1923

Notes:

Annotations by Fitzgerald and Perkins in the menu of the Hotel Chatham restaurant during preparations for Ring Lardner's How To Write Short Stories collection (1924). Fitzgerald listed possible titles and selections on the back of the menu. The note on "Good for the Soul" is in Perkins' hand.

101. To Fitzgerald

Jan. 25, 1924

Dear Scott:

We have now these stories by Ring Lardner: *

The Facts

A Caddy's Diary

Some Like Them Cold

Champion

“Along Came Ruth”

A Frame-Up

Golden Honeymoon

That is, two stories about prize fighters, one about baseball, one about golf, and two not about sport at all. This would make quite a representative collection. There is a good deal of variety too in the nature of the stories. “Champion” is a grim story almost. “Some Like Them Cold,” about a flirtation, while exceedingly funny, is at the same time piercing;—at least I found it so. It is much more than a funny story. “The Facts” is simply exceedingly amusing, but it is not told in the manner of the baseball stories. “A Caddy's Diary” is more the same sort of story as “Some Like Them Cold” but is not poignant. Taken all together these stories show various sides of Ring Lardner's talent. They include two of the three Post stories I have been trying to get. And the only reason I haven't got the third is that the date he gave me was evidently incorrect for I got the number and found no story. These stories would line up very well with that preface he gave us.

I have read “The Big Town”* and liked it greatly and I have looked over “Symptoms of Being 35”* with great amusement. But “My Four Weeks in France”* was not so good. I wish you would come in and talk about this matter some time soon. I would like to take up with Mr. Scribner the matter of publishing a book of stories right off.

As ever,

Notes:

* Fitzgerald had recommended that Scribners and Perkins look at Ring Lardner's stories with the object of publishing them in a collected volume.

* These are additional pieces by Lardner.

WHO'S WHO

Charles Scribner’s Sons. Founded by the first Charles Scribner in 1846, the firm achieved literary prestige under Charles Scribner II, president from 1879 to 1928. During the 1920s editor Maxwell Perkins altered the reputation of the House of Scribner from a conservative publisher to a firm receptive to innovative work. See Charles Scribner III, A History of Charles Scribner’s Sons (Cleveland: Rowfant Club, 1985), and Charles Scribner, Jr., In the Web of Ideas (New York: Scribners, 1993).

Maxwell E. Perkins (1884–1947), editorial director at Charles Scribner’s Sons, was Fitzgerald’s generous friend and closest literary adviser. He fought for the publication of Fitzgerald’s first novel, This Side of Paradise, and thereafter provided encouragement and financial backing. At Scribners Perkins assembled a great stable of writers that included Ring Lardner, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe. His literary judgment and commitment to his writers have become legendary. See A. Scott Berg, Max Perkins: Editor of Genius (New York: Dutton/Congdon, 1978).

The letters of Perkins were published in:

These letters were first published in books:

Перевод: «Уважаемый Скотт / Уважаемый Макс»: Переписка писателя Ф. Скотта Фицджеральда и редактора Максуэлла Перкинса.

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