Letter To Frances Newman
from F. Scott Fitzgerald
38 West 59th Street New York City
February 26, 1921
My dear Miss Newman:
While it astonished me that so few critics mentioned the influence of Sinister Street on This Side of Paradise, I feel sure that it was much more in intention than in literal fact. It occurred to me to write an American version of the history of that sort of young man—in which, no doubt, I was hindered by lack of perspective as well as by congenital shortcomings.
But I was also hindered by a series of resemblances between my life and that of Michael Fane which, had I been a more conscientious man, might have precluded my ever attempting an autobiographical novel. I have five copies of Youth's Encounter at present in my library, sent me by people who stumbled on the book and thought that it was an amazing parallel to my own life. When I was twenty-one and began This Side of Paradise my literary taste was so unformed that Youth's Encounter was still my “perfect book.” My book quite naturally shows the influence to a marked degree. However, I resent your details. Both Shane Leslie in the Dublin Review and Maurice Francis Egan in the Catholic World took me to task for painting “Monsignor Darcy” from the life. He was, of course, my best friend, the Monsignor Sigourney Fay to whom the book was dedicated. He was known to many Catholics as the most brilliant priest in America. The letters in the book are almost transcriptions of his own letters to me.
Amory Blaine's mother was also an actual character, the mother of a friend of mine, whose name I cannot mention. There is such an obvious connection between her early career and that of the cook in Youth's Encounter that I appreciate your pointing it out. You see I object to being twice blamed—once for transcribing a character from life and once for stealing him from another author. I have had numerous comments from Princeton about putting J-----1 into the book as “Thomas P. D'Invilliers,” and now I am told that I borrowed the dilettante aesthete Wilmot from Mackenzie. “Spires and Gargoyles” was possibly suggested by “Dreaming Spires” but the terms “slicker” and “big men” were in use at Princeton when I first went there—before Youth's Encounter was written.
It seems to me that you have marred a justified criticism by such pettinesses as comparing the names “Blaine” and “Fane,” and by remarking on the single occurrence of the word “narcissus” in Sinister Street. You seem to be unconscious that even Mackenzie had his sources such as Dorian Gray and None Other Gods and that occasionally we may have drunk at the same springs. Incidentally Michael's governess did not tease him about G. A. Henty.
This is the first letter of any kind I have ever written to a critic of my book and I shall probably regret this one before the day is over. I sent the novel to Mencken with the confession that it derived itself from Mackenzie, Wells and Tarkington, with half a dozen additional overtones, but there are comparisons you brought up that make me as angry as my book evidently made you. It is as if I accused Floyd Dell of being a plagiarist because both our mooncalfs wrote poetry and both walked toward a dark town at the last, whispering of their lost loves—or said that Cabell's Jurgen is an imitation of The Revolt of the Angels, or even, to use another Tristan and Irene comparison, compared your article with p. 138 of Mencken's Prejudices, 1st Series.
Yours very truly,
F. Scott Fitzgerald
1 John Peale Bishop.
Published in books: Frances Newman's Letters (1929); also in The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald ed. by A. Turnbull (1963).