From a sanitarium where she was being treated for schizophrenia, Zelda Fitzgerald writes to her husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald, lamenting her inability to care for him as she once did.
ALS, 4pp. Princeton University
Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital
Towson, Maryland
June 1935
Dearest and always
Dearest Scott:
I am sorry too that there should be nothing to greet you but an empty shell. The thought of the effort you have made over me, the suffering this nothing has cost would be unendurable to any save a completely vacuous mechanism. Had I any feelings they would all be bent in gratitude to you and in sorrow that of all my life there should not even be the smallest relic of the love and beauty that we started with to offer you at the end.
You have been so good to me—and all I can say is that there was always that deeper current running through my heart: my life—you.
You remember the roses in Kinneys yard—you were so gracious and I thought “he is the sweetest person in the world” and you said “darling.” You still are. The wall was damp and mossy when we crossed the street and said we loved the south. I thought of the south and a happy past I’d never had and I thought I was part of the south. You said you loved this lovely land. The wistaria along the fence was green and the shade was cool and life was old.
—I wish I had thought something else—but it was a confederate, a romantic and nostalgic thought. My hair was damp when i took off my hat and I was safe and home and you were glad that I felt that way and you were reverent. We were gold and happy all the way home.
Now that there isn’t any more happiness and home is gone and there isn’t even any past and no emotions but those that were yours where there could be any comfort—it is a shame that we should have met in harshness and coldness where there was once so much tenderness and so many dreams. Your song.
I wish you had a little house with hollyhocks and a sycamore tree and the afternoon sun imbedding itself in a silver tea-pot. Scottie would be running about somewhere in white, in Renoir, and you will be writing books in dozens of volumes. And there will be honey still for tea, though the house should not be in Granchester—
I want you to be happy—if there were justice you would be happy—maybe you will be anyway—
Oh, Do-Do
Do-Do—
Zelda.
I love you anyway—even if there isn’t any me or any love or even any life—
I love you.
FURTHER READING
“Babylon Revisited,” F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1931 short story said to be based on his failing relationship with Zelda, can be found here.
For a review of this summer’s novels about Zelda Fitzgerald, click here.