This week Baz Luhrmann’s bold, bright and brash re-working of F Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel The Great Gatsby bursts on to cinema screens here in the UK. In bookshops, the author’s iconic wife – Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald is also getting plenty of attention, as no less than three new works of fiction and a graphic novel about her are published this month.
Mrs Fitzgerald fascinates me. The Southern belle who grew up to be the Queen of the Jazz Age; the muse of many and mistress to her husband’s demons. Adored by an emerging generation of flappers and despised by her husband’s lit- set, she struggled for a creative identity of her own. At thirty, she suffered her first nervous breakdown and was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Never fully to recover, she spent the rest of her life in and out of institutions. She died tragically in a hospital fire aged just forty seven.
Back in 2011, when I started to research my book, my husband and I embarked on a colossal literary pilgrimage through the Deep South. After catching up with friends and the haunts of Margaret Mitchell in Atlanta, our first stop on the tour- proper was Montgomery, Alabama; birthplace of Zelda and one time home to America’s first ‘It’ couple.
The Fitzgerald Museum, Montgomery, AL
Top of my Montgomery itinerary was a visit to the F Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum – a literary and artistic treasure trove tucked away amongst the winding wisteria and neatly manicured lawns of the city’s Garden District. It was here I met museum director, Willie Thompson.
A few weeks ago, when I came to write an article on the renewal of interest in Zelda for the Wales Arts Review, as well as speaking to two of the authors of the recent releases, I knew I had to take the story back to Zelda’s beginning, and to the curator of her legacy. You can read that article – ‘Gatsby’s Gal: The Reinvention of Zelda Fitzgerald’ here.
And here is my interview with F Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum director Willie Thompson in full.
Scott and Zelda are one of the most important “literary” couples America ever boasted. That Montgomery, Alabama is home to the only museum in the world dedicated to preserving their memory is unusual – seeing as Scott, who was the more prolific artist of the two, was from St. Paul, Minnesota. But Zelda’s pre-eminence in Montgomery and her popularity in the state (especially among the young servicemen of WWI) while she was still in high school, coupled with the fact that her family was one of the most prominent families here when she and Scott met, as well as the fact that the museum exists in the last house that they lived in in together – justifies the location. The story started here, and it continues to be remembered here.
The museum is host to the world’s second largest collection of Zelda’s paintings (the largest being with her family) Aside from first-editions and various manuscripts of many of their works, we have a great deal of minutia, including Zelda’s long-stemmed cigarette holder, original photographs of the couple throughout the course of their lives, various “flapper” ornaments that Zelda created: painted-perfume bottles, marble-topped tables from the Sayre household, letters between the famous couple, as well as letters to their daughter Scottie and to Hemingway. The house, however, is the most important artefact. This is where Scott and Zelda hoped to “settle” and it is the last house they lived in together before Zelda’s long bout with mental illness throughout the 30s.
In honour of the Halloween Party that Zelda threw for Scottie here in October 1931, we host one of our own every year. Although we don’t buy the town out of kite twine to create an enormous spider web out of the house and yard as Zelda did, we do play off a 20’s theme. We also have a Christmas Open house, where we try to bring in a prominent speaker or author, and we celebrate Zelda’s birthday every July 24th. Our largest party, however, is our Annual Gala and Auction, which occurs in the first week of March every year. It’s a giddy affair. Last winter we had over 300 guests – all dressed in their flapper best – two bands, three bars, and a whole lot of tom-foolery. It’s grand.
Of all the other countries in the world, Italians and the French are the most interested in Scott and Zelda. But Europe doesn’t have a monopoly on international interest in the ‘Jazz Age darlings.’ Every year we have visitors from every continent, and we’re seeing a large increase in Australians this year. We haven’t done any clinical research, but it might have something to do with the new Gatsby movie. Our head count is more than double what it was in the first quarter of last year.
I’ve personally never met anyone who knew Scott and Zelda as a couple, but I’ve met several who knew Zelda in the 1940s (they were children at the time). Scott and Zelda’s daughter, Scottie, had many friends in Montgomery. Unfortunately, there are few left. Scottie’s best friend in Montgomery, Dodgy Schaeffer who accompanied Scottie to Paris on several occasions, to revisit places from her childhood passed away on this last year.
Partly due to her upbringing, her genetic predisposition to mental illness, to Scott’s literary prominence, and partly due to her own refusal to “act normal,” Zelda failed to reach the artistic professionalism she was capable of in her own time period. I do think we’re seeing people who want to help her reach it now. Personally, I find it a little strange. Zelda was one of the most popular celebrities of her day (until mental illness struck), so I have a hard time calling it a “revival.” A “revisiting” might be more like it. If Zelda had been able to produce more substantial work of literary or artistic merit, I don’t think you’d see as many fictionalizations as you have of her life today. Scott’s not getting that sort of treatment. But the early twentieth century certainly wasn’t an easy time to be a prominent female, so maybe it’s warranted that authors are taking her side. What’s good for either Scott or Zelda is good for their legacy, but I find it hard to focus on one without the other.
80 Tales Around The World 