Dearest love.
Scott
Of course you can count on going South in September. We could even meet you there.
And the editorial comment about your paintings was a real thrill to me. We must do something about that soon.
5121 Amestoy Avenue
Encino,
California August 4, 1939
Dearest:
Scottie arrives tomorrow and I hope she’ll enjoy the weeks out here. She doesn’t like heat much and of course this is subtropical but there is a pool nearby belonging to the landlord and as I wrote you there are boys from the East, at least for the present.
Perhaps I was unwise in telling her so succinctly that she had no home except Vassar. On the other hand, she doesn’t see the matter in relation to the past. When I tried to make a home for her she didn’t want it, and I have a sick-man’s feeling that she will arrive in a manner to break up such tranquillity as I have managed to establish after this illness. Perhaps she has changed - but this is the first time in many years that you yourself have expressed pleasure in her filial behavior. I, too, have had that, though in short doses, ever since the spring of 1934. Perhaps the very shortness of the doses has been the fault and I hope this visit will be a remedy.
In theory I tend to disagree with you about doing her harm to know where she stands. Scottie at her best is as she is now with a sense of responsibility and determination. She is at her absolute worst when she lies on her back and waves her feet in the air - so incapable of gratitude of things arranged for (the golf at Virginia Beach, for instance, or the moving picture stuff here, has been accepted as her natural right as a princess). I was sorry for the women of fifty who applied for that secretarial job in Baltimore in 1932 - who had never before in their lives found that a home can be precarious. But I am not particularly sorry for a youngster who is thrown on his own at 14 or so and has to make his way through school and college, the old sink or swim spirit - I suppose, au fond, the difference of attitude between the North and the old South.
Anyhow, we shall think of you and talk of you a lot and look forward to seeing you and wish you were with us. I will have done something by the time you get this about your expense money there. — Dearest love.
5521 Amestoy Avenue
Encino,
California August 18, 1939
Dearest Zelda:
Got your letter from Saluda. Will absolutely try to arrange the Montgomery trip early in September. Your letter made me sad, and I wish I could say ‘Yes, go where you want right away’ - but it doesn’t take into consideration the situation here. I will be much better able to grapple with the problem and with Dr Carroll two weeks from now. A severe illness like mine is liable to be followed by a period of shaky morale and at the moment I am concerned primarily with keeping us all alive and comfortable. I’m working on a picture at Universal and the exact position is that if I can establish their confidence in the next week that I am of value on this job it will relieve financial pressure through the fall and winter.
Scottie is very pleasant and, within the limits of her age, very cooperative to date - on the other hard, she’s one more responsibility, as she learns to drive and brings me her work and this summer there is no Helen Hayes to take her on a glamor tour of Hollywood. All of which boils down to the fact that my physical energy is at an absolute minimum without being definitely sick and I’ve got to conserve this for my work. I am as annoyed at the unreliability of the human body as you are at the vagaries of the nervous system. Please believe always that I am trying to do my best for us all. I have many times wished that my work was of a mechanical sort that could be done or delegated irrespective of morale, for I don’t want or expect happiness for myself - only pence enough to keep us all going. Put your happiness I want exceedingly, just as I wart Scottie’s safety.
I am writing Dr Carroll a long letter in a week’s time of which I will send you a carbon. I have already written Dr Suitt about the swimming.
With dearest love,
Scott
5521 Amestoy Avenue
Encino,
California October 6, 1939
Dearest Zelda:
Living in the flotsam of the international situation as we all are, work has been difficult. I am almost penniless - I’ve done stories for Esquire because I’ve had no time for anything else with $100.00 bank balances. You will remember it took me an average of six weeks to get the mood of a Saturday Evening Post story.
But everything may be all right tomorrow. As I wrote you - or did I? - friends sent Scottie back to college. That seemed more important than any pleasure for you or me. There is still two hundred dollars owing on her tuition - and I think I will probably manage to find it somewhere.
After her, you are my next consideration; I was properly moved by your mother’s attempt to send for you - but not enough to go overboard. For you to go on your first excursion without a nurse, without money, without even enough to pay your fare back, when Dr Carroll is backing you, and when Scottie and I are almost equally as helpless in the press of circumstances as you - well, it is the ruse of a clever old lady whom I respect and admire and who loves you dearly but not wisely —
I ask only this of you - leave me in peace with my hemorrhages and my hopes, and what eventually will fight through as the right to save you, the permission to give you a chance.
Your life has been a disappointment, as mine has been too. But we haven’t gone through this sweat for nothing. Scottie has got to survive and this is the most important year of her life.
With dearest love always,
Scott
5521 Amestoy Avenue
Encino,
California January 31, 1940
Dearest Zelda:
The article arrived and from a first brief glance I shall say that it is going to be rather difficult to sell. However, I will read it thoroughly tonight and report. Even a very intellectual magazine like the Forum or the Atlantic Monthly prefers their essays to contain some certain number of anecdotes or some dialogue or some cohesive and objective events. Of course, you might claim that vour whole article was conversation and in a sense it is, but it is one person’s conversation and thus does not contain much conflict. However, I think it is damn good considering that your pen has been rusty for so long. Shall I suggest you some ideas which yoa might handle with more chance of realizing on them? Tell me.
Dear, I know no one in Asheville except a couple of secretaries and nurses and the clerks at the hotel. I was ill at the time I was there and confined to mv room most of the time so I have no idea how you would make business contacts. This seems to be a great year for art and I wish you would drop a line to Cary Ross or someone about your new paintings and see if there is some interest. That would be a more practical way of getting things in motion than taking up something you’re unfamiliar with.
All is the same here. I think I have a job for next week. I know I’ve finished a pretty good story - the first one adequate to the Post in several years. It was a hard thing to get back to. My God, what a fund of hope and belief I must have had in the old days! As I say, I will write you more about the story tomorrow.
Dearest love.
Scott
5521 Amestoy Avenue
Encino,
California February 6, 1940
Dearest Zelda:
I understand your attitude completely and sympathize with it to a great extent. But the mood which considers any work beneath their talents doesn’t especially appeal to me in other people,