I'll Remember Her that Way

F. Scott Fitzgerald died in 1940, "believing himself to be a failure" (Bruccoli). He left behind him five novels, many short stories, and one daughter - Frances "Scottie" Fitzgerald. In her 1974 article "Notes About My Now-Famous Father" for Family Circle, Scottie attempted to explain the renewed interest in her father's work. She wrote, "people read him now for clues and guidelines, as if by understanding him and his beautiful and damned period, they could see more clearly what's wrong" (Smith). In the decadence of the Jazz Age, no one was interested in dissecting it, but in the painful aftermath Fitzgerald's cutting insight was finally appreciated.

But Fitzgerald did not write his stories just to warn society about its own shortcomings. Most of his plots are intensely personal. In The Great Gatsby, the title character is rebuffed by a rich girl in the same way that Fitzgerald himself was once rejected; in Tender Is the Night, hapless psychiatrist Dick Diver is powerless to save the woman he loves from her own insanity. For Fitzgerald, who had to watch his wife Zelda slowly slipping away until she had to be confined to a mental institution, this novel was more than mere symbolism.

One of the most poignant themes in much of his work is the relationship he portrays between fathers and daughters. In short stories like "Outside the Cabinet-Maker's" and "Babylon Revisited," he shows us sweetly and often doggedly devoted father figures. In Tender Is the Night, Nicole Diver's father is anything but a model of propriety, but he nevertheless has a profound influence on the unfolding of events. There is little doubt that Fitzgerald's feelings about his own wife and especially his daughter affected his writing: the three main father/daughter themes that run through Tender Is the Night and "Babylon Revisited" may be attributed to his own guilt, defensiveness, and deep affection for Scottie.

In "Babylon Revisited," American Charlie Wales has returned to France, finding his beloved city of Paris seemingly suffering from a mass hangover. Gone are the wild jazz parties and the throngs of expatriates living a carefree life; his friends have all left to find work, or treatment for their illnesses. All that remains is his daughter, Honoria, staying with Charlie's sister-in-law and her husband. As the story progresses we learn that the girl was taken into their custody after Charlie's wife, Helen, died of heart trouble - and after they had squandered all their money in the fever of 1920s Europe. Marion, Charlie's sister-in-law, does not believe that he's capable of caring for a child. She mistrusts him because of his wild lifestyle of the past, but also because of one particular incident in which he, suspecting that Helen had been cuckolding him, locked her out of the house. She wandered the streets in a pouring rain, finally ending up at Marion's house, where she collapsed and fell ill with pneumonia. Though there is no proof that this incident is connected with her death, Marion cannot forgive Charlie for his selfish and immature actions.

Charlie's near-desperate attempts to regain custody of his daughter echo Fitzgerald's own guilt about Scottie. Born in 1921, she was raised in the height of Fitzgerald and Zelda's reckless, party-dominated lifestyle. While Charlie literally lost his daughter to his own foolishness, it is likely that Fitzgerald felt he "lost" Scottie in the same way. In the story, Charlie pleads with Marion, "'but if we wait much longer I'll lose Honoria's childhood and my chance for a home.' He shook his head. 'I'll simply lose her, don't you see?'" ("Babylon Revisited" 556). The Fitzgeralds moved frequently, drank heavily, and often argued and fought. Even when all went well, the dissolute atmosphere was an unhealthy one for a little girl.

This is portrayed dramatically in the film version of Tender is the Night, directed by Henry King. Dick and Nicole's young daughter Topsy, growing thirsty in the night, finds the aftermath of one of her parents' parties and drinks enough champagne to seriously sicken herself. This is, perhaps, a melodramatic portrait of how a lifestyle like the Fitzgeralds' might have affected their daughter, but its point stands nonetheless.

The fatherly guilt expressed in the novel Tender Is the Night is more subtle. In it, Nicole Diver suffers from a profound mental instability that is traced to an incestuous encounter with her father. As he describes it, "people used to say what a wonderful father and daughter we were - they used to wipe their eyes. We were just like lovers - and then all at once we were lovers - and ten minutes after it happened I could have shot myself - except I guess I'm such a Goddamned degenerate I didn't have the nerve to do it" (Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night 129). There is no indication that Scottie Fitzgerald was ever treated with anything but proper fatherly affection, and any suggestions to the contrary go against what is known about the family. However, the entirety of this novel rests on the profound effect fathers can have on their daughters. Naïve actress Rosemary, through whose eyes we see the first third of the story, stars in a film called Daddy's Girl despite the fact that her own father is notably absent from the narrative. She begins to fall for Dick Diver because of the protection and paternal comfort he can offer her - after he does little more than calm her fears upon seeing a dead body, Fitzgerald says that "she adored him for saving her" (Tender is the Night 112). Both important female characters, Nicole and Rosemary, are attracted to Dick for the same reason: they lack the proper father figures in their lives. As a doctor, he radiates the avuncular spirit they hunger for.

To Nicole, too much fatherly attention was paid; to "Babylon Revisited's" Honoria, not enough. But the parallels between them exist nonetheless. While Honoria is described as rapidly losing her childhood, Nicole once smiles at Dick with "a moving childish smile that was like all the lost youth in the world" (Tender is the Night 134). Both woman and girl are forced to grow up too quickly, without fathers to guide them. When reflecting upon Scottie's upbringing, Fitzgerald most likely realized that what he had not done might have even more effect than what he had.

Along with guilt, excuses invariably come. Defensiveness is an undertone in both of these stories; in "Babylon Revisited," Charlie has such a dramatic fight with Helen that she dies and Honoria is taken away. Fitzgerald might easily have comforted himself with the notion that things never advanced quite so far in his own family. Despite his failings as a husband and father, he was not even remotely to blame for Zelda's insanity, and Scottie never had to be taken away from him. Similarly, in Tender is the Night, a father allows himself to become too close to his daughter. In leading up to the distasteful revelation, Nicole's father explains how he began to think of her as a substitute for his dead wife: "After her mother died when she was little she used to come into my bed every morning, sometimes she'd sleep in my bed. I was so sorry for the little thing. Oh, after that, whenever we went places in an automobile or a train we used to hold hands. She used to sing to me. We used to say, 'Now let's not pay any attention to anybody else this afternoon - let's just have each other - or this morning you're mine'" (Tender is the Night 129).

Though Fitzgerald may have felt he missed Scottie's childhood, at least he never traumatized her.

The most poignant and noticeable of all Fitzgerald's fatherly sentiments is his deep affection for his daughter. We know of this through many letters and postcards he wrote to her, some of them including cartoons and stories. But it is also expressed in his fiction. In "Babylon Revisited," Charlie wants very badly to defend his honor against Marion's subtle attacks. But he resists lashing out at her: "keep your temper, he told himself. You don't want to be justified. You want Honoria" ("Babylon Revisited" 556). He cares deeply for his daughter; when two reckless friends of Charlie's drop in unannounced on Marion and her husband, ruining any chances of her learning to trust him again, Charlie realizes he will probably never regain his little girl. "There wasn't much be could do now except send Honoria some things; he would send her a lot of things tomorrow. He thought rather angrily that this was just money - he had given so many people money..." The same affection is evident in his tender portrayal of both women in Tender is the Night, who, despite their faults, are really just children trying to survive in a grown-up world.

F. Scott Fitzgerald became a symbol for a generation. Understanding and even idolizing the man became so common that it was parodied, as in the song "Ballad of a Thin Man" by Bob Dylan:

You've been with the professors

And they've all liked your looks

With great lawyers you have

Discussed lepers and crooks

You've been through all of

F. Scott Fitzgerald's books

You're very well read

It's well known

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

(Dylan)

But Fitzgerald didn't write so that his friends and neighbors would realize the follies of their ways - he wrote in an attempt to awaken himself from a sluggish, subtle nightmare. His most profound regrets about his life and his daughter can be found not in letters or in painfully self-flagellant essays like "The Crack-Up," but tucked away in his fiction like a purloined letter.

Works Cited

Bruccoli, Matthew J. "A Brief Life of Fitzgerald." 2003. University of Southern California. 25 March 2006 .

Dylan, Bob. "Ballad of a Thin Man." Highway 61 Revisited. Columbia, 1965.

"F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great American Dreamer." Biography. Videocassette, A&E, 1997.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. "Babylon Revisited." 548-563.

_______. Tender Is the Night. New York: Scribner, 1995.

Joseph, Tiffany. "Non-Combatant's Shell-Shock: Trauma and Gender in F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night." NWSA Journal 15.3 (2003) 64-81

The Last Time I Saw Paris. Dir. Richard Brooks. Perf. Van Heflin, Elizabeth Taylor, 1954. Videocasette.

Smith, Scottie Fitzgerald. "Notes About My Now-Famous Father." Family Circle (May 1974): 118-20.

Tender is the Night. Dir. Henry King. Perf. Jason Robards and Jennifer Jones. 1962. Videocassette.