Born 117 years ago today in St. Paul, Minnesota, F. Scott Fitzgerald, that somewhat louche denizen—some might say inventor—of the “Jazz Age,” has been immortalized as the tender young man we see above: Princeton dropout, writer of The Great Gatsby, boozy companion to beautiful Southern belle flapper Zelda Sayre. Amidst all the glamorization of his best and worst qualities, it’s easy to forget that Fitzgerald was also the father of a daughter, Frances Scott Fitzgerald, who went on to have her own successful career as a writer. Unlike the children of some of Fitzgerald’s contemporaries, Frances thrived, which must be some testament to her father’s parenting (and to Zelda’s as well, though she allegedly hoped, like Daisy Buchanan, that her daughter would become a “beautiful little fool”).
We get more than a hint of Fitzgerald’s fatherly character in a wonderful little letter that he sent to her in August of 1933, when Frances was away at summer camp. Fitzgerald, renowned for his extremes, counsels an almost Epicurean middle way—distilling, perhaps, hard lessons learned during his decline in the thirties (which he wrote of candidly in “The Crack Up”). He concludes with a list of things for his daughter to worry and not worry about. It’s a very touching missive that I look forward to sharing with my daughter some day. I’ll have my own advice and silly in-jokes for her, but Fitzgerald provides a very wise literary supplement. Below is the full letter, published in the New York Times in 1958. The typos, we might assume, are all sic, given Fitzgerald’s penchant for such errors:
AUGUST 8, 1933
LA PAIX RODGERS’ FORGE
TOWSON, MATYLAND
DEAR PIE:
I feel very strongly about you doing duty. Would you give me a little more documentation about your reading in French? I am glad you are happy– but I never believe much in happiness. I never believe in misery either. Those are things you see on the stage or the screen or the printed page, they never really happen to you in life.
All I believe in in life is the rewards for virtue (according to your talents) and the punishments for not fulfilling your duties, which are doubly costly. If there is such a volume in the camp library, will you ask Mrs. Tyson to let you look up a sonnet of Shakespeare’s in which the line occurs Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds…
I think of you, and always pleasantly, but I am going to take the White Cat out and beat his bottom hard, six times for every time you are impertinent. Do you react to that?…
Half-wit, I will conclude. Things to worry about:
Worry about courage
Worry about cleanliness
Worry about efficiency
Worry about horsemanship…
Things not to worry about:
Don’t worry about popular opinion
Don’t worry about dolls
Don’t worry about the past
Don’t worry about the future
Don’t worry about growing up
Don’t worry about anybody getting ahead of you
Don’t worry about triumph
Don’t worry about failure unless it comes through your own fault
Don’t worry about mosquitoes
Don’t worry about flies
Don’t worry about insects in general
Don’t worry about parents
Don’t worry about boys
Don’t worry about disappointments
Don’t worry about pleasures
Don’t worry about satisfactions
Things to think about:
What am I really aiming at?
How good am I really in comparison to my contemporaries in regard to:
(a) Scholarship
(b) Do I really understand about people and am I able to get along with them?
(c) Am I trying to make my body a useful intrument or am I neglecting it?
With dearest love,
Related Content:
F. Scott Fitzgerald Creates a List of 22 Essential Books, 1936
“Nothing Good Gets Away”: John Steinbeck Offers Love Advice in a Letter to His Son (1958)
Read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Story “May Day,” and Nearly All of His Other Work, Free Online
Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness
The only time I’ve ever worried about horsemanship was when I was a kid at camp, and I was afraid one of them might bite my fingers off as I attempted to feed them watermelon rinds.
I don’t pretend to know much about Fitzgerald but the lines in this letter that I am stuck on and read over and over in disbelief are: “I think of you, and always pleasantly, but I am going to take the White Cat out and beat his bottom hard, six times for every time you are impertinent. Do you react to that?…”
Unless this is some longstanding joke between Fitzgerald and his daughter, the cruelty of those lines, the threat, stuns me.
As an 11 year old girl, I would have been paralyzed, if one of my parents had threatened me with beating my beloved cat whenever I by being rude or impolite.
To an 11 year old child this can be no less devastating a threat than as an adult being told by say, a captor, that your children will be beaten each time you misbehave.
I am appalled.
@CrimsonCrow,
F Scott had quite the sense of humor, maybe even dark at some times. I think it was more in good fun and his daughter, I am sure, would have known this about him. 11-year-olds, especially the children of literary geniuses, were much more mature in that time, too.
He goes onto say this:
P.S. My come-back to your calling me Pappy is christening you by the word Egg, which implies that you belong to a very rudimentary state of life and that I could break you up and crack you open at my will and I think it would be a word that would hang on if I ever told it to your contemporaries. “Egg Fitzgerald.” How would you like that to go through life with — “Eggie Fitzgerald” or “Bad Egg Fitzgerald” or any form that might occur to fertile minds? Try it once more and I swear to God I will hang it on you and it will be up to you to shake it off. Why borrow trouble?
Love anyhow.
Definitely some light-heartedness in there.
How I’d love a letter or letters like this from my dad as a young girl. What a delight Fitzgerald must’ve been as a daddy and his advice was pretty darn good. My dad didn’t start writing to me until I was a twenty-something living on the opposite coast from him. Absence surely made his heart grow fonder towards me. Thanks for this, J. Jones!
The line I use most from Fitzgerald to Scottie is’ work is dignity!’ Through all the troubles he worked very hard! Is father was not to successful and maybe that was his motivation!
I love the quotes of Fitzgerald than his books movies and letters
Lol it was tottally a joke when I was 11 me and my father had jokes like that and he had a sense of humor with his daughter. They were very close.