THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 29, 1996 TAG: 9609270713
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GEORGE TUCKER
LENGTH: 69 lines
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940), the American post-World War I novelist whose literary output epitomized ``The Jazz Age,'' had close family ties that lured him to Norfolk many times during his meteoric career.
Fitzgerald, the 100th anniversary of whose birth was celebrated this past Thursday, was a first cousin of the late Mrs. Richard Calvert Taylor of Norfolk whom he affectionately called ``Cousin Cecie.'' Mrs. Taylor, who was Miss Cecilia Delihant before her marriage and who lived in a still existing big white house on Gosnold Avenue in Norfolk's Colonial Place, was the mother of four daughters. All of them not only adored their golden-haired, blue-eyed older cousin once removed but later shared their memories of him with William W. Seward Jr., a former English professor at Old Dominion University, when he published an account of the novelist's Norfolk connections in the 1975 Fitzgerald/Hemingway Annual. They also contributed similar material to a feature article headed ``They Remember F. Scott,'' written by Mal Vincent, that appeared in The Virginian-Pilot on May 19, 1974. From these two sources the following excerpts have been culled.
One of Mrs. Richard Taylor's daughters, Mrs. Charles Abeles, recalled: ``Our mother was the great attraction for him here. . . . He first started coming to Norfolk when he was 17 or 18. We (the Taylor sisters) were young girls and although he wasn't too many years older than us, he was a Princeton man. . . . He was very handsome and wore beautiful clothes. He was also very sweet and kind to his younger cousins.'' For an occasional lark, Mrs. Abeles also recalled that Fitzgerald frequently took her sisters and herself to Digg's, then Norfolk's most fashionable confectionery, ``an ice cream joint on Main Street.''
Meanwhile, after serving briefly in the army during World War I, Fitzgerald had written his first novel ``This Side of Paradise'' (1920) and had skyrocketed to fame. From then on his career as one of the leading literary figures of ``The Roaring Twenties,'' is too well known to repeat. But it should be remembered that, according to Mrs. Abeles, he based Clara, one of the characters in ``This Side of Paradise,'' on her mother, his beloved ``Cousin Cecie.''
In the meantime, Fitzgerald had married Zelda Sayre, the emotionally disturbed daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court judge. After that, the handsome but irresponsible young couple, whom Ring Lardner called ``the prince and princess of their generation,'' proceeded to paint the town red on both sides of the Atlantic. Even so, Fitzgerald's heavy drinking had not yet deadened his creativity, and by the time ``Tender is the Night'' came out in 1934, he was still regarded as one of America's most talented novelists with ``The Beautiful and the Damned'' (1921), and ``The Great Gatsby'' (1925) to his credit. This juncture in the Fitzgerald saga brought him back into the Norfolk orbit.
Soon after the publication of ``Tender is the Night,'' Fitzgerald arrived here to pay his ``Cousin Cecie'' a visit. According to Bill Seward's version of the anecdote, the creator of ``The Great Gatsby'' arrived by train at the Union Depot on East Main Street, where he was to have been met by an in-law. But an illness in the family prevented this and a young Norfolk male socialite was sent to meet him instead.
The two men had never met before, and as they drove down Norfolk's colorful East Main Street, the young ``debutante pusher,'' who apparently had a few rooms for rent between his ears, remained silent. Fitzgerald, who by then was an international celebrity, tried to start a conversation, but each effort was unsuccessful. Miffed over the poor sales of ``Tender is the Night,'' but happy with the generally favorable reviews, Fitzgerald persisted, launching into a monologue concerning his writing career. But this produced no reaction from the other man, although by that time Fitzgerald had given him a fairly extended lecture concerning his works and his status as a writer.
Finally, in desperation, Fitzgerald demanded, ``Haven't you read any of my books?''
``Not unless you wrote `Black Beauty,' '' the Norfolk knucklehead responded without enthusiasm. by CNB