Free Scott Fitzgerald: A Biography by Jeffrey Meyers Page A

younger than Scott, Zelda was born on July 24, 1900, and named for the romantic gypsy heroine in Robert Edward Francillon’s Zelda’s Fortune (1874). In this popular novel, Zelda—who “could have been placed in no imaginable situation without drawing upon herself a hundred stares”—foresees that she will find a fortune of gold treasure and fall in love with the handsome Dr. Vaughan. Zelda Sayre had no close friends in girlhood or in later life, but was always close to her mother. Protected by the respectability and prestige of her family, Zelda was known for her striking beauty, her unconventional behavior and her sexual promiscuity. As she wrote in the opening sentence of her novel Save Me the Waltz (1932): “ ‘Those girls,’ people said, ‘think they can do anything and get away with it.’ That was because of the sense of security they felt in their father. He was a living fortress.” 9
    Zelda had a perfect peaches-and-cream complexion and honey-golden hair. In This Side of Paradise Fitzgerald portrayed her as Rosalind Connage and gave a delightful account of her physical attributes: “There was the eternally kissable mouth, small, slightly sensual, and utterly disturbing. There were gray eyes and an unimpeachable skin with two spots of vanishing color. She was slender and athletic, without underdevelopment, and it was a delight to watch her move about a room. . . . Her vivid, instant personality escaped that conscious, theatrical quality that Amory had found in Isabelle [Ginevra].”
    Fitzgerald was also keenly aware of the flaws in Zelda’s character—her rudeness, selfishness and lack of restraint—but found them quite provocative and exciting: “She treats men terribly. She abuses them and cuts them and breaks dates with them and yawns in their faces—and they [like Scott himself] come back for more. . . . [She] smokes sometimes, drinks [alcoholic] punch, frequently kissed. . . . She is prone to make every one around her pretty miserable when she doesn’t get [her way. . . . She believed] the only excuse for women was the necessity for a disturbing element among men.” She was, to Scott’s delight, an inspiring example of the postwar modern girl.
    Zelda’s notorious reputation in Montgomery began in childhood. When she was only ten she called the fire department (a recurrent ploy), climbed onto the roof and waited to be rescued. Unlike her self-effacing father, she scorned convention, liked to attract attention to herself and exploited the dramatic possibilities of the scene. She always gave a good public performance. Virginia Foster Durr, who went to dances with Zelda and later became a leader in the civil rights movement, confirmed Zelda’s powerful impact on her contemporaries: “Zelda always did things to shock people. . . . She used to come up to the dances in Birmingham and she was just gorgeous. She had a glow around her. When she came into a ballroom, all the other girls would want to go home because they knew the boys were going to be concentrating on Zelda. The boys would line up the whole length of the ballroom to dance with her for one minute. She was pre-eminent and we recognized it.”
    Mrs. Durr later elaborated her view of Zelda’s character and explained how her glorious youth left her especially vulnerable:
    Zelda was like a vision of beauty dancing by. She was funny, amusing, the most popular girl; envied by all others, worshipped and adored, besieged by all the boys. She did try to shock. At a dance she pinned mistletoe on the back of her skirt, as if to challenge the young men to kiss her bottom.
    In the South women were not supposed to do anything. It was sufficient to be beautiful and charming. Zelda, a spoiled baby just out of high school, never even learned to read or sew. She was always treated like a visiting film star: radiant, glowing, desired by all. Since she had absolutely nothing to do and no personal resources to draw on, she later bothered Scott