she was 10, Zelda came with her par¬
ents, Judge and Mrs. Anthony Sayre of
Montgomery, Ala., to spend the sum¬
mers in Saluda.
Scott’s first visit to North Carolina
was in February, 1935, when he came
to Tryon, 10 miles from Saluda. He
had a room on the top floor of the Oak
Hall Hotel, in April his collection of
short stories, Taps at Reveille, was
published. He already had behind him
three other volumes of short stories,
in addition to his novels, This Side of
Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned,
The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the
Night.
He returned to his Baltimore home
briefly; but in May, when X-rays
showed he was suffering from mild
tuberculosis, he moved to the Grove
Park Inn in Asheville for rest and re¬
habilitation.
Drinking was a recurrent problem.
with him, but he stopped entirely —
until his tuberculosis subsided, as it
always did when he took proper eare of
himself. He started consuming beer, on
the theory that “it isn’t really drink¬
ing.”
The story is current in Asheville that
one day 32 bottles were sent up to his
room, and he consumed them, alone,
while writing furiously on what the bell
boys described as “the biggest sheets of
paper” they ever saw.
Laura Guthrie was his secretary that
summer. Fitzgerald was working on the
popular formula-plot stories which he
came to detest but for which The Sat¬
urday Evening Post was so eager they
paid him as high as $4,000 apiece.
Relying on Gin
Laura remembers going to Chimney
Rock with him, The impressive scenery
seemed rather to depress him, for by
, . , "our love was one in a century. Life ended for me when Zelda and I crashed. If she would get
well, I would be happy again and my soul would be released. Otherwise, never." — (Photos courtesy of
Harper tj Row.)
Scott
and
Zelda
The dazzling highs and
tragic lows of their
careers were lived in
the mountains of North
Carolina.
By ASHTON
CHAPMAN
Although he has been dead for three
decades, more people are today read¬
ing and discussing the novels and short
stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald than dur¬
ing his lifetime. Books about his life
and work, which continue to come
from the press, also evoke wide in¬
terest, as do the TV reruns of old
movies based on his works, such as
Tender Is the Night and The Great
Gatsby.
Those who remember the fabulous
1920s, which Scott himself named “The
Jazz Age,” and younger readers to
whom that epoch is now “history,”
seem eager to learn about Fitzgerald’s
44 years, during which he climbed to
the heights of literary and personal ac¬
claim, then plunged to the depths.
Especially interesting to Tar Heels
are the periods he spent in Tryon and
Asheville and the life of his wife, Zelda,
who also was a gifted writer, as well as
being a talented painter and ballet
dancer, She was at various times a
patient in an Asheville mental institu¬
tion over a period of years.
Polk County Connections
Zelda, Nancy Milford’s biography
of Scott’s ill-fated wife, remained on
the best seller list for several weeks af¬
ter its publication by Harper & Row in
June, 1970. As a girl, from the time
THE STATE, October i, 1970
