The Gatsby Affair by Kendall Taylor

Author:Kendall Taylor
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781538104941
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2018-05-25T16:00:00+00:00

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Locked Away

On April 23, 1929, Scott took Zelda to Le Sanitarium de la Malmaison, a private hospital ten kilometers outside Paris at Rueil that occupied a nineteenth-century mansion in which Empress Josephine Bonaparte had lived, and now was a sanitarium specializing in nervous disorders. Five years earlier, T. S. Eliot’s first wife, Vivienne Haigh-Wood, also had arrived there exhibiting erratic behavior. One of the “river girls” who punted on the Cherwell to meet Oxford boys, Vivienne encountered T. S. in March of 1915 and married him three months later. She always suffered from “nerve storms,” as she called them, which worsened after marriage, and besides being confined to the same hospital, shared some other commonalities with Zelda. Also an excellent swimmer, she entered the dance world late, studying with Isadora Duncan’s older brother, Raymond, and was foisted by her husband onto another man, T. S.’s Harvard professor, Bertrand Russell.

Like Vivienne, Zelda appeared in a highly agitated state, not having slept for days. She paced the room and insisted that Scott was involved in a sexual relationship with Ernest Hemingway. Concerned that the attending physician, Dr. Claude, might believe her, Scott insisted that Zelda was delusional and nervous disorders were endemic in her family. To support this, he explained that her father, along with two of her sisters, had experienced breakdowns, and another suffered from a nervous affliction of the neck. Her maternal grandmother had committed suicide, as had her mother’s sister. The family was certifiably crazy; it was all quite evident. In his admission report, Professor Claude diagnosed her symptoms as a case of nervous exhaustion: “It is a question of a petite anxieuse, worn out by her work1 in a milieu of professional dancers. Violent reactions, several suicide attempts never pushed to the limit.” After being kept under observation for ten days, she discharged herself, explaining to Scott, “I went of my own free will2. . . . You also know that I left (with the consent of Professor Claude) knowing that I was not entirely well, because I could see no use in jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.” To put herself under control of the nerve doctors seemed a dangerous proposition.

When Zelda returned to their Paris apartment she found it in disarray, with Scott celebrating the impending marriage of Ludlow Fowler’s brother, Thomas, to Virginia Megeur. Many of his Princeton classmates had arrived for the festivities, and days leading to the May 10 nuptials were occupied with bachelor dinners, receptions, and parties. Ludlow had been Scott’s model for The Rich Boy and again would be portrayed in a story about these wedding festivities called “The Bridal Party” published that August by the Saturday Evening Post. The commotion at home only aggravated Zelda’s fragile state, and after experiencing a week of terrifying nightmares, she attempted suicide with an overdose of barbiturates. It was the second time she had tried to end her life. On May 22, Scott brought her to Valmont Clinic in

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