The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of the Liberal Arts TEMPORARILY DEVOTEDLY YOURS: THE LETTERS OF GINEVRA KING TO F. SCOTT FITZGERALD A Dissertation in English by Robert Russell Bleil © 2008 Robert Russell Bleil Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2008 ii The dissertation of Robert Russell Bleil was reviewed and approved* by the following: James L. W. West III Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English Dissertation Advisor Co-Chair of Committee Christopher Clausen Professor of English, emeritus Co-Chair of Committee Mark S. Morrisson Professor of English William L. Joyce Dorothy Foehr Huck Chair and Head of Special Collections, University Libraries and Professor of History Robert R. Edwards Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English and Comparative Literature Director of Graduate Studies Department of English *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School iii ABSTRACT When Ginevra King met F. Scott Fitzgerald in St. Paul, Minnesota on January 4, 1915 there was instant chemistry between them. That night in her diary, Ginevra exclaimed, “Scott perfectly darling am dipped about.” For his part, Scott was equally smitten with Ginevra; although he was due back in Princeton immediately, Scott stayed over an extra day to spend more time with the brunette debutante from Chicago. Upon his return to Princeton, Scott immediately sent Ginevra a special delivery letter; according to the customs of the time, such a letter constituted Scott’s formal declaration that he was interested in pursuing a correspondence with Ginevra. A vivacious and fun- loving girl, Ginevra was no stranger to the importance of a “special delie” and the epistolary game was afoot. For the next two years, Ginevra and Scott carried on an postal romance filled with exuberance, idealism, misunderstanding and remarkable candor. In the end, their letters could not bridge the distance: social, economic, and physical, that separated Ginevra’s background from Scott’s, but from the beginning of their relationship both Ginevra and Scott devoted considerable energy and time those ends. Although Ginevra destroyed Scott’s letters, at his request, in 1917 he carried copies of her letters with him for the rest of his life. In more than 65 letters, Ginevra reveals both parties in ways that no previous biographer has fully understood. Always complex and reflective, often funny and clever, Ginevra’s letters to Scott offer readers a glimpse of teenage romance in the last days of letter-writing, a peek into the world of wealth and privilege depicted in Fitzgerald’s writings, and the remarkable story of Ginevra’s attempt to balance her desire for independence with the restrictions of the circles that circumscribed her life. For more than 50 years, Ginevra King’s existence has been little more than a iv footnote to Fitzgerald’s biography and a point of speculation with respect to Fitzgerald’s fiction. Using a wealth of unpublished archival records and contemporary editorial methods, this project offers scholars the opportunity to experience Ginevra King’s letters to Fitzgerald in a way that has been impossible until now. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments........................................................................................................vi Editorial Introduction...................................................................................................1 Editorial Theory and Editions of Letters 2 Fitzgerald’s Letters and Their Editors 9 Establishing the Texts of the Letters 16 Introduction..................................................................................................................22 Rhetoric and Context in Ginevra King’s Letters to F. Scott Fitzgerald 22 In Pursuit of the Golden Girl 23 Ginevra in the Scholarly Imagination 33 Rediscovering Ginevra 35 The Editing of Letters and the Art of Biography 37 Time and Travel in Ginevra and Scott’s Letters 51 An Epistolary Drama in Four Acts 59 St. Paul, Westover, and Chicago: Winter 1915 64 A Remarkable Correspondence: Spring 1915 75 Growing Apart: Autumn 1915-Spring 1916 85 New Adventures: Autumn 1916 90 Texts of the Letters ......................................................................................................95 Bibliography ................................................................................................................289 vi Acknowledgments Ginevra King’s daughter, Ginevra Hunter, graciously granted permission for me to edit and publish her mother’s letters to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Without her kindness and the support of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society, this project could not have gone forward. James L. W. West III and Christopher Clausen have been patient teachers, wise counselors, generous critics, and demanding editors since my first days at Penn State. They have helped me to develop and clarify my thoughts, and they have encouraged me to refine my prose. I am a better scholar for their efforts. Mark Morrisson, Robin Schulze, and Bill Joyce have all provided astute advice and counsel over the last several years—often on a moment’s notice. I thank them for their assistance. Jeanne Alexander, editorial assistant to the Cambridge Edition of the F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Works, carefully and thoroughly proofread the texts of the letters. Every editor can use an extra set of eyes and Jeanne was there when I needed her. My time at Penn State has been made richer by the friendship and support of Joyce Wilusz, Gregg and Liz Baptista, Steve Bertolino, and Rochelle Zuck. Matt Jachim and Steve Smith encouraged me from afar. Robert Baker is my model as a teacher and he has blessed me with his friendship. My parents, Robert and Linda Bleil, have provided emotional and practical support at every turn. I am grateful to them for so many things, but most of all for placing great emphasis on education. They were my first teachers. Finally, Heather Murray has been my partner at home and in the office for these many years. Her gifts are too numerous to mention. vii With all his honours on, he sighed for one Who, say astonished critics, lived at home; Did little jobs about the house with skill And nothing else; could whistle; would sit still Or potter round the garden; answered some Of his long marvellous letters but kept none. —W. H. Auden, from “Who’s Who” viii For G.B.B. 1910-1988 1 Editorial Introduction Ginevra King, Zelda Sayre, and Sheilah Graham played uniquely assigned roles in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s life. They were his muses and his fates, inspiring his art and inhabiting his world. By studying them we can learn much about Fitzgerald and his literary works, but until recently Ginevra King has remained in the shadows. With the publication of her letters to Fitzgerald we can now more fully and accurately understand her place in his life and fiction. If it were not for the generosity of her daughter and granddaughters, however, her letters might have been lost forever. In the spring of 2003, Ginevra King’s granddaughter, Ginevra (Giny) Chandler, was emptying a box of family papers when she rediscovered her grandmother’s teenage diary, together with typewritten copies of her letters to Fitzgerald. This was not the first time that Giny Chandler had seen the documents and recognized their value; she had first seen them as a teenager, but had not been allowed to read them. During her lifetime, Ginevra King Pirie had allowed only a few people to read her letters to Fitzgerald and, when she died in December 1980 she left no instructions with respect to her diary or the copies of the letters. Twenty-three years after Ginevra King’s death, her daughter, Ginevra Hunter, and her granddaughters, Giny Chandler and Cynthia Hunter, donated the items to Princeton University Library in the summer of 2003. In the five years since then, fewer than a dozen persons have read the letters. With the publication of this volume, they are available to scholars, students, and the curious public for the first time. Before we can proceed to the letters, however, we must give careful consideration to the form and to the substance of the surviving documents. A careful understanding of both 2 the physical documents and the intellectual content is essential. The letters restore Ginevra King to her rightful place alongside Zelda Sayre and Sheilah Graham in Fitzgerald’s biography; they also illuminate Fitzgerald’s apprentice fiction, written during his time at Princeton, and create a space in which Ginevra King can speak for herself. Editorial Theory and Editions of Letters Unlike the rules for editing many types of public documents (e.g., public records, literary texts, speeches, essays, and drama), the rules, such as they are, for editing personal letters have developed ad hoc over the last two hundred years. Whereas the editor of public works generally, and literary works in particular, can look to the established guidelines set down by W. W. Gregg, Fredson Bowers, Philip Gaskell, G. Thomas Tanselle, and Jerome McGann over the last seventy years, the editor of a collection of letters must cobble together his or her own principles from a small body of scholarship and a good deal of common sense. While many critics have stepped forward to criticize the inconsistencies that arise from the lack of set principles, the very nature of letters thwarts most efforts to establish all but the most basic boundaries for their editing. Although editors, critics, and readers all agree that an edition of letters must be presented in a way that makes them accessible to users, the word “accessible” has as many definitions as there are editors of letters. In 1958, Robert Halsband, the editor of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s letters, outlined the fundamental problems that challenge every editor who attempts to bring forth a volume of letters: which letters to include, how to arrange them, what kind of text to create, how to treat erasures and inadvertent errors, which items to select for 3 annotation, and how much of the editor’s voice should be present in the final text. Halsband championed texts that: Print more letters as though they were worth reading for their own sake.