Those who know the story of Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald’s marriage know that things ended as unromantically as possible for this troubled couple. However, in their early years of courtship and marriage, they were the poster children for the artistic, physical, and emotional passion of the Jazz Age. If you have a weakness for flapper dresses, champagne, and sentences like, “I remember every single spot of light that ever gouged a shadow beside your bones,” then you might consider the Fitzgerald home in Montgomery, Alabama, for a romantic destination.
Disclaimer – as always, this is neither an endorsement nor a review, as I’ve never been to this location. This is just a dispatch from the world of aspirational travel and Google surfing.
Frances Scott Key Fitzgerald (Scott) met Zelda Sayre in 1918. He was in the army and stationed outside Montgomery (he was never deployed). They had a passionate courtship. Allegedly the scene in The Great Gatsby in which Jay Gatsby meets Daisy for the first time is based on the first time Scott met Zelda. Also the character of Rosalind in This Side of Paradise is based on Zelda, and Zelda’s diary is quoted in the book.
Zelda worried that Scott would not earn enough money to support them so she refused to marry him until he sold This Side of Paradise. They married in New York and partied incessantly. Their daughter Frances Fitzgerald (Scottie) was born in 1921.
The Fitzgeralds lived in the Montgomery house in 1931 and 1932. It wasn’t a happy time for the Fitzgeralds, and they didn’t have happy times ahead. They both had mental health problems (Zelda was diagnosed as schizophrenic) and significant issues with alcohol. The Montgomery house represents the last time they were together as a family. Scott worked on Tender is the Night and Zelda worked on Save Me the Waltz.
If you want to stay in their house, you can! The Montgomery Airbnb is located above the Fitzgerald Museum. It’s decorated with art by Zelda and quotes by Zelda and Scott. There’s a record player and jazz records to play on it and of course there are books. The rental comes with a free museum ticket. The museum hosts various events throughout the year including a literary festival, movie screenings, and parties, although probably not ones as lavish as the Gatsby parties of fiction.
For all their glamour, the Fitzgeralds led mostly unhappy lives. Still, they could write love letters like no one else, and there was a time when everyone loved to see them smiling and drinking champagne and saying brilliant things at two in the morning.
Even the cynical Dorothy Parker couldn’t help but love them: “They did both look as though they had just stepped out of the sun,” she said.
Would you want to stay here? What literary travel destinations are on your list?
This is right down the street from my house! They also have a gala every spring where everyone dresses in 1920’s attire, drinks cocktails, and listens to jazz, which, while no Gatsby party, is always pretty fun.
How cool! I wish you could stay in more museums! Will have to check it out next time we’re passing through AL.
Eva | http://www.shessobright.com
Oh, I had no idea the La Paix is open for touring and to stay in! This was, as you say, the house they were least happy in, but it’s beautiful, and I think it’s where Fitzgerald put the finishing touches on Tender is the Night?
Sadly the house where they met’s been demolished.
I would love to go there! We live in Rome and my husband and I recently discovered that when Scott and Zelda visited the city they were regulars at Caffe Greco, still a trendy cafe (though now insanely expensive and touristy) and not far from our home. Love the Dorothy Parker quote, btw. So bittersweet.
I’d like to recommend two fictional treatments of the Fitzgeralds: VILLA AMERICA by Liza Klaussmann. The book’s focus is Sara & Gerald Murphy, a rich couple who gathered the American ex-pat community in the southern France of the 1920s. Scott & Zelda are secondary characters, but I think their portrayal as rather immature people, baffled by each other and self-medicating with alcohol, is entirely accurate. The other book is Stewart O’Nan’s WEST OF SUNSET which covers the last few years of Fitzgerald’s life when he was working as a screenwriter in Hollywood and was involved with Sheilah Graham. Zelda was institutionalized by then and she appears in several scenes, utterly crushed by her mental illness.
@DiscoDollyDeb -thanks for the recommendations. Both sound good.
@DiscoDollyDeb – I didn’t quite take to Villa Americana, but I loved that O’Nan book!
I still haven’t read a novel that 100 percent encapsulates who the Fitzgeralds were to my satisfaction yet. Z by Therese Fowler was frankly terrible.