F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald are two of the most iconic artists of the roaring '20s.
Beneath the glamor, however, the story of these two novelists is tinged with tragedy.
This is the heartbreaking story of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.
F. Scott Fitzgerald met Zelda Sayre in 1918, when he was 22 and she was just 18 years old.
He was in the army, and she was the wild child of a local judge — and it was pretty much
love at first sight.
They began writing letters to each other immediately, and the only person who had any doubt that
this was the beginning of a great romance was Zelda's mother, who insisted on giving
her daughter newspaper clippings about failed writers.
As Scott settled into New York to write, Zelda quickly became his main source of inspiration.
He explicitly based several of his earliest characters on Zelda — most notably Rosalind
in his first novel, This Side of Paradise, and Nicole in Tender is the Night.
In fact, Zelda and his relationship with her increasingly became the focus of Scott's writing.
Tender is the Night in particular is a fictionalized account of his marriage to Zelda, their promising
beginnings, and their gradual descent into obscurity.
But Zelda wasn't just inspiration for Scott; she was also a key factor in his success as
an author.
She used her celebrity status to promote her husband's work, writing cheeky, humorous reviews,
giving interviews, and generally singing his praises.
The world of The Great Gatsby is often regarded as the epitome of 1920s America — new money
hosting huge parties soaked in champagne, jazz, and high fashion.
"Fireworks!"
And that's exactly how the Fitzgeralds lived — for a while, at least.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's first novel, 1920's This Side of Paradise, was an instant hit.
The novel's success allowed him to marry Zelda and made him a celebrity at the age of 23,
and the young couple revelled in their newfound stardom.
They immediately began living beyond their means, spending all their money on lavish
houses and expensive dinners, drinking and dancing their nights away.
Scott's second novel, The Beautiful and the Damned, was also a bestseller, allowing them
to keep up their new lifestyle.
Even at the height of their fame and success, however, the Fitzgerald's struggled with money,
always spending it faster than it came in.
By 1937, they were flat broke.
It's easy to look back on the Fitzgeralds' marriage and assume they were simply doomed
from the start; maybe they were.
After all, while they may have been deeply in love and widely adored when they first
married, it didn't take long for the first cracks to show.
By 1924, the relationship was already in decline.
It had been two years since Scott's second novel, and Scott had spent much of the time
writing feverishly in order to pay the couple's enormous bills, and subsequently isolated
himself that summer in France in order to finish writing his third novel.
Although Scott's plan eventually produced one of the greatest novels of the modern age,
The Great Gatsby, it also left Zelda lonely and bored.
She soon met and began an affair with a French man named Edouard Jozan.
Then Jozan disappeared, devastating Zelda, and spurring her to attempt suicide a short
while later.
It was a strain that changed their marriage forever.
Scott is rumored to have had several affairs himself too, but only his relationship with
Sheilah Graham, during the final years of his life, is known for a fact.
By 1930, Scott was miserably grinding out work in Hollywood to pay the bills, while
Zelda's mental state was fragile at best, leaving her flitting in and out of hospitals
for the rest of her life.
Scott was also hospitalized for alcohol-related problems eight times between 1933 and 1937,
and a lifetime of excessive drinking and smoking took its toll on his heart, eventually leading
to his early death.
Scott's health issues affected his work — and he knew it, too, often lamenting that drinking
got in the way of good writing.
His third novel, The Great Gatsby, was a commercial and critical failure when it was published
in 1925, sending Scott into a tailspin.
Just five years after being the toast of the literary world, he was considered a full-blown
has-been.
In 1940, a despairing Scott wrote to his wife, claiming that he was a "forgotten man."
Nonetheless, he hoped to plot a comeback with his fifth novel, The Last Tycoon, which was
based on his experiences in Hollywood.
But decades of heavy drinking and smoking had ruined his health, and in October 1940,
had a mild heart attack as a result of coronary artery disease.
On December 20, he went out to the movies and collapsed, experiencing chest pains.
The next day he suffered a massive heart attack and died, aged just 44.
As one final insult to his legacy, Scott's novels had been placed on the Catholic Church's
"proscribed list" due to their salacious content — so permission to bury him in his family's
plots was denied.
He was laid to rest miles away from the rest of his family; Zelda would join him eight
years later.
After suffering her first mental breakdown in 1930, Zelda Fitzgerald struggled with her
mental health for the rest of her life.
She spent several stints in sanitariums over the years, and began to spend more and more
time at Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina.
For a while, it seemed like she was on the verge of finally achieving some kind of peace.
In March 1948, Zelda's doctors told her they considered her stable enough to go home again,
but she remained cautious, and chose to stay a few more months at the hospital.
Then, just a few days later, a fire broke out in the hospital.
Because the windows and doors were locked and chained shut, the patients had no way
to escape — and nine of them burned to death, including Zelda.
She was identified only by the glamorous, iconic red slippers she had always been famous
for wearing.
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide
Prevention Lifeline​ at​ 1-800-273-TALK (8255)​.