28
PARTISAN REVIEW
And then suddenly we were in a world of fairies-I never saw so
many or such a variety together. There were tall gangling ones, and lit–
tle pert ones with round thin shoulders, and great broad ones with the
faces of Nero and Oscar Wilde, and fat ones with sly smiles that twisted
into horrible leers, and nervous ones who hitched and jerked opening
their eyes very wide. There were handsome, passive dumb ones who
turned their profiles this way and that, noble-faced ones with the
countenances of senators that dissolved suddenly into girlish fatuity;
pimply stodgy ones with the most delicate gestures of all; raw ones
with red lips and frail curly bodies, ... self-conscious ones who looked
with eager politeness toward every noise; English ones with great racial
self-control, Balkan ones-a small cooing Japanese.
The others must have been looking around simultaneously, for we
all said "Let's get out" together. After that we rode in the Bois I think.
Then Francis and Abe and I, the last survivors went in to drink coffee
in the Ritz Bar.
"But don't get up close," as Father Schwartz, the mad priest,
who also longed for the world's fair, says, "because if you do you'll
only feel the heat and the sweat and the life."
It was a summer Fitzgerald afterwards referred to as a time of
"hysteria." This was a reasonable enough description, but the time
was not all spent in hysteria and waste. There was a rather touching
scheme according to which Fitzgerald and Hemingway and Dean
Gauss met once a week for lunch and discussed some serious topic,
setting the topic for the next week at the end of each session so as
to be well prepared before it came up. There was also the satisfaction
of the critical reception of
Gatsby.
There were, in addition to the
handsome reviews, personal letters of obvious sincerity and great en–
thusiasm. "It is just four o'clock in the morning," Deems Taylor
wrote him, "and I've got to be up at seven, and I've just finished
The
Great Gatsb
y,
and it can't possibly be as good as I think it is."
There were letters like this one from Woollcott and Nathan, from
Cabell and Seldes, from Van Wyck Brooks and Paul Rosenfeld. Even
better were the letters from Willa Cather and Mrs. Wharton and
T. S. Eliot; these overwhelmed Fitzgerald, for with his almost child–
like awe of those he thought distinguished writers, he could hardly
believe in his own good fortune. When the letter came from Willa
Cather, he hurried around to Dean Gauss's hotel at one in the morn–
ing and insisted on the Gausses' getting dressed and coming to his
apartment to celebrate. The letter from Mrs. Wharton, with its modes-
