INNOCENTS ABROAD
37
markable eyes. She talked little. Her habit was rather to emerge from
her brooding and fiery silence to make some gesture, which,
if
often
outrageous, was usually serious and symbolic. When Alexander Wooll–
cott and Grace Moore's fiance, "Chato" Elizaga, were leaving for
Paris at the end of the summer, there was a dinner for them on the
terrace at Eden Roc. After a considerable number of toasts, Zelda got
up and said: "I have been so touched by all these kind words. But
what are words? Nobody has offered our departing heroes any gifts to
take with them. I'll start off." And she stepped out of her black lace
panties and threw them toward Woollcott and Elizaga. Elizaga caught
them and, announcing that he must perform an adequately heroic act
in return for his lady's favor, leapt from the rocks into the Mediter–
ranean. Everyone dashed down after him, and by the time something
like order had been reestablished they suddenly became aware of
Woollcott, completely naked, carefully donning his straw hat, light–
ing a cigarette, and walking slowly up the path to the hotel. They
learned later that he had walked with great dignity but still naked
through the hotel lobby, picked up his key at the desk, and gone
quietly up to his room.
In all this confusion Fitzgerald got very little work done. When
they had reached the Riviera he had had a moment of optimism. "My
book is
wonderful,"
he wrote Perkins. "I don't think it will be inter–
rupted again. I expect to reach New York about Dec. 10th with the
ms. under my arm." Two weeks later he was still going strong: "The
novel ... now goes on apace. This is confidential but
Liberty,
with
certain conditions, has offered me $35,000 sight unseen. I hope to
have it done in January." (The "conditions" were that Fitzgerald
was to give all the stories he wrote, up to a maximum of ten, to
Liberty
for $3,500 apiece.) But that was the end. There is no further
mention of the novel until December when he answers a direct ques–
tion from Perkins by saying: "My book [is] not nearly finished."
He did not write a single story between February, 1926, when he
wrote "Your Way and Mine" for
The Woman's Home Companion,
and June, 1927, when he wrote "Jacob's Ladder" for the
Post.
This
failure, together with his failure to complete the novel, effectively ab–
rogated the very profitable arrangement with
Liberty.
As always
when he was not working, he was deeply depressed, now not simply
by his failure to produce serious work or, indeed, any work at all, but
