FITZGERALD IN THE TWENTIES
9
Fitzgerald began to amuse himself by introducing Zelda to everyone
as his mistress. Since they appeared conspicuously dancing at all the
clubs in a condition such that, as one observer remarked, a draft
would have blown them down, the joke persuaded more people than
it should have; there was "a rather gay party staged conspicuously in
Harvey Firestone's car of robin's-egg blue" at which Fitzgerald ac–
quired a very black eye; there was a dinner at Cottage at which
Zelda became exceedingly gay.
The consequences of this spectacular display were not felt for
some weeks. Then, on May 1st,
The Nassau Lit
scheduled a banquet of
old editors at which they hoped to start an association of former con–
tributors to assist the magazine. It was a beautiful spring day, and
Stanley Dell, Bishop, Wilson, and Fitzgerald drove down from New
York. They all got a little drunk on the way down, so that by the time
they reached New Brunswick it seemed like a good idea to stop at a
theatrical costumer's and rent a supply of gilt laurel wreaths, lyres,
and pipes of Pan to celebrate the lovely spring. When they stopped
for a moment outside Princeton on the old Lincoln Highway to satisfy
the demands of nature, Fitzgerald, entering into the occasion with that
kind of ecstasy of emotional response which was characteristic of him,
began to dance around the car and shout the praises of the weather,
Princeton, and his friends. In this state of mind they arrived in Prince–
ton, where they caught sight of Dean Gauss on his front lawn and
immediately got out and crowned him with a laurel wreath to the
accompaniment of
ex tempore
verses on the occasion from Fitz–
gerald. They then separated to go to their various clubs until the ban–
quet that night. The last anyone saw of Fitzgerald was when he went
dancing up the walk to Cottage, a laurel wreath askew on his head
and the pipes of Pan at his lips. It was, for all its innocence, altogether
too precisely the image of him that was already in the mind's eye of
every respectable member of his club. He was quickly approached by
the president and told that he was suspended from membership. He
went straight to the station and back to New York, as hurt as he had
been when, as a child of six in Buffalo, he had approached a crowd
of children and been told to go away, they did not want him around.
It is difficult not to sympathize with Fitzgerald's feeling that "the
unctuousness and hypocrisy of the proceedings was exasperating,"
however much at fault he and Zelda had been on the earlier occasion.
