2006 RV - Doug & Crystal

15 April 2006: Doug and I went shopping a little, we went to a flea market, we didn’t find anything we couldn’t live without. Then we took a ride in the country. We also went to the First Confederate White House. Located across Washington Street from the Capitol, Jefferson Davis’ Family lived in this house for 3 months before the decision was made to move the capitol to Richmond, VA.

We went to the downtown area to go to the F Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum. Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, on September 24, 1896, the namesake and second cousin three times removed of the author of the National Anthem. Fitzgerald’s given names indicate his parents’ pride in his father’s ancestry. His father, Edward, was from Maryland, with an allegiance to the Old South and its values. Fitzgerald’s mother, Mary (Mollie) McQuillan, was the daughter of an Irish immigrant who became wealthy as a wholesale grocer in St. Paul. Both were Catholics.

In June 1918 Fitzgerald was assigned to Camp Sheridan, near Montgomery, Alabama. There he fell in love with a celebrated belle, eighteen-year-old Zelda Sayre, the youngest daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court judge. This is the house Zelda lived in for one year. The romance intensified Fitzgerald’s hopes for the success of his novel, but after revision it was rejected by Scribners for a second time. The war ended just before he was to be sent overseas; after his discharge in 1919 he went to New York City to seek his fortune in order to marry. Unwilling to wait while Fitzgerald succeeded in the advertisement business and unwilling to live on his small salary, Zelda Sayre broke their engagement.

Zelda was an author, ballerina, and painter, Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald is considered and assessed as a woman of exceptional energy and ability. Her novel, Save Me the Waltz, is described as ["the deeply felt and carefully crafted expression of a creative, independent spirit."] She was born in Montgomery, Alabama. In the summer of 1918, at a dance at the Montgomery Country Club, she met Army Lieutenant, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Following a stormy courtship of nearly two years, Zelda married him after the publication of his first novel. Their only child, Scottie, was born in October, 1921. Her paintings, though difficult to date precisely, are primarily from the 1930's and 1940's. She painted dancers, city scenes, fantasies, flowers, and religious subjects. These works were exhibited in 1934 at the New York Gallery of Carey Ross and in 1974 at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts. During her lifetime there were also smaller, informal showings in Asheville and Montgomery.