Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve been F.Scott Fitzgerald around here. We’ve been reading The Great Gatsby, watching a documentary about Fitzgerald, listening to an In Our Time podcast about the novel, and reading a short story, as well – “Babylon Revisited”
(It’s common to read “A Diamond as Big as the Ritz” at this level, but…I really don’t like it that much. I get it. I get why it’s read as an intro to Fitzgerald, but it’s just too fantastical for me. “Babylon Revisited” offers a more realism-grounded peak into Fitzgerald’s take on the Jazz Age and its aftermath, and also offers an excellent way to explore the intersection between life and art.)
So, like good homeschoolers, we wrapped up the study with a field trip – just a bit over an hour down the road to Montgomery, the site of the Fitzgerald House and Museum. (One of them, at least)
Zelda, of course, was from Montgomery. It’s where she and Scott met, while he was stationed at Camp Sheridan. And well into their marriage, they returned for just a few months from 1931-2, where they lived in this house, Scott started writing Tender is the Night here, and Zelda wrote her novel, Save Me the Waltz.
We’ve been to see the sights in Montgomery a few times before. There’s a lot to see: the Civil Rights sites of course, of which there are many, Hank Williams sites, the art museum, the Alabama Shakespeare Festival grounds, and this. Our last visit was in 2019, when we saw Hamlet and visited the EJI National Memorial for Peace and Justice.
Let me hasten to say that it would be a quick trip just to see the house – so you probably wouldn’t want to make a special trip just to see it, unless you are a Fitzgerald fanatic and want to add it to your pilgrimage list. There’s plenty more to see in Montgomery to fill out your day.
There are a few rooms open to the general public as the museum, and two apartments upstairs that are actually rented out as AirBnBs – the listings are here and here.
The rooms are dedicated to the couple’s early lives, with interesting inscribed books and photographs and other artifacts on the display, with a special room for Gatsby memorabilia, and a childhood-centered room focused on objects from Zelda’s and Scott’s childhoods, some of Zelda’s art, including paper dolls she made for neighborhood children, and then objects related to Scottie, their daughter (who died in 1986).
It was a lovely (albeit brief!) time, with lots to study and think about. More below, with descriptions:
The Gatsby room, obviously. These are costumes from the DiCaprio version. Also in the room were lots of Gatsy memorabilia, including information on the real human beings Fitzgerald probably or certainly based his characters on, and various editions of the book and photos and programs from stage and screen versions.
I didn’t know Coppola had written the screenplay for the 1972 Robert Redford version.
Most interesting – and this was mentioned in the In Our Time program. When Fitzgerald died in 1940, Gatsby, which had been published in 1925, was not considered a critical or commercial success. How did it attain its canonical status? Partly due to an edition of his last, unfinished novel, The Last Tycoon, published not long after his death and packaged with Gatsby.
But even more was the edition above – the Armed Services Edition, published and distributed in 1946 – 150,000 of them. Tiny, compact (but complete!), easily carried in a pocket and pulled out during otherwise empty or dull stretches of time.
This was particularly affecting in the childhood-themed room – a stamp collection started by Scott and Scottie when they lived in Paris. (Right-click on the image to read the text)
Below on the left is Scott’s inscription on a book he gave Zelda’s father, a judge. I can’t remember what the book is, but it’s by Upton Sinclair, and Fitzgerald’s inscription is interesting because he indicates he knows his father-in-law probably won’t agree with Sinclair’s views, but they’re well-presented and worth reading, nonetheless. Was this a sly jab or an honest, expression of a view he had no fear of expressing and had confidence would be received with an open mind?
On the right, Zelda’s publicity photo for her novel, hanging in the spot where it was taken.
So yes, a very worthwhile visit, giving more life to the words on the pages we’ve been reading.
We could have done a lot more, time-wise, but one of us had risen at 4:45 to go to boxing boot camp and not slept in the car on the way down, and was fading a bit, even at that point – so we headed over the Alabama Archives and Museum, which we’d visited back in 2014, but that’s a long time ago. Free parking, free admission, so definitely an easy choice – a good review of Alabama history. No MooSeum this time, though.
One more quick stop before heading back north. And this speaks again to the value of exploring history in person, in walking in the footsteps, on well-worn paths. We can read books, we can even watch films, we can listen to speeches, but there’s something about being in a place in person and seeing it with your own eyes that expands a different sort of vision.
I’ve seen this a few times before, but I always seem to forget the reality of it.
For you know about the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-56, and you know that it was coordinated out of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, pastored at that time by Martin Luther King, Jr. But perhaps seeing this image will clarify for you the courage that was at work in that place and at that moment, as those men and women worked out the beginnings of the road they’d be taking to justice, not just in a random church in a random neighborhood in Montgomery, but in this church one block away – one block – from the seat of the civil power arrayed against them.
Charlotte was Both 