F Scott Fitzgerald in St Paul

Walking with Writers

F. S C OT T F I T Z G E R A L D

IN ST. PAUL: A GUIDE

SAINTED MEDIA

TABLE OF CONTENTS Chronology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Map. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 St. Paul Cathedral . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1 Louisa McQuillan Residence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 Fitzgerald’s Birthplace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 3 St. Paul Academy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 4 Fitzgerald Residences (1909-13) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 5 Commodore Hotel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 6 Fitzgerald Family Residence (1918-19). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 7 Fitzgerald Family Residence (1914-15). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 9 Sinclair Lewis House. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 0 University Club of St. Paul. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 1 The Spectacle Shoppe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2 Fitzgerald Residence (1921-22) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 3 (Site of) Kilmarnock Book Store. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 4 Fitzgerald Statue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 5 St. Paul Theatre. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 6 Fitzgerald Residence (August-October 1921). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 7 White Bear Yacht Club. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 9 Town and Country Club . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 0 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1 Cast of Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2

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CHRONOLOGY 24th September 1896 - Fitzgerald born at 481 Laurel Avenue, St. Paul.

September 1908-1911 - Fitzgerald enrolled at St. Paul Academy.

1908-09 – Fitzgerald lives with his grandmother, Louisa McQuillan, at 294 Laurel Avenue.

1909-1913 – The Fitzgerald family moves between three addresses (514, 509, and 499) on St. Paul’s Holly Avenue.

1914-15 – Fitzgerald’s parents move to 593 Summit Avenue. While staying here during the 1914-15 Christmas holidays he met his first serious love interest, Ginevra King.

July 1919 – Fitzgerald returns to St. Paul to re-draft This Side of Paradise and stays at his parents’ latest address, 599 Summit Avenue.

August-October 1921 – Scott and Zelda live at 5 Yellow Birch Road, Dellwood, on White Bear Lake.

October 1921 – The Fitzgeralds stay at The Commodore Hotel, 97 West Avenue North.

26th October 1921 – Scottie Fitzgerald born at the Miller Hospital, St. Paul.

November 1921-June 1922 – The Fitzgeralds stay at 626 Goodrich Avenue.

June-August 1922 – The Fitzgeralds stay at White Bear Yacht Club, 56 Dellwood Avenue, White Bear Lake.

August-October 1922 – The Fitzgeralds return to The Commodore, after which they depart for Great Neck, Long Island.

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FITZGERALD’S ST PAUL

Click here to enlarge map Figure -.-

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FITZGERALD IN SAINT PAUL Although Fitzgerald had many homes – American and European – his life and fiction are richly intertwined with his home city of St. Paul, Minnesota. One of the ‘Twin Cities’ alongside neighbouring Minneapolis, St. Paul was the birthplace of Fitzgerald and his daughter, Scottie.

It was here he wrote This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and Damned, and St. Paul also features in several of Fitzgerald’s most notable stories, including ‘The Ice Palace’ and ‘Winter Dreams’.

Located on a bend on the Mississippi, St. Paul was an ideal embarkation point for fur trade vessels. The 1883 completion of James J. Hill’s Great Northern Railway – of which St. Paul was the eastern terminus – connected the city to the Pacific Northwest, enhancing its prominence as a trading centre. St. Paul also became a haven for gangsters such as John Dillinger, ‘Baby Face’ Nelson, and ‘Dapper’ Dan Hogan, who operated in conjunction with the corrupt city authorities, especially during the Prohibition Era (1920-1933). The city also has a strong cultural heritage. Charles Schulz, creator of the ‘Peanuts’ comic strip – including much-beloved characters Snoopy and Charlie Brown – spent much of his life in St. Paul.

Sinclair Lewis, a popular novelist known for his critique of Midwestern small-town life (and as the first American recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature), also lived here. Tim O’Brien, author of Pulitzer Prize-nominated The Things They Carried (1990), graduated from St. Paul’s Macalester College. More than any artistic figure, however, it is F. Scott Fitzgerald who is most closely associated with the city.

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At 3.30 pm on September 24th, 1896, Fitzgerald was born at 481 Laurel Avenue. His distant cousin Francis Scott Key (1779-1843) wrote the lyrics to ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ – an appropriate family connection for a writer whose works would also become an enduring aspect of American culture. His mother, Mollie McQuillan, was the daughter of an Irish immigrant who established a prosperous wholesale grocery business. A St. Paul native, Mollie was an unorthodox figure, known for her eccentric dress sense and love of sentimental poetry. Though Fitzgerald undoubtedly loved his mother, they shared little in common. She disapproved of his literary aspirations and burned most of his juvenilia. His father, Edward Fitzgerald, though born in Maryland, came from Southern stock and aided Confederate spies during the American Civil War (1861-65). Edward struggled to support the family through his own business endeavours. After his wicker furniture business in St. Paul failed, Edward moved the family to New York in 1901, where he embarked on an unspectacular career as a salesman. In 1908 the family returned to St. Paul and subsided on Mollie’s inheritance. Fitzgerald later felt that many of his character defects were attributable to having a weak father and being spoiled by Mollie.

Fitzgerald enrolled in the St. Paul Academy in 1908. He was not an exceptional student, but did display an aptitude for writing. In October 1909 Fitzgerald’s first published work, the story ‘The Mystery of Raymond Mortgage’, appeared in the Academy’s magazine Now and Then.

He also composed four plays for the school's Elizabethan Dramatic Club. In 1911 Fitzgerald left St. Paul to attend the Newman School in New Jersey, before entering Princeton as a Class of 1913 freshman.

Much like his time at the St. Paul Academy, Fitzgerald poured his energies into writing rather than studying, penning scripts for Princeton’s Triangle Club theatre group and contributing to the University’s Nassau Literary Magazine. Fitzgerald returned to St. Paul on vacations, however, and in January 1915 he encountered a woman who would have a profound influence on his life. At a party held at the Town and Country Club Fitzgerald met Ginevra King, a beautiful young socialite visiting St. Paul on vacation with a classmate from Westover school in Connecticut.

Ginevra was the daughter of a wealthy Chicago businessman, and her beauty and social standing earned her a place among the ‘the Big Four’ – the name given to the most desirable debutantes in Chicago during World War I. The pair quickly became infatuated. Fitzgerald visited her in Westover in February and Ginevra accompanied him to the June 1915 Princeton Prom.

Ginevra had other suitors, however, and she broke off her relationship with Fitzgerald in January 1917. Ginevra was Fitzgerald’s first love, and their relationship markedly influenced his fiction.

She served as an inspiration for Judy Jones in ‘Winter Dreams’, Isabelle Borge in This Side of Paradise, Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby, and as Josephine Perry in his five ‘Josephine’

stories about a Chicagoan heiress at the time of World War I. Fitzgerald didn’t see Ginevra again until a 1937 meeting in Hollywood. He claimed he had deliberately avoided coming into contact with her in later life to preserve the poignant memory of their youthful relationship.

Following America’s entry into World War I in April 1917, Fitzgerald enlisted in the army. Although he was spared combat experience – he was in New York waiting to embark for Europe when the armistice was called – Fitzgerald’s military training profoundly changed his life. Posted to Camp Sheridan in June 1918, Fitzgerald met an eighteen-year-old beauty named Zelda Sayre.

Knowing he would have to be in a secure financial position to make a serious offer of marriage, Fitzgerald revised the manuscript of his first novel, This Side of Paradise, which had already been turned down by Scribner’s in 1918. The novel was rejected a second time and Fitzgerald, after a short and unsuccessful attempt to work in the New York advertising business, returned to St. Paul and once more tried to recast his manuscript into publishable form. This time he succeeded. This Side of Paradise was accepted in September 1919 and published in March the following year, a week before his marriage to Zelda in New York.

Having returned from Europe in 1921, the Fitzgeralds settled in the St. Paul area, moving just outside the city to a home in Dellwood, on the shores of White Bear Lake. After being evicted for damaging a water pipe, Scott and Zelda moved into the city’s Commodore Hotel. In October, Zelda gave birth to Scottie at the Miller Hospital in St. Paul. The family then moved to a rented house in the Summit Avenue area, where they remained until relocating to the White Bear Club in June 1922. Scott and Zelda’s penchant for exuberant partying saw them evicted from the Club in August, after which they returned to the Commodore. During this period, Fitzgerald worked on his second novel, The Beautiful and Damned, which appeared in March 1922.

In October, the Fitzgeralds moved east, setting up a home in Great Neck, Long Island. Here Fitzgerald began socialising with moneyed and stylish members of fashionable society – experiences which would serve as the background for his third and most famous novel, The Great Gatsby (1925). Although he left St. Paul behind – Fitzgerald would never return to his

hometown – his time there was an important influence on The Great Gatsby. While at the Commodore Fitzgerald finished his most well-known St. Paul story. In ‘Winter Dreams’, local boy Dexter Green falls in love with Judy Jones, a young beauty who is socially and financially out of Dexter’s reach. Returning to St. Paul having built a successful career in the laundromat business, Dexter reconnects with Judy to whom he becomes engaged. Judy, however, leaves him for another man. Seven years later Dexter is distraught to learn Judy’s marriage has been a failure, but is even more hurt by the realisation he no longer feels any emotional attachment to her.

‘Winter Dreams’ served as a prototype for The Great Gatsby where, in the story of Gatsby’s infatuation with Daisy Buchanan, Fitzgerald developed the theme of a man’s obsessive pursuit of a socially superior and ultimately unattainable woman. Dexter’s response to being in Judy’s home – one far more glamorous than his own – was lifted almost verbatim and used in a similar scene where Jay Gatsby reacts to being invited into the (for him unprecedented) splendour of Daisy’s house. As well as using local connections such as White Bear Lake Yacht Club, ‘Winter Dreams’ channelled the feelings of social inferiority Fitzgerald experienced growing up in a respectable, yet not wealthy, St. Paul family.

Moving between Europe and America, the rest of Fitzgerald’s career was blighted by alcoholism, Zelda’s deteriorating mental health, and the constant pressure to support his often-excessive lifestyle by writing commercial fiction. Screenwriting became Fitzgerald’s main source of income in his final years, although he struggled to turn his literary talents to the silver screen. Despite having found sobriety, Fitzgerald’s health deteriorated and he died of a heart attack in 1940. Tragically, he was just months away from completing The Last Tycoon, a novel set in Hollywood which promised to equal the best of his work.

As it was, Fitzgerald died in relative obscurity, with the feeling that his achievements had not lived up to the potential of his talents. However, his early death (aged just 44) occasioned a series of reprints of his work and a stream of literary biographies which rehabilitated his reputation. Fitzgerald’s writing, including his literary reflections on St. Paul, is now one of the most highly-regarded body of works by a twentieth-century author. Today, St. Paul celebrates Fitzgerald’s international renown. Plaques outside his birthplace, St. Paul Academy, and 559 Summit Avenue all honour Fitzgerald. Meanwhile, a Fitzgerald stature adorns Rice Park and a mural of the author appears on the wall of the Fitzgerald Theatre, which was named after the city’s most-lauded literary son in 1994. Our guide will help you explore the most significant St. Paul locations – historical and contemporary – which relate to the life and works of Fitzgerald.

ST PAUL CATHEDRAL 239 Selby Avenue Cathedral Hill Area

The area of St. Paul which Fitzgerald grew up in – known as ‘Cathedral Hill’ – got its name from St. Paul Cathedral, which was initiated through the endeavours of Archbishop John Ireland. Designed by Emmanuel Louis Masqueray, the Cathedral was started in 1906, opened in 1915, and finalised in 1940, the same year Fitzgerald died of a heart attack in Hollywood. Although Fitzgerald’s mother and father were Catholic, he was not a devoted believer. Still, faith played an important role in his life. He was educated at the Catholic Newman School between 1911-13, where he met Father Sigourney Fay (1875-1919), who became his mentor and the inspiration for Monsignor Thayer Darcy in This Side of Paradise, which is dedicated to Fay. The Catholic emphasis on achieving grace through good works is an

important influence on Monsignor’s concept of the ‘personage’. A personage is someone who makes an appreciable mark on the world through achievement, whereas ‘personality’ is a more superficial quality.

Aspiring to become a personage rather than a personality is a key aspect of Amory’s development.

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LOUISA MCQUILLAN RESIDENCE 294 Laurel Avenue Cathedral Hill Area

Fitzgerald’s grandmother, Louisa Allen McQuillan, lived at this address. After Edward Fitzgerald’s career as a salesman in New York failed, the family returned to St. Paul in July 1908.

From that point the Fitzgerald children lived here with their grandmother, while their parents stayed with friends. When Louisa went abroad in April 1909, the parents were able to join their children at this address. After Louisa’s death in 1913, Edward Fitzgerald inherited enough money to keep the family household in St. Paul and to pay for Fitzgerald’s Princeton tuition fees.

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FITZGERALD BIRTHPLACE HOME 481 Laurel Avenue Cathedral Hill Area

24th September, 1896, Fitzgerald – weighing ten-pounds and six-ounces – was born in this Pullman-style building. Two of his sisters died in infancy in the same year and Fitzgerald suffered from health problems. Following a series of colds, he contracted bronchitis in 1897. Fitzgerald’s mother, Mollie, benefitted from a substantial inheritance from her father. This was fortunate, as the checkered business career of Fitzgerald’s father saw the family moving between various homes. After the collapse of Edward Fitzgerald’s furniture business, the family left this address while he pursued a career as a salesman for Proctor and Gamble in New York. Fitzgerald would not return to live in St. Paul until 1908, after his father’s New York move failed. The building is now on the National Register of Historic Places.

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ST. PAUL ACADEMY 25 North Dale Street Cathedral Hill Area

In September 1908, Fitzgerald enrolled at the St. Paul Academy, where he remained until 1911.

While Fitzgerald did not distinguish himself as a student, he did publish his first work at the Academy. His story, ‘The Mystery of Raymond Mortgage’, appeared in the October 1909 edition of the school’s publication Now and Then, to which he continued to contribute stories and limericks throughout his time at the Academy. Fitzgerald’s headmaster recalled: ‘I helped him by encouraging his desire to write adventures. It was his best work. […] He wasn’t too popular with his schoolmates. He saw through them too much and wrote about it’. Fitzgerald studied here for three years before moving to the Newman School in New Jersey. A statue of Fitzgerald aged 14, created

by Aaron Dysart, was unveiled here in 2006. Owing to a lack of images of Fitzgerald as a child, Dysart was forced to use his imagination. ‘I think I did the face like five times’, he informed the St. Paul Pioneer Press, ‘[t]he hardest problem was not having a model’. The Academy relocated to

larger premises in 1931; today the building forms an elegant office complex.

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FITZGERALD RESIDENCES (1909-13) 514, 509, and 499 Holly Avenue Cathedral Hill Area

In September 1909, the Fitzgerald family moved to 514 Holly Avenue, during which time Fitzgerald attended Sunday school at St. Mary’s where he received his first holy communion.

Jersey.

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In 1910 they moved again, just over the road to an 1887 Brownstone Romanesque Revival townhouse at 509 Holly Avenue. Here Scott graduated into long trousers and began smoking

In September 1911 the family moved yet again to another house at 499 Holly Avenue. Fitzgerald left soon after to begin his two-year stint at the Catholic preparatory Newman School, New Jersey.

COMMODORE HOTEL 79 Western Avenue North Cathedral Hill Area

The Fitzgeralds relocated here after being evicted from their rented home in Dellwood in October 1921. They stayed at the Commodore until their daughter, Scottie, was born at the Miller Hospital on October 26th. Scott and Zelda sought shelter here once more in August 1922 after being asked to vacate the White Bear Yacht Club. The Commodore was an apartment-style hotel which aimed to blend a ‘homelike spirit’ with an elegant dining room and, it is rumoured, a speakeasy in the basement. After a dramatic gas explosion in 1978, the Hotel was converted into condominiums. In 2015, however, The Commodore was reopened after extensive remodelling, boasting a restaurant and an art-deco bar. While the Fitzgeralds were here, Scott’s second short story collection, Tales of the Jazz Age, was published in September.

The family remained until October, before leaving St. Paul behind for New York's Great Neck area, where their lives amongst the East Coast socialites would inspire The Great Gatsby.

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FITZGERALD FAMILY RESIDENCE (1918-19) 599 Summit Avenue Cathedral Hill Area

In 1918, Fitzgerald’s parents moved into the most famous of all Fitzgerald St. Paul addresses. Following his enlistment in the army in 1917, Fitzgerald worked on the manuscript of what would become his first novel, This Side of Paradise. The work was rejected twice by Scribner’s in 1918, despite the support of editor Maxwell Perkins.

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During his training in Alabama, Fitzgerald met and fell in love with Zelda Sayre. Anxious to be able to make a serious offer of marriage, Fitzgerald tried to make his way in the New York advertising industry. Zelda, however, was tired of waiting for Fitzgerald to make a success of the move and broke off their engagement. Distraught, Fitzgerald left New York in July and returned to St. Paul.

Placing everything on the success of his novel, he shut himself in his room at 599 Summit Avenue and feverishly attempted to redraft This Side of Paradise. The gamble paid off. In September 1919, Maxwell Perkins wrote with the news that his novel had been accepted by

FITZGERALD FAMILY RESIDENCE (1914-15) 593 Summit Avenue Cathedral Hill Area

As he entered his second year at Princeton, Fitzgerald’s parents moved into this three-storey Summit Avenue address. Fitzgerald had a room on the third floor where he stayed during his Christmas visit in 1914 – the same trip on which he would meet Ginevra King the following January. In December 1915, he returned in less romantic circumstances when he came here to recover from an attack of tuberculosis. Fitzgerald’s eight-month recuperation was a frustrating period during which he worried over his fraught relationship with Ginevra. He did, however, compose the story ‘Spires and Gargoyles’ which was later incorporated into This Side of Paradise.

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SINCLAIR LEWIS HOUSE 516 Summit Avenue Cathedral Hill Area

599 was not the only address on this street with a notable literary connection. From 1917-1918, twriter Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) lived at number 516, which he referred to as ‘Lemon Meringue Pie’ house. Lewis was the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, doing so in 1930. He is best known for his novels which criticise the hypocrisy and materialism of Midwestern small-town society. Lewis was far more commercially successful than Fitzgerald, a fact emphasised by the recurring coincidence that four of Lewis’s novels – Main Street (1920), Babbitt (1922), Arrowsmith (1925), and Work of Art (1934) – appeared at the

same time as Fitzgerald’s. Sportingly, Fitzgerald wrote in Lewis’s copy of The Great Gatsby (1925) that he hoped the book would be the second most significant work published that

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UNIVERSITY CLUB OF ST. PAUL 420 Summit Avenue Cathedral Hill Area

The 1913 Clubhouse was designed by Charles A. Reed and Allen H. Stem, best known for their design of New York’s Grand Central Station. Today the building is an upmarket, though family-friendly, private members’ club. At a ‘Bad Luck Ball’ held here on Friday 13th January 1922, Fitzgerald wrote a satirical mock newspaper called the ‘St. Paul Daily Dirge’, which was handed out to guests. Scott and Zelda hired a delivery boy to distribute the paper, which carried the subtitle ‘Frightful Orgy at University Club' and generally mocked the attendees.

Zelda, meanwhile, with her penchant for drinking, cigars, and perfume, also behaved in a manner at odds with St. Paul's social orthodoxies.

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THE SPECTACLE SHOPPE 1089 Grand Avenue Summit Hill

This optician pays an innovative tribute to Fitzgerald through its 17-by-9 feet wide, 500-pound replica of the ‘Dr T.J. Eckleburg, Oculist’ billboard from The Great Gatsby. Tom Mischke, a local writer and radio host, tried to persuade Spectacle Shoppe owner David Ulrich to open a branch in St. Paul which would pay tribute to Fitzgerald. An ‘oculist' used to be a name for ‘optician' – hence Mischke's feeling the sign would be an appropriate tribute. Ulrich eventually agreed, and this sign was unveiled on September 24th, 2017, on what would have been Fitzgerald’s 121st birthday. The sign was painted by Forrest Wozniak, who assisted in the Fitzgerald mural on the Fitzgerald Theatre. In the novel, the ‘eyes’ symbolise scrutiny of the characters’ behaviour, implying a moral judgement of Jay Gatsby’s idealised pursuit of the American Dream.

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FITZGERALD RESIDENCE (1921-22) 626 Goodrich Avenue
 Summit Hill

The Fitzgeralds moved here after the birth of their daughter, Scottie, in November 1921. Their friend Xandra Kalman suggested Scott and Zelda move in with relatives of hers at this address.

While staying here, Fitzgerald worked on The Beautiful and Damned at a rented downtown office. Zelda disliked this late-Victorian property and did not relish St. Paul society. She would no doubt have been pleased that they only remained here until June 1922. The Fitzgeralds were asked to leave because of their disruptive behaviour and relocated to the more energetic atmosphere of White Bear Yacht Club.

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KILMARNOCK BOOKS STORE (FORMER SITE) 84 East Fourth Street Central St. Paul This was the site of the now sadly demolished Kilmarnock Books shop, which opened in 1921 under the management of World War I veteran Thomas Boyd. When the Fitzgeralds moved back to St. Paul in the 1920s, Boyd, who wrote a book page for the St Paul Daily News, came to interview Fitzgerald at his White Bear Lake ‘cottage’. A friendship quickly developed between Boyd and Fitzgerald, a relationship which may in part be due to Scott’s admiration for Tom’s combat record during the Great War (Fitzgerald never saw overseas service). Like Fitzgerald, Boyd struggled to place his first novel with Scribner’s. It was only after Fitzgerald’s insistence that Scribner’s reconsidered, and Boyd’s novel, Through the Wheat, was accepted by the firm. Through the Wheat has since become a classic American World War I novel, one that probably owes its current reputation to Fitzgerald. Boyd, meanwhile, used his book page to counter Fitzgerald’s reputation for dissipation, claiming that Fitzgerald was hard at work on his new novel.

Boyd also filled the windows of the shop here with a display advertising The Beautiful and Damned.

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FITZGERALD STATUE Rice Park Central St. Paul

This statue was created by Michael Price in 1996. Describing the approach he took to sculpting Fitzgerald, Price commented: ‘I found Fitzgerald to be an honest and generous person, and I wanted to express those qualities in the work’. ‘Fitzgerald said he didn't have a large idea, but he had a large perception, and so developed content from the vantage point of immediate human experience. I wanted to emulate that approach’. Fitzgerald’s memory is also honoured by the nearby Fitzgerald Theatre.

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ST PAUL THEATRE 10 East Exchange Street Central St. Paul

Originally opened as the Sam S. Schubert Theatre in 1910, this is the oldest playhouse in St Paul. In 1933 it became the World Theatre film house, before eventually being reopened as a theatre in Fitzgerald’s honour in 1994. This tribute is apt, since though known as a novelist and story writer, Fitzgerald also wrote a number of plays and forged a career as a screenwriter in later life. The building celebrates Fitzgerald’s legacy via its eye-catching mural of a youthful Fitzgerald in plus-fours.

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FITZGERALD RESIDENCE (AUGUST-OCTOBER 1921) 5 Yellow Birch Road
 White Bear Lake

After their marriage, Scott and Zelda returned to Minnesota and moved into this cottage in Dellwood on White Bear Lake, just outside St. Paul. Following a disruptive period of partying in New York, Dellwood, in theory, would provide the seclusion Fitzgerald needed to work on new literary projects. Zelda, who was pregnant, also needed a quiet environment in which to await the arrival of her first child.

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However, Fitzgerald’s newfound celebrity as a rising young author brought a string of visitors to the cottage and the wild nights of New York continued on the shores of White Bear Lake. While Fitzgerald was here, his second novel, The Beautiful and Damned, began serialisation in Metropolitan Magazine. The Fitzgeralds leased the house for a year, but were asked to leave in

October, apparently after the building’s plumbing became damaged. They moved to the Commodore Hotel instead.

WHITE BEAR YACHT CLUB 56 Dellwood Avenue White Bear Lake

The White Bear Yacht Club was designed by Charles A. Reed and Allen H. Strem, who also worked on St. Paul’s University Club. Two plays Fitzgerald composed for the St. Paul Academy Elizabethan Drama Club – Coward (1913) and Assorted Spirits (1914) – were performed here under Fitzgerald’s direction. Fitzgerald also attended several dances here in his youth. The story ‘Winter Dreams’ – in which the Club is loosely disguised as ‘Sherry Island Golf Club’ – was partially inspired by dancing here with Ginevra King. He returned with Zelda from June-August 1922, but they were asked to move on as a result of their rowdy behaviour. The original Club burned down in 1937, but a replacement was built and continues to offer golf and sailing facilities to St. Paul’s well-heeled.

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TOWN AND COUNTRY CLUB 2279 Marshall Avenue West St. Paul

After he enrolled in Princeton in 1913, Fitzgerald returned to St. Paul for the holidays. On these return trips Fitzgerald and his local friends had parties at the Town and Country Club, where they embarked on bobsledding and sleigh rides.

On one such ‘bob party’ in January 1915 Fitzgerald met the first serious love of his life – Ginevra King. The daughter of a wealthy Chicago businessman, Ginevra’s beauty and social standing earned her a place among ‘the Big Four’ – the name given to the four most desirable debutantes in Chicago during World War I. He wrote about this meeting in ‘Babes in the Wood’, which was later incorporated into his first novel, This Side of Paradise.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Works by Fitzgerald This Side of Paradise, ed. James L. W. West III (1920; rep. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2012)

Flappers and Philosophers (1920; rep. London: Alma Classics, 2014) The Beautiful and Damned (1922; rep. London: Penguin, 1994) Tales of the Jazz Age (1922; rep. London: Penguin Classics, 2011) The Great Gatsby, ed. by Matthew Bruccoli (1925; rep. Cambridge, Cambridge

University Press, 1991) All the Sad Young Men (1926; rep. London, Alma Classics, 2013) Tender Is the Night, ed. James L. W. West III (1934; rep. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2012) Taps at Reveille, ed. by James L. W. West III (1935; rep. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2014) The Love of the Last Tycoon, ed. by Matthew Bruccoli (1941; rep. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2014) The Crack-Up, ed. by Edmund Wilson (1945; rep. New York, NY: New Directions

Books, 2009) The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald, ed. by Andrew Turnbull (London: The Bodley Head,

1963)

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THE PEOPLE OF FITZGERALD’S SAINT PAUL Frances Scott “Scottie” Fitzgerald (1921-1986) - Fitzgerald’s daughter and only child. Scottie had an irregular childhood, moving with her parents as they changed residences, including spells in Paris and Antibes. When she attended the Ethel Walker School in Connecticut, her father’s literary agent Harold Ober and his wife Annie became her surrogate parents. After graduating from Vassar College in 1942 Scottie became a journalist and active member of the Democratic Party.

Edward Fitzgerald (1853-1931): Edward was president of the American Rattan and Willow Works, a St. Paul furniture maker. After this business failed, Edward moved his family to New York in 1901, where he worked for Procter and Gamble as a wholesale grocery salesman. In 1908 he lost his job and the family returned to St. Paul to live with Fitzgerald’s maternal grandmother.

Zelda Fitzgerald (1900-1948) - American novelist, painter, and wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda was part of the American expatriate set of Paris in the 1920s. Dubbed by her husband as ‘the first American Flapper’, Zelda and Hemingway did not get along well. Hemingway felt that she had a bad influence on her husband’s writing: ‘But anytime you got him all straightened out and taking his work seriously Zelda would get jealous and knock him out of it.’

Ginevra King (1898-1980): Ginevra King was a noted Chicago debutant. After meeting in St. Paul in 1915 the pair entered a relationship that lasted until 1917. Ginevra was Fitzgerald’s first love and served as an inspiration for several Fitzgerald heroines, including Josephine Perry in his five ‘Josephine’ tales and Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby.

Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951): Lewis was the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, which he did in 1930. He is best known for novels criticising the hypocrisy and materialism of Midwestern small-town society, such as Main Street (1920) and Babbitt (1922). From 1917-1918 he lived at number 516 Summit Avenue.

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William Maxwell Evarts Perkins (1884-1947) - American journalist and book editor for Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Perkins joined Scribner’s in 1910 and actively sought out promising new writers, working closely with them on the revisions of their manuscripts. Perkins made his first great ‘find’ in 1919 when he signed F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Perkins is also known for ‘discovering’ the talents of Thomas Wolfe and, via Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway.

Louisa McQuillan (1841-1913): Was Fitzgerald’s maternal grandmother. After the business career of his father, Edward Fitzgerald, failed the Fitzgerald family moved in to Louisa’s residence at 294 Laurel Avenue. After Louisa’s death in 1913, Mollie Fitzgerald inherited enough money to stabilise the family finances and for Scott to attend Princeton.Mary (Mollie) Fitzgerald (née McQuillan) (1860-1936): Mollie was born into a prosperous St. Paul family. She married Edward Fitzgerald in 1890 and her family’s money supplemented Edward’s chequered business income. In the 1930s, she also lent money to her son. After suffering a stroke, Mollie died in 1936.

IMAGE AND ILLUSTRATION CREDITS Location illustrations: Agata Urbanska.

The Romantic Egoists: A Pictorial Autobiography from the Scrapbooks and Albums of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Published by University of South Carolina (2003). Photographs adapted into illustrations by Agata Urbanska.

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MORE LITERARY GUIDES Hemingway Trails and Quizzes App Follow in the footsteps of Ernest Hemingway, and learn more about his life, love and work. Relive the enjoyment of his novels by answering quiz questions based on the books.

The Hemingway Trails and Quiz App has interactive clue-driven treasure hunt style trails in Key West, Cuba, London, Paris, Juan les Pins, Cap d’Antibes, Arles, Madrid, Pamplona, Ronda, Valencia, and book quizzes for your favourite novels - with more locations and book quizzes being added all the time. Collect rewards at the end of the trails and quizzes.

Available on Google Play and the App Store

Fitzgerald Trails and Quizzes App Follow in the footsteps of F Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, and learn more about their lives, their love and their work. Relive the enjoyment of his work by answering quiz questions based on Fitzgerald’s novels and short stories.

The Fitzgerald Trails and Quiz App has interactive clue-driven treasure hunt style trails in London, Paris, Juan les Pins, Cap d’Antibes, New York, LA, Long Island and book quizzes of your favourite novels and short stories - with more locations and book quizzes being added all the time. Collect rewards at the end of the trails and quizzes.

Available on Google Play and the App Store

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Written by: Illustrations by: Agata Urbanska Designed by: Eleanor O’Neill

A Sainted Media production. literarycityguide.com www.walkingwithwriters.com

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