I love you—the way you always are

Zelda Fitzgerald writes to her absent husband

The following letter was recently suggested by a reader named Margaret, to whom I owe thanks. If you also have in mind a letter of note that I’m yet to feature here, please leave a comment in this thread. Or simply email me: shaun@lettersofnote.com.

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Zelda Sayre and F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1919, a year before they married. (Photo: Getty)

In the summer of 1930, after a series of challenging mental health struggles, Zelda Fitzgerald journeyed to Switzerland to be admitted to the Prangins Clinic, where she would undergo treatment for over a year, sequestered away from all visitors. In the midst of her solitary existence, with little else to do, she composed numerous heartfelt, poetic letters filled with longing for her absent husband, fellow novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, vividly detailing her lonely days. This is just one. 

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[Autumn 1930]

[Prangins Clinic, Nyon, Switzerland]

Goofy, my darling, hasn’t it been a lovely day? I woke up this morning and the sun was lying like a birth-day parcel on my table so I opened it up and so many happy things went fluttering into the air: love to Doo-do and the remembered feel of our skins cool against each other in other mornings like a school-mistress. And you ’phoned and said I had written something that pleased you and so I don’t believe I’ve ever been so heavy with happiness. The moon slips into the mountains like a lost penny and the fields are black and punguent and I want you near so that I could touch you in the autumn stillness even a little bit like the last echo of summer. The horizon lies over the road to Lausanne and the succulent fields like a guillotine and the moon bleeds over the water and you are not so far away that I can’t smell your hair in the drying breeze. Darling—I love these velvet nights. I’ve never been able to decide whether the night was a bitter enemy or a grand patron—or whether I love you most in the eternal classic half-lights where it blends with day or in the full religious fan-fare of mid-night or perhaps in the lux of noon—Anyway, I love you most and you ’phoned me just because you ’phoned me to-night—I walked on those telephone wires for two hours after holding your love like a parasol to balance me. My dear—I’m so glad you finished your story—Please let me read it Friday. And I will be very sad if we have to have two rooms. Please.

Dear. Are you sort of feeling aimless, surprised, and looking rather reproachful that no melodrama comes to pass when your work is over—as if you ridden very hard with a message to save your army and found the enemy had decided not to attack—the way you sometimes feel—or are you just a darling little boy with a holiday on his hands in the middle of the week—the way you sometimes are—or are you organizing and dynamic and mending things—the way you always are.

I love you—the way you always are.

Dear—

Good-night—

Dear dear dear dear dear dear dear
Dear dear dear dear dear dear dear
Dear dear dear dear dear dear
Dear dear dear dear dear dear
Dear dear dear dear dear dear
Dear dear dear dear dear dear
dear dear dear dear dear dear
dear dear dear dear dear dear
dear dear dear dear dear dear
dear dear dear dear dear dear

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This letter was originally reprinted in Zelda: A Biography by Nancy Milford, published by HarperCollins in 1970. In 2019 it featured in Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, a fantastic collection with an introduction written by the Fitzgeralds’ granddaughter, Eleanor Lanahan. You can read that introduction on Literary Hub.