The original dust jacket of Andrew Turnbull's biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1962.
In 1932, F. Scott Fitzgerald rented a house from the Turnbull family. Located in Towson, Maryland, just outside of Baltimore, “La Paix” was a beautiful, sprawling old Victorian home. Fitzgerald lived there for 18 months with his wife Zelda and their daughter Scottie. The Turnbulls lived in a newer house on their sprawling property, where they raised their three children: two daughters, Frances and Eleanor, and an 11-year-old son, Andrew.
Andrew Turnbull was fascinated by Fitzgerald, who took a paternal interest in the boy. Fitzgerald played tennis, tossed footballs, and shot .22 rifles with Andrew. He also encouraged Andrew’s interest in words, writing him letters filled with obscure words that would send Andrew to the dictionary. Andrew attended Princeton, as did Fitzgerald. Andrew was a better student, as he actually graduated from Princeton, then earned a master’s and doctorate from Harvard in European history. Turnbull wrote the second biography of Fitzgerald. Titled simply Scott Fitzgerald, it was published in 1962. The following year, Turnbull edited the first collection of Fitzgerald’s letters.
One of my favorite descriptions of Fitzgerald was written by Andrew Turnbull: “There was always something of the magician in Fitzgerald. He was the inventor, the creator, the tireless impresario who brightened our days and made other adult company seem dull and profitless. It wasn’t so much any particular skill of his as a quality of caring, of believing, of pouring his whole soul and imagination into whatever he did with us.” (p.231) I just love this passage, and it makes Fitzgerald come to life. You can imagine his sparkling wit enlivening Great Neck, the French Riviera, Saint Paul, Baltimore, and all the other places he lived.
Turnbull understood Fitzgerald’s complicated personality, and his admiration for Fitzgerald comes across strongly in the text. But his book is no mere hagiography of Fitzgerald. Turnbull interviewed many people who knew Fitzgerald, and there are numerous accounts of his behavior, both good and bad.
Fitzgerald exhibited a strong personal charisma, and Turnbull wrote of him: “Fitzgerald focused on you—even riveted on you—and if there was one thing you were sure of, it was that whatever you happened to be talking about was the most important matter in the world. A further seduction was his smile—quick, tight, and very appealing. It was not so much a smile as a flash of confidence in you and your mortal possibilities.” (p.226-7) There was more than a touch of Jay Gatsby in Scott Fitzgerald.
Turnbull masterfully chronicles Fitzgerald’s life, from the glamour and fame of the 1920’s to the crash of the 1930’s, and his final attempt to remake himself in Hollywood. Brad Hayden wrote of Turnbull in the Dictionary of Literary Biography: “His speculations concerning Fitzgerald are filled with poetic insight and fidelity to the romantic spirit of his subject.” I read this quote grateful that someone summed up the book so well, and wishing that I had come up with such an elegant sentence.
Turnbull wrote a beautiful summation of the eighteen months when Fitzgerald lived at La Paix. It’s one of my favorite passages in the book. “My mother was grateful she knew Fitzgerald when she did, for he must have been more impressive then than at almost any other time—because more tragic, and therefore more profound...My mother became for a brief season a listener to and therefore a sharer of his thoughts, and they blotted out the surface lights and carried her, as the poetry of his books has carried others, down into the depths. And not the depths of weakness and illness alone. They were there, but also the angels.” (p.248)
After editing the collection of Fitzgerald’s letters, Turnbull also edited the 1965 volume Letters to His Daughter, which collected his letters to Scottie. Turnbull also wrote an acclaimed biography of Fitzgerald’s contemporary, and fellow Scribner’s author Thomas Wolfe, published in 1967. I’m lucky enough to have a signed copy of Turnbull’s Wolfe biography.
In addition to his own memories of Fitzgerald, Turnbull interviewed and corresponded with many people who knew Fitzgerald. In “A Note on Method and Sources” at the end of the book, the list of people Turnbull talked to about Fitzgerald is six pages long. It’s a great loss for Fitzgerald and Wolfe studies that Turnbull’s papers do not survive, as “Turnbull’s files were destroyed when his widow left her house in Cambridge, Massachusetts.” (F. Scott Fitzgerald Remembered, p.x)
I knew that Andrew Turnbull died young, at age 48 in 1970, but it wasn’t until recently that I learned he committed suicide. I’m always saddened by any mention of suicide, and it’s hard for me to say exactly why I feel such sadness at the passing of someone I never met, someone who died 11 years before I was born. Part of the sadness is that I’ve always loved the connection that Fitzgerald had with Andrew Turnbull—how his friendship with this boy turned into a literary conversation, with Turnbull becoming his biographer, and editing the first collection of Fitzgerald’s letters. I’ve used the quote about Fitzgerald being “the inventor, the creator” numerous times on my Fitzgerald walking tours. I don’t know that the quote ever evoked in my audiences the same warm feeling I always had upon reading it, but I loved sharing it with people. I’ve moved away from reading direct quotes on my tours, unless I’m quoting from Fitzgerald himself. But when I talk about Fitzgerald’s personality, I always paraphrase what Turnbull wrote about how “Fitzgerald focused on you—even riveted on you— and if there was one thing you were sure of, it was that whatever you happened to be talking about was the most important matter in the world.” In that tiny way, I know my words are paying a little tribute to Andrew Turnbull’s work in researching and writing such a finely woven portrait of a talented writer who also happened to be his friend.
