Zelda Fitzgerald - Biography - F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Scott began to call her daily and came into Montgomery on his free days. He talked of his plans to be famous, and sent her a chapter of a book he was writing. He was so taken by Zelda that he redrafted the character of Rosalind Connage in This Side of Paradise to resemble her. He wrote, "all criticism of Rosalind ends in her beauty" and told Zelda that "the heroine does resemble you in more ways than four". Zelda was more than mere muse—after showing Scott her personal diary, he used verbatim excerpts in his novel. At the conclusion of This Side of Paradise, the soliloquy of the protagonist Amory Blaine in the cemetery is taken directly from her journal.

Scott was not the only man courting Zelda, and the competition only drove Scott to want her more. In his ledger that he meticulously maintained throughout his life, he noted on September 7 that he had fallen in love. Ultimately, she would do the same. Her biographer Nancy Milford wrote, "Scott had appealed to something in Zelda which no one before him had perceived: a romantic sense of self-importance which was kindred to his own".

Their courtship was briefly interrupted in October when he was summoned north. He expected to be sent to France, but was instead assigned to Camp Mills, Long Island. While he was there, the Armistice with Germany was signed. He returned to the base near Montgomery and by December they were passionately inseparable; Scott would later describe their behavior as "sexual recklessness". On February 14, 1919, he was discharged from the military and left to establish himself in New York City.

They wrote frequently and by March 1920 Scott sent Zelda his mother's ring and the two became engaged. Many of Zelda's friends and members of her family were wary of the relationship. They did not approve of Scott's excessive drinking, and her Episcopalian family did not like that he was a Catholic.