History Pages
Château de la Garoupe( recently confiscated by French Gov!)
© lamareecatering. ru
The Murphys were an influential couple and they made two epoch-changing events happen on the Riviera. First, they made sure that the Hôtel du Cap in Antibes, built as a private villa in 1869 by Hippolyte de Villemessant, did not close for the hot summer season. After all, the French Riviera had been a winter destination. For the first time in 35 years, Gerald persuaded the owner to keep the cook, steward and doorman and moved in with his new friends. It was also Gerald Murphy who inspired the pale-faced « Old World » aristocrats to come to the Côte d’ Azur for sunbathing. Before him, the fabulous « golden sands » of the Riviera barely ever had sunbathers! Gerald was always on top of the latest art trends and scientific inventions. Back in his first days in Paris, he noticed the paintings of Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso and Juan Gris in La Boétie street windows. Struck by unusual shapes and bold colours, he decided to master painting, created several works that are featured in modern art museums today. His wife Sara kept up by taking lessons from Picasso himself, who happened to be their next-door neighbour.
Dangerous dreams
to stand out in everything that I do … I must assert myself … I can-
« I
have
not live without being loved, act without being praised …»— Fitzgerald confessed in 1935 to his secretary, Laura Guthrie. Ever since his childhood, Mr. Francis Scott Fitzgerald always wanted to become wealthy— very wealthy. All the other matters of this world— war, love, religion, scientific discoveries— were all perceived by him as cheap fiction, melodramatic stories and he wrote quite a lot of those to make money on the side. His difficult childhood largely accounts for his tragic life. As a boy, he was living between two fires: a kind but spineless father, bent under the weight of his debts, and an extravagant, overprotective mother— she would serve the young Francis sandwiches and coffee in bed and could show up in public wearing different-coloured shoes. Francis’ only legacy was his vanity, multiplied by an amazing ability to notice the subtle details of human character. As a schoolboy he wrote a diary about his classmates. He was also outrageously brave, bordering on outright arrogance. If he were late for a Sunday service, he would shout to the priest: « Don’ t mind me, carry on preaching!» Literature, for Fitzgerald, became a kind of a special world where all his dreams came true— but reincarnated in different characters, in different lives, sending him back to his Princeton years( 1913 – 1917). His envious heart and overt narcissism repelled the editors of the top American publishing houses: « Our public will be insulted after reading your novel.» Eventually, however, after two years of painstaking work and rewrites, Francis published his first novel, « This Side of Paradise » in April, 1920. The book brought him instant success, loads of money, and— most importantly— the consent of twenty-year-old Zelda Sayre and her well-to-do family from Alabama to wed the enamoured Fitzgerald.
Born tricksters
Both Francis and Zelda had always been mischievous. Back in grade school, the young Francis, tired of his teachers in the Catholic college, would amuse himself making prank calls. He would call a leg prosthetic firm and choke with laughter while keenly asking whether their products were squeaky or not. The « fidgety » Zelda, as her parents lovingly referred to her, would call the fire department from her room and ask, in mock sobs, to come and remove her brother from the roof as quickly as possible. Once they got together, Francis and Zelda carried on pranks and partying it up in the big city. They would ride on the roofs of taxis in Manhattan and appear stark naked at shows. The young couple’ s real « feast of life », however, began in 1924, in France. They first moved to Paris, where they partied with fellow artists like Hemingway, Picasso, Gertrude Stein, and Dalí. Then to the Riviera where they met Gerald and Sara Murphy— the heart and soul of the local « jet set ».
Life imitating art
It was not the Murphy’ s connection to the art world that drew Fitzgerald’ s attention; it was the couple’ s wealth( Sara alone inherited $ 7,000 per year). The heroine of his novel « Tender is the Night » does not buy paint and canvas on the Riviera, but a stunning novelty of the season, an insanely expensive inflatable crocodile. Thence the scene of Nicole Diver’ s shopping frenzy. The character is a rich girl who succumbs to schizophrenia after accidental sex with her father. Sara Murphy, the prototype of this heroine, unsurprisingly « did not like the novel », to say the least! In real life, Sara Murphy lived a seemingly normal life from every point of view, whereas Nicole Diver, discharged from a Swiss psychiatric hospital, is clearly inspired by Zelda Fitzgerald. Both their behaviour and medical history are the same. Baby Warren, another « Tender is the Night » heroine, voices the writer’ s tiredness from helping Nicole( Zelda) find a way out from her disturbed mind’ s quagmire: « How do you know where eccentricity ends and gives way to a mental illness?»
Spiralling into madness
In August 1924, Gerald and Sara stayed in Hotel du Cap during the renovation of their Villa America. One of those nights, Francis knocked on their door. He was pale, a candle trembling in his hand,
86 / Hello Monaco Spring – Summer 2018