NINE HEMINGWAY

An American Returns

F. Scott Fitzgerald is introduced as one who “understood loss better perhaps than any American writer”. Babylon Revisited acutely relates to this theme as it speaks of a man trying to reclaim what he had lost. Paris becomes the setting for this quest and its fiction resonates with many of the realities that Fitzgerald faced during the 1920s. We continue to learn about Paris through an expatriate lens and are reacquainted with that lifestyle in retrospect. Furthermore, this story might offer some insight into Fitzgerald’s psyche as a successful writer, husband and father. At the same time, the series of events, observations and characters continuously serve to convey the inescapability of the past.

The story begins with an American expatriate, Charlie Wales, who returns to Paris only to find it “so empty.” His friends ‘Mr. Campbell’, ‘George Hardt’ and ‘the Snowbird’ had left. The sense of loss is immediately evoked in this first dialogue between Wales and presumably the taxi driver. However, thee fact that he can have such a conversation (one that one might have with an old friend) with the taxi driver and trust him with his “brother-in-law’s address”, suggests that there was still a familiarity in Paris then despite its foreignness. As such, the present still had traces of the past in it.

As the story unfolds, Wales’s motivations are made clearer to us — he wishes to regain custody of his daughter. Wales is seeking for a second chance at fatherhood which his past, likely a hedonistic one, in Paris had revoked. He, according to his sister-in-law, Marion, had done “that terrible thing” that caused his wife, Helen’s death. Marion continues to beset Wales with this, emphasizing that “you (Wales) haven’t really existed for me (Marion)” since then, during his plea for his daughter’s custody.  Wales however, insists that he has corrected his ways. Yet the past continues to haunt him.

Duncan and Lorraine are the leading “ghosts out of the past”, in particular Lorraine (since Wales passed his contact to Duncan through the taxi driver), whom Wales repeatedly tries to get away from. In contrast to the doorman Alix and barman Paul, who were likely also witnesses to Wales’s alcoholic party life, Duncan and Lorraine appear not only to be reminders, but also agents who will drag Wales back into that “lavish times” which cost him his daughter and wife. Furthermore, Wales’s strong “unwilling[ness]” to re-associate with Duncan and Lorraine is parallel to his strict control of alcohol of not “only one drink every afternoon”. His is quite conscious of his intake, remembering that he “had not touched his drink at the Peters’, and now he ordered a whisky-and-soda.”

Fitzgerald navigates Charlie’s quest to start anew having corrected his flaws in this short story as he confronts his past, the people and the setting for it — Paris. His description of the city is in line with the dreamy reputation.  

 “Charlie directed his taxi to the Avenue de l’Opera, which was out of his way. But he wanted to see the blue hour spread over the magnificent façade, and imagine that the cab horns, playing endlessly the first few bars of La Plus que Lent, were the trumpets of the Second Empire. They were closing the iron grill in front of Brentano’s Book-store, and people were already at dinner behind the trim little bourgeois hedge of Duval’s.”

Furthermore, Fitzgerald builds up the mythicism of Paris by alluding it to the ancient city, Babylon in the title of this piece. Babylon, the name of one of the earliest cities of mankind, is deeply entrenched in the past, which relates back to the central theme of the past of the story. 

At the same time, the story corresponds with the expatriate reality of the 1920s. In contrast to the Ritz Bar which had “gone back to France”, the expatriate home of Lincoln and Marion had a room which  “was warm and comfortably American.” In addition, the situation and perspective of the American has also changed due to the Great Depression. Many of them could no longer afford living in Paris anymore, or at least living like they used to. 

“It seems very funny to see so few Americans around.”“I’m delighted,” Marion said vehemently. “Now at least you can go into a store without their assuming you’re a millionaire. We’ve suffered like everybody, but on the whole it’s a good deal pleasanter.”“But it was nice while it lasted,” Charlie said. “We were sort of royalty, almost infallible, with a sort of magic around us…”

Not only does Fitzgerald give us the “millionaire” view of Americans held by Parisians pre-Depression, but also points out the mythical view of them, “with a sort of magic around us”, held by those out of France (particularly Americans back home). This agrees with the phenomenon of the wondrous Lost Generation that Fitzgerald himself had a leading role in. 

The close knitted nature of the American expatriate circle is also exemplified by the finding out each other’s address by word-of-mouth. This is similar to the actual state of things, where Americans were able to visit homes quite easily, such as visits to Ezra Pound’s studio or Gertrude Stein’s home as depicted in Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast. 

Alternative insight that this piece might provide is about Fitzgerald himself. It is notable that this piece was written for the Saturday Evening Post, 21 February 1931. Could this be one of the pieces that Fitzgerald wrote for money? How would this affect how we look at this story? Yet, the emotions evoked from the story — loss, remorse, guilt, nostalgia — speak to the reader effectively. 

The plot line about Helen is interesting if we consider the Fitzgerald’s marriage. In this story, Wales experiences a lot of guilt over the demise of Helen. She “died of heart trouble” and Fitzgerald highlights the duality of the term through Marion’s response, “Yes, heart trouble.” We can infer that the Wales’ marriage was similar to that of the Fitzgeralds’ — party lifestyle and turbulent emotions. While Zelda did not die before Scott, it is possible that Scott felt responsible for her insanity. After all, Zelda notoriously threw herself down a flight of marble stairs to get Scott’s attention after he was talking to a dancer, Isadora Duncan, for too long. 

Finally, Wales’s portrayal as an absent father might shed some light into Fitzgerald’s fatherhood. Like his protagonist, Fitzgerald only had one daughter, Frances Scott “Scottie” Fitzgerald. While we do not know much about the details of their relationship, Fitzgerald’s letter to Scottie in 1933 reveals a rather affectionate and astute father in him.

AUGUST 8, 1933
LA PAIX RODGERS’ FORGE
TOWSON, MATYLAND
DEAR PIE:
I feel very strongly about you doing duty. Would you give me a little more documentation about your reading in French? I am glad you are happy– but I never believe much in happiness. I never believe in misery either. Those are things you see on the stage or the screen or the printed page, they never really happen to you in life.
All I believe in in life is the rewards for virtue (according to your talents) and the punishments for not fulfilling your duties, which are doubly costly. If there is such a volume in the camp library, will you ask Mrs. Tyson to let you look up a sonnet of Shakespeare’s in which the line occurs Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds…
I think of you, and always pleasantly, but I am going to take the White Cat out and beat his bottom hard, six times for every time you are impertinent. Do you react to that?…
Half-wit, I will conclude. Things to worry about:
Worry about courage
Worry about cleanliness
Worry about efficiency
Worry about horsemanship…
Things not to worry about:
Don’t worry about popular opinion
Don’t worry about dolls
Don’t worry about the past
Don’t worry about the future
Don’t worry about growing up
Don’t worry about anybody getting ahead of you
Don’t worry about triumph
Don’t worry about failure unless it comes through your own fault
Don’t worry about mosquitoes
Don’t worry about flies
Don’t worry about insects in general
Don’t worry about parents
Don’t worry about boys
Don’t worry about disappointments
Don’t worry about pleasures
Don’t worry about satisfactions
Things to think about:
What am I really aiming at?
How good am I really in comparison to my contemporaries in regard to:
(a) Scholarship
(b) Do I really understand about people and am I able to get along with them?
(c) Am I trying to make my body a useful intrument or am I neglecting it?
With dearest love,

Wale’s adoration of Honoria was likely inspired by Fitzgerald’s relationship to Scottie too. In addition, Frances Scott Fitzgerald grew up to be successful writer, unlike most of the other children of the Lost Generation. Perhaps we can speculate that she “was an individual with a code of her own” as a child like Honoria.

One cannot but help think about Hemingway’s last chapter in A Moveable Feast with the ending of Babylon Revisited set in the Ritz bar as well. Obviously, Wales is on close terms with the doorman and bartender, Alix and Paul. On the other hand, Fitzgerald may not have had enjoyed such a friendship since barman George barely has any impression of him. It is probably such that fiction is more indulgent and beautiful, as both being American expatriates, Wales is able to seek solace in the people who were supporting characters in his past life, while Fitzgerald was left little mark on his.

Jones, Josh. "F. Scott Fitzgerald Tells His 11-Year-Old Daughter What to Worry About (and Not Worry About) in Life, 1933." Open Culture. September 24, 2013. Accessed April 2, 2015. http://www.openculture.com/2013/09/f-scott-fitzgerald-tells-his-11-year-old-daughter-what-to-worry-about.html.

Milford, Nancy. Zelda: A Biography. New York: Harper & Row, 1970. 54.