Fitzgerald became furious and melodramatically claimed that he had been carried out on a stretcher.
Glenway Wescott once observed that “Fitzgerald must have been the worst educated man in the world.” 15 It was ironic, Fitzgerald later told his daughter, that he had failed “Buzzer” Hall’s course in modern European history, but now owned more than three hundred books on the subject. Aware of his own intellectual limitations, he struggled to improve his mind until the very end of his life.
Fitzgerald dedicated the summer of 1917 to drinking gin and reading Schopenhauer, Bergson and William James. But the gin had a more powerful effect than the philosophy, and he returned to Princeton to await his commission in the army rather than to get his degree. The most famous alumnus of the college never graduated. Though bitter about his failures, he always remained intensely idealistic about and deeply devoted to Princeton.
Chapter Three
The Army and Zelda, 1917–1919
I
Fitzgerald, who was extremely self-absorbed, had no serious interest in or understanding of the greatest historical event of his lifetime: World War I. “Beyond a sporting interest in the German dash for Paris,” he wrote with studied indifference in This Side of Paradise , “the whole affair failed either to thrill or interest him. . . . He hoped it would be long and bloody.” When the war bogged down in the trenches after the German invasion of France, he “felt like an irate ticket holder at a prizefight where the principals refused to mix it up.” Fitzgerald joined the army for the same reasons that he went to Princeton. It was the fashionable thing to do. He imagined himself as a war hero as he had once pictured himself as a football star and wanted to prove his courage in combat. The army was also a convenient way, as malaria had been in 1916, to escape his recurrent failures in college.
Writing to his cousin Cecilia Taylor and to his mother (who had wanted him to become an army officer) after America had entered the war in April 1917, Fitzgerald emphatically rejected the patriotic motives that had inspired thousands of young men and had been immortalized in Rupert Brooke’s “The Soldier”: “If I should die, think only this of me: / That there’s some corner of a foreign field / That is forever England.” Instead, when explaining his voluntary enlistment to these good ladies, he alluded to Ireland’s neutrality and stressed his own individuality and deliberate detachment: “Updike of Oxford or Harvard says ‘I die for England’ or ‘I die for America’—not me. I’m too Irish for that—I may get killed for America—but I’m going to die for myself. . . . About the army, please let’s not have either tragedy or Heroics because they are equally distasteful to me. I went into this perfectly cold-bloodedly and don’t sympathize with the ‘Give my son to country’ . . . stuff because I just went and purely for social reasons .”
In July 1917, after his brief bout with Schopenhauer and Bergson, Fitzgerald went to Fort Snelling, near St. Paul, and took the exams required for an appointment as second lieutenant in the regular army. He could not become an officer until he reached the age of twenty-one in September. When he received his commission in the infantry on October 26, he immediately ordered his smart uniforms at Brooks Brothers—just as he had sent for his football equipment as soon as he was admitted to Princeton.
He was sent for three months of training, from November 1917 to February 1918, to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, on the Missouri River northwest of Kansas City. The captain in charge of training provisional lieutenants in exercises, calisthenics and bayonet drills was Dwight Eisenhower. One of his trainees wrote home enthusiastically about the young captain: “He has given us wonderful bayonet drills. He gets the fellows’ imaginations worked up and hollers and yells and makes us shout and stomp until
Glenway Wescott once observed that “Fitzgerald must have been the worst educated man in the world.” 15 It was ironic, Fitzgerald later told his daughter, that he had failed “Buzzer” Hall’s course in modern European history, but now owned more than three hundred books on the subject. Aware of his own intellectual limitations, he struggled to improve his mind until the very end of his life.
Fitzgerald dedicated the summer of 1917 to drinking gin and reading Schopenhauer, Bergson and William James. But the gin had a more powerful effect than the philosophy, and he returned to Princeton to await his commission in the army rather than to get his degree. The most famous alumnus of the college never graduated. Though bitter about his failures, he always remained intensely idealistic about and deeply devoted to Princeton.
Chapter Three
The Army and Zelda, 1917–1919
I
Fitzgerald, who was extremely self-absorbed, had no serious interest in or understanding of the greatest historical event of his lifetime: World War I. “Beyond a sporting interest in the German dash for Paris,” he wrote with studied indifference in This Side of Paradise , “the whole affair failed either to thrill or interest him. . . . He hoped it would be long and bloody.” When the war bogged down in the trenches after the German invasion of France, he “felt like an irate ticket holder at a prizefight where the principals refused to mix it up.” Fitzgerald joined the army for the same reasons that he went to Princeton. It was the fashionable thing to do. He imagined himself as a war hero as he had once pictured himself as a football star and wanted to prove his courage in combat. The army was also a convenient way, as malaria had been in 1916, to escape his recurrent failures in college.
Writing to his cousin Cecilia Taylor and to his mother (who had wanted him to become an army officer) after America had entered the war in April 1917, Fitzgerald emphatically rejected the patriotic motives that had inspired thousands of young men and had been immortalized in Rupert Brooke’s “The Soldier”: “If I should die, think only this of me: / That there’s some corner of a foreign field / That is forever England.” Instead, when explaining his voluntary enlistment to these good ladies, he alluded to Ireland’s neutrality and stressed his own individuality and deliberate detachment: “Updike of Oxford or Harvard says ‘I die for England’ or ‘I die for America’—not me. I’m too Irish for that—I may get killed for America—but I’m going to die for myself. . . . About the army, please let’s not have either tragedy or Heroics because they are equally distasteful to me. I went into this perfectly cold-bloodedly and don’t sympathize with the ‘Give my son to country’ . . . stuff because I just went and purely for social reasons .”
In July 1917, after his brief bout with Schopenhauer and Bergson, Fitzgerald went to Fort Snelling, near St. Paul, and took the exams required for an appointment as second lieutenant in the regular army. He could not become an officer until he reached the age of twenty-one in September. When he received his commission in the infantry on October 26, he immediately ordered his smart uniforms at Brooks Brothers—just as he had sent for his football equipment as soon as he was admitted to Princeton.
He was sent for three months of training, from November 1917 to February 1918, to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, on the Missouri River northwest of Kansas City. The captain in charge of training provisional lieutenants in exercises, calisthenics and bayonet drills was Dwight Eisenhower. One of his trainees wrote home enthusiastically about the young captain: “He has given us wonderful bayonet drills. He gets the fellows’ imaginations worked up and hollers and yells and makes us shout and stomp until
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