“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter….tomorrow we will run faster….stretch out our arms farther…. And one fiiiine morning….
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back…ceaselessly into the past.”
This, the closing line of The Great Gatsby, is perhaps the most well-known and beloved ending in all American literature. And, while many are familiar with the quote, far fewer are familiar with its author’s connection to Western New York.
It’s author, F. Scott Fitzgerald spent much of his childhood here and the city left an indelible mark on the man who would write Gatsby, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Tender is the Night, and many other works. His tales of the Jazz Age spoke to the decadence and flamboyance of the 1920s. He has come to be regarded as one the great American writers and his most famous work, The Great Gatsby is certainly in contention for Greatest American Novel
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald or Scott as he preferred to be called, was born on September 24, 1896, in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Now, if that name sounds similar to the author of the Star-Spangled Banner; it was no coincidence – Francis Scott Key and F. Scott Fitzgerald were distant cousins (actually second cousins three times removed) and his parents wanted to highlight the connection.
Fitzgerald’s father was a soap salesman for Proctor and Gamble which brought his family to Buffalo in 1898 when Scott was just a year-and-a-half old. When they arrived, the family took up residence in the Lenox Apartments on North Street–now the Lenox Hotel and Suites. Built in 1896, the Lenox was a fashionable and elegant place to live, surrounded by some of Buffalo’s most ornate mansions.
In 1899, the family moved to an apartment on Elmwood and Summer where they remained until 1901 when Fitzgerald’s father was transferred to Syracuse. That year, the Fitzgerald’s returned to Buffalo to attend the Pan-American Exposition and, within two years, moved back to the Queen City, this time taking up residence at 29 Irving Place in the Allentown neighborhood.
It was around this time that the young Fitzgerald befriended Hamilton Wende, a boy whose family connections earned the boys free theatre tickets. The boys were captivated by the plays and would re-enact them for audiences of neighborhood children…but not without charging an admission first.
From an early age, Fitzgerald proved to be a precocious and intelligent child with an interest in literature. As both of his parents were Catholic, they sent Scott to school at Holy Angels Convent with the unusual arrangement that he only needed to go for half the day—and he was allowed to choose which half. At nine, Scott transferred from Holy Angel’s to Nardin Academy, one of the first Catholic private schools.
In 1903, the family moved to 71 Highland Avenue. In his personal notes later in life, Fitzgerald mentioned that he loved playing in the attic of this house where he had a “complete gymnasium” and even had a swing that he had hung from some hooks in the ceiling. His biographer, Andrew Turnbull, later visited the house and was shocked to discover the hooks still in the attic exactly as Fitzgerald had described.
In 1908, his father was fired from Procter & Gamble, and the family returned to Minnesota, but Fitzgerald’s time in Buffalo proved to have an impact on him and his later works. Fitzgerald’s family would likely have been considered upper middle class, but Scott was rubbing shoulders with some of Buffalo’s wealthiest families, in what was then America’s eighth largest city.
Fitzgerald’s family was, we”ll say “wealth adjacent,”…..he was an outsider amongst the monied elites. But, though he lacked the financial means to open doors for himself, his charm and intellect earned him access to prominent social circles. For example, according to The Buffalo Times, Scott learned to golf at the Park Club, where he would have crossed paths with the prominent men in the city and their sons.
In 1904, The Buffalo Commercial listed him as a student of C. H. Van Arnam Jr.’s Dancing Class. In 1906, he was part of their Easter Carnival at the Twentieth Century Club. The patronesses of the classes were a veritable who’s who of turn-of-the-century Buffalo society with names like, Mrs. Ansley Wilcox, Mrs. Dexter Rumsey, and Mrs. John C. Glenny. In this particular recital, the young Fitzgerald danced in a piece called ‘Humpty Dumpty’ with several other boys.
Van Arnam’s dance classes were a popular activity for the children of Buffalo society. His talent as a dancer made him a popular partner for the young ladies in the class and Fitzgerald, a burgeoning ladies man, loved the attention. Two of Scott’s more frequent partners were Dorothy Knox, the sister of Seymour Knox, and Harriet Mack whose family owned the Buffalo Times.
The Buffalo Evening News noted that during the 1906 Children’s Charity Ball, Scott was invited to join Harriet in her mother’s reserved box. In his own diary he mentioned going to their country club with them, dressed in his tuxedo. But, the Fitzgerald’s did not belong to any country clubs or reserve private boxes as balls. His access to these circles was by invitation only- predicated on the kindness of his wealthier friends. While Scott enjoyed this world, he knew it wasn’t truly his. While he was able to socialize and dance with the daughters of high society, as he would latermark, “Poor boys shouldn’t think of marrying rich girls.”
These themes play out later in his works This Side of Paradise and The Great Gatsby so it’s easy to see why Fitzgerald promoted his fiction as autobiographical. Many of his characters possess those same insecurities or grappled with materialism, classism, and a shifting culture brought on by a modernizing world. Perhaps that’s what made Fitzgerald so popular in the 1920s- he had a way of capturing the essence of the era in his work- the way only someone who lived it could fully understand it.
In 1908, his father was fired from Procter & Gamble, and the family returned to Minnesota. Fitzgerald finished his schooling in Saint Paul before attending Princeton. There Fitzgerald preferred writing to studying and he found himself on academic probation. In 1917, Fitzgerald dropped out of Princeton to join the Army. Though America had joined the Great War in April of that year, Fitzgerald saw no combat. Instead, he was stationed near Montgomery, Alabama which is where he met his future wife, Zelda Sayre.
The pair were married in 1920 and had a daughter, Frances Scott Fitzgerald, in 1921. They moved around the country before briefly joining the American expat scene in Paris. It was there that he met Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and others. “The best of America drifts to Paris,” Fitzgerald wrote, “The American in Paris is the best American. France has the only two things toward which we drift as we grow older—intelligence and good manners.”
Though Fitzgerald has come to be remembered as one of the greatest American writers, much of his success came after his death. His work- which so elegantly captured the spirit of the 1920s- fell out of fashion during the depression. The 1930s proved tempestuous for Fitzgerald- he grappled with personal and professional struggles. He only completed one novel during this time- in fact he had turned primarily to writing short stories and screenplays to support himself.
In December of 1940, Fitzgerald died at the age of 44. At the time of his death, he was on the brink of obscurity- a forgotten relic of a bygone era. But when his final manuscript The Last Tycoon was finished and published in 1941 by his friend Edmund Wilson, it was printed with The Great Gatsby included in the edition. The renewed popularity of the novel led to its inclusion in the Armed Services Editions (books printed for American troops) during WWII. In 1960, New York Times editorialist Arthur Mizener announced it was “probably safe now to say that [Gatsby] is a classic of twentieth-century American fiction.” Thus cementing Fitzgerald’s position amongst the literary greats.
The Great Gatsby and Fitzgerald himself have come to embody the decadence, flamboyance, and elegance of the 1920s. His work walks a fine line between an empathetic admiration for the appeal of the lifestyle money could afford but also an acute awareness of its destructive and corrosive power. He captures the essence of an opulent world that many would never have the opportunity to see into while maintaining the bias of an outsider. Like Gatsby, if Fitzgerald wanted this world in his own right he’d have to earn it. Which in its own way is the American Dream.
While it’s impossible for Buffalo to take full credit for shaping Fitzgerald’s views, his time here was his first introduction to the division between worlds. Going to the country club, but only as the guest of friends…Dancing in the gorgeous ballrooms of the 20th Century Club, but with his dance class. Living in the most fashionable part of the city- but in an apartment nestled amidst the mansions.
While Buffalo was the setting for only a small part of Fitzgerald’s life, the city and all it represented, was anything but forgotten
Lindsey Lauren Visser 