In the summer of 1920, F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda rented a house in Westport, Connecticut, a place that sparked mention in The Beautiful and Damned. Much of what Fitzgerald wrote was semi-autobiographical, and setting his book in Connecticut was true to life. Especially in the scene in the book where Gloria runs out of the grey cottage and heads to the train station. It can only be Westport. And Zelda inspired the scene.
What is the difference between the historian and the souvenir hunter? Both are in search of relics, of sacred objects; both tend to linger over scenes of carnage and tragedy– Sarah Churchwell, Careless People, Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of the Great Gatsby.
The Fitzgeralds were young and just married. Fitzgerald’s success with This Side of Paradise, meant they had money and fame. They rented a house at 244 Compo Road South, a modest home known today as the “F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald House.” The idyllic setting of Westport provided the couple with a refuge from the frenzy of New York City and allowed them to immerse themselves in the tranquility of small-town life.
Westport in the 1920s was a picturesque New England town, offering a combination of pastoral beauty and a burgeoning arts scene. With its rolling green hills, proximity to a beach on Long Island Sound, and a community of writers and artists, the environment must have provided a striking contrast to the Fitzgeralds’ otherwise fast-paced, urban lifestyle. This peaceful coastal town was a place where Fitzgerald could explore themes of wealth, social status, and the American Dream—themes that would later be immortalized in his most famous work, The Great Gatsby.
Careless People
Sarah Churchwell, a writer, spent a great deal of primary source research on Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby. Her book, Careless People, Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby, covered the time period that he wrote the book, but also the run up to why he left Long Island and went to France to write it.
Academic scholars have often dismissed notions that Fitzgerald based parts of the book on Westport. But there are tantalizing breadcrumbs, in Fitzgerald’s own words that lead to a different and more nuanced view. To say Westport and Great Neck are the same, at least back then, is to say that East Egg and West Egg, could also be descriptive of many towns on the Long Island Sound. But the class of people found in such towns, narrows the field a bit. Westport certainly struck the right mix, old-money estates and newer wealth. Fitzgerald made that a theme, not only in The Great Gatsby but in other works. It was according to Church, a status he coveted and derided. The grandiose mansions along the Connecticut coastline likely provided imagery for the novel’s lush descriptions of wealth and excess, while the Fitzgeralds’ own precarious finances may have colored his reflections on the fragility of the American Dream. And most notably, the house they rented in Great Neck was nowhere near the water.