Fitzgerald, F. Scott | “Now you just go right to sleep” — This Side of Paradise, inscribed to his nurse, Carma Kaufman Freeman

Fitzgerald, F. Scott.

This Side of Paradise. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1931

8vo. Publisher’s dark blue-green cloth, spine lettered in gilt; cloth a little rubbed with minor fraying to spine extremities, corners lightly bumped.

Inscribed by Fitzgerald on the front free endpaper: “Best wishes ("Now you just go right to sleep") from Old Insomniac Fitzgerald to his old childhood nurse, Mrs. Freeman.”

This rare survival is from one of the most difficult periods of Fitzgerald’s life. In the summer of 1934, Zelda remained hospitalized at Sheppard-Pratt, Scottie was staying with cousins in Norfolk, and Fitzgerald himself oscillated between stays at Johns Hopkins Hospital and periods of fragile convalescence. Indeed, his friend H. L. Mencken wrote in a June 1934 diary entry that "the case of F. Scott Fitzgerald has become distressing. He is boozing in a wild manner and has become a nuisance. His wife, Zelda, who has been insane for years, is now confined at the Sheppard-Pratt Hospital, and he is living in Park Avenue with his little daughter, Scottie." During this time he was attended by Carma Kaufman Freeman, a Hopkins-trained nurse and the wife of Dr. George Freeman.

Fitzgerald’s playful self-designation as “Old Insomniac” echoes the running joke between him and Carma—“Now you just go right to sleep” being her habitual reassurance when administering medication. The line would later shadow the reflections on sleeplessness in “The Crack-Up,” but here it appears in a far lighter register.

This volume formed part of the small group of books and papers Carma retained from her time with Fitzgerald, including the autograph manuscript of Edgar Fawcett’s “The Other Side of the Moon” written out for her (see lot 1058) and her inscribed copy of Tender Is the Night (see lot 1057).

Fitzgerald’s life in 1934 was difficult and complicated. His Ledger references a “collapse at home,” the “first Welbourne trip,” and “the nurse who was the doctor’s wife,” long misinterpreted by scholars but evidently referring to Carma Freeman. “Her Last Case,” written between visits to Welbourne and the Fishers’ house at Ruxton and published in fall 1934 in the Saturday Evening Post (for which Fitzgerald received an essential payment of $3,000), transforms his nurse into Bette Weaver, a young professional woman pulled between duty and suppressed emotion. Now recognized as one of Fitzgerald's most important stories about the South, it explores the lingering psychological impact of the Civil War, and the phenomenon of the "Lost Cause."

REFERENCES

Bruccoli, Matthew J., Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2002; Daniel, Anne Margaret. "Medical advances: How F. Scott Fitzgerald's nurse inspired a fictional romance." TLS. Times Literary Supplement, no. 6224, 15 July 2022, p. 13

PROVENANCE

Carma Kaufman Freeman; thence by descent