“We have both lived too deeply in our own generations to have much communication except with a mutual respect but that you accepted me as an equeal — even tho it was the exterior factor of a terriblee mutual grief that acted as the catylitic agent — settled something that had been haunting me about my relations with men since my tacit break with Ernest Hemmingway. I suppose like most people whose stuff is creative fiction there is a touch of the feminine in me (never in any sense tactile — I have always been woman crazy, God knows) — but there are times when it is nice to think that there are other wheel horses pulling the whole load of human grief + despair, + trying to the best of their ability to mould it into form — the thing that made Lincoln sit down in Jeff Davis’ chair in Richmond and ask the guards to leave him there for a minute”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald to H.L. Mencken, 6 August 1935
[Emphasis mine.]
I only just read the section of Ferrara’s Liberty where Mencken (correctly) sneers at the myth of the sainted Lincoln.
It would be appropriate for him to reflect in that seat – as Davis himself was poised to become an alter Lincoln.
note to JOB: though my father long ago devoured the book, I’m still steadily (& happily) plugging along through it. I don’t think I’ve ever savored a book like this before.
That’s very interesting, and what a pleasant creative environment I find myself in. But I have been lucky in my discoveries in the last two and a half years.