Frances Scott Fitzgerald

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Frances Scott "Scottie" Fitzgerald (October 26, 1921 – June 18, 1986) was the only child of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald and novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. She was a writer, journalist, and a prominent member of the United States Democratic Party.

"Scottie" was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Her mother supposedly remarked upon her birth that she was glad to have borne a girl and that she hoped she would be a "beautiful little fool." In The Great Gatsby (1925), Daisy Buchanan says this of her young daughter.

She had four children with her first husband, Samuel Jackson Lanahan. She later married Grove Smith. Both men were lawyers, and both marriages ended in divorce.

She is the subject of an absorbing biography, "Scottie, The Daughter of . . . : The Life of Frances Scott Fitzgerald Lanahan Smith," which was written by her daughter Eleanor Lanahan.

In it is copied Scottie Lanahan's startlingly civilized letter to her first husband, asking him for a divorce after 23 years.

"Dearest Lamb -

"I love you. I really do. I think you are an absolutely wonderful person, and I admire you very much.

"I nonetheless agree that we can't look forward to our declining years together. I don't know why our marriage is such a failure, when we like each other and are so nice to each other, and are both such nice people, basically - this is perhaps a vain remark but I feel the principal thing we have in common is that we're "nice" - there's just no way either of us could do anything cheap or common advertently. I have done some very foolish and cheap things inadvertently.

"Lamb dear, here's what I think should happen: I think we should continue our present life until the summer of 1967, when I think I should take the children out west, and quietly get a divorce when nobody's looking ...

"Dearest Jack, I just think that we were mis-mated. Yours and my life has been one long argument, often fun and definitely challenging, but dry. So little love, so little plain affection. A sort of rivalry, always - a competition. I have never felt as if I could do with you what I want to so badly, and hope I'll do before I die, which is crawl into someone's arms, and feel their solace."