Upon the death of the last son of a very good family friend (the Murphy’s), F. Scott Fitzgerald penned this letter to convey his sadness…..
It’s amazing how beautiful the man could write — and this coming at the end of his life, through the thick of Zelda’s antics, all the money from Gatsby and other book sales gone, and Scott himself drowned in full-blown alcoholism.
“Dearest Gerald and Sara:
The telegram came today and the whole afternoon was so sad with thoughts of you and the happy times we had once. Another link binding you to life is broken and with such insensate cruelty that it is hard to say which of the two blows was conceived with more malice. I can see the silence in which you hover now after this seven years of struggle and it would take words like Lincoln’s in his letter to the mother who had lost four sons in the war to write you anything fitting at the moment. The sympathy you will get will be what you have had from each other already and for a long, long time you will be inconsolable.
But I can see another generation growing up around Honoria and an eventual peace somewhere, an occasional port of call as we all sail deathward. Fate can’t have any more arrows in its quiver for you that will wound like these. Who was it said that it was astounding how deepest griefs can change in time to a sort of joy? The golden bowl is broken indeed but it was golden; nothing can ever take those boys away from you now.
Scott
Taken from: http://npg.si.edu/audio/blog_fitzgerald.mp3
& the great Letters of Note blog: http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/10/another-link-is-broken.html
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