Let's Write about Scott and Zelda in France!

Were F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda ever happy?

Their love story still sizzles! 

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in Saint Paul Minnesota in 1896. He and Zelda were married in New York City's Saint Patrick's Cathedral, in 1920.

This essay was published in the France Today electronic magazine (Ezine).  To be honest, although I realize how infamous (or famous- depending how the couple's biographers might frame their lives) are and remain to this day, I was unaware about how their lives together were tumultuous, to say the least. I suspect the experiences described in this article about when F. Scott and his wife Zelda were in France, might have been some of their (sort of) happiest years together.  

Back in 1922, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald rented a house in Great Neck Estates, West Egg, Long Island, a relatively modest home compared with the sumptuous East Egg mansions of Sands Point, where The Great Gatsby’s Daisy and Tom Buchanan lived. 

Drawing on his own experiences, Fitzgerald wrote short stories in a room above the garage. While his characters took shape, he and Zelda were busy burning cash, heedless that their newly extravagant lifestyle might be more ruinous than they imagined. The endless partying (often with his buddy and neighbor, Ring Lardner, a sports columnist and satirical short story writer) also kept Scott from concentrating on his new novel.

Tipped off by writer Edith Wharton that the palm-shaded, sleepy town of Hyères was an enchanting place to settle down, the couple found it too staid and swarming with dreary British pensioners. Instead, they rented a charming white villa, further down the coast, on a tranquil pine-shaded hillside in Saint-Raphaël – “a little red town built close to the sea, with gay red-roofed houses and an air of repressed carnival about it”. It was here, at the Villa Marie, that Scott cloistered himself to work on Gatsby, while Zelda spent long, idle afternoons at the beach, where she met a young French aviator, Édouard Jozan. Her passionate but short-lived affair with Jozan (recounted in Zelda’s semi-autobiographical novel, Save me the Waltz) soon put a strain on their marriage. Blame it on the dazzling landscape: the Riviera is “a seductive place,” wrote Zelda, “where the blare of the beaten blue and those white palaces shimmering under the heat accentuates hings”. 

Needing distraction, the Fitzgeralds would often set out in their little blue Renault along the red rock coastal road to the Cap d’Antibes, where their American friends, Sara and Gerald Murphy were staying.

Gerald, heir to the Mark Cross luxury leather goods company and a visionary painter, and Sara, a mid-western beauty who was believed to have been Picasso’s secret muse, may be best known as Fitzgerald’s initial models for Dick and Nicole Diver in Tender is the Night.

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) with Zelda (Sayre) Fitzgerald (1900-1948)

Zelda was dubbed by her husband F. Scott Fitzgerald as "the first American flapper". She and Scott became emblems of the Jazz Age, for which they are still celebrated.

Everyone gravitated towards the Murphys, stylish, charismatic trendsetters who attracted a charmed circle of friends that included the likes of Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, John Dos Passos, Rudolf Valentino, Fernand Léger, Serge Diaghilev and Pablo and Olga Picasso. They hosted elaborate picnics on the powdery sand of the then-deserted La Garoupe beach to the tune of Gerald’s latest jazz ballads on a portable phonograph, slathered themselves with cocoa butter, sunbathed and swam in the turquoise shallows (although allegedly, fair-skinned Scott preferred to lie in the shade, nursing a bottle of gin). Zelda, later remembered by the Murphy’s daughter, Honoria, as “blonde and soft and tanned by the sun”, was strikingly beautiful and always had a peony in her hair or pinned to her dress.

That summer, the Murphys set up headquarters in the empty pink seaside Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc – now one of the most iconic glitzy hotels on the Riviera – convincing the owner, Antoine Sella, to keep it open for them while their new home, the Villa America, was being built nearby. While Gerald entertained his friends with ritual cocktails (ingredients called for “the juice of a few flowers”), his guests Scott and Zelda would often liven up evenings with alcohol-fuelled antics that included diving off 11m-high rocks into a dark sea, or inciting guests to skinny dip in the pool. On another, more sobering occasion, Zelda swallowed a dangerous quantity of sleeping pills and walked around the hotel grounds all night.

In summer 1926, in the wake The Great Gatsby’s roaring success, the Fitzgeralds rented the Villa Saint-Louis in Juan-les-Pins to be close to the Murphys. It was “a big house on the shore with a private beach near the casino”, where Scott would work on the first chapters of Tender is the Night.

A vintage postcard of the Belles Rives hotel

Three years later, the villa was sold and transformed into a family-owned Art Deco mini-palace, Hôtel Belles Rives, whose 1920s décor has been meticulously preserved by the current owner, Marianne Estène-Chauvin. “Out of all the anecdotes passed down from generation to generation, my favourite is when Scott lured a local jazz band inside the villa and then locked them in a bedroom upstairs, and forced them to play dance music all night,” she says. Today, the hotel’s Fitzgerald Bar conjures up the Jazz Age; you’d almost expect to see Scott, hunched over a gin fizz, puffing on his Chesterfields, making notes. 

For the Fitzgeralds – self-avowed “excitement eaters” – there was no better place for a glamorous jaunt than Monte Carlo. The couple would take the Grande Corniche, “through the twilight with the whole French Riviera twinkling below” and spend the evening at the casino. If Scott had forgotten his passport, he’d pretend to faint in front of the gambling room, hoping that they would somehow let him in. When it came to restaurants, fine cuisine was never a priority for Scott, who preferred club sandwiches and abhorred garlic. However, the artists’ haunt, La Colombe d’Or in Saint-Paul-de-Vence was the place to be seen, even then. One evening, Scott spotted Isadora Duncan at the next table and went to pay her court. Outraged, Zelda showed her jealousy by plunging down a flight of stone steps.

(??? OMG)


Don’t miss your chance to dine at La Colombe d’Or

Return to America: In 1929, the Fitzgeralds spent their last summer on the Riviera. When the Stock Market crashed in the autumn of that year, the gaiety was gone. Living in a villa in a less fashionable part of Cannes, the Fitzgeralds now avoided the Hôtel du Cap, a celebrity circus where silk-clad matrons used the pool “only for a short hangover dip”.

By this time, Zelda, who was doggedly working at becoming a ballerina, was showing signs of mental strain, and their cash was running low. Still, that didn’t stop the Fitzgeralds from exploring Nice, staying at the Hôtel Beau Rivage on the seafront, where “they were serving blue twilights at the cafés along the Promenade des Anglais for the price of a porto and we danced their tangos and watched girls shiver in the appropriate clothes for the Côte d’Azur”. They also went to “the cheap ballets of the Casino on the jetée” and dined on salade niçoise. Venturing as far as Menton, they ordered a bouillabaisse “in an aquarium-like pavilion by the sea across from the Hotel Victoria”. By the time Tender is the Night was published in 1934, the Fitzgeralds had been back in America for three years. Zelda’s mental health had declined and tragic events would mar their happiness, but the golden glow of those endless summers on the Côte d’Azur remained.

Vintage postcard from the Hôtel Belles Rives

Fortunately, some things never change. Take, for instance, Fitzgerald’s rhapsodic description of the shimmering Mediterranean, published in 1924, in The Saturday Evening Post: “the fairy blue of Maxfield Parrish’s pictures: blue like blue books, blue oil, blue eyes, and in the shadow of the mountains a green belt of land runs along the coast for a hundred miles and makes a playground for the world. The Riviera!”

The Hôtel Beau Rivage in Nice back in the day

Today, many of the Fitzgeralds’ stomping grounds are still going strong. The Hôtel Belles Rives remains an elegant Art Deco gem, with a superb restaurant, private beach and waterskiing school; in Nice, the Hôtel Beau Rivage is a stylish hotel with a terrific beach restaurant. If you’re feeling flush after a night at the Monte Carlo Casino, head for the Hôtel-du-Cap-Eden-Roc for their signature Bellini cocktail or dine at the terrace Grill Eden-Roc, overlooking the legendary pool carved out of the rock (www.hotel-du-cap- eden-roc.com). At the far corner of La Garoupe beach, the beau monde flocks to La Plage Keller for toes-in-the-sand dining, featuring Mediterranean classics. After lunch, head to Villa Eilenroc, the Belle-Époque home once owned by the Count and Countess Étienne de Beaumont, whose lavish fêtes Scott and Zelda attended. 

No one leaves the Côte d’Azur without dining at La Colombe d’Or in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, surrounded by original works by the great masters. And if you’re a true Fitzgerald fan, rent his former digs Villa Marie in Saint-Raphaël and scribble your own masterpiece.

From France Today magazine

The Belles Rives today

Lead photo credit : Images © John Michel Sordello, Jean-luc Guillet, Hôtel Belles Rives; Alamy

More in Fitzgeralds, French Riviera, Great Gatsby, Hôtel Belles Rives, Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc

Scott and Zelda were buried in Rockville, Maryland — originally in the Rockville Union Cemetery, away from his family plot.  At their daughter Scottie's* request, her parents were later interred with the other Fitzgeralds at Saint Mary's Catholic Cemetery, in Rockville. Inscribed on their tombstone is the final sentence of The Great Gatsby: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

*Frances Scott "Scottie" Fitzgerald was an American writer and journalist and the only child of novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald. She worked for The Washington Post, The New Yorker, The Northern Virginia Sun, and others, and was a prominent member of the Democratic Party.

Let's write about touring the Louvre in Paris France

 Let's write about Le Louvre - an echo tour from France Today by Jennifer Ladonne: Louvre at a glance.

Ieoh Ming Pei was appointed in 1983, to develop a new grand entrance to accommodate the growing number of visitors and to reorganize the museum's interior. It was he who designed the pyramid, the entrance of which opened in March 1989, symbolically the bicentenary year of the French Revolution.

Originally built as a fortress in 1180, the Louvre was expanded and repurposed as a royal residence in the 14th century. Over eight centuries, the edifice grew ever larger with each passing monarch. Although the Louvre officially became an art museum in 1793, during the Revolution, plans were already under way to use at least part of the behemoth as gallery space for the various collections acquired, or pillaged, over successive centuries, kings and curators. Each of the Louvre’s three principal wings – the Denon, Sully and Richelieu – bears the imprint of a different monarch.

There is beyond a doubt something for everyone at the Louvre. Besides a treasure trove of artworks, the museum’s architecture, interiors, history and the sheer variety of its collections is vast and beyond compare.


That’s why a little planning goes a long way: identify what most piques your interest and let that be your guide. If it’s European paintings – including the Louvre’s resident icon, Mona Lisa – head straight to the first floor (second floor to Americans) of the Denon wing, where you’ll also find the museum’s spectacular Grande Galerie – an immense sky-lit corridor stuffed with Italian masterpieces – as well as the Nike of Samothrace, the Winged Victory for short, lording it over a staircase. If it’s sumptuous interiors you prefer, head to the Richelieu, where Napoleon’s eye-popping piles of red plush, gilding and crystal push the boundaries of good taste, or the gorgeously restored Galerie d’Apollon – precursor to Versailles’ Galeries des Glaces – where the French crown jewels have resided since the 19th century.

Armed with the right tips and plenty of time, you can see of the Louvre’s famous icons and more without getting caught in the crowds: Winged Victory of Samothrace, or the Nike of Samothrace, is a monument originally found on the island of Samothrace, north of the Aegean Sea. It is a masterpiece of Greek sculpture from the Hellenistic era, dating from the beginning of the 2nd century BCE. It is composed of a statue representing the goddess Niké (Victory), whose head and arms are missing, and its base in the shape of a ship's bow.

History buffs should not miss the Pavillon de l’Horloge, in the Sully wing at the heart of the palace, where the story of the Louvre is told over four floors, starting at the actual foundations of the original medieval fort and continuing to the oldest room in the palace – the Salle Saint-Louis – all the way up to the Salle de la Chapelle at the top, boasting the best views of the Tuileries gardens, the Pyramid, the Champs-Élysées and the Arc de Triomphe in the distance.

These are the museum’s most popular, and crowded, areas. 

But go a little deeper and you’ll be amply rewarded. The museum’s Egyptian collection, created by renowned scholar Jean-François Champollion, who famously cracked the hieroglyphs on Napoleon’s looted Rosetta Stone, covers 5,000 years of Egyptian history and is one of the most impressive collections in the world. One of the museum’s most prized possessions awaits you in the Persian rooms – collected by French archaeologists over 25 years – where the stately remnants of the Palace of Susa (one of the world’s oldest cities, mentioned in the Bible’s Book of Esther) include a stunning column flanked by two kneeling bulls. The soaring 30,000 sq ft Islamic wing, housed under a luminous modernist canopy, is another treasure trove loaded with luxuriously wrought artworks, furnishings, rugs, mosaics and decorative items from the palaces of the caliphs.

Wandering through these collections is a joy, all the more so as they are wonderfully crowd-free, aside from random groups of French school kids.

To see or not to see?  

The fact that nearly 80 per cent of the Louvre’s 30,000 to 50,000 visitors a day said they came solely to see Mona Lisa could be interpreted two ways: one, this is a once-in-a-lifetime, everyone-must-do thing or, two, she is to be avoided at all costs. Notice that neither option has much to do with the 30in painting’s artistic merit. Nifty new Prussian blue background and orderly cordoned aisles aside, the Louvre’s recent upgrade of Room 711 has done little to make the experience more enjoyable. Guards still hover and nudge you along at a clip, and smartphones, heads and elbows still insult your view, if not your person.

If you decide to see what the fuss is about, book your ticket for 9am when the museum opens. That way, you can make a beeline straight to the Denon wing, follow the signs, and have a relatively crowd-free viewing.

Keep in mind that housed in the very same room as La Gioconda and, from what I could see, going largely unnoticed, are some of the Louvre’s great Venetian masterpieces by the likes of Titian and Veronese (Veronese’s The Wedding Feast at Cana, the largest painting in the Louvre, is a few doors away). Also bear in mind the unfathomable fact that as the line snakes along in front of Mona Lisa, just outside in the Grande Galerie a 20-second walk away, are three da Vinci masterpieces: La Belle Ferronnière; The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne; and Saint John the Baptist, often without a soul in front of them.

Getting around:  The Louvre has four entrances, but with fewer visitors due to Covid only two are open to the general public: the main Pyramid entrance in the museum’s central courtyard, or the Carrousel du Louvre entrance underground in the Carrousel du Louvre mall. At the general ticket line you will be asked for your sanitary pass and ticket on your smartphone or pre-printed.

Check out this site for more information: https://www.louvre.fr/en/visit/map-entrances-directions

Though definitely useful, the Louvre’s detailed unfolding map of each wing, with inset photos of the high-lights, can be confusing. Within what’s depicted as single hallways lies a rabbit’s warren of smaller galleries represented by numbers. If you do get lost – and you will – don’t be too shy to ask a guard for directions.

Do not accost them with your question, be sure to begin your inquiry with a polite, “Bonjour Madame/ Monsieur…”. They are much more likely to help you if addressed this way.

The Louvre does have access for disabled people, with several dedicated lifts in each wing that a guard will gladly guide you toward. Agents at the Carrousel du Louvre entrance are equipped with information on the best routes for moving between floors. Restrooms are surprisingly plentiful and clean.

Armed with the right tips and plenty of time, you can see of the Louvre’s famous icons and more without getting caught in the crowds.

Where to dine and relax: If your early morning date with the Venetians has left you flagging, the Louvre has plenty of options for restoration and relaxation. Just outside the Salle Mollien (Room 700) is a boutique and the Café Mollien, with a lovely outdoor terrace and views over the Tuileries gardens. Salle Mollien, also known as the Red Room, is home to the museum’s gargantuan masterpieces, including Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa, Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People, and Ingres’s sinuous Grande Odalisque. On Richelieu’s mezzanine, between a spacious new Starbucks and the cafeteria-style café Goguette, you can have a hot meal or a pricey coffee. You can also get a drink and a snack at takeaway counters on the mezzanine of Denon and Richelieu, with limited seating. 

Moreover, the Louvre’s resident Café Marly (reachable through the museum courtyard without a ticket) is stylish, so-so and expensive, but with an unparalleled courtyard vantage point.

If you don’t mind stepping off the premises (a much less-crowded proposal), at the Carrousel du Louvre, a high-end underground mall reaching from the rue de Rivoli or the metro (metro line 1; stop: Louvre-Rivoli), you’ll find the Restaurants du Monde food court, where you can dine on Italian, French, Chinese, Turkish- Greek or Spanish fast food. In the Tuileries Gardens you’ll also find food stands. These are detailed on the Louvre’s handy app.

Wow! Shop till you drop?  Check out the Louvre boutique, located in the Carrousel du Louvre, is the museum’s main shop. Along with the usual jewellery, scarves, bags, dishes, postcards and so on, you’ll find an area unique to the museum: the Chalcographie du Louvre. Here you can choose from hundreds of original prints made at the Louvre’s own atelier and dating from 1850 to the present. The collection includes pieces by renowned contemporary artists such as Jenny Holzer, JR (of his large-scale projects at the Louvre) and Arnulf Rainer, as well as hand-coloured botanical prints, maps of Paris, landscapes and more, ranging from €50 to €500.

If the sheer enormity of the Louvre and the treasure therein counsels us to narrow our visit to the must- sees, wandering aimlessly in the great French tradition of the flâneur has its rewards. Putting aside all expectations and FOMO to enjoy the unanticipated wonders unfolding gallery-by-gallery is maybe the greatest pleasure of visiting this splendid museum.

What’s for sure is there’s no time like the present for a visit to the Louvre. For all the awfulness wrought by the pandemic, it has opened an unprecedented opportunity for art lovers in Paris. In 2020, 2.7m people visited the Louvre, down from 9.6m in 2019. While tourist numbers are slowly increasing, the relatively minor inconveniences of having to pre-book (tickets are rarely sold out more than four days ahead of time and are refundable up to 24 hours before your visit), present a pass sanitaire and wear a mask are well worth the pleasure of unencumbered views and the chance to stand uninhibited in front of masterpieces. On several recent visits, I was utterly alone with Vermeer’ Lacemaker and Rembrandt’s Bathsheba at Her Bath.

What could be better? The Louvre is open every day except Tuesday, from 9am to 6pm. Tickets, purchased online, cost €17 and can be used to access both the permanent collections and temporary exhibitions.  From France Today magazine

Writing about World War II in France - published in France Today

This book essay caught my attention because my husband was attached to the Seabee Batallion MCB 71, in Vietnam where they were stationed at Chu Lai. 

Obviously, in this essay, the French connection with the Seabee subject are, to me, a dual interest. Thanks to the author.

An echo essay about the book "Finding Gilbert: A Promise Fulfilled" by author Diane Covington-Carter:

Johnson and Gilbert. courtesy of Diane Covington-Carter

Reflections on “The Greatest Generation” and D-Day in France

My relationship with the D-Day invasion began before I was born. My father landed on Omaha Beach in June, 1944 and I came along later as part of the ‘post war Baby Boom generation’.

Dad was a Seabee, an engineer in the Naval Construction Battalion Corps, whose mottos are ‘We Build, We Fight’ and ‘Can Do!’; their mascot, a bee, carries a drill and a gun. He spent five months on the cliffs above Omaha Beach where, after he supervised the construction of the navy camp, he then organized the rebuilding of bridges, the carving out of roads and whatever construction and engineering projects needed doing.

Dad’s stories about his time in France were as much a part of my childhood as the yellow Formica table we crowded around each evening, and the glasses of frosty, whole milk from the local dairy we drank with dinner.

He’d describe how his high school French made ‘s’il vous plâit’ come out sounding like ‘silver plate’, but would smile when he told how patient the French were with his efforts.

As a lieutenant in charge of the mess hall in the camp for two months, he’d load up pans of fresh food that would have gone to waste and take them to a different farm house each evening. “Oh, they would be so grateful,” he’d say, and his eyes would shine remembering the happiness of the farmers at this simple gesture of goodwill.

The Seabee unit of Diane Covington-Carter’s father (back left) in Normandy, 1944

Dad also became close to an orphan boy Gilbert, who lived near the camp, making sure that Gilbert came through the lunch line with Dad every day. Dad even tried unsuccessfully to adopt Gilbert and bring him home. In my childhood, I felt curious about this French boy who could have been my older brother. He hovered in my consciousness, slightly out of focus.

I studied French in high school and college and worked hard to keep it up in my adult life. It was as if I had a connection to France through my father, and, though I couldn’t explain it, it felt deep and true.

Near the end of my father’s life, his body weak with cancer, I noticed how when he spoke about his time in France during the war, his eyes shone, he sat up straighter and his voice came out clear and strong. It was if he regained some of the youthful vigor of his part in turning the tide of World War II.

He even mentioned Gilbert again, his voice becoming quiet, wistful. “I wonder what ever happened to him?” My father died in 1991.

For the 50th anniversary, June 6, 1994, I traveled to Normandy where I accepted a medal in my father’s honor in a moving ceremony for veterans and their families. I spent a day touring the invasion beaches and learned that Dad had been a part of the largest land and sea invasion in the history of the world.

I had adored my father and thought I knew him well. But there was so much that he’d seen and experienced that he hadn’t talked about. Why hadn’t I encouraged him to come back to France again? Why hadn’t I asked more questions and paid more attention, before it was too late?

Though I wasn’t even sure how to spell his last name, I put an ad in the Normandy paper to look for Gilbert. By a combination of miracles and providence, I connected with Gilbert on what would have been my father’s 80th birthday.

Gilbert had told his wife, his daughter and his grandsons about the kind lieutenant who had wanted to take him home to America and that someday, someone would come. In our emotional reunion, when I told Gilbert that my father had never forgotten him, he wept.

My father’s stories led me to France and to Gilbert. They also created a deep connection to the D-Day anniversaries that didn’t end with the 50th. I have stayed close to Gilbert and his family, and attended both the 60th and the 70th anniversaries of D-Day, working as a translator and guide for returning veterans. The French locals would swarm around them and we’d all be wiping away tears as I translated their words of gratitude.

Now I will be in France again for the 75th ceremonies in France, the last time that veterans from D-Day will be alive for the events. I’ll be staying with Gilbert’s widow, who has become like a sister to me.

My heart is pulling me back, for my father, for Gilbert and for all the men of ‘The Greatest Generation’ who risked their lives in France, fighting to preserve our freedom.

And standing there with us, unseen, will be all the men who never came home. The words from the cemetery chapel above Omaha beach in Normandy express it well: “Think not only of their passing. Remember the glory of their spirit.” We will remember them that day and, I hope, from now on.

Diane Covington-Carter’s award-winning memoir, "Finding Gilbert, A Promise Fulfilled," tells the story of finding her father’s French orphan. The book recently won the Gold award in a Society of American Travel Writers competition.