That Golden 1920s couple, the darlings of the Jazz Age, trapped now by their frailties. "They both realized that they were very upsetting to each other and it was very difficult for them - when they were both fragile - to be together for any length of time," Railsback says. Her husband rarely visited the psychiatric facility. Meanwhile, just across the valley, the once beautiful, brilliant Zelda Fitzgerald wrestled with her own demons at Asheville's Highland Hospital. "That was probably the darkest time of his life," Railsback says. It was likely not a suicide attempt - though that was the rumor - but Fitzgerald did consider suicide after that newspaper story came out. The Fitzgeralds attend a formal event, circa 1935.
"What a wonderful place to find interesting subject matter. "This was a place where he hoped that he would be restored, find discipline and then maybe find subject matter," Railsback says. Fitzgerald thought Grove Park Inn might help. He was churning out hack stories for magazines, trying to pay off debts and the bills for his wife Zelda's hospitalization in a psychiatric facility. His writing, 10 years after The Great Gatsby, had gone flat. He was drinking 50 ponies of beer a day - the "beer cure" - in an attempt to wean himself off gin. Railsback, who is dean of the Honors College at Western Carolina University, says Fitzgerald was at a low point. "He could see the cars that were pulling up and he could see if there were any interesting women who might appear to be single and what were they wearing." "He came to the Grove Park Inn and chose these rooms so that he could overlook the main entrance," Railsback explains.
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English professor Brian Railsback says the windows in Fitzgerald's rooms had opportunistic views. Visitors today can see replicas of the dark wooden arts and crafts furniture and tan draperies that were there in Fitzgerald's day. Scott Fitzgerald pose for a photo at the Sayre home in Montgomery, Ala., in 1919, the year before they married.Īt the inn, he rented two very simple rooms: one for sleeping, one for writing. Fitzgerald came in the summers of 19 he'd had tuberculosis and needed to rest. Hotel historian Tracey Johnston-Crum strolls past framed photos of presidents, potentates and artists who have been guests - Margaret Mitchell, Alex Haley, Harry Houdini and Bela Bartok, to name a few. A massive shelter of craggy granite stones, turning 100 years old this year, the Grove Park has rocking chairs on the terrace, huge fireplaces and a history of well-known visitors who came there for the clean mountain air, and "rest, relaxation and respite." Scott Fitzgerald - who, along with his wife Zelda, had devastating connections to the town.įitzgerald spent two bumpy summers in Asheville, at the Grove Park Inn. But there is also a little-known story of another writer - F. His wife Zelda lived across the valley at Highland Hospital, a psychiatric facility.Īsheville, a mountain town in North Carolina, is known for at least two important native sons: writers Thomas Wolfe, whose 1929 novel Look Homeward, Angel eviscerated some locals, and Charles Frazier, whose 1997 civil war novel Cold Mountain is set in the nearby hills. Scott Fitzgerald stayed there in the summers of 19. Grove Park, a tranquil inn located in Asheville, N.C., opened in 1913 and hosted well-known guests who came to the mountain town for rest and relaxation.
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