Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald – one of the greatest American writers of any century – was born on the 24th September 1896 in St Paul, Minnesota. His father Edward Fitzgerald came from pre-revolutionary stock and was, to quote biographer Arthur Mizener, a quiet “…gentlemanly man with beautiful Southern manners that perhaps left him exceptionally defenceless before the determined attack of Molly McQuillan who (according to the gossip of those days) persuaded him to propose to her by threatening to throw herself into the Mississippi.”

Scott would have the same problem when he met Zelda.

Scott Fitzgerald’s mother, Mary “Molly” McQuillan, was the eldest daughter of Philip McQuillan who, to quote Arthur Mizener again was “…an Irish immigrant who made two fortunes in the wholesale grocery business before dying at the age of forty-four. His widow continued to occupy the imposing Victorian McQuillan mansion on St Paul’s most important residential street, Summit Avenue.”

Fitzgerald’s father, apart from being gentlemanly and quiet, was also broke. His furniture manufacturing business had folded when just about every other furniture manufacturer in the US was flourishing, which meant he now had to earn his living as a commercial traveller trying to sell soap.

He enjoyed travelling the length and breadth of America by train with his catalogues and samples safely locked away in the baggage car. He enjoyed these trips for another reason too: he was away from Molly and her – how could he put it? – erratic sexual behaviour. As he’d told many a salesman acquaintances, in many a Pullman Car, over too many a cigar, and far too many brandies, that one minute she was making wild demands, the next turning her back and denying him any contact whatsoever. To even attempt a kiss might result in a bout of screaming hysterics. He seldom told anyone about Molly’s threat to jump into the Mississippi if he didn’t marry her after one old timer had told him he’d one day see his reluctance to allow Molly to get wet in that wide and majestic river as probably the biggest mistake of his life, and that maybe he should try and convince her to take that desirable course of action as soon as possible. It was a thought, and the more he thought about it…

But Edward would always go on to say that when they were first married he received several telephone calls, and many letters from different members of the Fitzgerald clan telling him that that particular line of McQuillans, although successful and rich, had not, unlike the Fitzgeralds fought the English in the Revolutionary Wars making a fine name and reputation for themselves.

And as Edward Fitzgerald leaned on the bar of the Pullman Car of the 7.35pm out of St Paul and
ordered a pre-dinner Johnny Walker on the rocks from an old one-armed barman called Adam – he’d lost his arm fighting Indians with Buffalo Bill, or so he said – he wondered how he was going to tell Molly he’d lost his job again. The last time he’d lost a job he told Mrs McQuillan Fitzgerald – as she liked to be addressed – in a soft unworried, unhurried voice so as not to worry her, and that everything would be okay; but it hadn’t worked, and she, with one histrionic hand upon her heaving breast, and the other upon her fevered brow, took to her bed and, sobbing, wrote Edward long letters asking him, demanding of him, to tell her how they were possibly going to manage financially. Edward could have, perhaps should have replied by saying: my dear, by relying on your substantial inheritance. But he did not, it was not good politics he reasoned, and he had to try and keep young Francis relatively happy – and the boy was already showing signs of becoming a little unsettled – and stop him from taking himself off to his bed in a similar histrionic fashion to his mother when the news of another lost job had been broadcast over an early dinner of boiled white fish and mashed potatoes.