The story of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s burial
How did one of America’s most important writers of the twentieth century end up buried in a commuter suburb of Maryland?
F. Scott Fitzgerald was descended from prominent Maryland families, the Scotts, the Keys, and the Fitzgeralds. He was named after Francis Scott Key, a distant cousin who witnessed a British attack on Baltimore in 1814, and wrote a poem about it, called “The Star-Spangled Banner.” His father, Edward Fitzgerald, was born in the pre-Civil War town of Rockville, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C.
F. Scott Fitzgerald moved to Maryland in 1932.
Scott, wife Zelda, and daughter Scottie lived in a rented cottage in Baltimore, close to Johns Hopkins Hospital, where Zelda was being treated for mental illness.
During their four years in Baltimore, both Scott and Zelda spent time writing. Scott completed and published Tender is the Night, and wrote a number of articles including “The Crack-Up” for Esquire magazine. Zelda wrote and published her semi-autobiographical novel, Save Me the Waltz.
The couple hosted parties and hobnobbed with Baltimore elite. Scott spent time at Hopkins, drying out from binge drinking.
In April 1936, Scott moved Zelda to Highland Hospital, a sanitarium in Asheville, North Carolina. He left Baltimore shortly thereafter.
His career in decline, his wife seriously ill, and heavily in debt, Scott moved to Hollywood in 1937 to work as a screenwriter. He made periodic trips back East to visit his family. While in Hollywood, he began a love affair with gossip columnist Sheilah Graham.
Scott died of a heart attack on December 21, 1940. He was 44.
Zelda arranged to have her husband’s body transported to Maryland, for interment at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Rockville, where Scott’s father and ancestors were buried. But the church denied Scott entrance, claiming that he had not been a practicing Catholic.
Scott was laid to rest in the cemetery of Union Church, a Protestant church located a mile away. A small crowd, including Scottie, witnessed the funeral, held two days after Christmas.
Zelda perished in a fire at Highland Hospital on March 10, 1948. She was buried with her husband.
The couple rested in peace for 27 years.
In 1975, civic groups wanted to spruce up the grave, and contacted Scottie. By then, she had married and was living in Washington, D.C. Wanting to make things right, Scottie successfully sought to have her parents reinterred in the family plot at St. Mary’s Church.
F. Scott Fitzgerald rests eternally off Veirs Mill Road, in a historic area of Rockville, surrounded by traffic, shopping centers, and office buildings. He keeps company with his wife and daughter, and his ancestors, the Scotts, the Keys, and the Fitzgeralds. Visitors to his grave leave pens and bottles of liquor.
The grave is inscribed with the final words from The Great Gatsby:
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
***
The writer of this story is from Baltimore.
