Scott and His Parisian Chauffeur
After the Princeton game in the fall of 1928 Scott and Zelda, Henry (Mike) Strater, my wife Pauline and I rode in the crowded after football train to Philadelphia where we were to pick up the Fitzgerald’s French chauffeur with their Buick car to drive to where they lived on the river outside Wilmington in a house called Ellerslie Mansion. Scott and Mike Strater had been at Princeton together and Mike and I had been good friends since we had first met in 1922 in Paris.
Scott took football very seriously and he had stayed sober through most of the game. But on the train he had started speaking to people he did not know and asking them questions. Several girls were annoyed by him but Mike or I would speak to their escorts and quiet any rising feeling and maneuver Scott away from trouble. We had him seated several times but he wanted to wander through the cars and he had been so reasonable and decent all day that I thought we could help keep him out of anything serious. We had no choice but to try to take care of him and as he realized that he was being taken out of trouble as soon as he started it he began to expand his operations alternating indiscrete questions with excessive courtliness while one of us gently moved him along and the other apologized.
Finally he found a Princeton supporter who was now absorbed in reading a medical book. Scott took the book away from him in a courtly way saying, “Do you mind Sir?” glanced at it and returned it with a bow in a voice pitched for all that part of the car, “Ernest I have found a clap doctor!”
The man paid no attention to Scott and went on reading in his book.
“You are a clap doctor aren’t you?” Scott asked him.
“Come on Scott cut it out,” I said. Mike was shaking his head.
“Speak up Sir,” Scott said. “There is nothing to be ashamed about being a clap doctor.”
I was trying to work Scott away and Mike was speaking to the man apologizing for Scott. The man was keeping out of it and trying to study.
“A clap doctor,” Scott said. “Physician heal thyself.”
We got him away from persecuting the medical student finally and the train eventually came into the station at Philadelphia with no one having hit Scott. Zelda had been in one of her periods of perfect ladyhood on the train sitting quietly with Pauline and paying no attention to Scott’s behavior.
The driver of the car was a Parisian taxi driver who neither spoke nor understood English. He had brought Scott home one night in Paris Scott told me and had kept him from being robbed. Scott had brought him to America as his chauffeur. As we drove toward Wilmington from Philadelphia in the dark with the drinking now started the chauffeur was worried because the car heated up.
“You should have filled the radiator,” I said.
“No, Monsieur. It isn’t that. Monsieur will not allow me to put any oil in the motor.”
“How’s that?”
“He gets very angry and says American cars don’t need to have oil added. That only worthless French cars need additional oil.”
“She gets even more angry.”
“Do you want to stop and put in some oil now?”
“It could make a dreadful scene.”
“Let’s stop and put some in.”
“No Monsieur. You don’t know the scenes there have been.”
“The motor’s boiling now,” I said.
“But if I stop to put gas and fill with water I must stop the engine. They will not put gas in without the engine being stopped, then the cold water will crack the cylinder block. There is plenty of water Monsieur. It is a very big cooling system.”
“For Christ sake let’s stop and put in water with the engine running.”
“No Monsieur. I tell you Monsieur would never permit it. I know this motor. It will reach the chateau. This is not the first time. Tomorrow if you would come with me to a garage. We can go when I take the little girl to church.”
“Sure,” I said.
“We’ll change the oil,” he said. “We’ll buy some tins. I’ll keep them hidden and add them when it needs them.”
“Are you jabbering about oil?” Scott said. “Philippe has some sort of fixation that you have to put oil in this car all the time like that ridiculous Renault we drove up from Lyon that time. Philippe, écoute, voiture américain pas d’huile.”
“Oui Monsieur,” the chauffeur said.
“He makes Zelda nervous with that silly oil chatter,” Scott said. “He’s a good fellow and absolutely loyal but he knows nothing about American motors.”
It was a nightmare ride and when the driver wanted to turn off at the side road that led to the house Zelda would not let him. Both she and Scott insisted that it was not the road. Zelda claimed the turn off was much further on and Scott said we had passed it. They argued and quarreled until Zelda went to sleep momentarily while the chauffeur drove slowly on. Then Scott told the driver to turn around and while he was napping too the chauffeur made the turn off.