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Francis Scott Fitzgerald, who announced to the world the beginning of a new century - the “Jazz Age”, stands apart in modern American classics. Flesh of that legendary era, he reflected it more clearly and impartially than anyone else. Ernest Hemingway wrote about him: “His talent was as natural as the pattern of pollen on the wings of a butterfly.” His novel The Great Gatsby (“the first step forward taken by American literature since Henry James,” in the words of T. S. Eliot) influenced the formation of a new world literary tradition and was filmed several times, most recently in 2013 (director Baz Luhrmann, starring Leonardo DiCaprio). But another classic novel by the master, “The Beautiful and the Damned,” a kind of testing ground before “The Great Gatsby,” is much less known to Russian readers - it was first translated only at the very end of the 20th century and was almost never republished. This unfortunate omission needs to be corrected. So, meet the new heroes of the “roaring twenties” - the brilliant Anthony Patch and his beautiful wife Gloria. Waiting for Anthony's multimillionaire grandfather to die and leave them his enormous fortune, they spend their lives in New York, dining in the best restaurants, renting the most prestigious housing. It doesn’t take long for them to understand that every choice has its own price - sometimes unaffordable...

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Francis Scott Fitzgerald

The Beautiful and the Damned

The winner belongs to the trophies.-

Anthony Patch

Dedicated to Shane Leslie, George Jean Nathan and Maxwell Perkins with gratitude for their enormous literary assistance and support.

Anthony Patch

In 1913, when Anthony Patch was twenty-five, it was already two years since irony, this Holy Spirit of our day, descended upon him, at least theoretically. This irony was like the perfect shine on a shoe, like the last touch of a clothes brush, something like an intellectual “Hello.” And yet, at the beginning of our history, he had not yet progressed beyond the stage of awakening consciousness. When you see him for the first time, he is still often interested in whether he is completely devoid of nobility and whether he is completely sane, whether he represents some shameful and indecent unnecessaryness, shining on the surface of the world, like a rainbow spot on the water. Naturally, these periods were followed by others when he considered himself a completely exceptional young man, sufficiently refined, perfectly suited to the environment he had been given, and in some ways even more significant than anyone else.

This was his healthy state, and then he was cheerful, pleasant and very attractive to intelligent men and all women without exception. While in this state, he believed that the day would come when he would accomplish some subtle and quiet deed, which would be duly appreciated by the chosen ones, and then, having walked the rest of the road of life, he would join the not very bright stars in the foggy uncertainty of the heavens, halfway between immortality and death. And while the time for this effort has not yet come, he will be simply Anthony Patch - not a portrait of a person in general, but a living, developing personality, not without some stubbornness and contempt for others, even a rather self-willed person who, realizing that honor does not exist, but he preserves it and, understanding the illusory nature of courage, still risks being brave.

A worthy man and his gifted son

As the grandson of Adam J. Patch, Anthony imbibed about the same amount of social awareness as if he had descended from overseas, straight from the Crusaders. It's simply inevitable; The Counts of Virginia and Boston, whatever you say, are an aristocracy that grew up on money, and honors money first and foremost.

So, Adam J. Patch, popularly known as "Angry Patch", left his father's farm in Tarrytown early in the year sixty-one to enlist in the New York Cavalry. He returned from the war as a major, set foot firmly on Wall Street and, amid the turmoil and hassle there, approval and hostility, managed to save something like seventy-five million.

To this he devoted all his vital energy until he was fifty-seven years old, for it was at this age, after a severe attack of sclerosis, that he decided to devote the rest of his life to the moral renewal of humanity. He became a reformer of reformers. Seeking to surpass the unsurpassed achievements in this field of Anthony Comstock, after whom his grandson was named, he rained down a whole series of uppercuts and straights on literature and drunkenness, art and vice, patent medicines and Sunday theaters. Under the influence of a harmful mold, which only very few brains manage to escape with age, he responded with fervor to any public indignation of the era. From an armchair in the office of the Tarrytown estate, he led a real military campaign that lasted fifteen years against the vast hypothetical enemy whose name was wickedness. In this campaign, Adam Patch proved himself to be a fiercely persistent fighter who bored everyone to death. But by the time this story begins, his strength had dried up, the campaign had disintegrated into separate chaotic skirmishes, and more and more often the current year, 1895, was clouded by visions of the long-gone 1861, thoughts more and more willingly turned to the events of the Civil War and less and less to his dead wife and to his son, and even to his grandson Anthony - and not often at all.

Early in his career, Adam Patch married Alicia Withers, an anemic woman in her thirties, who brought him a $100,000 dowry and easy access to New York banking circles. Almost immediately and very bravely, she gave birth to his son and, as if weakened by the greatness of her deed, from then on she disappeared into the gloomy spaces of the nursery. The boy is Adam Ulysses Patch. eventually became a clubber, a connoisseur of good manners and a tandem rider, and at the age of twenty-six, somewhat untimely, began writing memoirs entitled “New York Light as I Know It.” Judging by rumors, the concept of the work was very curious, and a real battle began among publishers for the right to publish, but after his death it turned out that the manuscript was prohibitively verbose and staggeringly boring, so they refused to print it, even at the expense of the author.

This Lord Chesterfield married Fifth Avenue at the age of twenty-two. His wife was Henrietta Lebrun, “the contralto of the Boston world,” and the only fruit of this union, at the request of his grandfather, was christened Anthony Comstock Patch. However, by the time Anthony entered Harvard, this “Comstock” had somehow spontaneously been removed from his name and plunged into such deep oblivion that it never came up again.

When Anthony was young, he had a photograph of his parents together. As a child, it caught his eye so often that it gradually acquired the facelessness of a piece of furniture, but for someone who came into Anthony’s bedroom for the first time, this photograph could arouse a certain interest. On it, next to a dark-haired lady with a muff and a hint of a bustle, he depicted a lean, good-looking society dandy of the nineties. Between them was a little boy in long dark brown curls and a velvet suit “a la Lord Fauntleroy.” This was Anthony at the age of five - the year her mother died.

His memories of the "Boston contralto" were vague and musical. She seemed like a woman who did nothing but sing in the music room of their Washington Square home; sometimes surrounded by a scattering of guests - men with crossed arms, perched, holding their breath, on the edges of the sofas, women with their palms on their knees and from time to time barely whispering something to the men, but always applauding very loudly, and after each song making cooing cries . Often she sang only for Anthony - in Italian, French or in the monstrous dialect that, as she believed, southern blacks used.

The memory of the elegant Ulysses, who was the first in America to turn down the lapels of his jacket, was more life-like. After Henrietta LeBrun Patch “moved to another choir,” as her widower noted in a broken voice from time to time, father and son moved to live in Tarrytown with their grandfather. Ulysses visited Anthony in the nursery every day and sometimes spent about an hour there, filling the space around him with pleasant, thick-smelling words. He endlessly promised to take Anthony hunting, fishing, and even spending a day together in Atlantic City - “yes, very soon now” - but none of this was destined to come true. Although they did make one single trip. When Anthony was eleven years old, they went abroad, to England and Switzerland, and there, in the best hotel in Lucerne, among sheets wet with sweat, muttering something unintelligibly and desperately begging for a breath of air, his father died. Anthony was brought home to America in a state of half-crazed despair, and from then on causeless melancholy became his companion for the rest of his life.

The hero, his personality and past

At eleven years old, he already knew what the horror of death was. During the six most memorable years for the child, the parents died one after another; somehow, quite imperceptibly, my grandmother became more and more incorporeal, until one day, for the first time in all the years of marriage, she suddenly became for one day the sovereign mistress of her own living room. It is no wonder that life seemed to Anthony to be a constant struggle with death, which lurked around every corner. He developed the habit of reading in bed; it was distracting, although it was, in essence, a concession to a morbid imagination. He read until his eyes glazed over and often fell asleep without turning off the light.

Until the age of fourteen, his favorite pastime and at the same time a huge, almost all-consuming boyish passion was collecting stamps. His grandfather, without going into details, believed that such a hobby contributed to the study of geography, so Anthony began correspondence with half a dozen philatelic firms, and it was rare that the post office did not bring him new sets of stamps or a pack of glossy advertising brochures. Engaged in the endless transfer of his acquisitions from one album to another, he received an inexplicable, mysterious pleasure. Stamps became the greatest joy of his life; He rewarded anyone who tried to interfere with his philatelic games with a gloomy and impatient look. The stamps ate up all his pocket money; he could spend nights with them, never tired of being amazed at their diversity and multi-colored splendor.

The Beautiful and the Damned Francis Scott Fitzgerald

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Title: The Beautiful and the Damned

About the book "The Beautiful and the Damned" by Francis Scott Fitzgerald

Francis Scott Fitzgerald, who ushered in the beginning of a new century, the “Jazz Age,” stands apart in modern American classics. Flesh of that legendary era, he reflected it more clearly and impartially than anyone else. Ernest Hemingway wrote about him: “His talent was as natural as the pattern of pollen on the wings of a butterfly.” We all remember the amazing novel “The Great Gatsby” and its brilliant film adaptation starring Leonardo DiCaprio. This time, Fitzgerald introduces us to the new heroes of the “roaring twenties” - the brilliant Anthony Patch and his beautiful wife Gloria. Waiting for Anthony's multimillionaire grandfather to die and leave them his enormous fortune, they spend their lives in New York, dining in the best restaurants, renting the most prestigious housing. It doesn’t take them long to understand that every choice has its own price – sometimes unaffordable...

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Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald

THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED

© Savelyev K.A., translation into Russian, 2017

© Edition in Russian, design. LLC Publishing House E, 2017

* * *

Dedicated

Shane Leslie

George Jean Nathan

and Maxwell Perkins

in gratitude for the great literary help and support

Book I

Chapter 1
Anthony Patch

In 1913, when Anthony Patch was twenty-five years old, two years had passed since, theoretically at least, irony, that Holy Spirit of our day, had descended upon him. Irony was like the final polishing of shoes, the last stroke of a clothes brush; it was something of an intellectual finishing touch. However, at the beginning of this story, he had not yet progressed beyond the early conscious stage of his life. When you first see him, he often wonders if he is dishonest and slightly demented, a shameful and obscene lubricant that glistens on the surface of the world like a film of oil on a clear pond. Of course, these moments are interspersed with others when he considers himself to be a rather remarkable young man, deeply sophisticated, well adapted to his surroundings, and somehow more significant than everyone else he knows.

This was his normal state, and it made him cheerful, pleasant to talk to and very attractive to intelligent men and to all women without exception. In this state, he believed that one day he would accomplish something secret and subtle, thanks to which the chosen ones would consider him worthy. Then he will pass the test and join the host of dim stars in the foggy and uncertain sky, halfway between death and immortality. Until the time for testing comes, he will remain Anthony Patch - not a frozen portrait, but a whole and dynamic personality, self-confident, arrogant, imposing his will on circumstances - a man who knows dishonor, but has honor, knows the sophistry of courage, but has courage.

A worthy man and his gifted son

Anthony derived confidence in his social position from the reliable source of being the grandson of Adam J. Patch and his ability to trace his ancestry back to the overseas crusaders. This was inevitable: regardless of any provisions of the social contract, Virginians and Bostonians belonged to an aristocracy based solely on money and taking wealth for granted.

Adam J. Patch, better known as "Angry Patch," left his father's farm in Tarrytown in 1861 and enlisted in the New York Cavalry. He returned from the war with the rank of major, stormed Wall Street, and in the midst of much hype, irritation, applause, and ill will, carved out a fortune for himself of approximately seventy-five million dollars.

He devoted his energies to this occupation until he was fifty-seven years old. Then, after an acute attack of sclerosis, he decided to devote the rest of his life to the moral revival of the world. He became a reformer among reformers. In imitation of the brilliant efforts of Anthony Comstock, after whom his grandson took his name, he aimed a formidable battery of uppercuts and body blows at alcohol, literature, immorality, painting, patent medicines and Sunday theaters. Under the influence of that insidious mold which eventually covers all but a few minds, he attacked with fury everything that aroused his indignation. From his armchair in the study of his Terrytown estate, he waged a campaign against the monstrous imaginary enemy called "unholy" - a campaign that lasted fifteen years, during which he showed himself to be a rabid maniac, an incomparable bore and an insufferable prude. The year this story begins, he began to run out of steam: his campaign had become disorganized, 1861 was gradually eclipsing 1895, and his thoughts were mostly focused on the Civil War, less on his late wife and son, and almost never on on his grandson Anthony.

Early in his career, Adam Patch married a skinny thirty-year-old lady, Alicia Withers, who brought him $100,000 and gave him impeccable access to New York banking circles. Almost immediately and quite bravely, she gave birth to his son and, completely exhausted from this feat, disappeared into the gloomy confines of the children's room. The boy, Adam Ulysses Patch, became a regular at many clubs, a connoisseur of good physical shape and a lover of tandem riding. At the astonishing age of twenty-six, he began writing a memoir entitled New York High Society Through My Eyes. Rumors about his plan aroused keen interest among publishers, but, as it turned out after his death, the work was inappropriately verbose and extremely boring and was not even worthy of private publication.

This worthy scion of Fifth Avenue married at twenty-two. His wife was Henrietta Lebrun, “the contralto of Boston society,” and the only fruit of their union, at the insistence of his grandfather, was named Anthony Comstock Patch. When Comstock went to Harvard, he consigned the middle part of his name to oblivion, never to be heard from again.

Young Anthony had one joint portrait of his father and mother, which in childhood caught his eye so often that it acquired the faceless quality of furniture, but everyone who entered his bedroom looked at the picture with interest. The portrait showed an 1890s dandy, lean and handsome, standing next to a tall, dark-haired lady with a fur muff and a hint of a bustle. Between them was a small boy with long and curly brown hair, dressed in a velvet suit à la Lord Fauntleroy. It was Anthony who was five years old the year his mother died.

His memories of the "contralto of the Boston light" were vague and musical. She sang and sang and sang in the music room of their Washington Square home, sometimes with guests gathered around her—men with arms folded, balancing breathlessly on the edges of sofas; the women, with their hands folded in their laps, sometimes addressed the men in low whispers, and always applauded vigorously and made cooing noises after each performance. She often sang only for Anthony in Italian, French, or in a strange and eerie dialect, which she herself considered the Negro language of the South.

His memories of the gallant Ulysses, the first man in America to roll up the lapels of his jacket, were much more vivid. After Henrietta LeBrun Patch “joined another choir,” as her widower would occasionally remark in a voice hoarse with emotion, father and son lived with his grandfather in Terrytown, where Ulysses came into Anthony’s nursery every day and began making sweet, thick-smelling speeches , sometimes lasting for an hour. He constantly promised Anthony hunting and fishing trips, excursions to Atlantic City - "oh, it's coming soon" - but none of the promises materialized. One trip did take place: when Anthony was eleven years old, they went abroad, to England and Switzerland, and there, in the best hotel in Lucerne, his father died covered in sweat, moaning and begging for more air. In panic, despair and horror, Anthony was taken to America, where he married with a vague melancholy that remained with him for the rest of his life.

The past and personality of the hero

At the age of eleven he experienced the horror of death. During the six years of impressionable childhood, his parents died, and his grandmother imperceptibly became more and more ethereal, until, for the first time since the beginning of her marriage, she acquired for one day absolute dominance in her drawing room. Therefore, for Anthony, life was a battle with death waiting around every corner. The habit of reading in bed was a concession to his suspicious imagination; it comforted him. He read until he was exhausted and often fell asleep with the light on.

His favorite hobby was his stamp collection: huge and as comprehensive as possible for a boy. His grandfather innocently believed that this activity would teach him geography, so Anthony corresponded with half a dozen companies specializing in philately and numismatics, and rarely did a day go by without the delivery of new notebooks or packages with shiny approval sheets. There was a certain mysterious charm in the endless transfer of one's acquisitions from one album to another. Stamps were his greatest joy, and he looked irritably at everyone who interrupted his games with them; they devoured his monthly pocket money, and at night he lay awake, tirelessly indulging in dreamy reflections on their variety and multi-colored splendor.

At sixteen, he existed almost completely in his inner world, a silent young man, completely unlike an American, causing polite bewilderment among his peers. He had spent the previous two years in Europe with a private teacher, who convinced him that Harvard would be the best choice, which would “open doors,” serve as a great mental tonic, and give him many loyal and selfless friends. So he went to Harvard; he simply had no logical choice.

Indifferent to social conventions, he lived for some time in solitude and obscurity in one of the best rooms of Beck Hall: a slender, dark-haired youth of average height with a shy, sensitive mouth. His allowance was more than generous. He laid the foundations of a personal library when he acquired first editions of Swinburne, Meredith and Thomas Hardy, as well as a yellowed, illegible letter signed by Keats, from a traveling bibliophile, only to discover that it had been shamelessly purged. He became a sophisticated dandy, amassing a pathetic collection of silk pajamas, brocade robes and ties that were too pretentious for going out. In this secret attire, he walked in front of the mirror in his room or lay on the couch by the window in satin linen, looking out into the courtyard and dimly discerning the tense noise of outside life, in which it seemed he would never find a place.

In his final year, he was slightly surprised to discover that he had gained a certain popularity among his classmates. He learned that he was viewed as a highly romantic figure, a learned hermit or a pillar of wisdom. This amused him, but secretly made him happy, and he began to go out into the world - at first little by little, then more and more often. He joined the Pudding Club. He drank without making a show of it, but in full accordance with tradition. It was said of him that if he had not gone to college at such a young age, he might have been "extremely successful." In 1909, when he graduated from Harvard, he was only twenty years old.

Then abroad again, this time to Rome, where he alternately dabbled in architecture and painting, took violin lessons and wrote terrifying Italian sonnets, supposedly the musings of a 13th-century monk on the joys of the contemplative life. It was rumored among his Harvard acquaintances that he was in Rome, and those who were in Europe that year soon visited him and, during numerous moonlit excursions, explored much of the city, which predates the Renaissance and even the Roman Republic. . For example, Maury Noble from Philadelphia stayed with him for two months; together they tasted the peculiar charm of the Latin women and experienced a delightful sense of their own youth and freedom in an ancient and free civilization. Many of my grandfather's acquaintances paid him visits, and if he had wished, he could have become persona grata in diplomatic circles. He did discover a growing inclination for casual communication, but his long adolescent alienation, along with the development of shyness, still influenced his behavior.

He returned to America in 1912 due to the sudden illness of his grandfather and, after an extremely tedious conversation with the gradually recovering old man, decided to postpone the idea of ​​​​permanent residence abroad until the death of his last close relative. After a long search, he rented an apartment on Fifty-Second Street and seemed to have settled down a little.

In 1913, the process of reconciling Anthony Patch with the outside world was in its final stages. His appearance had changed for the better since his student days: he was still too thin, but his shoulders were broad, and his face had lost the frightened expression of a freshman. He had a secret passion for order and always dressed to the nines: his friends claimed that they had never seen him unkempt. His nose was too sharp, and his mouth - the unfortunate mirror of mood - curved downward at the corners in moments of despondency, but his blue eyes looked charming, whether they shone with intelligence or were half-closed in an expression of melancholy humor.

Being one of the people lacking the symmetrical features inherent in the Aryan ideal, he was nevertheless considered a handsome youth. Moreover, in appearance and in fact he was very pure - that special purity that comes from beauty.

Immaculate apartment

Fifth and Sixth Avenues seemed to Anthony to be the uprights of a giant staircase that stretched from Washington Square to Central Park. Riding on the top deck of a bus from downtown to Fifty-Second Street always gave him the sensation of climbing up a long series of precarious rungs, and when the bus stopped on his own rung, he felt something akin to relief as he descended the rickety metal steps onto the sidewalk.

After that, he only had to walk half a block down Fifty-Second Street, past a hulking family of brownstone mansions, and then he would immediately find himself under the high ceiling of his huge living room. It was wonderful. Here, after all, real life began. Here he had breakfast, slept, read and had fun.

The house itself was built in the nineties from gloomy stone; in response to the growing need for small apartments, each floor was carefully renovated and rented separately. Of the four apartments, Anthony's apartment, located on the second floor, was the most desirable.

The front parlor had a beautiful high ceiling and three large windows with a pleasant view of Fifty-Second Street. In its setting, it successfully avoided belonging to any particular period; there was no stiffness, clutter, asceticism or decadence in it. There was no smell of smoke or incense in it; she seemed sublime and subtly melancholic. There was a deep couch, upholstered in the softest brown leather, over which the spirit of slumber hovered like a misty haze. There stood a tall screen with Chinese lacquer painting, covered with geometric images of fishermen and hunters in black and gold; she fenced off a corner alcove with a spacious armchair guarded by a floor lamp with an orange lampshade. The four-quarter coat of arms, located on the back wall of the fireplace, was smoked to a dusky blackness.

Once past the living room, which, since Anthony was just having breakfast at home, was still just a brilliant potential opportunity, and down a relatively long hallway, you approached the center of the apartment: Anthony's bedroom and bathroom.

Both rooms were huge. Under the ceiling of the first, even the majestic four-poster bed seemed to be of medium size. The exotic scarlet velvet carpet on the floor was as soft as sheep's fleece under his bare feet. In contrast to the rather pompous bedroom, his bathroom was ornate, bright, extremely comfortable and even slightly playful. On the walls hung framed photographs of four celebrated theatrical beauties of the time: Julia Sanderson from Sunshine Girl, Inna Claire from The Young Quaker, Billie Burke from Painted Beware! and Hazel Down from The Lady in Pink. Between Billie Burke and Hazel Down hung a print of a snow-covered field under a cold and threatening sun; according to Anthony, this symbolized a cold shower.

The bathtub, equipped with an original book stand, was spacious and low. The closet next to her was overflowing with enough linen for three men and an entire generation of neckerchiefs. The floor was covered not with a narrow rug, like a sanitized rag, but with a luxurious carpet, similar to the one in the bedroom - a miracle of softness, almost massaging the wet feet crawling out of the bathroom...

All in all, it was a witch's room. It's easy to see why this is where Anthony dressed and styled his impeccable hair; in fact, he did everything here except sleep and eat. The bathroom was his pride. It seemed to him that if he had a woman he loved, he would hang her portrait right opposite the bathtub, where, lost in the soothing streams of steam emanating from the hot water, he could lie, look at her and indulge in tender, sensual dreams of her beauty.

He doesn't spin

The cleanliness of the apartment was maintained by an English servant with the unusual, almost stage appropriate surname Bounds, whose formalism was overshadowed only by the fact that he wore a soft collar. If Bounds had been Anthony's undivided one, this defect could have been corrected without delay, but he was also Bounds to the other two gentlemen who lived in the neighborhood. From eight to eleven in the morning he was at Anthony's disposal. He brought the mail and prepared breakfast. At half-past nine he gently tugged at the edge of Anthony's blanket and uttered a few brief words; Anthony couldn't remember what the words were, but he suspected they were disapproving. Then he served breakfast on the card table in the living room, made the bed, and finally, inquiring with some hostility if anything else needed to be done, he left the apartment.

Anthony visited his broker at least once a week in the morning. His income was a little less than seven thousand a year, based on the interest of the money inherited from his mother. His grandfather, who did not allow his own son to go beyond a very generous allowance, judged that such a sum would be sufficient for young Anthony's needs. Every Christmas, he sent his grandson a five hundred dollar bond, which Anthony usually sold, since he was constantly (though not too much) in need of money.

His interactions with the broker ranged from light small talk to discussions about the safety of an eight percent investment; Anthony always enjoyed both. The building of a large trust company seemed to link him directly to the vast fortunes which he respected for their joint liability, and to assure him that he occupied a fairly secure place in the financial hierarchy. The sight of clerks hurrying about business gave him the same feeling of security that he experienced when thinking about his grandfather's money, and even more: Anthony vaguely imagined his grandfather's money as a demand loan issued by the world to Adam Patch for his moral virtue, at that time like the money that swirled around here, as if collected and held together only by the indomitable will and heroic efforts of many people. In addition, here they became something more obvious and definite - just money.

Although Anthony sometimes found it difficult to stay within his income, he believed that it was enough. Of course, one day he would have many millions, but for now he found raison d'etre in planning to write several essays on the popes of the Renaissance. This brings us back to a conversation with his grandfather immediately after his return from Rome.

Anthony hoped to find his grandfather dead, but a call from the pier found out that Adam Patch was on the mend again. The next day he hid his disappointment and went to Tarrytown. Five miles from the station, his taxi pulled out onto a carefully manicured path that led through the veritable maze of walls and wire fences that protected the estate. As people said, it was a certainty that if the Socialists came to power, one of the first people they would kill would be old "Angry Patch."

Anthony was late, and the venerable philanthropist was waiting for him in the glass-enclosed solarium, where he was looking through the morning newspapers for the second time. His secretary Edward Shuttleworth (who, before his rebirth, had been a gambler, saloonkeeper, and all-around wicked man) ushered Anthony into the room and introduced him to his savior and benefactor, as if showing him a priceless treasure.

They exchanged a formal handshake.

“I’m extremely glad to hear that you’re feeling better,” Anthony said.

The elder Patch took out his watch, looking as if he had met his grandson just last week.

- Was the train late? – he asked softly.

Anthony's waiting irritated him. He was under the delusion that in his youth he managed to conduct business with absolute punctuality and fulfill his obligations exactly on time, which was the immediate and main reason for his success.

Anthony looked at his grandfather with the silent amazement that he always experienced on such occasions. This decrepit, half-crazy old man had such power that, contrary to the opinion of the tabloid press, he could directly or indirectly buy enough souls to populate White Plains. It seemed as incredible as believing that he had once been a loud, pink baby.

The interval of seventy-five years of its existence acted like magic bellows: the first quarter of a century they filled it to the brim with life, and the last quarter of a century sucked it all back out. His cheeks sunken, his chest sunken, his arms and legs became twice as thin as before. Time mercilessly took away his teeth, one by one, suspended his small eyes in dark gray bags, thinned his hair, turned it from steel gray to white in some places, yellowed his pink skin and roughly mixed natural colors, like a child playing with a set of paints. Then, through body and soul, it attacked his brain. It sent him sweaty nightmares, unreasonable tears and groundless fears. It split off from the solid material of his enthusiasm dozens of small but absurd obsessions; his energy degenerated into the whims and antics of a spoiled child, and his will to power degenerated into a senseless infantile desire to have a kingdom of harps and chants on earth.

After a cautious exchange of pleasantries, Anthony felt that he was expected to state his intentions. At the same time, the slight sparkle in the old man’s eyes warned him against immediately publicizing his desire to live abroad. Anthony wanted Shuttleworth to show tact and leave the room - he didn't like Shuttleworth - but the secretary was already settled in the rocking chair and looking between the two Patches with faded eyes.

“Since you’re here, you should do something,” his grandfather said softly. -You have to do something.

Anthony waited for his grandfather to add “to leave something behind.” Then he spoke:

- I thought... it seemed to me that I was best prepared for writing...

Adam Patch winced, probably imagining the family poet with long hair and three mistresses.

“...works on history,” Anthony finished.

- Stories? Stories of what? Civil war? Revolution?

- Uh... no, sir. Stories of the Middle Ages.

At the same time, Anthony had an idea about the history of the Renaissance papacy, presented from a different angle. Still, he was glad he talked about the Middle Ages.

- Middle Ages? Why not your home country, which you know something about?

– You see, I lived abroad for so long...

“I don’t understand why on earth you should write about the Middle Ages.” We called them the Dark Ages. No one really knows what happened there, and no one cares. They're over and that's the end of it.

He continued to rant for several minutes about the uselessness of such information, naturally mentioning the Spanish Inquisition and “monastic corruption.” And finally:

“Do you think you can do some work in New York?” Do you actually intend to work? – The last words were spoken with subtle cynicism.

- I think so, sir.

- And when will you finish your work?

- Uh-uh, you see, we’ll need to draw up a general plan. A lot of preliminary reading will be required.

“I figured you'd been doing this long enough.”

The already uneven conversation came to a rather abrupt end when Anthony stood up, looked at his watch and noticed that he had an appointment with his broker that afternoon. He intended to stay with his grandfather for a few days, but he was tired and irritable due to the motion during the voyage and did not at all want to listen to the sophisticated sanctimonious attacks. So he promised to return in a few days.

Nevertheless, as a result of this meeting, work entered his life as a permanent idea. In the year since then, he had compiled several lists of authorities, even experimented with chapter titles and dividing his work into chronological periods, but to date not a single line had been written, and no such possibility was in sight. He did nothing, but contrary to generally accepted truisms, he managed to get some good pleasure from it.

. An approval sheet is a philatelic term to designate thick sheets of paper, cardboard, or landscape-sized plastic to which the philatelic materials offered for sale are attached. Designed to demonstrate the product and coordinate with the buyer’s choice (approx. transl.).

This refers to the "Quick Pudding Club", founded by Horace Binney in 1795 for Harvard students and graduates. Each week, two club members, chosen in random order, must prepare a makeshift pudding for the others. It is the oldest student club in the United States; four presidents were its members, including Roosevelt and Kennedy.

. "Be careful, it is freshly painted!" (“Mind-the-paint, Girl!”) is a play by Arthur Pinero (1912) about a rising theater star.

The name comes from the Gospel text: “Look at the lilies, how they grow: they do not toil, they do not spin; but I tell you that Solomon in all his glory did not dress like each of them” (Luke 12:27) - approx. translation

Rated the book

- But every day you put in at least a little effort, and you’re only twenty-five. Are you really not striving for anything in life? Think about what you will become at age forty?
“I sincerely hope that I won’t last that long.”

The story of a generation that we will never be again, although “never say never,” as people whisper. Francis Scott Fitzgerald presented to the reader a cast of the era, tragedy and sitcom in one bottle, where he and she are the soloists, and behind and around them is a whole era.
What the author does not skimp on throughout the entire narrative is cruel irony; believe me, here everyone is awarded it. It is Fitzgerald’s choice of dialogue with the reader through the prism of a maliciously instructive story over a cup of coffee and cognac, from my point of view, that is the main reason why “The Beautiful and the Damned” is difficult to read in places, especially the first chapters. It’s one thing when a grin accompanies an episode, and another when the whole story is told from start to finish. But after twenty or thirty pages you somehow manage to get used to all this, and the narrator slows down the pressure for a while, so you can completely immerse yourself in a story where there is he and she, where there is youth, dreams, dancing and drinking, ambitions, laziness and extra laughter. It is very easy to unravel the meaning put by the author into the title of the novel. Anthony and Gloria are a perfect example of spoiled, spoiled children who knew no need. They only know how to have fun, build castles in the air (and Gloria is incapable of even that, she thinks only about herself and, for example, her impending old age), whine while sitting on the couch about how unfair, gray and boring everything is around, throw parties and don’t count spent money in anticipation of new gifts bringing. In some ways they are more than beautiful, this youth, carelessness and fun. But the beauty outweighs their curse - after all, time slips through your fingers so quickly, before you have time to look back, years have already passed, and you are still at the same point, when others have long moved forward.

It is very difficult when reading “The Beautiful and the Damned” to remain objective in relation to the characters presented, especially the lead couple. 80% of the book Anthony and Gloria does not evoke any emotions other than pity and contempt, because it is very difficult for me to imagine how one can be so careless, selfish and even hypocritical. They believe that they have found true love for centuries, but everyone looks away or, even more so, meets with someone easier to forget for a moment. They say that they could easily work if they wanted, but all attempts to start and stay are in vain. If we consider the worst of the bad, then the greatest disappointment for me is still Anthony, and not his companion; Gloria can be forgiven for a lot. She spins around in her own little world, doesn’t allow her gray matter to work, and let her do it. She wants to remain a kind of eternal girl who doesn’t have to worry about anything, just have fun. Anthony has a naivety of a different order, more likely from a blind person than from a complete child. Being a person who just wants to get, but does nothing for it (here I mean a career), he only waits for the death of his grandfather, who brutally displeased him, in order to receive millions, and little by little he writes here and there. He has a marriage in which everything is more than not smooth, but he lacks either the strength, or the courage, or just one thought out loud, to somehow sort it out, and not go back forever. I sincerely believed that the moment he was drafted into the army, a turning point would begin, and this guy would still take the right path, but there are some individuals for whom the attempts of the universe to change something in these people are like water off a duck’s back. For me, Anthony is just that type. There was no fracture, only a further fall. It’s just that before he fell hand in hand with his wife, and in the last chapters their vaunted oneness has long been covered with cracks and is supported only by the conditional.

As a result, an instructive story for the young in spirit about how not to live and how to behave, it is also an excellent cast of the era from Francis Scott Fitzgerald, seasoned with cruel irony. Recommended reading for all those who are disappointed in their life and are looking for an incentive to go further, who is interested in how they hung out at the beginning of the last century, as well as in order to get acquainted with the work of their favorite author, if Fitzgerald is one. But I’m very interested in how much autobiographical is hidden in “The Beautiful and Damned,” I feel that a decent part of this story is an echo of real events.

Rated the book

While reading, I had a strong feeling that I had already seen this somewhere. And of course, his novel by Francis Scott Fitzgerald “The Great Gatsby” involuntarily came to mind. Only if the author turned it out stylish and laconic, then “The Beautiful and the Doomed”, in my opinion, is a test of the pen.

Style F.S. Fitzgerald is already recognizable. Indeed, wonderful language, beautiful metaphors, pleasing to the eye. A subtle, ironic, with a fair amount of sarcasm, melodic novel. I liked the HOW it was written, but at the same time, I was not impressed or hooked by what was written about. All the same hackneyed themes and platitudes about golden youth, about years lived in vain, about money that scatters in the wind... Such people are boring to watch, boring to read about, you don’t even want to think about them. Gray mediocrity is just that, mediocrity, albeit gilded...

Anthony Patch– a superficial personality, lacking enthusiasm and balance. An idealist and a romantic in one bottle, seeing the world through wine vapors and drowning his problems at the bottom of the bottle. Dummy. Zilch. He builds castles in the air, dreams, and then watches as everything collapses, including his idealism. Many words are not enough action. And a lot of cynicism for self-justification.
His precious Gloria with cold beauty like a damp wind. The same dummy. Little thought about anything. Only about the fact that you want to remain so charming and airy. Meanwhile, the years are taking their toll. Persistently and quietly. And so their lives flow on, in ever-changing merry drinking bouts, in a state of intoxication. This probably has its own charm and charm. May be. Their union destroys both of them. Love, passion, warmth quickly disappear, but discontent, aggression, quarrels, pitiful attempts to find money without working anywhere remain... Why should I really strain myself... And the ending surprised me a little. In the style of “enjoy life, live it better and you will be rewarded!!!”

Apparently F.S. Fitzgerald will remain for me the author of the only novel by Frances Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night. I was very impressed at the time. "The Great Gatsby" didn’t cause much excitement, and this one even less so.