Scandalous Women: The Lives and Loves of History's Most Notorious Women by Elizabeth Mahon Page A
Authors: Elizabeth Mahon
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He disparaged her, calling her a third-rate writer and a third-rate ballet dancer. Zelda wearily responded that he was making quite a violent attack on someone he considered third-rate. She assured him that she was not trying to be “a great artist or a great anything.” She just needed a creative outlet, to have a sense of self. Nevertheless she changed the novel according to his wishes and it was published in October of 1932. The reviews were poor and it sold less than half of its three-thousand-copy print run. Zelda earned $120.73 from her novel.
Although they never lived together as husband and wife again, Scott never abandoned his wife during her years of mental illness. In 1936, Zelda entered the Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, where she would spend the next twelve years on and off. Scott died in Hollywood in 1940, having last seen Zelda a year and a half earlier. She was too unwell to attend his funeral. Fitzgerald left her an annuity to help pay for her medical bills. When she was well, she lived with her mother in Montgomery until her demons came back, and she would go back to the hospital. She submitted to electroshock therapy, which helped but also damaged her memory.
Zelda spent her remaining years working on a second novel, which she never completed, and she painted extensively. In 1948, a fire broke out on the top floor of the hospital, causing her death. It took some time before her charred body could be identified. Scott and Zelda are buried with the other Fitzgeralds at Saint Mary’s Catholic Cemetery. Inscribed on their joint tombstone is the final sentence of The Great Gatsby : “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
THREE
Scintillating Seductresses
Anne Boleyn
1501?-1536
I never wished to choose the King in my heart.
—ANNE BOLEYN
Anne Boleyn is probably one of the most maligned queens in English history. During her lifetime, she was considered an enchantress who seduced Henry VIII through witchcraft; she was accused of having a sixth finger and a third breast; she was called “the concubine” or worse. Historians since then have been divided about Anne’s true nature and motives. Was she the instrument of an ambitious family that craved power above all else, or was she a devout evangelical Christian who believed that God had put her on earth to lead England toward the true religion? By capturing the heart of Henry VIII she set in motion the action that changed the course of English history.
Born sometime around 1501, she was the middle child of Thomas Boleyn and his wife, Lady Elizabeth; through her mother she was a niece of the man who would become the powerful third Duke of Norfolk. At the age of twelve, Anne was sent to the continent as lady-in-waiting at the courts of Margaret of Austria and Claude of France. There she picked up the sophisticated élan that set so many male hearts aflutter at Henry’s court. She learned to speak French like a native, to dance with flair, and to flirt in the continental fashion, promising everything but giving away nothing. It was at the court of Francis I that Anne may have come into contact with his sister, Marguerite de Navarre, who was the patron of Christian humanists, such as François Rabelais, who espoused reform within the Catholic Church.
Anne was recalled to England in 1521 to marry her cousin. When that engagement fell through, she was sent to court, this time to serve Henry VIII’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon. She quickly became popular, at least among the men. She wasn’t beautiful by sixteenth-century standards, which favored plump, blueeyed blondes, but she knew how to make the most of what God gave her. She dressed impeccably in rich colors to enhance her dark hair and olive complexion. Rejecting the unflattering gabled hood then in vogue, which looked like a house sitting on one’s head, Anne brought the chic French hood into
Although they never lived together as husband and wife again, Scott never abandoned his wife during her years of mental illness. In 1936, Zelda entered the Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, where she would spend the next twelve years on and off. Scott died in Hollywood in 1940, having last seen Zelda a year and a half earlier. She was too unwell to attend his funeral. Fitzgerald left her an annuity to help pay for her medical bills. When she was well, she lived with her mother in Montgomery until her demons came back, and she would go back to the hospital. She submitted to electroshock therapy, which helped but also damaged her memory.
Zelda spent her remaining years working on a second novel, which she never completed, and she painted extensively. In 1948, a fire broke out on the top floor of the hospital, causing her death. It took some time before her charred body could be identified. Scott and Zelda are buried with the other Fitzgeralds at Saint Mary’s Catholic Cemetery. Inscribed on their joint tombstone is the final sentence of The Great Gatsby : “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
THREE
Scintillating Seductresses
Anne Boleyn
1501?-1536
I never wished to choose the King in my heart.
—ANNE BOLEYN
Anne Boleyn is probably one of the most maligned queens in English history. During her lifetime, she was considered an enchantress who seduced Henry VIII through witchcraft; she was accused of having a sixth finger and a third breast; she was called “the concubine” or worse. Historians since then have been divided about Anne’s true nature and motives. Was she the instrument of an ambitious family that craved power above all else, or was she a devout evangelical Christian who believed that God had put her on earth to lead England toward the true religion? By capturing the heart of Henry VIII she set in motion the action that changed the course of English history.
Born sometime around 1501, she was the middle child of Thomas Boleyn and his wife, Lady Elizabeth; through her mother she was a niece of the man who would become the powerful third Duke of Norfolk. At the age of twelve, Anne was sent to the continent as lady-in-waiting at the courts of Margaret of Austria and Claude of France. There she picked up the sophisticated élan that set so many male hearts aflutter at Henry’s court. She learned to speak French like a native, to dance with flair, and to flirt in the continental fashion, promising everything but giving away nothing. It was at the court of Francis I that Anne may have come into contact with his sister, Marguerite de Navarre, who was the patron of Christian humanists, such as François Rabelais, who espoused reform within the Catholic Church.
Anne was recalled to England in 1521 to marry her cousin. When that engagement fell through, she was sent to court, this time to serve Henry VIII’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon. She quickly became popular, at least among the men. She wasn’t beautiful by sixteenth-century standards, which favored plump, blueeyed blondes, but she knew how to make the most of what God gave her. She dressed impeccably in rich colors to enhance her dark hair and olive complexion. Rejecting the unflattering gabled hood then in vogue, which looked like a house sitting on one’s head, Anne brought the chic French hood into
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