



Produced by Stan Goodman, Audrey Longhurst, and Project
Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders











THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED

BY F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

1922







_Novels_

THE LAST TYCOON
(Unfinished)
_With a foreword by Edmund Wilson
and notes by the author_

TENDER IS THE NIGHT

THE GREAT GATSBY

THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED

THIS SIDE OF PARADISE


_Stories_

THE PAT HOBBY STORIES
_With an introduction by Arnold Gingrich_

TAPS AT REVEILLE

SIX TALES OF THE JAZZ AGE AND OTHER STORIES
_With an introduction by Frances Fitzgerald Lanahan_

FLAPPERS AND PHILOSOPHERS
_With an introduction by Arthur Mizener_

THE STORIES OF F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
_A selection of 28 stories, with
an introduction by Malcolm Cowley_


_Stories and Essays_

AFTERNOON OF AN AUTHOR
_With an introduction and notes
by Arthur Mizener_

THE FITZGERALD READER: A Selection
_Edited and with an introduction
by Arthur Mizener_






The victor belongs to the spoils.
--ANTHONY PATCH



TO
SHANE LESLIE, GEORGE JEAN NATHAN
AND MAXWELL PERKINS

IN APPRECIATION OF MUCH LITERARY HELP
AND ENCOURAGEMENT





CONTENTS


BOOK ONE

  I. ANTHONY PATCH

 II. PORTRAIT OF A SIREN

III. THE CONNOISSEUR OF KISSES


BOOK TWO

  I. THE RADIANT HOUR

 II. SYMPOSIUM

III. THE BROKEN LUTE


BOOK THREE

  I. A MATTER OF CIVILIZATION

 II. A MATTER OF AESTHETICS

III. NO MATTER!




BOOK ONE



CHAPTER I


ANTHONY PATCH

In 1913, when Anthony Patch was twenty-five, two years were already gone
since irony, the Holy Ghost of this later day, had, theoretically at
least, descended upon him. Irony was the final polish of the shoe, the
ultimate dab of the clothes-brush, a sort of intellectual "There!"--yet
at the brink of this story he has as yet gone no further than the
conscious stage. As you first see him he wonders frequently whether he
is not without honor and slightly mad, a shameful and obscene thinness
glistening on the surface of the world like oil on a clean pond, these
occasions being varied, of course, with those in which he thinks himself
rather an exceptional young man, thoroughly sophisticated, well adjusted
to his environment, and somewhat more significant than any one else
he knows.

This was his healthy state and it made him cheerful, pleasant, and very
attractive to intelligent men and to all women. In this state he
considered that he would one day accomplish some quiet subtle thing that
the elect would deem worthy and, passing on, would join the dimmer stars
in a nebulous, indeterminate heaven half-way between death and
immortality. Until the time came for this effort he would be Anthony
Patch--not a portrait of a man but a distinct and dynamic personality,
opinionated, contemptuous, functioning from within outward--a man who
was aware that there could be no honor and yet had honor, who knew the
sophistry of courage and yet was brave.


A WORTHY MAN AND HIS GIFTED SON

Anthony drew as much consciousness of social security from being the
grandson of Adam J. Patch as he would have had from tracing his line
over the sea to the crusaders. This is inevitable; Virginians and
Bostonians to the contrary notwithstanding, an aristocracy founded
sheerly on money postulates wealth in the particular.

Now Adam J. Patch, more familiarly known as "Cross Patch," left his
father's farm in Tarrytown early in sixty-one to join a New York cavalry
regiment. He came home from the war a major, charged into Wall Street,
and amid much fuss, fume, applause, and ill will he gathered to himself
some seventy-five million dollars.

This occupied his energies until he was fifty-seven years old. It was
then that he determined, after a severe attack of sclerosis, to
consecrate the remainder of his life to the moral regeneration of the
world. He became a reformer among reformers. Emulating the magnificent
efforts of Anthony Comstock, after whom his grandson was named, he
levelled a varied assortment of uppercuts and body-blows at liquor,
literature, vice, art