Ginevra King (1898-1980) was
an American
socialite, a Chicago, Illinois
, debutante and the
inspirational muse for several characters in
the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Early life
She was born in Chicago in 1898, the daughter of Ginevra and
Charles Garfield King. (She, as with her mother and grandmother,
was named after
Leonardo da
Vinci's painting
Ginevra de'
Benci.) Charles G. King was a wealthy Chicago businessman
and financier. She was the eldest of three sisters and grew up
amidst the Chicago social scene, even being a member of the elite
"
Big Four" Chicago
debutantes during World War I.
She attended the Westover School in Middlebury,
Connecticut
.
Relationship with Fitzgerald
Ginevra
first met Fitzgerald on January 4, 1915, while visiting her
roommate from Westover, Marie Hershey, in St. Paul,
Minnesota
. They met at a sledding party and, according
to letters and diary entries, they both became infatuated. They
sent letters back and forth for months, and their passionate
romance continued until January 1917. In August 1916, Fitzgerald
first wrote down the words, thought to have been said to him by
Charles King, that would later recur in
The Great Gatsby the movie: "Poor boys
shouldn't think of marrying rich girls." The line "poor boys
shouldn't think of marrying rich girls" also appears in
The Great Gatsby, only it
is delivered to Gatsby by Daisy Buchanan and not the father of his
love.
Later life
On July 15, 1918, King wrote to Fitzgerald, telling of her
engagement to William Mitchell, the son of her father's business
associate. They married later that year and had three children.
Then in 1937, she left Mitchell for businessman John T. Pirie, Jr.
(of the Chicago department store
Carson Pirie Scott & Company). That
year she also met Fitzgerald for the last time in Hollywood; when
asked which character was based on her in
The Beautiful and Damned,
Fitzgerald replied,
"Which bitch do you think you
are?"
King later founded the Ladies Guild of the American Cancer Society.
She died in 1980 at the age of 82.
Literary legacy
King is thought to have exerted a great influence on Fitzgerald's
writing, perhaps as much as his relationship with his wife,
Zelda. His work abounds with
characters modeled on King. These characters include:
- Judy Jones in "Winter Dreams"
- Isabelle Borge in This
Side of Paradise
- Most notably, Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby
- Fitzgerald also recreated their meeting in "Babes in the
Woods," from the collection Bernice Bobs Her Hair and Other
Stories; this was reused in This Side of
Paradise.
King is also featured in the books
The Perfect Hour by
James L.W. West III, and in a fictionalized form in
Gatsby's
Girl by Caroline Preston. The musical
The Pursuit of
Persephone tells the story of King's romance with
Fitzgerald.
References
Further reading
External links
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