Fitzgerald’s Baltimore: Beautiful Yet Unresolved

“That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.” -F. Scott Fitzgerald

Just a short stroll down the street from the old rowhouse in which we’re renting an apartment for the year, sits another austere old rowhouse. Unremarkable and even plain next to the others on its block, it would be easy to pass by without further notice except for the round blue plaque placed just above an easily readable level. If you walk through the Bolton Hill neighborhood you will likely notice several of these round blue plaques denoting the residences of significant people and briefly commemorating their accomplishments, especially those that occurred while they lived at the location. One of the most well-known figures to be memorialized in the neighborhood is F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose former residence is this plain rowhouse just up the street.

Before moving to Baltimore, I didn’t even know that Fitzgerald had lived here. I knew of his connections with Minnesota and Princeton which are reflected in his semi-autobiographical This Side of Paradise. I had liked This Side better than The Great Gatsby and recently re-read Gatsby just to be sure. Both stories are more than a little melancholy. However, upon my re-read I was reminded what an exquisite writer Fitzgerald was. His descriptions often capture the subtleties of an idea with a slight twist. Whether it’s sarcastic, melancholic, romantic, or scathingly truthful, the descriptions he offers are are piercing new ways of seeing common things.

“It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played
again.” The Great Gatsby

He challenges me in my feeble attempts at writing to look at things with wide-open eyes. To note the shades of meanings in a word and to be critical in my choices of each one.

In a city like Baltimore, it’s easy to imagine Fitzgerald having plenty of fodder for his stories. The Jazz era he writes of can still be easily seen in places such as The Belvedere– the grand old hotel which stubbornly clings to its past through the black and white photos lining one of its lobby halls. Through its grandly imposing formal foyer, you can still step back into the age of Prohibition as you wander down a side hall and round a corner into the shadowed nooks and stone paved corridors of The Owl Bar, a cafe/bar which only needs a false door to be the incarnation of a speakeasy. The stained glass detailing above the bar, combined with the cozy booths, sturdy wooden tables, and dimly lit cavernous ceilings demand a respectful hush, as if people are exchanging secrets in the next booth. While I haven’t tried the brick-oven pizza there yet, the hearty half-circle of flames visible whenever the oven door is opened, add to the vibrant atmosphere.

The law school which my husband attends has had two social meet-and-greets sponsored by different organizations at The Owl Bar. As voices echoed off the stone and the setting sun illuminated the stained glass, I once again felt lucky to be in Baltimore. It’s finding these simple beautiful things that make me love the city and look forward to exploring more of its stores from the past.

(photo taken from The Belvedere’s website) 

“Think how you love me,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t ask you to love me always like this, but I ask you to remember…I’ll be different, but somewhere lost inside me there’ll always be the person I am tonight.”— F. Scott Fitzgerald (Magnetism)

I think Baltimore is a little bit like this quote. Lost inside itself are several versions of the city, some romantic and cloaked in excitement, and some less savory that the city likes to gloss over. The city is riddled with disturbing scenes-the makeshift mattresses under the on-ramp to Highway 40, the scrawled signs held by cold hands which pass between the rows of rush-hour traffic in the mornings, children wearing their school uniforms on weekends because that’s all they have. These are juxtaposed with the facades of well-kept single family rowhomes, luxury cars secured with steering wheel clubs, and expensive boutiques. The inconsistencies would make for some very piercing observations by a writer such as Fitzgerald today. I’m grateful for the complexities of the city even as I struggle with some of its flaws- it always leaves me with questions to ask and possibilities to ponder.

“If you have anything to say, anything you feel nobody has ever said before, you have got to feel it so desperately that you will find some way to say it that nobody has ever found before, so that the thing you have to say and the way of saying it blend as one matter–as indissolubly as if they were conceived together.”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald)