James Gatz that was really, or at least legally, his name. He had changed it at the age of seventeen and at the specific moment that witnessed the beginning of his career when he saw Dan Codys yacht drop anchor over the most insidious flat on Lake Superior[80]. It was James Gatz who had been loafing along the beach that afternoon in a torn green jersey and a pair of canvas pants, but it was already Jay Gatsby who borrowed a rowboat, pulled out to the Tuolomee, and informed Cody that a wind might catch him and break him up in half an hour.
I suppose hed had the name ready for a long time, even then. His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all. The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception[81] of himself. He was a son of God a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that and he must be about His Fathers business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.
For over a year he had been beating his way along the south shore of Lake Superior as a clam-digger and a salmon-fisher or in any other capacity that brought him food and bed. His brown, hardening body lived naturally through the half-fierce, half-lazy work of the bracing days. He knew women early, and since they spoiled him he became contemptuous of them, of young virgins because they were ignorant, of the others because they were hysterical about things which in his overwhelming self-absorption he took for granted.
But his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot. The most grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at night. A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain while the clock ticked on the wash-stand and the moon soaked with wet light his tangled clothes upon the floor. Each night he added to the pattern of his fancies until drowsiness closed down upon some vivid scene with an oblivious embrace. For a while these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairys wing.
An instinct toward his future glory had led him, some months before, to the small Lutheran[82] College of St Olafs[83] in southern Minnesota. He stayed there two weeks, dismayed at its ferocious indifference to the drums of his destiny, to destiny itself, and despising the janitors work with which he was to pay his way through. Then he drifted back to Lake Superior, and he was still searching for something to do on the day that Dan Codys yacht dropped anchor in the shallows alongshore.
* * *Cody was fifty years old then, a product of the Nevada silver fields, of the Yukon, of every rush for metal since seventy-five[84]. The transactions in Montana copper that made him many times a millionaire found him physically robust but on the verge of softmindedness, and, suspecting this, an infinite number of women tried to separate him from his money. The none too savoury ramifications by which Ella Kaye, the newspaper woman, played Madame de Maintenon[85] to his weakness and sent him to sea in a yacht, were common property of the turgid journalism of 1902. He had been coasting along all too hospitable shores for five years when he turned up as James Gatzs destiny in Little Girl Bay.
To young Gatz, resting on his oars and looking up at the railed deck, that yacht represented all the beauty and glamour in the world. I suppose he smiled at Cody he had probably discovered that people liked him when he smiled. At any rate Cody asked him a few questions (one of them elicited the brand new name) and found that he was quick and extravagantly ambitious. A few days later he took him to Duluth and bought him a blue coat, six pair of white duck trousers, and a yachting cap. And when the Tuolomee left for the West Indies[86] and the Barbary Coast Gatsby left too.
He was employed in a vague personal capacity while he remained with Cody he was in turn steward, mate, skipper, secretary, and even jailor, for Dan Cody sober knew what lavish doings Dan Cody drunk might soon be about, and he provided for such contingencies by reposing more and more trust in Gatsby. The arrangement lasted five years, during which the boat went three times around the Continent. It might have lasted indefinitely except for the fact that Ella Kaye came on board one night in Boston and a week later Dan Cody inhospitably died.
I remember the portrait of him up in Gatsbys bedroom, a grey, florid man with a hard, empty face the pioneer debauchee, who during one phase of American life brought back to the Eastern seaboard the savage violence of the frontier brothel and saloon. It was indirectly due to Cody that Gatsby drank so little. Sometimes in the course of gay parties women used to rub champagne into his hair; for himself he formed the habit of letting liquor alone.
And it was from Cody that he inherited money a legacy of twenty-five thousand dollars. He didnt get it. He never understood the legal device that was used against him, but what remained of the millions went intact to Ella Kaye. He was left with his singularly appropriate education; the vague contour of Jay Gatsby had filled out to the substantiality of a man.
* * *He told me all this very much later, but Ive put it down here with the idea of exploding those first wild rumours about his antecedents, which werent even faintly true. Moreover he told it to me at a time of confusion, when I had reached the point of believing everything and nothing about him. So I take advantage of this short halt, while Gatsby, so to speak, caught his breath, to clear this set of misconceptions away.
It was a halt, too, in my association with his affairs. For several weeks I didnt see him or hear his voice on the phone mostly I was in New York, trotting around with Jordan and trying to ingratiate myself with her senile aunt but finally I went over to his house one Sunday afternoon. I hadnt been there two minutes when somebody brought Tom Buchanan in for a drink. I was startled, naturally, but the really surprising thing was that it hadnt happened before.
They were a party of three on horseback Tom and a man named Sloane and a pretty woman in a brown riding-habit, who had been there previously.
* * *Im delighted to see you, said Gatsby, standing on his porch. Im delighted that you dropped in.
As though they cared!
Sit right down. Have a cigarette or a cigar. He walked around the room quickly, ringing bells. Ill have something to drink for you in just a minute.
He was profoundly affected by the fact that Tom was there. But he would be uneasy anyhow until he had given them something, realizing in a vague way that that was all they came for. Mr. Sloane wanted nothing. A lemonade? No, thanks. A little champagne? Nothing at all, thanks Im sorry
Did you have a nice ride?
Very good roads around here.
I suppose the automobiles
Yeah.
Moved by an irresistible impulse, Gatsby turned to Tom, who had accepted the introduction as a stranger.
I believe weve met somewhere before, Mr. Buchanan.
Oh, yes, said Tom, gruffly polite, but obviously not remembering. So we did. I remember very well.
About two weeks ago.
Thats right. You were with Nick here.
I know your wife, continued Gatsby, almost aggressively.
That so?
Tom turned to me.
You live near here, Nick?
Next door.
That so?
Mr. Sloane didnt enter into the conversation, but lounged back haughtily in his chair; the woman said nothing either until unexpectedly, after two highballs, she became cordial.
Well all come over to your next party, Mr. Gatsby, she suggested. What do you say?
Certainly; Id be delighted to have you.
Be ver nice, said Mr. Sloane, without gratitude. Well think ought to be starting home.
Please dont hurry, Gatsby urged them. He had control of himself now, and he wanted to see more of Tom. Why dont you why dont you stay for supper? I wouldnt be surprised if some other people dropped in from New York.
You come to supper with me, said the lady enthusiastically. Both of you.
This included me. Mr. Sloane got to his feet.
Come along, he said but to her only.
I mean it, she insisted. Id love to have you. Lots of room.
Gatsby looked at me questioningly. He wanted to go, and he didnt see that Mr. Sloane had determined he shouldnt.
Im afraid I wont be able to, I said.
Well, you come, she urged, concentrating on Gatsby.
Mr. Sloane murmured something close to her ear.
We wont be late if we start now, she insisted aloud.
I havent got a horse, said Gatsby. I used to ride in the army, but Ive never bought a horse. Ill have to follow you in my car. Excuse me for just a minute.
Im afraid I wont be able to, I said.
Well, you come, she urged, concentrating on Gatsby.
Mr. Sloane murmured something close to her ear.
We wont be late if we start now, she insisted aloud.
I havent got a horse, said Gatsby. I used to ride in the army, but Ive never bought a horse. Ill have to follow you in my car. Excuse me for just a minute.
The rest of us walked out on the porch, where Sloane and the lady began an impassioned conversation aside.
My God, I believe the mans coming, said Tom. Doesnt he know she doesnt want him?
She says she does want him.
She has a big dinner party and he wont know a soul there, he frowned. I wonder where in the devil he met Daisy. By God, I may be old-fashioned in my ideas, but women run around too much these days to suit me. They meet all kinds of crazy fish.
Suddenly Mr. Sloane and the lady walked down the steps and mounted their horses.
Come on, said Mr. Sloane to Tom, were late. Weve got to go. And then to me: Tell him we couldnt wait, will you?
Tom and I shook hands, the rest of us exchanged a cool nod, and they trotted quickly down the drive, disappearing under the August foliage just as Gatsby, with hat and light overcoat in hand, came out the front door.
Tom was evidently perturbed at Daisys running around alone, for on the following Saturday night he came with her to Gatsbys party. Perhaps his presence gave the evening its peculiar quality of oppressiveness it stands out in my memory from Gatsbys other parties that summer.