Ginevra King Pirie (November 30, 1898 – December 13, 1980) was an American socialite and heiress. As one of the self-proclaimed "Big Four" debutantes of Chicago during World , King inspired many characters in the novels and short stories of Jazz Age writer F. Scott Fitzgerald; in particular, the character of Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby. A 16-year-old King met an 18-year-old Fitzgerald at a sledding party in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and they shared a passionate romance from 1915 to 1917.
Although King was "madly in love" with Fitzgerald, their relationship ended when King's family intervened. Her father Charles Garfield King purportedly warned the young writer that "poor boys shouldn't think of marrying rich girls", and he forbade further courtship of his daughter. A heartbroken Fitzgerald dropped out of Princeton University and enlisted in the United States Army amid World . While courting his future wife Zelda Sayre and other young women when he was garrisoned near Montgomery, Alabama, Fitzgerald continued to write to King in the hope of rekindling their relationship.
While Fitzgerald served in the army, King's father arranged her marriage to , the son of his wealthy business associate John J. Mitchell. An avid polo player, Bill Mitchell became the director of Texaco, and he served partly as a model for Thomas "Tom" Buchanan in The Great Gatsby. Despite King marrying Mitchell and Fitzgerald marrying Zelda Sayre, Fitzgerald remained in love with King until his death. Fitzgerald scholar Maureen Corrigan wrote that King, far more than the author's wife Zelda Sayre, became "the love who lodged like an irritant in Fitzgerald's imagination, producing the literary pearl that is Daisy Buchanan". In the mind of Fitzgerald, King was the prototype of the unobtainable, upper-class woman who embodies the elusive American Dream.
During her relationship with Fitzgerald, Ginevra wrote a Gatsby-like story which she sent to the young author. In her story, she is trapped in a loveless marriage with a wealthy man yet still pines for Fitzgerald. The lovers are reunited only after Fitzgerald attains enough money to take her away from her adulterous husband. Fitzgerald kept Ginevra's story with him, and scholars have noted the plot similarities between Ginevra's story and Fitzgerald's novel.
King separated from Mitchell in 1937 after an unhappy marriage. A year later, Fitzgerald attempted to reunite with King when she visited Hollywood. The reunion proved a disaster due to Fitzgerald's alcoholism. A disappointed King returned to Chicago and she divorced Mitchell in 1939. She married John T. Pirie Jr., a business tycoon and owner of the Chicago department retailer Carson Pirie Scott & Company in 1942. She died in 1980 at age 82, at her estate in Charleston, South Carolina.
Early life and education
Born in Chicago, on November 30, 1898, King was the eldest daughter of socialite Ginevra Fuller (1877–1964) and Chicago stockbroker Charles Garfield King (1874–1945).1910 United States census She had two younger sisters, Marjorie and Barbara. Like her mother and her grandmother, her name derived from Ginevra de' Benci, a 15th-century Florentine aristocratic woman whom Leonardo da Vinci painted in an eponymous work.
Raised in luxury at her family's sprawling estate in Lake Forest,: "Lacking the outward signs of high status that the landed nobility of Europe once enjoyed, wealthy American families have long maintained social distance from the 'common people' by withdrawing into upper-class enclaves. Often located on forested hills far from the stench and noise of the industrial districts, places like Greenwich, Connecticut; Lake Forest, Illinois; and Palm Beach, Florida, are 'clear material statement[s] of status, power, and privilege.'" Ginevra enjoyed a carefree life of riding polo ponies and playing tennis as well as engaging in private-school intrigues and country-club flirtations. Both sides of Ginevra's family were extravagantly wealthy and exclusively socialized with the other wealthy families in Chicago such as the Mitchells, Armours, Cudahys, Swifts, McCormicks, Palmers, and Chatfield-Taylors. The privileged children of these prominent Chicago families played together, attended the same private schools, and endogamously married within this small social circle.: "...an exception to the rule of marrying within their circle.": "Ginevra's marriage to Bill Mitchell was a dynastic affair very much approved by both sets of parents. In fact Bill's younger brother, Clarence, would marry Ginevra's younger sister Marjorie a few years later."
Due to her family's immense wealth, the Chicago press chronicled Ginevra's mundane social activities, and newspaper columnists fêted the young Ginevra as one of the city's most desirable debutantes. As the center of attention in this environment, King developed "a clear sense of her family's wealth and position and, from an early age, a highly developed understanding of how social status worked". She socialized within an elite circle of other wealthy Chicago debutantes—self-proclaimed as the "Big Four"—which included her friends Edith Cummings, Courtney Letts, and Margaret Carry:
As a privileged teenager cocooned in a small circle of wealthy Protestant families, King developed a notorious self-centeredness,: Later as an adult, King described her youthful self in a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald's daughter: "Goodness, what a self-centered little ass I was!" and she purportedly lacked introspection. Intensely competitive, King disliked losing to anyone at anything—tennis, golf or basketball. This competitiveness did not extend to her academic studies. Although she completed her schoolwork, she disliked learning and instead preferred parties where she could sit up late gossiping with her Big Four friends. Her closest friend in the Big Four quartet, Edith Cummings, became one of the premier amateur golfers during the Jazz Age and served as the model for the character of Jordan Baker in Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby.
In 1914, King's father sent Ginevra to Middlebury, Connecticut, to attend the Westover School, an exclusive finishing school for the daughters of America's wealthiest families. Her Westover schoolmates included such notable persons as Isabel Stillman Rockefeller of the Rockefeller dynasty, as well as Margaret Livingston Bush and Mary Eleanor Bush, the aunts of President George H. W. Bush. The school prided itself on inculcating a sense of noblesse oblige in its pupils. Many of Westover's attendees became the wives of wealthy men who sought fulfillment as society hostesses and, if they wished, in helping those less privileged.
Romance with Fitzgerald
While visiting her Westover roommate Marie Hersey in St. Paul, Minnesota, a 16-year-old Ginevra King met an 18-year-old F. Scott Fitzgerald at a sledding party on Summit Avenue on January 4, 1915. At the time, Fitzgerald was a sophomore at Princeton University. The two teenagers fell in love.: Contrary to claims by Ginevra's family, Ginevra wrote in her diary that she was "madly in love with" Fitzgerald: "Oh it was so wonderful to see him again," she wrote on February 20, 1916, "I am madly in love with him. He is so wonderful".: "He met and fell in love with Ginevra King, a rich and wildly popular visitor from Chicago, who at sixteen had the social ease of a young duchess. A beauty with dark curling hair and large brown romantic eyes, she had an air of daring and innocent allure. To Fitzgerald, Ginevra King was the embodiment of a dream, and he was immediately and completely captivated." Fitzgerald described this petting encounter in a short story: "It was the sleigh ride he remembered most and kissing her cool cheeks in the straw in one corner while she laughed up at the cold white stars. The couple next to them had their backs turned and he kissed her little neck and her ears and never her lips."
After this flirtatious encounter under the stars in Minnesota, Ginevra returned to Westover in Connecticut, and Fitzgerald returned to nearby Princeton in New Jersey. He deluged Ginevra with correspondence which pleased her as she measured her popularity "by which boys wrote to her and how many letters she received". Against his wishes, Ginevra read Fitzgerald's intimate letters aloud to her Westover classmates and rival suitors for their amusement. At one point, Ginevra asked for a photograph of him as she coyly professed to recall only that he had "yellow hair and big blue eyes". Despite such coyness, Ginevra regarded Scott as among the more important of her many romantic conquests due to his handsome good looks and Princeton standing.
The lovers corresponded for months and exchanged photographs. Over time, their letters became passionate. Ginevra began having dreams about Scott and "slept with his letters" in the hope "that dreams about him would come in the night". Fitzgerald visited Westover several times, and Ginevra professed in her diary to be "madly in love with him". In March 1915, Fitzgerald asked Ginevra to be his date for Princeton's sophomore prom, but Ginevra's mother forbade Ginevra to attend as the consort of a middle-class young man. "I'm so [disappointed] about the dance I can't see straight," Ginevra wrote Scott. Despite this setback, they met again in June in New York. They dined at the Ritz and saw two Broadway plays, Nobody Home and Midnight Frolic. Fitzgerald wrote that Ginevra "made luminous the Ritz roof on a brief passage through [New York].": "June ... Ritz, Nobody Home and Midnight Frolic with Ginevra."
As the months passed, King and Fitzgerald rendezvoused in different locations, and they discussed—perhaps lightheartedly—eloping. In February–March 1916, Fitzgerald wrote a short story titled "The Perfect Hour" in which he imagined Ginevra and himself blissfully together at last, and he mailed the love story to her by post as a token of his affection. Ginevra read the story aloud to a rival suitor who generously praised Fitzgerald's writing as excellent.
In response to Fitzgerald's "The Perfect Hour" tale, Ginevra herself wrote a Gatsby-like short story which she sent to Fitzgerald on March 6. In her story, she is trapped in a loveless marriage with a wealthy man yet still pines for Fitzgerald, a former lover from her past. The two lovers are reunited only after Fitzgerald attains enough money to take her away from her adulterous husband. Fitzgerald kept Ginevra's story with him until his death, and scholars have noted the plot similarities between Ginevra's story and Fitzgerald's work The Great Gatsby.: "The correspondences between Ginevra's story and Fitzgerald's novel are close enough to suggest that her story might have had an influence, and perhaps an important one, on the genesis of the novel."
Despite Fitzgerald's frequent visits and love letters, Ginevra continued entertaining other suitors. "At this time," Ginevra later explained, "I was definitely out for quantity not quality in beaux, and, although Scott was top man, I still wasn't serious enough not to want plenty of other attention!" At the time, she wrote apologetically to Scott, "I know I am a flirt and I can't stop it".
On May 22, 1916, Westover School expelled Ginevra for flirting with a crowd of young male admirers from her dormitory window. Mary Robbins Hillard, the stern headmistress of Westover school, declared King to be a "bold, bad hussy" and an "adventuress", a derogatory term referring to a woman who ensnares wealthy men in order to increase her social position. After legal threats by Ginevra's imperious and influential father, a cowed Hillard readmitted King to the school, but her father—irate at Westover's treatment of his beloved daughter—decided that she instead would complete her education at a New York finishing school. Ginevra recounted these events in her diary: