Читать книгу The Beautiful and Damned / Прекрасные и обреченные. Уровень 4 - Френсис Скотт Фицджеральд, Френсис Фицджеральд - Страница 4

At eleven he knew a horror of death. Within six years his parents had died and his grandmother had faded off almost imperceptibly. So to Anthony life was a struggle against death, that waited at every corner. He formed the habit of reading in bed – it soothed him. He read until he was tired and often fell asleep with the lights still on.

His favorite diversion until he was fourteen was his stamp collection; his grandfather considered fatuously that it was teaching him geography. His stamps were his greatest happiness; they devoured his money.

At sixteen he became an inarticulate boy. His private tutor persuaded to go to Harvard.

There he lived for a while alone – a slim dark boy of medium height with a shy sensitive mouth. He laid the foundations for a library by purchasing from a wandering bibliophile some books, finding later that he had paid too much. He became an exquisite dandy, bought a pathetic collection of silk pajamas, brocaded dressing-gowns, and neckties too flamboyant to wear. In this he could parade before a mirror in his room.

Curiously enough he found that he was looked upon[7]as a rather romantic figure, a scholar, a recluse, an erudite. This amused him but secretly pleased him. In 1909, when he graduated, he was only twenty years old.

Then abroad again – to Rome this time, architecture and painting. He wrote some ghastly Italian sonnets.

He returned to America in 1912 because of his grandfather’s sudden illness, and decided to put off the idea of living permanently abroad. He took an apartment on Fifty-second Street and settled down.

In 1913 Anthony Patch’s shoulders had widened and his brunette face had lost the frightened look. His friends declared that they had never seen his hair rumpled. His nose was too sharp; his mouth was a mirror of mood, but his blue eyes were charming. Moreover, he was very clean, in appearance and in reality, with that especial cleanness borrowed from beauty.