Zelda's and Scott's Craig House Letters.

F. Scott Fitzgerald had hopeful expectations that Beacon psychiatrist C. Jonathan Slocum could help his beleaguered wife come out of the deep depression of her third nervous breakdown. "It was a pleasure meeting you," Fitzgerald wrote to Dr. Slocum in Beacon on March 12, 1934, "and [I am] feeling tremendously pleased with your beautiful plant [Craig House] but also coming to the conclusion that you are perhaps the very best man to help Zelda at the present."

By the 1930s, C.J. Slocum had earned the reputation as a pioneer in the field of mental health with his working concept of an "open" hospital where, for therapy, patients at his Craig House Sanitarium in Beacon could enjoy nature walks, play golf or swim, do crafts, and have one-on-one care as they immersed themselves in the beautiful landscapes of the former Sargent and Howland estates, "Wodenethe" and "Tioronda" that were the foundations of the Craig House property

Zelda Fitzgerald, novelist, painter, dancer, and the high living "flapper" wife of Jazz Age writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, had been admitted on March 8, 1934, into Slocum's sanitarium, which at the time had been rated as one of the top five mental hospitals in America by a national magazine. Zelda's stay at Craig House would last only nine weeks--from March to May 1934. But her letters to Scott written from the sanitarium tell of productive, happy hours spent there--painting, writing an article for Esquire magazine, and relaxing by playing golf on the sanitarium's nine-hole course. "This is a beautiful place, Zelda writes to Scott, "There is everything on earth available and I have a little room to paint in with a window higher than my head--the way I like windows to be. And my room is the nicest room I've ever had, any place, which is very unjust [to you] considering the burden you are already struggling under."

The financial burden Zelda guiltily alluded to was the exorbitant cost of this high-end institution--$175 a week. Scott Fitzgerald, too, was worried about the bills. He anxiously wrote to Dr. Slocum, asking if his wife would be there more than a couple of months. If so, he might have to go to Hollywood for the better money of writing for the movies. Zelda's stay proved short, however, but not before the place left a positive lasting impression upon her, as described in her inimitable writing style: "t is so pretty here. The ground is shivering with snowdrops and gentians. I suppose you wouldn't like to to rest, but I wish you could for a while in the cool apple-green of my room. Mostly we walk where tumbling villages prop themselves on the beams of the afternoon sun. It is an awfully nice place." --From the Craig House Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.