Origin of "old sport" in The Great Gatsby

[JimF]

"That's a great expression of yours, isn't it?" said Tom sharply.

"What is?"

"All this 'old sport' business. Where'd you pick that up?"

Tom's (or Fitzgerald's) question is for us to find the answer. The term "old sport" was used by several authors before The Great Gatsby, but only in few occasions and hardly can they answer Tom's question.

Harry P. Dodge (1812–?) used this term 20 times in his 1885 book, "Fifty Years at the Card Table, the Autobiography of an Old Sport," where he defined old sport in page 93:

There are hundreds of up and up fellows in this world, who, like myself, are old sports. I know them by the score, who would give their last dollar to help a friend.

Jay Gatsby is one of the "up and up fellows" as sealed in the elevator boy scene in chapter II. The elevation concept, also in Jacob's ladder in chapter VI, can be found in Fitzgerald's pencil manuscript:

"I could be a great man if I could just forget that once I lost out on something I wanted. My life has got to be all like this—" He drew a slanting line from the lawn to the stars. "It's got to go up."

At the bottom of Dodge's title page (https://i.imgur.com/32Px6Jl.jpg) there's a quote can well describe Gatsby:

"A gentleman and a gamester, the varnish of a complete man."—Shakespeare.

Gatsby might wish everyone could be an old sport as himself. With this in mind, reading mood of The Great Gatsby may change a little, for the term appears 45 times in the novel.

In Dodge's Autobiography, people call Dodge old man or old sport; in The Great Gatsby, Nick has an "old Dodge," which can be a car, or an old book by Dodge.

[JimF]

Another origin may change our reading mood, the origin of the title The Great Gatsby.

Why Gatsby is great? Fitzgerald asnwered the question in his pencil manuscript:

"I don't care how much people talk about me or hate me. Just so I could make them admire me, make everybody admire me—like my company did in the war. They knew I was a good man. They gave me a watch."

I smiled but he didn't see.

"Do you think Jay Gatsby's a good name for that sort of thing?" he demanded anxiously. He asked suddenly in a ringing voice. "Then goes the great Jay Gatsby."

I was afraid he was going to change it on the spot.

"Jay Gatsby!" he cried suddenly in a ringing voice. "That's what people are going to say—wait and see. I'm only thirty two now."

"Then goes the great Jay Gatsby" becomes the title of this novel by removing Jay. Gatsby is blessing his own name; Fitzgerald his own novel.—"Then goes the The Great Gatsby."

Gatsby may not be (or isn't) a great character in the novel, but the novel itself is great, the wish of Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald doesn't care how much people talk about him or hate him. Just so he could make them admire him, make everybody admire him. Nick smiles at the "watch" for it can be a timepiece, or a watch of the novel.

Fitzgerald stated his ambition when he was 24:

My idea is always to reach my generation. The wise writer, I think, writes for the youth of his own generation, the critic of the next and the schoolmasters of ever afterward.—New York Tribune, image 14, May 7, 1920

[JimF]

Fitzgerald's View on "Negro"

Fitzgerald used Maria Edgeworth's 1880 novel Castle Rackrent to seal a secret related to Daisy Fay.

Harry P. Dodge, a sharper, wrote in his 1885 Autobiography of an Old Sport: "Ten or twelve years ago while traveling in the West I was accosted by a three card monte robber, . . ."

Fitzgerald named a young man "Monte" in his 1924 short story "Rags Martin-Jones and the Pr-nce of W-les." Monte is one of the deceivers in the story.

In The Great Gatsby, Catherine is "gyped out" in Monte Carlo in "the private rooms"; but why in the private rooms? Private has the usage of isolated, hidden, or not to be seen. The three-card monte plays with three private rooms.

In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald used Montenegro, or monte negro, to show his view on "negro":

Little Montenegro! He lifted up the words and nodded at them—with his smile. The smile comprehended Montenegro's troubled history and sympathized with the brave struggles of the Montenegrin people.

[JimF]

Fitzgerald repeated "Montenegro" seven times in few paragraphs to alert readers. He did something similar in his short story "Absolution" (1924), prologue of The Great Gatsby:

Blatchford Sarnemington was himself, and these words were in effect a lyric. When he became Blatchford Sarnemington a suave nobility flowed from him. Blatchford Sarnemington lived in great sweeping triumphs. When Rudolph half closed his eyes it meant that Blatchford had established dominance over him and, as he went by, there were envious mutters in the air: "Blatchford Sarnemington! There goes Blatchford Sarnemington."

[JimF]

The name Blatchford is used to match with Schwartz the priest in "Absolution." Fitzgerald coined Sarnemington, a name hard to reason until The Great Gatsby:

"What part of the Middle West?" I inquired casually.
"San Francisco."

San Francisco in the Middle West is a fault, intentionally made like "smokeing" in chapter XI.

San can be the short of sanatorium, appeared since 1906 (OED).
Francisco can link to Francis Scott Fitzgerald.
The term sanatorium, sanatoriums, and sanatoria can be found in Fitzgerald's works.

Sarnemington is a perfect anagram of San-mentoring.

Interestingly, in the 2013 film directed by Baz Luhrmann, Nick wrote his memory in "The Perkins Sanitarium."

[JimF]

In Tender Is the Night (1934), Francisco, the only son of Señor Pardo y Cuidad Real, is "no more self-control than a drunken woman," and the father tried to cure him:

"I worked out a plan with a doctor friend of mine, sent them together for a tour of Spain. Every evening Francisco had an injection of cantharides and then the two went together to a reputable bordello . . . I made Francisco strip to the waist and lashed him with a whip."

Cantharides in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica: "The drug is administered internally in certain cases of impotence and occasionally in other conditions. Its criminal employment is usually intended to heighten sexual desire, and has frequently led to death."

At the end of this interlude, the father, Señor Pardo y Cuidad Real, "knelt suddenly" to Dick:

"My only son! Can't you take him with you?"

The Spaniard knelt suddenly at Dick's feet.

"Can't you cure my only son? I believe in you--you can take him with you, cure him."

• Señor Pardo => pardon (ending Pardo with ñ).

• Cuidad Real => cuidar deal (exchanging -d and r-); cuidar means to care in Spanish.

The trip to Spain is a care-deal that cannot cure Francisco's painS.

In this interlude, Fitzgerald's father (Señor Pardo y Cuidad Real) knelt to his only son (Francisco) asking pardon of his criminal acts.

(Ciudad Real is a city in Spain. Some later editions change Cuidad to Ciudad.)

Gatsby: "I am the son of some wealthy people in the Middle West--all dead now." Among so many cities, Francis Scott Fitzgerald selected San Francisco, wrongly.