The Bad Old Days in St. Paul—and “the Ingersoll Girls”

This personal reminiscence by journalist Finlay Lewis—the author of a 1980 biography of then U.S. vice president Walter Mondale—explores his mother’s and aunt’s early lives as friends of F. Scott Fitzgerald in St. Paul, Minnesota. Sisters Georgie and Jean Ingersoll inspired a pair of characters in Fitzgerald’s 1928 short story “A Short Trip Home,” and while Lewis’s mother passed away before he was able to glean details about her childhood friendship with the writer, he was able to discuss Fitzgerald’s youth with his aunt. Lewis then places the dark undertones of “A Short Trip Home”—often credited as Fitzgerald’s most successful foray into the supernatural—in the context of St. Paul’s history of crime. A slightly different version of this talk was originally presented in March 2024 at a meeting of the Literary Society of Washington (founded in 1874) at the Cosmos Club in Washington, D.C.