This Side of Paradise - Book One - The Romantic Egotist - Chapter 1 - Amory, Son of Beatrice

Sep 21, 2026

This Side of Paradise opens with Amory Blaine’s inheritance of family traits and the shaping influence of his mother, Beatrice O’Hara. The narrative traces Stephen Blaine’s passive, bookish background and contrasts it with Beatrice’s privileged, cultivated education and social sophistication. Through Amory’s early childhood travels, unconventional upbringings, and formative incidents—small conversations, schooling, and even moments of indulgence—the chapter frames how wealth, art, and temperamental fragility converge in Amory’s personality.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages263

Reading Time6 h 45 min

AccessFree to download

Book One—The Romantic Egotist

Chapter 1. Amory, Son of Beatrice

Interlude

Book Two—The Education of a Personage

This Side of Paradise by F . Scott Fitzgerald Prepared and Published by: Ebd [E-BooksDirectory.com](E-BooksDirectory.com) ... Well this side of Paradise!... There's little comfort in the wise. —Rupert Brooke. Experience is the name so many people give to their mistakes. —Oscar Wilde. To SIGOURNEY FAY Contents BOOK ONE—The Romantic Egotist CHAPTER 1. Amory, Son of Beatrice CHAPTER 2. Spires and Gargoyles CHAPTER 3. The Egotist Considers CHAPTER 4. Narcissus Off Duty INTERLUDE BOOK TWO—The Education of a Personage CHAPTER 1. The Debutante CHAPTER 2. Experiments in Convalescence CHAPTER 3. Young Irony CHAPTER 4. The Supercilious Sacrifice CHAPTER 5. The Egotist Becomes a Personage BOOK ONE—The Romantic Egotist CHAPTER 1. Amory, Son of Beatrice Amory Blaine inherited from his mother every trait, except the stray inexpressible few, that made him worth while. His father, an ineffectual, inarticulate man with a taste for Byron and a habit of drowsing over the Encyclopedia Britannica, grew wealthy at thirty through the death of two elder brothers, successful Chicago brokers, and in the first flush of feeling that the world was his, went to Bar Harbor and met Beatrice O'Hara. In consequence, Stephen Blaine handed down to posterity his height of just under six feet and his tendency to waver at crucial moments, these two abstractions appearing in his son Amory. For many years he hovered in the background of his family's life, an unassertive figure with a face halfobliterated by lifeless, silky hair, continually occupied in "taking care" of his wife, continually harassed by the idea that he didn't and couldn't understand her. But Beatrice Blaine! There was a woman! Early pictures taken on her father's estate at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, or in Rome at the Sacred Heart Convent—an educational extravagance that in her youth was only for the daughters of the exceptionally wealthy—showed the exquisite delicacy of her features, the consummate art and simplicity of her clothes. A brilliant education she had—her youth passed in renaissance glory, she was versed in the latest gossip of the Older Roman Families; known by name as a fabulously wealthy American girl to Cardinal Vitori and Queen Margherita and more subtle celebrities that one must have had some culture even to have heard of. She learned in England to prefer whiskey and soda to wine, and her small talk was broadened in two senses during a winter in Vienna. All in all Beatrice O'Hara absorbed the sort of education that will be quite impossible ever again; a tutelage measured by the number of things and people one could be contemptuous of and charming about; a culture rich in all arts and traditions, barren of all ideas, in the last of those days when the great gardener clipped the inferior roses to produce one perfect bud. In her less important moments she returned to America, met Stephen Blaine and married him—this almost entirely because she was a little bit weary, a little bit sad. Her only child was carried through a tiresome season and brought into the world on a spring day in ninety-six. When Amory was five he was already a delightful companion for her. He was an auburn-haired boy, with great, handsome eyes which he would grow up to in time, a facile imaginative mind and a taste for fancy dress. From his fourth to his tenth year he did the country with his mother in her father's private car, from Coronado, where his mother became so bored that she had a nervous breakdown in a fashionable hotel, down to Mexico City, where she took a mild, almost epidemic consumption. This trouble pleased her, and later she made use of it as an intrinsic part of her atmosphere—especially after several astounding bracers. So, while more or less fortunate little rich boys were defying governesses on the beach at Newport, or being spanked or tutored or read to from "Do and Dare," or "Frank on the Mississippi," Amory was biting acquiescent bell-boys in the

FAQs

Who is Amory Blaine in this opening chapter?

Amory Blaine is the child of Stephen Blaine and Beatrice O’Hara. The chapter emphasizes how he inherits his mother’s cultivated traits and his father’s physical tendency to waver in crucial moments.

How does Beatrice O’Hara shape Amory’s upbringing?

Beatrice provides a highly specialized social and cultural education through travel, refined conversations, and tailored experiences. She also models delicacy and uses her experiences and ailments to craft Amory’s atmosphere.

What early events help define Amory’s character?

The chapter recounts Amory’s childhood travels, his early tastes in music and reading, and a formative episode where he becomes tipsy from apricot cordial and later encounters an urge toward a cigarette, which the story frames as part of Beatrice’s “line.”

Sep 21, 2026

Uploaded by Evangeline