[6] Her father Charles Garfield King purportedly warned the young writer that "poor boys shouldn't think of marrying rich girls",[7][8] and he forbade further courtship of his daughter by Fitzgerald.

[10][11] While courting his future wife Zelda Sayre and other young women while garrisoned near Montgomery, Alabama, Fitzgerald continued to write to King in the hope of rekindling their relationship.

[12] While Fitzgerald served in the army, King's father arranged her marriage to William "Bill" Mitchell [wd], the son of his wealthy business associate John J.

[13][14] An avid polo player, Bill Mitchell became the director of Texaco,[15] and he partly served as the model for Thomas "Tom" Buchanan in The Great Gatsby.

[28] Like her mother and her grandmother, her name derived from Ginevra de' Benci, a 15th-century Florentine aristocratic woman whom Leonardo da Vinci painted in an eponymous work.

[33] The privileged children of these prominent Chicago families played together, attended the same private schools, and endogamously married within this small social circle.

[48] Her closest friend in the Big Four quartet, Edith Cummings, became one of the premier amateur golfers during the Jazz Age and served as the model for the character of Jordan Baker in Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby.

While visiting her Westover roommate Marie Hersey in St. Paul, Minnesota,[e][56] a 16-year-old Ginevra King met an 18-year-old F. Scott Fitzgerald at a sledding party on Summit Avenue on January 4, 1915.

[60][5][61] Fitzgerald described this petting encounter in a short story: "It was the sleigh ride he remembered most and kissing her cool cheeks in the straw in one corner while she laughed up at the cold white stars.

[76] Mary Robbins Hillard, the stern headmistress of Westover school, declared King to be a "bold, bad hussy" and an "adventuress",[77] a derogatory term referring to a woman who ensnares wealthy men in order to increase her social position.

[76] Ginevra recounted these events in her diary:[79] After all the things that demon [Mary Robbins Hillard] had told me, she was as sweet as sugar to Father, even if he did tell her a few plain truths about herself—You wouldn't have known her for the same woman.

[88] At the time, the predominantly White Anglo-Saxon Protestant township of Lake Forest socially excluded others such as Black and Jewish people, and the presence of a middle-class Irish Catholic parvenu such as Fitzgerald likely caused a stir.

[a][89] Either Ginevra's father or someone else remarked, loud enough to be heard by the young Fitzgerald, that "poor boys shouldn't think of marrying rich girls".

[91] Two months later, in November 1916, their final encounter as a romantic couple occurred when Ginevra visited the Princeton campus for a Princeton–Yale football game.

King later admitted that she had begun secretly dating a Yale student in New York by this time,[92] and this complicated her rendezvous with Fitzgerald who was unaware of the other young man awaiting her attentions:[92] My girlfriend and I had made plans to meet some other, uh, friends.

[93][94] By this time, likely echoing her father's opinion of Fitzgerald, Ginevra discounted the young writer as a suitable match because of his middle-class status.

[91] According to scholar James L. W. West, Ginevra scrutinized Fitzgerald "against the backdrop of Lake Forest by that time, as opposed to seeing him at her school," and she realized he "didn't fit in" with the elite social milieu of the wealthy upper class.

[55] A heartbroken Fitzgerald claimed that King rejected his love with "supreme boredom and indifference",[55][11] and he viewed Ginevra as a rich socialite who merely toyed with his sincere affections before casting him aside.

"[94] In the wake of Ginevra's rejection, a distraught Fitzgerald dropped out of Princeton and enlisted in the United States Army amid World War I.

"[97] By consenting to marry the son of her father's business associate, Ginevra "made the same choice Daisy Buchanan did, accepting the safe haven of money rather than waiting for a truer love to come along.

"[100][101] Columnists gushed over "the extreme youth of the bridal couple, their gay and gallant air, their uncommon good looks, the distinguished appearance of both sets of parents, the smart frocks and becoming uniforms, all made an impression of something brilliant, charming, and cheerful.

"[100][101] The wedding ceremony featured "great garlands of fruit, that Luca della Robbia himself might have designed, [which] outlined the [chapel] arches.

He placed the wedding invitation, newspaper clippings reporting the ceremony, and a piece of Ginevra's handkerchief in his scrapbook with the note: "THE END OF A ONCE POIGNANT STORY.

[17][18] Following his failed pursuit of Ginevra due to his insufficient wealth, Fitzgerald's attitude towards the upper class became embittered,[115][116] and he wrote in 1926: "Let me tell you about the very rich.

[24] Despite marital discord,[24] Bill Mitchell rose to become the director of the Continental Illinois National Bank and Texaco,[120] and he partly inspired the character of Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby.

[23] During this year, King began an extramarital affair with paramour John T. Pirie, Jr., whom she met during an exclusive North Shore fox hunt.

[i][128] "She was the first girl I ever loved, and I have faithfully avoided seeing her up to this moment to keep the illusion perfect", an ill Fitzgerald informed his daughter Scottie, shortly before the meeting.

[131] Shortly before Ginevra's departure, which Fitzgerald thought would be their final meeting, the forlorn author began downing double shots of gin.

[139] By the time of Charles Garfield King's death, the deceased Fitzgerald had experienced a posthumous revival, and the author whom the stockbroker once scorned had become one of the most famous names in America.

[19] Scholar Maureen Corrigan notes that "because she's the one who got away, Ginevra—even more than Zelda—is the love who lodged like an irritant in Fitzgerald's imagination, producing the literary pearl that is Daisy Buchanan".