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Ginevra King Pirie (November 30, 1898 – December 13, 1980) was an American socialite and heiress. As one of the self-proclaimed "Big Four" debutantes of Chicago during World War I, King inspired many characters in the novels and short stories of writer F. Scott Fitzgerald; in particular, the character of Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby. A 16-year-old King met an 18-year-old Fitzgerald at a sledding party in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and they shared a passionate romance from 1915 to 1917. Although King was "madly in love" with Fitzgerald, their relationship ended when King's family intervened. Her father Charles Garfield King purportedly warned the young writer that "poor boys shouldn't think of marrying rich girls", and he forbade further courtship of his daughter by Fitzgerald. A heartbroken Fitzgerald dropped out of Princeton University and enlisted in the United States Army amid World War I. While courting his future wife Zelda Sayre and other young women while garrisoned near Montgomery, Alabama, Fitzgerald continued to write King in the hope of rekindling their relationship. 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. Mitchell. An avid polo player, Bill Mitchell became the director of Texaco, and he partly served as the model for Thomas "Tom" Buchanan in The Great Gatsby. Despite King marrying Mitchell and Fitzgerald marrying Zelda Sayre, Fitzgerald remained obsessed with King until his death. Fitzgerald scholar Maureen Corrigan notes that King, far more so than author's wife Zelda Sayre, became "the love who lodged like an irritant in Fitzgerald's imagination, producing the literary pearl that is Daisy Buchanan". In the mind of Fitzgerald, King became the prototype of the unobtainable, upper-class woman who embodies the elusive American dream. During her relationship with Fitzgerald, Ginevra wrote a Gatsby-like story which she sent to the young author. In her story, she is trapped in a loveless marriage with a wealthy man yet still pines for Fitzgerald. The lovers are reunited only after Fitzgerald attains enough money to take her away from her adulterous husband. Fitzgerald kept Ginevra's story with him, and scholars have noted the plot similarities between Ginevra's story and Fitzgerald's novel. King separated from Mitchell in 1937 after an unhappy marriage. A year later, Fitzgerald attempted to reunite with King when she visited Hollywood in 1938. The reunion proved a disaster due to Fitzgerald's alcoholism, and a disappointed King returned to Chicago. She later married John T. Pirie Jr., a business tycoon and owner of the Chicago department retailer Carson Pirie Scott & Company. She died in 1980 at the age of 82 at her estate in Charleston, South Carolina. Early life and education Born in Chicago in 1898, King was the eldest daughter of socialite Ginevra Fuller (1877–1964) and Chicago stockbroker Charles Garfield King (1874–1945). She had two younger sisters, Marjorie and Barbara. Like her mother and her grandmother, her name derived from Ginevra de' Benci, a 15th-century Florentine aristocratic woman whom Leonardo da Vinci's painted in an eponymous work. Both sides of Ginevra's family were extravagantly wealthy, and they exclusively socialized with the other "old money" families in Chicago such as the Mitchells, Armours, Cudahys, Swifts, McCormicks, Palmers, and Chatfield-Taylors. The privileged children of these prominent Chicago families played together, attended the same private schools, and were expected to endogamously marry within this small social circle. Raised in luxury at her family's sprawling estate in the racially segregated White Anglo-Saxon Protestant township of Lake Forest, Ginevra enjoyed a carefree "life of tennis, polo ponies, private-school intrigues, and country-club flirtations". Due to her family's immense wealth, the Chicago press chronicled Ginevra's mundane social activities, and newspaper columnists feted the young Ginevra as one of the city's most desirable debutantes. Accordingly, King developed "a clear sense of her family's wealth and position and, from an early age, a highly developed understanding of how social status worked". She socialized in only an elite circle of other wealthy debutantes—self-proclaimed as the "Big Four"—which included her friends Edith Cummings, Courtney Letts, and Margaret Carry:The [Big Four] girls went to dances and house parties together, and they were seen as a foursome on the golf links and tennis courts at Onwentsia. If other girls were jealous, Ginevra and her three friends did not care. The Big Four was complete; it would admit no further members. As a privileged teenager cocooned in a small circle of wealthy Protestant families, King developed a notorious self-centeredness, and she purportedly lacked introspection. Intensely competitive, King disliked losing to anyone at anything—tennis, golf or basketball. This intense competitiveness did not extend to her academic studies. Although she completed her schoolwork, she disliked learning and instead preferred parties where she could sit up late chatting with her Big Four friends. Her closest friend and confidant in the Big Four quartet, Edith Cummings, later 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. In 1914, King's father sent Ginevra to Middlebury, Connecticut, to attend the Westover School, an exclusive finishing school for the daughters of America's wealthiest families. Her Westover schoolmates included such notable persons as Isabel Stillman Rockefeller of the Rockefeller dynasty, as well as Margaret Livingston Bush and Mary Eleanor Bush, the aunts of President George H. W. Bush. The school prided itself on inculcating a sense of duty and noblesse oblige in its pupils. Most of Westover's attendees later became the wives of wealthy men who sought "fulfillment in social activities, in child-rearing, and, if they wished to, in helping the needy." Relationship with Fitzgerald While visiting her Westover roommate Marie Hersey in St. Paul, Minnesota, 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. At the time, Fitzgerald was a sophomore at Princeton University. The two teenagers immediately fell in love. Fitzgerald later described this encounter: "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. The couple next to them had their backs turned and he kissed her little neck and her ears and never her lips." After this encounter in Minnesota, Ginevra returned to Westover in Connecticut, and Fitzgerald returned to Princeton in New Jersey. He deluged Ginevra with correspondence which pleased her as she measured her popularity "by which bo.... Discover the Basil Pirie popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Basil Pirie books.