TORTURED LOVE

Ernest Hemingway at work

Dearest Hem,

Your letter to Pauline, dated November 1926 is a sad testament to a tortured soul when it comes to love, and attachment, and obsession. There is so much of your passion reflected in this letter but reflected in such a way that the figure in the glass is a distorted, wounded, self debasing vision of the "man's man" of a writer that you give the world. My heart breaks for you.

What I see is that little boy Ernest, trying to be what others want, or need, or expect, and losing himself in the process. Being the caped hero can be exhausting, and being the caped hero who portrays wearing a cape as something for sissies is debilitating. This process has you intentionally cutting yourself off at the knees to prove you're a man's man and to debunk any and all stories that you live in the shadow of your mother. When it comes to women your relationship with your mother has forever tainted whatever comes after.

You are desperately down when you write Pauline, "Now I can look back on the days when I had just strait lonesomeness and waiting for you - but knowing that everything was all right and that it was just waiting - and they seem unbelievably happy. Because now you have given yourself and your heart as a hostage to your mother too and the whole thing seems so absolutely hopeless." Dear Hem, you have found a kindred soul in Pauline as you both are held hostage by your mothers. It's no wonder that the conditions of the separation have the capacity to reach right down and rip your heart out.

I am amazed at your level of insight, my friend, when you write, "I know you did the extra three months because you thought that was what Hadley wanted - and also because at the time you were in such a state that sacrificed seemed like the thing to do. And of course al that Hadley wanted was to delay the divorce - anything to delay the divorce - she didn't want to just smash us both up - she won't admit it but she knows we're the same person - sometimes she has admitted it - but instead of giving her the delay that is practically the only thing left in the world that she wants we railroad her toward divorce and smash ourselves both up at the same time. That makes nice thinking too."

The most telling thing that you share in this heart wrenching letter is when you speak about killing yourself because of the apparent hopeless nature of the situation. You point to the fact that you had made a promise to Pauline not to act rashly until she had returned from her exile, but, in the light of her personal emotional deterioration, as well as yours, you asked if this didn't excuse you from your promise. You write, "But now it is getting all out of control again and you have broken your promises and I should think that would let me out. Only nothing ever lets you out. But I'm not a saint, nor built like one, and I'd rather die now while there is still something left of the world than to go on and have every part of it flattened out and destroyed and made hollow before I die."

At the end of your letter, like the soliloquy before the hero plunges the dagger into his heart, you write, "And all I want is you Pfife and oh dear god I want you so. And I'm ashamed of this letter and I hate it. But I had to get this poison out and I've just been stewed in it and not hearing and all the mail boats that get in with nothing on them and then that horrible awful letter from your mother yesterday in which you were getting your just punishment." And there it was, the affirmation that your own life echoed, that the punishment of a mother is the most damning, the most damaging, the most lasting - there is nothing more lasting than a mother's "love."

There is no winner to be found in this version of Sartre's Huis Clos that is your life at this point. My heart goes out to you, to Pauline, and to Hadley and Bumby who's lives will be forever changed by these events that have been set in motion.  Sometimes there's no benefit to identifying a winner. Sometimes it's simply about picking up the pieces after the storm and trying to piece life back together again into something that allows you to move on.

Hem, I trust in your capacity to construct a story line and I trust in your ability to create something of the pieces that lie at your feet.

Wishing you better days,

Betsy

SUCCESS SHADOWED BY CHANGE

Ernest Hemingway and Pauline Pfeiffer

Dear Ernest,

It was so good to read your letters to your friends, in the early part of 1926. It seems as if everything is coming together. After all of the struggle, and rejection, and doubt (particularly that of your parents) around whether you were really made of the stuff it was going to take to be a successful writer. Here, finally, it's starting to unfold.

You write to William Smith and Harold Loeb, "I got loose from Liveright on account him turning down the satire. Scribners say they will back me solidly and loyally no matter how the books turn out financially. So now I don't have to worry. Only to work. will try and write some swell ones. I'm not going to think any more about what is to happen to the stuff. Just work."

In addition, my dearest Hem, you have found a true place of creative retreat in Schruns, Austria. Here, in the company of fast friends the likes of John dos Passos and Expats John and Sara Murphy you exercised your passion for the outdoors and devoted yourself to editing The Sun Also Rises.

Your relationship with Scribners would prove to be an over twenty-year partnership that was bound by your personal friendship with Maxwell Perkins, your editor at Scribners. It is interesting, dear Hem, that just as you were forging this lasting relationship with Scribners and Perkins, you were, at the same time falling for yours and Hadley's dear friend, Pauline Pfeiffer. Latter, in your biography, A Movable Feast, you wrote, "I should have caught the first train from Gare de l'Est... to Austria. But the girl I was in love with was in Paris then, and I did not take the first train, or the second, or the third. When I saw my wife again... I wished I had died before I ever loved anyone but her."

What I find interesting is that you continued to muddle along, going between the two women in your life and purposefully avoiding doing anything about it, particularly when it came to your family. You actually took extra measures to keep the whole affair under wraps and secretive. 

Hem, you had to have known it would happen sometime. Hadley discovered the affair in early May when all of you, including Pauline's sister, Virginia, were on a trip through the Loire Valley, in France. However, the rest of the world was still in the dark.

The avoidance was certainly made easier by your preoccupation with putting the finishing touches on The Sun Also Rises, writing back and forth with the likes of Ezra Pound, and F. Scott Fitzgerald and traveling back to Spain for the bull fighting season. By July and August of 1926 you still hadn't resolved anything and you were still carrying on the charade of Pauline being "simply a family friend" even though there were now those in your inner circle who definitely knew better. 

Hadley, in her infinite wisdom (or mutual efforts at avoidance) invited you and Pauline to come and stay with her and Bumby, at F. Scott Fitzgerald's place in the French Riviera where she and Bumby were recuperating from whooping cough. You even wrote about the experience in your novel The Garden of Eden. But, your marriage, eventually did fall apart, didn't it?

You and Pauline returned to Pamplona, Spain for the bull fights and Hadley and Bumby returned to Paris to set up separate residences. Dear Hem, even as you continued to try to live your life on your terms and to write on your terms, the world, people, and events would continue to press back, censoring, editing, shaping and ultimately, from your perspective, constricting that freedom you were so driven to express. You write to your editor, Maxwell Perkins, in August of 1926, "I've tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I'm afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane - or perhaps more sacred."

It was all bound to come to a head, Ernest, and it did when Hadley insisted that you and Pauline live apart for six months, with no contact, and if at the end of that time you still felt you were in love she would give you her blessings and grant the divorce. So, September of 1926 saw Pauline sailing for the States to spend the six months with her parents, and you facing a that same extended time without her.

What will come of all of this only time will tell. 

Hoping it all works out,
Betsy

EMERGING INTO THE LIGHT

Hadley, Bumby, and Ernest

Dear Ernest,

So sorry to hear about the rejection of your book Torrents of Spring by Liveright. I do have to ask, after reading it, if you didn't believe that the possibility existed for Liveright to reject the story? The book is clearly a parody of Sherwood Anderson's work, Dark Laughter. 

In your draft of your letter to Horace Liveright, dated January 19, 1926, you write,"I did not submit the Torrents of Spring to you in the hope that you would turn it down. I consider it a good book and John Dos Passos, Louis Broomfield and Scott Fitzgerald, who are people of different tastes are enthusiastic about it. Your turning it down was your own affair." You further share with Liveright your belief that this rejection constitutes a breach of contract regarding the agreement that you had with him, "As Torrents of Spring is my second completed book and as I submitted it to you and as you did not exercise your option to publish it; according to my contract with you your option on my third book then lapses. This is quite clear and open and shut."

Wow! Bold move, my friend! I know you have not been comfortable in the relationship you have had with Boni & Liveright for some time. It is apparent that you feel that their strict censorship (from your perspective), is no longer tolerable. As well, their sense of priority when it comes to their authors, and the possibility that they are deferring your work to that of their primary author (Sherwood Anderson) has to rub you the wrong way. 

I have to believe, Hem, that you have a heightened sensitivity to being forced to live in another's shadow. You have, in your own life, made the bold move to step out of the shadow cast by your family, and it follows that you would not be very tolerant of any relationship that recreated those conditions and feelings.

Timing is everything, right? You are certainly in good company and, I'm sure, under advisement from those close to you, in your literary circles, that finding the right publisher is everything. 

You wrote to Liveright of these influences, "...I have already received offers for the Torrents of Spring and The Sun Also Rises, which I am still working on, from several publishers. I have not approached these publishers. They have heard of the books from friends who have seen manuscripts and in whose judgement they place some confidence."

It seems, Hem, that you've formulated a plan forward and have the support of friends and colleagues who have the ears of top publishers and publications. I look forward to seeing how and where you settle as you continue to build momentum in your writing and in your readership. 

I'm looking forward to learning more about how you're putting it all together. This is a very fluid time in your life with lots of possibilities, and lots of decisions and choices. It's good that you have Hadley and Bumby to help anchor you during this time. When I think of you and Hadley, I am reminded of a poem by John Donne, 

If they be two, they are two so
   As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
   To move, but doth, if the' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
   Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
   And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must
   Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,

   And makes me end, where I begun.

It seems to be written in your stars, dear Hem, that you are destined to "obliquely run" and having that home port to return to can feel like both a blessing and a curse. I know, I've felt that way many times.

I do so love your letters!

With Warmest Regards,
Betsy

COMERADESHIP

Ernest and Bumby-Photo by Man Ray

Dearest Hem,

It is obvious that you are in the midst of a creative maelstrom that promises to sweep you up in it and take you to places yet unimagined!  In your letter to your fellow writer and friend, Ernest Walsh, dated January 2, 1926 you write, "There is comradeship today and I have it with Don Stewart and Dos Passos and a guy named Chink and a guy named Howy Jenkins and several other guys and would have it with you if we could bum around together."

You have such strong emotions around this idea of "comradeship." It is almost as if those who you hold dear in this exclusive circle of friendship are like your family to you. Your expectations of their commitment and loyalty are such that they can be hard to live up to.

In your letter you speak of your disappointment with poet and writer Robert McAlmon. This is the same man who published your first book, Three Stories and Ten Poems in 1923, and who financed and accompanied you on your first trip to Spain. In a sense, McAlmon was one of those key people who nurtured and supported you when, perhaps, others weren't yet on-board.

In your letter to Walsh you share that, "The last day I was in Paris I went around looking for him (McAlmon) intending, when I found him, to beat him up..." In your letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald, dated December 24, 1925 you called McAlmon, "a son of a bitch with a mind like an ingrowing toe nail."

Ernest, you are a difficult person, at times, and that's not to say that those who care about you aren't accepting of that difficulty. That being said, there may be times when those who care about you simply aren't able to stand in the gale force winds that you're life sometimes whips up.

Walsh put it best in his poem entitled "Ernest Hemingway" that was published in the second number of This Quarter (Autumn-Winter 1925-1926):

Papa soldier pugilist bullfighter

Writer gourmet lionhead aesthete

He's a big guy from near Chicago

Where they make the shoes bigger and

It's a good thing that because he aint

Got french feet Napoleon and him

Wouldn't have said much together

he'd have pulled Buonaparte's nose

And absolutely ruined french history

Dear Hem, your passion for what you do and how you love the written word permeates your letter to Ernest Walsh and Ethel Moorhead dated January 15, 1926. You write, "This Quarter came this morning. IT IS SPLENDID... as it should be - and mechanically a hell of a fine performance. As for what is in it: it is the first exciting magazine I have read since I was 13 and used to wait for the baseball magazine to come out. That's God's truth."

I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes, "If I was a dog I'd roll in it."

I'm looking forward to reading more of your letters and coming to understand "life according to Hemingway". 

With Warmest Regards,

Betsy

MAKING A PLACE FOR YOURSELF

Ernest Hemingway and poet and writer Robert McAlmon

at the bullfights in Madrid

Dear Ernest,

1925 was certainly an action packed year for you! 

The month of April saw you pitching in to help out with Ernest Walsh's quarterly publication, The Quarter, to help get it out the door and published. You wrote Ezra Pound about it, "...and the continued activity of myself working like a son of a bitch to get Walshs magazine into the and off the press. Walsh put it my hands as a friend to help him outa his mechanical difficulties. Two hundred and sixty four pages and fifty reproductions can present considerable difficults when being printed by printer hitherto only done job printing."

At the same time you were wrestling with Walsh's publication and an inexperienced printer, you were struggling with your own issues. Having sent In Our Time off to your publishers, Boni and Liveright, you then found yourself going back and forth with the publisher over the stories that comprised In Our Time. At the same time you were being courted by Maxwell Perkins, from Charles Scribner's Sons, Publishers.

Throughout the exchange of letters between yourself and Boni Liveright I detect that the restraints, that Liveright was working to put on your work in order to make it "publishable" in their eyes, were a point of some irritation for you - sometimes more, sometimes less. Throughout your correspondence with Liveright it never feels like you are able to be truly comfortable with their approach to you or your material.

Your letter to writer, John Dos Passos, dated April 22, 1925 reflects the beginnings of a long and colorful friendship as well as your discomfort with your publishers, "Jesus I wish you were over here so we could get drunk like I am now and have been so often lately... You're a good guy, Dos and I wish to hell you were here... I sent back the signed agreement to Liveright on the 1st of April about and they were to send me the $200. but it hasnt come yet. Nor any word from them. A Mrs. George Kauffman is here and she claims they want to cut it all cut the Indian Camp story. Cut the In our Time chapters. Jesus I feel all shot to hell about it. Of course they cant do it because the stuff is so tight and hard and everything hangs on everything else and it would all just be shot up shit creek. There's nothing to bother anybody. Not a dam thing."

You close your letter to Dos Possos with, "Dont let them cut it. Tell Liveright not to be a damned fool.

As colorful as your letters are to your literary friends, your letters back to your parents are as comparatively conservative and dry, focusing on fishing, an overview of your writing accomplishments, and their grandson, Brumby. 

You write to your father, "I do hope you will get some fishing. We plan to go to Spain June 25 for a mo or 6 weeks. Get ten days of fishing in the North. I have a commission to write a book on bull fighting for a German publisher and will follow the corridas from Pamplona July 7-13 down to Sragossa, Madrid and Valencia. I will be in the ring some of the time studying the business from close to but if you hear any reports of my being hurt discount them and don't worry as I will take good care of myself."

Compare what you wrote above with what you wrote to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, while on your trip to Spain, on July 16, 1925, "We have had a fine time and no bad hot weather and seen Belmonte cogida-ed and he is not so bad, and had a bull dedicated to us and Hadley got the ear given to her and wrapped it up in a handkerchief which, thank God was Don Stewarts. I tell her she ought to throw it away or cut it up into pieces and send them in letters to her friends in St. Louis but she wont let it go and it is doing very nicely."

Dear Hem, as you begin your long love affair with the running with the bulls, so too do you initiate relationships with various literary and creative figures that will influence you in many, many ways. You count, among your friends, associates, and confidants the likes of Sherwood Anderson, American novelist and short story writer; George Antheil, American avant-garde composer; Sylvia Beach, owner of the Left Bank Paris bookstore Shakespeare and Company; John Dos Passos, American writer and author; F. Scott Fitzgerald, American novelist and short story writer; Zelda Fitzgerald, American writer and painter; Lewis Galantiere, journalist, translator of French literature and playwright; Christian Gauss, professor of Modern Languages at Princeton University; Alyse Gregor, novelist and managing editor of the Dial; Jane Heap, co-editor of the Little Review; Eugene Jolas, journalist, poet, translator and editor; Harold Albert Loeb, American writer and editor; Archibald MacLeish, American poet and writer; Robert Menzies McAlmon, American poet, fiction writer, and publisher; Edith Moorhead, painter and influential Scottish suffragist; and the list goes on, and on, and on.

It's impressive the level of immersion you've achieved in your art, in the literary world at large and in Paris in particular. In my lifetime I can only name a handful of people who have achieved the notoriety or fame that those in your general circle of influence have achieved, and you at the "ripe old age" of 26. You, my dear friend, are in for the ride of your life. 

I'm looking forward to seeing what the future holds for you. I just hope you can survive the meteoric effects of the life of immersion you've chosen. 

Wishing you all the best,
Warmest Regards,
Betsy

GROWING AS A WRITER

"Nobody lives life all the way up except bull fighters."

Ernest Hemingway

Dearest Hem,

Your love affair with Spain and Bull Fighting has begun! You write, "Spain is damn good in hot weather! Went down there about two months ago to study bull fighting and lived at a bull fighter's pension in the calle San Jeronimo in Madrid...the big Feria at Pamplona - five days of bull fighting dancing all day and all night - wonderful music - drums, reed pipes, fifes - faces of Valasqueze's drinkers, Goya and Greco faces, all the men in blue shirts and red handkerchiefs - circling, lifting, floating, dance. We the only foreigners at the damn fair."

You write of your passion for bull fighting, "It isn't just brutal, like they always told us. It's a great tragedy - and the most beautiful thing I've ever seen and takes more guts and skill and guts again than anything possible could. It's like having a ringside seat at the war with nothing going to happen to you."

That theme Hem, that theme of heart wrenching tragedy marked by brutality, courage and beauty, will surface multiple times in your letters and around various life events as you continue to weave the story of your life. I can't help but think that the combination of visiting your old WW1 sites with Hadley, and rehashing the events around those sites along with the raw and visceral pageantry of bull fighting triggered in you a pattern of remembrance that embraced the beauty of the tragedy of both war and bull fighting.

The all consuming celebration of the running of the bulls and the bull fights a Pampalona had to be similar to the drive to live every moment to its fullest, to grab life by the horns and never let go in the face of war and death. How many times in your life did you escape death and wonder, "Why me?" 

1923 saw you continuing to work for the Toronto Star as a reporter as well as writing short stories for publication. The relationships you build with the likes of Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein will provide the literary base you need to continue to hone your craft. 1923 was also a year where you had to adjust to the challenge of fatherhood, as John Hadley Nicanor Hemingway came into the world in October. You would travel back to North America for the birth, and take up residence in Toronto.

The birth of your son and your resignation from the Toronto Star in 1924 marked another turning point in your focus and career. By January, 1924 you will be back in Paris with Hadley and Bumby (your son) and back at the task of writing and working to get published.

During this time period, as you struggle to get published, as you write short stories and grab life by the horns taking it all in and experiencing its many faces, you continue to dial in your perspective and view and develop a language that will become easily identifiable with Hemingway. Your growing circle of literary friends and supporters are essential to you in maintaining perspective and momentum as you ride out the disappointment of rejection letters and evolve your capacity for self criticism and improvement.

The years 1923 to 1925 are packed with life experiences and learnings around writing, publishing, networking and maintaining balance and sanity through the ups and downs. Hadley proves to be an anchor during this time and the freedom you've been able to experience through the influence of her trust fund has allowed you to indulge in full immersion in ways that would not have been possible otherwise.

My heart breaks for you, dear Hem, as you continue to suffer under the disapproval and rejection of your parents regarding your writing. In your letter to your father, dated March 20, 1925, you share, "The reason I have not sent you any of my work is because you or Mother sent back the In Our Time Books. That looked as though you did not want to see any. You see I'm trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across - not just depict life - or criticize it - but to actually make it alive."

Your sister Marcelline would recall that your parents had been "shocked and horrified" by the book that they returned to the publishers. Your father, on the other hand, would simply share with you his lament of not having seen or been able to read any of what you were publishing. It's a confusing message at best.

Through the influence and friendships of the likes of Ernest Walsh and Ethel Moorhead you will continue to grow and develop your capacity to convey those feelings of actual life and the scenes that will bring your stories alive. You write to Ernest Walsh on April 6, 1925, "You certainly can make a man feel good when you write about - The Undefeated. Picks me up. Makes me feel it's worth while working. And I need it."

Keep at it, my friend. Your capacity for finding expression and engaging others through your writing is growing stronger all the time. Every journey begins with the first step, and yours is a worthwhile one, to be sure.

Warmest Regards,
Betsy

THE EARLY YEARS WITH HADLEY IN EUROPE

Ernest Hemingway and Elizabeth Hadley Richardson 

with friends at a cafe, Pamplona, Spain, summer 1925

Dearest Hem,

My apologies for not writing for awhile. I too have been having adventures, having just returned from Kenya. It was an amazing trip - like being swept up in a tornado force wind and blown to the other side of the world; tossed about and exposed to experiences, people, and places I had no idea of; and then rough, raw and changed, deposited back into a life that is so opposite of all that I experienced in Kenya.

It seems impossible that one can't forever be changed by such experiences. I get that Oak Park, Illinois is a far cry from the creativity and freedom you have found in Paris and Europe. You write your mother of your first year abroad with Hadley, on January 10, 1923, "Last year seems pretty full. In Paris, Switzerland, Paris, Genoa, Switzerland, Italy again, The Black Forest, The Rhineland down to the Vendee to see Clemenceau, the Balkans, Constantinople the Near East, home again to Paris, a trip through Burgundy for the wine sale, down to Lausanne; and now here in the Alps where we were this time last year.

This summer we are going to Norway - we plan, wonderful wild country, pine forests and great trout streams. They say it's the finest part of Europe." 

Hem, so very sorry to hear about the loss of your early manuscripts while in transit from the States. Such an awful loss and I can imagine the disappointment as you are challenged to revisit your subjects and replace your collection of memories, thoughts, and related prose and poetry.

In your letter to Ezra Pound, dated January 23, 1923 you write, "You, naturally, would say, 'Good' etc. But don't say it to me. I aint yet reached that mood. I worked 3 years on the damn stuff. Some like that Paris 1922 I fancied." (These particular manuscripts were a series of observations during his first months in Paris. These were believed to either have survived the theft or were recreated at a later date.) 

Ezra's consoling you about your loss may offer some value, in hind sight. In his letter of January 27, 1923, Ezra calls the loss of your work an "act of Gawd" and advises you to begin rewriting the parts you could remember, as "memory is the best critic."

Hem, I really enjoy your lengthy letter to your friend Bill Horne. You wrote this while traveling with Hadley in Italy and Spain and it contains the stuff that validates your life of immersion.  You write, "I saw Mussolini in Milan and had a long interview with him and wrote 3 articles predicting the Fascist seizing the Govt. And we flew to Strasbourg and hiked all through the Black Forest and fished for trout caught lots of lived in little Inns and loved each other and came down the Rhine from Frankfurt to Cologne and visited Chink and came back to Paris - and saw Siki nearly kill Carpentier and I got a cable for the Star to go to Constantinople and went and was with the Greek Army in the big retreat - and three weeks in Constant itself - 3 very fine weeks when just as it was getting light you'd all get into a car and drive out to the Bosphorous to see the sun rise and sober up and wonder whether there was going to be a war that would set the whole world on fire again -"

Dear Hem, you have a case of full blown full immersion and you have life by the tail. I can't wait to hear what comes next. If I haven't said it before, thank you for your letters. Their content has lent a breadth and depth to you that I could not have gleaned from your creative works.

Your friend,
Betsy

THE BEST OF TIMES

Dear Ernest,

What a year! It's 1922, and you're 23 years old this year. WOW! What you've seen and experienced in your life, dear Hem, in those 23 years could fill a book. By 19 you were immersed in the war, in Italy, and wounded. You've survived the streets of Chicago as a cub reporter; you've fished, hiked and canoed your way from Canada to Michigan; you've loved, lost, and loved again; and you've married and moved to Europe - Paris in particular. That's what I call action packed, my friend.

And now... biggest WOW of all! You're living your dream, married to the woman you're mad about, hiking and skiing in Switzerland, enjoying the life fantastic in Paris. What more could you ask for? 

In January, 1922 you wrote your family, "Bones (your term of endearment for Hadley) and I are living up here at about 3,000 feet above sea level and having the most gorgeous time... It is Les Avants, above Montreaux on Lake Geneva and wonderful mountain sports." You write them of your your new apartment in Paris, "It is on top of a high hill in the very oldest part of Paris. The nicest part of the Latin quarter. Just back of the Pantheon and the Ecole Polytechique." You write your good friend, Katherine Smith, "My gawd the fun a man has...It is so beautiful here that it hurts in a numb sort of way all the time,only when you're with somebody you're lovers wit the beauty gets to be jost sort of a tremendous happiness. It's so damn beautiful, Butstein, and we have so damn much fun."

My dearest Hem, you are fully, totally, and completely smitten - with Hadley, with Paris, with Switzerland...with life! These are truly the best of times. And the people you are meeting! You write of dining with Gertrude Stein who, as you share, "is keen about your poetry." You go on to share, "Me and Ezra Pound are getting to be great pals." The literary mix you are immersed in is impressive.

I am so very please to hear that you are writing. This wonderland that you inhabit, these creatives that you are entrenched with, it all comes together to create a rare and fortunate opportunity. The experiences you're amassing, whether hiking the Black Forest of Germany, or fishing the pristine streams of rural France, are all fodder for the literary pieces you will create and the works you will put forth.

Remember, dear Hem, to take the time to appreciate and enjoy this time. Life is so uncertain and change is inevitable, but for right now the world is your oyster. Enjoy!

With Warmest Regards,
Betsy

OFF TO PARIS TO WRITE

Dear Hem,

WOW! 1921 was one whirlwind of a year! If you weren't immersed in writing, socializing with your friends, and camping and fishing, you were getting married and preparing to go abroad. By October, 1921 you had arranged with the Star to go to Paris as a roving correspondent. With the modest income you were going to receive from the Star combined with Hadley's trust income, your return to Europe and your wish to focus on your writing is really starting to take shape.

You write your family on December 20, 1921 of your passage, "We've had a fine trip. Stopped at Vigo in Spain and went ashore in a motor launch. Only very rough one day. Then a regular hurricane...Hash (his nickname for Hadley) is very popular aboard the ship because of playage of the piano...There are a funny lot of people aboard but many a few very nice ones. We land in Havre tomorrow about noon and will be in Paris tomorrow night." 

Another letter that you wrote to Bill Smith, during that same time-frame personified the "manly" Hemingway. (You so love your characters, even in how you personify yourself to the different people in your life!) "Vigo, Spain. That's the place for a male. A harbor almost landlocked about as big as little Traverse bay with big, brown, mountains. A male can buy a lateen sailed boat for 5 seeds. Costs a seed a day at the Grand Hotel and the bay swarms with Tuna. They behave exactly like lainsteins - sardines for shiners - chase them the same way and I saw 3 in the air at once - 1 easily 8 feet. The biggest one they've taken this year weighed 850 lbs!" What a "fish story!"

Paris! What an amazing city, and to be young, in love, and brimming with creativity and drive - ah, dear Hem, you are in your element! You wrote of it to your friend, Sherwood, "Well here we are. And we sit outside the Dome Cafe, oposite the Rotunde that's being redecorated, warmed up against one of those charcoal brazziers and it's so damned cold outside and the brasier makes it so warm and we drink rum punch, hot, and the rhum enters into us like the Holy Spirit. And when it's cold night in the streets of Paris and we're walking home down the Rue Bonaparte we think of the way the wolves used to slink into the city and Francois Villon and the gallows at Montfaucon. What a town."

With the letter of introduction from Sherwood Anderson that you brought with you, introducing you to the likes of Lewis Galantiere, Sylvia Beach, Exra Pound, and Gertrude Stein, your immersion in the literary world of Paris is guaranteed! How exciting!

The rate of exchange in France makes living comfortably very reasonable indeed, and by January 8,1921 you wrote your friend, Howell Jenkins, that you and Hash were moving to an apartment at 74 Rue du Cardinal Lemoine. Amazing, Hem! You went from living in those boarding house conditions as a street reporter for the Star, to Paris where you share that, "We're not going to keep house till we get back from Chambry Sur Montreaux in Switzerland where we're allezing for a brace of the weeks to shoot some winter sports." You must be black-and-blue from pinching yourself to see if you might wake up from this dream!

Dearest Hem, throughout your letters written in 1922 I read about your happiness, your wonder at your life and your passion for immersion in what you love. You revel in the literary world you're becoming a part of. You delight at the life you are leading with the woman who you love and who shares in your wonder and delight. This is an amazing time in your life that shines brilliantly. It is all so new, so rich, and at times so overwhelming. You, sir, have the bull by the horns. I encourage you to enjoy this time and write "like there's no tomorrow." This is the beginning of something great. 

Give my love to Hash.

With Warmest Regards,
Betsy

CHOOSING A LIFE OF FULL IMMERSION

Ernest Hemingway and Hadley Richardson

Dear Ernest,
Wouldn't you know it! You no sooner fall in love then your friend James Gamble invites you to travel with him to Italy for an indefinite indulgence in "romance spaget and fleas again." Your reply telegram speaks of the truth of your current life outside of the ideals you continue to paint your life with, despite the truth, " Rather go to Rome with you than heaven STOP. Not married STOP. But am broke STOP. Sad STOP. Too sad for words STOP Writing and selling it STOP. Unmarried but don't get rich STOP. All authors poor first then rich STOP. Me no exception STOP. Wouldn't we have a great time STOP. Lord How I envy you. Hemmy

You never do make that trip with James, though you seriously think about it as you wrote Hadley on December 29, 1920, "Things are all up in the air. I'm liable to leave Tuesday for Rome, not Rome N.Y. via Washington to pick up passport and will leave from here to St. Louis and then to Washington. Here's the chance - 5 months of writing under Ideal conditions..."

I have to wonder, Hem, if you chose not to go because you may have had a foreshadowing of what might happen based on your experiences with Ag. In your mind I have to wonder if you don't seriously doubt the old adage that, "absence makes the heart grow fonder." In the end you chose not to go to Italy and to stay Stateside, work, and court Hadley.

Hem, I am constantly impressed the the level of your knowledge around literature and the arts. It is obvious you are a voracious reader. In your letter to your mother, dated January 10, 1921, you write of Levin (1892-1981), a Russian-born journalist who worked at the KS Star; Mischa Levitzki (1898-1941), an American pianist and composer; Josef Hofmann (1876-1957), Polish-born pianist - and the list of composers and writers you mentioned in your letter goes on and on. It's impressive!

As I read this letter to your mother I sense that you may feel a real sense of inadequacy as you try to shine in your mother's shadow. It always seems that you're doing your darnedest to try and impress her and possibly prove to her that you are worthy, somehow. Coming from a Mother's perspective that saddens me as I would hope that she would choose to affirm your worthiness, whatever your career or educational choices, but that space of kind, unconditional love does not seem to be the space that your mother operates from when it comes to her children, or at least when it comes to you.

I love that you mentioned the poet Carl Sandburg in your letter to Bill Horne, dated January 26, 1921. I too am very fond of Sandburg's acerbic style of writing:

"Your head ain't screwed on wrong, I trust.
Use your noodle, your nut, your think tank,
your skypiece. God meant for you to use it.
If they offer to let you in the ground
floor take the elevator."

This year,1921, was a pivotal year for you, Hem. You launched into a life of full immersion in your writing and networking. The year is peppered with letters to editors and publishers and submissions of manuscripts and ideas. Your prolific creative nature is becoming more focused and, as such, is carrying you forward in a time span of perpetual motion and creativity. In this time span you have also made the decision to marry Hadley and that has set reactions and plans into motion that are pivotal to your future.

Congratulations on your pending marriage to Hadley! I see that you will be married on September 3, 1921 at the small Methodist church in Horton Bay. How wonderful! You happily share your satirical view of the event in your letter to your sister, Marcelline, dated August 11, 1921, "The enditer is to become man and wife on September the 3rd at Hortense Bay, Michigan, as yet I do not realize all the full horror of marriage, which was plainly visible on the Blights face, you recall his face?, and so if you wish to see me break down at the altar and perhaps have to be carried to the altar in a chair by the crying ushers, it were well that you made your plans to be on tap for the date. It is a Saturday."

I am thrilled for you as this marks a turning point in your life and career. Before the end of the year you and Hadley will set sail for Europe and the start of something very different from your life stateside. Well done, Hem! Well done!

Warm Regards,
Betsy

RECOVERING FROM A BROKEN HEART

Angnes Von Kurowsky

Dear Hem,

I am so very sorry that things didn't work out between you and Ag. Distance and time are two obstacles to love that can sometimes bring those involved to their knees. I'm sorry to see this happen to you. You write of your loss and suffering in your letter to Bill Horne, dated March 30, 1919, "She doesn't love me Bill. She takes it all back. A 'mistake' one of those little mistakes you know. Oh Bill I can't kid about it and I can't be bitter because I'm just smashed by it. And the devil of it is that it wouldn't have happened if I hadn't left Italy...

But Bill I've loved Ag. She's been my ideal and Bill I forgot all about religion and everything else - because I had Ag to worship. Well the crash of smashing ideals was never merry music to any ones ears. But she doesn't love me now Bill and she is going to marry some one, name not given, whom she has met since. Marry him very soon and she hopes that after I have forgiven her I will start and have a wonderful career and everything...All I wanted was Ag and happiness...

I'm writing this with a dry mouth and a lump in the old throat and Bill I wish you were here to talk to. The Dear Kid! I hope he's the best man in the world. Aw Bill I can't write about it. 'Cause I do love her so damned much... And the pefectest hell of it is that money, which was the only thing that kept us from being married in Italy is coming in at such an ungodly rate now...I've got to stop before I begin feeling bitter because I'm not going to do that. I love Ag too much."

My heart breaks for you, dear friend, as I see your idealistic view of the world struggling to not shatter and fall in splinters at your feet. Your letters over the next couple of months frame your intent to wipe Ag from your heart and from your mind. You engage in a whirlwind of social engagements and spending time with friends up at Windemere. the family cottage, in upper Michigan. There's plenty of fishing and time in the great outdoors with friends, and by yourself, and the healing seems to be happening.

It must have been a bit of a shock to get the letter from Ag! Your response speaks to the healing work you're doing to recover from your broken heart, "Had a very sad letter from Ag from Rome yesterday. She has fallen out with her Major. She is in a hell of a way mentally and says I should feel revenged for what she did to me. Poor damned kid I'm sorry as hell for her. But there's nothing I can do. I loved her once and then she gypped me. And I don't blame her. But I set out to cauterize out her memory and I burnt it out with a course of booze and other women and now it's gone. She's all broken up and I wish there was something I could do for her tho. But that's all shut behind me - Long ago and far away. And there ain't no buses runnin' from the Bank to Mandalay."

Hem, one of the risks of being a raging idealist is that the constant disappointments can harden you to real world events. I truly hope this isn't happening to you as you have a good heart and an expressive soul, and I'd hate to see that become jaded and judgmental. It is good to see that you are moving on from the devastation you felt when Ag broke it off with you. Surrounding yourself with good friends and enjoying your time up north is a great salve for healing those wounds.

By November, 1919 you'd spent an amazing summer fishing, hanging out and having fun with your buddies and it seems to have done you a world of good. Your passion for life and your idealistic view are back full strength and you've hit the pavement running as you start back to writing and getting published.

So you continue to carouse, write,eke out a living and try to get published, and weave stories of an exotic life lived on the edge. You have lots of friends and buddies who you move freely among and between as you burn both ends of the candle at once. 1920 is a whirlwind of engagements, friends, writing, and drinking that goes by in a blur until the end of 1920 when your letter to Hadley Richardson, dated December 23, 1920 speaks of the softening of your heart towards this young lady. You close your letter to her with, " 'Night my dearest Hash - I'd like to hold you so and kiss you so that you wouldn't doubt whether I wanted to or not -"

Ah, dear Hem, I think you're in love again! 

POST WAR RECOVERY

Dear Hem,

As you share in your letter to Bill Horne, dated December 13, 1918, "And so I'm coming home and start the battle for buns or the skirmish for stew or the tussle for turnovers as soon as I can." You are back stateside and ready to hit the bricks and make up for lost time in your writing and reporting. This is good news.

My heart goes out to you, dear friend, as you are "homesick" for Italy now and yearning to get back to the lady you love, "Don't for the Lord's sake come to this country as long as you can help it. That is from one who knoweth. I'm patriotic and willing to die for this great and glorious nation. But I hate like the deuce to live in it." This you wrote in your letter to Jim Gamble, dated March 3, 1919.

It must be quiet a change to be on the speaking circuit sharing your stories of the war. From what you share, I get that you are not comfortable with the way those around you perceive you, "They've tried to make a hero out of me here. But you know and I know that all the real heroes are dead. If I had been a really game guy I would have gotten myself killed off." 

Dear Hem, your guilt about surviving the war and your sense of not being worthy having been rejected during the draft, and having to go as a part of the Red Cross has you feeling like an impostor compared to the "real" soldiers who fought, were wounded, and who died. That sense of being an impostor will follow you and goad you throughout your life. 

You returned home sooner than you wanted to only to find that you needn't have, "Coming home with high resolves to start in at once on the battle for buns and expecting to find all finances very low I'm greeted with this from the Dad, 'Never better. Everything going great. Why didn't you ask me for some kale and stay over if you wanted to!' That was the last straw. I had everything sized up wrong."

This isn't the homecoming you had expected or dreamed of, and it marks the beginning of a really difficult time for you. Hem, I wouldn't have wished this on you for anything. I had hoped you'd get back to feeling good and feeling good about yourself and your life, but that's not the way it is, and that's not to be.

Hem, sometimes absence makes the heart grow fonder, and sometimes not. I'm afraid that Ag may not be weathering your separation well. You write in your letter to Bill Horne dated March 5, 1919, "(My) Ag does not know when she is coming home. She doesn't want to come home at all. I can't blame her cause I didn't either. But either one has to cross the ocean. I can't cross and have anything when I hit the other side. So I guess it will end in the little C. around the C." You go on to further share, "I'm still as much in love as ever Bill. Hope Ag stays that way. 'Cause if she shouldn't life wouldn't be worth living."

I hope it works out for you and Ag as I'd hate to see heartbreak added to your burden. 

Sending you hugs and best wishes.

Your friend,
Betsy

IN ITALY AND IN LOVE

Ernest Hemingway and Ag in Italy and in Love

Dear Ernest,

It's good to hear that you are "on the mend" from your wounds. It may be that leg of yours will continue to challenge you throughout your life. Wounds like that leave lasting scars and damage. In your letter dated 20 November, 1918 you wrote your family, "My blame leg is worse than a barometer, it aches with every change in temperature and I can feel snow two days in advance." I don't blame you for wanting to extend your stay in Italy where you have the opportunity to heal and convalesce in much more hospitable conditions than winter in Chicago might offer.

In this same letter you write of your expectations for rest and relaxation, "The Bellias want me to stay a couple of weeks at Turino. And I've promised Nick to go shooting with him in Abruzzi and there is a chance to go pig sticking in Sardinia. They have boars there you ride them down with a spear on horse back. It is regarded as quelque sport. Captain Gamble wants me to go to Madeira with him for two months. It is tropical there and very cheap living and a wonderful place... In the south of Italy the weather is great though they say."

Hem, I am concerned for you, my friend. In your heart of hearts I feel you know what will serve you best and yet you seem to continually subjugate your own best interests for the expectations of friends and family that may not be in your best interest. After making all these wonderful plans to "winter" in Italy you finally give in to your families sentiments that you need to get back to the states and pick up the yoke of your responsibilities. 

I have to say that I believe in what your heart of hearts is telling you. Sometimes, Hem, the choices others would make for us, even though they may feel they are advising us "in our best interests," in the end simply aren't. You have the woman you love within reach. You are on the mend in a country that you love and that loves you. Staying however long you feel serves you is not a bad thing. How different your life might have been if you had chosen to stay? I can't help but wonder.

In your letter dated December 11, 1918 you write your family that you've booked passage to the states. Your choice will forever change and shape your life in ways you could not foresee. This choice will haunt you. You write, "For a while I was going to go down to Madeira and the Canaries with Capt. Gamble but I realize that if I blow down there and bum I never will get home. This climate and this country get you, and the Lord ordained differently for me and I was made to be one of those beastly writing chaps y'know. You know I was born to enjoy life but the Lord neglected to have me born with money - so I've got to make it and the sooner the better."

Your love for your dearest girl, Ag, is evident in what you write to your friend, Bill Smith, "Bill this is some girl and I thank God I got crucked so I met her. Damn it I really honestly can't see what the devil she can see in the brutal Stein but by some very lucky astigmatism she loves me Bill. So I'm going to hit the States and start working for the firm. Ag says we can have a wonderful time being poor together and having been poor alone for some years and always more or less happy I think it can be managed... Why man I've only got about 50 more years to live and I don't want to waste any of them and every minute that I'm away from that Kid is wasted."

You, my dear Hem, are head-over-heels in love! You close your letter to Bill with, "And so I'm coming home and start the battle for buns or the skirmish for stew, or the tussle for turnovers as soon as I can... Bill I am undoubtedly the most lucky bum in the world. The temptation comes to rave - but I won't."

Ah, dear Hem, hold to your hearts desire but know that life is a fickle mistress and just when you're on top of the world is when you have to watch out for the slippery spots. I love your idealism and your passion but my fear for you is that the game of life plays no favorites and sometimes it's when we think we have the world by the tail that things can get out of hand. When happiness is within our reach why do we so often think we need to walk away in order to make it better?

Give my best to the family. I look forward to reading more about your adjusting to life back stateside.

Your friend,
Betsy