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