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