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