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

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

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