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

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

CAUGHT IN THE CROSS-HAIRS

Ernest Hemingway in Hospital in Milan Summer of 1918

Dear Ernest,

Sometimes the conditions of the world that surround our birth and life sweep us along in such a way that our future seems out of our control. Sometimes the power of events comes together in a "super cell" event (like a class 5 tornado) where conditions seem to rip through our lives leaving us struggling to make meaning of it, and trying to hold ground and to determine what the path forward is in the raw revelation of the drastically changed landscape of our life.

What I know about you, Hem, is that you are a romantic, an adventurer, a soul who embraces a passion for life that holds stories, and dreams, and "great pals." You are someone who loves the great out of doors in an intimate, playful and comfortable way. You have made yourself an observer of the human condition and a forger of your way through this cultural maze, progressing towards your happiness. Already you have started to misunderstand the objectives and intents of others as you "see" the world differently than most.

The world of Ernest Hemingway, as framed in your letters, is a world where men are men, and women are women. Men are expected to be fighters, and lovers of passion and destiny; and women are a mystery, a conundrum of conflicting thoughts, words, and deeds, whose scent and presence is like a beautiful rose in bloom - pulling you inexorably towards it even as it as it warns you off with it's sharp thorns.

You were born before your time, Ernest, and at the same time you were born too late. You see the world in technicolor and high definition, and yet your world is also a world with traditional boundaries and honor, and camaraderie that belies distance and time. Yes, Ernest, as I think on your early letters, honor and camaraderie are so very important in your life and stories.

So now you lie in a hospital bed in Italy. You are on the slow road to recovery after being wounded in a shell explosion at the Italian front that left over 200 fragments embedded in your body. You lie in a hospital bed in Italy as the war rages in Europe, as your country struggles to support the war effort and morns it's dead, receives back it's wounded, and sends it's sons. The raw events that unfold around you have to weigh on you as you immerse yourself in where you are and what you are about. What you share in your letters from the front poignantly points to the erosive effects of current events on your sense of how the world should be, but the strength of your beliefs continues to shine through, even among your dark moments of disclosure and your brief lapses of faith.

What I am detecting, Hem, at this stage in your life, is that you have made a commitment to a way of seeing and engaging in the world that I suspect will follow you through to the end. As I connect with your choice and come to understand that you have chosen "a path less traveled," I wonder how you will cope with that choice and the related consequences. A life choice such as yours can play out in a number of different ways over time and given the test of reality. How will you deal with the challenges that arise? How will you face those who are critical, judgmental, and doubting of your view and choices? And, ultimately, how will you come to terms with yourself in the light of how the world sees you?

I am looking forward to exploring the answers to these questions in your letters and life to come. 

Wishing you well on your road to recovery.

Your friend,
Betsy

THE ADVENTURE AND REALITY OF WAR

Dearest Hem,

Well, as they say back home, "In for a dime, in for a dollar."

You write of your arrival in Paris, "We heard our first shell arrive soon after Breakfast. Nothing but a dull boom (like blasting at Summit). We had no means of knowing where it hit but it was a long way away."

Paris was starting to feel the pressure of the enemy shelling, but there was still room for levity and fun for those newly arrived and unaware of the pending danger, "Have seen all the sights. The Champs Elysee. Tuilleries, Louvre Invalides Arc D'Triomphe etc... Ted Jenks and I are having Le Grande Time. Tonight we went to the Follies Bergert. Hot puppums... We leave for Milan tomorrow - Tuesday - night. Travel first class all way. Tis Ye gay life."

You follow with a brief note to your father, "Everything Lovely. We go to the Front tomorrow. I'm in the mountains. Ted and I were split up. Everything quiet now they say. We've been treated like Kings. Been two days here. Wonderful in Alps." Dated that same day as the note to your father was a note to a friend in Kansas City, "Having a wonderful time!!! Had my baptism of fire my first day here, when an entire munition plant exploded. We carried them in like at the General Hospital, Kansas City. I go to the front tomorrow. Oh Boy!!! I'm glad I'm in it. They love us down here in the mountains."

Later in July you wrote your friend, Ruth in Oak Park, Illinois, "It all seems about a million miles away and to think that this time last year we had just finished graduating. If anybody had told me when I was reading that damn fool prophecy last year that a year from date I would be sitting out in front of a dug out in a nice trench 20 yards from the Piave River and 40 yards from the Austrian lines listening to the little ones whimper way up in the air and the big ones go scheeeeeeeek Boom and every once in a while a machine gun go tick a tack a tock I would have said, 'Take another sip.'"

You go on to tell Ruth about a shell that came right through the roof of the house where you were staying, but it's the description of what you are doing in the war effort, and for whom that I find most interesting,"What I am supposed to be doing is running a posto Di ricovero. That is I dispense chocolate and cigarettes to the wounded and the soldiers in the front line. Each aft and morning I load up a haversack and take my tin lid and gas mask and beat it up to the trenches. I sure have a good time but miss their being no Americans. Gee I have darn near forgot the English language."

Dear Hem, what a mess you are in. The local paper in Oak Park, Illinois was ablaze with your story, "Ernest Hemingway, son of Dr. and Mrs. C.E. Hemingway and a member of the Red Cross Ambulance Corps in Italy, received his baptism of fire just five weeks after his arrival overseas and, moreover, has won a citation for bravery."

Hem, how did you do it? With over 200 pieces of shell lodged in your body you managed to rescue and carry a fellow soldier to the first aid dug-out. Your friend Ted writes to your parents, "An enormous trench mortar hit within a few feet of Ernest while he was giving out chocolate. The concussion of the explosion knocked him unconscious and buried him with earth. There was an Italian between Ernest and the shell. He was instantly killed while another, standing a few feet away, had both his legs blown off. A third Italian was badly wounded and this one Ernest, after he had regained consciousness, picked up on his back and carried to the first aid dug-out."

You later wrote your parents about the event, "You know they say there isn't anything funny about this war. And there isn't. I would say it was hell, because that's been a bit overworked since Gen. Sherman's time, but there have been 8 times when I would have welcomed Hell... F'rexample. In the trenches during an attack when a shell makes a direct hit in a group where you're standing. Shells aren't bad except direct hits. You just take chances on the fragments of the bursts. But when there is a direct hit your pals get spattered all over you. Spattered is literal."

You, who just turned 19 in July, now laid up for months in a military hospital in Italy would struggle for much longer than you expected in order to recover from your wounds. At the end of August you wrote your mother to tell her that your still awfully weak yet, that your right leg was taken out of the cast and that there's still more "carving" that has to happen to repair the damage.

As always a romantic, you also wrote her that you have fallen in love with an American nurse who works at the Hospital, though you try to play it down as you know your Mother has a habit of getting worked up over news like that.

You write your parents, at the end of September, that you're getting out and about a bit and that you are enjoying your recovery time in Italy now that you are more mobile. One of the most poignant things that you wrote your parents about the war has to do with death and dying, "There are no heroes in this war. We all offer our bodies and only a few are chosen, but it shouldn't reflect any special credit on those that are chosen. They are just the lucky ones. I am very proud and happy that mine was chosen, but it shouldn't give me any extra credit. Think of the thousands of other boys that offered. All the heroes are dead. And the real heroes are the parents. Dying is a very simple thing. I've looked at death, and really I know. If I should have died it would have been very easy for me. Quite the easiest thing I ever did. But the people at home do not realize that. They suffer a thousand times more. When a mother brings a son into the world she must know that some day the son will die. And the mother of a son that has died for his country should be the proudest woman in the world, and the happiest. And how much better to die in all the happy period of undisillusioned youth, to go out in a blaze of light, than to have your body worn out and old and illusions shattered."

How has your view of the world and yourself changed, Ernest? Is the burden of these events weighing on you? Do you dream of your prewar life and does it now seem forever lost in the stark light of war and death? 

As I look ahead to your own eventual aging and death I wonder if you still felt that way when you were older - if you still felt that dying in a youthful "blaze of light" outweighed old age and death. In your mind did aging exclude youthfulness? I may have thought that in my 20s, but I've discovered that the mind ages differently than the body and that it's possible to remain youthful in thought and view well into the more advanced years of life. That discovery, for me was a revelation, as I had assumed, aging precluded a youthful mind. I am hard-pressed, at times, in marrying the thoughts of "growing old gracefully", however, I don't necessarily see youth as an advantage either. Each stage of life comes with its upside and its downside.

What I see, for you, is that the idea of adventure as lived by inexperienced youth has been seriously wounded by the reality of war. It will be interesting to see what comes out the other side of recovery.