‘All April [1927] he stayed away from Montparnasse where sidewalk cafes were crowded noon and midnight with American tourists, some looking for a glimpse of characters out of [The Sun Also Rises], others behaving as if they were auditioning for the parts.’
Michael Reynolds, Hemingway: The Homecoming
‘Now, in the warm streets of summer, Paris was less lovely for Ernest than she had ever been in winter rain. Five years earlier, he and Hadley, unknown and in love, delighted in discovering the city . . . When the franc was at twelve to the dollar, they were tourists; as it rose to eighteen, they became old hands in the neighbourhood, recognised at the Dôme by painters and writers. Now [in 1927] with the franc at twenty-five, Hadley was in California and he, having become legendary along Montparnasse, took no joy on the boulevard.
Michael Reynolds, Hemingway: The Homecoming.
‘That afternoon [June 7, 1927] he enclosed a check for 700 francs in his last letter to the landlord of 113 Notre Dames-des-Champs. “Because I am leaving Paris,” he said, “I shall not keep the apartment any longer. You may rent it immediately if you wish.” In part of his heart, he had already left Paris; his actual departure was only a matter of time.
Michael Reynolds, Hemingway: The Homecoming.
By now, of course, Hemingway’s life had moved on and he no longer saw himself as the dedicated writer prepared to starve for his art in a garret: now he was the established and published author, a serious man of letters. Yet although he was no longer ‘starving’ — and, in truth, he was never close to ‘starving’ despite his romantic claims later in life, notably in his memoirs A Moveable Feast — he still wasn’t earning his living from his writing as he had set out to do when, five years earlier, he arrived in Paris. More to the point, he was still obliged to live off a wife’s income, and that irked him.
Despite in many ways being different — for example, Hadley was tall and matronly whereas Pfeiffer was short and petite — they had much in common and both benefited from a generous trust fund income. Pfeiffer’s fund paid her $3,600 a year (about $53,779 in 2020), and given the still advantageous exchange rate — you got FF25 to the dollar in 1927 — Pfeiffer had an annual income of FF90,000. It was more than enough to sustain her and Hemingway — for example the annual rent on their new apartment was just FF9,000. Furthermore, when Pfeiffer and Hemingway married on May 10, her extended family showered the couple with gifts of cash — cheques for $1,000 ($15,000 in 2020) were not unusual — and according to biographer Michael Reynolds the couple would have been able to live off the money for a year. Then there was the largesse of Pfeiffer’s very wealthy uncle Gus Pfeiffer.
Uncle Gus had no children of his own and doted on his nieces Pauline and Jinny, and was extraordinarily generous to them. So when Hemingway and Pfeiffer took on the apartment in rue Froidevaux, Uncle Gus paid the many bills involved in sub-leasing it — three month’s rent in advance and the equivalent of a year’s
rent to the leaseholder, three month’s back taxes owed by the leaseholder and deposits for various utility services.
Despite in many ways being different — for example, Hadley was tall and matronly whereas Pfeiffer was short and petite — they had much in common and both benefited from a generous trust fund income. Pfeiffer’s fund paid her $3,600 a year (about $53,779 in 2020), and given the still advantageous exchange rate — you got FF25 to the dollar in 1927 — Pfeiffer had an annual income of FF90,000. It was more than enough to sustain her and Hemingway — for example the annual rent on their new apartment was just FF9,000. Furthermore, when Pfeiffer and Hemingway married on May 10, her extended family showered the couple with gifts of cash — cheques for $1,000 ($15,000 in 2020) were not unusual — and according to biographer Michael Reynolds the couple would have been able to live off the money for a year. Then there was the largesse of Pfeiffer’s very wealthy uncle Gus Pfeiffer.
Uncle Gus had no children of his own and doted on his nieces Pauline and Jinny, and was extraordinarily generous to them. So when Hemingway and Pfeiffer took on the apartment in rue Froidevaux, Uncle Gus paid the many bills involved in sub-leasing it — three month’s rent in advance and the equivalent of a year’s
 |
Ever-generous Uncle Gus |
A year later Uncle Gus arranged for a new Ford A Coupe to be on the quayside to greet the couple when they arrived in Key West via Cuba on their way to Piggott, Arkansas, Pfeiffer’s home town (though in the event delivery of the automobile from the mainland was delayed). When Hemingway and Pfeiffer eventually decided to settle in Key West, Uncle Gus paid for the purchase, renovation and decoration of the splendid, but rundown, house they had eventually chosen as their new home; and when in the early 1930s Hemingway announced he wanted to go on safari to East Africa, ever-generous Uncle Gus gave Ernest and Pauline $25,000 ($501,000 in 2020) worth of stock to sell to pay for the two month-long trip.
As for Hemingway’s ambition to become a professional writer earning his living from his pen it would be quite a few years before he realised it. On the back of the success of The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway’s short stories were now being accepted by various magazine, but none was attracting anywhere near the fabulous sums his friend Scott Fitzgerald had been paid for his short fiction. Nor did Hemingway benefit from the success of his novel: in his zeal to rid himself of Hadley and marry Pauline Pfeiffer, he had impulsively signed over to her all royalties, current and future, from the sales of The Sun Also Rises (and it was a decision he later bitterly complained about).
As for Hemingway’s ambition to become a professional writer earning his living from his pen it would be quite a few years before he realised it. On the back of the success of The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway’s short stories were now being accepted by various magazine, but none was attracting anywhere near the fabulous sums his friend Scott Fitzgerald had been paid for his short fiction. Nor did Hemingway benefit from the success of his novel: in his zeal to rid himself of Hadley and marry Pauline Pfeiffer, he had impulsively signed over to her all royalties, current and future, from the sales of The Sun Also Rises (and it was a decision he later bitterly complained about).
Within two days of the divorce coming through in mid-April, Hadley and her young son had sailed for New York, and — she told Hemingway —$5,000 ($74,794 in 2020) in royalty payments were waiting in her bank account: so much for Hemingway earning his living from his writing. As one of his better short stories, The Snows Of Kilimanjaro, in which a dying writer reproaches himself for living off his wife’s income, made clear, it rankled a great deal.
. . .
With his second marriage, the Paris years, which saw Hemingway establish himself and, arguably, when he produced his better work, were drawing to a close. He was no longer enjoying and living in the city as once he had. When he and Hadley arrived in December 1921, the young couple had toured Paris looking at the sights, but since the publication and success of his novel The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway was now himself ‘one of the sights’. Americans flocked to Paris — the cheap franc made it very affordable for most — and haunted ‘the Latin Quarter’ bars and cafes hoping to catch a glimpse of the writer himself. In Hemingway: The Homecoming, biographer Michael Reynolds spells out that
. . .
After an almost month-long on honeymoon in the South of France (where the perpetually accident-prone Hemingway cut his foot and was infected with anthrax and where he continued work on his second collection of short stories), he and Pfeiffer returned home to Paris; but just three weeks later, they were off again, this time to Pamplona for the annual trip to the San Fermin festival, followed by another leisurely trawl through Spain. They finally began married life at their new rue Ferou apartment at the beginning of September, and within days Hemingway (who now had his own room in which to work) began a new novel.
Hemingway knew that he needed to publish a new novel to consolidate his career and status as a coming writer lauded by all the critics and — in Malcolm Cowley’s later judgment — ‘a master at 26’. That second novel, which at first he called A New Slain Knight, was intended to chronicle life on the road for a ‘professional revolutionist’ and his 14-year old son, and the lad’s education by his father in the ways of the world. Work went very well to begin with, and a week after Hemingway’s new short story collection Men Without Women was published on October 14, he was telling friends that he had already written 30,000 words.
Hemingway’s preferred method of composition was to write without a plan, not knowing where his work would take him. Michael Reynolds suggests that Hemingway believed this would keep a story vibrant and fresh. It was how he had written The Sun Also Rises (which began life as a short story) and it had worked then; but this time his method did not pay off. Although he conscientiously carried on working on the novel every morning throughout the autumn of 1927, he slowly dried up. He tried to correct what might be wrong by switching from a first-person narrative to a third-person narrative. At one point he changed the name of the ‘professional revolutionist’, but nothing did the trick. In November he and Pfeiffer spent ten days in Berlin, and once back in Paris he re-read what he had so far written and — as he told one correspondent — the novel was ‘all right part of the time’ and that at other times it was ‘horse manure’.
In mid-December Hemingway, Pauline, Jinny and his son Bumby travelled to Gstaad for a two-month Christmas and New Year break, and work on the novel was interrupted when he developed ‘flu, piles and toothache. Then Bumby accidentally cut the pupil of Hemingway’s — good — right eye with his little finger, rendering him comparatively sightless for a few days. Back in Paris by mid-February, the writing was still no easier and Hemingway finally gave up on the novel in mid-March. (His manuscript is now in the Hemingway section of the JFK Library in Boston with his other ‘manuscripts, typescripts, drafts, notes, and galleys for Hemingway's published and unpublished writings’.)
Michael Reynolds suggests that it wasn’t just Hemingway’s aimless method of composition that was causing him problems: after the Men Without Women collection was published four months in October, his self-confidence was shaken by a few of the reviews it had received. Ironically, many had praised the work — The New Yorker recorded that the collection was
Between those newly resident intellectuals and the burgeoning tourists, the Left Bank was losing its charm [for Hemingway]. Evenings in the cafe with the light beginning to fail and saucers piling up, those evenings were becoming impossible . . . Wherever he looked pretentiousness abounded. The latest guidebook to Paris ‘with the lid lifted’ assured its readers that at Deux Magots one could hear ‘more dirty stories and advice as to where to buy “adorable dresses” all in English than anywhere else in Paris’. The Select, one read, was filled with ‘gentlemen with long, wavy hair and long painted fingernails and other gentlemen who, when they walk, walk “Falsetto”, toss their hips and lift their brows”.By 1927 ‘the city of light’ was for Hemingway just not what it had been, though ironically he and his successful novel were two of the causes. He was nominally a resident of Paris for another three and a half years, but between May 10, 1927, when he and Pauline Pfeiffer were married, first in a civil ceremony in the town hall of Montrouge, then in a Roman Catholic ceremony in St Honoré d’Eylau, until the couple and their young son, Patrick, finally settled in Key West, Florida in late December 1931 — he spent in all less than eight months in the city.
. . .
After an almost month-long on honeymoon in the South of France (where the perpetually accident-prone Hemingway cut his foot and was infected with anthrax and where he continued work on his second collection of short stories), he and Pfeiffer returned home to Paris; but just three weeks later, they were off again, this time to Pamplona for the annual trip to the San Fermin festival, followed by another leisurely trawl through Spain. They finally began married life at their new rue Ferou apartment at the beginning of September, and within days Hemingway (who now had his own room in which to work) began a new novel.
Hemingway knew that he needed to publish a new novel to consolidate his career and status as a coming writer lauded by all the critics and — in Malcolm Cowley’s later judgment — ‘a master at 26’. That second novel, which at first he called A New Slain Knight, was intended to chronicle life on the road for a ‘professional revolutionist’ and his 14-year old son, and the lad’s education by his father in the ways of the world. Work went very well to begin with, and a week after Hemingway’s new short story collection Men Without Women was published on October 14, he was telling friends that he had already written 30,000 words.
Hemingway’s preferred method of composition was to write without a plan, not knowing where his work would take him. Michael Reynolds suggests that Hemingway believed this would keep a story vibrant and fresh. It was how he had written The Sun Also Rises (which began life as a short story) and it had worked then; but this time his method did not pay off. Although he conscientiously carried on working on the novel every morning throughout the autumn of 1927, he slowly dried up. He tried to correct what might be wrong by switching from a first-person narrative to a third-person narrative. At one point he changed the name of the ‘professional revolutionist’, but nothing did the trick. In November he and Pfeiffer spent ten days in Berlin, and once back in Paris he re-read what he had so far written and — as he told one correspondent — the novel was ‘all right part of the time’ and that at other times it was ‘horse manure’.
In mid-December Hemingway, Pauline, Jinny and his son Bumby travelled to Gstaad for a two-month Christmas and New Year break, and work on the novel was interrupted when he developed ‘flu, piles and toothache. Then Bumby accidentally cut the pupil of Hemingway’s — good — right eye with his little finger, rendering him comparatively sightless for a few days. Back in Paris by mid-February, the writing was still no easier and Hemingway finally gave up on the novel in mid-March. (His manuscript is now in the Hemingway section of the JFK Library in Boston with his other ‘manuscripts, typescripts, drafts, notes, and galleys for Hemingway's published and unpublished writings’.)
Michael Reynolds suggests that it wasn’t just Hemingway’s aimless method of composition that was causing him problems: after the Men Without Women collection was published four months in October, his self-confidence was shaken by a few of the reviews it had received. Ironically, many had praised the work — The New Yorker recorded that the collection was
. . . a truly magnificent work . . . [the reviewer did] not know where a greater collection of stories can be found . . . Hemingway has an unerring sense of selection . . . His is, as any reader knows, a dangerous influence. The simple thing he does looks so easy to do. But look at the boys who try to do it.’But Hemingway paid attention only to those reviewers who were less impressed with his collection: in a letter to Scott Fitzgerald he complained that
. . . these goddam reviews are sent to me by my ‘friends’, any review saying the stuff is a pile of shit I get at least 2,000 copies of.He had previously been irritated by suggestions that The Sun Also Rises was — in the words of Douglas Ogden Stewart on whom the character of Bill Gorton was based — not a novel, but a ‘skilfully produced travelogue’, so Percy Hutchisson’s New York Times review of Men Without Women will have hurt, despite the praise. Hutchisson commented:
Hemingway’s is the art of the reporter carried to the highest degree . . . His facts may be from experience, and they may be compounded solely of imagination; but he so presents them that they stand out with all the clearness and sharpness (and also the coldness) of pinnacles of ice in clear, frosty air. To sum up in a figure, Hemingway’s is a stark naked style.In The Saturday Review Lee Wilson Dodd handed out brickbats as well as bouquets. He admitted that
. . . the present critic . . . is amazed and genuinely admires the lean virtuosity of Mr Hemingway
the second most astonishing thing about him is the narrowness of his selective range.Dodd concluded that
In the callous little world of Mr Hemingway I feel cribbed, cabined, confined; I lack air — just as I do in the cruel world of Guy de Maupassant — just as I do, though not so desperately, so gaspingly, in the placid stuffy little world of Jane Austen. But there is room to breathe in Shakespeare, in Tolstoy. And — yes — it makes all the difference.Virginia Woolf was also less than impressed. She conceded that
Mr Hemingway, then, is courageous; he is candid; he is highly skilled; he plants words precisely where he wishesbut she added that
he is modern in manner but not in vision; he is self-consciously virile; his talent has contracted rather than expanded; compared with his novel, his stories are a little dry and sterile.’Wyndham Lewis was also ambivalent about Hemingway’s new collection. Although he described Hemingway in his review of Men Without Women (which he had himself forwarded to Hemingway in Gstaad) as
. . . easily the ablest of the wild band of Americans in Europehe added, rather tactlessly given Hemingway’s growing rather high opinion of his talent, that he
Hemingway had a thin skin and it was not quite what he wanted: in essence Lewis was telling readers that ‘Hemingway could do better and has some way to go yet’. None of this was what Hemingway wanted to read. Reynolds records. . . is obviously capable of a great deal of development before his work reaches maturity.
Hemingway wrote Fitzgerald that he had seen the reviews of Burton Rascoe and [Virginia] Woolf and a couple of others . . . ‘Am thinking of quitting publishing any stuff for the next 10 to 15 years.’ The reviews, he said, were ruining his writing.Quite apart from those less than enthusiastic reviews of his second collection of short stories and that his inspiration was declining as he wrote his new novel, Hemingway’s mood had surely not been improved when the week before he finally abandoned his novel in mid-March, he suffered another accident. At around 2am one morning — and, biographer Kenneth Lynn suggests, probably drunk (Pfeiffer was
It cut his forehead badly and the wound needed six stitches, and the accident left him with a prominent scar (left) on the left side of his forehead
By chance, Bill Horne, his old buddy from the Red Cross days in Italy, had written to Hemingway out of the blue the previous November, and Horne’s letter possibly revived memories of Italy. Hemingway might have known little about revolutions, but his, albeit rather short, time serving in the Red Cross in northern Italy meant he had seen war and knew a little about life on the front.
By chance, Bill Horne, his old buddy from the Red Cross days in Italy, had written to Hemingway out of the blue the previous November, and Horne’s letter possibly revived memories of Italy. Hemingway might have known little about revolutions, but his, albeit rather short, time serving in the Red Cross in northern Italy meant he had seen war and knew a little about life on the front.
Reynolds suggests that being contacted by Horne as well as being ‘wounded’ by the falling skylight were catalysts that prompted Hemingway to abandon A New Slain Knight and instead start writing A Farewell To Arms to offer as his ‘second novel’, though it, too, began life as a short story and then evolved.
The novel’s protagonist, Frederic Henry, was — like Hemingway — an American serving as an ambulance driver with the Italian army, and Catherine Barkley, the novel’s rather two-dimensional second protagonist, was — like Agnes von Kurowsky, the woman who broke the young Hemingway’s heart — a Red Cross nurse. The other notable details of the novel, Italy’s ignominious retreat after the Battle of Caporetto, Hemingway had garnered from war histories and maps — the battle and retreat had taken place seven to eight months before Hemingway first set foot in Europe.
At some point during the family winter holiday in Gstaad, Pfeiffer realised she was expecting her first child, and preparations for giving birth, due at the end of June, governed all the Hemingways’ plans. Like Hadley, Pfeiffer wanted her baby to be born in America (although Hadley gave birth to their son in Canada because Hemingway had started a staff job on the Star in Toronto).
The novel’s protagonist, Frederic Henry, was — like Hemingway — an American serving as an ambulance driver with the Italian army, and Catherine Barkley, the novel’s rather two-dimensional second protagonist, was — like Agnes von Kurowsky, the woman who broke the young Hemingway’s heart — a Red Cross nurse. The other notable details of the novel, Italy’s ignominious retreat after the Battle of Caporetto, Hemingway had garnered from war histories and maps — the battle and retreat had taken place seven to eight months before Hemingway first set foot in Europe.
. . .
Accordingly, the Hemingways left France for the US via Havana in mid-March, a week after Hemingway had abandoned work on his novel. They decided to visit Key West on the recommendation of Hemingway’s friend, the novelist John Dos Passos (who had been much taken with the island) and then travel north to Pfeiffer’s family home in Piggott, Arkansas. They sailed from Le Havre for Havana and then caught a ferry to Key West, 90 miles north of Cuba.
For the public, the name ‘Hemingway’ is still inextricably linked with Key West (and later Cuba), but that he made the island his home for the next ten years was happenstance. When they arrived and discovered the Ford Uncle Gus had bought them had been delayed on the mainland, Hemingway and Pfeiffer were forced to wait in Key West and rented a small apartment while they waited. Over the following weeks they explored the small island and met and became friends with one of Key West’s wealthiest couples, Charles and Lorine Thompson.
Hemingway had already tried his hand at fishing from the quayside — he spent every morning writing what was to become A Farewell To Arms and every afternoon fishing — but Charles, whose family owned many of island’s businesses, introduced Hemingway to deep-sea fishing. The two couples go on well, and
Pauline later admitted that she would not have agreed to settle in Key West as Hemingway was suggesting (because of his new enthusiasm for deep-sea fishing) had it not been for the prospect of Lorine’s company.
What with the writing going well and the deep-sea fishing, Hemingway was in no rush to leave Key West even though Pfeiffer was getting ever closer to term, and finally, her father, Paul Pfeiffer, arrived to speed up matters. Pfeiffer left Key West for Piggott by train and Hemingway drove there in the company of his father-in-law (in those days it was a three-day journey often travelling on dirt roads).
From Piggott Hemingway and Pfeiffer carried on to a hospital in Kanas City for the birth of their first child, Patrick, who was delivered by caesarean section at the end of June. Pfeiffer spent several weeks recuperating in Kansas City before Hemingway took her and the baby back to Piggott, then returned to Kansas City to meet up with Bill Horne to go hunting in to Wyoming. Within weeks, they were joined by Pfeiffer, who had left her two-month-old baby son in the care of her sister Jinny. She later confessed she ‘had never had a maternal instinct’ and was uninterested in children until they were at least six years old.
By the end of September, Hemingway and Pfeiffer were back in Piggott, but were soon on the road again. Hemingway first made a rare visit to see his family in Oak Park and before moving a few miles east to Chicago to drink and reminisce with friends. There he was joined by Pfeiffer, and they carried to Massachusetts and New York to see friends, a trip which included a memorable reunion with Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda when Fitzgerald yet again got hopelessly drunk and yet again disgraced himself.
. . .
One of the most significant events of Hemingway’s life, perhaps as significant as his near-death experience in July 1918 at the front near the Piave river, was the suicide of his father Clarence Hemingway. As a boy Hemingway had enjoyed his father’s company and the times they spent together, hunting and fishing near the family summer cottage at Walloon Lake, Michigan, but when Hemingway was barely in his teens, Clarence, a family physician known as Ed, increasingly withdrew into himself and away from the family. He had long suffered from depression, but more recently he had also developed diabetes, suffered from angina attacks and was worried about some investments he had made in real estate in Florida. Just before lunch on December 6, 1928, he had returned home from the hospital where he had been working that morning, gone upstairs to his bedroom, put an antique pistol to his head just behind his right ear and ended his life.
Hemingway was told of the death — although not yet how his father had died — by telegram on a train back to Key West from New York where he had picked up his son Bumby. He put his son in the care of the train’s conductor and changed trains at Philadelphia for Chicago, and it was only when he was collected from Chicago Union Station that he was told that Ed had killed himself.
For the rest of his life Hemingway uncharitably regarded Ed’s suicide as an unforgivable weakness; but more than that believed his mother Grace had driven Ed to the act, and until he himself died he told everyone that he hated her. Yet one of the many oddities about Hemingway is that despite his antagonism to her, as he sorted out his father’s affairs in the months following Ed’s death, not only did he treat her generously but a year or two later he established a trust fund for his mother’s benefit that doubled her monthly income, and he supported her financially until she died just under 23 years later.
. . .
Hemingway and Pfeiffer had intended to return to Paris in November 1928, but at some point during their Wyoming fishing and hunting trip they decided instead to spend the winter months in Key West. Their new friend there, Lorine Thompson, found them a house to rent short-term — one big enough to accommodate not just Hemingway and Pfeiffer, but their new son, Patrick, Pfeiffer’s sister Jinny, who
would help look after the baby, and Hemingway’s sister Madelaine, known as Sunny, who had agreed to type up the manuscript for A Farewell To Arms that Hemingway had just finished. Then Hadley had got in touch to ask whether her and Hemingway’s son Bumby might also come to Key West — he had an incessant cough, she explained, and the Paris weather was doing him no good at all. It was while he was returning from New Y0rk collecting Bumby that Hemingway was told of his father’s death.
The household had settled in the weeks before Christmas, and Pfeiffer and Sunny typed up what was to become A Farewell To Arms, completing the task towards the end of January, 1929. With work on his second novel out of the way, Hemingway entertained friends in Key West for the next few months, including his editor at Scribner’s, Maxwell Perkins. Hemingway was keen to introduce everyone to his new enthusiasm for deep-sea fishing and even the otherwise rather staid Perkins was roped in, encouraged by Hemingway’s light-hearted threat that unless he collected the new manuscript in person, he wouldn’t get it.
For the public, the name ‘Hemingway’ is still inextricably linked with Key West (and later Cuba), but that he made the island his home for the next ten years was happenstance. When they arrived and discovered the Ford Uncle Gus had bought them had been delayed on the mainland, Hemingway and Pfeiffer were forced to wait in Key West and rented a small apartment while they waited. Over the following weeks they explored the small island and met and became friends with one of Key West’s wealthiest couples, Charles and Lorine Thompson.
Hemingway had already tried his hand at fishing from the quayside — he spent every morning writing what was to become A Farewell To Arms and every afternoon fishing — but Charles, whose family owned many of island’s businesses, introduced Hemingway to deep-sea fishing. The two couples go on well, and
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Hemingway proudly shows off one |
What with the writing going well and the deep-sea fishing, Hemingway was in no rush to leave Key West even though Pfeiffer was getting ever closer to term, and finally, her father, Paul Pfeiffer, arrived to speed up matters. Pfeiffer left Key West for Piggott by train and Hemingway drove there in the company of his father-in-law (in those days it was a three-day journey often travelling on dirt roads).
From Piggott Hemingway and Pfeiffer carried on to a hospital in Kanas City for the birth of their first child, Patrick, who was delivered by caesarean section at the end of June. Pfeiffer spent several weeks recuperating in Kansas City before Hemingway took her and the baby back to Piggott, then returned to Kansas City to meet up with Bill Horne to go hunting in to Wyoming. Within weeks, they were joined by Pfeiffer, who had left her two-month-old baby son in the care of her sister Jinny. She later confessed she ‘had never had a maternal instinct’ and was uninterested in children until they were at least six years old.
By the end of September, Hemingway and Pfeiffer were back in Piggott, but were soon on the road again. Hemingway first made a rare visit to see his family in Oak Park and before moving a few miles east to Chicago to drink and reminisce with friends. There he was joined by Pfeiffer, and they carried to Massachusetts and New York to see friends, a trip which included a memorable reunion with Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda when Fitzgerald yet again got hopelessly drunk and yet again disgraced himself.
. . .
Hemingway was told of the death — although not yet how his father had died — by telegram on a train back to Key West from New York where he had picked up his son Bumby. He put his son in the care of the train’s conductor and changed trains at Philadelphia for Chicago, and it was only when he was collected from Chicago Union Station that he was told that Ed had killed himself.
For the rest of his life Hemingway uncharitably regarded Ed’s suicide as an unforgivable weakness; but more than that believed his mother Grace had driven Ed to the act, and until he himself died he told everyone that he hated her. Yet one of the many oddities about Hemingway is that despite his antagonism to her, as he sorted out his father’s affairs in the months following Ed’s death, not only did he treat her generously but a year or two later he established a trust fund for his mother’s benefit that doubled her monthly income, and he supported her financially until she died just under 23 years later.
. . .
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Pauline Pfeiffer’s sister |
The household had settled in the weeks before Christmas, and Pfeiffer and Sunny typed up what was to become A Farewell To Arms, completing the task towards the end of January, 1929. With work on his second novel out of the way, Hemingway entertained friends in Key West for the next few months, including his editor at Scribner’s, Maxwell Perkins. Hemingway was keen to introduce everyone to his new enthusiasm for deep-sea fishing and even the otherwise rather staid Perkins was roped in, encouraged by Hemingway’s light-hearted threat that unless he collected the new manuscript in person, he wouldn’t get it.
Whether Perkins did collect it or whether Hemingway later delivered the manuscript to Scribner’s in New York in person is unclear: on this and several other points the various biographers’ accounts differ. For example, some tell us the Ford Model A Uncle Gus bought for Hemingway and Pfeiffer was delayed on Miami, others claim it was waiting for them on the quayside when they disembarked as promised. Ironically, the variance of their separate accounts is of a piece with contradictions in the stories Hemingway told about himself: in all seriousness he had claimed he had an affair with the Dutch spy Mata Hari. In fact Hari, or Margaretha Geertruida Zelle as she was christened, was executed for spying seven months before Hemingway set foot in Europe.
Hemingway’s new novel was due for September publication but he had also agreed for it to be serialised in Scribner’s Magazine, and the first instalment appeared in May (with, to Hemingway’s great annoyance, words and phrase deemed by the magazine to be offensive and unacceptable edited out). By then Hemingway, Pfeiffer and Patrick were back in Paris, although with a view to possibly returning they left some belongings in Key West. They had finally set sail for Europe from Cuba at the beginning of April (with a second new Ford given them by the ever-generous Uncle Gus stowed away in the ship’s hold, according to Michael Reynolds).
Hemingway’s new novel was due for September publication but he had also agreed for it to be serialised in Scribner’s Magazine, and the first instalment appeared in May (with, to Hemingway’s great annoyance, words and phrase deemed by the magazine to be offensive and unacceptable edited out). By then Hemingway, Pfeiffer and Patrick were back in Paris, although with a view to possibly returning they left some belongings in Key West. They had finally set sail for Europe from Cuba at the beginning of April (with a second new Ford given them by the ever-generous Uncle Gus stowed away in the ship’s hold, according to Michael Reynolds).
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