Paris

Paris is a distracting city. It was so distracting, my first year there I could not write my novel. Everything Paris was, Oak Park, Chicago was not. I was working abroad for the Toronto Star, writing articles and sending them, often about my life. My articles “American Bohemians in Paris a Weird Lot” and “A Veteran Visits Old Front, Wishes He Had Stayed Away” sold papers. Hadley got pregnant, and we did move to Toronto for a spell, and then back to Paris. I wrote things. Fitzgerald became a close friend and mentor. My books were published. I wrote what I knew and what I thought. Fitzgerald especially liked The Sun Also Rises in 1926 (30).

Source:

Wagner-Martin, Linda. A Historical Guide to Ernest Hemingway. Oxford University Press: New York, 1999.

I Was In Europe, Though Not In Paris Yet

I graduated from high school in 1917. The war was going on in Europe. In Russia the Tzar was overthrown. The Austrians broke through the alpine lines at Caporetto. I became a reported for the Kansas City Star, where I learned to write a simple, declarative sentence.

My directions: “Short first paragraphs, vigorous language, no superfluous words, few adjectives, no trite phrases” (22). After 7 months, I joined the Missouri Home Guard, and volunteered my time in the Great European War driving ambulances for The Red Cross (23). I was called then called to duty, though the accident that happened shortly after I was ready to serve was tragic.

It was July, 1918 when I was asked to man a canteen on the Piave River front and was blown up by an Austrian Trench mortar (23). I was no yet 19 (23). For five months I kept in a hospital, where Agnes Von Kurosky nursed me back to health. She was attractive for an older lady. Seven years my senior and eager to take care of me. We were engaged to be married, though she did not and would not have it. The following march I received her letter stating there would be no wedding, just as there never would have been (23).

I returned to Kansas City to write for the paper and met Hadley Richardson. She was a St. Louis girl 8 years my senior. We were married in 1921 and moved to Paris when my magazine went bankrupt. I had the names of people to know in Paris. Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and Sylvia Beach: these would be my friends. We moved to the Latin Quarter and called our fourth floor walk-up home (24).

Source:

Wagner-Martin, Linda. A Historical Guide to Ernest Hemingway. Oxford University Press: New York, 1999.

Before I Got to Paris

I was born in a Chicago suburb on July 21, 1899, and grew up changing as America was changing. Oak Park was a place of conservatism. You could not buy cigarettes, drink Alcohol, or behave immorally any which way. I was the oldest son of a physician and a music teacher. My parents, well-to-do and educated people, are one of the reasons I became a writer. I sat down in front of a typewriter and bled. They taught me how to do that.

My father committed suicide before I turned 30. He was a doctor. Those who knew me did not know. In World War I participated as an ambulance driver. They said my eyesight was too bad to fight. We were on the Italian front, fighting. From there, I stayed in Paris with my bestie-friends Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, and some others. At the age of 36 I went off the Spanish American War, and at 44 I went off to the Normandy invasion, invited as a reporter landing on Omaha Beach (16).

As a young man we had a lake Michigan home my father would take me to for hunting and fishing. I learned these skills as an apprentice learns from his master, observing and then trying. The trout were plentiful at the lake, as were the campsites, hiking trails, baseball games, and women. It was truly an American place for me in my childhood (17).

Teddy Roosevelt was good at sports. It made a boy want to be good at sports. I was not good at sports. Consider me to be the slowest in running, the clumsiest in football, and the swimmer most likely to drown. My event was “the plunge”, where I swam underwater for distance. I learned how to box when I grew taller. I learned how to protect myself against men of all sizes. I admired the boxers. The baseball players were also deserving men of respect. After finding myself in Spain at the right time, bullfighters were the only athletes worth watching (20).

I never went to college, though I did read many books.

~EH

Source:

Wagner-Martin, Linda. A Historical Guide to Ernest Hemingway. Oxford University Press, New York: 1999.