My First Mistress. My Second Wife. My Favorite Trust Fund.

I met Pauline Pfeiffer while I was still with Hadley. This was problematic.

Who Could Resist Such a Fine Lady.

It was lucky that Paulina had a trust fund. She helped me in my writing of A Farewell To Arms. I felt bad for Hadley, of course, being divorced, so all of the rights for The Sun Also Rises were left in her possession. She had a son to look after. My son. I think the money helped ease the pain (34).

Eventually.

Source:

Wagner-Martin, Linda. Historical Guide to Ernest Hemingway. Oxford University Press, NC: 2000.

My Mom Totes Messed Me Up

Grace and Ernest Hemingway. 1899.

My mother would dress me up like a girl and not allow me to cut my hair up until I reached the age of 6. By then, it was too late for me to not hate my mother. My sister got it the same. She was forced to keep her hair short and dress like a boy. Whatever sadistic game my mother was playing, we were certainly too oblivious to find any humor in it (87).

My mother was a strong, independent woman. She gave music lessons and eventually invited one of her students, Ruth Arnold, to stay and become a live in housekeeper. Ruth gave my mother the comforts to speak up to my father. She was in charge when she was home. I didn’t know what a lesbian was at such a young age, but my mother and Ruth took to loving each other when my father was not around. It was better his unabating depression forced him to take his own life. He wouldn’t have been able to deal with the humility if he found out about Grace and Ruth. It would all have been worse (87).

I did not see my mother in the last 20 years of her life (88).

Source:

Fantina, Richard. Ernest Hemingway: Machismo and Masochism. Palgrave Macmillon, Gordonsville: 2005.

My Trust Fund Baby

I met Elizabeth Hadley Richardson in 1920 as I recovered from post-traumatic Agnes syndrome. She was 8 years my senior, and we wrote each other letters when she was in St. Louis and I was in Kansas City or Chicago. She was smart. She was tragic.

Her father had died by his own hands when she was 14. Her mother had passed away only right before I met her.

Source:

Tyler, Lisa. Student Company to Ernest Hemingway. Greenwood Press, Wesport, CT: 2001.

Hadley and I Looking Into Each Others Eyes

The First Lady

Agnes Von Kurowsky and I had a very short story together. She inspired my short story “A Very Short Story”.

She also inspired my prototype for Catherine Barkley in A Farewell to Arms. She left me when I thought we would be married. It’s funny. Plans that become unplanned. Pretty swell.

I plan to leave all my next wives before they leave me.