Ernest At Home

Ernest in front of the fire at the apartment above the sawmill, 113 rue Notre Dame des Champs. He is holding his son, Bumby, in the second shot. These photos are from 1924.

Josephine Baker

Josephine Baker became the toast of Paris when she danced the Charelston with her jazz review, "Le Tumulte Noir." Parisians, and American expats loved the young American and her style of dance.

The Art Deco poster is representative of the graphics of the era. It depicts the night life and cosmpolitan atmosphere of Paris in the 1920s. Art Deco took its name from the 1925 Exposition of Decorative Arts in Paris.

Some Of The Lost Generation

The Lost Generation: Hemingway and the circle of ex-pat friends he later incorporated in The Sun Also Rises. Top photo includes, Harold Loeb, the model for Robert Cohn in The Sun Also Rises, on the left, and Hemingway in the center.
In the bottom photo: Hemingway on the left, Harold Loeb, Lady Duff Twysden, Hadley, Don Stewart and Pat Guthrie.
Writing the book, Hemingway thought of himself as the Jake Barnes character, Lady Duff Twysden was Brett, Pat Guthrie was Mike Cambell, and as mentioned, Harold Loeb was Robert Cohn.

Hemingway At Shakespeare And Company

The top photo shows Sylvia Beach with her long time lover and business partner, Adrienne Monnier inside Shakespeare and Company bookstore at 12 rue de l'Odeon.
A photo of Sylvia Beach standing outside of her bookstore with Hemingway.
She was one of Hemingway's staunchest friends and supporters. She lent him books, money, and encouragement.

More

Ernest inside Shakespeare And Company in 1921.

Picasso And Gertrude Stein

Pablo Picasso was one of Gertrude Stein's favorite artists and social contacts in Paris.

Gertrude Stein is shown sitting in front of a portrait of her painted by Picasso. The photo was taken by Man Ray in 1922. More on Miss Stein and Hemingway can be found in an earler post

Jules Pascin

Jules Pascin was a good friend of Hemingway. He was a working artist, Bulgarian by birth, and a regular of the Left Bank cafe circuit. Like Hemingway, he usually only went out to drink after getting in a good day's work. They frequently met at the Dome Cafe, a cafe Hemingway liked because many of the regulars were artists that had worked at their craft that day and were not just out to be "seen." In "A Moveable Feast," Hemingway devotes a short chapter to his friend, called: With Pascin at the Dome. Pascin who suffered from alcoholism and depression hanged himself when he was 45.
The first painting is "Woman at Her Toilet."
The second painting is of Pasin's mistress, Lucy Krohg.
The next painting is titled "Nude Sleeping."
After the photo of Pascin is a self-portrait by him done in 1921. Then, a portrait of him painted in 1906 by Albert Weisgerber.

Robert McAlmon

Robert McAlmon (on the right with Hemingway, first photo) was one of the wealthier American expats in Paris. He married into his wealth. He was a poet and writer who wanted to start a publishing house for new writers. He started Contact Editions and used Shakespeare & Co. as his office.
He met Hemingway and the two became friends even though the relationship had its stormy times.
They travelled to Spain with Bill Bird for Ernest's first exposure to bullfighting - in the photo above they are in the Spanish town of Ronda in the bullring there.
The third photo shows Hemingway's first published work - published by McAlmon in 1923.
The short stories were: My Old Man, Out of Season, and Up in Michigan.
The ten poems were:
Mitraigliatrice
Oklahoma
Oily Weather
Roosevelt
Captives
Champs d'Honneur
Riparto d'Assalto
Montparnasse
Along With Youth
Chapter Heading

Ernest In Switzerland

Ernest and Hadley liked to get out of the damp cold of Paris in the winter for the clean air of alpine Switzerland and Austria.
They'd rent a cabin or find a hotel to use as a base camp to ski and hike from.
Ernest always ended up with skin browned by the high altitude sun.
These photos were taken in Gstaad, Switzerland in 1927.

The Banks Of The Seine

The Pont-Neuf, Paris

The Pont-Neuf, one of Hemingway's regular walking routes as he explored the Seine and its inhabitants. He loved the Notre Dame area, it was close to the booksellers and then he might sit on the grass and eat his lunch as he watched the fishermen.

Hemingway The Young Journalist

Ernest's passport from late 1921. He was going to Paris with Hadley and the passport was provided by the Toronto Star newspaper. He was going to be their foreign correspondent in Paris.
Ernest had been a writer for the Kansas City Star newspaper for seven months in 1917. Learning to write "newspaper style" seemed to be to his liking. He adhered to the Kansas City Star's style guide which begins: "Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative." This style of writing was also called "cablese" by journalists because of the sparse style that sending telegrams required. Telegrams were expensive and journalists cut down their transmissions to the bare essentials. He carried these lessons over to the Toronto Star.
(Telegrams were called "cables" because they were transmitted on wires - usually running between railroad stations. Almost any town of any importance had a railroad station. If there was a fire in Boston, for example, the story would be sent from there to telegraph receivers up and down the rail line. The story was said to have "moved on the wire." The first reporter to telegraph the story is said to have "broke" the story and "scooped" the competition. Cables could also be sent by radio -"wireless", as the British called radio - anyone who has seen a movie about the Titanic is familiar with radio telegrams. Radios and the necessary large antennas were not very practical or common in the 1920s.)
It was in his newspaper work for the Toronto Star that Hemingway developed not only his stylistic quirks (his famous terse, staccato style of writing), but also his hard-boiled dialogue, his comedic structure, major themes and sense of plot and character.
When he arrived in Europe he was slow in beginning his work for the Star. It took him two months to mail in his first articles. That soon became about two a week. He wrote about Swiss tourism, German inflation, tuna fishing at Vigo, the election of Pope Pius XI, Clemenceau's place in French history, a book review ( his first) of a novel set in Africa; about thirty articles from february untill the end of March, 1922.

First Novel Published

Fired with the fictional possibilities that he saw during his visit to the Pamplona bullfights in 1925, Hemingway started translating them into a novel, initially titled, Fiesta, soon after leaving the Spanish town. Within roughly two months, the first draft of what would eventually be titled The Sun Also Rises was done. Although this work is a classic today, one reviewer charged, at its publication in 1926, that Hemingway was hiding his talents "under a bushel of sensationalism and triviality." Many others, however, disagreed. One critic claimed that its "lean, hard narrative prose" put a good deal of "literary English to shame," and yet another noted that the novel contained the best dialogue to be found in contemporary fiction.
The celebrity that the novel brought him marked the beginning of the end of the early innocence of the Paris years.

The Little Book of Sketches

A fine example of "A Moveable Feast". I love the artwork on the dustjacket. It's hard for me to say exactly when this edition came out, but 1964 was the first publication date. Hemingway worked on AMF from the fall of 1957 to the spring of 1958. He worked primarily at his home in Cuba. It centers on the Paris years of 1921 -1926. It was called the Paris sketchbook as he worked on the chapters, digging up the memories from years ago. His fourth wife edited it after his death. It was published by Scribners.

A Favorite View For Hemingway

Photo courtesy Carlos

Lisbon Weekly Photo

A routine part of Hemingway's Paris years was walking down the Boulevard du Montparnasse to the intersection of rue de L'Observetoire where the La Closerie de Lilas cafe is located. It was one of his favorite spots to write, eat and drink. Hemingway would sit outside after a good days work or to be alone with his thoughts. He would often gaze at the statue of Marshal Ney. He admired the courage of Ney and writes quite often about him and the Lilas in "A Moveable Feast."

Hemingway Preferred This One

The second of Henry Strater's portraits of Hemingway. Ernest preferred this one.
Photo is courtesy of the Hemingway collection at the JFK Library, Boston.

Portrait Of Hemingway in Paris

Shortly after arriving in Paris, Ernest met Henry Strater, another American expat with literary interests.
Strater was interested in boxing and tennis as was Hemingway. He was a Princeton graduate and he had already become a friend of F. Scott Fitzgeralds. So, another connection to the "Lost Generation."
It was only natural that Hemingway and Strater should become friends.
Strater painted this portrait in 1922, although Strater claims in was 1923. Hemingway didn't like it very much.

Bumby Is Born

Harry Hindmarsch



Hadley, "Bumby", and Ernest in Schruns, Austria, in 1926. The family was in Schruns for their winter vacation. They preferred the alpine climate to Paris in the winter.
Bumby was born John Hadley Niconor Hemingway, in October, 1923. The baby was named in honor of his mother and the Spanish matador Villalta.
Hadley wanted the baby to be born back home because she disrusted European medical proceedures and it would be psychologically more comfortable for her. Ernest thought that with the baby on the way he had better get a regular job and decided on trying for a position at the Toronto Star. They sailed to Canada from Cherbourg on August 26, 1923 on the Cunard liner Andania. It took ten days to reach Quebec. Bumby was born on October 9, 1923 in Toronto, while Ernest was rushing home from a journalism assignment in New York. Ernest never forgave the editor of the Toronto Star, Harry Hindmarsh, for sending him on that assignment.
Gertrude Stein is babysitting "Bumby" in the Luxembourg Gardens in the last photo.

Losing All

Gare de Lyon Station

In December of 1922, Ernest was in Lausanne for The Star covering the peace conference trying to settle a dispute between Greece and Turkey.

He was trying to get Hadley to come down. She didn't want to fly through the mountains in the winter so she took the train from the Gare de Lyon station.
She decided to take all of Ernest's manuscripts except for "Up in Michigan" which was in a drawer somewhere in the apartment, and "My Old Man" which was in the mail to a publisher. She thought this would be a wonderful surprise for Ermest - she wanted to break up the tedium that he usually felt at conferences.

She grabbed all of his fiction and poetry that she could find. She hoped to please him by bringing his manuscripts so he could have something to work on besides his journalism.
A porter carried her bags to the train from the taxi and the bag with the manuscripts was stolen in that brief space of time. All of Ernest's work - including the carbons; his only copies - were lost. He had to start all over again from memory. Scholars still hope that the suitcase will be found with the original manuscripts intact.

John Dos Passos

The top photo is a passport photo for John Dos Passos. Then a photo portrait from the 1920s.
In the winter photo from Vorarlberg, March, 1926, left to right: Frau Lent, Ernest Hemingway, Dos Passos, and Gerald Murphy.
The bottom photo is a book jacket of "Three Soldiers," a book published in 1921 about the First World War.
John Dos Passos was another American of "The Lost Generation." He was an ambulance driver in Italy like Hemingway in World War I. They actually met and chatted in the Piave campaign, but they didn't keep in touch.
He spent time in Paris where he met Hemingway again and the other American expat writers and artists. He was always travelling, looking for adventurous situations to observe and write about. He is believed to be "the pilot fish" that hemingway mentions in "A Moveable Feast." The person that showed up before "the rich" came & spoiled a relatively unknown place. Dos Passos was a pilot fish for the Murphys.
He is said to have travelled more to seek out adventure in conflicts and in social situations than even Hemingway. He wrote 42 books and was quite a painter with over 400 works of art to his credit.