Hemingway As Kid Balzac

This satirical painting of Hemingway was done by his good friend and fishing companion, Waldo Peirce.
A critic had remarked that Hemingway looked like 19th century French writer Honore de Balzac.
In Peirce's painting, Hemingway appeared to be a slimmed-down version of Balzac (at least facially).
Hemingway was always comparing himself to famous writers and he probably enjoyed this - even though it was done in jest.

Boxing In Paris

Cirque d' Hiver



Hemingway loved to box, it was part of his essence, essential to the core of his personality. (That is Hem in the top photo.)
He was a good amateur boxer, even if he embellished his prowess, as he did with most things masculine.
In the preface to "A Movable Feast", Hemingway tells about the boxing at the Stade Anastasie, and the "great twenty-round fights at the Cirque d' Hiver." He was fond of most sports and outdoor activity, but boxing was one of the things - like bullfighting, that was at the top of the list.

Harry's New York Bar

Harry's New York Bar, 5 rue Daunou (sank roo doe noe, to the Yanks), was a popular hangout for American expats, including Hemingway. Ernest would often spar at a nearby gym with Harry holding Hemingway's towel.
It was particularly popular for those fleeing prohibition America. Harrys inventions included: The White Lady, 1919, The Bloody Mary, 1921, and the Harry's Pick Me Up, in 1923.
In 1924, Harry's started its first presidential straw poll for the American expats.
That year, Republican Calvin Coolidge beat Democrat John W. Davis.

Eugene Atget's Paris In The 1920's

Paris Street Scene


Prostitute, Paris




Cafe, Paris, 1924 6AM




Eugene Atget (1857-1927) was one of the most artistic photographers of Paris in the early years of the 1900's. He was also a skilled technician of the craft.
He was orphaned when he was seven years old and went to sea as a cabin boy on the Transatlantic. He gave up the sea after several voyages across the Atlantic and became an actor, where he performed in mostly second-rate shows in secondary roles.
He knew that he could make a living with a camera selling scenes to artists who needed a fixed image to study as they painted. He sold his work to the artists of Montparnasse.
He was a bohemian at heart and he moved to Montparnasse to live in the "art colony" there. He was a neighbor of Man Ray, and a contemporary of Matisse, and Picasso.

Some More Cafe Life

The sidewalk cafes of Paris and the circle of friends that Hemingway met there is a central theme to "A Moveable Feast."
He did much of his most productive writing sitting in a cafe with his blue notebooks and a few pencils and a pocket knife to keep them sharp. The walk from his apartment or just a stroll through Paris to the cafe were stimulants for a good day's work.
His first published short stories were written that way and his beginning of "The Sun Also Rises" started there, too.
The painting is called "Hemingway's Paris," and is courtesy of Maranda Pleasant of Big Modern Art.

F.Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald was perhaps the most famous of the Jazz Age writers, (he supposedly coined the phrase himself). F. Scott Fitzgerald embodied the spirit of the Roaring Twenties. He staked his claim as the voice of his generation with his first novel, "This Side of Paradise" (1920), and later with "The Great Gatsby" (1925). The Saint Paul, Minnesota native spent a lot of time visiting Paris in the 1920's with his wife Zelda, and their daughter Scottie. Fitzgerald was a fan of Hemingway's early work and Hemingway loved "The Great Gatsby." Fitzgerald was to become a good friend (if a difficult one) of Hem's and the two had quite a few interesting and humorous moments in France. Fitzgerald would also help Hemingway in getting his writing published. Hemingway devoted quite a bit of space in "A Moveable Feast" to Fitzgerald, their time together, and Hemingway's not too flattering opinion of Zelda's influence on Fitzgerald's career.

Bicycle Racing At The Velodrome

After Ernest gave up horseracing, he discovered cycling and liked it more than betting on the horses.
A friend of his, Mike Ward, told him that he used to bet on the horses but he'd found something better, bicycle racing.
In "A Moveable Feast" Ernest wrote: "I have started many stories about bicycle racing but have never written one that is as good as the races are both on the indoor tracks and on the roads."
" French is the only language it has ever been written in properly and the terms are all French and that is what makes it hard to write. Mike was right about it, there is no need to bet. But that comes at another time in Paris."

Running Of The Bulls

This week it is the "running of the bulls" in Pamplona, Northern Spain, at the Festival of San Fermin. Young men have been participating in this ceremony since the 1600's, but Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises" published in 1926, made it the event that it is today.
Gertrude Stein recommended to Hemingway that he take a vacation there to help him "clear his head" and concentrate on the business of writing a novel.
These photos are from 1925, one year before he finished his novel.
Top photo: Hemingway on the left, Harold Loeb, Lady Duff Twysden, Hadley, Don Stewart and Pat Guthrie.
(If you click on the bottom photo, you will see Ernest just in front of the bull as he participates in "the amateurs.")

Deco Paris

Palais d'Hiver
Art Deco Steamship and Night life in Hemingway's Paris, Art Deco style.

Bloomsday

In honor of "Bloomsday" - June 16th - a photo of James Joyce, the creator of Leopold Bloom and Bloom's world in "Ulysses."

Ulysses For Dummies

Bal-Musette

When Ernest and Hadley lived at 74 rue Cardinale Lemoine, a Bal-Musette was in the basement. Bal-Musette was a style of French music that was popular with the working class and the cafe where the music was played was called A Bal Musette. The music had a unique style that incorporated an accordian-like instrument to produce a distinctive style of music. Cafes frequented by Italians had a similar style of music but they had a different musical instrument that produced different tones. These cafes later became places to hear jazz and the tango and many other new styles of music. More at Wikipedia

Bal-Musette

1920's Paris Jazz Age Film Clips

(I added this post because YouTube had stopped running the film clip just before this one. Well, I guess your cards, letters & calls of complaint worked, because (perhaps fearing unrest) YouTube has re-released the clip.) Gosh, can it get much better than this?
This is part of the old introduction to the above clip:
It will give you a flavor of the times if not as much of the personalities involved from the "Lost Generation."
(It ends rather abruptly!)

1920's Paris "Seeing Paris"

rue Mouffetard

Photos of the rue Mouffetard, a Paris street full of markets and stalls. The top photo shows the rue Mouffetard where it meets the Place Contrescarpe. The Hemingways shopped here when they lived in their apartment on rue Cardinale Lemoine.
In "A Moveable Feast", Hemingway called it, "that wonderful crowded market street which led into the Place Contrescarpe."
(It is also where Amelie shopped.)

What To Add, What To Add?

Gargoyle on Notre Dame, Paris

Back To Italy

Ernest first went to Europe as a volunteer ambulance driver for the Red Cross during World War I. (The top photo shows him in 1918.) He passed through Paris and other parts of France on his way to Italy and was impressed with the city. He was sent to the Italian front to evacuate soldiers wounded in fighting with Austrian troops. He was stationed in a town called Fossalta, not far from Mestre and Venice. His area of operation was along the Piave River, an area that was seeing heavy fighting. He was wounded by a mortar shell (over 200 pieces of shrapnel were removed from his body) and was sent to a hospital near Milan to recover. He promptly fell in love with his nurse, Agnes von Kurowsky. It was a brief affair, but one that Hemingway would talk about and embellish considerably. He also added quite a bit of drama and heroism to his war service experiences.

After the war, Ernest returned home, leaving from Genoa, with a brief trip to Naples for his first trip to Southern Italy. He arrived home to a hero's welcome and began to court Hadley Richardson.

After he and Hadley had married they moved to Paris so he could try his hand at writing. He was doing some travelling for The Star as its foreign correspondent and getting to see more of Europe. In 1922, he decided to take Hadley to Italy for a month's vacation to show her the places of his adventures.

First they went to Milan and to Biffi's cafe in the Galleria, a great indoor shopping mall and one of the places Ernest frequented with his nurse, Agnes. They travelled to Mestre, then Schio, Fossalta, and the Piave River, but he was disappointed that everything had changed. He had wanted to impress Hadley with scenes of ruin and destruction and privation, but the damage had all been cleaned up in the years after the war.
His second novel, "A Farewell to Arms", is based on his adventures in the war and his affair with his nurse during his recuperation in Milan.

Fishing In Spain

Hemingway loved to fish, and on his fourth trip to Pamplona he did some trout fishing in the Irati River in the Pyrenes.
After the Festival of San Fermin he and Hadley, Robert McAlmon, and the Smiths went into the mountains in Basque country around Burquete to relax a bit after the bullfights. Hemingway fished with worms as bait while the party had wine and cheese as they tried their luck.
This little day trip is a famous scene in "The Sun Also Rises."

Some Color

Some Color to break up the blog. Barges on the Seine in Winter in the 1920's

First Major Publisher

Hemingway's earliest publications were a small pamphlet "Three Stories and Ten Poems" and a small book issued in Paris by Three Mountain Press in 1924, "In Our Time". The latter was the book that Edmund Wilson read and admired and that F. Scott Fitzgerald liked so much that he recommended its author to his own publisher, Charles Scribners and Sons.
Only 1335 copies were printed.
The stories had an absolutely new style, a terse, staccato style that became his trademark.
Interestingly, all of the title words on the jacket are in lower case print.

Ernest In Pamplona, 1927

This is Hemingway with a bull in the Summer of 1927. The photo was taken outside of Pamplona, Spain, a town that was recommended to Hemingway by Gertrude Stein. It is in Northern Spain, just South of the French border. The famous "running of the bulls" is held here every year during the Festival of San Fermin.
Pamplona and Hemingway's vacations there were the setting and inspiration for his first novel, "The Sun Also Rises."
Another view

Here