Ernest Hemingway, The Reporter Years

Bill Schiller recounts the early years when Ernest Hemingway started out as a cub reporter for The Toronto Star.
He eventually became the Star's European correspondent.

In Germany 1922

In Schwarzwald


Chink Dorman-Smith



Black Forest



Gasthaus Rossele


Paris was very hot and humid in the Summer of 1922.
In August, Ernest got a passport for himself and Hadley for travel to Germany. They were going to go on a hiking tour and fishing trip in the Black Forest region where they hoped that it would be cooler.
They invited Bill Bird and his wife Sally, and Lewis Galantiere and his fiance, Dorothy Butler to come along.
The dollar was being exchanged at 605 marks to a dollar, so Ernest was counting on a vacation that wouldn't break the household funds. He was also hoping to get some material for a story that he could sell to The Star.
Earnest and Hadley decided to fly from Paris to Strasbourg to save eight hours of travelling by train. Hadley was eager for the adventure of her first flight and took the two and a half hour flight in such stride that she fell asleep before the landing.
The six hikers met in Strasbourg on August 3rd and crossed into Germany. They headed to Triberg to fish, but they were not pleased with the crowds of Germans - who were not pleased with them. Ernest thought the Germans to be loud, rude, and rough with women. They managed to get some fishing in away from the crowds of German hikers. Hadley was becoming quite skilled at catching trout.
One day near Oberprechtal the thirsty and hungry hikers stopped at an inn for rooms and food. The innkeeper refused to serve them. He was still bitter towards foreigners because Germany had lost the war. They hiked an additional four miles of "hot, white road" until they came upon the Gasthaus Rossele or Inn of the Pony. It seems that the pony is the favorite symbol of Black Forest inn keepers. Here they were given rooms and they were served food and beer.
By mid-August, the Birds, Galantiere and Dorothy Butler were heading back to Paris. Ernest and Hadley continued alone down the Rhine to Coblenz. There they met Eric "Chink" Dorman-Smith, a friend of Ernest's since 1918 when they met in Italy. (He would become the godfather of the Hemingway's first child. Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas were the joint godmothers.)
Hemingway managed to get three stories forThe Toronto Daily Star: "German Inn-Keepers," "A Paris-To-Strasbourg Flight," and "German Inflation."
The Hemingways returned to Paris by train on August 31st.

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.

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.