I don't know much about Ernest Hemingway and even less about any of his wives. Perhaps that's just as well as with some authors their reputation precedes them, and when the reputation isn't always a particularly favorable one the less said the better, it seems. My perspective has shifted ever so slightly since I finished reading Paula McLain's very excellent Paris Wife, which is a fictional biography of sorts about Hemingway's first wife Hadley Richardson and their life together in 1920s Paris. I had little knowledge and few expectations going into this book, so perhaps this has helped in forming my opinions. I still don't know a lot about either Ernest or Hadley, though it seems as though McLain tried to paint an accurate portrait of both individuals. I don't think she glosses over their behavior or shortcomings yet she doesn't exactly condemn their actions either. It seems as though she tries to simply present the facts of their lives paying special attention to what they might have been feeling emotionally during their short marriage.
Hadley Richardson was a very average young American woman when she met Ernest. She had a fairly conventional upbringing in St. Louis, though her mother was very protective of her after a childhood accident. She met Ernest when she was visiting a friend in Chicago. Several years her junior, Ernest was full of life and energy and Hadley felt an immediate attraction. Hemingway had served in Italy during WWI as an ambulance driver but was injured and invalided out. He was working as a reporter when he met Hadley and the two corresponded after her return home. Despite concerns of family members they married a year later in 1921, living for a while in Chicago and then moving to Paris at the suggestion of Hemingway's mentor Sherwood Anderson.
I think Hadley must have been Hemingway's muse. She was immensely supportive of his work and didn't shy away from trying anything he had an interest in. The two became part of the expatriate community that included Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce and Ezra Pound. Other than his journalistic work he hadn't been published and was struggling to find his own voice. He would write during the day--sometimes taking a separate room away from his and Hadley's apartment or writing at cafés where he could chat with other writers and artists. If Hadley's upbringing was fairly conventional her lifestyle in Paris was not. The 20s was about youth culture and shaking off the past, which had been darkened with the bloodshed of WWI. Hemingway was not the only writer looking for a new language to express how the world had changed. In a letter to Hemingway before their marriage Hadley wrote "The world's a jail and we're going to break it together." But Paris wasn't everything Hadley expected it to be. She took care of their home all day and while she missed Ernest, it didn't seem that he missed her. He was part of the creative sphere of Paris and she was not.
By all appearances Ernest and Hadley had a very typical middle class marriage but they were just about the only ones of their group to do so. Marriage and family life were considered bourgeoisie and most of their friends were either unfaithful or didn't believe in having children. People drank hard and played even harder, so it's not surprising that staying happily married in such an environment would be a challenge. They moved to Toronto when Hadley was ready to give birth to their son, John, but it was stifling for Ernest who didn't seem to be cut out for domesticity. As soon as the baby was old enough to travel they sailed once again for France. Whatever happiness they initially had seemed to erode away in the Parisian milieu of the 1920s.
"If Ernest was changing, Montparnasse was, too. American tourists flooded the scene hoping to get a glimpse of a real bohemian while the usual suspects grew wilder and stranger for the new audience. Kiki was one of the most famous artist's models around, and May Ray's lover and muse. She could often be seen at the Dôme or Rotonde with her pet mouse. It was small and white, and she wore it attached to her wrist with a delicate silver chain. The fleshy redhead Flossie Martin held court in front of the Select shouting obscenities to locals and tourists alike. Bob McAlmon vomited neatly in the flowerbeds of all the best cafés and then ordered another absinthe. That absinthe was illegal deterred no one, and the same held true for opium and cocaine. Ernest and I had always been more than happy enough with alcohol, but there was the very real feeling, for many, of needing to up the ante--to feel more and risk more. It grew harder and harder to shock anyone."
It can be really painful reading about the disintegration of a marriage. As supportive of Ernest as Hadley was she couldn't be a critic, but there would be others who could talk about literature in a way that she couldn't. Their ongoing joke was that she liked Henry James, an author Hemingway saw as mired in the past. Ernest and Hadley had traveled to Pamplona to see the running of the bulls, where he finally found inspiration for his writing. It was during this period that he wrote his famous novel, The Sun Also Rises, and also met and began an affair with Pauline Pfeiffer who became his second wife.
Whatever you think about Ernest Hemingway the man, Paris Wife made for fascinating reading, McLain offers a glimpse into a marriage and a world that seems by parts both interesting and immensely sad. I'm not sure how much further I want or need to delve into these lives but it has been enlightening. I suspect he had the ability to be a real bastard, but I still feel a twinge 'something' (sympathy? understanding?) for his struggles as an author. It seems as though he worked so hard to create this myth of being 'Ernest Hemingway' that not even he could really live up to it and he and others suffered for it along the way.
This has inspired me to finally pick up Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, to get an even fuller picture of this period. I've also got A Moveable Feast, which was published posthumously about his life in 20s Paris with Hadley, at the ready. And out of curiosity I've been dipping into Hadley: The First Mrs. Hemingway by Alice Hunt Sokoloff.