Everybody Behaves Badly

by Lesley M. M. Blume

  171 woman-to-woman chat: Hadley Hemingway to Alice Sokoloff, November 29, 1970, quoted in Sokoloff, Hadley, 86–87.

  171 three short stories: Hemingway later claimed that on May 16, the bullfights were snowed out, so he stayed at the pension and wrote “The Killers,” “Today Is Friday,” and “Ten Indians.” Plimpton, “The Art of Fiction: Ernest Hemingway,” 79.

  171 “You tired after”: Ibid.

  171 to get an abortion: Ruth Hawkins speculates, on the basis of compelling yet circumstantial evidence, that Pauline may have joined Hemingway in Madrid and gotten the procedure done then. Hawkins, Unbelievable Happiness and Final Sorrow, 65–66. Pauline and Hemingway’s son Patrick doesn’t find the idea of an abortion plausible or in keeping with his mother’s character and background: “I really don’t believe it. Pauline was brought up with a very strict Catholic education at the Sacred Heart convent in St. Louis and it stuck for a long time. My mother didn’t give up her religion until she was in her late forties . . . [H]er Catholicism was one of the things that made the marriage complicated, according to my father.” Some of Hawkins’s circumstantial evidence supporting the possibility of a pregnancy and abortion involves a story Hemingway later penned—titled “Hills Like White Elephants,” in which a couple struggles with an unwanted pregnancy and the specter of an abortion—and presented to Pauline on their eventual honeymoon, but Patrick Hemingway remains unconvinced: “People are always trying to hang Christmas ornaments on what my father wrote in stories” (interview with the author, September 26, 2014). Hawkins, however, points out that if Pauline had found herself pregnant that spring, her choices would have been limited; having the baby would have been as much of an affront to her Catholicism as an abortion: “To have had a baby out of wedlock with a man who was married to someone else . . . would have been a public admission that she had sinned.” It may have been a question of which route was the lesser sin (interview with the author, October 13, 2014).

  172 their Antibes villa: Just as madcap New York City belonged to the Fitzgeralds, the Murphys have often been credited with “inventing” and then epitomizing the Riviera lifestyle—or at the very least popularizing the area as a summertime destination for wealthy expats. In the early 1920s, Antibes was still a glorious little backwater; the Biarritz crowds that Hemingway so loathed stayed away. “Summer on the Mediterranean was regarded as unhealthy and no one would go down there,” recalled Archibald MacLeish, adding that one could rent “almost anything for nothing” (Reflections, 43).

  172 “burnished blue-steel”: Honoria Donnelly, Sara & Gerald, 18; heliotrope, eucalyptus, and tomatoes: Dos Passos, The Best Times, 168.

  172 opera-length pearl necklace: The Murphys’ granddaughter Laura Donnelly recalls a jewelry inventory that belonged to her grandfather, which included details of the 104-pearl strand. F. Scott Fitzgerald later immortalized the necklace in his Tender Is the Night character Nicole Diver—inspired by Sara—who also wore a pearl necklace to the beach, draped down her back. Picasso painted Sara wearing those pearls. Laura Donnelly says that the pearls immortalized by greats of the literary and art worlds have since “disappeared,” although she still possesses other jewelry once belonging to her famous grandparents. Laura Donnelly, interview with the author, September 23, 2014.

  172 offer them to: Roger Angell, interview with the author, October 7, 2014.

  172 “They would never”: MacLeish, Reflections, 46.

  173 “a grand distance”: Hadley Hemingway to Ernest Hemingway, two letters, both May 1926, Incoming Correspondence, Hadley Richardson Hemingway Mowrer, 1926 folder, Ernest Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum; sent them necessities: ibid.

  173 shot of whisky: “Yesterday I . . . got so low I went downtown and spent 8 frcs. on some whiskey and felt repentant.” Hadley Hemingway to Ernest Hemingway, May 1926, Incoming Correspondence, Hadley Richardson Hemingway Mowrer, 1926 folder, Ernest Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. On her loneliness, she reported in the same letter, “I don’t talk to a soul except Marie [the nanny] all day.”

  173 “Pfeiffer is stopping”: Hadley Hemingway to Ernest Hemingway, May 1926, Incoming Correspondence, Hadley Richardson Hemingway Mowrer, 1926 folder, Ernest Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

  174 alleviate the little: Hadley told biographer Alice Sokoloff that she thought Hemingway had drafted a “pathetic letter” depicting her and Bumby’s loneliness, thus prompting a Good Samaritan visit from Pauline. Sokoloff, Hadley, 88. For speculation that Hadley accepted Pauline’s visit out of fear that she’d otherwise join Hemingway in Spain, see Hawkins, Unbelievable Happiness and Final Sorrow, 53.

  173 “to stop off”: Hadley Hemingway to Ernest Hemingway, May 21, 1926, Incoming Correspondence, Hadley Richardson Hemingway Mowrer, 1926 folder, Ernest Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

  174 “She’s sorry for”: Hadley Hemingway to Ernest Hemingway, May 1926, Incoming Correspondence, Hadley Richardson Hemingway Mowrer, 1926 folder, Ernest Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

  174 “a splendid place”: Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, 159.

  174 colored-glass garland: Sokoloff, Hadley, 87.

  174 “domestic difficulties”: Zelda Fitzgerald paraphrased in Mayfield, Exiles from Paradise, 112.

  174 “[My father] was unable”: Donnelly, Sara & Gerald, 152.

  175 “Why do you”: Calvin Tomkins, interview with the author, September 10, 2014.

  175 “committing suicide on”: Mayfield, Exiles from Paradise, 116.

  175 “sense of carnival”: Zelda Fitzgerald to Maxwell Perkins, September 1926, quoted in Miller, Letters from the Lost Generation, 5.

  175 their inebriated hijinks: Mayfield, Exiles from Paradise, 114–16.

  175 “We cannot”: Sara Murphy to F. Scott Fitzgerald, ca. summer 1926, reprinted in Miller, Letters from the Lost Generation, 18.

  176 “What we loved”: Tomkins, Living Well Is the Best Revenge, 109.

  176 “Scott was a”: Calvin Tomkins, interview with the author, September 11, 2014. Gerald Murphy once told Tomkins: “The one we took seriously was Ernest, not Scott. I suppose it was because Ernest’s work seemed contemporary and new, and Scott’s didn’t.” Tomkins, Living Well Is the Best Revenge, 117.

  176 “People watched Hemingway”: MacLeish, Reflections, 60–61.

  176 his skin had: As recounted by Sara Mayfield, who spent time with the Fitzgeralds during this period, in Exiles from Paradise, 113.

  176 “Scott is writing”: Zelda Fitzgerald to Madeline Boyd, July 2, 1926, transcribed on the website of Sotheby’s, which auctioned the letter in 2004 (http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/lot.pdf.N07980.html/f/65/N07980-65.pdf), and also partly quoted in Bruccoli, Fitzgerald and Hemingway, 63.

  177 “truly more interested”: Hotchner, Papa Hemingway, 55.

  177 “certain qualifications”: F. Scott Fitzgerald to Maxwell Perkins, ca. June 28, 1926, F. Scott Fitzgerald file, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

  178 “careless”: The entire contents of the ca. June 1926 letter are reprinted in Sarason, Hemingway and the Sun Set, 256–59.

  179 “I think it”: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, June 5, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

  179 “The only effect”: F. Scott Fitzgerald to John O’Hara, July 25, 1936, reprinted in Bruccoli, F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters, 303.

  179 THE SUN ALSO: Ernest Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald, ca. November 24, 1926, reprinted in Sanderson, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 3:164.

  180 “I have hardly”: Maxwell Perkins to Ernest Hemingway, July 20, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

  180 “After all if”: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, August 26, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton Uni
versity Library.

  180 “very good dope”: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, November 16, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

  180 “make one understand”: Maxwell Perkins to Ernest Hemingway, October 30, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

  180 “all the fucking”: Ernest Hemingway to Ezra Pound, February 13, 1927, reprinted in Sanderson, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 3:202.

  181 “Henry James is”: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, June 5, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

  181 “There are four”: Maxwell Perkins to Ernest Hemingway, July 20, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

  181 “Henry or Whatsisname”: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, August 21, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

  181 “An Englishman will”: Maxwell Perkins to Ernest Hemingway, July 20, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

  181 “not imaginary”: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, November 16, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

  181 “protected”: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, November 16, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

  182 “It would be”: Maxwell Perkins to Ernest Hemingway, July 20, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

  182 “I have never”: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, July 24, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

  182 “Perhaps we will”: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, August 21, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

  183 group activities: Sokoloff, Hadley, 88.

  183 crawled into bed: Diliberto, Paris Without End, 219.

  183 rooting for Pauline: Sokoloff, Hadley, 88.

  183 “As for you”: Gerald Murphy to Ernest Hemingway, July 14, 1926, reprinted in Miller, Letters from the Lost Generation, 19.

  183 “miscast”: Gerald Murphy to Ernest Hemingway, September 6, 1926, reprinted ibid., 22. According to Calvin Tomkins, the Murphys nevertheless felt affection for Hadley as a person (interview with the author, September 10, 2014).

  184 Hemingway-led tours: By the following year, even comedian Harpo Marx would make a bid to be included in Hemingway’s Pamplona excursions. In 1927 Gerald Murphy sent Hemingway a postcard proclaiming, “Harpo Marx wants to go to Pamplona.” The Murphys were friends with Marx and had told him of their memorable time in Pamplona with the Hemingways in 1926. Donnelly, Sara & Gerald, 166.

  184 “He had absolutely”: Gerald Murphy to Calvin Tomkins, quoted in Tomkins, Living Well Is the Best Revenge, 115.

  184 “Dansa Charles-ton!”: Ibid., 114.

  185 to look distinctly forlorn: Baker, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, 172.

  185 “I am going”: Pauline Pfeiffer to Ernest and Hadley Hemingway, July 15, 1926, quoted ibid., 172.

  185 “[It is] an awfully”: Ernest Hemingway to Henry Strater, ca. July 24, 1926, reprinted in Sanderson, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 3:101.

  185 “his name known”: Stewart, By a Stroke of Luck! 155. For Stewart’s bachelor party attendees, see ibid., 156.

  185 “Hadley’s tempo is”: Gerald Murphy to Ernest Hemingway, September 6, 1926, reprinted in Miller, Letters from the Lost Generation, 21–22.

  185 “believe in what”: Gerald and Sara Murphy to Ernest Hemingway, ca. fall 1926, reprinted ibid., 23.

  186 “evil”: Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, 219.

  186 TO HADLEY RICHARDSON: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, August 26, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

  12. How Happy Are Kings

  191 three more months: Pauline Pfeiffer to Ernest Hemingway, October 2, 1926, Incoming Correspondence, Pauline Pfeiffer Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

  191 financial settlement: Pauline Pfeiffer to Ernest Hemingway, October 25, 1926, Incoming Correspondence, Pauline Pfeiffer Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

  191 “All I want”: Ernest Hemingway to Pauline Pfeiffer, November 12, 1926, reprinted in Sanderson, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 3:141.

  192 “Trying unusual experiment”: Ernest Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald, ca. September 7, 1926, reprinted ibid., 118. Hemingway was quoting from and deliberating the poem “Happy Thought” by Robert Louis Stevenson. During this period, somewhat astonishingly, Hemingway even penned a desperate letter to Sherwood Anderson, describing his relentless insomnia and complaining about feeling burdened. Ernest Hemingway to Sherwood Anderson, ca. September 7, 1926, reprinted ibid., 115.

  192 “I’d rather die”: Ernest Hemingway to Pauline Pfeiffer, November 12, 1926, reprinted ibid., 140.

  192 “You may not”: Maxwell Perkins to Ernest Hemingway, August 20, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

  192 “They gain an”: Maxwell Perkins to Ernest Hemingway, September 8, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

  193 had appalled her: Meade, Dorothy Parker, 167–68. Hemingway had mentioned Parker’s trip to Spain in a missive to Fitzgerald earlier that year, adding that “of course [she] hated it.” Ernest Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald, May 4, 1926, reprinted in Sanderson, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 3:71.

  194 “viciously unfair”: Stewart, By a Stroke of Luck! 157. Hemingway was not the only person who was unsympathetic to and callous about Dorothy Parker’s suicide attempts. Zelda Fitzgerald would write to a friend, “Dorothy Parker is here [in Paris] showing her wounds.” Zelda Fitzgerald to Madeline Boyd, July 2, 1926, reprinted on Sotheby’s website, http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/lot.pdf.N07980.html/f/65/N07980-65.pdf.

  194 “No one else”: St. John, “Interview with Donald Ogden Stewart,” 199.

  194 one of her favorite: Meade, Dorothy Parker, 170.

  194 “just dying of”: Sokoloff, Hadley, 91.

  195 “We have three”: Maxwell Perkins to Ernest Hemingway, March 2, 1927, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

  195 “any kind of”: Maxwell Perkins to Ernest Hemingway, January 25, 1927, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

  195 “Papers are glad”: Maxwell Perkins to Ernest Hemingway, January 28, 1927, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

  195 “I would rather”: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, February 14, 1927, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

  196 “I never went”: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, February 19, 1927, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

  196 “If I break”: Ibid.

  196 “had Scott [Fitzgerald]”: Maxwell Perkins to Ernest Hemingway, March 2, 1927, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

  196 “We are preparing”: Maxwell Perkins to F. Scott Fitzgerald, January 6, 1927, F. Scott Fitzgerald Files, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

  197 “They are not”: Maxwell Perkins to Ernest Hemingway, September 8, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

  197 “more than a best-seller”: Advertisement reprinted in Bruccoli, Smith, and Kerr, Romantic Egoists, 62.

  197 “not only cold”: Heywood Broun in the New York Herald Tribune, quoted ibid., 59; “HEYWOOD BROUN scoffs”: Advertisement quoted ibid.; “cracking good stuff”: Harry E. Dounce in the New York Sun, quoted ibid.

  197 “The book is”: Press release, Publicity and Promotion Files, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library. />
  198 “quiver[ed] with life”: Charles Scribner’s Sons, fall 1926 catalogue, excerpted in Trogdon, The Lousy Racket, 44–45.

  198 easier for publications: Maxwell Perkins to Ernest Hemingway, November 26, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

  198 “With [this novel’s] publication”: See, for example, advertisement for The Sun Also Rises, The New Yorker, October 23, 1926, 82.

  198 No demographic was: For a full list of publications in which The Sun Also Rises was advertised, see advertising records, 1917–1965, “Howard—Hemingway” folder, box 3, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

  198 “Cleon”: The artist’s full name was Cleonike Damianakes Wilkins; she created cover art for books by a handful of seminal inner-circle Paris Lost Generation expats, including All the Sad Young Men by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Save Me the Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald. Scribner’s used her for two later Hemingway covers: A Farewell to Arms and a reissue of In Our Time. Hemingway detested the cover for Farewell. Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, October 4, 1929, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library. Cleon was paid a mere $50 “wrap design” fee to create the now famous image that adorned the first American edition of The Sun Also Rises—around $700 today. She eventually fell out of fashion. According to her niece Noel Osheroff, Cleon’s career went into decline when abstract art came into vogue—“and that wasn’t her thing,” says Osheroff. Noel Osheroff, interview with the author, May 1, 2014. For more information, see the collection of Scribner’s cover cards, Brandywine Conservancy and Museum of Art, Chadd’s Ford, Pa.

  199 “very much like”: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, November 16, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

  199 “This is the”: “Marital Tragedy,” New York Times, October 31, 1926, 7; “No one need”: The New Republic, review of The Sun Also Rises, December 22, 1926.

  199 “It is alive”: Conrad Aiken, review of The Sun Also Rises, New York Herald Tribune, October 31, 1926.