Ernest Hemingway: A Life From Beginning to End (Biographies of American Authors Book 1) by Hourly History

Author:Hourly History [History, Hourly]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, pdf
Publisher: Hourly History
Published: 2018-07-16T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

Suicide in the Family

“It is brutal, it is terrific, it is awesome, it is coarse, it is vulgar, it is beautiful, it is all sorts of contradictory things.”

—A Chicago Tribune reviewer for A Farewell to Arms

In December of 1925, Hemingway went to Austria with Hadley and Bumby for another skiing trip. At Christmas, one of Hadley’s friends, Pauline Pfeiffer, joined the family for a brief time. Pauline, the assistant editor of Paris Vogue, enjoyed her time with the Hemingways and particularly Ernest. Ernest also began to feel more than simple friendship towards Pauline.

When he traveled from Austria through Paris on his way to sail to New York in January, Hemingway met Pauline again, and the two began an affair. When he returned to Europe in March, instead of going back to Hadley and Bumby in Austria, he chose to spend time with Pauline. Hemingway called her “Pilar,” a name that referred to the patron saint of a region of northern Spain, the Virgin of Pilar. But Hemingway instantly regretted the affair when he saw Hadley and Bumby at the train station in Schruns, Austria, as he remembered how much he loved his wife and child. He wrote, “I wished I had died before I ever loved anyone but her,” and decided he needed to forget about Pauline.

At the same time, his books had come out in America. While The Torrents of Spring received little attention and mainly succeeded in ending Hemingway’s friendship with Anderson, The Sun Also Rises received great critical acclaim and made the name Ernest Hemingway famous. His parents, however, were disappointed by the book; they saw it as indecent, and they were ashamed that their son had written it. Hemingway did not write to them for months afterward.

The Hemingways eventually moved back to Paris. There, despite his previous resolve, Ernest and Pauline continued what Ernest called “the other thing.” Hadley found out in May. After a summer of grief, she suggested a compromise: she would grant Hemingway a divorce, if he wanted it, after he and Pauline remained apart for 100 days. And so, Pauline traveled to Arkansas, Hemingway remained in Paris to watch Bumby, and Hadley took time to be alone in Chartres, France. In January, Pauline sailed back to France, and Hemingway met her ship just over 100 days after she had left. As the divorce was finalized, he signed his earning from The Sun Also Rises over to Hadley; the book was selling very successfully and gave her a significant income.

In May, Hemingway and Pauline were married. While they took their honeymoon on the coast of France, Hemingway wrote the short story “Hills Like White Elephants,” acclaimed as one of his best. In the summer, he and Pauline went to Pamplona, and Hemingway also finally wrote to his parents to tell them about his divorce and new marriage. He told his family he would always love Hadley and Bumby and take care of them, but that he also could not stop loving Pauline, now his wife, and felt certain this was “not to be ashamed of.

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