Ernest Hemingway
Shortly after her mother's death, in December 1920, Hadley visited her old roommate Katie Smith (who would later marry John Dos Passos) in Chicago and through her met Hemingway, who was living with Smith's brother and employed as an associate editor of the monthly journal Cooperative Commonwealth. When Hadley returned to St. Louis, Hemingway, who became infatuated with her, wrote "I knew she was the girl I was going to marry". Hadley was red-haired, with a "nurturing instinct", and eight years older than Hemingway. Bernice Kert, author of The Hemingway Women claims Hadley was "evocative" of the woman whom Hemingway met and fell in love with during his recuperation from injuries during World War I, Agnes von Kurowsky, but in Hadley Hemingway saw a childishness Agnes lacked.
During the winter of 1921 Hadley took up her music again and indulged in outdoor activities. She and Hemingway corresponded during the winter. When she expressed misgivings about their age difference he "protested that it made no difference at all." Hemingway visited her in St. Louis in March and two weeks later she visited him in Chicago. They did not see each other for two months until he returned to St. Louis in May. In their correspondence she promised to buy him a Corona typewriter for his birthday. In June she announced her engagement, despite objections to the marriage from his friends and her sister. Hadley believed she knew what she was doing and, more importantly, she had an inheritance with which to support herself and a husband. She believed in Hemingway's talent and believed "she was right for him."
They were married on September 3, 1921, in Horton Bay, Michigan and spent their honeymoon at the Hemingway family summer cottage on Walloon Lake; however, the weather was miserable and both Hadley and Hemingway came down with fever, sore throat, and cough. After the honeymoon the couple returned to Chicago where they lived in a small apartment on North Dearborn Street.
Initially they intended to visit Rome, but Sherwood Anderson convinced them to visit Paris instead. The recent death of an uncle gave Hadley another inheritance and additional financial independence for the couple. Anderson's advice to live in Paris interested her and, when two months later Hemingway was hired as foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star, the couple left for Paris. Of Hemingway's marriage to Hadley, Hemingway biographer Jeffrey Meyers claims: "With Hadley, Hemingway achieved everything he had hoped for with Agnes: the love of a beautiful woman, a comfortable income, a life in Europe."
Read more about this topic: Hadley Richardson
Famous quotes by ernest hemingway:
“There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things and because it takes a man’s life to know them the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“Only one marriage I regret. I remember after I got that marriage license I went across from the license bureau to a bar for a drink. The bartender said, ‘What will you have, sir?’ And I said, ‘A glass of hemlock.’”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“The rich were dull and they drank too much or they played too much backgammon. They were dull and they were repetitious. He remembered poor Julian and his romantic awe of them and how he had started a story once that began, ‘The very rich are different from you and me.’ And how someone had said to Julian, ‘Yes, they have more money.’”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“The individual, the great artist when he comes, uses everything that has been discovered or known about his art up to that point, being able to accept or reject in a time so short it seems that the knowledge was born with him, rather than that he takes instantly what it takes the ordinary man a lifetime to know, and then the great artist goes beyond what has been done or known and makes something of his own.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)