Hadley Richardson - Ernest Hemingway

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."