he had a kind of dramatic intensity that lent everything a lovely hardness and charge. He was just short of magnificent when he began to talk about Paris over dinner.
“What about Rome?” Ernest asked, filling him in on our longstanding plans to move to Italy.
“Rome certainly has its appeal,” Anderson said, blowing smoke away from his empty plate, “la dolce vita and all that. What’s not to like about Italy? But if you want to do any serious work, Paris is the place to be. That’s where the real writers are now. The rate of exchange is good. There are things to do at any hour. Everything’s interesting and everyone has something to contribute. Paris, Hem. Give it some thought.”
After we climbed into our cold little bed that night, snuggling closer to warm our feet and hands, Ernest asked me what I thought of the idea.
“Can we just switch so quickly? We’ve done so much planning.”
“Rome will be there whenever we want it—but Paris. I want to follow the current. Anderson knows his stuff, and if he says Paris is where we want to be, we should at least seriously consider it.”
We were still so broke the whole thing would have been a moot point, but then I got news that my uncle, Arthur Wyman, had died and left me an inheritance of eight thousand dollars. He’d been ill for some time, but the gift was completely unexpected. That amount of money—a fortune to us—guaranteed our trip abroad overnight. As soon as we heard, Ernest went to see Sherwood in his office downtown and told him we were keen on Paris. Was there anything he could do to pave the way? Where should we go? What neighborhood? What was the right way to go about things?
Anderson answered all of his questions in turn. Montparnasse was the best quarter for artists and writers. Until we found a place, we should stay at the Hôtel Jacob off the rue Bonaparte. It was clean and affordable and there were lots of American intellectuals to be found there and nearby. Finally Anderson sat down at his desk and wrote Ernest letters of introduction to several of the famous expatriates he’d recently met and gotten friendly with, including Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and Sylvia Beach. All were or would soon become giants in the field of arts and letters, but we weren’t aware of this at the time, only that having Anderson’s letter as a calling card was essential. Ernest thanked him for everything he’d done and hurried home to read his words aloud to me in our dim kitchen, each of the letters saying essentially the same thing, that this Ernest Hemingway was an untried but very fine young newspaperman whose “extraordinary talent” would take him well beyond the scope of journalism.
In bed that night as we talked and dreamed about Paris, I whispered into Ernest’s ear, “Are you this fine young writer I’ve been hearing about?”
“God, I hope so.” He squeezed me hard.
On December 8, 1921, when the
Leopoldina
set sail for Europe, we were on board. Our life together had finally begun. We held on to each other and looked out at the sea. It was impossibly large and full of beauty and danger in equal parts—and we wanted it all.
TWELVE
Our first apartment in Paris was at 74 Cardinal Lemoine, two oddly shaped rooms on the fourth floor of a building next door to a public dance hall, a
bal musette
, where at any time of day you could buy a ticket to shuffle around the floor as the accordion wheezed a lively tune. Anderson had said Montparnasse, but we couldn’t afford it, or any of the other more fashionable areas. This was old Paris, the Fifth Arrondissement, far away from the good cafés and restaurants and teeming not with tourists but working-class Parisians with their carts and goats and fruit baskets and open begging palms. So many husbands and sons had been lost in the war, these were mostly women and children and old men, and that was as sobering as anything else about the place. The cobblestone street climbed and
“What about Rome?” Ernest asked, filling him in on our longstanding plans to move to Italy.
“Rome certainly has its appeal,” Anderson said, blowing smoke away from his empty plate, “la dolce vita and all that. What’s not to like about Italy? But if you want to do any serious work, Paris is the place to be. That’s where the real writers are now. The rate of exchange is good. There are things to do at any hour. Everything’s interesting and everyone has something to contribute. Paris, Hem. Give it some thought.”
After we climbed into our cold little bed that night, snuggling closer to warm our feet and hands, Ernest asked me what I thought of the idea.
“Can we just switch so quickly? We’ve done so much planning.”
“Rome will be there whenever we want it—but Paris. I want to follow the current. Anderson knows his stuff, and if he says Paris is where we want to be, we should at least seriously consider it.”
We were still so broke the whole thing would have been a moot point, but then I got news that my uncle, Arthur Wyman, had died and left me an inheritance of eight thousand dollars. He’d been ill for some time, but the gift was completely unexpected. That amount of money—a fortune to us—guaranteed our trip abroad overnight. As soon as we heard, Ernest went to see Sherwood in his office downtown and told him we were keen on Paris. Was there anything he could do to pave the way? Where should we go? What neighborhood? What was the right way to go about things?
Anderson answered all of his questions in turn. Montparnasse was the best quarter for artists and writers. Until we found a place, we should stay at the Hôtel Jacob off the rue Bonaparte. It was clean and affordable and there were lots of American intellectuals to be found there and nearby. Finally Anderson sat down at his desk and wrote Ernest letters of introduction to several of the famous expatriates he’d recently met and gotten friendly with, including Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and Sylvia Beach. All were or would soon become giants in the field of arts and letters, but we weren’t aware of this at the time, only that having Anderson’s letter as a calling card was essential. Ernest thanked him for everything he’d done and hurried home to read his words aloud to me in our dim kitchen, each of the letters saying essentially the same thing, that this Ernest Hemingway was an untried but very fine young newspaperman whose “extraordinary talent” would take him well beyond the scope of journalism.
In bed that night as we talked and dreamed about Paris, I whispered into Ernest’s ear, “Are you this fine young writer I’ve been hearing about?”
“God, I hope so.” He squeezed me hard.
On December 8, 1921, when the
Leopoldina
set sail for Europe, we were on board. Our life together had finally begun. We held on to each other and looked out at the sea. It was impossibly large and full of beauty and danger in equal parts—and we wanted it all.
TWELVE
Our first apartment in Paris was at 74 Cardinal Lemoine, two oddly shaped rooms on the fourth floor of a building next door to a public dance hall, a
bal musette
, where at any time of day you could buy a ticket to shuffle around the floor as the accordion wheezed a lively tune. Anderson had said Montparnasse, but we couldn’t afford it, or any of the other more fashionable areas. This was old Paris, the Fifth Arrondissement, far away from the good cafés and restaurants and teeming not with tourists but working-class Parisians with their carts and goats and fruit baskets and open begging palms. So many husbands and sons had been lost in the war, these were mostly women and children and old men, and that was as sobering as anything else about the place. The cobblestone street climbed and
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