Hemingway's First Marriage to Elizabeth Hadley Richardson

Hemingway went back to Michigan after leaving the ambulance service.

He was trying to find a job, which was proving difficult. He eventually found a job as a reporter for the Co-operative Commonwealth, a slick paper monthly magazine put out by the Co-operative Society of America.

He was earning just forty dollars a week and he was unhappy and unfulfilled, worrying about his health and his future.

Meeting Elizabeth Hadley Richardson in a friends apartment seemed to put a spring back into his step.

Elizabeth was twenty eight, educated at Mary Institute, a private school for girls and she appeared unworldly, naieve and inexperienced. Although eight years older than Hemingway they married on September 3rd 1920 in the country church at Horton Bay. Their wedding feast was a chicken dinner.

Their honeymoon was spent at Hemingway's father's house at Bear Lake, where Hemingway had spent most of his summers in childhood. After the honeymoon they lived in a small top floor apartment in the 1300 block of North Clark Sttreet. It was grubby and depressing.

Hemingway was not working. He had given up his job with the Co-operative Commonwealth.

He and his wife, Elizabeth, known as Hadley, lived only on her trust fund income, although Hemingway still submitted the occasional article to the Toronto Star.

They lived frugally in order to save up for a trip to Europe and shortly after their marriage they left for Paris. By January 9th 1922 they were living in a fourth floor apartment at 74 rue du Cardinal Lemoine. Ernest wrote his family that he was living in the best part of the Latin Quarter, when in truth the apartment was squalid and sparsely furnished.

Hemingway set to work writing and working on a novel he'd boasted he started in Chicago. He visited Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein in Paris with his wife. Both Pound and Stein were to be a very great influence on Hemingway's style of writing.

Hemingway, desperate to see the world went with Hadley to Italy. In Milan, Hemingway, with the aid of his Press Card arranged a meeting with Mussolini, the emergent leader of the Black Shirts.

He also relived his time in the ambulance service and showed Hadley all the places he'd been to and had been wounded in.

Shortly after their return to Paris, Hemingway left for Constantinople to cover the war between Greece and Turkey. Hadley was furious and did not want him to go.

He was away for three weeks covering the war and when he returned he was covered in bug bites and his hair was so lowsey his head had to be shaved. He brought back peace offerings for Hadley - a necklace of Ivory and one of Amber.

By now Hemingway had some slight notoriety both for his journalism and for his service in the ambulance corps and his first portrait was painted by Henry Strater. It was the first likeness of Hemingway to show the new moustache he had begun to cultivate.

Hemingway by Henry Strater (1896-1987) / Oil on panel, 1922/23

Hadley became pregnant but they took a trip to northern Spain, Pamplona. They were there for the fiesta on the sixth of July and both were amazed at the bullfights and the running of the bulls in the streets. This trip and a couple of others to Spain were to be the foundation of his novel, 'The Sun Also Rises' also sometimes called 'Fiesta'.

They returned to Paris but then went on to Canada so their baby could be born on American soil. By this time Hemingway had written a series of sketches called 'Three Stories and Ten Poems' which were to be published.

Hadley gave birth to a boy to be called, John Hadley Nicanor Hemingway.

Hemingway was now a fully fledged author and his newspaper work was confined to feature articles for the Star Weekly.

He did not enjoy journalism any more and he wrote to Gertrude Stein, now a very good friend in Paris, that he was going to give journalism up and concentrate soley on writing novels.

True to his word on January 1st 1924, Hemingway resigned from the Star. On January 13th Hemingway, his wife and their baby son returned to Paris.

Hemingway and Hadley did a lot of travelling to Europe, Spain, Switzerland during their marriage. Hemingway wrote another novel besides The Sun Also Rises, The Torrents of Spring during their five year marriage.

They separated after Hadley found out about his affair with a Vogue Editor from Arkansas called Pauline Pfeiffer. Hemingway dedicated The Sun Also Rises to Hadley and to his son, John Hadley Nicanor. It was, he said, the least he could do.

All royalties from this book also went to Hadley. Hemingway was, it was said, devastated that he was losing a woman he had loved and still loved.

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