"No. It's been operated of course. Should we not talk about our bodies? I'm so happy your tests are negative. That's wonderful, Hem. You'll forgive me speaking so seriously about your writing. I'm asking you to do the opposite of what I've done about my poetry. You understand why. We never had to make explanations to each other. I write about my now. It is the horses. You have a very interesting now. And you've made me presents of many places and people."
"Let's go in and find some, Evan. I had a whole bit left from the boat. But I did not like to leave it around the place so I burned it probably."
"We might miss him on the way."
"I'll call another doctor. There's no sense waiting longer when it is unbearable."
"Please don't bother. I should have brought it myself. I'm sure he will be coming. I'll just go over to the little house a moment if you don't mind and lie down. Hem, you won't forget about the writing?"
"No," I said. "I won't forget about the writing."
I went out to the telephone. No, I thought. I would not forget about the writing. That was what I was born to do and had done and would do again. Anything they said about them, the novels or the stories or about who wrote them was all right by me.
But there are remises or storage places where you may leave or store certain things such as a locker trunk or duffel bag containing personal effects or the unpublished poems of Evan Shipman or marked maps or even weapons there was no time to turn over to the proper authorities and this book contains material from the remises of my memory and of my heart. Even if the one has been tampered with and the other does not exist.
FRAGMENTS
The following fragments are transcriptions of handwritten drafts of false starts for the introduction. They are gathered in item 122 in the Hemingway Collection at the John F. Kennedy library in Boston.
This book is fiction. I have left out much and changed and eliminated and I hope Hadley understands. She will see why I hope. She is the heroine and the only person who had a life that turned out well and as it should except certain of the rich.
*
This book is fiction. I have left out much and changed and eliminated and I hope Hadley understands. A book of fiction may eliminate and distort but it tries to give a fictional picture of a time and the people in it. No one can write true fact in reminiscences; Evan would back you up but he is dead. Scott would disagree. Miss Moorehead would sue if you published anything against Walsh and she had many letters and much basis to sue on. The story about Walsh will have to come out.
*
This book is all fiction and the fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact. Hadley is the heroine and I hope she will understand and forgive me writing fiction, some others never will. It is hopeless not to expect to be sued by people all of whose names begin with Miss.
*
This book is fiction. But there is always a chance that such a work of fiction may throw light on what has been written as fact.
*
There is much about poverty but it was not all poverty. Hadley would know and understand why certain things were altered I hope and why it was fiction. She would understand why fiction is fiction and when it is fact. Other people will not understand why they are included or not included. Everyone sees it differently and nearly forty years are gone. Characters that seemed strongest and most important to themselves are not there afterwards although, to themselves, they are always more there than anyone. Most of the voyages are not there nor many people that we loved and cared for deeply. It has been cut ruthlessly as fiction should be.
The worst part of it is that you cannot publish it after you are dead because people will still sue even though you change the names and call it fiction as it is. Hadley would not sue because she is the heroine and would understand when you wrote fiction with her in it.
*
This book is fiction but there is always a chance that such a work of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact.
*
It was necessary to write as fiction rather than as fact and Hadley would understand I hope why it was necessary to use certain materials or fiction rightly or wrongly. All remembrance of things past is fiction and this fiction has been cut ruthlessly and people cut away just as most of the voyages are gone along with people that we cared for deeply. Only they knew certain things. Other people are not there as people are not there in life afterwards although, to themselves, they are always more there than anyone.
*
There is no last chapter. There were fifty. I hope some people will understand and forgive the fiction and why it was made that way. It has been cut ruthlessly and many things changed. Many voyages have been omitted along with many people. There is no catalogue of omissions or subtractions. The lesson that it teaches has been omitted. You may insert your own lesson and the tragedies, generosities, devotions, and follies of those you knew, unscramble them as in an instrument of transmission and insert your own. You will be wrong of course as I was.
Two things are important. Nothing lasted with us no matter how well intended and they ski much better now than they did in our time. Nobody has to climb on seal skins anymore unless they want to but they are beautifully instructed now and are better in everything. People break their legs and in the world some people still break their hearts. They come down faster and they drop like birds that know many secrets. They have no time to tell their secrets as they pass. Everyone knows many secrets now and everyone has written everything and will write more. It would be fine if it could all be true but lacking that I have attempted in this fiction only to make it interesting. Nobody was invulnerable but we thought we were then and hearing someone's voice over the telephone you know they still are and that they deserve it.
*
This book is fiction and many things have been changed in fact to try to make it a picture of a true time.
There is no formula to explain why this book is fiction nor will it be effective.
It seemed so easy when it started. Then you found mistakes and errors.
*
This book is fiction and should be read as such. It may throw some light on other books that have been written as fact. I apologize to Hadley for any mis-representations or mistakes or for any errors. She is the heroine of the stories and I hope she understands. She deserves everything good in life including accurate reporting.
*
This book is fiction but there is always a chance that such a work of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact.
Hadley would understand why it could be necessary to write as fiction rather than as fact and she would see what I have used as the materials for fiction rightly or wrongly. Scott has his own fiction and I wrote about his complicated tragedies, his generosities and his devotions and left them out. Others have written of him and I have tried to help them out. Almost everyone is out along with most of the voyages, the people that we knew and loved and the things they and they alone knew. Only a part of the Paris that we knew is in this book and I will not catalogue what is missing. It is not easy to put in the missing all in fiction and it is all in if you leave it out.
They ski much better now and some break their legs and some break their hearts. The latter is important and unfortunate and some good philosophers explain how you can not break them if they were not there and something happened and they did not exist. The important thing is that they should ski better and they do. They also write better and everything including several wars and all that comes between helped on that along with every good writer from the start. Remembrance of Things Past was fiction too.
The following fragment may have been intended as a revision for "The Education of Mr. Bumby. It is Item 186 in the Hemingway Collection at the John F. Kennedy library, Boston.
In those days it was no disgrace to be crazy, but, on the other hand, you got no credit for it. We, who had been at the war, admired the war crazies since we knew they had been made so by somethi
ng that was unbearable. It was unbearable to them because they were made of a finer or more fragile metal or because they were simple and understood too clearly.
The following fragments are transcribed from handwritten drafts for the ending of the book. They are item 124 in the Hemingway Collection at the John F. Kennedy library, Boston.
There was much more to write about poor Scott and his complicated tragedies, his generosities and his devotions and I wrote those and left them out. Other people have written about him and the ones who wrote about him, and did not know him, I tried to help out on the parts about him that I knew, telling them of his great generosities and his kindnesses. But this is about the first part of Paris and certain true aspects of it and Scott did not know the early Paris that we knew and loved and worked in and that always seemed different to me from anything that I have ever read about it. All of that Paris you could never put into a single book and I have tried to write by the old rule that how good a book is should be judged, by the man who writes it, by the excellence of the material that he eliminates. So much that was interesting and instructive is gone and this book is an attempt to distill rather than to amplify. Andre Masson and Miro are not there as they should be and will be nor Gide teaching me how to punish a cat nor how Evan Shipman and Harold Stearns ran through Evan's fortune when he came of age, but this is straight out of Dostoyevsky. Nor did I mention up in the old Stade Anastasie on the rue Pelleport [nor Menilmontant] where the fighters worked as waiters and training Larry Gains and all the great fights at the old Cirque d'Hiver and the Cirque de Paris nor many of my best friends, Bill Bird nor Mike Strater nor the Black Forest, nor stories of Ezra and of Eliot and Bel Esprit and the time Ezra left me the jar of opium for Cheever Dunning, nor the truth about Ford. I cut ruthlessly and I hope it makes what is in stronger. I left out when it started with Pauline. That would have been a good way to end this book except that it was a beginning not an ending. Anyway I wrote it and left it out. It is intact and it starts another book. You can only write it in fiction of course. It has the most happiness in it and it is the saddest book I know. But it comes later.
There is never any end to Paris but maybe this will give you some true part of the people and places and the country when Hadley and I believed that we were invulnerable. But we were not invulnerable and that was the end of the first part of Paris. Nobody climbs on skis now and almost everybody breaks their legs and maybe it is easier in the end to break your legs than to break your heart although they say that everything breaks now and that, sometimes, many are stronger at the broken places. I do not know about that now, although I remember who said it. But this is how Paris and other places were in the early days when we were very poor and very happy. There is another book about the parts that are missing and there are always the stories that were lost.
*
So this is the end of it for now. There was never any end to Paris. But this is the end of the first basic part that always seemed different to me from anything that I had ever read about it.
There is much more to write about Scott and his complicated tragedies, generosities and devotions and I wrote them and left them out. Other people have written them and on the parts I knew I tried to help them. This is about the first part of Paris and Scott did not know the early Paris that we knew and loved and worked in. That Paris you could never put into a single book and I have tried to write by the old rule that how good a book is should be judged by the man who writes it by the excellence of the material that he eliminates. The second part of Paris was wonderful although it started tragically enough. That part, the part with Pauline, I have not eliminated but have saved for the start of another book. It is a start rather than an ending.
It could be a good book because it tells many things that no one knows or can ever know and it has love, remorse, contrition, and unbelievable happiness and final sorrow.
That part, the part with Pauline, I have not eliminated but have saved for the start of another book. It is called The Pilot Fish and The Rich and Other Stories.
*
There is no mention of Menilmontant nor of the Stade Anastasie up the steep rue Pelleforte where the boxers of the Anastasie stable served as waiters at the tables set out under the trees and the ring was in the garden, nor of training Larry Gains, nor of the early days of Paolino, nor the great twenty round fights at the Cirque d'Hiver and the Cirque de Paris nor things that only three of my best friends, Charley Sweeney, Bill Bird or Mike Strater knew. I left out most of the voyages and I left out people that I loved or cared for deeply and other people are not there as people are not there in life, afterwards, although, to themselves, they are always more there than anyone.
*
If, in your time, you have ever heard four honest people disagree about what happened at a certain place at a certain time, or you have ever torn up and returned orders that you requested when a situation had reached such a point that it seemed necessary to have something in writing, or testified before an inspector general when allegations had been made, presenting new statements by others that replaced your written orders and your verbal orders, you, remembering certain things and how they were to you and who had fought and where, you prefer to write about any time as fiction.
*
There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were nor how it was changed nor with what difficulties nor what ease it could be reached. It was always worth it and we received a return for whatever we brought to it.
APPENDIX I
CONCORDANCE OF ITEM NUMBERS FOR THE ADDITIONAL PARIS SKETCHES
All of the following item numbers refer to the cataloging system of the Hemingway Collection at the John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts.
"Birth of A New School," Item 155
"Ezra Pound and His Bel Esprit," Item 161
"On Writing in the First Person," Item 179a "Secret Pleasures," Item 256
"A Strange Fight Club," Item 185
"The Acrid Smell of Lies," Item 180
"The Education of Mr. Bumby," Item 185a "Scott and His Parisian Chauffeur," Item 183
"The Pilot Fish and the Rich," Item 123
"Nada y Pues Nada," Item 124a
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
1. Mary Hemingway, "The Making of the Book: A Chronicle and A Memoir," New York Times Book Review, May 10, 1964, 26-27; Mary Hemingway, How It Was (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976), 440, 444.
2. My mother, Valerie Hemingway, remembers my grandfather telling her, when she was working as his secretary in Paris in the fall of 1959, that he got the idea for the Paris sketches after the plane crashes. See Valerie Hemingway, Running with the Bulls: My Years with the Hemingways (New York: Ballantine, 2004), 77. She also helped with the typing of the manuscript of A Moveable Feast.
3. For a thorough, scholarly examination of the existing manuscripts from the book, see Jacqueline Tavernier-Courbin, Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast: The Making of Myth (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1991). See also Gerry Brenner, A Comprehensive Companion to Hemingway's A Moveable Feast: Annotation to Interpretation, 2 bks. (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2000), which is the most comprehensive scholarly publication on A Moveable Feast, and also contains many comments on the manuscript, arranged according to the published chapters.
4. For a reproduction of the letter, see Brenner, book 1 (supra n. 3), following p. 215.
5. Hemingway Papers, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum, Item nos. 188-89.
6. Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1964), 147.
7. See Sean Hemingway, ed., Hemingway on War (New York: Scribner, 2003), especially, xxxi; Michael Reynolds, Hemingway's First War: The Making of A Farewell to Arms (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976).
8. See Michael Reynolds, Hemingway: The Paris Years (New York: W.W. Norton and Co. Limited, 1989), 98, footnot
e 16.
9. See J. Gerald Kennedy, Imagining Paris: Exile, Writing, and American Identity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), especially 128-37; J. Gerald Kennedy, "Hemingway's Gender Trouble," American Literature 63.2 (June 1991), 187-207.
10. See, for example, "My Pal the Gorilla Gargantua," Ken, July 28, 1938, reprinted in Sean Hemingway, ed., Hemingway on Hunting (Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2001), 187-91.
11. See, for example, Bernard J. Poli, Ford Madox Ford and the Transatlantic Review (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1967); Arthur Mizener, The Saddest Story: A Biography of Ford Madox Ford (New York: The World Publishing Company, 1971).
12. See George Plimpton, introduction in A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway (Norwalk, CT: The Easton Press, 1990), v-xi.
13. On Ernest Hemingway's collection of art, see Colette C. Hemingway, in his time: Ernest Hemingway's Collection of Paintings and the Artists He Knew (Naples, FL: Kilimanjaro Press, 2009).
14. In the archives of Charles Scribner's Sons Hemingway Correspondence, Princeton University Libraries. Reproduced in Gerry Brenner, A Comprehensive Companion to Hemingway's A Moveable Feast: Annotation to Interpretation, Book 1 (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2000), 215.
15. Reynolds, Hemingway: The Paris Years, 115.
16. In a letter dated February 6, 1961, to Harry Brague, his editor at Scribner's for the book, Hemingway asked for copies of The Oxford Book of English Verse and The King James Bible for "titleing." See George Plimpton, introduction in A Moveable Feast, vii.
17. For an illuminating discussion of this, see Colette C. Hemingway, in his time, 1-10.
18. Hemingway's personal copy of Ulysses, a first edition imprint published by Sylvia Beach, can be seen at the Hemingway Room of the J. F. Kennedy library in Boston, Massachusetts. Hemingway was deeply impressed with Joyce as a writer and it is likely that he also saw Joyce's own memoir, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, as a significant predecessor to A Moveable Feast.
19. A. E. Hotchner, Papa Hemingway: A Personal Memoir (New York: Random House, 1966), 57.