Papa Hemingway (8 page)

"That was Gertrude Stein's pronouncement, not mine!" he snapped. "Gertrude repeating what some garage keeper in the Midi had told her about his apprentice mechanics:
une generation perdue.
Well, Gertrude ... a pronouncement was a pronouncement was a pronouncement. I only used it in the front of
Sun Also Rises
so I could counter it with what I thought. That passage from Ecclesiastes, that sound lost? 'One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever . . .' Solid endorsement for Mother Earth, right? 'The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose . . .' Solid endorsement for sun. Also endorses wind. Then the rivers—playing it safe across the board: 'All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.' Never could say thither. Look, Gertrude was a com-plainer. So she labeled that generation with her complaint. But it was bullshit. There was no movement, no tight band of pot-smoking nihilists wandering around looking for Mommy to lead them out of the dada wilderness. What there was, was a lot of people around the same age who had been through the war and now were writing or composing or whatever, and other people who had not been through the war and either wished they had been or wished they were writing or boasted about not being in the war. Nobody I knew at that time thought of himself as wearing the silks of the Lost Generation, or had even heard the label. We were a pretty solid mob. The characters in
Sun Also Rises
were tragic, but the real hero was the earth and you get the sense of its triumph in abiding forever."

On another day that the nags were resting at Auteuil, we walked across the Pont Royale to have lunch at the Closerie des Lilas, which was another of Ernest's fondly remembered haunts. On the way there Ernest pointed out a tall, narrow building where he had once lived with Pauline on the top floor. "It was a pleasant flat up there," Ernest said, "with a big skylight that kept the place light. A Bohemian named Jerry Kelley was visiting us one day—actually he was a reject dadaist—and he went in to use the can before departing. Instead of pulling the chain for the toilet, he grabbed hold of the skylight cord, gave it a heavy yank, and down came the skylight in a shower of glass. I was standing directly under it and the falling glass gashed my head open. When I saw the blood gushing out, my first thought was to keep it off my one and only suit. I ran into the bathroom and bent over and bled into the bathtub so as to save the suit. At the same time I put my thumb on the pressure point in my temple to slow down the blood, which was pouring out like a son-of-a-bitch. Pauline called Archie MacLeish, who got hold of a doctor pal of his from the American Hospital, Dr. Carl Weiss—same guy who years later shot Huey Long. He did a really terrible job on my head, leaving me with this patch of raised skin which enlarges when I get angry. Afterward we measured the blood in the bathtub and it came to more than a pint. Doctor did better job on Huey Long than he did on me.

"The next day I went to the bike races and that evening, feeling absolutely wonderful from the loss of all that blood, I finally began to write
A Farewell to Arms.
I had been ducking and dodging for almost two months, but that cut on the head, plus roughing up that lion, finally sprung me. Pauline had fixed up a fancy workroom for me with a Mexican desk, where I had been avoiding the start of
Farewell
by writing a long account of life in Michigan. I guess it would have been a novel about Nick Adams—but one day after I read through all that I had written over a two-month period, I wrote across the cover page, 'Too misty to be real'; then I destroyed it all.

"Besides trouble with that book, was also having hell of a tough time with Pauline. Don't know if it was autosuggestion from
Sun Also Rises
or maybe reaction to having just divorced Hadley, but I was in a hell of a jam—I couldn't make love. Had had very good bed with Pauline during all the time we were having our affair, and after Hadley left me, but after our marriage, suddenly I could no more make love than Jake Barnes. Pauline was very patient and understanding and we tried everything, but nothing worked. I became terribly discouraged. I had been to see several doctors. I even put myself in the hands of a mystic who fastened electrodes to my head and feet—hardly the seat of my trouble—and had me drink a glass of calves' liver blood every day. It was all hopeless. Then one day Pauline said, 'Listen, Ernest, why don't you go pray?' Pauline was a very religious Catholic and I wasn't a religious anything, but she had been so damn good that I thought it was the least I could do for her. There was a small church two blocks from us and I went there and said a short prayer. Then I went back to our room. Pauline was in bed, waiting. I undressed and got in bed and we made love like we invented it. We never had any trouble again. That's when I became a Catholic."

Ernest stopped to listen respectfully to an old man who was playing a rasping violin with fingers barely moveable in the cold; Ernest thanked him and put a thousand-franc note in his cap. We then resumed walking.

"Once I started on
Farewell
it ran like a Duesenberg. Of course, much of it was projected from my own experiences, but a lot of it, like the Caporetto retreat, wasn't. I was never in the Caporetto retreat—despite what you may read in the lurid professorial studies of my wicked past—and someone will someday write a book to prove it; I got it from a friend and from all the talk I heard when I was hospitalized. I had discovered in writing
The Sun Also Rises
that it was easier to write in the first person because you could involve the reader immediately, so I again took that advantage with
Farewell,
but later in
To Have and Have Not
and
For Whom the Bell Tolls
, I used the third person; it's harder to write in the third person but the advantage is you move around better.

"The writing of
Farewell
really had quite an itinerary—after Paris, wrote on it in Key West, then Piggott, Arkansas; Kansas City, Missouri; Big Horn, Wyoming; and then back to Paris to work on the galleys. First draft took six months in contrast to six weeks of
Sun Also Rises.
But I knew I had it made with
Farewell
when I finished the first draft. Everyone who read it treated it as a special thing right from the beginning. You know you're in if you hit a ratio of ten to one—that is, if you get your writing to have a truth and a reality ten times stronger than the original reality you are drawing on. I sent the finished manuscript to Max Perkins at Scribner's and he was delighted.

"Max was a terribly shy man who always wore his hat in the office—I can't prove that the two have any connection, although maybe they have. I went back to New York to discuss the book with Max, and he said he had only one change which he wanted—the deletion of that pesky four-letter word which seems to be okay verbally, especially in the army, but
verboten
on the printed page.

"Max was too shy to say the word out loud, so he wrote the word on his calendar pad. I said it was okay to delete it and suggested that since we had completed the rewriting, we go out to lunch and enjoy ourselves. Along about three o'clock that afternoon Charlie Scribner came into Perkins' office to consult him about something, and not finding him at his desk, went over and looked at the calendar pad to see where he was. Opposite twelve o'clock, Charlie found the notation
f-u-c-k.
Later that afternoon, when Charlie did find Perkins at his desk, he said solicitously, 'Max, why don't you take the rest of the day off? You must be done in.' "

Ernest stopped to study a row of buildings. "In the basement of one of these buildings," he said, "was the best night club that ever was—Le Jockey. Best orchestra, best drinks, a wonderful clientele, and the world's most beautiful women. Was in there one night with Don Ogden Stewart and Waldo Peirce, when the place was set on fire by the most sensational woman anybody ever saw. Or ever will. Tall, coffee skin, ebony eyes, legs of paradise, a smile to end all smiles. Very hot night but she was wearing a coat of black fur, her breasts handling the fur like it was silk. She turned her eyes on me—she was dancing with the big British gunner subaltern who had brought her—but I responded to the eyes like a hypnotic and cut in on them. The subaltern tried to shoulder me out but the girl slid off him and onto me. Everything under that fur instantly communicated with me. I introduced myself and asked her name. 'Josephine Baker,' she said. We danced nonstop for the rest of the night. She never took off her fur coat. Wasn't until the joint closed she told me she had nothing on underneath."

Our wanderings had taken us onto the Rue Bonaparte, and now as he talked Ernest occasionally glanced into the windows of the antique stores. He had stopped to study a set of pearl-handled dueling pistols. "When they published Gertrude Stein's
Autobiography of Alice Toklas
," he said abruptly, "Picasso and I were very disappointed."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because it was so full of lies."

He gave his full and serious attention to the antiques the rest of the way to the Closerie des Lilas, where we settled ourselves comfortably in the dim, quiet bar. One of the barmen remembered Ernest, but everyone else was new. "Joyce came here with me a few times," Ernest said. "I knew him from 1921 till his death. In Paris he was always surrounded by professional friends and sycophants. We'd have discussions which would get very heated and sooner or later Joyce would get in some really rough insults; he was a nice man but nasty, especially if anyone started to talk about writing, nasty as hell, and when he really had everything in an uproar, he would suddenly depart and expect me to handle the characters in his wake who were demanding satisfaction. Joyce was very proud and very rude—especially to jerks." Ernest took a drink of his Pernod. "He really enjoyed drinking, and those nights when I'd bring him home after a protracted drinking bout, his wife, Nora, would open the door and say, 'Well, here comes James Joyce the author, drunk again with Ernest Hemingway.'"

He sat quietly, sipping his drink and thinking about Joyce, and then he said, "He was mortally afraid of lightning."

The maitre d' came over with two menus and requested autographs on behalf of a couple of clients. After he had left, Ernest said, "They were good to me here when I needed it. Like that time with the Miro. Miro and I were good friends; we were working hard but neither of us was selling anything. My stories would all come back with rejection slips and Miro's unsold canvases were piled up all over his studio. There was one that I had fallen in love with—a painting of his farm down south—it haunted me and even though I was broke I wanted to own it, but since we were such good friends, I insisted that we do it through a dealer. So we gave the picture to a dealer and, knowing he had a sure sale, he put a price of two hundred dollars on it, damn steep, but I arranged to pay it off in six installments. The dealer made me sign a chattel mortgage so that if I defaulted on any payment, I would lose the painting and all money paid in. Well, I skimped and managed okay until the last payment. I hadn't sold any stories or articles and I didn't have a franc to my name. I asked the dealer for an extension but, of course, he preferred to keep my dough
and
the painting. That's where the Closerie comes in. The day the dough was due, I came in here sad-ass for a drink. The barman asked me what was wrong and I told him about the painting. He quietly passed the word around to the waiters and they raised the money for me out of their own pockets."

"You mean that's 'The Farm' that now hangs in your house in Cuba?"

"Yep. Insured for two hundred thousand dollars. You can see why I'm fond of this joint. Another time, I wanted to rent a flat near here, but not having any furniture or finances I was what you might call a wobbly risk as a tenant. The landlord was out of town and the concierge, who was a pal of mine, let me stay until he returned. The day before the landlord was due back, one of my friends, who was well positioned, went around to people he knew, most of whom had good art collections, and borrowed two Cezannes, three Van Goghs, two Van Dycks and a Titian. Told them it was for a charity exhibit. We hung all that art on the walls of my room, and even though I had no furniture in the joint, the landlord was so impressed with my 'collection' he gave me a lease for a year.

"I was very happy in that flat and had no trouble until the time Scott Fitzgerald came to visit me. Scott was staying at the Ritz, as usual. He brought his daughter, Scotty, with him. While we were talking, Scotty announced she wanted to make pee-pee, but when I told Scott the W.C. was on the floor below, he told Scotty that was too far to go and to do it in the hall. The concierge observed the trickle coming down the steps and went upstairs to inquire. 'Monsieur,' he said to Scott very politely, Svould it not be more comfortable for Mademoiselle to use the W.C.?' Scott said, 'Back to your miserable room, concierge, or I will put your head in the W.C.' He was mad as hell. He came back into my room and began stripping off the wallpaper, which was old and starting to peel. I begged him not to because, as always, I was behind in my rent, but he was too mad to listen. The landlord made me pay for repapering the entire room. But Scott was my friend and you put up with a lot in the name of friendship."

"But how can you say Fitzgerald was your friend when he behaved like that?"

"Well, I was speaking of our overall relation and in that respect he certainly was a loyal and devoted friend who at that time was truly more interested in my career than in his own. It was Scott who insisted that Max Perkins, who was his editor at Scribner's, read my story 'Fifty Grand.' Scott was one of their leading authors so he pulled a lot of weight. The story had already been rejected by Ray Long, editor of
Cosmopolitan,
because it was mainly about boxing and had no love interest. Max Perkins liked the story and sent it to the editor of
Scribner's Magazine
, who said he would pay me two hundred and fifty dollars for it if I would cut five hundred words. I said I had already cut it to its minimum size but if they wanted to they could lop off the first five hundred words. I had sometimes done this with a story and improved it; it would not have improved this story but I figured it was their ass, not mine, and I would have it published properly in a book. But they assigned a young editor to it who cut little snips here and there all through the story so that when he got through it made no sense. That was the end of the
Scribner's
experience, and where it finally wound up, all in one piece, was the
Atlantic Monthly.
After that I had a lot of requests to write fight stories but I have always tried to write only one story on anything if I got what I was after the first time, because there was a hell of a lot I wanted to write about and I knew even then that the clock runs faster than the pen."