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Ernest Hemingway and his women. Ernest Hemingway's women

Ernest Hemingway and his women. Ernest Hemingway's women

20.06.2019

Eighteen-year-old Hemingway met the American Agnes von Kurowski in a Milan hospital. A classic novel between a young man wounded by shrapnel and Cupid and a beautiful nurse. She was 8 years older than 19-year-old Ernie. Agnes became the first woman to leave him, cruelly laughing at the inexperienced young man. But she also turned out to be the last, since from then on he reserved the right to leave only to himself. Perhaps it was then that he set himself the task of becoming a champion. He not only remembered this first love and first betrayal in his life for the rest of his life, but also described it in his novel “A Farewell to Arms!”

“Happiness is good health and weak memory”

Hadley Richardson: "The Sun Also Rises (Fiesta)"

Having recovered from his hopeless love for Agnes, Ernest met the lovely red-haired pianist from St. Louis, Hadley Richardson. And yes, she was also older than the groom. For 7 years. She became the first Mrs. Hemingway.

Critics usually speak of Hemingway’s first wife as a failed pianist who made the life of a talented writer difficult. Indeed, at the most inopportune moment she gave birth to his son, and in December 1922 she lost a suitcase with his complete archive, leaving the writer without a single line.

The love of Hadley and Ernest withstood poverty, wanderings, unemployment, depression, war, but cracked when fame came to the writer.

In the novel “The Sun Also Rises,” Hemingway wrote about what he knew well, saw himself, experienced himself, but the personal experience on which he relied served only as the foundation of the edifice of creativity he erected. He formulated this principle as follows:

“Writing novels or stories means making things up based on what you know. When you manage to invent something well, it comes out truer than when you try to remember how it really happens.”

He has already experienced betrayal, and now divorce has been added to his experience.

Ernest Hemingway and Hadley Richardson Photo: East News

Polina Pfeiffer: “A holiday that is always with you”

Polina, editor of Paris Vogue, was four years older than Ernest, but, most importantly, much more experienced than the naive Hadley. Having made friends with her, Polina got the opportunity to see Ernest as much as she wanted, who by that time had already become a fairly famous author. As a result, Ernest divorced Hadley and married Pauline in 1927. The young moved to the States, to the town of Key West in Florida. It was there in 1940 that Hemingway created one of his masterpieces, the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, which brought him worldwide fame. And it was after this success that he fell into the deepest depression. Meanwhile, Polina gave birth to her husband two sons - Patrick and Gregory.

Gradually he got out of this state. As usual, he is helped by an active life filled with physical exercise, fishing and... the attention of women.

“... A young unmarried woman temporarily becomes the friend of a young married woman, comes to stay with her husband and wife, and then imperceptibly, innocently and inexorably does everything to marry her husband... All truly bad things begin with the most innocent... You are lying, and this is disgusting to you, and every day threatens with greater and greater danger, but you live only in the present day, as in war.”

Ernest Hemingway and Polina Pfeiffer Photo: East News

Martha Gellhorn: "For Whom the Bell Tolls"

They saw each other in a corner that was iconic for Ernest - the writer’s favorite place to stay in Key West - the Sloppy Joe bar. Martha was beautiful, smart, independent. She published two books whose style was reminiscent of Hemingway's books. And it was nice. The passion turned out to be lightning fast: Polina, already on the day Ernest met Martha, did not wait for her husband for lunch. And for dinner too. How can one not remember the first Mrs. Hemingway? Everything is rewarded...

History repeated itself. Martha remained in Key West, became Polina's friend and became Ernest's mistress. Then a civil war broke out in Europe - in Spain. Together they went to Spain to cover its progress. After the Spanish raid, Hemingway shuttled between Key West, where Polina lived with his two sons, and Florida, where Martha moved. Two weeks after Ernest received a divorce from Polina, he and Martha got married. They settled in Cuba, in the house of the famous writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez. An endless supply of books, dogs and cats served them as society.

However, this marriage was doomed from the very beginning: too strong and self-centered individuals ended up under one roof. A fairly well-known journalist and writer herself, Martha Gellhorn resolutely refused to step into the shadow of her famous husband and sign her works with the name Martha Hemingway.

In addition, Ham was and remains at heart a patriarchal American. Falling in love with independent and intelligent women, he did not know how to live with them at all.

In general, despite the war, gradually a free place for another love formed in Ernest’s heart.

Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn Photo: East News

Mary Welch Noel: "Over the river, in the shade of the trees"

Martha, despite her intelligence, did not avoid the mistakes of previous Mrs. Hemingway: she left her husband alone for a while. In 1943, Hemingway went to war in Europe to cover the war there for Colliers magazine. Martha, who was supposed to go with him, was a little delayed. This sealed her fate. During her absence, Hemingway met a Time magazine correspondent named Mary Welch Noel, who was destined to become his fourth wife.

“I want you to marry me. I want to be your husband"

By the way, I also met Mary in a tavern. After two years of dating and mad love, Hemingway married Mary.

Hemingway spoke to this woman - the only one of all - when depression made him dream of suicide. Mary forgave him for his rudeness, hard drinking, and infidelity - after all, he was fabulously talented. Hemingway's children reproached her for lack of will. “You don’t understand anything,” she answered. “I’m a wife, not a policeman.”

But the sad fact was that one of Hemingway’s last novels, “Over the River, in the Shade of the Trees,” was formally dedicated to his wife Mary, but in fact to the writer’s last hobby. It was 19-year-old Dalmatian Adriana Ivancic. This love remained platonic.

Ernest Hemingway and Mary Welch Noel Photo: East News

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Walking with Hemingway

Chapters from Michael Palin's Time Out Book of Paris Walks and Hemingway Adventure
Translation by Tanya Marchant
Photos from Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection/John F. Kennedy Library.

Ernest Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, at the end of the 19th century, and the first sounds he heard were the clatter of horses' hooves outside the windows, not the sharp, whistling roar of cars that we hear everywhere today.

From birth, little Ernest, while still lying in the cradle, heard the sounds of the piano his mother played. However, Hemingway did not inherit from his mother either her musical talent or her penchant for poetry.

Hemingway's father was a doctor. From him and his grandfather, Ernest passed on a love of nature, which he was imbued with from birth, and which filled his entire life. But there was no “vegetarian” touching in Hemingway’s love for nature. Hemingway's love for animals did not at all contradict his hunting for them.

Ernest’s father, Grace Hemingway, captioned one of his son’s photographs: “Grandfather began teaching Ernest to shoot when he was only two and a half years old, and at four the boy could already handle a pistol freely.” And in another photo, little angel Ernest stands next to his happy parents and relatives. If you look closely at this cute group photo, you can see a double-barreled hunting shotgun on Ernest's shoulder.

The city where Ernest Miller Hemingway was born was called Oak Park. In the same town, located in the state of Illinois, Ernest graduated from school and, upon graduation, left for another state in order to begin working as one of the reporters for the Kansas City Star newspaper in Missouri in 1917. But, after working at the newspaper for only a few months, he volunteered to serve in one of the Red Cross units. And during the First World War, while serving in Italy, he was the driver of a field ambulance.

“Horton's Bay was essentially a town of five houses on either side of the high road between Boyne City and Charlevoix,” Hemingway wrote in 1922 in his cold, drafty Paris apartment.

And now, seventy-six years after this recording, the town, by and large, corresponds to this description. A two-lane asphalt road, with a bridge over the Horton Creek, connects Charlevoix and Horton Bay, gliding past the former main store and post office with a high, falsely ornate gable. Yes, the 117-year-old mansion of the Red Fox Hotel is hidden in a grove, among old linden and maple trees.

Not far from this hotel there was a house with furnished rooms where Hemingway stayed in the winter of 1919. Down the street is the old public library, where Hemingway often went to read the newspapers. And further down the street is the Park Garden Cafe bar, where Hemingway usually spent his evenings.

First World War

During the First World War, Ernest volunteered to serve in one of the Red Cross units, they were transporting medicine for soldiers on the front line along the Austro-Italian border.

On the morning of June 7, 1918, 18-year-old Hemingway got off the train at Milan Garibaldi Station and took a job as an ambulance driver. On July 7, exactly one month after arriving in Italy, Hemingway took a bicycle from the owners of the house in which he was billeted and, through the village of Fossalta, rode it to the Italian trenches on the front line, where that day he brought “morale-boosting” products: candy and cigars. From the soldiers he learned about the imminent attack being prepared. The curious Ernest wanted to see with his own eyes the fighting that was to begin that night.

He said that the soldiers allowed him to get to the forward observation post, located near the river. Half an hour after the start of the offensive, an Austrian mortar shell hit the post.

One of the soldiers had his legs blown off and died from loss of blood. Although some Hemingway biographers are not sure exactly what happened to the writer that night, many claim that Hemingway pulled the wounded soldier back to the trenches under machine gun fire. Ernest himself came under fire, and his legs were literally riddled with machine gun fire. He was taken to the city hall, and then to a local school, from which the wounded Hemingway was transported by ambulance to the field hospital in the city of Treviso. And from there - to the hospital in Milan. During the operation, 227 fragments were removed from his legs.

In the Milan hospital, Ernest met his first love - a nurse who was just over twenty years old. Her name was Agnes von Kurowsky.

Ernest and Agnes often walked together along the streets of Milan, past the Duomo Cathedral, through the noisy shops of the Galleria. Kurowski did not take their romance seriously because Ernest was too young for her. And some time after Hemingway returned to the USA, she wrote to him that she had met another person. Ten years after their first meeting, in 1929, Hemingway would again relive his unrequited love, which he would describe in the novel A Farewell to Arms (1929). Its heroes will be a soldier wounded in the First World War and a nurse.

Hemingway returned to Italy in the 1940s. By this time he was already a world famous writer, driving around the streets of Milan in a limousine; hunting company with an Italian baron on his private estates; and trailing the eighteen-year-old beauty who inspired him to write the novel Across the River and into the Trees.

In 1950, this novel will be published. It tells the story of an aging soldier who falls in love with a young girl in post-war Venice. This novel was received rather coldly by both readers and critics. But the next book, the story “The Old Man and the Sea” (1952), was almost unanimously recognized as a masterpiece and served as the reason for awarding the author the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.

In the novel A Moveable Feast, Hemingway will recall how he served as an ambulance driver on the Austro-Italian front in the summer of 1918. how the brake pads burned, burned on mountain roads long before they were replaced by more advanced new technology.

In 1999, the Italian automobile concern Fiat was still producing older models of ambulances, but now they had been modernized and, together with additional equipment, cost $36,000 and only vaguely resembled the ambulance Ernest once worked on.

Hemingway in Love

After returning to America (January 21, 1919), Hemingway worked for some time for the Toronto Star newspaper (Toronto, Canada), then lived at odd jobs in Chicago. In Chicago, Hemingway made a couple of very important acquaintances. It was in this city in 1920 that his first serious romance began since his unrequited love for an Italian nurse.

In Chicago, Ernest met a woman named Elizabeth Hadley Richardson. She was eight years older than Hemingway. He liked this charming lady, who, by the way, just like Hemingway, was always not averse to drinking. According to Hemingway's first biographer, Carlos Baker, what attracted her to Ernest was, among other things, his ability to “puff cigarette smoke out of his nostrils.” They married on September 3, 1921, and lived for some time in discreet apartments on North Dearborn Street.

At the same time, Hemingway became friends with a writer who had recently arrived from Paris named Sherwood Anderson. Anderson passionately convinced Ernest that the French capital was the only place on earth that could inspire a writer to create.

In the post-war years, society had much more liberal attitudes towards life and art. Money, devalued by military reforms, could no longer provide the aspiring writer with a more or less normal life. Or perhaps Hemingway sought to escape his mother's care. In a word, for Hemingway, Anderson’s words served as a decisive impetus for making the decision to travel to Europe. And on December 8, 1921, Hemingway, along with his wife Hadley, left New York on the ship Leopoldina, traveling from America to Le Havre.

On December 22, 1921, they arrived in Paris, from where Hemingway continued to write reports for the Toronto Star.

By that time Hadley was thirty years old, Ernest twenty-two. Thus began Hemingway's travels, which continued throughout his life until he committed suicide on August 1, 1961, by shooting himself in the forehead with a double-barreled hunting shotgun.

Paris

Thanks to Anderson, Hemingway joined the Lost Generation community, which included a circle of writers, artists and “free poets.” These people helped the aspiring writer create his own literary style, different from others.

In December 1922, Hadley - Hemingway's wife - went to visit her husband in Switzerland. On the way, she lost a suitcase that contained all of Hemingway's unpublished fiction. This loss was compensated only by a pleasant event - the birth of his son Jack.

The Hemingway family settled in Montparnasse, in the very center of the emigrant community. It was here that Hemingway wrote Three Stories and Ten Poems in 1923, In Our Time in 1925, and his first two novels: Torrents of Spring and "The Sun Also Rises"

Both novels were published in 1926. Several of Hemingway's early stories from his first major collection, In Our Time (1925), indirectly reflected childhood memories. The stories attracted critical attention for their stoic tone and objective, restrained style of writing.

The following year saw the release of Hemingway's first novel, The Sun Also Rises, a disillusioned and beautifully composed portrait of the Lost Generation. Thanks to the novel, which tells the story of the hopeless and aimless wanderings of a group of expatriates in post-war Europe, the term “Lost Generation” (its author is Gertrude Stein) has become commonplace. Equally successful and equally pessimistic was the next novel, A Farewell to Arms (1929), about an American lieutenant deserting the Italian army and his English lover who dies in childbirth.

The pleasure that literary creativity gave Ernest illuminated the Parisian sky for Hemingway with new colors. In this city, in the Dingo bar, he first met Scott Fitzgerald and two English aristocrats who became the prototypes of Duff Twisden and Mike Guthrie - the heroes of the novel "The Sun Also Rises" - a book that glorified Hemingway and brought the young author worldwide fame.

In 1929, Hemingway left Paris and returned there only in 1944, when Paris had already been liberated from the Nazis. Accompanied by a company of French resistance fighters, Hemingway began to “liberate” the wine cellars of the Ritz Hotel.

In the first apartment in which Hemingway once lived in Paris, on 74 rue du Cardinal Lemoine, twenty-year-old American John, a former Boston resident who now works for a business consulting firm, now lives. He tells journalists that he is already pretty tired of curious people who want to see the former apartments of the great writer.

And recently his apartment was occupied for three days by Japanese journalists from Tokyo Broadcasting System. It's a really tiny apartment with cement stucco on the ceiling. Cramped, with a doll-like kitchen and a very small bathroom, Hemingway's first Paris apartment is now on sale for an amount unthinkable for such apartments - one million francs; or $180,000; or 150,000 euros - just because a great writer once lived there.

True, time has hardly changed the surrounding landscape, which Hemingway saw from the window, and which Hemingway described in one of the chapters of the book of memoirs about his Parisian period - “A Moveable Feast” (A Moveable Feast, 1964). This book was published after Hemingway's death. It contains autobiographical notes of the writer and portraits of contemporary writers.

The houses around Hemingway's first Paris apartment haven't aged much. They seem to be tired of standing upright and, at an angle, they look sideways, leaning on each other and rolling down the narrow street. On the corner of rue Descartes there is still a former hotel, on the memorial plaque of which there is an inscription engraved that it was here that Verlaine died and that Hemingway once rented a room for his creative work.

And on Rue St-Michel you will look in vain for that “good cafe” where Hemingway loved to sit at a table and drink “Rum St James” - “soft as a kitten’s cheek”; in which he once caught the eye of a pretty girl, and then ordered oysters and fresh white wine to celebrate the end of a new story. Today - this street of book and souvenir shops; intersection of vehicle routes. This is a street of constant traffic, which has preserved only the rails of the eastern metro line from its former architecture.

Walking along the Seine, Hemingway liked to look at the wares of second-hand booksellers, whose dark green, metal boxes are sandwiched between the stone walls of the embankment. For many years, Picasso's studio was located here on rue des Grands Augustins, where he painted Guernica, and where Hemingway met him in 1946.

Walking along rue Jacob, full of antique shop windows, Hemingway went out onto rue Bonaparte and opened the doors of his favorite cafe, Cafe Pre aux Clercs.

Not far from it is the Hotel d’Angleterre, where Ernest spent his very first night in Paris. In room No. 14, which can still be rented by paying 1,000 francs per day.

In a noisy corner, at the end of rue des Sts-Peres, in the 20s of the last century there was a fashionable restaurant “Michaud’s”. With his nose pressed to the window of this establishment, Hemingway once watched the James Joyce family having lunch.

Hemingway often visited the Cezannes in the Musee de Luxembourg with his first wife and son Jack. This museum is now closed, and its art gallery has moved to the Musee d’Orsay.

Hemingway came here when he was very poor: “you see nothing and smell nothing except food while you walk from the Observatory to rue de Vaugirard.” And Ernest went there precisely along this road in order to imbue himself with the mood and spirit of the Parisian artists, whose canvases were collected in the Gertrude Stein gallery.

“It quickly and easily became a habit to go to house number 27 on rue de Fleurus to warm up in front of beautiful paintings and in intimate conversations with artists,” he wrote about his visits to Gertrude’s house. This woman introduced him to young French artists and writers. She and her friend Alice Toklas treated them to plum and raspberry liqueurs. In the groups that gathered at Stein's, everyone was very friendly and addressed each other by name. However, Hemingway was friendly towards all the people who ever helped him.

The houses on rue de Fleurus, in which apartments were rented, were large, very expensive and dull. Walking from this street along Boulevard Raspail and turning left several times, Hemingway ended up on rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs.

On this street, at number 70, lived the poet Ezra Pound, with whom Hemingway was friends. Here Ezra introduced Hemingway to one of the first publishers of the American writer, Ernest Walsh. In turn, Hemingway taught the poet to box. “He is as graceful as a lobster,” Hemingway described the poet as a boxer.

In 1924, Hemingway moved to apartment No. 113, which was located above the carpentry workshop, which explained its cheapness. Now this house is a concrete block of the Ecole Alsacienne building. Opposite Hemingway's apartment there was a bakery, and Hemingway loved to “go out the back door onto Montparnasse Boulevard through the delicious smell of fresh bread.”

Boulevard du Montparnasse was Hemingway's favorite corner of Paris. To the left of the Librairie Abencerage, number 159 was once the apartments of the Hotel Venitia, where Hemingway met Pauline Pfeiffer while cheating on his first wife.

Hemingway’s favorite restaurant was located on rue de l’Observatoire. The “American Bar” is still located there, which has a memorial plaque with the writer’s name, and where his favorite cocktail, named after Hemingway, is served. And across the street from the bar is the Hotel Beauvoir, where Hadley and little John lived when Ernest left her and went to Pauline.

In 1927, Hemingway married Pauline. And in April 1928, Paulina and Ernest leave Paris for the island of Key West, Florida. On June 28, 1928, their son Patrick was born, and their second son, Gregory Hancock, was born on November 12, 1931.

“Paris will never be the same Paris you’ve already been to,” Hemingway wrote about this amazing city after breaking up with his first wife. “Even though it remains Paris, it has changed as much as you have changed.”

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The writer's father committed suicide. Ernest, the eldest son of six children, attended several Oak Park schools and wrote stories and poems for school newspapers.

After graduating from school, from 1917 to 1918 he worked as a correspondent for the Kansas newspaper "Star".

Due to an eye injury received in adolescence, he was not drafted into the army to participate in the First World War. He volunteered for war in Europe and became a driver for the American Red Cross detachment on the Italian-Austrian front. In July 1918, he was seriously wounded in the leg while trying to carry a wounded Italian soldier from the battlefield. Hemingway was twice awarded Italian orders for his military valor.

In 1952, Life magazine published Hemingway's story "The Old Man and the Sea" - a lyrical story about an old fisherman who caught and then lost the biggest fish of his life. The story was a huge success both among critics and among the general reader, and caused a worldwide resonance. For this work, the writer received the Pulitzer Prize in 1953, and in 1954 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

In 1960, Hemingway was diagnosed with depression and severe mental illness at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. After leaving the hospital and finding that he could no longer write, he returned to his home in Ketchum, Idaho.
On June 2, 1961, Ernest Hemingway committed suicide with a gunshot.

Some of the writer's works, such as "The Holiday That Is Always With You" (1964) and "Islands in the Ocean" (1970), were published posthumously.

The writer was married four times. His first wife was Elizabeth Hadley Richardson, his second was his wife's friend Paulina Pfeiffer. Hemingway's third wife was journalist Martha Gellhorn, and his fourth wife was journalist Mary Welsh. From his first two marriages, the writer had three sons.

The material was prepared on the basis of RIA Novosti and information from open sources

Ernest Hemingway

The idol of an entire generation that was called lost, Ernest Hemingway became a myth during his lifetime. It was he who first formulated the credo of this generation: “The winner gets nothing...”, but he himself found the strength and courage to achieve everything in life, literature... But not in love.

There were many women in the life of the great writer. His first wife was Elizabeth Hadley Richardson. When Hemingway first saw Elizabeth, as he himself recalls, he received a shock akin to an electric shock. “I realized that this is the girl I should marry.” It is known that the writer hated boredom and routine more than anything in the world, and with Hadley Richardson (he called her Red Hash) it was impossible to get bored.

Like Hemingway, Hash was attracted to travel, entertainment and creative personalities. She hated boredom, respectability and monotony.

Soon after the wedding, Hemingway was offered a position as a correspondent for a French newspaper, and the young couple went to Paris. The days spent in Paris were the happiest in the life of Hemingway and Hash: a small apartment, new friends, a string of cafes and the pink air of the “city of lights.” The wife earned money by playing the piano, and the husband wrote articles for newspapers. Early in the morning, before work, Hemingway loved to sit in a cafe, where, after ordering a cup of black coffee, he plunged into the world of invented images.

Every evening, Hemingway and Hadley left their small apartment and wandered the narrow streets of Paris for several hours, and when they returned home, they made love. Subsequently, Hemingway wrote about this happy time for him: “After work, I needed to read. Because if you think about work all the time, you can lose interest in it even before you sit down at your desk the next day. It is necessary to get physical exercise, to get tired of the body, and especially to indulge in love with the woman you love. This is the best..."

The husband and wife traveled a lot. They visited Italy, Germany, Spain, the Middle East, and America. Their friends never ceased to be amazed at how Hemingway and Hadley managed to visit everywhere, see all the sights and discover something new in every city. But the secret was that the spouses were running away from boredom: they did not understand why waste time on trifles if there was so little available.

Hemingway and Hadley loved and understood each other, and after the birth of their son, whom they affectionately called Bambi, husband and wife became even closer. Their life, despite material difficulties, was an idyll. Could this idyll last forever? Of course she could, if... If Hadley hadn't changed.

Several years of family life and the birth of a child greatly influenced Hadley: from an extravagant woman she turned into a sensible and sedate lady. In addition, she was 8 years older than her husband, and, apparently, age began to tell. Hadley lost interest in entertainment and travel and devoted most of her time to housekeeping and raising the baby. She no longer rushed headlong with her husband when he was sent on business trips to the ends of the world. Hemingway was disappointed. He still loved that Red Hash and could not get used to the new Elizabeth Hadley.

With the birth of the child, the family's financial situation worsened. If earlier the couple were content with the little that life gave them, now they had to think about their son’s health: they often went hungry, giving the baby their last piece of bread. But despite the fact that the work of a journalist brought in little income, and the writer’s first books were gathering dust in a warehouse, Hemingway did not give up. He believed in his future, that one day the world would recognize him. She believed in the genius of her husband and Hadley. Although she had changed, her love for Hemingway remained as passionate as before.

Probably, they would have waited together for the recognition and glory of a brilliant writer if a certain Polina Pfeiffer had not quickly burst into their lives. She was a young, unmarried woman whom the Hemingway family was introduced to by their friends. Ernest fell in love with her at first sight. How to explain this? Perhaps a sudden feeling for a wayward and eccentric rich woman is the passion that often pushes people to do crazy things. But most likely, Hemingway’s love for Polina can be explained by his constant thirst for new sensations.

Hemingway himself recalled his relationship with Polina this way: “A young unmarried woman temporarily becomes the best friend of a young married woman, comes to stay with her husband and wife, and then quietly, innocently and inexorably does everything to marry her husband to herself... When the husband finishes work, two attractive women are next to him. One is unusual and mysterious, and if he is lucky, he will love them both.”

But, as you know, Hemingway was unlucky. Perhaps he really loved both women, but if Hadley was his wife and faithful friend, then Pauline literally drove him crazy. The desire to possess this woman and completely subjugate her to himself deprived him of peace and sleep. Hadley understood everything perfectly well, but in her memoirs about Hemingway, apparently trying to shield her ex-husband, she wrote that the breakup was her fault: “I didn’t have time to keep up with him. I felt tired all the time, and I think that was the main reason...”

Hadley valued her family, and her husband languished within four walls, dreaming of plunging headlong into new feelings and sensations. He could not leave on his own, leave his wife and son, and waited for Hadley to take the first step towards a divorce. In the end, she made up her mind, believing that living with a person who no longer loved was humiliating. After explaining things to her husband, Hadley filed for divorce. Soon the couple separated.

Strange as it may seem, they did not become enemies. On the contrary, Hadley and Hemingway remained good friends until the end of their lives.

It must be said that Hemingway took the break with Red Hash very hard. His friends later recalled this: “He is a romantic by nature, and he falls in love just as a huge pine tree collapses, crushing the surrounding small forest. Besides, he has a puritanical streak that keeps him from flirting over cocktails. When he falls in love, he wants to get married and live in marriage, and he perceives the end of the marriage as a personal defeat.” I can’t help but remember the words of Hemingway himself: “The winner gets nothing...”

The writer married Polina. Even before the wedding, he became a Catholic. The fact is that Polina was a zealous Catholic and agreed to the marriage only after Hemingway promised to become a Catholic, like her. He loved Polina and took this step for her sake. In Polina, the writer saw the ideal woman that he often pictured in his dreams, but after the wedding, Ernest was faced with reality: his wife turned out to be completely different from what he imagined her to be.

Polina, unlike Hadley, was demanding and tyrannical. She was not used to financial difficulties and made absolutely unrealistic demands on her husband. The couple's relationship became strained after the birth of their sons: Hemingway, trying to provide for his family, worked extremely hard, and Polina, instead of supporting and inspiring her husband, constantly complained to him about her difficult life.

His wife never became Ernest’s friend; they were different people in temperament and worldview. When the tension between the spouses became unbearable, Hemingway left home for several weeks, but his magical attraction to Polina always prevailed over resentment and misunderstanding, and he returned.

As often happens, the loneliness and alienation that arose between husband and wife allowed Hemingway to create the best works of his life. He plunged headlong into creativity, and after the film adaptation of the novel “A Farewell to Arms!” became famous. He realized that his star had finally risen, and began to work with even greater zeal. But Polina was missing something again. Money? Husband's attention? Worldwide fame? Love?

When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Hemingway realized that the Europe he loved no longer existed. The writer went to East Africa. And when he returned to Europe, he did not recognize her: people lived in fear, lied, rushed about. Suddenly Hemingway felt like part of a lost generation. The writer was choking from powerlessness and general doom...

It seemed to Hemingway that the war in Spain, and then World War II, became a kind of purification for him after years of inaction. He felt needed again. “Yes, in my opinion, it was a broken generation, broken in many ways,” he wrote. - But - damn it! – we didn’t die at all, of course, except for the dead, the maimed, the ones who went crazy. Lost generation! - no... We were a very resilient generation..."

By this time, the marriage of Hemingway and Polina had broken up, having completely exhausted itself. From a brilliant woman, Polina turned into a grumpy and boring housewife. She became a stranger to Hemingway. The breakup was inevitable, and the main reason for it was the same story as in the case of Hadley. Only now Polina is in Hadley’s place...

So, again, my wife’s friend... A certain beautiful blonde Marta Gelhorn is a young journalist. She burst into Hemingway's life like a whirlwind, but it was hardly love. Most likely, the writer simply found an excuse to break away from his boring family life. The energetic and eccentric Martha, like Hemingway, adored everything new. The writer clung to her like a drowning man clutching at a straw, believing that this was the woman who would understand him. But what Martha loved about Hemingway was his popularity. The 42-year-old master of the pen, being blinded by a new passion, did not notice anything and, having separated from Polina, married Martha.

Yes, Hemingway and Martha had a lot in common: like the husband, the wife could not sit still and was constantly on the road. And when she came, she... made scandals. Martha was obsessed with cleanliness. In her opinion, everything around had to be sterile. Ernest, however, like any creative person, could not do without pictorial disorder. When he plunged headlong into work, his house resembled ruins. Needless to say, how infuriating this was for Martha. She made scandals, threw hysterics, and Hemingway did not seem to notice his wife’s angry attacks, continuing to behave as before.

When the first gusts of passion subsided, the writer’s eyes were opened: Martha again turned out to be not the woman he wanted to see next to him. Having divorced his wife, Hemingway promised himself not to marry again, but fate seemed to laugh at him, not allowing him to fully enjoy the delights of a bachelor's life. Soon after his divorce from Martha, Hemingway met the most beautiful woman in the world. She really was sent to him by fate. Hemingway's marriage to Mary Welsh was happy. She accepted him as he was and loved him, no matter what... Mary was devoted to her husband until the last day of his life.

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The life of the writer (1899-1961), winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, was as tragic and bright as all the novels he wrote - “A Farewell to Arms!”, “To Have or Not to Have,” “A Holiday That Is Always With You” , “And the sun rises (Fiesta)”, “Beyond the river in the shade of the trees.”
2010 marked the 70th anniversary of the creation of one of his best works - the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940).
Duff Tweedsen and Pauline Pfeiffer, Jane Mason and Martha Gellhorn, Mary Welsh and Andriana Ivancic... are Ernest Hemingway's favorite women. What is their role in his life?
Why, for example, did he have sad memories associated with Agnes Kurowski, his first lover, because their feeling was mutual? Why did Agnes say that “she is not at all the perfect woman” that he thought she was?
What kind of relationship did the world famous writer have with Gertrude Stein? Was he really her student in his creative work?
The writer was 62 years old when he committed suicide. With his own hand, Ernest Hemingway put an end to the end of his life. Why did he do this?
Why did I always walk on the edge of the abyss, as if deliberately testing my luck? He was wounded several times, got into plane and car accidents, from which he miraculously emerged alive, but he still took risks - why?

...Question to men: have you ever been in love in Paris?

Not a casual acquaintance, but a woman who has just become your wife? Have you ever felt as rich as Croesus, even though the wind was blowing in your pockets because you didn’t even have a single franc lying around?
In Paris, Ernest Hemingway was young and ambitious, unknown and truly happy. Here, in the center of the bohemian life of the Old and New Worlds, in small cafes and literary salons, at vernissages and in the editorial offices of numerous newspapers and magazines, one could meet Marc Chagall and Luis Buñuel, Gertrude Stein and James Joyce, Pablo Picasso and Ilya Ehrenburg.
Here, a young talented writer played at the races, was fond of boxing, met with friends in the evenings, and wrote in the mornings, sitting in the Rotunda cafe, believing that soon, very soon, he would conquer not only Paris, but the whole world...
And here he passionately loved his wife Hadley...

He met the aspiring pianist Hadley Richardson, a native of St. Louis, in Chicago. The girl had just lost her mother and felt immensely lonely. Tall, slender, red-haired Hadley, distinguished by a calm, balanced character, was his first wife, but not his first love.

Goodbye baby!...

Ernest met a pretty American woman of Polish origin in a Milan hospital, where he ended up with 227 shrapnel stuck in his body after being wounded on the Italian-Austrian front in 1918.

Bloody and in bandages, he woke up at night, when the unbearable pain that had constrained his whole body subsided. Opening his eyes slightly, he saw the face of a pretty girl above him. The beautiful nurse, Agnes von Kurowski, was on duty that night.
The feeling that flared up instantly turned out to be mutual. The charming Polish woman spent her days at the bedside of the wounded, and her nights in the bed of Ernest Hemingway, the driver of an ambulance of the 3rd Red Cross detachment.
Exhausted by wounds and love, the young American fell asleep at dawn, and Agnes quietly slipped out from under the blanket and went into the neighboring rooms to look after the other wounded. During the day, Hemingway wrote her love notes.

The lovely nurse was born into an intelligent family. After her father's death, shortly after turning 18, she decided to study medicine, secretly dreaming that someday she would be able to go to Europe to the front. She was eight years older than Ernest, but the age difference did not bother either Agnes, who was in love, or the ardent “tenete” (junior lieutenant).
He was only 19, and she was already 27. He was young, brave and courageous. She is damn beautiful, independent and free. He asked her to become his wife on his birthday, when the whole ward noisily celebrated this holiday. She smiled sadly and refused, although she had strong feelings for him.

But the refusal did not become a reason for separation. She also came to his room and stayed at night. At the beginning of November 1918, the nurse was sent to a hospital in Florence. Frightened of losing his beloved, Hemingway persistently demanded that the girl consent to marriage. But she only remained silent in response. Before she had time to leave the city, Ernest began to bombard her with love letters. She replied that “she misses, feels terrible hunger for her beloved and cannot forget those sweet nights in Milan.”
The young writer experienced the pangs of love - he was jealous, flew into a rage, could not find a place for himself and... could not do anything; He dreamed of Agnes at night, the dreams were beautiful and crazy, the morning came, and life again turned into a living hell.
Soon Kurowski found herself passing through Milan. The lovers, clasping their hands, sat for two hours at the station, unable to part with each other. Finally, he put her on the train.
In January 1919, Ernest Hemingway left the hospital and went to America. The war was over, but love for Agnes remained a fragment in his soul... He wrote her tender, passionate and desperate letters. He begged me to come to him and become his wife. He was possessed by only one idea, which is called the “idea-fix” - an idea from which one could free oneself only by bringing it to life.
And she mercilessly answered: “You shouldn’t write to me so much...” And then she wrote: “I’m not at all the perfect woman you think I am... I’m confident in you. You have an amazing career ahead of you that someone like you deserves... Goodbye, baby. Do not be angry…"
In the same letter, she reported that she had become engaged to a wealthy Italian aristocrat and intended to connect her future life with him.
Young Ernest began to think about suicide for the first time and lay in bed for several days, overcome by terrible attacks of fever.
The further fate of Agnes was not very happy. His marriage to Domenico Carracciolo was upset by his traditional Italian family. She opposed her relative’s decision, considering this marriage an ordinary misalliance. And Agnes was left with nothing.

"In Love and War" film with Sandra Bullock.

And the young Hemingway began to write prose and wrote about his passion “A Very Short Story,” as short as their sudden love that flared up and ended just as quickly.
Much later, he would give the features of his first lover, Katherine Buckley, the heroine of the novel A Farewell to Arms! Already a mature writer will talk about dirt and violence - the inevitable companions of war, about fear and loneliness that haunt a person, and about pure sublime love, which alone can withstand this hell.
The hero of the novel, “Tenet” Henry, reminiscent of Hemingway himself in his youth, says to Katherine: “I knew many women, but I always remained lonely when I was with them, and this is the worst loneliness. But... we never felt lonely and we never felt afraid when we were together.”

What more does a man need?

And then Hadley appeared in his life. Red-haired, long-legged and narrow-hipped Hadley. Art-savvy, literature-savvy, musically gifted Hadley Richardson.

She was several years older than Hemingway, and all she lacked was marriage and love. But she lived in St. Louis, and his life took him to Chicago. And then, in the circumstances, he does what he knows how to do best in life - he writes letters to her, talks about himself, about his complex character, about the fact that he is preparing to be a writer, and that there is no more important thing for him in life than to write.
A correspondence begins, Hadley becomes the first person to whom he trusts himself, to whom his inner life, creative quests, and artistic quests are close.
Smart and patient Hadley, yearning for love and dreaming of a family life, not only understands Ernest, but also agrees to put up with all his shortcomings. She dissolves in him, subordinating herself to him in absentia. And he can no longer imagine himself without this woman...

Hadley was not a beauty like Agnes, but the young writer was captivated by her generosity and the attention she showed him. A year after breaking up with Agness, a traditional, prim American wedding was held - Hadley came from a wealthy family. They spent their honeymoon in passion and love.

A year later, Hadley gave birth to her first son, and in 1921 they went to Paris, where world fame awaited him. In this city, which remained his favorite for the rest of his life, they visit boxing, which was becoming fashionable, and play at the horse races.

They try to spend every winter in Switzerland, where they go skiing. In the summer they go to bullfights in Spain.

Hemingway fighting a bull, 1925

But the main thing for Hemingway is still literature. In 1924, a collection of stories “In Our Time” appeared, in 1926 - the novel “The Sun Also Rises (Fiesta)”, and in 1929 - “A Farewell to Arms!”, in which he finally said goodbye to the war and said goodbye to Agnes.

Hemingway's passport, 1923

I know what love is...

No matter what Hemingway wrote about, two themes are invariably present in his work - love and death. Because, according to the deep conviction of the author, only these two main categories should be explored by a real writer.

He himself constantly walked along the edge of the abyss, as if deliberately testing his luck. He was wounded several times, got into plane and car accidents, from which he miraculously emerged alive, but he still took risks, not imagining his life without danger. Throughout his life and work, he seemed to confirm that a real man must be courageous, must be able to hunt and fish, drink a lot and love women.

In Africa, Ernest Hemingway hunts lions and rhinoceroses, and catches trout in the cold rivers of Michigan. He practices boxing and attends bullfights. He participates in two world wars and one civil war, which split his beloved Spain in two.

And he continues to write - about love and death, changeable and multifaceted, like the world. Death in his stories and novels is cruel and terrible, like life itself, and love...
Love can turn into a rough underside of an already joyless existence, as in the novel “To Have or to Have Not,” when one of its heroines, tired of lies and injustice, shouts to her husband, who caught her in bed with another:
“Love is just a vile lie. Love is ergoapol pills, because you were afraid to have a child... Love is the vileness of the abortions that you sent me to. Love is my mangled insides. These are catheters mixed with douching. I know what love is. Love is always hanging in the bathtub outside the door. She smells like diesel. Fuck love."
But at the same time, this feeling can be tender and bright, the way that other heroes of the same novel love, despite all the hardships of an unpredictable life...

Duff Tweedsen and Pauline Pfeiffer,
or
Everything truly bad begins with the most innocent...

In Paris, Hemingway became interested in the Englishwoman Duff Tweedsen. She enjoyed success with both men and women, drank constantly, was beautiful and reckless.

There was something about Duff that irresistibly attracted everyone who knew her to her. She spent her life with some kind of frantic pleasure, often behaved defiantly and did not care about the opinions of those around her. The relationship between Hemingway and Duff turned out to be short, but not banal - there was something more behind their strange relationship at first glance, but at some point both managed to stop.

In 1922, Polina Pfeiffer, the daughter of a wealthy owner of one of the Arkansas companies, appears in Hemingway’s life. Polina worked for the Vogue magazine, published in the French capital.

Always tastefully dressed, as if she had stepped off the glossy cover of this fashion magazine, and able to carry on small talk, the charming Mademoiselle Pfeiffer clearly outperformed the conservative Hadley, who was always preoccupied with concerns about the family well-being.

Hemingway himself wrote about how everything happened in his autobiographical work “A Holiday That Is Always With You”:

“... A young unmarried woman temporarily becomes the friend of a young married woman, comes to stay with her husband and wife, and then imperceptibly, innocently and inexorably does everything to marry her husband to herself... All truly bad things begin with the most innocent ... You lie, and it’s disgusting to you, and every day threatens more and more danger, but you live only in the present day, as in war.”

Ernest's hobby, meanwhile, turned into passion. Polina was envied. Evil tongues claimed that she specially came to Paris to find herself a worthy husband. But Hemingway did not want a divorce from Hadley.
“I myself went to the breaking point when everything had already healed,” she recalled. “I didn’t have time to keep up with him.” And besides, I was eight years older. I felt tired all the time and I think that was the main reason... Everything developed slowly, and Ernest had a hard time with it. He took everything very deeply."
Hemingway only blamed himself for what happened. When asked by one of his friends why he was getting a divorce, he answered briefly: “Because I’m a son of a bitch.”
Many years later, in a frank conversation with General Lanham, he would blame himself for all his divorces, except for the divorce with Martha Gellhorn.
In 1927, his marriage to Hadley was officially dissolved. Immediately after the divorce, a wedding took place with Polina. Polina was also several years older than her husband, but, unlike Hadley, she was not particularly flexible.

In America, where they moved shortly after the birth of their two sons, as in Paris, she was haunted by thoughts about her own career. And Hemingway tried to persuade his wife to quit her job, but he never persuaded her.

Jane Mason, or Common Interests

A few years later in New York, the writer, who had already received recognition in his homeland, meets the seemingly prosperous Mason couple. Friendly relations are established between them. Hemingway, however, prefers Grant's wife, Jane, who is only 22 years old.

Jane Manson aboard the Anita, 1933

Just like him, the young, rich, ex-centric American woman loves hunting and fishing, plays sports and has an artistic nature. They spend a lot of time together, making plans for joint travel. The marriage with Polina is crumbling before our eyes. Moreover, Hemingway has long been dissatisfied with his sex life with his wife...

But, in spite of everything, Polina managed that time not to give her husband to the charming high-society lioness. She managed to keep him, but family life still did not go well.

Martha Gellhorn, or the Other Side of Emancipation

And soon Martha Gellhorn appeared on the horizon, a famous and influential journalist, the author of two books in which Hemingway’s influence was clearly discernible. Now Martha accompanies him on all his trips, and they do not hide their relationship.

Ernest with Martha Gellhorn during a pheasant hunt in Sun Valley. 1940

In 1940, in the town of Key West in Florida, he created one of his masterpieces - the novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” which brought him long-awaited world fame.

In the same 1940, he officially broke up with Polina Pfeiffer and married Martha Gellhorn. But this marriage does not bring happiness to Hemingway either.
Emancipated and independent Martha is too independent in her decisions and actions. He prefers obedience and admiration, which a woman with an independent and independent character cannot give him. Ernest is furious.

Novels of the twentieth century. Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway

Even little things like her excessive cleanliness begin to irritate him.
Of course, two such people could not stay in the same boat - a breakup was inevitable.

And they part, very dissatisfied with each other...

Man-made myth

There was always a lot of gossip and rumors around Hemingway, especially after he became famous.

Gertrude Stein, who considered him her student after he developed his original, unique style of writing and freed himself from the influence of contemporary writers, being a lesbian herself, for a long time tried to convince all mutual acquaintances that he was secret homosexual.
But the owner of the famous fashionable literary salon, where all the cream of the Parisian bohemia gathered, had no evidence. Apparently, Stein, with her characteristic imagination, came to this conclusion after a conversation with Ernest, who once told her that once in a hospital in Milan an old man approached him with a similar proposal.

Remembering Gertrude Stein, Hemingway admitted: “I always wanted to sleep with her, and she knew it.” But this never happened.
After the publication of the novel “The Sun Also Rises,” many began to identify its author with the main character, Jake Barnes, who was seriously injured in the war and lost the ability to love physically. The feelings of the main characters of the novel were mutual, but happiness turned out to be impossible due to Jake's injury...
Hallie, once answering a question about her husband’s relationships with women, said: “...There were all sorts of cases, but, in general, these women were crazy about him.”
In one of his letters, Hemingway wrote to the famous American writer Thornton Wilder that in his youth he could make love several times a day. To another addressee - that during a safari he slept with a whole harem of African beauties.
He himself, like any extraordinary person, created a myth about himself, where it was sometimes difficult to distinguish fiction from reality. By the way, the sharp-tongued Gellhorn is also known to have said that, apart from the ability to write, he could do nothing else...
In turn, Hemingway will call his marriage to Martha the biggest mistake he ever made in his life.
Critic Malcolm Cowley said of his friend:
“He is a romantic by nature, and he falls in love like a huge pine tree crushing a small forest. In addition, he has a puritanical streak that keeps him from flirting over cocktails. When he falls in love, he wants to get married and live in marriage, and he perceives the end of the marriage as a personal defeat.” But, despite all the insults and defeats, women in Hemingway’s life always remained a holiday “that is always with you”...

Fourth wife - Mary Welsh

He met Mary a year before the end of World War II in London, where he arrived as a war correspondent. Everyone was waiting for Allied troops to land on the English Channel. The entire writing fraternity gathered in the White Tower tavern. They were introduced to each other by the aspiring writer Irwin Shaw.
The famous Hemingway was 45 years old. The magazine sheet of Mary Welsh is 36. The affair lasted a whole year and ended after the end of the war. He proposed to her, and she accepted him, knowing full well what kind of person she was connecting her life with.
All subsequent years, Mary patiently bore the burden of this difficult love. She forgave him a lot, including his incessant infatuation with women. Mary Welsh was the last, fourth wife of Ernest Hemingway, but not his last love.

Ernest and Mary Hemingway in Sun Valley, 1947

Andriana Ivancic - "daddy's girl" and source of inspiration

In Italy, in Cortino de Ampezzo, a charming 19-year-old Italian of Yugoslav origin, Andriana Ivancic, falls into the orbit of attraction of an aging famous writer.

Hemingway was 50 years old. Andriana's youth, beauty and artistic talent (she painted and wrote poetry) fascinated Ernest. It was a strange relationship that lasted six years. Hemingway felt tender, almost fatherly feelings towards her. He called her “daughter”, she, like everyone close to him, called him “dad”.
After the writer’s death, Andriana admitted that at first she was bored next to this elderly man who had seen and experienced so much; she was not always able to understand him. But she felt that Ernest enjoyed their time together, and gave “dad” this innocent pleasure.

Andriana had no idea that she helped Hemingway overcome his creative crisis and write a new novel, to the heroine of which he gave many of her features. In this beautiful and charming southern woman, the writer again found a source of inspiration, which he had so lacked lately.

The heroine of the new work - “Across the River in the Shade of the Trees” - Countess Renata was based on an attractive Italian woman. An American colonel, Catwell, who is disillusioned with life, falls in love with the countess.
He is fifty years old, he, like Hemingway himself, has seen and experienced a lot in his lifetime and does not expect anything good from the future. But an unexpected outbreak of love transforms this courageous man. In Renata he finds what he tried in vain to find in other women - the ability to understand and sympathize.
However, the ending of this Hemingway piece is tragic. Having seemingly found the meaning of existence in love for the young Italian beauty countess, the colonel dies of a heart attack in a car rushing along the road to Trieste...

He dedicated “The Old Man and the Sea” to Andriana Ivancic. By the way, the writer received the Pulitzer Prize for this work in 1952.

Ernest Hemingway. "The Being of the World"

"Biblical story". The story of the creation of the novel "The Old Man and the Sea", for which Hemingway received the Nobel Prize. It is based on Psalm 103 of David, which is called “On worldly existence.” Faulkner, having read it, said: "His best work. Perhaps time will show that this is the best of all that we - his and my contemporaries - have written. This time he has found God, the Creator."

As always with Hemingway, love and death walk side by side...

The fate of Andriana, the prototype of the novel, was very sad. She got married twice, and was not happy in either marriage. At the age of 53, she committed suicide by hanging herself out of despair in her garden.

Last point.

Ernest Hemingway, Bobby Peterson and Harry Cooper, Silver Creek, Idaho. January 1959

Back in Spain... Twenty years later... 1959

Ernest Hemingway's last years were marred by depressions that came in waves. He was tired, often irritated over trifles, and he showed signs of mental illness - persecution mania.
In 1960, he went to the Mayo Clinic in Minn. The doctors' diagnosis was disappointing - depression on the background of a mental disorder. He was treated with electric shock.

After leaving the hospital, exhausted and tired, Hemingway returned to Idaho. He understood that his spiritual strength was exhausted, that, in the end, madness loomed ahead. Attacks of melancholy, despair and powerlessness constantly rolled in. He tried to fight them, but nothing worked.
On July 2, 1961, he got up early, with a heavy head and a clouded mind. He left the bedroom and carefully began to make his way to the dark room where Mary hid the gun from him. The dry floorboards of the old wooden house creaked loudly. Mary, who had swallowed sleeping pills, did not even move in her sleep.
He took the gun off the wall and walked onto the veranda. He hammered in a cartridge, held the gun between his knees and slowly cocked the hammer. His time passed, like sand through his fingers - everything was lived, experienced, everything turned to dust, ashes. Everything he knew about life, love and death, he said long ago in his novels. There was nothing more to write about and no need to write. And in general, he had not been able to write a single line for a long time. And writing for him meant living...
Mary did not let him put the last point in April. Today he will untie all the knots of existence...
He peered into the pupil of the gun - there was only cold and emptiness. All that was left was to pull the trigger...
The sharp sound of a shot woke Mary up. In a ridiculously wrinkled nightgown, she rushed out of the bedroom. One thought was beating in her head: she was late, nothing could be done!
...The husband's prostrate body lay near the chair he had firmly put together. Blood slowly poured into her naked gray hairy chest...
Nobel Prize winner in literature Ernest Hemingway committed suicide, just like his father, who also suffered from depression. With his own hand, he put an end to the end of his life, and his life was as tragic and bright as all the novels he wrote. He would have turned 62 years old.