Hadley Richardson
Hadley Richardson | |
---|---|
Born | Elizabeth Hadley Richardson November 9, 1891 St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. |
Died | January 22, 1979 Lakeland, Florida, U.S. | (aged 87)
Resting place | Chocorua Cemetery, Tamworth, New Hampshire |
Nationality | American |
Education | Bryn Mawr |
Occupation | Pianist |
Spouses | |
Children | Jack Hemingway |
Elizabeth Hadley Richardson (November 9, 1891 – January 22, 1979) was the first wife of American author Ernest Hemingway. The two married in 1921 after a courtship of less than a year, and moved to Paris within months of being married. In Paris, Hemingway pursued a writing career, and through him Richardson met other expatriate American and British writers.
In 1926, Richardson learned of Hemingway's affair with
Early life
Elizabeth Hadley Richardson was born on November 9, 1891, in St. Louis, Missouri,[1] the youngest of five children. Richardson's mother, Florence Wyman Richardson (née Hadley), was an accomplished musician and singer, and her father, James Richardson Jr., worked for a family-owned pharmaceutical company. As a child, Hadley fell out of a second-story window and consequently was bed-ridden for a year. After the accident, her mother became overly protective, not allowing Hadley to learn how to swim or engage in other physical activities.[2] Hadley's father was less protective, but in 1903 he died by suicide in response to financial difficulties.[2]
As a teenager, Richardson became painfully shy and reclusive. She attended
After her return from college, Richardson lived a restricted life—her sister and her mother continued to worry about her health—with little opportunity for physical activity or much of a social life.
Ernest Hemingway
Shortly after her mother's death,
During the winter of 1921, Richardson took up her music again and indulged in outdoor activities. She and Hemingway corresponded during the winter. When she expressed misgivings about their age difference, he "protested that it made no difference at all."[8] Hemingway visited her in St. Louis in March 1921, and two weeks later she visited him in Chicago. Then, they did not see each other for two months until he returned to St. Louis in May. In their correspondence, she promised to buy him a Corona typewriter for his birthday. In June, she announced her engagement despite objections to the marriage from his friends and her sister.[9] Richardson believed she knew what she was doing, and more importantly, she had an inheritance with which to support herself and a husband. She believed in Hemingway's talent and believed "she was right for him."[9]
They were married on September 3, 1921, in Bay Township, Michigan[10] and spent their honeymoon at the Hemingway family summer cottage on Walloon Lake. The weather was miserable, and both Richardson and Hemingway came down with fever, sore throat, and cough.[11] The couple returned to Chicago after their honeymoon, where they lived in a small apartment on North Dearborn Street.[12]
The death of a hated uncle gave Richardson another inheritance and additional financial independence for the couple. Initially, they intended to visit Rome, but Sherwood Anderson convinced them to visit Paris instead.[13] Anderson's advice to live in Paris interested her,[12] and when two months later Hemingway was hired as foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star, the couple left for Paris. Of Hemingway's marriage to Richardson, Hemingway biographer Jeffrey Meyers claims: "With Richardson, Hemingway achieved everything he had hoped for with Agnes: the love of a beautiful woman, a comfortable income, a life in Europe."[14]
Paris
In Paris, Richardson and Hemingway lived in a small apartment at 74, rue du Cardinal Lemoine in the Latin Quarter. In the winter of 1921, he discovered the Shakespeare and Company bookshop, which also functioned as a lending library, and was run by American expatriate Sylvia Beach. Richardson went there to buy James Joyce's works, which she liked,[15] because Beach had published Joyce's Ulysses. The Hemingways first met Joyce at the book shop in March 1922.[16]
Through Anderson's letters of introduction, Hemingway met
A few months later, when they learned Richardson was pregnant, the couple decided to move to Toronto for the child's birth. Before they left, the couple went for the first time to watch the bullfighting and the
In Toronto, the family lived in a small apartment on Bathurst Street with "wall space enough to hang their collection of paintings." Richardson called the assignments given to her husband at the Toronto Star "absurd."
Sometime after their return to Paris from Canada, Hemingway met the Pfeiffer sisters.[26] When in June 1925 Hemingway and Richardson left Paris for their annual visit to Pamplona—the third year they had done so—they were accompanied by a group of American and British expatriates, including Pauline Pfeiffer.[27] The trip inspired Hemingway's first novel The Sun Also Rises, which he began to write immediately after the fiesta, finishing it in September.[28] In November, as a birthday present for Richardson, Hemingway bought Joan Miró's painting The Farm.[26]
Divorce
Their marriage disintegrated as Hemingway was writing and revising The Sun Also Rises,[29] although he dedicated the novel to "Hadley and ...John Hadley Nicanor."[20] For the second year, they went to Schruns for Christmas, but that year they were joined by Pauline Pfeiffer. Hemingway returned with Pfeiffer to Paris, leaving Richardson with Bumby in Austria.[30] While Richardson was in Austria, Hemingway sailed to New York then returned to Paris in March, at which time he may have begun his affair with Pauline.[31] In the spring of 1926, Richardson became aware of the affair,[29] although she endured Pauline's presence in Pamplona that July.[32] On their return to Paris, Richardson and Hemingway decided to separate, and Richardson formally requested a divorce in the fall. By November they had split their possessions, and Richardson accepted Hemingway's offer of the royalties from The Sun Also Rises.[33] The couple divorced in January 1927, and Hemingway married Pauline Pfeiffer in May the same year.[34]
Paul Mowrer
Richardson stayed in France until 1934.
A Moveable Feast
Hemingway's memoir A Moveable Feast, not published until 1964, three years after Hemingway's death, captures Hemingway's marriage to Richardson and their life together in Paris during the early to mid-1920s.[41]
Later years and death
When Richardson left her marriage to Hemingway, she left the limelight.[42] She reportedly saw Hemingway only twice after their divorce. In July 1939, she and Mowrer ran into him while vacationing in Wyoming,[43] and, according to A. E. Hotchner, the last time Hemingway reported seeing Richardson was after a brief and spontaneous meeting in Paris.[44]
Richardson died on January 22, 1979, in Lakeland, Florida, at the age of 87. She is buried in New Hampshire at Chocorua Cemetery in Tamworth.
In 1992, Hadley by Gioia Diliberto, a biography of Hadley Richardson, was published. The book, which is based on extensive research, including the author's exclusive access to a series of taped conversations with Richardson, was reissued in 2011 as Paris Without End: The True Story of Hemingway's First Wife.
In 2011, a book titled The Paris Wife: A Novel by Paula McLain was published, telling the entire story of Hadley Richardson's relationship with Hemingway in "her voice."[45] Although a work of fiction, its narrative is faithful to the known facts.
References
Footnotes
- ^ a b c Oliver, p. 139
- ^ a b c d e f Kert 1983, pp. 83–90
- ^ Barlowe 2000, p. 133
- ^ Barlowe 2000, p. 132
- OCLC 960750891.
- ^ Mellow 1992, p. 129
- ^ Meyers pp 56–59.
- ^ Kert 1983, p. 91
- ^ a b Kert 1983, pp. 91–95
- ^ Oliver, p. 140
- ^ Kert 1983, p. 103
- ^ a b Kert 1983, p. 104
- ^ Baker 1972, p. 7
- ^ Meyers 1985, pp. 60–62
- ^ Kert 1983, p. 112
- ^ Meyers 1985, p. 82
- ^ Baker 1972, pp. 8–11
- ^ Meyers 1985, pp. 69–70
- ^ a b c Baker 1972, pp. 15–18
- ^ a b c d Workman 1983
- ^ Mellow 1992, p. 445
- ^ Mellow 1992, p. 241
- ^ Mellow 1992, p. 248
- ^ Mellow 1992, p. 259
- ^ Mellow 1992, p. 281
- ^ a b Mellow 1992, p. 293
- ^ Meyers 1985, pp. 117–119
- ^ Baker 1972, pp. 1972
- ^ a b Baker 1972, pp. 44–43
- ^ Spilka 1984
- ^ Mellow 1992, pp. 324–326
- ^ Mellow 1992, p. 333
- ^ Mellow 1992, pp. 338–340
- ^ Meyers 1985, p. 172
- ^ Kert 1983, p. 199
- ^ Kert 1983, p. 225
- ^ Kert 1983, p. 251
- ^ "I am Lake Bluff History: People". Lake Bluff History Museum. Retrieved 2021-04-09.
- ^ Reynolds 2000, p. 23
- ^ Reynolds 2000, p. 293
- ^ Oliver, pp. 225–228
- ^ Just, Julia (12 April 1992). "IN SHORT: NONFICTION". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-05-10.
- ^ Baker, Carlos (1969). Ernest Hemingway, A Life Story. Charles Scribner's Sons. p. 341.
- ^ Hotchner, A. E. (2015). "Hemingway in Love", Smithsonian, October 2015, p. 80.
- ISBN 978-0-345-52130-9.
Sources
- Baker, Carlos (1969). Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. ISBN 0-02-001690-5.
- Baker, Carlos (1972). Hemingway: The Writer as Artist (4th ed.). Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01305-5.
- Barlowe, Jamie (2000). "Hemingway's Gender Training". In Wagner-Martin, Linda (ed.). A Historical Guide to Ernest Hemingway. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-512151-1.
- Kert, Bernice (1983). The Hemingway Women (1999 ed.). Norton. ISBN 0-393-31835-4.
- McLain, Paula (2011). The Paris Wife: A Novel. Ballantine Books. ISBN 978-0-345-52130-9.
- Mellow, James R. (1992). Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences. New York: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-37777-3.
- Mellow, James R. (1991). Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein and Company. New York: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-47982-7.
- Meyers, Jeffrey (1985). Hemingway: A Biography. London: Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-42126-4.
- Oliver, Charles M. (1999). Ernest Hemingway A to Z: The Essential Reference to the Life and Work. New York: Checkmark. ISBN 0-8160-3467-2.
- Reynolds, Michael S. (2000). Hemingway: The Final Years. New York: Norton. ISBN 0-393-31778-1.
- Spilka, Mark (1984). "Victorian Keys to the Early Hemingway: Captain Marryat". Novel: A Forum on Fiction. 17 (2). Duke University Press: 116–140. JSTOR 1345014.
- Workman, Brooke (1983). "Twenty-Nine Things I Know about Bumby Hemingway". The English Journal. 72 (2): 24–26. JSTOR 816722.
Further reading
- Diliberto, Gioia: Hadley Ticknor & Fields, New York, 1992, reprinted as Paris Without End: The True Story of Hemingway's Wife HarperCollins, New York, 2011
- Sokoloff, Alice Hunt: Hadley – The First Mrs. Hemingway, New York (1973)
- McLain, Paula. The Paris Wife, Random House. (2011)