Writers through the centuries - 19th Century authors part 6
episode 14
"One doesn't recognize the really important moments in one's life until it's too late."
Agatha Christie
"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."
F. Scott Fitzgerald
That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."
C.S. Lewis
"The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too."
Ernest Hemingway
Agatha Christie (1890-1976)
Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born in a well-established financial family, on 15 September 1890 in the beautiful town of Torquay, Devon. The third child of Frederick Miller and Clarissa Margaret nee Boehmer. Agatha’s mother received in 1869 a large sum of money as an inheritance of 2,000 £ which would be equivalent to today’s money of 200,000 £, making them relinquish their money worries by the time Agatha was born.
Her childhood was filled with visits to their relatives in London or trips to Paris. She started to read at a very early age, of four and received a home education supervised by her mother and sister. She enjoyed mathematics, reading, and writing and learned to play the piano.
She enjoyed reading the works of Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, Walter Scott and Alexandre Dumas, and her creative skills increased with her reading, as at the age of 10 she wrote her first poem.
Christie struggled with her father’s death, at a very early age (he died in 1901) after which she could not easily adapt to the local Girl school and attended the Paris pensionnats (or boarding schools) studying more extensively piano and opera, but once again could not warm up to the strict rules so she abandoned the musical pursue. Instead, her writing skills came to fruition and wrote her first short story, aged only 18.
This work was followed by an attempt at her first novel, written under the pen name: “Monosyllaba” titled: “Snow upon the desert”, but her effort got discouraged by six publishers declining to publish her work. However, a family friend, the novelist Eden Phillpotts, sees potential in her work and even sends Agatha’s introduction to his literary agent, but he turned it down as well, suggesting instead that she still writes.
On a personal note, she met Archibald Christie at a dance, in the autumn of 1912. The British military officer fell in love on the spot, and three months later they got engaged on a firm marriage proposal. In December 1914 the couple got married in Clifton, Bristol. While her husband was sent to the front line, she enrolled herself as a volunteer at the Red Cross, through which she also qualified as an apothecary’s assistant.
She always had a soft spot for detective novels, like “The woman in white” written by Wilkie Collins, or the detective short stories of Arthur Conan Doyle, “Sherlock Holmes”. This pushed her to create her own detective, a former Belgian police officer named “Hercule Poirot”. The character was inspired by real people she met while working as a volunteer for the red cross. Belgian refugees that took shelter from the Germans, came to shape the little detective that is now a most loved character, a central figure in her detective series.
Her stories got rejected by another 2 major publishing houses, eventually, at “The Bodley head” publishers, John Lane who was one of the co-founders decided to act upon a submission he received several months before. She signed with them a five books contract, and the first story of Hercule Poirot was published in 1920.
In the next years, her novels started to increase in popularity, gaining more and more notoriety and sales. The family, which was now blessed with a child: Rosalind Clarissa Hicks (born in August of 1919) decided to go on a promotional tour for the British Empire Exhibition. After leaving the much too young daughter for such a voyage, with her mother, Agatha and her husband embarked for the next 10 months on the tour that would take them to New Zealand and Australia, South Africa, and Canada. Upon their return, they acquired a house in Sunningdale, Berkshire.
But after several happy years, in August 1926, her husband decided to go for a divorce, felling in love with another, after a few arguments Agatha disappeared on 3 December 1926. Her disappearance made the news, appearing even in “The New York Times”. Another newspaper offered a good amount of money as a reward for her whereabouts. She was found 11 days later and 184 miles from her home. In 1928 the couple was divorced and Archie remarried just a week later.
Going on trips, she reached through the Orient Express, Istanbul. From there she went to Baghdad to visit the British archaeology excavations. It is here where she met Max Mallowan. In September 1930, the couple married in Edinburgh. He, a talented and skilled archaeologist was often accompanied by his wife, in the Middle East excavations. This experience would shape her novel’s settings and backgrounds. Eventually, the couple settled in Chelsea, London where they lived in Winterbrook, and it is the same place where Agatha Christie would do much of her writing.
When World War II struck, Agatha put her pharmaceutical skills to good use, once more, working at the University College Hospital in London. The influence of pharmacy on her novels was seen in the novel: “The Pale horse”, the novel returned the favour and influenced real life, when in 1977 a real case of thallium poisoning, was elucidated. The medical staff had read her novel and recognised the patient’s symptoms from her writing.
Christie received recognition for her masterpieces, being elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, in 1950. She was appointed in 1956, Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). The University of Exeter awarded her an honorary degree: “Doctor of Literature”. And in 1971 New Years’ honours, she was raised in rank to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE).
Christie despised loud noises, or crowds, she did not take to alcohol or smoking, instead preferring travelling, piano concerts or going to the theatre. She was all her life a devout Christian with a regular Church of England attendance. She founded a trust: “The Agatha Christie Trust for Children”, established in 1969 which helped the two dearest causes to her heart: elderly people and young children.
Aged 85, on 12 January 1976 she died of natural causes at her home in Winterbrook house. Several theatres dimmed their outside lights, on receiving news of her death. Her funeral was attended by several newspapers and TV journalists and reporters, some coming from South America.
During her lifetime Agatha Christie sold about 300 million books, and in late 1950 her yearly earnings were above the 100,000 £ mark (which would be about 2.5 million pounds in today’s equivalent). All of this established her, in 1976, as the best-selling novelist in history (at the time). Beyond this, her detective novels are seen alongside the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as the greatest detective stories there are.
Agatha Christie’s daughter Rosalind Hicks inherited her mother’s work copyright, and she was a great preserver of her mother’s memory, refusing to take commercial benefits which would have altered her mothers’ memory or her mother’s work. One such example is in 1995 when a script adaptation of: “Towards zero” distorted the book so much, that now included incestual relations to gain commercially on a current issue wave. Often commercial works (movies or books) will tend to touch on current issues and alter the real or original story so that it appeals to the current social climate. In 1995 Rosalind vehemently opposed such depiction, and the film could only appear after the movie had to change its title and its characters’ names, avoiding copyright.
Rosalind authorised Janet Morgan to write an objective biography of Agatha Christie and being president of the “Agatha Christie Society” she named both: David Suchet (the actor who portrayed Hercule Poirot) and Joan Hickson (the actress who portrayed Miss Marple) as vice president thanking them for portraying the characters as much to her mother writings that would have made her proud.
On 28 October 2004, Rosalind Clarissa Christie/Hicks died and her son: Mathew Prichard inherited her shares of Agatha Christie limited, to which Mathew’s son, the great-grandson of Agatha Christie, James Prichard is nowadays CEO.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973)
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in a middle-class watch makers and piano manufacturers in London and Birmingham. His ancestors could be dated to around 1620, mainly in German speaking territories. This heritage will come back to JRR Tolkien who will develop a specific interest in German linguistics.
Born in January 1892, he was soon encountered by a tragic event, as his father died in his infancy, by a rheumatic fever. This meant that the family was left without a steady income, and that meant the family had to move constantly around Birmingham and Worcestershire, and the landscape he saw there, inspired his future writings.
He could read and write from a very early age, and enjoyed reading literature, especially: “Treasure Island”, “Alice’s adventures in wonderland”. His mother started to attend and become a part of the Catholic Church community, although her family, being a Baptist faith, opposed his and did no longer support her financially. Disaster struck once more, in 1904 his mother passed away of acute diabetes. According to his mother’s will, John Ronald and his brother was assigned to be take care of and raised by the Catholic priest: Father Francis Morgan. In school he was a good pupil with a strong inclination towards linguistics, learning both Latin and Anglo-Saxon.
He met his future wife, Edith Mary Bratt, around 1908, she was three years older, and they soon fell in love for each other.
In 1911 he took a trip to Switzerland, which once more will influence his literary work, in Bilbo Baggins trips. Coming back to England, he started his studies at Oxford, Exeter college and graduated in 1915 from literature and English language.
In 1913, Tolkien wrote once again to Edith Bratt and asked her to marry him. At the time she already accepted the marriage proposal of a school friend, but that she always cared more for Tolkien, and after the two met in Cheltenham she accepted to brake up the previous engagement and marry John Ronald, taking the first step by converting to Catholicism. The two got married in 1916, at St Mary Immaculate Catholic Church, Warwick.
Although blamed for not wanting to join the military forces, right away, as soon as the war started, Tolkien delayed the enrolment until 1915, and in 1916 he was sent to Calais, France. Because mailing, even to your family, your location was forbidden in a war military environment, he developed a cryptic communication method with his wife. Although he despised all the roles a war would implicate, things would turn to worse, when he was taken to the Somme that will soon see one of the bloodiest and inhumane battles, the Battle of the Somme. Witnessing these horrors would once again mark him and could be read in his novels. Soon after the battle he got ill from trench fever and was sent back to England in November 1916.
In his recovery time, he started to work on: “The Fall of Gondolin” which will be the base for “The Silmarillion” (which will be published post-humous in 1977, by his son). During his recovery period, his first son was born: John Francis Reuel Tolkien (1917–2003) a Catholic priest, followed by: Michael Hilary (1920–1984), Christopher John (1924–2020) and Priscilla Anne (1929–2022).
After the war ended, as a civilian, Tolkien got a role working at the Oxford English Dictionary where he worked on the history and etymology of the words of Germanic origin. His professional career progressed from there and taking a position at the University of Leeds, he became the youngest member of the academic staff.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born into a middle-class Catholic family, living at the time in Saint Paul, Minnesota, on 24 September 1896, of Irish and English origins. Soon after his birth, the family had to move to Buffalo, New York as a repercussion of the family business failure.
Attending two catholic schools till 1908, he was highly regarded by his colleagues as unusually intelligent and with a special interest in literature. Which was later followed by his publishing in the school newspaper, his first fiction piece, in 1909. In 1913 he joined the University of Princeton, where he wrote stories and poems for the Princeton Triangle Club, the university theatre group.
In his second year of university, returning home, to Saint Paul, for the Christmas break, he met the 16-year-old Ginevra King and fell in love with her on the spot. The two started a romantic relationship and according to some literary analysts, she was the inspiration for the characters: Daisy Buchanan in “The Great Gatsby” and Isabelle Borge, in “This side of Paradise”, but soon after she broke up the relationship with him. Although he still pursued her, and she still fancied him, being of different social status (she being from an upper-class family, and he of a lower financial status) his father actually intervened in blocking the relationship.
Rejected, Fitzgerald enlisted in the United States Army, fighting in World War I. Although he hoped he will die in combat, he wanted to live something behind, before his death, as such wrote very fast a 120,000-word manuscript, which he named: “The Romantic Egotist” (future novel: “This side of Paradise”), but it was declined by the famous publisher Scribner, who encouraged him to continue his writing and to resubmit his work but after further revisions.
He returned from the war, and his regiment was stationed at Montgomery, Alabama, were trying to forget Ginevra, he met a few women. Among others, the one that made an impression on him was a 17-year-old bubbly girl, named Zelda Sayre, which seemed to attract a lot of attention because of her beauty. The two started a very passionate relationship, but when the question of marriage appeared, Zelda declined to marry Fitzgerald until he was financially established.
He tried to find a role as an editor at various newspapers but got declined. He then tried to have a good income writing adverts. He still did not abandon his writing literature desire, which was received with over 120 rejections, and the only story sold was: “Babes in the woods” for which he received 30$ (which would be around 500$ in today’s money).
Declined by two of the girls he loved, with a job he hated, and a grim prospect of ever making it as a writer, Fitzgerald quit his job and returned to St. Paul where he decided to give an all-or-nothing attempt at his literature attempt, revising his novel now named: “This side of Paradise” adding more and more of his personal romantic life twists to the book. During this time, to be able to sustain himself, he got a job repairing cars. One late evening in 1919 he received the mail he was waiting for: Scribner accepted his manuscript for publication. March 1920 his novel was now in bookstores and was received tremendously good, selling astonishingly 40,000 copies in the first year. Fitzgerald now became an established literary name and a sensation across the United States.
Now established financially, Zelda and Scott now married in April 1920, although as his success increased, his feelings for Zelda decreased. The two moved into different hotels in New York, where the two behaved very childish, enjoying Scott’s celebrity. But among this newly acquired success story, Fitzgerald realized that this might not last, and all of his fame might be just a glittering star, mirroring in his own life the glitter of the Jazz Age. He loved and despised the age he lived in, from one side the perversion of the former morals, increased partying and increasing alcohol consumption of this self-indulgent age brought tears to his eyes, but he also was a huge consumer of all of these events that shaped the jazz age of the ’20s.
Zelda was pregnant and gave birth to Frances Scott Fitzgerald on 26 October 1921, the time in which Scott worked on his second novel: “The Beautiful and damned”. On the birth of their child, Zelda said “I hope she is a fool, a beautiful little fool”, which Scott would later attribute to the character of Daisy Buchanan, in “The Great Gatsby”.
The characters of “The Beautiful and Damned” now mirrored someone in his current life. Anthony and Gloria Patch had the basis of their personality on themselves. The book was published by Scribner in March 1922. The story sold well, with an initial first run of 20,000 copies and a follow-up of another 50,000 copies. But in order to sustain their increasingly spending lifestyle, he continued to publish short stories, which he hated, considering them too commercial, all except one: “Winter dreams” (which will be collected and published as part of the “All the sad young men”).
Once again, he admired and despised the age and the rich people of this age. Moving to Long Island, one of his neighbours was the wealthy German immigrant, Max Gerlach, involved in the alcohol smuggling business, used to through lavish parties and never wore the same shirt twice. He will become an important influence in shaping the character of Jay Gatsby. But Fitzgerald wanted to move away from the US, and in May 1924 the Fitzgerald’s moved to Europe, France.
Although France was supposed to be a place for rediscovery, the family actually began to fight more and more, Zelda got infatuated with a pilot and started to use large quantities of sleeping pills. Zelda wanted to run away with the French aviator, but he never actually intended a serious relationship with her, the fling eventually ended when the pilot left the French Riviera, and the couple managed to somehow get passed this incident.
Working still on his work, The Great Gatsby got published in April 1925, and although sold fairly good, it was a lot less compared to his previous books, selling almost 20,000 copies in the first year. During their time in Europe, Scott met and befriended Gertrude Stein, James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway. Gertrude Stein branded themselves as “The Lost Generation” (“generation perdue”). Although he was close friends with Hemingway, Ernest despised Zelda and her influence over Scott. The couple came more and more apart, and eventually, they returned to the United States in December 1926.
Following an invitation by the film producer Considine, Scott and Zelda arrived in Hollywood no later than January 1927. But here, Zelda’s demand for constant entertainment started to make a reputation for themselves, behaving too childish. At one party Fitzgerald lacking for so many years the person to speak with on an elevated intellectual level, met the rising star of the cinema, the 17-year-old Lois Moran.
Although he was in his early 30s and she was 17 years old (when they met), they entangled in long discussions about literature, principles and erudite topics. Lois Moran fell in love with him, seeing Scott for the talented writer he was and his sophisticated nature that only required to be nourished. The two started a romantic relationship, and she became part of a short story, called: “Magnetism”. Furthermore, Fitzgerald rewrote “Tender is the Night” in the new version, the main character now resembled Lois Moran.
Zelda pushed by jealousy and despair, seeing that she is losing Scott, persuaded him to move once more to Delaware, followed by a return to Paris, in the spring of 1929. But during their time here, Zelda tried at some point to grab the wheel of their driving car, and through herself, Scott and their daughter off a cliff, subsequently Zelda was diagnosed with schizophrenia and searched for treatment in Switzerland, before returning to America in the September of 1931. She was admitted to the John Hopkins University hospital in Maryland to undergo treatment for her psychiatric condition.
In October 1932 Zelda sent to Scribner “Save me the waltz” which was a depiction, from her perspective, into a fiction novel, their relationship crumbling. Although Scott was working on a similar piece, he persuaded Scribner to publish Zelda’s version, which proved not to sell well. In April 1934, Scott published his novel, “Tender is the Night”, but his novel was not received as good as his status as an established writer demanded.
His literature work was now seen as too niched, only for the elite of society and not appealing to the mass public. As the Great Depression loomed in, people found less money to buy reading material. Also, while the jazz age, depicted in Scott’s novel as the main setting, represented reckless spending on expensive alcohol and parties, the current reality of the 33s was now as far from that as it could be, the novels did not seem adapted to the present.
The medical bills from Zelda’s hospital admission and his former exuberant lifestyle pushed Scott into a constant and deepening debt. His financial decline was simultaneous with his health decline. The years of parties, heavy alcohol consumption and past tuberculosis were now taking their effects on Scott’s health. He started to be recurrently admitted to the hospital because of his alcoholism. Almost bankrupt, the years 1936 and 1937 finds Scott Fitzgerald living in cheap hotel rooms.
Pushed by the necessity to produce more money for Zelda’s medical bills, which were now increasing due to her constant attempts at suicide that required a more secure and safe medical unit, but also more expensive, added onto his daughter’s school tuition fees, in 1937 Scott started to work as a screenwriter for MGM. His income now reached almost 30,000 $ / year (around 550,000 $ in today’s equivalent) and was almost entirely spent on the bills.
He started a casual relationship with a gossip columnist, Sheilah Graham that cared for him and his medical needs, constantly pushed by guilt that Zelda’s mental illness has been caused by him. This depression was further fuelled by the constant dissension with MGM over his screenwriter role. While Scott wrote pieces that were too literary and more suitable for novels, the employer demanded that his approach was more to the guidelines of screenwriting. His contract ended in 1939, while some directors were sympathetic to him, considering Fitzgerald as a screenwriter was like “a great sculptor who is hired to do a plumbing job”.
Fitzgerald did not like the state he reached, and through the short stories of Pat Hobby, he expressed his discontent. Before a trip to Cuba, in 1939, he saw Zelda for one last time, on the trip during a cockfight he wanted to intervene on the grounds of animal cruelty, but he was beaten up by the spectators. In the last year of his life, he was sober, but in December 1940 Fitzgerald almost collapsed after viewing the premiere of a movie he felt very dizzy, followed by a final collapse on the floor the next day, he died on 21 December 1940 of coronary atherosclerosis. He was just 44 years old.
The funeral in Bethesda, Maryland, was attended by little over thirty people. Fitzgerald was buried at Rockville union cemetery, Maryland, where Zelda joined him in 1948 after a fire took her life while in the Highland Mental Hospital. The couple was moved at Scottie’s (their daughter) demand, in 1975, to the Catholic family plot in Saint Mary’s cemetery of Rockville. Posthumously, “The last tycoon” was published in 1941, 17 out of the planned 31 chapters were edited, to add continuity in the missing chapters, that Scott did not have a life span enough to complete.
Frances Scott Fitzgerald died in June 1986 and had 4 children of her own: Thomas Lanahan, Eleanor Lanahan, Samuel Lanahan jr and Cecilia Lanahan. Eleanor Lanahan, born in January 1948 is herself an author.
Although in the last period of his life, the fame of his books was in decline, nearly a decade later, his books were rediscovered again and again and his literary genius was appreciated. “The Great Gatsby” became a reference lecture in many schools and colleges, defining an era, the jazz era. His stories were adapted into movies time and time again and are rediscovered with the same enthusiasm and appreciation by several generations after him, regarded as one of the greatest authors that ever lived.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)
Clive Staples Lewis was born in Belfast, in November 1898, his father was a solicitor and his maternal relatives were priests of the Church of Ireland. As a child, he read multiple times the stories of Beatrix Potter, it is from this point that his interest towards animal tales and fictional animals inhabited lands by animals with human traits. Increasing his literature skills was easy enough, because as a child, living with his parents, his fathers’ house was filled with books.
His mother died in 1908 when he was privately tutored, after which he was sent to Watford in England, with his elder brother, but because the school closed, he returned to continue his studies in Belfast. His interest in literature increased and expanded towards Scandinavian legends and stories, added to the Greek literature and mythology, which eventually got him a scholarship at the University College, Oxford.
Although he was at first very interested in the Celtic pagan heritage, fascinated by the Irish language and its Celtic origins, he then inclined more towards Christianity, which increased his interest in Christian theology, and more towards the necessity of a Catholic union of writers.
From Oxford, he enrolled on the army and fought in World war I from 1917-to 1918, where he met Edward “Paddy” Moore with whom he made a pact, that if any of them died in the war, the other would take care of the deceased’s family. Edward “Paddy” Moore died, and C.S. Lewis did keep to his word. Upon return he graduated in Greek, Latin literature, and ancient history, eventually becoming a tutor at Magdalen College.
After his return to Christianity and conversion in 1931, he had numerous discussions on the religious topics, with his friends: Tolkien and Hugo Dyson, and C.S. Lewis decided to convert to the Church of England, to the dismay of Tolkien who would have wished for him to convert to Catholicism. On this topic, he wrote: “The Great divorce” (published in 1945) and “Letters to Malcolm” (published in 1964).
During the Second World War II, he took evacuees from London into his home, near Oxford. During the war, he wanted to join but he was rejected, and he spoke frequently on the radio, on religious programmes trying to up the morale of the British population during the Nazi air raids, which the people seem to appreciate.
One of the best-known works by C.S. Lewis is: “The lion, the witch and the wardrobe” part of the 7 novels in the series: “Chronicles of Narnia”. The whole series was published between 1950 and 1956, as follows: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950), Prince Caspian (1951), The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952), The Silver Chair (1953), The Horse and His Boy (1954), The Magician's Nephew (1955), The Last Battle (1956).
After the war, in 1954, he moved his teaching career from Oxford to Cambridge at the Mediaeval and Renaissance Literature at Magdalene College.
In his personal life, C.S. Lewis befriended Joy Gresham, an American writer, of Jewish heritage and a former communist. After a few correspondences, she came to England with her two sons and agreed to enter a civil marriage with her, although he saw her more as a friend than a lover. However, because she was diagnosed with cancer and feared that she might die from it, the couple married religiously. Although she recovered, the couple remained married, but eventually, cancer took its toll, and Joy Gresham passed away in July 1960.
From 1961 his health started to decline, been diagnosed with renal problems, eventually the kidneys’ status just aggravated, and he died in November 1963.
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
Ernest Miller Hemingway was born at the end of the 19th century, on 21 July 1899 in Illinois, near Chicago. His father was a physician and his mother a musician. His mother taught Ernest to play the cello, which would influence the structure of his later writing. But his focus was more on physical activities. As a child, he was very interested in fishing, hunting, and numerous sports, like boxing, water polo, and football.
Leaving his high school education, he got a job as a reporter, and it seemed like his career would take him toward journalism. But once again his daredevil inclinations and physical activities, he wanted to enrol on the US army, but he was refused due to poor eyesight. Managing to find a loophole by joining the red cross and joining the Italian front in Milan as an ambulance driver to rescue the people from the bombarded places. But soon after his arrival in June of 1918, he was wounded by mortar fire. But despite his wounds, he was still helping the Italian soldiers to escape and was eventually decorated with the “Silver medal of Military valour” by the Italian military force. After which he had even more wounds added by shrapnel, which took him to the hospital for recovery, where he made a few friends.
While in hospital recovery he met and fell in love with an American nurse, Agnes von Kurowsky, but upon his return to America, she did not join him, as she engaged with an Italian officer, which left an even more deep wound on Ernest’s soul than the military could leave on his body. This love affair made Ernest Hemingway so careful in all future relationships, that he left the women before he was left by them. In September 1920 he moved to Chicago and worked as an associate editor for the monthly journal “Cooperative Commonwealth”. It is in Chicago, where he met his first wife, Hadley Richardson, who was eight years older than Hemingway, and they married soon enough, in September 1921, and left for Paris.
In Paris, they (especially Hadley Richardson) went to “Shakespeare and Company bookshop” where they met James Joyce, Hadley admired his work. It is here where he met multiple American expatriates, and writers, eventually meeting one of his best friends, Gertrude Stein. The friendship however took a turn for the worse, after Hemingway reached a certain level of fame, as a writer. Hemingway and Hadley travelled across Europe, visiting Switzerland, and Germany and eventually after she was pregnant, the couple decided to move to Toronto. John Hadley Nicanor Hemingway was born in October 1923 (died in December 2000, in New York, and had 3 children of his own).
Hemingway despised being a mere journalist in Toronto, so he moved once more to Paris in January 1924, from there they travelled to Spain and Austria.
It is between the period of 1924 and 1925 that Ernest Hemingway met and befriended F. Scott Fitzgerald. The friends admired their writing talent, and when 1925 Fitzgerald published “The Great Gatsby”, he greatly admired his friend’s talent.
Along the constant travels and moving, Hemingway met Pauline Pfeiffer, and he began to write his first novel: “The Sun also rises”. Hadley travelled to Austria, the time in which Ernest started his affair with Pauline, and the couple divorced in January 1927. The ended marriage is described in “A Moveable Feast”, published in 1964.
Pauline was pregnant and she desired to move out of Paris, Hemingway agreed and the couple left France in March 1928. In Kansas City, Patrick Hemingway was born in June 1928 (in April 2022 he is still alive), and he has a son of his own, Mina Hemingway. In the winter of 1928, his father committed suicide but kept working on his novel: “A farewell to arms” published in September 1929. Gloria Hemingway (born in November 1931 died in October 2001, and had 8 children of her own), the third child of the couple born in Kansas City, after which in 1933 the couple went on a safari trip to Kenya. But his trips took him in 1937 to Spain, to cover the Spanish civil war. From there he moved to Cuba in 1939 which started his desire to separate from Pauline. He wanted to officialise the relationship he started in Spain with the American writer Martha Gellhorn, which he married in November 1940, as soon as his divorce from the previous marriage (with Pauline) was finalized.
Inspired by Martha, he wrote: “For whom the bell tolls”, published in October 1940. But during World War II, he was in Europe between 1944 and 1945, where he met the American journalist Mary Welsh, after which in March 1945 he divorced Martha. For his military service, he was awarded the “Bronze Star” for bravery. But during this time, he suffered some of the more serious blows, as his friend passed away: F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1940, James Joyce in 1941 and Gertrude Stein in 1946, this caused him severe depression.
In May 1952 he won the Pulitzer Prize, but in 1954 he almost died in two successive accidents, of plane crashes. But 1954 brought some good into his life, as he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Returned to Paris in 1956 he remembered that there were some notebooks he left in his previous stay, at the Ritz in 1928. Retrieving them, he revisited some of his previous writings.
His final months were filled with money problems, and he was under multiple FBI investigations, as his mental health started to deteriorate rapidly in July 1961 he committed suicide, by shooting himself with his favourite shotgun.
Nihil sine Deo
