"but paris was a very old city and we were young"

trina gave me a moveable feast for my birthday, so i've been walking the streets of 1920s paris with ernest and friends for the past few days. the jfk library in boston has the ultimate archive of hemingway manuscripts, photos, and correspondence. don't you wish you could walk the quais and check out books from the library with them too?


ernest and his first wife, hadley, in paris, 1922

"with so many trees in the city, you could see the spring coming each day until a night of warm wind would bring it suddenly in one morning. sometimes the heavy cold rains would beat it back so that it would seem that it would never come and that you were losing a season out of your life. this was the only truly sad time in paris because it was unnatural. you expected to be sad in the fall. part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. but you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. when the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason.

in those days, though, the spring always came finally but it was frightening that it had nearly failed."


the murphys, pauline pfeiffer, ernest and hadley, summer 1926

" 'let's walk down the rue de seine and look in all the galleries and in the windows of the shops.'

'sure. we can walk anywhere and we can stop at some new cafe where we don't know anyone and nobody knows us and have a drink.'

'we can have two drinks.'

'then we can eat somewhere.'

'no. don't forget we have to pay the library.'

'we'll come home and eat here and we'll have a lovely meal and drink beaune from the co-operative you can see right out of the window there with the price of the beaune on the window. and afterwards we'll read and then go to bed and make love.'

'and we'll never love anyone else but each other.'

'no. never.'

'what a lovely afternoon and evening. now we'd better have lunch.'"


john "bumby" hemingway and gertrude stein in paris, 1924


hemingway's passport photo


ernest and his second wife, pauline in paris, 1927