Hadly Richardson, and the joy of simplicity

Hadley Richardson with Ernest and Bumby

I just finished The Paris Wife, a novel about Ernest Hemingway's first wife, told from her point of view.   For a long time, Hemingway has had all the attention, with his novels on all the required-reading lists, but his first wife (of four), who supported him when he was but a lowly reporter for the Toronto Star, is finally getting some celebrity of her own.

I wasn't sure I was going to like the book when I first started.  I had no idea what a novelist could do with a story about a famous writer's first marriage, especially when he had three subsequent ones.  But since Hemingway divorced Hadley just as he was becoming famous (The Sun Also Rises was written as their marriage was falling apart in 1925), leaving her for someone much flashier and suitable for his own rising star, the book is more of a story about love, and love falling apart.  Hadley loved Ernest before he was the huge figure he became, before he was famous, before he shot himself in the head.  She lived quietly until 1979, finding peaceful happy love with a journalist after her stormy divorce.

Hadley moved to Paris to support Ernest, put her own goals on hold so that he could write.  She loved the piano, but stopped playing when they couldn't afford to rent one for her (even though Ernest rented his own office where he could write, of course).  The one time she put her foot down was to insist that their son be born in Canada, where the hospitals were better, and she would feel safer.  Some of Ernest's glittering friends thought that Hadley had no personality.  Some even encouraged the divorce, thinking he needed more of a gorgeous, chic, Gibson Girl to match him.

But Hadley is far from a weak obedient wife.  She tolerated his affairs, and tried to give his bizarre bigamy idea a try (we think the 60's invented Free Love, but they had nothing on Paris in the 20's), but finally she decided that she had to stay true to herself, and she divorced him, leaving behind the celebrity and the fame.  She was the strongest one of their group, the only one who had the nerve to stand up to Ernest.  And in some respects, she spoke the truth when she said that she got the best Ernest Hemingway there was.  Because she knew him before he was the Ernest Hemingway we know now, because she loved him before there was any fame or money to love, she got the true Ernest Hemingway, one that none of the later wives were able to see.

In a rare interview in the late 70's, Hadley was asked whether she ever thought about going back to Paris and rekindling the relationships she had with celebrities when she was Mrs. Hemingway.  She answered, "No, I think I wanted something real."  When you look at the crowd she could have gone back to - the Fitzgeralds, for example, you can see why she chose a quiet life with her journalist-husband (to whom she was married for almost 40 years).

Hadley was also featured in a new song by Mary Chapin Carpenter called, appropriately, Mrs. Hemingway.  It's a melancholy little waltz about the move to Paris, and the happy times she had with Ernest.  Reading about her has inspired me to check out the biography's of her, and reread Hemingway from the period he was married to her.  She was such an influence on him, and it seems so unfair to simply refer to her as Hemingway's First Wife.  Maybe with this bit of fame she's seeing, people will know her name for who she was, and not just who she married.

Paris: All Style, No Substance

Last Saturday I went to Paris for the day.  Mainly because it sounds really neat to say, "I went to Paris for the day."  When you're based in London, it's easy to do that. 

I had been in Paris when I was 13 on a family vacation with my parents.  I had this idea that Paris was insanely romantic.  I envisioned my teenaged self (wearing my Batman shirt and bad pink lipstick) falling in love with a Parisian boy who would play the accordion and tell me that he'd meet me on the top of the Eiffel Tower.  He'd wear a beret and carry a baguette, too.  I didn't have a romantic rendezvous, but I blame that on the fact that I was with my parents.  And being thirteen didn't help.  I wouldn't have known a romantic rendezvous if it hit me in the face.

So I went back last Saturday.  J went to Amsterdam for the weekend to see a friend of his.  I'd been to Amsterdam before, and not being a fan of tulips or legal marijuana, and having already been to Anne Frank's house, I passed.  He needed a weekend with the boys, and I needed a weekend on a train.  I had been thinking about going to Italy, but I really wanted a nice long train trip, so Eurostar it was.  

I arrived at the Nord station excited to see some glamour, and some elegant skinny moms with their elegant and well behaved offspring.  

Instead, an old lady poked me in the ribs and asked me for three euros.  

(I was subsequently poked in the ribs six times, though the amount of euros requested varied each time)

Then a smug guy on a bike honked his bike-bell at me.  Apparently I was standing in the bike lane.  

Oh, and then a guy whistled at me, asked me for directions, and when I tried to say something like "non parle Francais..." he blew smoke in my face.

Good God, I thought.  These people are as smug as the ones in San Francisco.  And at least San Francisco has the water and sunshine.  What does Paris have?

I ventured off to find out, guidebook in hand.  Surely there would be some style.  People carrying original Louis Vuitton bags and not the cheap knock-offs I see all the time.  Women walking around in four inch stiletto heels as comfortably as if they were in Dr. Scholl's.  After all, the women in London are pretty glamorous, and they have nothing on Paris, right?  And I do love Amelie.  Really, I do.  That traveling gnome is awesome.

Now, I want to be clear that I'm aware of the fact that the time I spent there was about the equivalent of judging London by arriving at King's Cross and walking down to Trafalgar Square on Tottenham Court Road.  I can't judge an entire city by one road.  But maybe I can?  I mean, in London, that journey would take you close to Bloomsbury, the publishing and literary capital.  You'd go very near Soho.  You'd see St. Martin in the Fields, and the National Gallery.  You'd see a lot of life.  

I saw an Office Depot.

No shit, I seriously saw an Office Depot.  

I saw Notre Dame, walked around the South Bank, saw Pont Neuf (a major landmark, the oldest bridge in the city, which, incidentally, was missing the "f" on the sign.  Stay classy, Paris.) and ate outside at an outdoor cafe.  I considered buying some makeup at a giant Yves Rocher store, but didn't once I saw the check-out line.  And I marveled at some fashion faux pas, including:

- skin tight turquoise jeans paired with a sheepskin coat and purple uggs.  Really?

- prostitutes wearing fur coats, and little else.  Seriously, can't Peta step in and do something about that?  Give the prostitutes some faux fur?

- a tan mini-skirt, forest-green tights, and shiny black stiletto boots.

The list went on.  I also saw a fair few mustaches.  On women.

Oh, and I have I mentioned how loud Paris is?  Everyone honks their freaking horns all...the...time.  There was some bicycle rally going on, and this guy must have just set his horn on "auto-annoy" because it did not stop.  Where was he going to go?  There were three hundred bicycles in front of him, rallying, in French.  What point did the horn serve?  Did making my lunch that much less pleasurable really do much for him?

So it had been 22 years since I'd been to Paris, and if you can't tell from this post, I don't really mind if it's another 22 years before I go back.  

And women of the UK (and the US): please get over your inferiority complex about French women.  It's like it's this made-up fairy tale that we've all bought into - that French women are more beautiful, and that Paris is more romantic.  They aren't, and it's not.     

Case in point:

awesome outfits

Only Paris can make eating at KFC outside look romantic: it's a perfect example:
you're outside, having a romantic dinner, but you're eating crap.

When I go to Paris, I like to get Used Jeans

Me and Notre Dame

This is what you get when you order a ham and cheese sandwich in Paris.
Coronary surgery included, thanks to the socialist government.

In case you were wondering, this is the Trendy Shop

French Subway: in Paris, calling cheap cheese "fromage" makes it cool