Mrs Hemingway

Travel Guide

From his home in Key West Florida, to their summer vacation place in Antibes France, we travel with the Hemingways as their lives play out on the world stage but hidden from the world’s eyes. With brief séjours in Cuba and Spain too during the Civil war, this is a booktrail of some very iconic locations which formed the basis of much of Hemingway’s work.

Antibes and Paris, France

It’s the summer of  1926 and Ernest Hemingway’s first wife Hadley is staying with him in a villa in Antibes.

The morning is already warm and the light has turned the white cotton sheets nearly blue

At night fruit falls to the grass with a soft thunk and in the morning she finds the oranges split and stormed by ants

A vivid picture  – of something beautiful turned into something horrible so quickly – much like the Hemingway’s unravelling relationship. Yet the south of France locations shows how much the young Hemingways and their friends Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald were keen to live the good life where ‘ the livin is easy’ is evoked in both the dinners they have, the sitting on the balcony and the general easy living of that era.

Paris

But behind the scenes Hadley yearns for Paris, its grey skies and the simple appartment there but then this was the place where she discovered Ernest’s affair in a letter. Suspecting it after having seen them whispering in a church in Chartres, the fallout soon follows. This is also the location for a further fling – Martha the war correspondent to buy Ernest a book from the Shakespeare and Company bookstore on the left bank. the literary side of the city is alive and well.

Cuba and Spain

Ernest spent much of his time here and its where Mary, wife four, spends time here with him. She likens it to Pemberley where she is Elizabeth Bennett

When Ernest had driven up the Finca, the morning of her arrival in cuba, she had immediately smelled hibiscus and  lime. Before her was the most enormous white mansion, bright as a pebble in the Caribbean sunshine.

Spain we visit via Martha, wife three, who worked with Ernest as a war correspondent during the Civil war. She is abused by him – he calls her a bitch and slaps her when she drives his car into a tree. But still, like the others, she stays

“Rabbit remember Spain, we need war so we can feel the force of each other. Lets not go back to Cuba”

Spain was an exciting time in Hemingway’s life and provided his material for some of his greatest writing but it was a place of chaos in both his private and personal life.

Key West Florida

Ernest’s home in Key West is where we are when Fife ‘s story takes up – it’s where she remembers their first kiss

“Where the shutters  are open a breeze comes into the house from the Gulf crying in the scent of tamarind, frangipani, banana.

They, especially Ernest loves his old haunt of the Sloppy Joe’s bar and is where he ‘hides out’ when the going gets tough

The Hemingway is quite a journey across the world, via the voices of four wives as they each take it in turn to take us back in place and time – to their time with Ernest and life as a mistress then as a wife.