Elizabeth Hadley Richardson was Ernest Hemingway’s first wife. Ernest fell for Hadley’s good looks and honest character. However, no one could have prepared him for how much Hadley would influence his life and his writing.
One can see influences of Hadley in some of his famous characters, like Catherine Barkley from A Farewell to Arms. On the other hand, the reader gets to know about Ernest and Hadley’s relationship most from his writing where he explicitly talks about her, such as in A Moveable Feast and in his letters.
The reader can see Ernest’s sense of regret about his affair with Pauline, but also his fear that Hadley and his son, Bumby, could ruin his writing career. His writing also features how he felt about his and Hadley’s money situation and how Hadley was able to see his more sensitive side instead of the masculine persona that everyone else saw.
This website was made for a Mellon Scholar project.
Hadley and Ernest 