In Search of Hemingway

By Arnie Greenberg, ultours1@gmail.com

It's been a quest for me since my teenage years, when I first read The
Sun also Rises. My story is no different from other Hemingway aficionados, except that I still feel that same pull, so many years and so many miles later.

My trail of Hemingway haunts took no special order. I knew in my mind
where I wanted to go and went to each of the places when it was practical.

It Started in Paris

Of course, it started in Paris. I wanted to walk where he walked, drink where he drank and see where he lived.

I walked along rue Notre Dame des Champs, where he and Hadley and
their young son lived above a carpenter's loft, "on the left hand side going down, in a carpenters loft on a street in that emerald city..." That loft is not there now, but I walked in behind the gate into a university courtyard and knew I was on the actual site of Hem's early days in Paris.

I continued to the end of the block. There, in the shadow of Marshal Ney, one of the great Generals of the Napoleonic era, I find Le Closerie des Lilas, where Hem sat at a table, ordered a drink, and wrote in the early quiet of this fabled bar-restaurant. It is still there, and the menu still boasts a picture of Papa, their star visitor.

Down the boulevard Montparnasse, I discover Le Select, where he and
Firzgerald drank, talked and argued. I am only yards from Le Dome and Le Coupole, the haunts he knew so well.

Heading for Cardinal Lemoine

I jump on the Métro and head for rue Cardinal Lemoine, where the writer
and family lived in a fourth floor walk-up. I am reminded that James Joyce lived just across the street, possibly at the same time. (By the way, it was in that same building that Maisonneuve once lived. He was the founder of my home town, Montreal.) Hem borrowed a friend's apartment on rue Descartes, around the corner, so he could write in peace.

But family life was not to continue for the man who said he left his
wife, "because I'm a bastard". He left his wife to marry her friend Pauline.

He and Pauline moved into a fashionable apartment near the St. Sulpice at #6 rue Ferou.

I am at Sylvia Beach's bookstore, where Hem arrived to shoot snipers
from the rooftops, before he liberated the bar at The Ritz.

I look for the gym where he boxed unsuccessfully with Canadian writer Morley Callaghan. I look for Hemingway clues at the racetrack.

I walk the streets of Paris, looking for clues. I am haunted by a man
I never met. I am searching for a time when The Sun Also Rises. I am
searching for his 'lost generation'. I am aching to return to the past.

I go to Milan and look for the Red Cross hospital where he recovered
after his leg wounds on the Piave River. I look at A Farewell to Arms for
clues of Agnes, when Hem was still single and less jaded.

The Ghosts Stay with Me...

I am in Spain, and the ghosts stay with me. I can hear the voice of
patriotic Pilar, her peasant compatriots fighting in the hills and the plans
to blow up a bridge for 'the cause'. He looks like Gary Cooper, but he speaks like Hemingway. I, too, ask, For Whom the Bell Tolls.

(In Spain, Arnie finds a restaurant where the sign says "Hemingway Never Ate Here")

I am at the bullring in Seville, in Barcelona and in Madrid. I watch the
intricate movements of the matador and recall the lessons from Death in the Afternoon.

I am in Key West at that huge square house with all the cats. I look
into the room behind the house where the master wrote. I examine the urinal he dragged home from his favorite bar for the cats to get their water.

I fly to Cuba and rush to the Finca Vigia, where the man lived during a
later period. My mind turns to The Old Man And the Sea. I can see Hem on his boat, The Pilar, searching for submarines. I can see him standing with Fidel Castro.

I photograph the house in Ketcham, Idaho, where he shot himself, and I
stand in the tiny cemetery near a stone slab that says, simply, Ernest
Miller Hemingway.

I have found the man, but I still search for the spirit.