The Sensitive Macho: Ernest Hemingway and “A Moveable Feast – the 2009 Restored Edition” (Part 3)

Bumby (Jack/John Hemingway)

One of the most endearing chapters in the memoir will have to be “The Education of Mr. Bumby,” in which Hemingway the father describes a conversation with his first-born in the Place St. Michel café. Bumby was a precocious and sensitive child. Having been told by his French tutor that the writing profession was a difficult metiér, he asked his father if it was really so.

“… Tell me papa is it difficult to write?”

“Sometimes.”

“Touton says it is very difficult and I must always respect it.”

“You respect it.” (204)

Then Bumby asked if they could go by Silver Beach’s bookstore (Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare and Company, the mispronunciation affectionately retained by Hemingway) because “she is always very nice to me” (205).

Bumby

Hemingway then refers to a quarrel he had with Hadley about something in which “she had been right and [he] had been wrong seriously” (205). This had been witnessed by young Bumby, who said: “Mother has been bad. Papa has scolded her.”

One day, Bumby asked his father about Fitzgerald’s health:

“Monsieur Fitzgerald is sick papa?”

“He is sick because he drinks too much and he cannot work.”

“Does he not respect his metiér?”

“Madame his wife does not respect it or she is envious of it.”

“He should scold her.”

“It is not so simple.” (205)

Later, when Bumby commented that “a man should first learn to control himself,” Hemingway’s response was the same: “It is not so simple as that” (206).

All these episodes illustrate a similar point: that Hemingway was a doting father and treated his son as if he were already a grown-up. He also tried to instil in the young one that matters in life were rarely simple – a notion that he himself was grappling with during that period of his life, and perhaps, for the rest of his life.

To end this essay defending Hemingway as a sensitive man, we must take a look at the restored chapter “Nada y Pues Nada,” in which Hemingway reminds himself of the sanctity and purposefulness of writing: “I would not forget about the writing. That was what I was born to do and had done and would do again” (225).

In the insightful introduction to the Restored Edition by Seán Hemingway, the grandson states that “Nada y Pues Nada” was the “last demonstrable sustained piece of writing” done before Hemingway’s suicide, and that even at this late stage of ill mental health (he had been given shock therapy treatment, which greatly affected his writing), he was still staunchly committed to his calling. The chapter ends with these sad lines:

But there are remises or storage places where you may leave or store certain things such as a locker trunk or duffel bag containing personal effects … and this book contains material from the remises of my memory and of my heart. Even if the one has been tampered with and the other does not exist (225).

In the early morning hours of July 2, 1961, Hemingway shot himself with his favourite twelve-gauge Boss shotgun, ending a turbulent but immeasurably rich life. It is the more ironic when one flips back to the chapter “Scott Fitzgerald” and re-reads this line: “Scott then asked me if I were afraid to die and I said more at some times than at others” (139). On the morning of July 2, 1961, he was evidently not afraid.

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A Note to the reader: I am far from being an authority on either Hemingway or Fitzgerald. All my observations here are solely based on my reading of the memoir.

All page numbers refer to the 2011 Arrows Books restored edition.