A Moveable Feast

Hemingway begins this chapter with a short paragraph in italics. He equates the awareness of one’s talent to the intricate patterns dust makes on a butterfly’s wings. Once one begins to think, they became conscious of their damaged wings and can only remember the time when flying was effortless.

Hemingway recalls the night he first met Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald enters the Dingo bar where Hemingway is drinking and introduces himself along with the star pitcher of Princeton, Dunc Chaplin. Hemingway describes Fitzgerald as having “very fair wavy hair, a high forehead, excited and friendly eyes and a delicate long-lipped Irish mouth that, on a girl, would have been the mouth of beauty” (67). Hemingway feels uncomfortable as the three share a bottle of champagne and Fitzgerald endlessly compliments Hemingway’s writing. Hemingway studies Fitzgerald closely as he continues his speech. As the speech finally comes to an end, Fitzgerald moves to the question phase, believing that all novelists learn from “direct questioning of his friends and acquaintances” (68). Fitzgerald asks Hemingway if he slept with his wife before they were married. Hemingway says he cannot remember, to which Fitzgerald is shocked. As Fitzgerald urges Hemingway to make an honest effort to remember, his face suddenly tightens. He becomes pale and his eyes sink into their sockets. Dunc insists Fitzgerald is fine, and the two leave.

A few days later, Hemingway sees Fitzgerald at the Closerie des Lilas and says he’s sorry that Fitzgerald had such a bad reaction the last time they drank together. Fitzgerald is surprised, saying that the only reason he left was because he grew tired of the British company. He remarks that there is “no use to make mysteries simply because one has drunk a few glasses of wine. Why did you want to make the mysteries?” (69). Surprised that Fitzgerald has changed every detail from the previous night, down to his very tie, Hemingway decides to drop the matter. The two begin speaking of other things, and Fitzgerald humbly relays that Hemingway must read his new book, The Great Gatsby. He invites Hemingway to go to Lyon and pick up his car, which he and Zelda had left due to bad weather. Hemingway agrees, thinking that spending time with an elder writer would benefit his own writing. The next morning, Hemingway boards the train only to learn Fitzgerald is not aboard. He writes, “I had never heard, then, of a grown man missing a train; but on this trip I was to learn many new things” (71). Hemingway continues to Lyon, where he attempts, and fails, to find Fitzgerald. Hemingway has dinner with a man who eats fire and then returns to his hotel. The following morning Fitzgerald arrives.

The two have breakfast and ask the hotel to pack them a picnic lunch. Hemingway notices that the car has no top, as Zelda, Fitzgerald’s wife, dislikes cars with tops. Fitzgerald refuses to have the top replaced, and the two are halted by rain sporadically throughout the road trip. Fitzgerald relays his anxieties of congested lungs and states that the disease had been spotted in Europe. Fitzgerald asks if they may stop at the next town before the onset of fever and delirium take effect on him. The two arrive at a hotel and Fitzgerald immediately takes to his bed. Hemingway realizes that Fitzgerald has convinced himself that he is dying from congestion of the lungs. Hemingway tries to convince Fitzgerald that he has no fever and that his pulse is normal, but Fitzgerald insists he ask for a thermometer. Hemingway writes, “You could not be angry with Scott any more than you could be angry with someone who was crazy, but I was getting angry with myself for having become involved in the whole silliness” (77). The waiter returns without a thermometer, as all the drug stores are closed. After further protesting from Fitzgerald, the waiter finally brings a bath thermometer. Upon finally convincing Fitzgerald that he is not dying of lung congestion, Fitzgerald tells Hemingway a sad story about how Zelda had once fallen in love with another man.

Once returning to Paris, Hemingway treats his wife to dinner. He tells her that all he learned from his trip with Fitzgerald is to never travel with someone you do not love. Hemingway finally reads The Great Gatsby and concludes that any man who could write such a great novel deserves all of the compassion and understanding he can give.

Fitzgerald invites Hemingway and Hadley to have lunch with him, his wife, Zelda, and their daughter. Zelda is nursing a bad hangover and Fitzgerald reveals that he has decided to cut back on drinking. Zelda bullies him for being a killjoy. Hemingway depicts Zelda as hawkish, with “hawk’s eyes and a think mouth and deep-south manners and accent” (85). Zelda excuses her behavior, arguing that if Fitzgerald and Hemingway can have fun then so can she. Hemingway soon realizes that Zelda is not supportive of Fitzgerald’s writing and is jealous that he spends more time working than with her. Fitzgerald blames their marital problems on Paris and dreams of living on the Riviera with Zelda. Out of fear that Zelda may get involved with another man, Fitzgerald feels pressured to accompany her to parties. Hemingway recounts how this turbulent cycle between the two destroyed Fitzgerald’s writing.

Summer passes and once Hemingway and Hadley return from Spain, Hemingway produces the first manuscript for The Sun Also Rises. Upon reuniting with Fitzgerald, he notices that his companion is drunk at all hours of the day. Despite showing Fitzgerald a later version of the manuscript, Hemingway did not want or trust his help.

Fitzgerald invites Hemingway and Hadley to visit him and Zelda in Juan-les-Pins, promising not to drink. The Great Gatsby had been dramatized into a play, but Fitzgerald could not afford to treat the couple to a vacation. Hemingway recalls that all seemed peaceful at Juan-les-Pins, mostly because Zelda’s “hawk’s eyes were clear and calm” (87). Zelda shares a secret, as a “hawk might share something with a man,” saying “Ernest, don’t you think Al Jolson is greater than Jesus?” Hemingway reflects that Fitzgerald ultimately did not write anything of value until the day he realized Zelda was “insane” (87).

After Zelda’s first nervous breakdown, Fitzgerald asks Hemingway to meet him for lunch at Michaud’s restaurant. Fitzgerald tells Hemingway that he has something very important to ask him and that he must answer honestly. During dessert, Fitzgerald reveals that he has only ever slept with Zelda. He continues, stating that Zelda once told him he could never please another woman. She claimed it was a “matter of measurements” (88). Hemingway reassures Fitzgerald that he is “perfectly fine” (89). He tells him to study the statues at the Louvre and then go home and study himself in the mirror. Hemingway tells Fitzgerald that Zelda only said that to manipulate and destroy him. Fitzgerald leaves to meet people at the Ritz bar.

Long after World War II, Georges, the bar chief at the Ritz, asks Hemingway who is the Monsieur Fitzgerald that everyone asks him about. Hemingway recalls that Fitzgerald was an American writer of the early twenties and that he wrote two very good books and one complicated book that could have been good. Hemingway says that he is going to write something of Fitzgerald himself in a book about the early days in Paris.

Hemingway recalls that the addition of Bumby, his child, made being poor during a winter in Paris unbearable. Without money for a nanny, their cat, F. Puss, would guard Bumby while Hemingway and Hadley left to work or run errands. To escape the cold of Paris, the family migrates to Austria. Hemingway writes, “Schruns was a healthy place for Bumby who had a dark-haired beautiful girl to take him out in the sun in his sleigh and look after him” (93). Hemingway and Hadley enroll in skiing lessons. The two also have a whole library of books from Sylvia Beach. Hemingway plays poker with the men and each morning the maid delivers a lovely breakfast. Schruns is a great place to work for Hemingway; he does the hardest rewriting of his life there, where he turns the manuscript of The Sun Also Rises into a full-length novel. They stay in Austria from Thanksgiving to Easter.

Hemingway recalls the year where many people were killed in avalanches. The first loss is a party of Germans on their Christmas vacation. Herr Lent, the skiing instructor, deems the hills unsafe, as the snow from the previous day is too powdery and does not stick well enough. The Germans insist, and as they ski down the mountain, an avalanche ensues. Out of the thirteen men, nine perish. Hemingway remembers the last man to be dug out of the snow. His neck has been worn down to the point where his tendons and bone are visible. Hemingway recalls many other stories of porters asking for more money than originally agreed upon, of locals calling him ‘the Black Christ,’ and of observing a fox in the beautiful winter snow as he pounced on prey. He discusses the different kinds of snow; “I remember all the kinds of snow that the wind could make and their different treacheries when you were on skies. Then there were the blizzards when you were in the high Alpine hut and the strange world that they would make…Finally towards spring there was the great glacier run, smooth and straight” (96).

The year of the avalanches proves tame compared to the following winter and summer, when the rich arrive in Schruns. First is the pilot fish who investigates the hotel and skiing routes prior to the rich arriving. The pilot fish “is never caught and he is not caught by the rich. Nothing ever catches him and it is only those who trust him who are caught and killed. He has the irreplaceable early training of the bastard and a latent and long-denied love of money” (97). The rich trust this pilot fish, as he is “shy, comic, elusive, already in production…” (97). Hemingway begins to trust the new rich visitors and is entranced by their philosophy that every day is a fiesta. He even shares a section of his novel with them, a more dangerous act for a writer than skiing without protection. Hemingway recalls the story of another rich family who’s young, beautiful daughter infiltrated the house of a married couple.

Hemingway must leave Schruns and go to New York to rearrange publishers. He stays a very long time but eventually returns to Paris where his love, Hadley, and his son are waiting for him. This return marks the end of the “first part of Paris” (99); Hemingway notes that Paris is always changing and that one cannot help but change with it.