Letter from Hadley Hemingway to her mother

113, Rue Notre Dame des Champs Paris VIe April 11. 1924

Dearest Mother:-

It was wonderful at last to see your handwriting again! We expected you to be as generous with letters as usual, writing to American Express Co. which always reaches us, but you were wise to wait for our own home address.

We are bowled over by the stunning photographs of Ma and Sun- my I certainly am proud of my sisters! Ma was bound to take the cake so I'm not a bit surprised by the article in Oak Leaves and all Sunny needs is the same chance to go and do likewise. I think her profession is a dandy and as a recent occupant inmate I mean of a hospital I can truthfully say that I wish more intelligent girls of our class would go in for it - clear eyes and head and health and firm hands make an awful lot of difference in a patient's carer, don't you think so?

Did I fail to acknowledge the receipt of the wonderful family pictures with such interesting notes on the back. That I failed to do so shows what a stew we were in when I wrote for we were greatly impressed with their charm and value to

2 all of us as a possession. It was just like you to saw them, choose and mark them for us with such painstaking mother. Ernest is terribly proud of them. We have showed them to J.H's godparents Miss Stein and Miss Toclaz and they are wild over the whole family. You can imagine how I love Ernest's baby pictures!

Well, we are all in fine health and just about settled. I think we shall stay here by our sawmill in spite of certain uninviting features belowstairs. We get [s?eter?] up on our floor every day. There's so much sun and light and Bumbie sleeps all day in his bed right in the big French window all dressed for outdoors, comes in to meals with pink cheeks and uproarious laughter. He is taking Nestle's six times a day, me six times, and orange juice before his 12 o'clock meal. He adores them all and calls for more. Weighs over 15 lbs. Yesterday was his 6 month birthday as you showed you remembered in your letter mother, and we had Gertrude Stein and Alise Toclaz over. The baby received rubber animals from them and a beautiful silver cup out of which he drank

3 his orange juice (really did with hardly any spilling) Then the grownups went to the dining room and had oysters before dinner, white wine for toasts and yellow jonquils brought by a friend from the forest of [?] added to the festivity.

Yesterday our goods arrived from Toronto and E went with Miss Toclaz and was very successful in getting it thru customs. They will be arriving this afternoon or tomorrow and then curtain making, customing and refurbishing will start in earnest. Our place will seem like really our own home then. Our only dissatisfaction with this place is that it is too much in the line of march of all our friends (and boring acquaintances for us to ever have much quiet for work. E works in the mornings while I cook for the baby, feed and bathe him, - it takes until 12. then I generally get us a little luncheon here and then get the 3 o'clock feeding done. Then Madame comes and I go out if a bunch of people don't arrive to keep us or me in. We are joining a tennis club and E boxes twice a week

4 with George O'Neil at their house near the Etoile J. H. N. goes out once in a while in his buggy or a taxi to spend the day or pay calls and adores it. But most of the time he sleeps here in the open window. My femme au menager is marvelous - does his laundry every day, waxes floors, washes windows, empties and fills all water [ls?], makes the bedroom, switches around with a duster a little, gathers a couple of sacks of work a day and gets a good dinner all in 5 hours. Best cook in the world. Chink spent a week with us and it was while he was here that the baby was Christened. He is Godfather you see. He was christened just before vespers at St. Luke's Episcopal Chapel near here, by an American minister, Rev. Killian [Stimson?]. He was lovely to the baby and to all of us and we met his wife and mother afterwards. Miss Stein and Miss Toclaz are wonderful godparents - are here every few days to see his progress and make the right suggestions at the right moments. Getrude S. has been an obstetrical surgeon - John Hopkins graduate - and she helped me a great deal while the baby was coming. They are great, both.

The apartment you remembered me speaking

about was the Ezra Pound's and we have decided not to take it - it is not at all possible with the baby - cold and damp and I always tho't rather dismal. Has a certain charm tho, and I'm sorry in a way to lose it.

Florida must be wonderful - so glad you had the trip after all that wretched illness and pain. My small Bumbie sends special love to his Grammam - he is lying here in his [weighing?] basket made into a bed and set on a fur rug on the floor before the fire at my feet, gurgling about it. He is the handsomest little thing you ever saw, knows everything and everybody.

This letter of course is from Ernie too and he will write soon separately. He is making a great name for himself away literary people everywhere. Ford Maddox Ford, editor of the Transatlantic Review, the man who taught Joseph Conrad to write English, said to him yesterday when E was saying rather plaintively that it took a man years to get his name known - "Nonsense! You will have a great