‘A little place called Horton Bay” – Hadley talks about her wedding to Ernest

 In a few days I’m headed for Chicago and then Michigan for the Hemingway Conference in Petoskey. The Hemingway Society sponsors this weeklong event every year, bringing together writers, scholars, professors, and Hemingway aficionados from all over the world. The gathering is usually held in a location connected to the adventurous life of Ernest.

“Up in Michigan”, is the landscape that shaped Hemingway’s early life, fostering his love of fishing, hunting, and the self-reliance it must have taken to live there in the early 1900’s. The woods and streams of Michigan show up in some of his most beautifully written stories, the Nick Adams stories.  The birch trees and Indian camps, trout streams and clear, cold lakes, and the dramatic seasons stayed with Ernest forever.

I look forward to seeing some of the places Hemingway loved in the area and I’ll be sure to post some photos.  I’ll be giving a short talk about the blog, and all of the people I’ve met and places this project has taken me.

Posted below is an audio clip of Hadley talking about her wedding to Ernest in “A little place called Horton Bay”.  As always, it is a pleasure to hear the intelligence and warmth in the conversation between Hadley and her friend Alice.  This clip rambles a little as Hadley remembers her wedding day fifty years earlier.

Ernest and Hadley were married on a warm day in early September, 1921, in the little Methodist church there. Hadley had gone swimming that afternoon and still had damp hair when she went to the church for her 4:00 ceremony.  Her auburn hair, which was long at the time of her wedding, would soon be bobbed – a new look for the new life she was about to begin in Paris.

After their vows were spoken, Hadley and Ernest walked across the street to a small café, where friends joined them for a simple chicken dinner.  A friend drove them to Walloon Lake, four miles away. At the lake, they got in a small boat and rowed across in the darkness. They walked a short ways to Windemere, the cottage where the Hemingway family had spent most of their summers since Ernest was a child.

The next day, the weather turned chilly and both Hadley and Ernest developed miserable colds. Hadley says they couldn’t find the pots of pans, but “we did have some kind of liquor and an open fire.”  They pulled a mattress from the bed onto the floor close to the fire, alone together as they began their honeymoon and their famous marriage.

But Hadley tells it best. To hear the audio, click on the blue type below:

Hadley Horton Bay