A Never-Before-Published Essay about Growing Up with Hemingway, Written by His Unrequited High School Crush. (2024)

The handwriting was familiar, but the letter was lost--or at least,forgotten for almost a century. "Everybody else I know seems to beengaged or married... but I can't commit to matrimony while broke.It's an awful war one of the worst in which I've everengaged," writes the young Ernest Hemingway on American Red Crossstationery.

The year was 1918 and Frances Coates was on the receiving end ofHemingway's charm. Hemingway was convalescing in a Milan hospital,after being wounded by Austrian mortar fire during his stint as avolunteer ambulance driver for the American Red Cross. He was flirtingand trying to make her jealous by talking about local Italian girls.Coates was Hemingway's high school crush and the object of hisinfatuation, despite the fact that the two had only dated socially.

I stumbled into the life of Frances Coates after publishing HiddenHemingway: Inside the Ernest Hemingway Archives of Oak Park (Kent StateUniversity Press) in 2016, which I co-wrote with Mark Cirino and AaronVetch. For two years after the release of the book, I found myselfplaying the role of Hemingway detective, tracking down forgotten lettersand lost Hemingway artifacts.

I first ran across Coates's name while I was researching anarticle on another of Hemingway's high school classmates, AnnetteDeVoe, for whom he wrote a passionate poem ("I'd gladly walkthru Hell with you / Or give my life."). This helped correct themyth perpetrated by his schoolmates that the young Hemingway wasn'tinterested in girls. "He preferred to go hunting and fishing. Ifany classmate can say he ever saw Ernie take a girl to a dance or aschool party... I don't know who that person was. This seems hardto believe now that we know he married four times," Susan LowreyKesler wrote in the booklet Ernest Hemingway as Recalled by His HighSchool Contemporaries published in 1973 by the The Historical Society ofOPRF.

In researching the story about DeVoe for the Chicago Tribune (1), Ikept coming across another woman's name in Hemingway's lettersalongside DeVoe's: Frances Elizabeth Coates. After a little bit ofinternet sleuthing, I found her obituary and a phone number forCoates's granddaughter, Betsy Fermano. "Yes, they dated, butmy grandmother wasn't really interested in him," Fermano toldme over the phone. "I have some of his letters in a trunkhere."

Fermano didn't know why anybody would be interested in lettersHemingway wrote to her grandmother, Frances Grace (her married name),who wasn't anyone famous. She was a devoted mother, an operaaficionado, and a locally well-known singer. Apparently, shecorresponded with Hemingway as late as the mid-1930s, though Francesonly kept two of his letters, dated 29 July and 15 October 1918.

The discovery was important because it shed light on a previouslyunknown relationship, one that inspired Hemingway to use a version ofher name, "Liz Coates," in his sexually-charged 1923 shortstory "Up in Michigan." Frances also saw herself in acharacter in To Have and Have Not, in a particularly pointed passage(read on for details).

Also in Frances's family trunk: a handful of snapshots ofHemingway, including his high school portrait, which she kept in asmall, gilded frame in her dressing room. Frances also savedcorrespondence from Hemingway's biographer, Carlos Baker, and asixteen-page handwritten monograph she wrote about growing up withHemingway in Oak Park.

The monograph, along with the photographs and Hemingway'sletters, was sold on 11 December 2017, to an unknown buyer for $20,000.Fermano retained the copyright on her grandmother's writing,however, and was gracious enough to allow me to share it here, forfuture generations of scholars.

While Frances and Baker never met, they did correspond and sheanswered a few of his questions. But ultimately Coates never grantedBaker a full interview. She apologizes in the unsent letter and explainsthat she was reluctant to add to what she calls Hemingway's "IKnew Him When" cult in Oak Park. Remembering her time in highschool was painful for Frances, because during those years, her motherwas dying after a long battle with cancer. It's unknown why shenever sent the letter or the monograph to Baker, both of which werewritten after 1969. Her reluctance to contribute to Baker'sbiography could have been, in part, because while she was socializingwith Hemingway in 1918 and 1919, her declared boyfriend was away.

"She was very private about it. I think Ernie meant a lot toher and she was very protective of their relationship," saysFermano.

I've written elsewhere, notably on The Paris Review website(2) and in Northwestern University's alumni magazine, (3) aboutFrances's life and her impact on Hemingway. But here,Frances's own charming account of their relationship providessignificant insight into the life of the young writer. What I love mostabout the essay is Coates's view into Hemingway's psyche andfamily life.

In editing this piece for publication, I've left intact herflowery, extravagant prose. I've corrected a few titles and dates,and added annotations for a modern reader.

After the original stories ran, I found recordings ofFrances's singing. It was her voice that made Hemingway fall inlove with her, as he listened to Frances perform in Martha, their highschool opera. He was in the orchestra pit, playing cello.

I also uncovered correspondence that Frances wrote toHemingway's mother in 1924 and, in the forthcoming essay, shementions Madelaine "Sunny" Hemingway's trips toErnest's home in Cuba--evidence that Frances's relationshipwith the family went well beyond high school.

As I was preparing this manuscript, Fermano found hergrandmother's baby book, which included an invitation to the babyshower of Hemingway's sister Marcelline. There is plenty more forfuture scholars to uncover about the connection between these twofamilies.

[Frances's unsent letter to Hemingway biographer Carlos Baker,written sometime after 1969.]

Dear Mr. Baker,

I am most remiss in writing you to thank you for putting me sonicely in your book about Ernest Hemingway. I feel very sorry about thisand hope you will forgive my silence. I have started many times to writeyou but somehow it was most difficult because it touched a part of myyouth that set off an almost endless train of poignant memories, not ofErnie, but of my mother. (4) I have re-evaluated my whole life and, nowthat I am a mother and a grandmother, I question myself anew and hopethat I have become the person she so wished.

I very much enjoyed your book, quite apart from its subject. Thestyle is so limpid, the understanding so gentle, the humor so kindly andthe analysis so deadly correct. And when you were interviewed here byRobert Cromie (5) your presence confirmed it all: Would that allbiographies could be so well done!

No, I wasn't the girl to whom Ernie gave his Italian uniformcape, to which his mother took umbrage. She would have given me the capeand the boy too, and to her last days she would remember those earlydays. Young people can be very cruel and draw fine lines between"groups" that seem absurd in later years... And Ernie and"Marce" were a bit "different."

I read your book with an echo forever following. The events inErnies life came back to us at the time in Oak Park as acts in a play:unreal, far away, and mostly un-understandable. "Two wives livingaround the corner from each there in Paris, baby-sitting with eachother's small sons?" Strange. And we felt comforted that ourown small daughter still had the same parents she started out with."Ernie had become a Catholic?" He had always wanted to"belong" and this was it, perhaps. That chap in The Sun AlsoRises... sad, but why go on about it? I knew about Lady Brett, too. She,too, was one rung up Ernie's social ladder! We stopped playingbridge and over our tea wondered how the Hemingways' breezy,late-afternoon porch would look to Maria when Robert Jordan sent her"home to his mother" in For Whom the Bell Tolls. Sunny'svisits to the Finca in Cuba and to the Key West were hilarious. It wasnice, after the house on Kenilworth was sold, to hear he had bought thehouse on Keystone Avenue in River Forest for his mother, but no onewanted to see him when he was there... and I doubt that he wanted to seeus: Fame, however heady, could never compensate or change an eternalinferiority complex. Later, of course, they capitalized on him. The"I Knew Him When" cult came into being, not only his family,who had a heyday, but classmates and remote, erstwhile associates.Success, however, varnishes every early opinion, and most of us wereglad for Ernie.

Your Mr. Waring Jones (6) was most courteous and thoughtful andinterested. I should be most grateful if you would beg his forgiveness,too, for me! And I am forever in your debt.

I don't know quite why I send you the enclosed monograph.Could you return it? It is largely because your inquiries started thistrain of memories. I could have added little to your excellent story,except in the late winter and spring of 1919 when Ernie returned fromItaly. I have a fine snapshot of the tall figure, overseas cap at ajaunty angle, full-circle black cape a-fling, cane, and booted legstoeing inwards in typically awkward pose. He came often to mymother's house and I was part of the parties given by the Italians,the first one instigated by the fruit storeowners of Forest Park, laterattracting the Chicago group. We had many happy times together and withMarce. I heard briefly about the little Italian nurse, only she was aContessa in whose home he convalesced, but I never understood, untilreading your book, his bitter remark when I told him John and I wereengaged: "All the good girls are taken!"

So, I thank you again for your beautifully written book for yourinterest, which sent me down the fresh, green springtime path of myyouth.

Sincerely

Frances Grace

Untitled Remember Hemingway Monograph

By Frances Coates Grace

Really I wish I might tell you how fresh and green it is still, thefirst time Ernie swam into my vision. The tender green of youth andgrowing things, our time of life perhaps (we were sixteen, I a fewmonths older); the time of year --it was spring; the soft green of earlytwilight on the river grand, the shimmering green of tree-reflectingwater, as the canoe glided along, everything rich and soft and flowing,glissando, waiting in that magic moment, suspended, before settling intoa mold. A most hopeful time, kind and shy, waiting to bloom. Whatevercomes later, one is grateful for remembered beginnings.

Ernie has asked me to go up the river ("the raging DesPlaines") for a picnic supper cooked over a fire, with his sisterMarcelline and her beau, Harold Sampson. Dr. Hemingway, having broughtus out in his busily energetic car, leaned over the bridge railing aboveto wave us on our way. The crepuscule (7) envelopes the picture as afixative in my mind.

It was really quite a thing for Ernie to do. His bravery was asurprise to me. Oak Park High was a big school. There were many cliques(young people are cruel) and ours had never coincided. My kind heart hasalways betrayed me and perhaps I wanted to put him at ease.

But there he was, a great, awkward boy falling over his long feet,moving slowly, inclusively, a trifle bent over as though to examinethings more closely (immensely tall Henry Beston, did the same thinglater because of his deafness and I'm 5'2"), his armswide to include all men, all experiences, or to balance hisawkwardness... in life, a disturbing person with very dark hair, veryred lips, very white teeth, very fair skin under which the blood seemedto race, emerging frequently in all-enveloping blush. What a help hisbeard, later was to be, protecting and covering this sensitivity. Thewhole of his face fell apart when he laughed. There were dimples, a widegrin and a suave and pleasing voice, like Marce's, a legacy nodoubt from their singing mother.

And everyone knew the Hemingways--a big family in a big house onnorth Kenilworth Avenue distinguished by an enormous room to the north,a "studio" where Mrs. Hemingway held "musicales." Abig, majestic woman, a singer in her youth naturally a contralto, shemoved as a ship does, with great majesty and authority. She mustsometimes have worn dresses other than long, but I can never rememberher in anything but long, black, trailing dresses and pearls reflectingher white hair, spectacles mirroring her placidity. She would descend onus, over a puzzle or games, to announce pontifically, "If you willcome to my room at three o'clock, I should like to read toyou." And we appeared dutifully, were read to and dismissed, aftera time, meek and quiet. (At 60 or 65 she took up painting, lots of"dunes" pictures, and was quite successful at selling them.)

One sensed the rigid discipline of the household, here. One neverdanced at the Hemingways'. At other houses the rugs were rolledback and the Victrola happily wound up, but on great occasions,invitations arrived from Ernie and Marcelline with'Salmagundi' (whatever that was!) (8) [written] in the lowerleft-hand corner. We thought it quaint, but I always enjoyed it, as Idid all the other times in that house. There was much banter and humouramong the children, Marcelline, Ernie, Ursula, Leicester, and"Sunny," and always a baby (9); the wit flying back and forth,everyone with those wide, sweet mouths, in constant laughter, cloakingeveryday thoughts in dramatic, extravagant language.

If Mrs. Hemingway were austere, it was Dr. Hemingway who warms memost. Ernie, later, was the exact image of his father, with a few morewhiskers. A doctor of medicine, he was forever popping back home betweencalls and inhabiting a small room at the front of the house, an officeof sorts, genial, interested, kind and generous. His family home wasover on Oak Park Avenue, his own father was at that time still alive andMiss Grace, the doctor's sister, was a gracious and charming lady,pretty. Later she married and lived in Honolulu.

Ernie adored his father and was proud of the things he learned fromhim. At the family's summer cottage at Walloon Lake in northernMichigan, they must have loved being together, finding the intimate waysof nature, hunting, fishing, and exploring that follow in all Ernieswriting. When we passed the game preserve on the River Road just belowthe new country club, Ernie would point out the low-flying pheasant, thescuttling chipmunk, and the wedge of duck overhead. I remembered thisearly love in the dreadful Across the River and into the Trees (10)which otherwise, was so filled with vindictive hatred of his third wife,or fatuous disdain for the military. Ernie himself knew how bad thisbook was for he set about immediately to vindicate himself and earneternal vindication and the worldwide gratitude for The Old Man and theSea plus the Nobel Prize.

I seem to remember this Hemingway household warmly, even though itwas not my world exactly. While my own home was modest and my mother sadand ill, there was an echo here at the Hemingways' of mylittle-girlhood when my much older brothers and sisters filled our homewith activity, albeit a bit more worldly. The house of my John, (11) whoeven then was tucked in the back of my mind and heart as the Beginningand End of all things for me, was most conventional, conservative andaustere, so that this warmth pleased me. I went to the Country Clubdances with John, rode in his father's high and shiny Packard car,as I realize now it must have seemed to Ernie (one doesn't sensethose things when one is young). It is in To Have and to Have Not, Ithink, that there is a girl with my name, whose fiance is sarcastically"tapped" on the shoulder for membership in a stratum of lifeunattainable to the writer and the hero. It is a wry scene. (12)

Ernie's first stories which appeared in the High School"Tabula" and "Trapeze" were patterned on RingLardner's (13) epics appearing in the Chicago Tribune and I thoughtthem immeasurably stupid. Why anyone would go to the trouble to try totalk like that or, worse, to copy it, was beyond me. Miss Dixon, ourEnglish teacher, took us all over to the University of Chicago to takethe Scholarship Exams, and most of us were enamored of sweeter soundingphrases, a more elegant style. Who could foresee the spectre of realismwaiting to engulf the whole world or the arts, the black stream ofcrudity and indecency that has submerged us, or that Ernie would be inits vanguard? Ring Lardner indeed! To me, at sixteen, football playerswere, and still are the epitome of stupidity. Their heads were so hardthere was no room for brains and their extreme and oafish activity putthem to sleep at parties, mercifully for me. Now swimming, I would argue(my John was on his university swimming team), tennis, riding (myhusband still keeps his horses), skating, golf, shooting-games that takereal skill--were a different matter enlisted my respect. Sportsmanshipshould be of a higher order, involving technique and all it implies. Iseem to sense this involvement with skill and the appreciation of styleyears later in the marvelous ballet of bull-fighting in Death in theAfternoon, and interested always, in guns and the skill of hunting.

At the end of my Freshman year in college, I began to study musicseriously and, my lovely mother being sad and ill, I stayed at home inOak Park. There were letters from Ernie in Kansas City (14) where he hadgone to learn to be a journalist and to stay with his uncle. ThenToronto where he cubbed on the Star. Then from Italy where he went tocover the war and joined the Italian Ambulance Corps. (15) I wish I hadkept them all, but these few are interesting enough. One can trace theexperiences and places in A Farewell to Arms. Catherine and the littlecontessa Ernie wrote about to me are very much alike. And thegrouse-hunting in my letter is surely part of the dreadful Across theRiver and into the Trees countryside, the Abruzzi, etc.

Ernie came home on convalescent leave in the late winter and earlyspring of 1919. See the picture of him in front of our house on PleasantStreet in Oak Park. (16) Note the bravado angle of the kepi, (17) theuniform cut like a civilized jacket (our U.S. boys, as you remember,were all done up in band masters' outfits: braid straight up thefront to the still, uncompromising collar designed to keep the chin upand no mistake, their legs wound in endless puttees).

Note Ernie's Italian uniform with proper lapels, like theBritish the long, soft boots; and over all, the swashbuckling,full-circle black cape! And the wide, crimson and white grin! TheNineteenth Century Woman's Club (18) had never seen the like of itand listened enraptured, to "War Experiences." Madame Mare(19) enjoyed it pontifically and the good doctor was quiet andmoist-eyed.

The Italians of Chicago and Oak Park and its environs werewonderful! Ernie was the first American wounded in Italy and soon he washome. The party described in the article (20) was something I shallalways treasure. The world was almost young, we were to save it,remember, and many people believed that Mr. Wilson (21) could bring outthe latent qualities of good will in every nation. The local Italiancolony came to serenade Ernie one night and I happened to be there forsupper. A proper leader introduced himself and Ernie spoke to them inItalian, leaning over the porch railing. From the shadows they emerged,the fruit vendors of Forest Park and the West Side, their faces shiningin the light of the porch lamps. Someone had a hurdy-gurdy and therewere presents of fruit and wine, and a proper speech. Ernie thanked themmodestly in, to our ears, marvelously fluent Italian. A week later therewas a dinner at the Hemingways' but brought in by the guests andcomplete in every detail. Food, wine, and delicious "dolces,"cooked and served by the guests. The opera singer spoken of in thearticle was from the Civic Opera and, finding no one able to accompanyhim, stood at the piano, one foot on the pedal, occasionally striking avague chord, but singing ecstatically his face illumined, his audienceenraptured. The Old World thanked the New in grateful, unmistakablyromantic accents in unromantic Chicago!

Going to the theatre was an adventure, too. Ernies "bad"leg was stiff, so we had aisle seats in order to keep it out straight.The "different," distinguished uniform and a touch of ham inits wearer, delighted everyone and invited comment. One night we suppedafterward at the old Terrace Garden. The couple one tier above us,middle-aged, nice-looking people, watched us carefully and, as theyleft, dropped a folded note on the table.

Ernie flushed and started after them, but decided to read the note(22) first. Such nice young people we must have been and the couple,visiting from England, thought so too! As similar incident is in one ofhis stories, (23) only the note was an insult and an equivalent to aninvitation to a duel. And naive we were, too. I remember tryingvaliantly to smoke a cigarette, with Marcelline cheering, coughingmyself into a frenzy amid swirls of smoke. Nowadays, you can'tqualify as a teenager if you can't pack your liquor and yourmarijuana along with your switchblade! But then it was daring.

There were lots of nice times, skating, walks, movies, and opera.After-dinner coffee served in my mother's living room was apleasant novelty to Ernie and my concerts and musical interests wereinteresting to him. He was nice about my budding recognition.

But our paths were slowly separating, not that they had ever beenvery close. My responsibilities were increasingly heavy and when mymother died the next year, I was forever glad that I attended her soclosely and lovingly. Then, too, as sailors do, my John came home fromOfficers' Training School, stumbling over his new sword, sporting,too, a full-circle, black broadcloth officer's cape! A familiar andbeloved figure who sensed and shared my sadness and burdens too greatfor youth. Our engagement was announced that Christmas, and now, yearslater, I can still feel the glow and peace of that specialChristmas-time.

And Ernie must have become part of the Chicago of that time, theearly Twenties, a fabled time when our city was a Mecca for young andthe not-so-young of the arts. One caught reverberations of it in goingto lessons in the Fine Arts Building for years after. A special auraalways surrounded that building. Scales and crescendos echoed in thehalls. The Cordon Club, feminine counterpart of the very masculine CliffDwellers high in their eyrie (24) a block north, was in its heyday,presenting Mary Cameron's clever parodies on opera, etc., tostanding ovations. I got to sing in "Hi Eda" and it washi-larious. Maurice Browne's Chicago Little Theatre, the first ofits kind in America, flourished and the whole top floor wasartists' studios. Ernest Klempner, (25) from Vienna, painted me ina pink "Manon" (26) costume and it was he who said, with hisinimitable accent, "It is bewildering; in Europe we say we are apainter." In America they say, "I am an artist."

The huge portrait of Maggie Teyte (27) on the west wall of thestairwell on the sixth floor epitomizes the period: dim, romantic,idealistic, pretty. She smiled a bit mistily, a bit wryly when I spokeof it to her, years later. Yvette Guilbert (28) came to town, therespectability of delectable French dolkaonfa (29) taking the place ofher naughty, long black gloves painted by Toulouse-Lautrec (30) in theMoulin Rouge posters. We had fine theatre concerts and opera, unhinderedby the powerful and shameful unions of today. Dr. Stock, (31) urbane andfrock-coated, continued Theodore Thomas's (32) great discipline ofthe Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Orchestra Hall where we strolled atintermission time, overlooking the Boulevard with the Lake (33) in thedistance, and then repaired upstairs to tea at the Cliff Dwellers atconcerts and to toast our toes at their fire and meet the artists.Opera, too. Campanini (34) and his great company at the Auditorium; (35)Mary Garden (36) and the unforgettable Pelleas (37) of Leon Rothier.(38) Her directorship of the Civic Opera was to come several yearslater. Ben Hecht (39) was even then rearing the brutal head of realismwith Charles MacArthur, (40) a brave but breathless second. SherwoodAnderson (41) (later to be felled by Ernies criticism), his Ohio washingmachine salesman days behind him, was trying to remember his early life.Thornton Wilder (42) came to teach at the University of Chicago and his"Cabala" followed.

And the young Hemingway must have moved among them, hesitant shy,belligerent, questing, overbearing, anxious, and kind. But not for longdid he tarry.

We, John Grace and I, were married in 1920 and lived in a charming,tiny white gardeners cottage on Bonnie Brae Place approached by a pathoverhung with grape vines. Tiny, but with an enormous lot above where,among other festivities, we gave a party for Marceline and SterlingSanford before their marriage. So we heard about Ernie's marriageto Hadley Richardson and wished him well. And soon afterward, they hadleft the Chicago scene; Ernie and Hadley, that sweet, good young woman,that stalwart soul, and set about partaking of their own Movable Feaston Paris' Left Bank. Hesitant, questing, watching; wrestling withthe great truths within him to stew them out to the bewildered world;incorrigibly idealistic and romantic; going through, again, and again,one experience after another to find the core: marriage, many times,friendship and hero worship betrayed, religion from the fundamentalismof his youth through the stark mysticism of Catholicism, ideologiesexploded, wars' exhaustion.

Whatever happened later on in life, I suspect bravery to be the"mean." The breathless bravery of the first four-letter wordsagainst his puritanical upbringing; bravery against hypocrisy earlyknown in his time; bravery against pomposity, windy pride and falsemodesty; bravery against symbolism and ideology owning and destroyingmen's souls; bravery against physical pain. His beloved father,remember, died by his own hand, an example his son felt compelled tofollow and welcomed, I'm sure.

This is the portrait of a young man I once knew.

What the intervening years developed in him is quite another story.The potentials were there when I knew him. The inferiority complexremained to the end and with it came the braggadocio and the need tobecome somebody to himself; imagination and a sense of drama in that hewas always watching himself perform; an enormous capacity for receivingand reassuring injury to his ego; a quick and deadly jealousy of his ownprestige and a constant and touching and consuming need for applause.But through and beyond and overall was a blinding talent and thegreatest requisite of all: the determination and industry to develop thetechnique to use it.

I think Ernie came full circle. I saw him start. Miss MaryHemingway received and comforted the final package. I thank her, now,for a piece of his youth and hope that sometime she saw lurking behindthat harsh and bristly beard a wide crimson and white grin staccato withdeep, deep dimples.

Editor's Note: The Hemingway Review is grateful to Ms. Fermanofor granting permission to print this remembrance and the accompanyingphotos.

NOTES

(1.) Elder, Robert K., "Hemingway's first love? Hispassionate poem is found in Oak Park," Chicago Tribune, 12 Jul.2016.

(2.) Elder, Robert K., "To Have and Have Not," ParisReview.com, 4 May 2017,https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/05/04/to-have-and-have-not/

(3.) Elder, Robert K., "To Have and Have Not,"Northwestern Magazine, winter, 2017,http://www.northwestern.edu/magazine/winter2017/feature/to-have-and-have-not-ernest-hemingway-love-interest-frances-coates.html

(4.) Frances' mother was dying of cancer.

(5.) War correspondent for the Chicago Tribune.

(6.) Waring Jones (1928-2008) was a Minneapolis-based theatricalproducer, writer and a collector of Hemingway artifacts whose collectionis now housed in the Oak Park Public Library, as part of the ErnestHemingway Foundation of Oak Park Archives.

(7.) "twilight"

(8.) Frances spelled this originally as "salamagundi,"but she likely meant "salmagundi." According to the onlineOxford Living Dictionary, salmagundi is 1) "A dish of chopped meat,anchovies, eggs, onions, and seasoning" or 2) "a generalmixture; a miscellaneous collection. This might also be a reference toGreenwich Village's Salmagundi Club, or its namesake WashingtonIrving's satirical magazine, Salmagundi."

(9.) Frances forgot to mention Carol Hemingway in this list.

(10.) Frances disliked Hemingway's novel so much that she getsthe title wrong and refers to it as Over the River and Through the Treesthroughout the piece.

(11.) John Grace, whom Frances Coates would marry.

(12.) The passage Frances references is this one: "The fianceis a Skull and Bones man, voted most likely to succeed, voted mostpopular, who still thinks more of others than of himself and would betoo good for anyone except a lovely girl like Frances. He is probably alittle too good for Frances too, but it will be years before Francesrealizes this, perhaps; and she may never realize it, with luck. Thetype of man who is tapped for Bones is rarely also tapped for bed; butwith a lovely girl like Frances intention counts as much asperformance" (THHN 159).

(13.) Ringgold Wilmer "Ring" Lardner (1885-1933),Hemingway's early journalistic hero, best known for his sportscolumns and short stories.

(14.) Unfortunately, Frances didn't save any of these letters.

(15.) Frances misremembers this detail. Hemingway volunteered withthe American Red Cross.

(16.) Frances misremembers this, even inscribes it incorrectly onthe back of the photo she owned. This is the famous photo of the youngHemingway, dressed in boots, a cape and cane, taken outside his familyhome at 600 N. Kenilworth Ave in Oak Park.

(17.) A round-top military cap with a visor, popularized by theFrench.

(18.) A social club in Oak Park of which Hemingway's motherwas a member.

(19.) Hemingway's mother, Grace Hall Hemingway.

(20.) Frances is referencing one of two newspaper articles in whichthe young Hemingway was interviewed dockside upon his return to the U.S.in 1919. They are: "Has 227 Wounds, But Is Looking for a Job,"New York Sun (22 Jan. 1919) or "Worst Shot-up Man in U.S. on WayHome," Chicago American (21 Jan. 1919).

(21.) U.S. President Woodrow Wilson.

(22.) The note, which was included and sold with Frances' lotof papers in 2017, read: "I just want to tell you, you are thefinest, really dear sweet looking girl I've seen in Chicago."

(23.) This might be "The Mercenaries," written in 1919.The fact that it was published posthumously in 1985, sheds doubt onthis. Hemingway may have shown her the story, however, as they were bothin Oak Park in 1919.

(24.) High nest.

(25.) Artist Ernest Klempner (1867-1941) settled in the Chicagosuburbs and painted a beautiful portrait of Frances, which was ondisplay in the Three Arts Club for decades before it was given back tothe family.

(26.) Title character of the 1884 comic opera by Jules Massenet.

(27.) Maggie Teyte (1888-1976) was a famous operatic soprano fromEngland.

(28.) Yvette Guilbert (1865-1944) was a well-known French cabaretsinger and actress.

(29.) Reference unknown, possibly mistyped or misremembered andgarbled.

(30.) Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901), the famed Frenchpainter.

(31.) Frederick Stock (1872-1942) served as the director of theChicago Symphony Orchestra for thirty-seven years.

(32.) Theodore Thomas (1835-1905) was the founder of the ChicagoSymphony Orchestra, as well as its first music director.

(33.) Lake Michigan

(34.) Italian conductor Cleofonte Campanini (1860-1919).

(35.) The Chicago Grand Opera Company played at Auditorium Theatreand Campanini served as the company's first conductor.

(36.) Mary Garden (1874-1967), an operatic soprano from Scotland.

(37.) One of the title characters from Pelleas et Melisande, a 1902opera by Claude Debussy.

(38.) Leon Rothier (1874-1951) was a famous operatic bass fromFrance.

(39.) Ben Hecht (1894-1964) was a screenwriter, journalist,novelist and playwright best known for co-authoring (with CharlesMacArthur) The Front Page, a Broadway sensation in 1928.

(40.) Charles Gordon MacArthur (1895-1956) was an Americanjournalist, playwright and screenwriter, best known for hiscollaborations with Ben Hecht. He shared an Academy Award with Hecht forBest Writing, Original Story for 1936 s The Scoundrel.

(41.) Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941) was a famous journalist, shortstory writer, and novelist who encouraged Hemingway to move to Paris,and provided him with an introduction to Gertrude Stein. The pair laterfell out after Hemingway published The Torrents of Spring (1926), aparody of Anderson's novel Dark Laughter (1925).

(42.) Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) was a novelist and playwrightbest known for his play Our Town. He won three Pulitzer Prizes in hislifetime.