Bumby

Bumby, the infant son of Ernest Hemingway and Hadley Richardson, shapes the memoir’s account of family life by making its hardships immediate and its moments of tenderness concrete. Too young to understand the adults’ choices, he is nevertheless at the center of them: the cold of Paris becomes intolerable with a baby, and the move to Schruns gives him warmth, care, and time outdoors. His reunion with his father there briefly restores the family’s sense of closeness, though it does not last.

Identity and Early Life

Bumby appears as a baby whose temperament is repeatedly described through calmness and alertness. He did not cry on the family’s twelve-day Atlantic crossing at three months old, even in heavy weather; when barricaded in a bunk so he could not fall, he laughed happily. In Paris, he watched what happened around him without crying or becoming bored. These details distinguish him not through speech or independent action, but through the quiet composure that adults remember and respond to.

The family’s affectionate name for him was Mr. Bumby. The memoir presents him as blond and chunky, with cheeks reddened by winter in the Austrian mountains, where he looked like a local Vorarlberg boy. His identity in these recollections is inseparable from his parents’ care: he is the child they carry across the Atlantic, keep warm in Paris, and take into a new landscape when the city becomes too cold.

Paris: Care in the Cold

The family could manage winter in Paris when it consisted only of the two adults. Ernest Hemingway could write through the morning in a café as it gradually warmed; Hadley Richardson could practice piano in a cold room, wearing enough sweaters to keep warm, then return to nurse Bumby. But taking a baby to a café in winter seemed wrong, despite his easy nature. Their poverty sharpened the problem: after returning from Canada, Hemingway had given up journalism and could sell no stories. Paris was not merely uncomfortable; with a baby and no income from his writing, it was too harsh a place to remain through winter.

With no babysitters, Bumby stayed in his tall cage bed when the adults had to go out and their housekeeper was away. His large, loving cat, F. Puss, lay beside him and watched the door with yellow eyes, allowing no one to approach. Others warned that a cat might suck a baby’s breath or smother him with its weight, but the family’s account reverses that fearful image: F. Puss was, in practice, Bumby’s babysitter. The scene records both the family’s limited means and the makeshift care that allowed them to manage.

A New Home in Schruns

The cold and weather finally drove the family from Paris to Schruns in Vorarlberg. The change was described as beneficial for Bumby. A beautiful dark-haired girl took him out in the sun in his sleigh and looked after him, while Hadley Richardson and Hemingway learned the new country and its villages. The people of the town were friendly, and the family found a healthier setting for a child than their cold Paris rooms.

Bumby’s daily life in Schruns included other companions. A dog named Schnautz slept at the foot of the bed, loved accompanying ski trips, and rode on Hemingway’s back or shoulder as he skied downhill. Schnautz was also Bumby’s friend, going for walks beside him and his nurse as she pulled the small sleigh. The sleigh links the child’s sheltered routine to the snowy outdoor life that defined the family’s winter there: he was not skiing, but the landscape and its movement were already part of his childhood.

Family Life and Separation

Bumby’s presence alters the memoir’s account of what Parisian life could bear. Hemingway recalls that having a child first seemed stimulating and fun, but the family’s circumstances made its pleasures precarious. In winter, the adults could adapt to cold rooms and café routines; a baby could not be treated as simply another participant in that life. The move to Schruns is therefore both a practical response to weather and a change in the family’s shared world.

That closeness is especially visible when Hemingway returns from a business trip to New York. Having failed to take the first, second, or third train back to Austria, he sees Hadley waiting by the tracks beside piled logs, with Bumby at her side. Bumby is blond and sturdy, his cheeks marked by the winter sun. Hadley welcomes Hemingway with the exact words, “Oh Tatie,” and tells him that she loves him and that they have missed him. The scene places the child within the parents’ reunion: he is not simply a detail in the landscape, but part of the family Hemingway has returned to.

Narrative Significance

The mountain reunion briefly makes the family seem secure again. Hemingway recalls loving Hadley and no one else, working well, and making trips together; he believed they were invulnerable. Bumby’s presence gives that feeling a visible form in the image of the three of them together after the winter apart. Yet the happiness is temporary: when they leave the mountains in late spring and return to Paris, the other trouble begins again. The memoir’s account of Bumby thus holds two conditions in tension—his care and safety in Schruns, and the adult relationship that cannot be preserved by that refuge. The family never returned to Vorarlberg, and the first part of their Paris life was over.