Ernest Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald's Friendship

Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald's Friendship takes shape through contrasts: one writer's reserved discipline meets another's charm, professional success, and unstable relation to alcohol. Their connection begins at the Dingo Bar with praise and interrogation, deepens in a café through frank talk about books and money, and leads Hemingway to join Fitzgerald on a journey to retrieve a damaged Renault from Lyon. The memoir makes the friendship vivid not as uncomplicated literary fellowship, but as an attraction repeatedly tested by difference and misjudgment.

First Meeting at the Dingo Bar

Hemingway recalls meeting Fitzgerald at the Dingo Bar on rue Delambre, where he was sitting with people he regarded as worthless company. Fitzgerald introduced himself and a tall, pleasant companion, Dunc Chaplin, whom he presented as a famous pitcher. Hemingway had never followed Princeton baseball and had not heard of Chaplin; nevertheless, he found him relaxed, friendly, and immediately more agreeable than Fitzgerald. The contrast sets the tone for a relationship that begins not in instant recognition but in watchful appraisal.

Fitzgerald struck Hemingway as a man who looked like a boy, with very fair wavy hair, an animated expression, and a delicate mouth. His appearance seemed almost too pretty, a quality Hemingway says became more troubling once he knew him. Fitzgerald wore well-fitting Brooks Brothers clothes, a white shirt, and a Guard's tie; Hemingway considered warning him that British visitors might notice it, then decided not to. Only later did he learn Fitzgerald had bought the tie in Rome. Hemingway also noticed Fitzgerald's capable-looking hands and unusually short legs. These precise observations reveal how he spends the encounter studying the man while trying not to follow his speech.

Fitzgerald had ordered champagne and spoke at length about Hemingway's writing, praising it in a way that embarrassed its recipient. Hemingway was accustomed to treating face-to-face praise as a kind of disgrace, and he had thought his possible greatness was a private understanding shared only with his wife and close acquaintances. Fitzgerald's approval was therefore gratifying, but the speech also made Hemingway uncomfortable. After the first bottle was finished and a second begun, the monologue gave way to questions. Hemingway came to understand that Fitzgerald believed a novelist could learn what he needed by directly questioning friends and acquaintances. The personal, sometimes intrusive character of their exchange was present from the start.

Literary Admiration and Disagreement

In a later café conversation, Fitzgerald asked Hemingway about the café and tried to share his attachment to it. They talked about writers, publishers, agents, critics, and the economics of literary success. Fitzgerald spoke cynically but without bitterness, and with humor and charm; he also discussed his earlier books without rancor. Hemingway took that composure as a sign that Fitzgerald's new book must be very good. Fitzgerald wanted him to read The Great Gatsby, but had lent out the only copy he then possessed.

Fitzgerald was puzzled and hurt that the novel was selling poorly despite very favorable reviews. Hemingway recalls that he was shy but happy about its quality, and that a review by Gilbert Seldes expressed admiration so strongly that it seemed difficult to improve upon. The book's reception placed commercial disappointment beside artistic confidence. Fitzgerald did not present himself as boastful about the novel; Hemingway instead recognized the diffidence of a writer who believed he had made something fine.

Their talk also exposed a real disagreement about how to earn a living as a writer. Fitzgerald explained that he first wrote stories as he thought they ought to be, then altered them for magazine submission, making the turns that would render them saleable. He called the practice whoring, but said magazine income gave him money in reserve for writing books. Hemingway objected that changing a story after writing it well risked damaging the talent behind it. Fitzgerald's answer was that the original story had already been made, so subsequent changes did it no harm.

Hemingway could not accept this defense. Yet he knew his own position lacked the proof of a novel: he wanted to demonstrate that a writer could not work in any way other than the best way possible, but had not yet produced a book that could support the argument. He had been dismantling his own facility, trying to make rather than describe, and the work was rewarding but laborious; a single paragraph could consume a whole morning. Their disagreement therefore arose from more than contrasting opinions about magazines. Fitzgerald had a successful method and financial experience, while Hemingway was still trying to establish the practice on which his convictions depended.

From Conversation to a Journey

The invitation to travel followed an evening in which Hemingway watched Fitzgerald closely for the effects of alcohol. On the café terrace, they drank two whisky and sodas, and Hemingway saw no chemical change in him: Fitzgerald asked no shameless questions, made no embarrassing display, and seemed normal, intelligent, and charming. That calm encounter helped make the earlier Dingo Bar meeting seem, by comparison, like an unpleasant dream. Fitzgerald then told him that he and Zelda Fitzgerald had been forced to leave their small Renault in Lyon because of bad weather, and asked him to take the train there and drive back with him.

Hemingway accepted readily. It was late spring, he expected the countryside to be beautiful, and he imagined that time in the car with an older, successful writer would teach him something useful. At that point he had not read The Great Gatsby and did not yet think of Fitzgerald as a serious writer. He associated him with readable stories for The Saturday Evening Post, while Fitzgerald's account of revising stories for magazine sales complicated that impression. The proposed trip thus joined practical help with a chance to observe a writer whose choices Hemingway both questioned and wanted to understand.

Their plan was specific: take the fast morning express to Lyon, with Dijon as its single stop, have the car checked, eat dinner, and set off early toward Paris the next day. Hemingway's wife, Hadley Richardson, was content for him to go and thought the journey might give him a rest from work, though she did not rate the Fitzgerald writing she had read as highly as Henry James. The couple also wished they had enough money to make the journey in their own car. Hemingway had received a two-hundred-dollar advance from Boni and Liveright for a short-story collection, and was selling work to German and Paris publications, but he and Hadley were economizing to save for Spain. Joining Fitzgerald's trip therefore meant spending money that had been set aside for another purpose.

Money, Care, and Uneasy Companionship

The journey quickly made money an element of the relationship rather than a background detail. At breakfast, Fitzgerald chose a substantial meal and then decided they should have the hotel prepare a picnic lunch. Hemingway thought they could buy provisions on the road more cheaply, but Fitzgerald insisted that Lyon's chicken was worth taking along. The hotel lunch, Hemingway estimated, cost several times what they might have spent assembling it themselves. The episode establishes a difference in practical habits without turning it into a simple accusation: Fitzgerald's assumption of comfort sat uneasily beside Hemingway's careful attention to expense.

At the garage, Hemingway found that the Renault had no top. It had been damaged when unloaded at Marseilles, or in some other mishap there, and Zelda had ordered it cut away rather than replaced because she disliked car tops. The garage reported a more serious problem: the engine needed new piston rings and had apparently been run without enough oil and water, causing it to overheat and burn paint from the motor. Fitzgerald disputed some charges for washing, greasing, and oil, while Hemingway listened to the mechanic's assessment. Their planned drive began with a car that was not simply waiting to be collected but needed repair and had already suffered from neglect.

Fitzgerald had apparently been drinking before meeting Hemingway that morning. Hemingway offered him a drink at the bar, and Fitzgerald said he was not a morning drinker; he would, however, keep Hemingway company if Hemingway needed one. They shared whisky and Perrier and both felt better. Hemingway paid for the room and the drinks, though Fitzgerald wanted to pay for everything. Paying brought Hemingway emotional relief, even as it used money saved for Spain; he believed he could borrow from Sylvia Beach if necessary. The gesture turned hospitality into a negotiation over obligation, independence, and who would carry the cost of the trip.

Affection Under Strain

The friendly evening at the café had led Hemingway to believe that Fitzgerald could drink without changing. The morning's whisky and Perrier, followed by wine during the journey, challenged that belief. Hemingway had regarded wine as an ordinary accompaniment to food and a source of pleasure, and could not imagine that a few bottles of light, dry white Mâcon would turn Fitzgerald into a fool. He also did not then understand alcoholism well enough to think that a single whisky could matter. His assumptions about drinking collided with what he was seeing.

By the time the strain surfaced, Hemingway was angry not only at Fitzgerald but at himself for having become involved in what he called the silliness of the situation. Even so, he could not simply be angry with Fitzgerald, whom he compared to someone who was crazy. He found it difficult to accept him as a drunkard precisely because such small quantities of alcohol seemed to affect him so strongly. The judgment remains conflicted: Hemingway recognizes the harm and resents the predicament, yet his explanation is limited by his own lack of understanding.

The friendship's early shape is therefore neither pure admiration nor simple disillusionment. Fitzgerald is generous with praise, engaging in conversation, and willing to include Hemingway in a journey; Hemingway, in turn, lends his time, pays expenses, and hopes to learn from him. But their differences in literary method, financial ease, and response to alcohol keep disrupting easy intimacy. The memoir's retrospective voice signals that many strange things would happen with Fitzgerald, while this episode shows the bond at the moment when curiosity and affection are already being asked to withstand practical and personal strain.