Hemingway’s Lost Suitcase
How to Start Again From Zero
Starting anything is hard. Losing everything and starting over is even harder.
In December 1922, a young Ernest Hemingway was in Switzerland as a newspaper correspondent for the Lausanne Peace Conference. On the way he met journalist and editor of The American Magazine Lincoln Steffens, who was impressed with Hemingway’s writing and asked to see more.
Hemingway messaged his wife Elizabeth Hadley Richardson, better known as Hadley, at their home in Paris to bring samples of his work to Switzerland. Hadley packed everything that Hemingway had written from the last three years, including copies and first drafts, into a suitcase and went to join him.
While waiting for the train at Gare de Lyon station in Paris, Hadley left the suitcase unattended on the train to buy refreshments for the trip. When she came back, it was gone.
Hemingway was devastated. In a letter to his good friend and poet Ezra Pound, he wrote:
