Up in Hedonistic Michigan with Hem

Susan Swartzlander
Professor of English
Grand Valley State University
swartzls@gvsu.edu

In the 1980's, before I finished my Ph.D. at Penn State and emigrated to Michigan, I watched a Sixty Minutes segment in which Mike Wallace interviewed an elderly and colorful Janet Flanner about lost generation Paris. Intrigued by her pronouncement that Hemingway was "hedonistic in his Michigan manner," I wondered just how hedonistic Michigan could be and what role this place played in Hemingway’s development (I always associated him with more exotic locales like Paris and Pamplona, Key West and Cuba). In the 90’s, I traced Hemingway’s footsteps through Paris, with the help of Noel Riley Fitch’s Walks in Hemingway’s Paris, and my partner, a French historian who happily indulged me, joining in my Hemingway and Joycean treks (leading us to many memorable adventures in dining).  As we lunched at a much more upscale Café des Lilas than Hemingway ever  knew, I puzzled over the incongruity of his writing about fishing in rural Michigan while downing café cremes on the Left Bank. Perhaps his choice of an apartment above a lumber mill was an attempt to bring a little bit of Michigan to his Paris life. 

Ernest Hemingway lived in northern Michigan as a boy and young man every summer save one between 1899 and 1921. When he needed to recuperate from his war wounds and a broken romance, he went north. When he married for the first time, he chose Horton Bay for the setting.  When he first went to Paris, Hemingway so convincingly played the northern Michigan persona that in a letter home while on a U.S. tour, Ford Madox Ford recounted his shock in discovering upon meeting Hemingway’s father, a physician, that Hemingway comes not from the backwoods, but from “a ridiculous suburb.” Ford concludes that Hemingway would be furious if any of their mutual friends knew his true origins in Oak Park, a toney Chicago suburb.  

Although little about Michigan could be called hedonistic, the wild beauty of northern Michigan landscapes and the down to earth people who became Hemingway’s summer family did indeed shape his writing and his life. James Joyce wrote: ''There was an English queen who said that when she died the word 'Calais' would be written on her heart. 'Dublin' will be found on mine.'' Like his early mentor, Hemingway left his place of inspiration, but the place never left him.

This website is the joint effort of HNR 312 (a Frederik Meijer Honors College junior seminar at Grand Valley State University), developed as nine students and I embarked on a search to discover, in a very short six weeks, as much as we could about Horton Bay and Petoskey, summer life on Walloon Lake and Lake Charlevoix, from roughly 1899 to 1920. We wanted to know what it was like in the time Hemingway summered here and how his Michigan experiences shaped his work, even his writing set outside of Michigan.  We read the Nick Adams stories, Torrents of Spring, and The Sun Also Rises, as well as excerpts from biographies, selected scholarly articles, and relevant letters from the Selected Letters of Ernest Hemingway.  We learned about Ottawa and Ojibway history, and the tourist entertainment of 1905, the Hiawatha play. Thanks to the GVSU library and library liason Anne Merkle, we read local histories of the area, as well as contemporary accounts of resort life in the Chicago Tribune and Grand Rapids Press.

We took an overnight trip to Hemingway country, enjoying tours of Horton Bay and Petoskey led by James Vol Hartwell and Chris Struble. Our adventures included meeting fascinating world travelers on Lake Street and experiencing first-hand the dramatic meteorological moods described by Hemingway in his blustery settings.

Our Honors College curriculum emphasizes interdisciplinary approaches; the junior seminar is a special topics honors course designed to explore a subject from different perspectives. Our class represented a variety of majors (Art and Design, Accounting, Computer Science, Geography, International Relations, Business, Communications, English and Film and Video).  Each student identified an aspect of Hemingway's early life in Michigan to research further, using primary sources found mostly in electronic archives, such as newspaper databases and Google Books. As a result, you can listen to the world internet premiere of Grace Hall Hemingway's "Lovely Walloona," learn about the luxurious Lake Michigan steamer the Hemingway family took to northern Michigan, find out more about camping or cooking at the turn of the century. You can see what dances the Hemingway teens learned and why their father objected, or discover the top ten tunes of the teens. You can read about Native Americans in the Walloon Lake area. Watch videos of our tours, and if you are planning a trip to Michigan, consider a Hemingway bike tour.

To see these finished projects, please visit this page.

Learn more about the Frederik Meijer Honors College here

Learn more about Grand Valley State University here

If you have comments or questions, feel free to email swartzls@gvsu.edu

Hemingway in Michigan Timeline

August 1898   Traveling on the steamship the S.S. Manitou, Dr. and Mrs. Hemingway with infant Marcelline visit Walloon Lake (known as Bear Lake until a name change in 1900). They stay at a cottage owned by Grace’s cousin. They enjoyed it so much that they bought an acre of land from farmer Henry Bacon. The Bacons would supply the family over the decades with milk, eggs, and produce, as well as provide opportunities for the city dwellers to experience farm chores.

August 1899  Family  visits Walloon Lake to check on their cottage now under construction. Grace Hall Hemingway designed the cottage. The parents, Marcelline, and 6-week old Ernest stay at the Echo Beach Hotel.

Summer of 1900 The family’s first summer in the cottage Windemere.

1901  Grace Hall Hemingway publishes sheet music singing praises of Walloon Lake: Lovely Walloona

1902 Kitchen, screened dining area, and sleeping annex added to the 20 x 40 cottage.

1905 The Hemingways purchase a 40 acre farm (Longfield Farm) across the lake from the cottage. Hemingway hired tenant farmers, but the family planted fruit trees and vegetables.

January 1910  Vollie Fox purchases what would become the Red Fox Inn.

July 1911  Daughter Carol born at Windemere.

1913  Infamous Porcupine meal.

July 30, 1915  Grace Hall Hemingway visited by game wardens looking for her son who had shot a great blue heron in the “Cracken” area of Walloon Lake.

1916  In June Ernest Hemingway and a friend took a steamer to lower Michigan and hiked to Kalkaska, took train to Petoskey and overnighted at the Perry Hotel. He visits several northern Michigan towns including Kalkaska (inspiration for “The Light of the World” and “The Battler”).  Publishes stories “Last Judgment of Manitou” and “No Worse than a Bad Cold” in Tabula, his high school literary magazine.

1917   Model T trip from Oak Park on unfinished roads. Hemingways expand Longfield Farm by purchasing an additional 20 acres of land. They hire local farmer Warren Sumner to tend the farm and accomplish other tasks, such as building an icehouse which supplied ice through the summer.

March 14, 1919   Hemingway leaves Chicago on the State of Ohio steamer bound for Harbor Springs. He limps more than 9 miles to Windemere seeking refuge in northern Michigan to heal shrapnel laden legs and a heart broken by his war time romance, Agnes von Kurowsky.

Summer of 1919   Grace Hall Hemingway has “Grace Cottage” built as her own private retreat; this cottage still stands on site of Longfield Farm, across Walloon Lake from Windemere.

October 1919  Ernest Hemingway takes a room for $8 a week at Mrs. Potter’s boarding house, 602 State Street Petoskey.

December 1919  Petoskey Ladies Aid Society asks Hemingway to lecture about his war experiences.

September 3, 1921  Ernest Hemingway and Hadley Richardson marry in Horton Bay. They honeymooned for 2 weeks at Windemere.

Resources to Learn More about Hemingway in Michigan

Baker, Carlos. Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story. NY: Scribners, 1969.
Berman, Ron. “Hemingway’s Michigan Landscapes,” The Hemingway Review 27.1 (2007) 39-54.

Buske, Morris. Dad, Are We There Yet? Michigan History Magazine Volume 83; Number 2 (March / April 1999) pp. 16-27.

Cappel, Constance. Hemingway in Michigan. Petoskey, MI: Little Traverse Historical Society, 1999.

Erb, Mary; Hermann, Cynthia; and Schloff, Charles. Walloon Yesterdays: A Glimpse of the Past Through Photographs and Memories. Petoskey, MI: Mitchell Graphics, 2003.

Federspiel, Michael. Up North with the Hemingways. Michigan History Magazine. Volume, Number, September/October 2007.

Godfrey, Laura Gruber. “Hemingway and Cultural Geography: The Landscape of Logging In ‘The End of Something’" The Hemingway Review 26.1 (2006) 47-62.

Griffin, Peter. Along With Youth: Hemingway, The Early Years. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.

Hartwell, James Vol.  Assorted guides about local history, Native American lore, interviews with those who knew Hemingway.

Hemingway, Leicester. Ernest Hemingway: My Brother. Cleveland: World Publishing Company, 1962.

Jobst, Jack. Gone Fishin' Michigan History Magazine Volume 79; Number 6 (November/December 1995) pp. 45-49.
Jobst, Jack. Hemingway in Seney. Michigan History Magazine. Volume 74; Number 6 (November/December 1990)

Kilborn, Harriet. The History of the Petoskey Area. http://deemamafred.tripod.com/emhist.html

Marek, Ken. Hemingway-related Sites in the Horton Bay/Walloon Lake/Petoskey/Harbor Springs area.
http://www.michiganhemingwaysociety.org/hemsites.html

Michigan Hemingway Society. http://www.michiganhemingwaysociety.org/

Miller, Madelaine Hemingway. Ernie: Hemingway's Sister Sunny Remembers. New York: Crown Publishers, 1975.

Ohle, William H. How it Was in Horton Bay: Charlevoix County, Michigan. Boyne City, MI: W.H. Ohle, 1989.

Palin, Michael. http://www.pbs.org/hemingwayadventure/walloon.html  (includes video of the area).

Sanford, Marcellene Hemingway, At the Hemingways. Moscow, Idaho: University of Idaho Press, 1999.

Svoboda, Frederic  J. “Landscapes real and imagined: `Big Two-Hearted River'.”  Hemingway Review, Fall 1996, Vol. 16, Issue 1.

Svoboda, Frederic  J.  and Joseph J. Waldmeir, eds.  Hemingway:  Up in Michigan Perspectives  (East Lansing:  Michigan State University Press, 1995).

Svoboda, Frederic  J.  “Hemingway in Michigan; Michigan in Hemingway” text for Exhibition Catalog available at the Clarke Historical Library. http://clarke.cmich.edu/hemingway_tab/additional_resources/michigan-in-hemingway-2003.pdf

Swartzlander, Susan. “Uncle Charles in Michigan” in Hemingway’s Neglected Short Fiction, ed. Susan Beegel (University of Alabama Press, 1991).

Swartzlander, Susan. “’Thus to Revisit or Thus to Revise-It’:  Ernest Hemingway, Defiant Disciple” Ford Madox Ford’s Literary Contacts: International Ford Madox Ford Studies 6, ed. Paul Skinner, (2007):  189-202.