Sheet Music Courtesy Beinecke Library, Yale University

Libby Klesmith and Kenny Spicer

"Hemingway in Michigan" Junior Seminar (spring 2009)
Libby Klesmith, Chris Carlson, Andrea Erat, Emily Gremel, Jaimie Biermann, Nicola Fester, Sean Francis, Marie Lockerd, and Kenny Spicer (pianist) of the Honors College, Grand Valley State University.

Grace Hall Hemingway had considerable musical talents. Before her marriage, Hemingway's mother trained in New York for a career as an opera singer. She returned to Chicago to marry Dr. Clarence "Ed" Hemingway, but continued to sing and give voice lessons.

The E. A. Stege Company of Chicago published her composition, "Lovely Walloona," in 1901. This homage to the "inland sea" of Walloon Lake sounds much like an alma mater, and features lyrics highlighting the blustery breezes of their cottage locale:

Oh! Lovely Walloona,
Fairest of all the inland seas.
Oh! Lovely Walloona,
Rock'd by the Northland breeze.
Heavn's face is seen smiling.
In thine own placid summer seas.

But grand is thy wrath,
When lashing winds ruffle thy breast,
Then dashing waves swirl shoreward
repenting, relenting,
Till all's sweetly at rest.

Oh, lovely Walloona,
Thy laughing ripples kiss the shore.
Oh! Lovely Walloona,
How can we praise thee more.

Swing daintily oarsmen,
Walloona sleeps,
The day is o'er.

These Michigan "breezes" would also figure prominently in Ernest Hemingway's short stories set in the area, such as "Three Day Blow." Perhaps the parents enjoyed puns as much as their son: inspiration for the cottage name "Windemere"undoubtedly came from the English Lake district of the romantic poets, but from the not so mere winds of the Walloon Lake region as well.

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Walloona #1

Walloona #2

n 1901