A great plot...a plot, that is, for the great American novel

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Since we’re all spending a bit more time at home these days, are any of you contemplating writing more. . .as in letters, short stories or even starting or finishing the great American novel?

Now, here’s a plot you might consider: A husband, wife and their young son are under quarantine. Joining them are the nanny and the husband’s mistress.

Just think what and how the story lines could play out here.

And, from what perspective? The wife? The husband? The nanny? The mistress?

Would there be murder? Would there be intrigue? Would there be, after the quarantine was over, peace on earth?

It might be coincidence, dumb luck or the force of nature, but one of this country’s great authors, Ernest Hemingway, found himself in this exact situation in 1926.

In Town and Country magazine, Lesley M.M. Blume shares this story.

In the early 1920s Hemingway and his wife, Hadley, and their son, Jack “Bumby,” were living in Paris. By 1926, the family had acquired a nanny and Hemingway a mistress by the name of Pauline Pfeiffer, an editor at Vogue.

Needless to say, Hadley wasn’t pleased that her husband had a mistress.

To make a long story short, that summer, while Hemingway was in Spain watching the bullfights, Hadley and Bumby traveled to Cap d’Antibes to stay with wealthy friends.

Then Bumby came down with whooping cough, a highly contagious disease. They soon found themselves in isolation, in quarantine.

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Upon learning that Bumby was ill, the nanny made her way from Paris followed shortly after by the mistress. Finished with the bullfights (Hemingway was told by the family friend not to worry or hurry back and that all were well cared for), Hemingway joined the newly formed family unit in a small two-bedroom house.

Pauline even joined the Hemingways in bed for breakfast in the morning.

If this isn’t captivating enough, Hemingway said that this was “a splendid place to write.”

You bet.

To keep up morale in the Hemingway-Pfeiffer household, friends came for a social distance cocktail hour. They stopped short of the fence and Hemingway, Hadley and Pauline joined them from the veranda. When finished, they placed their empty bottles upside down on the fence spikes. At quarantine’s end, the fence was lined with empty bottles.

As for the mistress, she was a force to be reckoned with. She wanted Hemingway and stated in a letter, “I’m going to get everything I want.”

As for Hadley. . .the marriage didn’t last through the summer.

Blume finishes her piece about Hadley and Hemingway brilliantly, “They had survived whooping cough and quarantine, but the onslaught of Miss Pauline Pfeiffer proved fatal.”

If you’d like to read the article, you can visit bit.ly/35gYh0E.

by P. Carter Newton, publisher

cnewton@galgazette.com