HADLEY: LIFE AFTER ERNEST

Hadley and Ernest in Chamby, Switzerland, in 1922

After their split in 1926, Hadley returned to America. After a year and a half of a marriage shared with another woman, Hadley admitted that she felt “like a million dollars and free as air.”

When she returned to Paris, Hadley met Paul Mowrer, a poet and journalist. Paul, however, was already married. Hadley herself now became the third part of the triangle of husband, wife and mistress. After his divorce, Paul and Hadley married in London in 1933, and they settled in Chicago.

Hadley’s taped interviews with biographer Alice Sokoloff show that although she viewed her first marriage with great tenderness,  life with Paul was perhaps a little less fraught, and a lot more comforting. After her divorce, Hadley saw Ernest only once after his death, although he continued to write her mournful letters, often full of longing and sorrow: “Good bye Miss Katherine Kat. I love you very much. It is all right to do so because it hasn’t anything to do with you and that great Paul; it’s just untransferable feeling for early and best Gods.” (1942)

Paul and Hadley remained married until their deaths. She died in Florida in 1979, at the age of eighty-seven.