Ernest Hemingway Meets F. Scott Fitzgerald

In Hemingway’s memoir, A Moveable Feast, he describes the first time he met F. Scott Fitzgerald in the Dingo Bar on the rue Delambre where, as Hemingway describes it, “…a very strange thing happened.”

As Hemingway was sitting and drinking with some “completely worthless characters,” Fitzgerald came in with a tall young man who turned out to be the famous baseball pitcher, Dunc Chaplin. Hemingway was no baseball devotee and had never heard of Chaplin, but recognised Fitzgerald, and took this chance to introduce himself, which went something like this:

”Mr Fitzgerald, forgive me, but my name is Ernest Hemingway, I am a writer.”

”Call me Scott. May I call you Ernest?”

”Yes.”

”Well, Ernest, this is my friend Dunc Chaplin, who plays baseball and went to Princeton like me.”

”Please to meet you…”

”Dunc, call me Dunc.”

”Dunc.”

Scott then ordered a bottle of champagne.