Scott Fitzgerald in September 1926 before enduring several months of despondency, during which he contemplated suicide and drafted a last will. Upon close review of the journalism, letters, and fiction Ernest Hemingway wrote during his residence in France, however, we find an expatriate scene that is disparate from these glowing general critical views: “ been in hell now since Christmas” (Selected Letters 217), he wrote to F.

The critics who study this group tend to focus on similar themes-rejection of conservative mores in America, sexual liberation and alcohol consumption, creative cross-fertilization, and so on-such that the cultural migration to France itself is generally treated as a positive experience. Literary expatriation had an important role in the development of twentieth-century modernist writing, particularly for Americans in Paris during the interwar years. This essay discusses these inconsistencies and proposes an alternative hypothesis for the locations. Following a recent visit to Bad Nauheim, I concluded that these locations and descriptions do not appear to be consistent with the historical evidence, or with certain passages in the novel. Hotel Regina: ‘A few yards from the Englischer Hof and on the same street at 8 Küchlerstrasse.’ Hotel Excelsior: ‘Grander than the Englischer Hof and Hotel Regina, the Excelsior was within easy walking distance of them but still modest in comparison with Grand-Hotel Kaiserhof or Grand-Hotel Metropole and Monopole’. In the Norton Critical Edition of the novel, they are described as follows: Englischer Hof: ‘Probably Hotel d’Angleterre, now the Deutscher Hof, a substantial private hotel on a tree-lined street, at 1 Küchlerstrasse, one block from the Kurpark and baths’.

Three hotels in Bad Nauheim are mentioned in the novel: the Englischer Hof, the Hotel Regina, and the Hotel Excelsior. Ford Madox Ford’s novel The Good Soldier is partly set in and around the German spa town of Bad Nauheim between the years 19.

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway