The documentary said that Hemingway’s mother Grace earned more as a teacher of voice and instrumental music than her physician husband Clarence earned.
This strikes me as unusual.
Grace did give up a promising career as a performer to marry, so she might have been really talented, and thus an outstanding music teacher.
It also wouldn’t surprise me to learn that physician might have been in a lower income percentile among occupations ca. 1900 than it was by mid-century, with the growth of professional licensing and the like.
I was born around 1960, and I don’t remember private music teachers being better paid than, say, school teachers. Was that not the case earlier in the century?
Mods, I considered creating a new thread in GQ or IMHO on this, but I figured that people reading this thread would already be familiar with the specific facts of this instance, so more interested in commenting. Move as you wish.