the Good Soldier: John McCain and Hemingway

Dear Readers: Hemingway still inspires. Best, Christine

THE GOOD SOLDIER

John McCain Found Lifelong Inspiration From a Hemingway Hero

The late senator first read ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ when he was 12 years old, and the book’s hero, Robert Jordan, became an enduring role model.

Nicolaus Mills

08.31.18 10:25 PM ET

No literary figure, Senator John McCain often pointed out, had more influence on how he conducted his life than Robert Jordan, the hero of Ernest Hemingway’s 1940 novel about the Spanish Civil War, For Whom the Bell Tolls.

In his most recent book, The Restless Wave, written in collaboration with Mark Salter, McCain wrote about his impending death by observing, “’The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it,’ spoke my hero, Robert Jordan, in For Whom the Bell Tolls. And I do, too. But I don’t have a complaint. Not one.”

McCain first read For Whom the Bell Tolls when he was 12, and he returned to it in succeeding years. “It’s my favorite novel of all time. It instructed me to see the world as it is, with all its corruption and cruelty, and believe it’s worth fighting for anyway, even dying for,” McCain observed earlier this year in an interview. The title of McCain’s 2002 memoir, Worth Fighting For, comes from the same For Whom the Bell Tolls passage that he quotes in The Restless Wave.

With so many literary heroes to pick from, McCain’s choice of Robert Jordan is revealing. Robert Jordan is no superhero, capable of overcoming all odds. Even in the 1943 movie version of For Whom the Bell Tolls, starring Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman, Jordan dies alone. In the passage McCain cites in The Restless Wave, Jordan lies concealed behind a tree with a submachine gun, hoping he can delay the heavily armed fascist troops who have been pursuing him and the guerrilla band he is with.

Jordan has gotten himself into this position by traveling from America to Spain to flight with the Loyalist forces supporting the democratically elected government of the five-year-old Spanish Republic, which in 1936 came under siege from a fascist military coalition led by General Francisco Franco, who ruled Spain from the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939 until he died in 1975.

Jordan knows that his own death is a certainty. He has sustained a broken leg as a result of the horse he has been riding falling on him. No matter what he does, he cannot flee. The best that he can do is sacrifice his life so that others, including the woman he loves, may live. “You’ve had as good a life as anyone because of these last days,” Jordan tells himself. “You do not want to complain because you have been so lucky.”

As he faces the end of his life, Jordan’s bravery reflects his character, but just as important are the choices that have brought him to this point. He is not a professional soldier, although he comes from a family in which his grandfather fought in the Civil War for four years. Until now Jordan has led a quiet life as an instructor in Spanish at the University of Montana. As a child he saw a lynching, but he was too young to do anything about it.

What has led Jordan to abandon the comfortable life he was leading in America is the prospect of the Loyalist defenders of the Spanish Republic being overwhelmed by a fascist cabal relying on foreign aid. During the Spanish Civil War, America was neutral as a result of a bill President Roosevelt signed on May 1, 1937, banning the export of arms and ammunition to the warring parties in Spain.

By contrast, neither Germany nor Italy saw any reason to remain neutral when they believed they had much to gain from helping a fascist ally. As historian Adam Hochschild notes in Spain Is in Our Hearts, his account of the Americans who fought in the Spanish Civil War, the German and Italian contributions to Franco were immense and gave both nations a chance to test out weapons they would use in World War II.

Some 19,000 German troops and instructors saw action in Spain or helped train Fascist troops, and nearly 80,000 Italian troops fought for Franco between the start of the Spanish Civil War and its conclusion. The Soviet Union, which for a period identified itself with the Loyalists, provided only limited aid by comparison.

For Hemingway, who made four trips to Spain to report on its Civil War for the North American Newspaper Alliance, Jordan was an admirable figure who reflected what was best about the 2,800 Americans who went to Spain to fight on the Loyalist side. Jordan knows that the Loyalist side he is on is capable of great cruelty. He is no fan of the Communists who are part of the Loyalist alliance. But Jordan sees the flaws in the fascists as so much greater than those of the Loyalists that he does not back away from the commitment he has made to the war.

In this commitment Jordan mirrors Hemingway, who in a 1937 letter described the Spanish Civil War as “the dress rehearsal for the inevitable European war.” Hemingway raised money in support of the Loyalist side, and with his future wife, the correspondent Martha Gellhorn, who travelled to Spain with him, he went to the White House for a showing of the pro-Loyalist film, The Spanish Earth, before President and Eleanor Roosevelt.

In the end Hemingway had to content himself with doing his best rather than getting the outcome in Spain that he wanted, and so finally must Robert Jordan. What makes Jordan admirable is what made McCain admirable—his unwillingness to sit on the sidelines and watch democracy be undermined.

David Brooks of the NY Times: Thoughts on Hemingway’s Cuba

When David Brooks visited Cuba and Hemingway’s home, the Finca Vigia, in 2016, he wrote an article about it. He commented on how

David Brooks, Columnist for the New York Times

healthy a place Hemingway’s home in Cuba seemed. It was bright, beautifully situated, and filled with tons of reading material.Hemingway was an avid reader of newspapers and all sorts of books and got through most of his daily newspapers and other reading. There also was a baseball diamond nearby where he used to pitch to the local kids.

However despite this sun-filled life, Hemingway nevertheless was not a healthy man toward the end of his life. Drinking had taken its toll and although Brooks cites Hemingway’s brother, Leicester, as stating that he counted17 scotch and sodas a day as his brother’s intake, Leicester –at least based on all of my reading–spent little time with Hemingway so I’m not sure how he would know. If anyone reading this knows more of this issue than I do, please comment. Despite Hemingway’s drinking and poor habits, on a wall in the Finca was Hemingway’s record of weight, which he was obsessed with.

Brooks noted that Hemingway could be lively and funny, and be the life of the party in a good way, but he also could be argumentative and depressed. If you follow this blog, you’ll know the extent.

The article is very interesting. Quoting a bit of David Brooks’ article:

“When you see how he did it, (Me: meaning how he accomplished his writing) three things leap out. First is the most mundane—the daily discipline of the job. In the house, there is a small bed where he laid out his notes and a narrow shelf where he stood, stared at a blank wall and churned out his daily word count.

“Second, there seemed to have been moments of self-forgetting… if you just try to serve the work—focusing on each concrete task and doing it the way it’s supposed to be done—then you’ll end up obliquely serving the community more.” (I think Brooks is saying there is a loss of self-consciousness in writing when you get to that point.)

“Finally, there was the act of cutting out. When Hemingway was successful, he cut out his mannerisms and self-pity. Then in middle age, out of softness, laziness and self-approval, he indulged himself, but even then, even amid all the corruption, he had flashes when he could distinguish his own bluster from the good, true notes.

“There is something heroic that happened in this house. Hemingway was a man who embraced every self-indulgence that can afflict a successful person. But at moments he shed all that he had earned and received and rediscovered the hardworking, clear-seeing and unadorned man he used to be.”

EH 4449P Ernest Hemingway reading books with his dog Negrita at Finca Vigia in Cuba. Please credit "Ernest Hemingway Collection/John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston" — EH 4449P
Ernest Hemingway reading books with his dog Negrita at Finca Vigia in Cuba. Please credit “Ernest Hemingway Collection/John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston”

6 Films Portraying Hemingway

Hemin gway on film: 6 films that take him from a WWI hotshot almost to the bitter end

Hemingway has been portrayed in film regularly over the last 20 years. He has been written about significantly more than F. Scott Fitzgerald—perhaps because his life was longer and with a few more highs to focus on—but often in film, only one side of Hemingway is emphasized and the total picture of the man doesn’t seem to emerge. He’s either portrayed as a bragging drunkard whose light shown brightest only in his early works or as a macho, thrill-seeking hunter/bullfighting aficionado/fisherman who covered wars and rarely let up on the macho image that blessed and cursed him.

In all of my reading, I have seen another side of him that is very much present. Next to the drunkard braggart, there is also the gentle and insecure man who just wants to be left alone to write. Next to the macho big game hunter is the man who considered his animals part of the family and whom he treated with caring gratitude and love. When his spaniel Black Dog died, the depression that was already in progress deepened and he said he’d give up all of his fame and money for a case of good claret and “my Black Dog back when he was young and happy again.” And while capable of harshness to all of his wives at moments, he also gave generous support and kind appreciation for what they gave to him, including Martha whom he tended to vilify after the divorce. He readily acknowledged her writing skill and her courage. I don’t see too many of those nuanced aspects of Hemingway being portrayed on film.

In any event, I read an article that talks about the following Hemingway based films:

In Love And War: Sandra Bullock plays the alter-ego of Agnes Van Kurowsky, Hemingway’s real life love when he was an ambulance driver in Italy. Chris O’Donnell was the Hemingway figure. It was not an intriguing movie.
In Love and War

The Last Good Country: This is short film portraying Hemingway returning home after World War I, haunted by physical and psychological demons. The film is supposed to be inspired, in part, by Hemingway’s story Big Two-Hearted River. The part of Hemingway is played by Nic Collins and from the reviews, he apparently acquits himself well in portraying the complexity of Hemingway’s war and postwar life.

3. Midnight In Paris: This is Woody Allen’s love film to Paris, but it also shows our stereotypical Hemingway who is portrayed with great fun by Corey Stoll. When Hemingway, apropos of nothing, shouts in a bar, “Does anyone want to fight?” I admit to laughing out loud.

4. Genius: This film just came out in June and focuses on Max Perkins, editor extraordinaire to Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Thomas Wolfe. The focus of the movie is on Wolfe, but Hemingway is in it in a few vignettes in which Perkins goes fishing with Hemingway presumably in Key West since this is set in 1929.

Hemingway & Gellhorn: The title is self-explanatory, but was something of a bore. Clive Owen played Hemingway; Nicole Kidman was Martha. Critics found it to be fairly dreadful.
Hemingway and Gellhorn/ Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman

Papa Hemingway In Cuba: This is also a new movie based on the true story of Hemingway’s friendship with Ed Myers, a young journalist. Reviews were mixed about whether it was not good or whether, as some critics said, “Sparks is superb in the title role and he captures Hemingway’s warmth as well as his irascible nature.”

A new film by Ken Burns for PBS is about to come out. Hoping it is balanced and fair. We all know the bad. It is there for sure. But there is a lot of good! Happy New Year to Hemingway readers and us devoted amateurs!

Even a bad Hemingway film can be look-worthy. Love, Christine

Wife # 3: Martha Gellhorn

“Only one marriage I regret. I remember after I got that marriage license I went across from the license bureau to a bar for a drink. The bartender said, ‘What will you have, sir?’ And I said, ‘A glass of hemlock.’ Ernest Hemingway This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is images-76.jpeg

One afternoon in late December as he prepared to leave the cool sawdust interior of Sloppy Joe’s, a trio of tourists walked in. One was a young woman with beautiful hair—tawny gold, loosely brushing her shoulders. She wore a plain black cotton sundress whose simplicity called attention in a well-bred way to her long, shapely legs. Bernice Kurt, The Hemingway women. Page 28.

Martha was lovely, smart, and determined. Born on November 8, 1908, her parents were well educated, a physician and a worker for social causes. Just as Pauline was determined to get Hem from Hadley, Martha knew she needed Hem as her mate. Martha was from St. Louis, just as Hadley and Pauline were. Coincidence but an interesting one. Martha attended Bryn Mawr but left at the end of her junior year. She wanted to be a foreign correspondent and did work in Europe for several years. She returned to the US, became a life-long friend of Eleanor Roosevelt’s. Money was tight but Martha persevered. She wrote a well-received book called the Trouble I’ve Seen, about four age groups who were caught in the cycle of unemployment This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is f4ad5707b68ba5ff072bc3e299eb2e28-1.jpg

Hem was nine years older than Martha but seemed older. He was a world acclaimed novelist. Compared to Pauline, she was flashy and accomplished. As for her early impressions of Hem, she wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt, “an odd bird, very lovable and full of fire and a marvelous story teller. So I sit about and have just read the mss of his new book and been very smart about it.” Kurt, page 291.

The relationship progressed as they bonded over the Spanish Revolution. Hem was on the fence as to allegiance, in true newsman fashion. Martha was for the Rebels. Both cared deeply about the cause and about Spain. Martha was brave and despite bombings of buildings regularly, both continued their work without complaint. Per Martha, “I think it was the only time in his life when he was not the most important thing there was. He really cared about the Republic and he cared about that war. I believe I never would’ve gotten hooked otherwise.”

As Martha secured her position in Hem’s life, Pauline suffered the loss. With several health issues afflicting her, it became clear that Hem was leaving and there was nothing she could do about it. Hem wrote a letter to Pauline’s mother in 1939 trying to explain the estrangement. Her family had been generous and accepting and it was painful. It also was painful for the boys. “When you were with my father, it was the Crusades. He was Richard the Lion-hearted, and my mother was the woman you left behind in the castle with the chastity belt.” One benefit though was that Patrick and Gigi (Gregory) started to spend summers and vacations with hem which created memories that were irreplaceable. Their half-brother Jack (John/Bumby) had been enjoying those times with his father since the Hadley divorce.

Martha developed a good relationship with the boys. She was loving to all three and they enjoyed her. She had a friendly relationship with Hadley as well.

Hem wrote much of For Whom the Bell Tolls while with Martha. He dedicated it to her. It was selling well and there were bids for the movie rights. He did pay Pauline alimony which he resented as she “didn’t need it.”

Martha found that her husband drank too much, didn’t bathe enough, and embellished his stories. Still she made an effort to be a good hostess, partner, mother, and appreciator of his cats.

As time passed and Martha pursued assignments in China and Europe, Hem felt rejected and their love declined. Hem began to rant and rail against Martha and to heap abuse on her. When they finally divorced, Martha was sad but relieved. No alimony for Martha. She went on to write and establish a successful career in her own right. She married in 1954 and divorced in 1963, living the balance of her life in London. She committed suicide at age 89 with a drug overdose after suffering from cancer and blind.

In a couple weeks, I’ll be giving away three copies of the Hemingway cookbook. It is actually pretty great. There are not only recipes of Hemingway meals but stories and anecdotes related to the novels, stories, and Hem’s life. I really like the cook book. (Details to follow on how to win).

Also, I’d love to have guest posters. If you are the third to guest post, you get one of the cook books. You laugh, but it’s really great. You can write about anything. Review Gellhorn and Hemingway. Talk about his impact on you. Tell us what you hate. did you like Midnight in Paris? Please share!

6970767837_1f7719de7e_s — Portrait of Martha Gellhorn

Did Hemingway Have a Favorite Wife? Hadley

Did Hemingway have a favorite wife? Of course he did despite each wife having suited him at the time he married each.

Hemingway had four wives: Hadley Richardson, Pauline Pfeiffer, Martha Gellhorn, and Mary Walsh. Of the four, three were from the St. Louis area. Only Mary was from elsewhere—Minnesota. Hadley was the great love of his life, in my opinion. Surely in retrospect, based on A Moveable Feast, she was.

Hadley and Hem were married on September 3, 1921 in Horton Bay, Michigan, and they spent their honeymoon at the family summer cottage, which featured significantly in Hemingway’s early short stories. Hemingway’s biographer, Jeffrey Meyers, noted in his biography that, “with Hadley, Hemingway achieved everything he had hoped for with Agnes: the love of a beautiful woman, a comfortable income, a life inEurope.” (Agnes was Agnes Von Kurowsky, his nurse in Italy who was the prototype for Catherine Barkley, the heroine of A Farewell to Arms). He called her Tatie or Hash.

While the Hemingways had little money as they headed to Paris, Hadley’s modest trust fund sustained them. They had a small apartment, as well as a rented studio for Hemingway’s work, plus an abundance of expatriot and European friends, most of whom were writers. Gertrude Stein’s salon was nearby and she was a mentor, although ultimately there was a falling out.

One of the great dramas of their marriage occurred in December, 1922, when Hadley was traveling alone to Geneva to meet Hemingway there (he was covering a peace conference), and Hadley lost a suitcase filled with Hemingway’s manuscripts. One can only speculate about what impact this ultimately had on his writing. At the time, he was devastated. As any writer knows, you can never recreate the first cut. However, scholars opine regularly about whether the loss enabled him to start from scratch and do a better job or whether it was an irreplaceable loss. Clearly, he did okay despite . . .

Still, Hadley was there at the beginning before he was the famous Ernest Hemingway. She was there during the ever-productive Paris years, which proved to be a touchstone gift that kept on giving. She funded his ability to write in Paris, enabling him to eventually at warp speed finish the first draft of The Sun Also Rises in six weeks.

To Hadley’s dismay and hurt, she never figured significantly as a character in any of Hemingway’s books, which did tend to be based on actual people in his life. The fictional memoir, The Paris Wife, paints Hadley as wounded that she was written out of The Sun Also Rises while starring Lady Brett Ashley, who’s based whole hog on Lady Duff Twysden.

Hadley settled into married life as a wife and mother, but trouble was not far away. She and Hem met the charming Pfeiffer sisters. Although initially Hemingway thought Jinny was the more attractive, it was the petite Pauline, a writer for Paris Vogue, who ultimately captured his attention. As Pauline played the role of loyal, jokey pal to both Ernest and Hadley, she set her cap for Hem and he fell hard.

Now it was Hadley’s turn to be devastated. Initially, she resisted a divorce but later agreed. Their son, John aka Jack aka Bumby, was about 4 years old at the time. Hadley graciously accepted Hemingway’s offers of the royalties fromThe Sun Also Rises as child support and alimony. At the time, she had no way of knowing whether those would amount to anything. As of that date, Hemingway’s writings had not created much money at all so for all Hadley knew, this new style of novel might do little in the way of sales.

Of course, the rest was history. Hadley and Hemingway divorced in January of 1927. The Sun Also Rises was published shortly before the final formal divorce. Hemingway married Pauline Pfeiffer in May of 1927. When The Sun Also Rises was made into a film, profits from the film also went to Hadley.

Hadley and Hemingway remained friendly throughout their lives.She and Hem didn’t socialize, but they were in touch regarding their son, Jack, who was known in the family as Bumby).

Hadley stayed on in France until 1934. Paul Mowrer was a foreign journalist for the Chicago Daily News. She’d known him since the spring of 1927. Mowrer was no light weight himself, having received the Pulitzer Prize as a foreign correspondent in 1929. Hadley and Paul married in London in 1933. The Mowrers ultimately moved to a suburb of Chicago.

After the divorce from Hemingway, Hadley saw Ernest only once again although they wrote to each other regularly. She and Paul Mowrer ran into him while vacationing inWyoming in Sept 1939. Hadley died on January 22, 1979 in Lakeland,Florida. She is the grandmother of Mariel and Margaux Hemingway, who are the children of Jack/Bumby.

Did Hem have a favorite wife? Hell, yes. Her name was Hadley.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/mar/10/hadley-freeman-richardson-ernest-hemingway

Pauline Pfeiffer, Wife # 2

“She shot very well this good, this rich bitch, this kindly caretaker and destroyer of his talent. Nonsense. He had destroyed his talent himself. Why should he blame this woman because she kept him well? He had destroyed his talent by not using it, by betrayals of himself and what he believed in, by drinking so much that he blunted the edge of his perceptions, by laziness, by sloth, and by snobbery, by pride and by prejudice, by hook and by crook.”

Ernest Hemingway,The Snows of Kilimanjaro

Pauline Pfeiffer was Hem’s second wife. She was petite, lively, chic, and in love. Since equality in a relationship was not his thing, Pauline seemed to know intuitively that she would have to defer an awful lot of the time to his dreams and wishes. That deference came naturally to Hadley, less naturally to Pauline, and not at all to Martha.

Once Hadley allowed the divorce to take place, Hem seemed less eager to seal the deal with Pauline although he ultimately adjusted and set a date. He wrote to Isabelle Godolphin that “I’m cockeyed about Pauline and going to get married in May . . . I felt like hell before, but now everything is very very good and everyone is feeling swell.”

Hem even became a Catholic for Pauline, who was a true believer. As for Hadley, she went back to New York temporarily, dated various men (and ultimately married journalist Paul Mowrer), and had a cordial meeting with Max Perkins, Hem’s editor. Max had arranged for the direct deposit of royalties from The Sun Also Rises to Hadley’s account. She received them for her life.

Pauline and Hem were married on May 10, 1927 in Paris. In fairly short order, Hadley’s bitterness faded and she became quite friendly with Pauline due to their shared interest in Bumby’s welfare, as well as Ernest’s welfare. Pauline did her best to keep up with Hem, letting him be him, going to Africa, and

finally settling in Key West, a place that Dos Passos drew Hem to, noting its climate, its fishing, and its undiscovered beauty.

Hem needed little more persuading. He and Pauline found a house on Whitehead Street. Jack aka Bumby had a nice relationship with Pauline, who treated him like one of her own boys. She did in fact have two sons with Hem: Patrick and Gregory. Hem by all accounts loved all of his sons (although with Gregory known as Gigi, there was estrangement when he was an adult), and they adored Papa. Being with him was enchanting and he had an air of excitement. Hem said that while not partial to kids, he rather liked these three.

As years passed Pauline and Ernest became cooler to each other. Hem spent time with Jane Mason, wife of Grant Mason, and an affair seems clear. Jane was a flashy, blonde, risk-taker, and not emotionally stable. She later jumped from a balcony. Whether Jane did so purposely or accidentally, is not clear but most believe it was a suicide attempt. Jane survived. Hemingway, per Bernice Kert, author of a wonderful and fascinating book about all of Hemingway’s women (and aptly called The Hemingway Women) avoided emotionally unstable woman. This seems true as Hadley, Pauline, Martha and Mary were all strong, intelligent, stable women. Even his closest women friends such as Marlene Dietrich were women with good heads on their shoulders.

Kert in her book, page 262, cites a story about Hem and Dietrich meeting. She notes that on his way back to NY from Paris on the Ile de France, Dietrich recalled, “I entered the dining salon to attend a dinner party. The men rose to offer me a chair, but I saw at once that I would make the thirteenth at the table. I excused myself on grounds of superstition, when my way was blocked by a large man who said he gladly would be the fourteenth. The man was Hemingway.” This is what Pauline was up against.

Ultimately, Hem left Pauline for a younger flashier model: Martha Gellhorn. He doesn’t seem to have had the sentimental look back at Pauline that he had at Hadley although he does praise her spirit in going to Africa with him, even though it meant leaving their sons for a significant period of time.

Pointedly, A Farewell to Armswas is dedicated to Uncle Gus, Pauline’s uncle, not to Pauline.

When he left, a great deal of Hem was left in Key West as he moved on to his next home in Cuba with Martha and on to write one of the greatest novels ever written: For Whom the Bell Tolls.

For whom the bell tolls — For Whom the Bell Tolls

Hemingway on Hong Kong

Good morning, Hemingway Readers: I’ve edited the below to focus on Hemingway but it is interesting all around! By Paul French, a true crime writer. I added a few photos.Thanks for reading Hemingway. Best, Christine

What authors from Kipling to Hemingway and Auden made of Hong Kong, good and bad

Somerset Maugham, Noel Coward, Auden, Ian Fleming – ‘Asia’s world city’ attracted some of the globe’s most celebrated writers
Author Paul French recalls how they praised, and condemned, Hong Kong

BY PAUL FRENCH

10 NOV 2018

Visiting writers have had a mixed response to Hong Kong over the years.

Rudyard Kipling may have gone on to be dubbed the “Bard of the British Empire”, but he had nothing good to say about Hong Kong, which he visited in 1889, only to be outraged by the presence of white prostitutes (he’d never had any problems with Indian ones in the brothels of Lahore.

Image result for The Painted Veil — The Painted Veil

Somerset Maugham was famously “welcome only once” wherever he went. This was due to his rather scurrilous short stories that resulted from his travels, and which enraged expats in the likes of Malaya and Singapore. In 1925, Maugham’s novel The Painted Veil was published. It was set partly in Hong Kong, which he had visited. The story of the lovely but shallow Kitty Fane, adulterous wife of Walter, a bacteriologist stationed in China, and of her husband’s revenge, outraged Hong Kong

The 2006 movie of the novel (the third film adaptation) , starring Edward Norton and Naomi Watts, also shied away from the British colony and set the adulterous affair in Shanghai. With cinema audiences, at least, Shanghai’s reputation as sin city has frequently overwhelmed that of Hong Kong, though – in keeping with tradition – after The Painted Veil, Maugham was no longer welcome in the territory.

American playwright Eugene O’Neill sought to escape the hassles of success and a failed marriage, and travel to Shanghai in 1928. When his liner finally reached Victoria Harbour, O’Neill opted to stay aboard, deciding that Hong Kong was “too damp” for him. Once in , he had a nervous breakdown.

In 1938, W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood came to Hong Kong, en route for China, to cover the war with Japan. The trip led to their book Journey to a War (1939). They described it as a city of dinner parties, dinner jackets and taxis home.

War brought smart and savvy American war correspondent Martha Gellhorn to town in 1941. It was her first trip to the East and – despite her reason for coming – she had visions of a Maugham-type colonial lifestyle in the Orient. Gellhorn liked Hong Kong, but she was keen to get up into China and see the war. However, she was having a hard time shifting her “UC”.

Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway with unidentified Chinese military officers in Chungking, in 1941. Picture: JFK Presidential Library

The “Unwilling Companion” in question was her new husband and supposed war correspondent colleague Ernest Hemingway. Reporting their marriage, some wag at the South China Morning Post came up with the (rather good) headline, “For Whom the Belle Falls”.

Gellhorn was independent and tough. She had been a foreign correspondent in Paris with United Press in the early 1930s, then worked for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration during the Great Depression, as part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. Her work with photographer Dorothea Lange, documenting America’s poorest communities, resulted in one of the great books of the Depression, The Trouble I’ve Seen (1936).

In love and war: a Hong Kong honeymoon for Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn

Gellhorn had met Hemingway and then gone to cover the Spanish civil war and Nazi Germany. Now she wanted to see the war in China. However, the Post was only interested in Hemingway, whose arrival they eagerly anticipated. Gellhorn was dismissed in a passing mention as “a bottle blonde” – she certainly was not.

UC Hemingway had immediately taken to Hong Kong. He was happy to find a ready circle of hangers-on to praise him and pour his drinks at the bar of the Hongkong Hotel (which was on Pedder Street, in Central). Former Shanghailander and New Yorker correspondent Emily Hahn claimed Hemingway introduced the concept of the Bloody Mary to Hong Kong.

Hemingway (second from right) uses chopsticks in Hong Kong as a guest of British army officers.

The problem, however, was that the bar of the Hongkong Hotel was not where the story was. Gellhorn famously said, “Where I want to be, boy, is where it is all blowing up.” And that was not Hong Kong – not quite yet. But Hemingway would not be moved from the bar and so, in March 1941, Gellhorn flew to Chungking (today Chongqing), at night, freezing cold and at high altitude to avoid Japanese fighter planes.

Hemingway opted to stay in the British colony, enjoying his circle of admirers, annoying the management of the Hongkong Hotel by letting off firecrackers in his room and pushing all the furniture out into the corridor so he could teach his new gang of acolytes and drinking buddies to box. Hemingway then headed into the New Territories to hunt for pheasant in the company of Morris “Two-Gun” Cohen, who had been Sun Yat-sen’s cockney bodyguard, and who was in semi-retirement in Kennedy Town. Eventually, Hemingway had to go to China proper too – but he hated it and was glad to eventually get back to the United States, describing his entire Hong Kong-China trip as an “unshakeable hangover”.

James Bond author Ian Fleming.

More positively, in 1962, writer Ian Fleming arrived in Hong Kong on a BOAC jet and started enjoying life on The Sunday Times tab. The James Bond author thought Hong Kong the “most vivid and exciting city I have ever seen” and spent plenty of time enjoying Shek O and Big Wave Bay. In his Sunday Times column, later collated as the travelogue Thrilling Cities (1963), Fleming listed the best three things about Hong Kong as: 1) food; 2) suits tailored perfectly in 48 hours; and 3) cheap cigarettes at 1s 3d for twenty.

Paul French, author of true-crime bestseller Midnight in Peking (2011), is in Hong Kong for the Hong Kong International Literary Festival

12 Quotes: 9-12

#9

It wasn’t by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short. The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics.”

Ernest Hemingway,1945 letter to Maxwell Perkins

#10

“We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt use it—don’t cheat with it. Be as faithful to it as a scientist.”

Ernest Hemingway, 1934 letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald

#11

“But sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, ‘Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.'”

Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

#12

“Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer’s loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day. For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.”

Ernest Hemingway, Nobel laureate speech

What does Hemingway’s New Story Mean?

Dear Readers: The below is also by Nicolaus Mills, a Hemingway Scholar. All very interesting. Media photos added by me. Best, Christine

Nicolaus Mills chairs the literature department at Sarah Lawrence College. He is currently working on a book about Ernest Hemingway and his World War II circle.

The Real Message Of Hemingway’s ‘New’ Story

Ernest HEMINGWAY during Spanish Civil War.
In December 1937 Ernest Hemingway was covering the Loyalist assault on Teruel, the walled town in the bleak mountains of Southern Aragon, Gen. Franco was planning to use this corridor route to the Mediterranean thus seaparting Barcelona from Valencia and Madrid. Robert CAPA the photographer and Hemingway would with some colleagues drive daily to Teruel from Valencia and return each evening.
Valencia. Dec. 1937. Hemingway visiting the front line.

12 Hemingway Quotes: 5-8

#5

“A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”

Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea²⁸

“Gertrude Stein and me are just like brothers.”

Ernest Hemingway, letter to Sherwood Anderson, 1922

“You see I am trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across – not to just depict life—or criticize it—but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me you actually experience the thing. You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful. Because if it is all beautiful you can’t believe in it.”

Ernest Hemingway, letter to his father, 1925

“There is seven-eights of it under water for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the part that doesn’t show. If a writer omits something because he does not know it then there is a hole in the story.”

Ernest Hemingway in interview with Paris Review 1958³¹