Mary was Hemingway’s fourth wife and his widow. She took a fair amount of abuse. I was never certain if she truly loved him that much or if she loved being Mrs. Ernest Hemingway that much. She survived his infatuation with Adriana Ivancich, his bad behavior and heavy drinking that was the precursor to that bad behavior and she helped as ill health hit both of them, but particularly Hemingway.
Hemingway seemed to like all sorts of women but the kind that he married was level headed and smart. He never left Pauline for Jane Kendall Mason, beautiful though she was, as she was emotionally unstable. Hadley, Pauline, Martha, and Mary were all stable, intelligent women. All but Hadley were journalists in their own right. All but Martha were very deferential to Hemingway and perhaps that’s why he always said that was the one marriage he regretted.
Mary
Anyway, Mary is being honored in her hometown in MN. All of the other three wives strangely were from St. Louis.
Married to a writerMary’s book about PapaLovely bride
You may be baffled, as you read letter one, by Hemingway’s arrogance. READ ON. Really fun and funny by two writers at the top of their powers and who at least at that point, genuinely liked and admired the other’s skills and persona.
Cuban JazzI’m a Cuban Pugwritten in Cuba about CubaA Pensive Hemingway
Now that Cuba has opened a bit, more opportunities for on location filming is possible. The new biopic about Hem’s declining years was just filmed and it sounds like the producer was able to use the actual Cuban locations. However, more of this should be possible in the future.
A fellow Hemingway fan, Will TIncher, has written a work of about 66,000 words exploring a fictional setting that follows Hemingway as an old man on a road trip with his aspiring baseball player neighbor, just before the actual death of Hemingway. He reconstructed possible conversations from all of Hemingway’s works and tried to show the sum of the man at the end of an incredible life. The text also offers a parallel narrative of the young ball player’s future experiences in the Vietnam War. Take a look!
Hemingway’s house is being restored to its former loveliness. Not as elegant as his Key West home, I think it suited him better. Visitors To his Cuban home still cannot go in but can peek through the windows. The excitement of getting to view the places he wrote is catching and I hope to make Cuba my next trip.
Dining room in Cuba and drinking with catSI Senor. I love Cuba.Hem’s Dining room in Key West
The above article discusses Hemingway’s time in Cuba, self-medication perhaps with alcohol, and his love for his Cuban home. Very interesting. Best, Christine
This article is interesting. While we often remember the first line of a favorite novel, this writer talks about the power of the last line, with his favorite being the last line of THE SUN ALSO RISES. Read other moving final lines.
The last line is the bestOn his own termsThe Sun Also RisesScott: he closes with a great final line to THE GREAT GATSBY
Just when you think everything that can possibly be written about Hemingway or his life or his writing has been done, another level of knowledge is uncovered.
Writing
The third volume of Hemingway’s letters, which covers the period 1926 to 1929, has been published. Those were truly wonderful years. He wrote The Sun Also Rises in about six weeks—at least for the first draft—in 1926. It was published in 1927. These letters cover correspondence with some of the literary luminaries of the day as well as cover a very rich and turbulent period for Hemingway.
Hadley
We are all familiar with the spare prose and tight structure of his writing. Consequently, his letters are surprisingly rambling and fun. He writes very honestly about his divorce from his first wife, Hadley, and of the pain of falling in love with a woman who became their mutual friend, Vogue journalist Pauline Pfeiffer. He also wrote of the drama of the birth of his first son, Patrick, by cesarean section during which Pauline almost died. It also was at this period of time that he relocated to Key West and completed his second book Men Without Women.
Hem and Hadley
While Hemingway aficionados are familiar with his dislike of his mother throughout his life, it may be less well known that he was very fond of his father who killed himself. In the letter to Pauline’s mother following his father’s suicide, he wrote, “I was awfully fond of my father—and still feel very badly about it all and not able to get it out of my mind and my book into my mind.”
Seventy percent of the letters have never been published before. They reveal a side to Hemingway that has had very little exposure: his intense drive to be the best writer out there, his insecurities, his enjoyment of a little gossip. He wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald asking him to write “all the dirt.”
Hem and Scott
It also seems clear that the culminating event in A Farewell to Arms, i.e. Catherine’s death during childbirth—is based in large part on Pauline’s difficulties. At the end of A Farewell to Arms when the nurse asks Frederic Henry if he’s proud of his newborn son, Frederic’s response is almost verbatim from a Hemingway letter in which he replied, “No, he nearly killed his mother.”
Hemingway had always asked that his letters never be published, but his fourth wife Mary agreed to the publication of some and I’m not familiar enough with the details of the estate to know exactly how these came to be published.
PaulineI love these letters. read them.
Read the letters and enjoy. Also, if you’re in New York catch the exhibit that’s at the Morgan Library. You won’t regret it. Love, Christine
