Hemingway's guns

[David Lien]

Grantham: A mile east of Sun Valley is where the Ernest Hemingway Memorial is located. The inscription reads

Best of all he loved the fall
The leaves yellow on the cottonwoods
Leaves floating on the trout streams
and above the hills
The high blue windless skies
now he will be part of them forever.


This is part of the eulogy that Ernest Hemingway gave for Gen Van Guilder in 1939.
Grantham I did enjoy your posts. Thank you

PS I will post up some more Idaho imformation later when I get "un busy".Wife Mary has a "job jar " with my name on it. and the fish are Bitin
David Lien

[Stepmac]

Originally Posted by Grantham Forester

Alice B. Toklas and Pauline Pfeiffer's sister Jinny were both Lesbians, back at the time when homosexuality was a dark dirty secret. There is a theory that one reason for Hemingway's youngest son, Gregory (aka- GiGi) turned out so "mixed up' about his sexual orientation is the great amount of time he spent in the care of Jinny Pfeiffer, while his mother and father were away on jaunts. Unlike Pauline's super wealthy uncle Gustavus Pfeiffer, who favored Ernest and Pauline with funds to: Take their first trip to Africa-- order the Wheeler fishing boat named the Pilar, purchased several new cars and also bought the house in Key West on Whitehead street for them, Jinny hated Ernest and did apparently try to be a divisive force in their troubled marriage. The best read on this is Bernice Kert's novel "The Hemingway Women", she did her research very well indeed.

You wrote of several things that I did not know. Thanx.

I just Finished Valerie Hemingway's book about her life with the "Hemingway Men". She was Hem's final secretary and also married Gregory "Gigi", meeting him at Hem's funeral. Gigi was a cross dresser from his early life (according to Valerie), which was probably why Hem disowned him - refused to mention his name, etc...

I wonder if there is a reason that people become cross dressors, or do they just have a hankering to do such a thing? Probably varies with the individual. Gigi took it to extremes, having a sex change operation and changing his name to Gloria. Weird. He died in a women's jail.

[Don Kaas]

Read Paul Hendrickson's "Hemingway's Boat" and Christopher Ondjaate's "Hemingway in Africa-the last safari". EH was a member of my gun club. Some of the older members knew him in the 50's. (He first visited with 3rd wife, Martha G. and son Patrick in 1944 as a guest of his society friend, Winston Guest and became a member in the late 40's. Guest, quite the playboy and "sport", himself also brought the then broke baron, Bror Blixen to the Club) Unfortunately, none of the folks who knew him as young men have much nice to say about our only Nobel winning member. By the time, he reached his mid 50s EH was a very troubled fellow. Even Hotchner's somewhat hagiographic "Papa" show hints of that. I put up a plaque in the entrance hall a few years ago on the 50th Anniverary of "the Fight in the Foyer" when EH fought another member Ed Taws (CEO of Burlington Mills) to a draw one boozy morning after a night of hard drinking. Fame and reputation have their price and EH paid his bill in full.

[King Brown]

Under the circumstances, his faculties gone, like an old samaurai he fell on his sword. I don't fault him for that; except for the noise and mess, almost an act of grace. I wouldn't have enjoyed his company. His writing, of course, was often peerless. Martha Gellhorn was a better reporter and better person. My father imbibed wisdom at Stein's on Rue Madame, and my Paris friends have an apartment a few doors away.

Put it down to chauvinism: his posturing was so insufferable to me that I take some pleasure from the Canadian writer half his size, Morley Callaghan, giving him a boxing lesson in Paris, knocking him on his ass. Hemingway blamed Fitzgerald, the timer, for extending the round beyond three minutes.

I worked in the company of Callaghan and his son Barry, now also a distinguished writer. But for all that, the No. 2 print of Karsh's famous turtleneck photo of Hemingway watches over my desk. He inspires still.

[Stepmac]

Originally Posted by King Brown

Under the circumstances, his faculties gone, like an old samaurai he fell on his sword. I don't fault him for that; except for the noise and mess, almost an act of grace. I wouldn't have enjoyed his company. His writing, of course, was often peerless. Martha Gellhorn was a better reporter and better person. My father imbibed wisdom at Stein's on Rue Madame, and my Paris friends have an apartment a few doors away.

Put it down to chauvinism: his posturing was so insufferable to me that I take some pleasure from the Canadian writer half his size, Morley Callaghan, giving him a boxing lesson in Paris, knocking him on his ass. Hemingway blamed Fitzgerald, the timer, for extending the round beyond three minutes.

I worked in the company of Callaghan and his son Barry, now also a distinguished writer. But for all that, the No. 2 print of Karsh's famous turtleneck photo of Hemingway watches over my desk. He inspires still.

Mr. Brown; your father was at Gertrude Stein's apartment in Paris! What interesting stories he must have told! Do you recall any of his pearls of wisdom that she imparted? When I ponder Stein's writing I think of the Rose times 3 and what a lousy place Oakland was. I can't recall reading anything that she wrote. Nor do I recall how she and her brother Leon made their money. Did they have a fortune? They were from SFO as I recall.

Hemingway, in the late 50's went back to his Parisian haunts and even found one of his favorite waiters, who recalled him and brought him to his old seat. I visited Sloppy Joes fifty years ago when the original owner still owned it and it was like it was when Hem knew it. He pointed me to Hem's favorite bar stool. It was to the left of the pass through. Today that place looks nothing like it did in the 60's.

The Pilar still lives, but sits on dry land behind the his Cuban home that is now a museum, but you can't go inside. Tourists have to peek through the windows.

Just this morning I was reading a collection of Hem's hunting stories. Yes, indeed he still does inspire.

[Stepmac]

I wonder how the mythical Hemingway compared to the real one. He had an image of himself that he worked hard to create. I think, that when he saw himself slipping he just could not live with his new self and me made that mess in the foyer.

He was only 61 when he died, but he looked 80. Was it the booze, or the concussions that he had one after the other? He was nearly killed in two plane crashes and after one he butted the door open with his head. Dura fluid ran from his hears.

I enjoyed Valeria Hemingway's book about her relationship with him. I thought it more insightful into what made the man tick that either Baker's or Hotchner's bios.

Good, evil, talented, selfish or no; Hemingway lived a life to be proud of. Was he a good man? I don't know. But he's been kaput for 61 years and we're still talking about him, that says something.

[King Brown]

". . . and Hemingway, whatever else he knew, knew for all time that the questions he had in a lifetime were answered, and those that remained were no longer of any consequence."

Last words of Hemingway, a life without consequences by James R. Mellon

Steve, conversations with Stein at the time often circled the failure of capitalism and the promised utopia of communism. My father engaged in spirited debates that included the anarchist Emma Goldman and Louise Bryant, widow of John Reed who wrote Ten Days That Shook The World. He returned to Canada as a Communist.

Any one who wasn't thinking that way at that time wasn't thinking at all.

[Stepmac]

King: I've been reading Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos. It's not exactly a page turner. He was one of Hem's cronies and was one of the reds who visited the Steins. Dos Passos however, while an avowd communist during his Parisian days switched and became an equally avid Nixon supporter. His relationship with the Soviet Communists had been an explicit one and turned him away from Stein's false utopia.

The movie Reds was based on Reed's work. And yes, Armond Hammer was a spy. So was Alger Hiss.

I read Ruark and Hemingway side by side and read the new remembrance of Ruark written by his secretary. I like to compare the two men and find much alike between them. Ruark lived in Hem's shadow and he knew it and he did not like it.

I'm not sure that Hemingway saw life as a problem to be brooded over, but rather as a challenge not to be conquered, but to become wrapped up with. He, and people in his family, before him and after, suffered bouts of depression. He drank his way through them, which made them worse, of course. Proper medication would have helped the old boy.

Was your dad Dee Brown?

[King Brown]

No, my father was Kingsley Brown, same as mine. As so many others, he broke from CP before the war because of its anti-Semitism. Politics of the time were byzantine as revealed by Hemingway's Bell Tolls. Some things never change. It generally boils down to who's going to feed at the trough.

[Stepmac]

Originally Posted by King Brown

No, my father was Kingsley Brown, same as mine. As so many others, he broke from CP before the war because of its anti-Semitism. Politics of the time were byzantine as revealed by Hemingway's Bell Tolls. Some things never change. It generally boils down to who's going to feed at the trough.

King: What is going on today in the political arena is not child's play.

I have always found Europeans shockingly anti-Semitic, and the Brits not far behind. It appears to me to be ingrained within their cultures. The Merchant of Venice is telling.

Hemingway was known as being anti-Semitic, calling himself Hemingstein as some kind of a joke. I catch the scent of growing anti-Semitism in the air, here, today. Strange.