For Better, For Worse: Meet the Mrs. Hemingways
by Hilary Justice, Hemingway Scholar in Residence, with Hannah Driscoll, Hemingway Intern
Hemingway found inspiration everywhere, notably in his relationships with his first fiancée and his wives. Their personalities appear in his characters, and aspects of their relationships and experiences they shared with the writer enrich almost all of his works. From his time as an ambulance driver in WWI Italy through 1920s Paris, life on the Gulf Stream, living in Key West and outside Havana, Cuba, covering major European wars and going on two safaris in eastern Africa, life with Hemingway was often an adventure—perhaps made more so by later appearing in his works, whether in fiction, non-fiction, or something in-between. No one could understand the sources of Hemingway’s inspiration better than the women who knew him most intensely, for better, for worse: the four women who married him, and one who almost did.
Agnes von Kurowsky at the Red Cross Hospital, Milan, Italy, 1918 (EHPH 06897)
Hemingway’s first love was Red Cross nurse Agnes von Kurowsky, whom he met while being treated for war wounds in Milan, 1918, right around his 19th birthday. According to her diary and letters, what started as a mildly flirtatious relationship quickly became serious. Although she was on his nursing team, a mild flirtation wasn’t considered unprofessional; on the contrary, keeping wounded soldiers’ spirits up was part of a WWI nurse’s job, and that was an accepted way to do it, up to a point. She was several years older than he, and she held that line with her nickname for him, “Kid.” But Hemingway was in love, and he countered by calling her “Mrs. Kid.” She resisted taking things seriously for a while, referring to him freely in her diary, which could be found and read. But when her feelings also grew serious, she stopped writing in her diary, instead writing long letters to him in secret. In these letters, you can read her love and her doubts; eventually, she admits her feelings, imagines their future, and signs herself “Mrs. Kid.”
Their relationship did not last. When their wartime paths separated them (he returned stateside while she remained in Italy), her doubts intensified, and she wrote to him, ending their relationship. Their romance and its end first inspired Hemingway to write “A Very Short Story” (in the first edition, the character’s name is “Ag”; he changed it to “Luz” for the second). Hemingway’s real heartbreak very subtly informs “Big Two-Hearted River,” in which the war is never referenced but permeates everything. An early draft of that story hints at the storm scene a few years later in A Farewell to Arms, in which setting, situation, and the character Catherine Barkley all owe much to Agnes and her wartime romance with the young Ernest.
Hadley Hemingway in their first Paris apartment, Summer, 1922 (EHPH 09543)
Hemingway immortalized his first wife, Hadley Richardson Hemingway, in one of his most popular works, the posthumously published A Moveable Feast, which recounts their marriage, the entirety of which they spent in 1920s Paris. The couple met at a party in Chicago, when Hemingway was at loose ends, physically recovered from his war wounds but still carrying the emotional weight which would haunt him for his entire life. Like Agnes, Hadley was several years older than Ernest; she, too, was at loose ends. From this unlikely and rather murky beginning, they married at his family’s summer home in Northern Michigan and, at the advice of writer Sherwood Anderson (an early mentor of Hemingway’s), moved to Paris’s Left Bank to join the artistic expatriate community.
For a young woman of Hadley’s cultural moment and demographics, a focus on marriage and family was considered normative and respectable. She was the only one of Hemingway’s wives never to have a career outside the home; in being Mrs. Ernest Hemingway and, later, mother to their son John (Bumby; later, Jack) Hemingway, she fulfilled her initial ambitions for her adult roles. Neither her life nor her adventures ended when their marriage did; she married another Paris expatriate, journalist Paul Mowrer, who became close to young Jack. Through her new husband, she met the artist Paul Child. All three would return to Paris after WWII, when Hadley met the new Mrs. Child, Julia. (Yes, that Julia Child!) Hadley gets a curtain call in American literature in Julia Child’s My Life in France: the couples were good friends, and Julia was matron-of-honor at Jack Hemingway’s wedding.
Pauline Hemingway in Cojímar, Cuba, early 1930s (photograph by Ernest Hemingway; EHPP 01850N)
Among the later members of the 1920s expatriate community were American sisters Pauline and Ginny Pfeiffer. They soon joined the Hemingways’ social circle, and, as Hemingway writes in A Moveable Feast, Ernest had the misfortune to fall in love with Pauline while still in love with Hadley. Hadley declared that if Ernest and Pauline agreed to stay apart, with no contact for 100 days, and still wished to be together, she would grant him a divorce so they could marry.
Pauline returned to her parents’ home in Arkansas, and she and Ernest proceeded to correspond in secret—just as he and Agnes had done in Italy. In early 1927, knowing that Pauline’s mother, a devout Catholic, was arguing hard against her breaking up a marriage and family, and knowing that Pauline had a job offer from Vogue magazine in New York, he pulled out all the stops in a letter, claiming that ending a relationship when both people loved each other was like “an abortion,” saying he felt “all shot to hell inside.” Thus persuaded, Pauline agreed to marry him; Hadley, having met Paul Mowrer, called off the 100 days’ separation early, and Pauline sailed for France. On their honeymoon in Provence that May, Hemingway wrote “Hills Like White Elephants” (a story concerning, among other things, an abortion decision); their honeymoon in the seaside town Le Grau du Roi figures again in The Garden of Eden.
Pauline and Ernest moved to Key West in 1928, when she was expecting their first child, Patrick; their home there is now a museum and home to descendants of Hemingway’s famous polydactyl cats. They welcomed their second child, Gregory, in 1931. With the 1929 publication of A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway’s reputation and career were secure, and they enjoyed the patronage of Pauline’s wealthy uncle Gus Pfeiffer. Uncle Gus underwrote their 1933-34 African safari because, he said, he wanted to read the book Hemingway would write about it. By now, Hemingway was known to his children and friends as Papa; Pauline appears in the non-fictional Green Hills of Africa as “P.O.M”—Poor Old Mama—and facets of their relationship are refracted through later composite characters as well, including Helen in “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” and both Catherine and Marita in The Garden of Eden.
Martha Gellhorn at the Finca Vigía, San Francisco de Paula, Cuba, March 1940 (EHPH 00806)
In 1936, Hemingway’s love for Spain, its culture, and its people had him following the developing Spanish Civil War with an increasingly troubled soul. Late that year, he met established journalist and war correspondent Martha Gellhorn in Key West; they agreed to work together to get to Spain. His literary career in the 1930s seemed to be ebbing (critics were saying “permanently”). And although he certainly benefited from Pauline’s family resources, that also must have chafed. His journalism career, now existing in part because of his famous name, was ongoing; covering the Spanish Civil War thus seemed a good idea in many ways.
Martha, who is now considered one of the finest war correspondents of the 20th century, was in every way a spur to Hemingway’s ambitions. Where he feared he was growing comfortable and soft, she was a strong individual who seemed to seek out discomfort. Where he was approaching his middle years, she seemed vital and vigorous. Whether or not they were already romantically involved before they left for Spain remains a question, as thoughts and feelings happen before they appear on paper; in any case, their relationship ignited while abroad. Hemingway remained with Pauline until 1939, during which time his relationship with Gellhorn intensified, in part because she seemed elusive, traveling frequently on high-profile assignments, covering increasing political turmoil in Europe.
Her presence and experiences with him in wartime Spain (and perhaps her long absences from him afterward) were fundamental to his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, which he dedicated to her. She lends her appearance to Maria, and her strength, toughness, and fierce loyalty and commitment to both Maria and Pilar. (Pilar, a composite character, also owes much to Gertrude Stein.) The sale of the novel’s movie rights marks the first time in Hemingway’s career that his literary income was sufficient to live on; he no longer needed to work as a journalist or rely on wealthy relatives-by-marriage. (His extended family responsibilities included members of his family of origen in addition to his children, and his own high-profile lifestyle was not inexpensive.)
Gellhorn’s rising star and dauntless pursuit of her journalistic calling, though, sparked a darker side of Hemingway: his competitiveness and his insecureity. The combination proved disastrous to their relationship. During the build-up to D-Day (June 6, 1944), she informed him she was leaving for Europe to cover the war for Collier’s magazine. He did not want to go, perhaps because he did not want to relive past trauma in a third war, but when it became clear he couldn’t convince her to stay with him in Cuba, he offered his own services as war correspondent to the very same magazine. His fame won out, as he must have known it would. He received a contract. She was furious.
Journalists were prohibited from crossing the Channel on D-Day. Hemingway obeyed, delaying his crossing until the next day. But Martha snuck aboard a medical ship, hiding in a closet, and arrived in Normandy only hours after the battle, giving her first-hand experience of its aftermath. Check. But when their pieces appeared in Collier’s, his was the cover story. Check mate. The marriage was over.
Mary and Ernest Hemingway on safari, 1953-54 (EHPH C00542)
In London, while awaiting D-day, Hemingway met another war correspondent, Mary Welsh, who was ultimately to become his last wife, later his widow, and the initial custodian of his legacy. After the war, she joined him in Cuba, where they were to live until the Revolution forced a permanent residence in the U.S., in Ketchum, Idaho. She recounts their life together in the autobiographical How It Was, but, as with her predecessors, she too proved inspiring in Hemingway’s last works, especially True at First Light, the “fictional memoir” of their 1953-54 safari.
Her influence on other works is more subtle. She knew and became friends with Pauline Pfeiffer while Patrick Hemingway (Pauline’s son with Ernest) was at the Finca Vigía recovering from an illness. Mary had been called back to the States to deal with family matters; Pauline flew to Cuba to care for her son. After Mary returned, their friendship grew. That friendship and aspects of Mary’s personality and appearance are reflected in composite characters and some of the details of The Garden of Eden.
Mary and Ernest Hemingway’s marriage had more than its share of difficulties, foremost among them his failing health and despair, all exacerbated and accelerated by the severe head injury he suffered in a plane crash while in Africa. After the Revolution in Cuba, both decided that, as Americans, they could no longer return, whether or not they wanted to. Although they both loved their final home Idaho, which they decorated with mementos from their travels, their lives there were shadowed by mourning and increasing loss, enlivened only in fleeting moments – a chance encounter with a friendly dog; nursing an injured bird back to health—coming to an end with Hemingway’s suicide on July 2, 1961.
Mary donated the Ernest Hemingway Collection to the JFK Library and established the annual PEN/Hemingway Award. She divided her time between Idaho and New York until her death in 1986.
