HEMINGWAY SAGA, CHAPTER 2

“Beautiful Exiles” is a novel, a book of fiction, by Margaret Waite Clayton. It is an intimate look at the professional and marital relationships of Ernest Hemingway and his third wife, Martha Gellhorn; “a riveting novel based on one of the most volatile and intoxicating real-life love affairs of the twentieth century.”  

Martha Ellis Gellhorn was born November 8, 1908. She became Hemingway’s third wife in 1940, divorced in 1945, and she died February 15, 1998.  I don’t think Gellhorn was trying to compete with Hemingway in number of liaisons, but she was somewhat free-spirited.

In this writer’s opinion, in this book Ms. Clayton gives Hemingway a disproportionate amount of ink; yet this is understandable when one compares Hemingway’s and Gellhorn’s long-term reputations as writers. I illustrate this with my own experience – I was reading Hemingway 75 years ago; bu, only came to know Gellhorn within the past year.  

 Martha Ellis Gellhorn was one of the great war correspondents of the 20th century. Reported on virtually every world conflict that took place during her 60-year career (Wikipedia).  As well as her worldwide work in covering the news and in writing stories and columns for Colliers, Gellhorn published eighteen books.  

Ernest Miller Hemingway born 7/21/1899 Oak Park, Ill; died 2/2/61 Ketchum Idaho.      Four wives: 1. Hadley Richardson 1921-1927; 2. Pauline (’Fife’) Pfeiffer 1927-1940; 3. Martha Gellhorn 1940-1945; 4. Mary Welsh 1946-1961.   Number of “lovers”????

There is no way one can compile a list of the most influential American writers and not include Ernest Hemingway. John Steinbeck gave us great insights on the poor farm workers migrating from the Dust Bowl to California, in “Grapes of Wrath” and other books; Scott Fitzgerald illuminated the lives of the East Coast elites with “The Great Gadsby.”  These three top my list; one could easily add James Michener; Herman Melville; Mark Twain; William Faulkner; Tennessee Williams; John Updike; Flannery O’Connor; and in verse: Emily Dickinson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. But, in this writer’s

Hemingway is in a class of his own, closely followed by Fitzgerald and Steinbeck.

Aside from Hemingway’s extraordinary journalist career, and the classics his books have become, he lived his life on the edge: big game hunting in Africa, hunting German submarines from a fishing boat in WWII, running with the bulls in Spain, as an ambulance driver in the Spanish civil war, always exhibiting (or trying to prove?) his manhood.  Whether this is a result of a strained childhood and youth could be the subject of deeper study.  Nevertheless, his marital relations were invariably tense.

“Beautiful Exiles” is an extraordinary look at a ten-year segment of the life of Hemingway, from December 1936 when Hemingway and Gellhorn first met, in a bar in Key West; to 1945 when they divorced. After a fourth marriage (to Mary Welsh in 1946), on July 2, 1961, Hemingway took his own life.  Though Clayton poses the book as fiction, in the “Author’s Note” she quotes from a plethora of sources including (without limitation) letters between Martha and others; Martha’s books; articles in Collier’s written by Gellhorn; Martha’s interactions with Eleanor Roosevelt; books and articles by other authors about Gellhorn and Hemingway, etc., etc.

I found a couple of interesting quotes on Google (Wikipedia?):    Why did Martha Gellhorn leave Hemingway?

“It was a sad end to a troubled relationship.”  Later, Hemingway’s youngest son Gregory would say she had been driven away by his father’s bullish behavior and egotism.

Gellhorn wrote to her mother that, “A man must be a very great genius to make up for being such a loathsome human being.” 

©Lee Weaver January 2024

"A DISEASE IN THE PUBLIC MIND" - Book Review.

Dear Reader:

At least some of you have faithfully followed my ‘blogging’ and know that I’ve mostly written stories from my life, along with some history (‘Migrations”). I started out with the intent NOT to politicize but I have come to realize life is not apolitical. If I wander into that minefield and your politics differ from mine, indulge me for the content that does not offend you.

I learned to read at a very young age. In school it was not infrequent to get caught in class hiding a novel inside the textbook. Especially in my adult years I have typically read 40 to 50 books a year. Now that I live in a ‘retirement’ center (more on that later) I exceed that number. I read among many genre but have generally leaned toward historical novels. Many of the books I’m currently reading have led me to have an interest in political science. Though I had a fruitful career as an engineer, I fantasize about “when I retired from that world why did I not go back to school and pursue another career” perhaps in Political Science.

Recently I’ve gotten into the plethora of books being written about the state of the nation – on both sides of the aisle everyone has an opinion; some are more thoughtfully espoused than others. Some deal more explicitly with current considerations; in some the authors attempt to go back and point out how events 150 years or more ago set the stage for today. In literature and most other walks of life ‘cancel culture’ is eliminating most all expressions that are not “woke.” In many (perhaps most) purportedly non-fiction books one must read diligently to determine the authors’ biases. This seems contradictory to the term ‘non- fiction’ yet ‘facts’ are often seen (or reported) differently by different observers. Without too much generalization this seems particularly true in history books – my observation is that victors write books while vanquished just try to get their lives put back together. Thus, the books we read/study (including textbooks) promote the biases of the winning side. In this context most of the histories (especially including textbooks) of the American Civil War reflect the Union perspective, promoting the almost universally held view that the Civil War was entirely about slavery. Read on!

“A DISEASE IN THE PUBLIC MIND” sub-titled ‘A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War.’

Book by Thomas Fleming

This internal, infernal war has been referred to by many names: The Civil War; The War Between the States; The War of the Rebellion; The War of Northern Aggression; perhaps more. Whatever you call it a war by any name is a tragic thing. How exponentially more tragic when a nation’s people war against each other. I ran across this book in the Trinity Terrace library. I’ve long been a student of Civil War history and was curious to read this author’s take on ‘A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War’ (author’s cover note).

The inside fold of the dust cover further expresses the author’s theme:

THE ONLY NATION IN THE WORLD TO FIGHT A WAR TO END SLAVERY?

By the time John Brown’s body hung from the gallows for his crimes at Harper’s Ferry, Northern Abolitionists had made him a “holy martyr” in their paranoid campaign against “The Slave Power.” Their hatred for Southerners long predated their objections to slavery. Abolitionists were convinced that New England, whose spokesmen had begun the American Revolution, should have been the leaders of the new nation. Instead, they had been displaced by Southern “slavocrats” like Thomas Jefferson. (Of the first six presidents of the new nation four were from Virginia; of the first fifteen [before Lincoln, who was born in Kentucky] nine were from the South.)

This malevolent envy exacerbated the South’s deepest fear: a race war. Thomas Jefferson’s cry, “We are truly to be pitied!” summed up their irrational dread. For decades, Northern and Southern extremists flung insults and threats at each other, blinding both sides to the possibility of a peaceful solution, despite Abraham Lincoln’s best efforts to achieve one. Only a civil war that would kill a million men could save the Union.

In this riveting, character-driven history, one of our most respected historians traces the diseases in the public mind – the distortion of reality – that destroyed George Washington’s vision of a united America and inflicted the tragedy that still divides the nation’s soul. Like most major historic events, the causes of war are complex. If one today believes that the cause of the Civil War was simply “slavery” it will be easy to criticize Fleming. Going beyond the plethora of public-school history books, Fleming cites example after example of how extremist rhetoric in both North and South drove each toward violence and no-compromise political positioning. Additionally, Fleming presents much background on events troubling the ‘public mind’ – the Haitian Revolution, secession threats in both North and South, nullification threats in the South, actual nullification of the Fugitive Slave Act in the North, etc. etc. The book should prove to the honest student that the causes of the war were entirely complex and demand honest re-examination.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fleming, Thomas: A Disease in the Public Mind

Marche, Stephen: The Next Civil War: Dispatches from 7the American Future

Perry, Imani: South to America (Subtitle: A Journey Below the Mason Dixon Line to Understand the Soul of a Nation).

Richardson, Heather Cox: How the South Won the Civil War

Walters, Barbara F.: How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them

Walters: Civil Wars, Insecurity and Intervention

Walters: Reputation and Civil War

Walters: Committing to Peace

"WACO" - Book Review

WACO

Jeff Guinn

Who could ever forget the sight of the fiery demise of nearly 100 men, women, and children in the destruction of the Branch Davidian cult’s “Mount Carmel” retreat/compound near Waco, Texas on April 19, 1993? After a failed raid by the ATF* in which four ATF agents and six Davidians died by gunfire, a 51-day siege by the FBI* was followed by a direct attack against the poorly built structure by the FBI using military tanks. Attempting to drive the occupants out by using noxious gas projectiles lobbed into the structure, the FBI accidentally, unknowingly, or purposefully included some combustible gas modules. The resulting fire completely obliterated the structure. In the ensuing fire, seventy-five more cult members died, many of them women and children. In his book Guinn describes the actions and errors in judgment of cult and government alike.

“David Koresh” was born August 17, 1959 as Vernon Wayne Howell. Guinn describes young Vernon as having a somewhat unsettled youth; Guinn goes on to document Howell’s early adulthood in the Seventh Day Adventist church which led him eventually to an association with a woman claiming to be a prophet. Lois Roden, the supposed prophetess, invited Howell to join her Living Waters group (principally made up of former Adventists) whose headquarters near Waco were called New Mount Carmel. Thus began the twelve-year journey metamorphosing Vernon Wayne Howell into “David Koresh,” who claimed to be the coming Lamb of the Book of the Revelation.

The journey was never smooth, particularly for members of the cult. Koresh demanded and was given complete domination over every aspect of life in the compound, including other men’s wives and daughters. The surprising thing, frightening, to many readers will be how a group of people, individually and corporately, can totally give up and give in to such domination and control. It gives weighted meaning to the scriptural warnings against false prophets.

Guinn’s research is impeccable. In this book he cites dozens, perhaps hundreds, of direct quotes from survivors of the raids, members of Branch Davidians (who escaped fiery death by being away at the time), as well as former or retired ATF and FBI agents. The story is well-documented throughout its 327 pages, with twenty-eight pages of chapter notes and a nineteen-page detailed index.

*ATF: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms

*FBI: Federal Bureau of Investigation

Reviewed by Lee Weaver

© March 2023