Hemingway's Key West by Stuart B. McIver

Author:Stuart B. McIver
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pineapple Press

CHAPTER XI

FAREWELL TO KEY WEST

In late december 1936, Charles and Lorine Thompson arrived at Whitehead Street for dinner with Ernest and Pauline. It was a perfect Key West evening—soothing breeze off the ocean, temperature at 70°. Pauline, though, was uneasy with the drift of things. For one thing, she was worried about the North American Newspaper Alliance’s offer to Ernest. The Alliance wanted him to cover the war in Spain for the news service, a task that would not only place him in harm’s way but at the very least would remove him from Key West for long periods just as she was struggling to hold their marriage together.

She and the Thompsons relaxed with drinks until 7:30, the usual dinner hour. Then Pauline, clearly edgy, said, “Oh, Charles, you know where he is. Drag him back here and let’s eat.”

Charles knew exactly where Hemingway was. He drove his yellow Ford sedan down to Sloppy Joe’s. Charles was unable, however, to persuade Ernest to leave. He returned to the Hemingway home and told Pauline: “He’s talking to a beautiful blonde in a black dress. Says he’ll meet us later at Pena’s.”

The plan had always been to enjoy an excellent Florida lobster dinner prepared with high skill by cook Miriam Williams and then to adjourn to Pena’s Garden of Roses, a Key West beer garden. Pauline was not particularly concerned, but then she hadn’t seen the beautiful blonde. That happened at Pena’s when Ernest introduced her to Martha Gellhorn, a novelist, a journalist, and, most dangerous of all, a beauty with long, blonde hair and long, shapely legs. Still, Pauline could not possibly have guessed that Martha would become the third Mrs. Ernest Hemingway.

Skinner, the three-hundred-pound black bartender at Sloppy Joe’s, described the Martha-Ernest meeting as a meeting between “beauty and the beast.” She was fetchingly attired in a black cotton sundress; he was sloppily dressed in a T-shirt and dirty Basque fishing shorts held up by a hemp rope in place of a belt. Ernest was delighted to meet a fellow novelist, particularly one who had read his books. They talked for hours.

Martha stayed on at the Colonial Hotel on Duval Street to work on a book. Soon she was invited to the Hemingway home. Said Miriam Williams: “There would be parties and Mr. Ernest and Miss Martha would be outside and kissing and carrying on, and I’d say to Miss Ada, ‘Look at that, would you.’ The way some people act.”

Right after Martha left Key West, so did Ernest. In fact, they met in Miami and traveled together by train to New York. There he met with executives at the North American Newspaper Alliance and negotiated a contract for coverage of the Spanish Civil War. He was to be paid $500 for each cabled story, $1,000 for longer pieces that were mailed. Soon after Hemingway reached Madrid, Martha appeared, armed with a contract to cover the war for Collier’s magazine, whose publisher Ernest had punched out in Bimini.

The affair with

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