Ernesto

  119 “Cuban Bombings Resumed,” The New York Times, January 1932, 2; Davis, Buda’s Wagon, 16; Benjamin, “The Machadato and Cuban Nationalism, 1928–1932.” Munro, The United States and the Caribbean Republics, 1921–1933, 368; Thomas, Cuba, 595; “3 Hurt by Bomb in Havana,” The New York Times, February 20, 1932, 9; “Two Dead in Cuba in Bitter Election,” The New York Times, February 29, 1932, 36.

  120 Dickson and Allen, The Bonus Army, 50.

  CHAPTER 3

  1 Key West as described by Samuelson, With Hemingway, 9.

  2 Samuelson, With Hemingway.

  3 Man of letters and adventure.

  4 Hawkins, Unbelievable Happiness and Final Sorrow, 138, Baker, Ernest Hemingway, 221.

  5 Anita Logs, Hemingway Personal Papers.

  6 Grits and grunts (grunts are a fish commonly found in Florida’s waters) is a famous dish in Florida composed of the grunt fish, so named for the sound it makes, and grits, made from coarsely ground corn kernels, hominy, boiled with water or milk. Johnson, Highways and Byways of Florida, 99. “Glad too, to have my fill of sea food, Florida lobsters, shrimps, pompano, red snapper, and the famous dish of grits and grunts, mighty tasty withal, though I do not like the sad noise with which the little grunts quit this life,” Life (October 1932), 26.

  7 “It was a full moon.” Anita Logs, box 88, Hemingway Personal Papers.

  8 Ernest Hemingway to John Dos Passos, May 30, 1932, Selected Letters, 359.

  9 Hemingway, “Marlin off the Morro,” in By-Line: Ernest Hemingway, 148.

  10 “I used to be co-owner of [The Blind Pig] Sloppy Joe’s. Silent partner, they call it. We had gambling in the back, and that’s where the real money was. But getting good dice-changers was difficult because if he was so good, you couldn’t detect it yourself, you knew he would steal from you. The only big expense in a gambling operation, ours included, is police protection. We paid $7,500 to elect a sheriff who, in his second year in office, went God-happy on us and closed us down, so we closed down the sheriff.” Ernest Hemingway to A. E. Hotchner, cited in McIver, Hemingway’s Key West, 53, 116.

  11 Shakespeare, Henry IV, 1.5.4. 115–21.

  12 Hemingway, My Brother, Ernest Hemingway, 118; Ernest Hemingway to John Dos Passos, May 30, 1932, Selected Letters, 359.

  13 Ernest Hemingway to John Dos Passos, May 30, 1932, Selected Letters, 359.

  14 “Carlos Gutierrez, Ernest Hemingway, Joe ‘Sloppy Joe/Josie’ Russell, and others aboard the Anita.” Access number EH01148N, Hemingway Personal Papers.

  15 Anita Logs, Hemingway Personal Papers. He arrived April 24, 1932. Baker, Ernest Hemingway, 228; Reynolds, Hemingway: The 1930s, 91. After three days of fishing he would give an interview to the Havana Post, and the story would appear on April 28, 1932.

  16 Fuentes, Hemingway in Cuba, 98.

  17 Ernest Hemingway to John Dos Passos, May 30, 1929, Selected Letters, 359.

  18 Hemingway, “Marlin off the Morro,” in By-Line: Ernest Hemingway, 460; Hemingway, My Brother, Ernest Hemingway, 118.

  19 Hemingway, “Marlin off the Morro,” in By-Line: Ernest Hemingway, 148.

  20 Ernest Hemingway to John Dos Passos, May 30, 1932. Selected Letters, 359.

  21 Anita Logs, April 24, 1932, Hemingway Personal Papers.

  22 Hemingway, “Marlin off the Morro,” in By-Line: Ernest Hemingway, 148.

  23 Hemingway, Islands in the Stream, 98.

  24 Hemingway, Islands in the Stream, 96.

  25 Hemingway, Islands in the Stream, 97.

  26 Hemingway, Islands in the Stream, 88–109.

  27 Ernest Hemingway to John Dos Passos, May 30, 1932, Selected Letters. 359.

  28 Says José Abeal, another legend—apparently untrue—is that a newspaper man had once been evicted from the joint because he refused to pay his bill and had vindictively written ab out the substandard conditions of the establishment in the newspaper. Abeal y Otero, Sloppy Joe’s Bar Cocktail Manual. Sloppy Joe’s owner, José Garcia Abeal, cited in Moruzzi, Havana Before Castro, 73; Andrea Strong, “Ode to Sloppy Joe, a Delicious Mess,” The New York Times (October 9, 2002), https://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/09/dining/an-ode-to-sloppy-joe-a-delicious-mess.html?mtrref=undefined.

  29 La Zaragozana is literally a woman from Zaragoza, but it is also the symbolic seat of the Basilica de Nuestra Señora de Pilar, the church belonging to Spain’s patron saint of the same name. It is also the name of a Spanish beer founded in 1900. Fernando G. Campoamor, Manuscript, Memoir, 1999. Journalist, author, and friend of Hemingway in Havana for twenty-five years.

  30 The names of streets are revealing: Street of the Soul, Mercy, Cheap, and so on. Interviews and Manuscript Notes, Fernando G. Campoamor, 1993–1999, Loló De la Torriente, “La prosa de Enrique Serpa,” Bohemia, May 28, 1971, 6–7; Loló De la Torriente, “Reedition of Contraband,” Instituto del Libro Cubano, cited in Leonard Depestre Catony, Cubaliteraria (2005), http://www.cubaliteraria.cu/articulo.php?idarticulo=10345&idseccion=35; Campoamor, “Enrique Serpa,” Bohemia, 4. See also Páporov, Hemingway en Cuba; Moruzzi, Havana Before Castro, 118.

  31 Terry, Terry’s Guide to Cuba, cited in Moruzzi, Havana Before Castro, 126–29.

  32 Skwiot, The Purposes of Paradise, 123.

  33 John Rybovich, cited in Miller, Trading with the Enemy, 168.

  34 Perez, “Image and Identity,” 129.

  35 Davis, Buda’s Wagon, 17, cited in Maurer, The Empire Trap, 190.

  36 Baker, Ernest Hemingway, 228; Ernest Hemingway to Pauline Pfeiffer, April 25, 1932, Museum Ernest Hemingway Collection; Ernest Hemingway to Waldo Peirce, April 15, 1932, and Ernest Hemingway to John Dos Passos, May 30, 1932, Selected Letters, 357–61; Official records of dockings, Morro Castle, 1931–1932, 440; Official records of dockings, Morro Castle, 11 August 1931 to 30 July 1932 (Havana: National Achives, 1928), 436.

  37 Meyers, Hemingway, 435; Hawkins, Unbelievable Happiness and Final Sorrow, 152.

  38 In the most recently published version of A Moveable Feast, Hemingway described the early years with Pauline as a time of “unbelievable happiness” followed by later years of “final sorrow” (186). Unbelievable Happiness and Final Sorrow was the title Ruth Hawkins choose for a biography of Pauline Pfeiffer. Originally, this line was omitted from Hemingway’s memoirs, edited and published posthumously by Mary Hemingway, who had been attempting to gain favor at the time she edited the book with Hadley Richardson and negotiate the transfer of an expensive work of art: The Farm, by Juan Miró.

  39 “I really shouldn’t be telling this because as soon as fishermen learn the possibilities here and Havana prepares to care for fishermen, it will become famous and crowded. And when it does, we’ll find some other fishing ground.” Ernest Hemingway, Havana Post, April 28, 1932, quoted in Reynolds, Hemingway: The 1930s, 94.

  40 Ernest Hemingway to Max Perkins, May 14, 1932, Ernest Hemingway Collection.

  41 Kert, The Hemingway Women, 240.

  42 Anita Logs, Hemingway Personal Papers; Hawkins, Unbelievable Happiness and Final Sorrow, 140.

  43 Kert, The Hemingway Women, 235.

  44 Hemingway, My Brother, Ernest Hemingway, 119.

  45 Hemingway, My Brother, Ernest Hemingway.

  46 Alane Salierno Mason, “To Love and Love Not,” Vanity Fair, July 1999.

  47 Hawkins, Unbelievable Happiness and Final Sorrow, 140.

  48 Pauline Hemingway to Ernest Hemingway, four letters from May to June 1932, Hemingway Personal Papers, quoted in Reynolds, Hemingway: The 1930s, 96.

  49 Hemingway, “Marlin off the Morro,” in By-Line: Ernest Hemingway, 148.

  50 Jane Mason to Pauline Hemingway, May 10, 1932, and Anita Logs, Hemingway Personal Papers.

  51 Anita Logs and correspondence between Jane Mason and Ernest Hemingway, 1932, Jane Mason Personal Papers and Hemingway Personal Papers.

  52 “Ernest resisted falling in love with women who had emotional problems. He liked to describe his women as ‘happy, health, hard as a rock.’” Kert, The Hemingway Women, 243, 250
.

  53 “He came to think of Jane Mason as his very own Zelda, except that he proposed to make her well by giving her lessons in marlin fishing, and by telling her over and over again that she wasn’t crazy, even as he had always responded to his own problems by publically denying their existence.” (“I know what I am doing and have never felt a ‘malajust,’” he would reassure one of his correspondents on August 9, 1932.) Lynn, Hemingway, 404; Christopher Martin, “Ernest Hemingway: A Psychological Autopsy of a Suicide,” Psychiatry 69 (Winter 2006): 4.

  54 “When questioned about the enigmatic title of his short story, ‘A Way You’ll Never Be,’ he said it was an effort to cheer up a hell of a nice girl going crazy from day to day.” In the story, Nick Adams, suffering from a head injury, was much nuttier than this girl was ever going to be. The girl he referred to was Jane Mason. Kert, The Hemingway Women, 250.

  55 Brian, The True Gen, in McIver, Hemingway’s Key West, 50.

  56 Once they had returned to Whitehead Street, the argument continued until Archie decided to board the train home. Brian, The True Gen, 91.

  57 Soft-spoken Charlie Thompson was another important exception to the rule. Archibald MacLeish to Ernest Hemingway, April 7, 1932, in MacLeish, Letters of Archibald MacLeish, 247.

  58 Kert, The Hemingway Women, 243.

  59 Anita Logs, Hemingway Personal Papers.

  60 On May 5, a tornado struck Havana and the party had a close call in heavy seas. “Tornado Strikes Havana,” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 5, 1932; Anita Logs, Hemingway Personal Papers.

  61 Anita Logs, Hemingway Personal Papers.

  62 Chigaco Daily Tribune, May 20, 1932, 11.

  63 Chigaco Daily Tribune, May 20, 1932, 11.

  64 Chigaco Daily Tribune, May 20, 1932, 11

  65 “Bombs Delivered to Cuba Leaders: One Hurled at Residence of Maj. Rasco; Plot Is Laid to Terrorists,” The Washington Post, May 23, 1932, 1; “Other Officers Get Bombs,” The New York Times, May 23, 1932, 5.

  66 Max Perkins to Ernest Hemingway, April 19, 1932, and Ernest Hemingway to Max Perkins, June 2, 1932, cited in Bruccoli, The Only Thing That Counts, 166–67.

  67 “Can’t get a son of a bitch down here—am feeling alone now with Joe holding the other rod and an insane night life jig to steer—goes to sleep while steering—goes to sleep minute he hits the boat. Spends the dough he makes every night on night life. At this hotel—Ambos Mundos—you can get a good clean room with bath right overlooking the harbor and the cathedral—see all the neck of the harbor and the sea for $2.00–2.50 for two people. Write the name down…Have gone over book 7 times and cut all you objected to (seemed like the best to me God damn you if it really was) cut 4 ½ galleys of philosophy and telling the boys—cut all of last chapter except the part about Spain…Left Old Lady in…wish you luck with yours.” Ernest Hemingway to John Dos Passos, May 30, 1932, Selected Letters, 360.

  68 Ernest Hemingway to John Dos Passos, May 30, 1932, Selected Letters, 360.

  69 “I do not follow the fashions in politics, letters, religion etc…If the boys swing to the left in literature you may make a small bet the next swing will be to the right and some of the same yellow bastards will swing both ways. There is no left and right in writing. There is only good and bad writing. These little punks who have never seen men street fighting, let alone revolution, I am no goddamned patriot nor will I swing to left or right. Would as soon machine gun left, right, or center any political bastards.” Ernest Hemingway to Paul Romaine, July 6, 1932, Selected Letters, 363.

  70 The poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen, one of the best known about the subject of war, was written by a solider from Ernest Hemingway’s experiential context of World War I. The Latin comes from an Ode by Horace, an old lie, often retold.

  71 In the book, he wrote, “Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter’s honor.” About Spaniards, he wrote, “Honor to a Spaniard, no matter how dishonest, is as real a thing as water, wine, or olive oil. There is honor among pickpockets and honor among whores. It is simply that the standards differ.” Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon, 77–78.

  72 Ernest Hemingway to Scott Fitzgerald, April 20, 1926, Selected Letters, 200.

  73 “Three Bombs Explode in Havana Schools: Beginning of New Terroristic Campaign,” The New York Times, June 1, 1932, 4, cited in Maurer, The Empire Trap, 186.

  74 “Cuba Starts Drive on Foes of Regime: Hundreds Are Seized or Sought on Charges,” The New York Times, June 15, 1932, 4, cited in Maurer, The Empire Trap, 186.

  75 “Secret Police Head Is Slain in Havana,” The New York Times, July 10, 1932, 1. “Cuba Guards Our Embassy Against Bombing by Reds,” The New York Times, August 1, 1932, 15; Guggenheim to Stimson, July 25, 1932.

  76 Hemingway, “Old Newsman Writes” in By-Line: Ernest Hemingway, 187.

  77 “Last week William Hushka’s Bonus for $528 suddenly became payable in full when a police bullet drilled him dead in the worst public disorder the capital has known in years.” “Heroes: Battle of Washington,” Time, August 8, 1932.

  78 Later, Eisenhower, who became president, said famously that he had told that “dumb son-of-a-bitch” General MacArthur “not to go down there,” for it was “no place for a Chief of Staff.” Major Patton commanded the unit that attacked the veterans’ camp and set fire to their shelters. A highly decorated soldier, Joe Angelo, a man who saved Eisenhower’s life at the Meuse-Aragon Offensive, was also present and attempted to confront Patton. Wukovits, Eisenhower, 43; D’Este, Eisenhower, 223; Dickson and Allen, The Bonus Army, 50, 254, 325.

  79 “Cuba Will Continue Martial Law Rule,” The New York Times, June 22, 1932, 3.

  80 Max Perkins to Ernest Hemingway, July 22, 1932, in Bruccoli, The Only Thing That Counts, 174.

  81 Ernest Hemingway to Max Perkins, July 27, 1932, in Bruccoli, The Only Thing That Counts, 175.

  82 Hemingway, “Fathers and Sons,” The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, 377.

  83 Hemingway, “A Clean Well-Lighted Place,” The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, 290–91.

  84 Hemingway later confessed in an interview with Lillian Ross that his analyst was “Portable Corona No.3,” his typewriter. Ross, Portrait of Hemingway, 36. He also counseled Scott Fitzgerald on May 28, 1934: “You especially have to hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt use it—don’t cheat with it. Be as faithful to it as a scientist.” Hemingway, Selected Letters, 408.

  85 Maxwell Perkins to Ann Chidester, July 15, 1943, in Perkins, Editor to Author, 151.

  86 Wilson, The Bit Between My Teeth, 522.

  87 Ernest Hemingway to Arnold Gingrich, December 4, 1932, Selected Letters, 378.

  88 Arnold Gingrich to Ernest Hemingway, February 24, April 24, and May 26, 1933, private collection, cited in Reynolds, Hemingway: The 1930s, 331, and Hemingway Personal Papers. See also Stephen Marche, “Down in Havana, Searching for the Ghost of Hemingway,” Esquire, September 30, 2015, https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a37859/havana-ghost-of-hemingway/.

  89 Ernest Hemingway to Arnold Gingrich, December 4, 1932, and March 13 and April 3, 1933, Selected Letters, 378, 383–85.

  90 Russell Porter, “Revolt by Terror Going on in Cuba,” The New York Times, February 4, 1933, 1.

  91 The article insinuated that Machado’s daughter was a lesbian. Thomas, Cuba or Pursuit of Freedom, 574.

  92 “Called the office just after you left (the day I left) and then wired you at the house. Haven’t written because I started a novel…have 3 ½ chapters done and 2 stories finished. Going well…What the hell about our Cuban trip? Or will you be coming down in May or June? Any time you want to come is fine. Let me know though.” Ernest Hemingway to Arnold Gingrich, February 27, 1932, Selected Letters, 381.

  93 “Our Relations with Cuba,” The Atlanta Constitution, April 30, 1933, 1; “Cuba Glad Welles Becomes Ambassador,” Christian
Science Monitor, April 22, 1933, 1.

  94 “Welles Is Welcomed by Havana Authorities,” The Washington Post, May 8, 1933, 1.

  95 Pauline Pfeiffer to Ernest Hemingway, May 18, 1933, Bernice Kert Personal Papers, cited in Kert, The Hemingway Women, 247.

  96 “The Protest of 13.” Bueno, “José Antonio Fernández de Castro.”

  97 José Antonio Fernández de Castro, “Fishing for Marlin with Hemingway: Interview with the U.S. novelist,” Diario de la Marina, May, 28 1933. Later José Antonio became the editor of Orbe, a weekly pictorial magazine.

  98 “José Antonio was the best person to know in Havana if you had never been there before,” said Langston Hughes when he met him in Havana three years before. A native with open accounts with all the drivers, José Antonio knew how to wine and dine foreigners, but it was his openness and connections with all kinds that most impressed the “jazz poet” and harbinger of the Harlem Renaissance: “Painters, writers, newsboys, poets, fighters, politicians and rumba dancers were all José’s friends…That is why I liked José Antonio. He lived in Vedado, but he knew all of Havana. Although he was a white Cuban of aristocratic background, he knew and loved Negro Cuba…He was a human dynamo who set things in motion. That first night we went straight to Marianao.” In Marianao, he showed Hughes “those fabulous drum beaters who use their bare hands to beat out rhythm, those clave knockers and maraca shakers who somehow have saved—out of all the centuries of slavery and all the miles from Guinea—the heartbeat and song beat of Africa. This ancient heartbeat they pour out into the Cuban night from a little row of café hovels at Marianao. Or else they flood with song those smoky low-roofed dance halls where the poor of Havana go for entertainment after dark. Most Cubans who lived in Vedado, Havana’s fashionable section, had no idea where these dance halls were.” Hughes, I Wonder as I Wander, 7.

  99 “I have some pictures tonight, and will have more tomorrow. Also I will change my mind and take a loan of ten or fifteen dollars if you still feel like that,” said the note written on Western Union stationary from the Western Union Office in Havana addressed from Walker Evans to Ernest Hemingway at the Ambos Mundos Hotel. On the back of the envelope, in Ernest’s handwriting, the words “loaned $25” are written. Toby Bruce later discovered the forty-six prints and letters in the basement of Sloppy Joe’s in 2002. Later in his diary, Walker Evans would remember guiltily that he still owed Hemingway “a small amount of money.” Mellow, Walker Evans, 199.