Hemingway's Brain

by Andrew Farah

  Pauline, Hemingway’s second wife, was four years older than Ernest. At times, she looked more adolescent boy than young woman. Androgyny was a recurrent theme in Hemingway fiction. Photograph copyright unknown, image reproduced courtesy of the Ernest Hemingway Collec tion Photographs, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

  Hadley and Pauline were close and for a time knowingly shared Ernest’s affection. Pauline liked to crawl into bed with the couple at Shruns and Juan-les-Pins in 1926. Pauline would later befriend Mary as well. As the Hemingway expert Burwell noted, only Martha, married to Hemingway for five years (November 1940 to December 1945), “would not engage in the gender-bending antics that he found erotic.” Photograph copyright unknown, reproduced courtesy of the Ernest Hemingway Collection Photographs, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

  Hemingway had no qualms about displaying his scar from the Paris skylight accident. He believed that the injury was transformative and freeing, that it had unleashed his pent up creativity: A Farwell to Arms followed the trauma. Photograph by Helen Breaker, reproduced courtesy of the Ernest Hemingway Collection Photographs, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

  Though referred to by archivists as “Hemingway with an unknown African woman,” this photograph is likely the only known image of his “Wakamba wife, Debba.” She was believed to be sixteen, and, unlike his attachments to his other late-life female companions, Adriana and Valerie, his affection for Debba was more archetypal than romantic. Photograph by Earl Theisen, © 2014 Roxann Livingston/Earl Theisen, used with permission, reproduced courtesy of the Ernest Hemingway Collection Photographs, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

  On safari in 1954, Hemingway “went native,” dying his clothes like a local, hunting with a spear, and pursuing Debba. In hindsight, that is, with the benefit of a correct neuropsychiatric diagnosis, he was disinhibited because of his use of alcohol and the early phase of dementia. Photograph copyright unknown, reproduced courtesy of the Ernest Hemingway Collection Photographs, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

  This photograph of Hemingway, Robert Capa, and their driver, Olin Tomkins (center), was taken near St. Lo. Hemingway suffered three more concussion during his World War II days, one in London and two in France. The photograph was contributed to the Hemingway Archives by Captain John Ausland, who had a distinguished military and postwar career and published Letters Home: A War Memoir in 1993. The photographgraph is reproduced courtesy of the Ernest Hemingway Collection Photographs, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

  This Yousuf Karsh photograph, more than any other, solidified Hemingway as iconic and provides for millions the mental imagery conjured when his name is mentioned. Photograph copyright Yousuf Karsh, used by permission of Julie Grahame, North American Representative, Estate of Yousuf Karsh, and reproduced courtesy of the Ernest Hemingway Collection Photographs, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

  Mary and Ernest were closing out their 1954 safari with sightseeing, and while they were photographing Murchison Falls, their plane struck abandoned telegraph wires and crashed. This was the first of two crashes, the second more fiery and violent, that left Ernest with multiple injuries. He was assumed dead after the second crash, and many of his obituaries mentioned he had always “sought death.” Hemingway asked, “Can one imagine if a man sought death all his life he could not have found her before the age of 54?” (6). Copyright unknown, reproduced courtesy of the Ernest Hemingway Collection Photographs, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

  Battered and burned, Hemingway is recovering after his Africa plane crashes. What no camera or x-ray could show was the cumulative damage to his central nervous system. Image reproduced courtesy of the Hemingway Collection Photographs, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

  Mary Hemingway and Castro during her 1977 return trip to Cuba. She was pleased with her negotiations that rescued Ernest’s manuscripts shortly after his death, but she burned letters and manuscripts that she believed would have embarrassed him. Copyright unknown, reproduced courtesy of the Hemingway Collection Photographs, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

  Gianfranco and Adriana Ivancich pictured in Cuba. Gianfranco lived in the guest house at the Finca for nearly three years and rushed to Mary’s side upon learning of Ernest’s death. Copyright unknown, reproduced courtesy of the Hemingway Collection Photographs, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

  Ernest and Adriana in a lighthearted moment. Copyright unknown, reproduced courtesy of the Hemingway Collection Photographs, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

  The Farm, painted by Joan Miró before he developed his signature style, was purchased by Ernest, given to Hadley, borrowed by Ernest, saved from Castro, inherited by Mary, then claimed by Jack Hemingway. It now hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. © Successió Miró/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris 2014, reproduced and used with permission of the Artists Rights Society.

  Chapter 5

  Free Fall

  Scott Fitzgerald once described Hemingway as having the quality of a stick that’s been hardened in a fire. Of course, if left in the fire too long, the stick will crumble. The last four years of Hemingway’s life were certainly his least content and his most stressful, and easily the most difficult for Mary as well. He was crumbling. But there was still the international travel, the writing, the quasi-employees hanging on, and very little peace of mind. And all the while the restless mind still propelled the body, sometimes purposefully, sometimes in anxious circles.

  In 1956 he was off to Spain, crossing on the Ile de France again and drinking far too much. When friends brought their concerns to Mary, she responded, “What can I do? He didn’t marry a policeman. It’s better if I let him alone.”1 She knew instinctively (or at least by this point in their marriage) that exorcising a devil was much more difficult than living with one. Nagging or not, he did what he chose—why stir up more trouble? In order to survive as the last Mrs. Hemingway, she accepted her role as the quiet enabler—and the more Ernest incapacitated himself, the more he needed her. The flask he was carrying, full of “splendidly aged Calvados,” was engraved “From Mary with Love.”

  Not long after arriving in Spain, Ernest paid a visit to a writer he had always admired—the Basque novelist Pío Baroja y Nessi. He owned seven of Baroja’s novels and believed the 1954 Nobel Prize had been awarded to the wrong man. He told him as much when he visited his deathbed: “I am convinced that you deserve the Nobel Prize much more than many writers who won it—myself first of all, for I am more or less just another of your disciples.” Hemingway brought the dying man a bottle of Scotch, as well as some socks and a sweater, both made of cashmere. He also gave him an inscribed copy of The Sun Also Rises. When Baroja died, three weeks later, Hemingway followed the funeral procession through the flower-lined streets—it was October 30, and the flower sellers were readying for All Souls Day.2

  Hemingway had played his role perfectly—he was the grateful student and admirer paying homage and humbling himself. He wrote a touching description of the burial in a letter to Harvey Breit dated November 5, 1956, and couldn’t resist including a dig at his old friend and enemy, Dos Passos: “We buried Don Pio Baroja last Tuesday. It was very moving and beautiful. I’ll tell you about it. Thought Dos Passos or some Americans could have sent some word.… He was a hell of a good writer you know. Knopf dropped him, of course, when he did not sell. The day was misty with the sun breaking through and burning off over the bare hills and on the way out to the un-consecrated ground cemetery the side of the streets were jammed solid with flowers, the flower sellers stands for Nov 2—All Soul day, and we rode out to the cemetery through the country he wrote about.… There were not too many of us. He was buried in a plain pine coffin, newly painted black so that the paint came off on the faces and the hands of the pall bearers and on their coats.”3 Ernest was particul
arly moved by this last detail, which ends his letter.

  Though not nearly as robust as he had been only two years earlier, and with the travel taking its toll, he nonetheless began planning another safari. He was also hoping to take along his favorite matador for the sixweek Africa trip, as well as his son, Patrick. But Hemingway’s health continued to deteriorate.

  His blood pressure was 210/105 (which was actually an improvement from his Cuba reading of 215/125), and he suffered nosebleeds. X-rays showed “an area of inflammation around the aorta,” and his Spanish doctor told him to reduce his alcohol consumption.4 He was also instructed to eliminate fatty foods, and his doctor forbade sexual activity. He also forbade the Africa trip—yet Hemingway ignored the dictate and continued his planning anyway. Only when Gamal Abdel Nasser, the president of Egypt, closed the Suez Canal was the trip cancelled, as a journey around the Cape of Good Hope would prove far too lengthy—and result in a poor ratio of travel to hunting.

  And so, it was on to Paris as a consolation prize. And though the Lost Generation had long scattered, the Ritz Hotel had a surprise waiting for him—two trunks had been sitting in the hotel’s basement, reportedly since 1928, stuffed with newspaper clippings, notebooks filled with Ernest’s longhand, pages of typed fiction, even books, sweatshirts, and a pair of sandals. The stash is thought to have inspired the series of sketches that would become A Moveable Feast. “It’s wonderful,” he said to Mary, looking up from one of the trunks, and added, “It was just as hard for me to write then as it is now.”5 He knew his skills had regressed to the point at which writing was again a struggle—not from inexperience, as in the early 1920s, but from a decline in cognitive functioning—a mental decline on which he was quietly keeping tabs.

  Ernest had forgotten many of the names from the café days when he and Hadley were “very poor and very happy” and became careless with dates and geography, yet he plowed ahead on his Paris sketchbook from the fall of 1957 to the spring of 1958.

  He had been thinking about this very work at least since 1933, when he wrote to Maxwell Perkins in his typical grandiose way, “I’m going to write damned good memoirs when I write them because I’m jealous of no one, have a rat trap memory and the documents. Have plenty to write first though.”6 In fact, Hemingway had been forming the work over the ensuing decades, recalling and revising (both consciously and subconsciously) his Paris history and his literary apprenticeship. He had no idea that there would be trunks in Paris awaiting his return more than twenty years later, yet these newly found documents, and even their very existence, would be debated for decades.

  Despite the inspiration of the Paris trunks, real or imagined, as 1957 progressed his obsessions about his health would turn fatalistic. When an elevated cholesterol level was reported (at 408), he was sure his death was imminent. His inflamed aorta progressed to an enlarged aorta, no doubt the result of his erratic blood pressure. He became more ruminative and fearful and more depressed. The cycle was obvious: stress and worries about his ailments further compromised his health, leading to more anxiety. On the Ile de France, crossing the Atlantic homeward, he was given cholesterol-lowering medication, high doses of B vitamins by injection, treatment for his eczema, and blood pressure medication by the Ile’s doctor, Jean Monnier, who also instructed Ernest, “You must stop drinking alcohol.… I understand that it might be harsh, even painful at the beginning, but you must gradually reduce your drinking to nothing.” His new doctor in Havana concurred: “Rest, mild exercise, restricted diet, altered medication, and no alcohol.”7

  By March 1957, irritable, depressed, and with an enlarged liver, he was forced to give up liquor, but he continued to drink wine. His famous quip about a life without alcohol being akin to driving a race car without motor oil dates to this period, and he also remarked that it was “a bore not to drink, and very hard to take bores without something to drink.”8 Hemingway echoed a complaint that is not uncommon in the newly sober.

  It was in this state of strained semi-abstinence that the Armenian-born photographer Yousuf Karsh found Hemingway in 1957. He had been sent to Cuba by Life, whose editors had hoped to coax an autobiographical article from Hemingway that would accompany his photos. Karsh described his subject as “the shyest man I ever photographed.”9 Such a demeanor more than likely indicated a depressed state of mind. Only in his last few years, with dementia and depression progressing, was he ever described as “shy.” But the photo that resulted was instantly iconic. In fact, the mental image most have of Ernest Hemingway is this very photo or is at least partly influenced by Karsh’s portrait: Ernest in his burly turtleneck sweater with the suede front. Mary had purchased the sweater in Paris the year before from the Christian Dior boutique as a Christmas gift.10 One result was that Karsh’s future subjects demanded that they too wear sweaters for their portraits. The portrait has been described as “biblical” and “Moses-like,” and its weighty presence is undeniable. Yet the clues to his demise are also evident: the famous scar on his left forehead is still visible, there is a heaviness above his eyelids, and his eyes peer out at slightly different angles, indicating a degree of neurological damage. It is challenging to view and consider a familiar photograph with a fresh eye, but Hemingway conveys a profound sadness, which is only partly veiled by the distraction of the image’s recognizability.

  By the fall his cholesterol was down to 208 from the peak of 428, and his weight had dropped 17 pounds, down to 203. He had stuck to his pledge of only wine for about two months, but he still ruminated about his finances, and as the violence led by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara came closer to his doorstep, Hemingway’s stress level understandably rose. The whisky returned, and the wine limit was gone. The alcohol, combined with the Doriden, a barbiturate, left him sedated and falling asleep in his chair in front of guests by early evenings.11 And Mary, also in need of antianxiety medication, was taking one Doriden to Ernest’s two pills per dose. It was more than clear that it was time to leave Cuba. He was not being unduly frightened, he would explain to Patrick, given the murders he saw around him every day. The rebels, when they took over, would be no better than the dictator’s Fulgencio Batista’s henchmen. He and Mary were off to the safety of Ketchum.

  He was in his fifty-ninth year when the cross-country ride to Idaho began. The Hemingways rode with their friends Betty and Otto Bruce and stopped frequently for food at local grocery stores. His preferred drink during the ride was Scotch and lime juice. The 1958 World Series was their entertainment. The couples heard the play-by-play action as the Yankees become only the second team in history to rally from a 3-1 deficit to win a Series. Whitey Ford and Warren Spahn squared off for the first game, and the names of other baseball greats and future Hall of Famers—Mantle, Berra, Aaron, Larson, Bauer, and Mathews—helped pass the miles. All the while, Ernest nibbled on cheese and pickles and sipped his Scotch.

  Paranoia struck in Cody, in an unlikely spot. As the car pulled into a motel one night, which seemed safe enough and certainly clean, Ernest was spooked. He insisted they move on but never fully explained what he had found so ominous about the place. In a lighter moment, but not a particularly amusing one for Hemingway, a group of children at a restaurant was asked who the famous bearded man was. “Burl Ives!” they announced.12

  Once in Idaho, he began hunting, usually daily. He was able again to swing with the birds, and, unlike during his recent Africa shoots, when his heavy drinking had compromised his marksmanship, he was back to impressing others with his skill. Initially they rented a home but soon found one to purchase. It was on a hillside flanked by tall aspens and cottonwoods. Another photographer visited him while in Idaho, though his official assignment was to get some shots of Mary in her kitchen. She had become skilled at cooking the various fish and game Ernest and his friends brought home, and This Week, a syndicated Sunday supplement magazine, hoped to get one of her wild-game recipes and a picture of her preparing the dish.

  The photographer, John Bryson, felt very welcome and stayed
on in Ketchum for several days rather than fly back to L.A. after his shoot. He even walked with Hemingway to the Sun Valley Lodge, where he observed him holding court in the bar. On one of these walks, he caught Ernest kicking a beer can down the road, which playfully told the world that there was still some life in the old man. Hemingway liked the picture and asked for several copies to send out as gifts. But more telling than this sprightly image is the photo from either late 1958 or early 1959 (Bryson had stayed over five days around the New Year holiday).13 It shows the same neurological features as the Karsh photo a year prior, but the hint of sadness has evolved into a vacant stare.

  While Bryson was enjoying the Hemingways’ hospitality, before sunrise on New Year’s day 1959, Batista flew out of Cuba for the last time with somewhere between $300 and $700 million. Hemingway wished Castro luck—fortunately, a friend had written to inform that so far Finca was safe. But, despite the peaceful country life in Idaho, Hemingway couldn’t stay put for long—he decided that he must again spend the summer in Spain. The official excuse was a bullfighting article commissioned by Life, but for another Spanish summer, another “dangerous summer,” he needed little prodding. And he was feeling better physically, his weight, cholesterol, and blood pressure had all dropped, and he was limiting his alcohol—but he was still declining mentally.