Hemingway's Widow: The Life and Legacy of Mary Welsh Hemingway

by Timothy Christian

Overview

A stunning portrait of the complicated woman who becomes Ernest Hemingway's fourth wife, tracing her adventures before she meets Ernest, exploring the tumultuous years of their marriage, and evoking her merry widowhood as she shapes Hemingway's literary legacy.

Mary Welsh, a celebrated wartime journalist during the London Blitz and the liberation of Paris, meets Ernest Hemingway in May 1944. He becomes so infatuated with Mary that he asks her to marry him the third time they meet—although they are married to other people. Eventually, she succumbs to Ernest's campaign, and in the last days of the war joined him at his estate in Cuba.

Through Mary's eyes, we see Ernest Hemingway in a fresh light. Their turbulent marriage survives his cruelty and abuse, perhaps because of their sexual compatibility and her essential contribution to his writing. She reads and types his work each day—and makes plot suggestions. She becomes crucial to his work and he depends upon her critical reading of his work to know if he has it right.

We watch the Hemingways as they travel to the ski country of the Dolomites, commute to Harry's Bar in Venice; attend bullfights in Pamplona and Madrid; go on safari in Kenya in the thick of the Mau Mau Rebellion; and fish the blue waters of the gulf stream off Cuba in Ernest's beloved boat Pilar. We see Ernest fall in love with a teenaged Italian countess and wonder at Mary's tolerance of the affair.

We witness Ernest's sad decline and Mary's efforts to avoid the stigma of suicide by claiming his death was an accident. In the years following Ernest's death, Mary devotes herself to his literary legacy, negotiating with Castro to reclaim Ernest's manuscripts from Cuba, publishing one-third of his work posthumously. She supervises Carlos Baker's biography of Ernest, sues A. E. Hotchner to try and prevent him from telling the story of Ernest's mental decline, and spends years writing her memoir in her penthouse overlooking the New York skyline.

Her story is one of an opinionated woman who smokes Camels, drinks gin, swears like a man, sings like Edith Piaf, loves passionately, and experiments with gender fluidity in her extraordinary life with Ernest. This true story reads like a novel—and the reader will be hard pressed not to fall for Mary.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781643138831
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	03/01/2022
Pages:	464
Sales rank:	650,629
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.90(d)

About the Author

Timothy Christian graduated as a Commonwealth Scholar from King’s College, Cambridge. During a varied legal career, he served as a law professor and Dean at the Faculty of Law at the University of Alberta and a visiting professor in Japan and Taiwan. Christian read A Moveable Feast in the cafes of Aix-en-Provence when he was a young man studying French. Realizing that no one had written deeply about Mary Welsh Hemingway, Christian began researching her story–and discovered a woman vital to Hemingway’s art. Christian is married to a lawyer and abstract artist, Kathryn Dykstra, and lives in a Mediterranean microclimate on Vancouver Island’s beautiful Saanich Inlet

Table of Contents

Preface H. R. Stoneback vii

Prologue xxi

1 Chatting with Lords: 1904-1937 1

2 You May Sleep Quietly: September: 1938-June 1940 10

3 It Would be Just Like That Bloody Hitler to Try His Invasion on Christmas: July 1940-November 1941 17

4 A Glamorous, Globe-Trotting War Correspondent: December 1941-April 1943 25

5 A Deft, Tricky Way with Men: August 1942-May 1944 33

6 Beautiful as a May Fly: May 1944 40

7 Railway Trains Across the Sky: May 1944-June 1944 46

8 She Was Mad For Shaw: June 1944-July 1944 51

9 I Cannot Understand this Chest-beating: August 1944 56

10 We Lived in Those Days Far Beyond the Usual Reach of Our Senses: August 1944-September 1944 63

11 I Also am Committed, Horse, Foot, and Guns: August 1944-September 1944 70

12 Irwin, Are You Going to Marry Me?: September 1944-November 1944 78

13 I Could Never be a Simone de Beauvoir to Papa's Sartre: November 1944-December 1944 85

14 A Complicated Piece of Machinery: December 1944-February 1945 94

15 This is Like Being a High-Priced Whore: March 1945-June 1945 101

16 I Bleached My Hair Lighter to Please Him: June 1945-July 1946 109

17 How Did a Beat-up Old Bastard Like You Get Such a Lovely Girl as That?: August 1946-July 1947 120

18 That Was a Day of Triumph for Me: September 1947-September 1948 129

19 Platinum-Blonde at Torcello: September 1948-November 1948 137

20 He Has Become the Most Important Part of Me: November 1948-May 1949 145

21 Ernest Taunts Me with This: May 1949-March 1950 154

22 It Lays Me Open, Raw, and Bleeding: March 1950-Jamiary 1951 166

23 People Are Dying That Never Died Before: January 1951-March-1952 177

24 Every Real Work of Art Exhales Symbols and Allegories: April 1952-August 1952 190

25 Safety Off, Hold Steady; Squeeze: August 1952-December 1953 199

26 A Plague Began to Descend Upon Us: December 1953-March 1954 215

27 The Swedish Thing: January 1954-February 1955 226

28 She Knows How to be Lazy as a Cat: March 1955-September 1956 235

29 If You Have a Message, Call the Western Union: September 1956-September 1958 243

30 I Wished for a Room of My Own: October 1958-July 1959 253

31 Smashed Like an Eggshell: July 1959-January 7, 1960 262

32 Lots of Problems but We Will Solve Them All: January 1960-September 25, 1960 270

33 A Vegetable Life: October 8, 1960-April 24, 1961 279

34 Good Night, My Kitten: April 25, 1961-July 2, 1961 289

35 The Sun Also Ariseth: July 2, 1961-July 4, 1961 296

36 This in Some Incredible Way Was an Accident: July 5, 1961-July 10, 1961 304

37 Picking up the Pieces: July 15, 1961-October 16, 1961 312

38 A "Vastly Different Outcome": October 1961-January 1963 325

39 You Are Rated as Politically Unreliable: December 1961-July 1962 337

40 A Moveable Feast: November: 1956-2015 349

41 Defending Papa's Reputation: February 1964-August 1966 359

42 No, He Shot Himself. Shot Himself. Just That.: March 1966-September 1968 372

43 Who the Hell is He Writing About?: July 1966-February 1975 379

44 I Never Especially Liked the Killing: July 1970-August 1974 388

45 Have Success in Something Instead of Talking About Equality!: February 1975 397

46 Ernest's Gift Was Joy: 1951-1977 402

47 How It Was: May 1966-JuIy 1977 410

48 It's a Beautiful Place of Bougainvillea and Poinsettia, but the Heart of it is Gone: May 1977-July 1977 419

49 Life is Ruthless: September 1979-June 2019 423

Acknowledgments 433

Bibliography 437

Endnotes 445

Index 495

Editorial Reviews

"This compelling book transported me back to Hemingway’s world, except this time his fourth and last wife Mary was guiding the way. Hemingway aficionados will enjoy the journey. Hemingway scholars will appreciate the detail, including some new revelations, and the fresh analysis of her life and legacy. Bottom line: an important book that fills a long-standing gap and is a pleasure to read."

Nick Reynolds

"Bravo to Tim Christian for creating a portrait of my friend Mary Hemingway that at last shows her for the complex person she was—so much more than an appendage of 'the great man.’ The author’s astonishingly deep research into the vast archive of letters, journals, memoirs, interviews allows him to put the fascinated reader into Mary’s thoughts and feelings as she navigated the sometimes glamourous and often treacherous shoals of life with Ernest. This is a story that needed to be told and we are fortunate that Tim Christian has told it so frankly, so sympathetically, and so compellingly.

Susan Buckley

"More than any other biographer or historian so far, Christian shows what a marvel Mary Welsh was to Hemingway in wartime London. Petite and perky, a shrewd assessor of male vanity and pretensions, this down-to-earth Midwesterner obtained plum assignments from newspapers and magazines and sized up the military men who befriended and courted her.

The New Criterion

"This portrait of Mary Welsh Hemingway documents her first encounter with Ernest Hemingway while she was working as a wartime correspondent and chronicles their tumultuous relationship, travels around the world and her life after Hemingway’s suicide."

The New York Times Book Review

Illuminating. I cannot imagine any biographer navigating these waters better than Timothy Christian has done in these pages. And I hope every student of Hemingway will pay close attention and adjust accordingly their views of Carlos Baker's biography of Hemingway. Again, I say this book is a stunning achievement. It is the custom to say that this volume belongs on the bookshelf of every scholar and student and fan of Hemingway. And it does. This includes Hemingway aficionados, who will appreciate Timothy Christian's superb skills in biography. This is the Hemingway book we've all been waiting for so long.

H. R. Stoneback

"Timothy Christian has spent years researching Mary's life across continents and every archive, including troves of information that no one else has tapped. To this task, he brought a sympathetic attachment to the woman behind the Hemingway myth. He has turned up truly fresh and significant information about Mary herself and her life before Ernest, about the courtship and sexual predilections of the couple, and about Ernest's suicide. While to some extent this story will compromise the myth of the great macho man that was important to Hemingway—a myth that Mary helped craft and maintain—it will ultimately provide a fuller understanding of an American icon and the lives he touched. Refreshingly, Christian does not view Mary as a victim, despite Ernest's callous and violent treatment of the talented journalist who spent her prime years with the aging and difficult master. Christian gives us Mary, a tiny and fearless dynamo, a woman of skill and heart, calculation and vulnerability, who knew exactly what she was getting into when she married Ernest—and played her hands as best as she could, even as her choices narrowed.

Carol Sklenicka

"A vivid portrayal of Mary Walsh Hemingway. Christian masterfully transports readers to Picasso's studio in Paris and to the Ritz Bar where the couple drank with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.Christian regales readers with stories from around the world, revealing the life of one of the most iconic literary couples. He also chronicles Mary's illustrious journalism career and her meetings with world leaders such as Fidel Castro and John F. Kennedy, setting the record straight that Martha Gellhorn was not the only respected reporter whom Hemingway married."

The Minneapolis Star Tribune - Wayne Catan

"Living with Hemingway could be downright treacherous, as the journalist Mary Welsh would learn even before becoming the great writer’s fourth and last wife. In this fast-paced, drama-packed, and full-bodied biography, Timothy Christian has given us the absolute true gem of a woman who sacrificed her own identity while navigating a partnership forged by careless love and deep darkness. Drawn from Mary Hemingway’s journals and other previously untapped sources, Hemingway’s Widow adds valuable new dimensions and insights to a story we thought we already knew.

Steve Paul

"In Hemingway’s Widow, Christian brilliantly fills this long-empty gap, presenting readers with lucid prose; meticulous research; where warranted, cogent argument; where pertinent, engagement with recent scholarship; and over 50 pages of endnotes. One couldn’t wish for a better-researched, more readable book; Hemingway’s Widow sets a new gold-standard in our understanding of Mary Hemingway’s life and legacy."

 The Hemingway Review Dr. Hilary Justice

Sixty years after Hemingway's death, Christian sets the record straight regarding Mary Hemingway's complex relationship with Hemingway and his art during and after his final years. Often stereotyped as accepting a sometimes abusive relationship, Mary comes powerfully to life in this intricately nuanced and mesmerizing biographical tour de force. Honest, unafraid and compelling, Christian finally gives us the true gen.

Linda Patterson Miller

"We now have a book that virtually closes the circle on Hemingway’s women, a biography that will be treasured by the author’s fans and scholars. Scenes of London during World War II are exciting and interesting as we see Mary grow to become a respected reporter, no mean task for a woman at that time. Christian presents a vivid picture, plunging the reader into their daily life, the visits from friends and frenemies, Ernest’s work on The Old Man and the Sea and Mary’s assistance. We feel Mary’s claustrophobia when Ernest becomes cruel and abusive, we are privy to their sexual games, we revel in their travels to Africa and Europe, we wince watching Mary’s unbelievable patience when Ernest 'falls in love' with an Italian woman young enough to be his grandchild."

The Arts Fuse - Roberta Silman

"More than any other biographer or historian so far, Christian shows what a marvel Mary Welsh was to Hemingway in wartime London. Petite and perky, a shrewd assessor of male vanity and pretensions, this down-to-earth Midwesterner obtained plum assignments from newspapers and magazines and sized up the military men who befriended and courted her.

Advance praise for Hemingway’s Widow:

From the Publisher