Hemingway's Widow

The Life and Legacy of Mary Welsh Hemingway

Timothy Christian

• Publisher: Pegasus Books
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN:
  9781643138800
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Journalist Biographies

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, andevoking her merrywidowhood 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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Preface
• Prologue
• Chapter One: Chatting with Lords
• Chapter Two: You May Sleep Quietly
• Chapter Three: It Would Be Just Like That Bloody Hitler to Try His Invasion on Christmas
• Chapter Four: A Glamorous, Globe-Trotting War Correspondent
• Chapter Five: A Deft, Tricky Way with Men
• Chapter Six: Beautiful as a May Fly
• Chapter Seven: Railway Trains Across the Sky
• Chapter Eight: She Was Mad for Shaw
• Chapter Nine: I Cannot Understand this Chest-beating
• Chapter Ten: We Lived in Those Days Far Beyond the Usual Reach of Our Senses
• Chapter Eleven: I Also am Committed, Horse, Foot, and Guns
• Chapter Twelve: Irwin, Are You Going to Marry Me?
• Chapter Thirteen: I Could Never be a Simone de Beauvoir to Papa’s Sartre
• Chapter Fourteen: A Complicated Piece of Machinery
• Chapter Fifteen: This is Like Being a High-Priced Whore
• Chapter Sixteen: I Bleached My Hair Lighter to Please Him
• Chapter Seventeen: How Did a Beat-up Old Bastard Like You Get Such a Lovely Girl as That?
• Chapter Eighteen: That Was a Day of Triumph for Me
• Chapter Nineteen: Platinum-Blonde at Torcello
• Chapter Twenty: He Has Become the Most Important Part of Me
• Chapter Twenty-One: Ernest Taunts Me with This
• Chapter Twenty-Two: It Lays Me Open, Raw, and Bleeding
• Chapter Twenty-Three: People Are Dying That Never Died Before
• Chapter Twenty-Four: Every Real Work of Art Exhales Symbols and Allegories
• Chapter Twenty-Five: Safety Off, Hold Steady, Squeeze
• Chapter Twenty-Six: A Plague Began to Descend Upon Us
• Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Swedish Thing
• Chapter Twenty-Eight: She Knows How to be Lazy as a Cat
• Chapter Twenty-Nine: If You Have a Message, Call the Western Union
• Chapter Thirty: I Wished for a Room of My Own
• Chapter Thirty-One: Smashed Like an Eggshell
• Chapter Thirty-Two: Lots of Problems but We Will Solve Them All
• Chapter Thirty-Three: A Vegetable Life
• Chapter Thirty-Four: Good Night, My Kitten
• Chapter Thirty-Five: The Sun Also Ariseth
• Chapter Thirty-Six: This in Some Incredible Way Was an Accident
• Chapter Thirty-Seven: Picking up the Pieces
• Chapter Thirty-Eight: A “Vastly Different Outcome”
• Chapter Thirty-Nine: You Are Rated as Politically Unreliable
• Chapter Forty: A Moveable Feast
• Chapter Forty-One: Defending Papa’s Reputation
• Chapter Forty-Two: No, He Shot Himself. Shot Himself. Just That.
• Chapter Forty-Three: Who the Hell is He Writing About?
• Chapter Forty-Four: I Never Especially Liked the Killing
• Chapter Forty-Five: Have Success in Something Instead of Talking About Equality!
• Chapter Forty-Six: Ernest’s Gift Was Joy
• Chapter Forty-Seven: How It Was
• Chapter Forty-Eight: It’s a Beautiful Place of Bougainvillea and Poinsettia, but the Heart of it is Gone
• Chapter Forty-Nine: Life is Ruthless
• Photographs
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Endnotes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright