Hemingway; A Family of Tragic Dimensions

Ernest Hemingway was one of America’s most talented and prodigious writers, who despite his immense fame, fought many  demons in his life.  Recognition for his writing though never seemed to completely satisfy his ego, as an emptiness within compelled him toward wild feats of thrill seeking as if to prove something he held in doubt about himself.

Offhand , I can’t think of any other family that within only 4 generations, there is a family history of 5 suicides and multiple diagnoses of bipolar illness, personality disorders, alcoholism, sexual abuse, bulimia and transgender issues.

I read his posthumously published book,  A Movable Feast, just before I was to embark on my on youthful adventures in Paris, too many years ago.  I certainly can identify with his love of this sensuous city, and I too, remembering my own innocence here, resonate with his memoirs.

He wrote this  book while he was living in Cuba towards the end of his life.  He was able to put it together after finding  several notebooks of his memories recounting his youthful adventures of him and his first wife Hadley when they moved to Paris in 1921.

I had often passed by where he and Hadley lived on 74 Rue Cardinal Lemoine, and likewise his other hangouts, like the cafe Deux Magots, the Closerie de Lilas, and le Jardin du Luxembourg as seen in the photos.   Some of his descriptions of Paris in the early 20’s remain true today, especially the Latin Quarter, which Hemingway would  easily be able to recognise today.

He was a poster boy of the “Lost Generation”, a phrase coined by his literary mentor and friend Gertrude Stein, who lived across the Luxembourg gardens on Rue Pleurus.  He liked to describe her apartment as being as “rich looking” as his was poor, and often looked forwarded to visiting her, knowing he would be warmed by multiple glasses of potent eau de vie, she always offered.

Hemingway apparently felt his years in Paris were some of his best and happiest.    One senses his nostalgia not only for Paris , but for Hadley, who he reportedly had wanted an apologetic letter to her included in the book, for all the pain he had caused.

His writing buddies  at that time included F Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound and James Joyce.    His recounts of Fitzgerald, who had just finished his monumental book The Great Gatsby are  enlightening and well portray the  obsessive personality traits of F Scott, and the early alcohol dependency of both of them.

Ernest Hemingway was born in 1899 in Oak Park , Illinois, a suburb of Chicago,  where his father was a physician and his mother a former operatic singer.  He was the second child and first son in a sibship of 5.

His father was described as  somewhat of a brutish man given to depressive periods and explosive anger; who would beat Earnest with a razor strap.   He was the one who introduced Ernest to the great outdoors and his love of game and sportive pursuits.

His mother for unexplained reasons would often dress little Ernest in girls clothing to extremes.   She was said to be very dominating and manipulative and had little appreciation of his writing career.  Hemingway never was close to her and often described her as a ” hateful bitch”, who he reportedly hated his whole life.

Instead of pursuing university studies, Hemingway started in journalism working for the local newspaper.    Because of an eye defect he was not able to be  an enlisted soldier, but was shipped to the war front in World War 1  in Italy, where he was an ambulance driver.

Gravely injured there, he was nursed back to health by a nurse eight years his senior, with whom he fell in love.  Unfortunately this nurse, Agnes von  Kurowsky,  whom he had planned on marrying, later rejected him in a letter saying she was marrying someone else.  These painful memories were fodder for his famous book For Whom The Bell Tolls.

Returning form the war zone, he started working for the Toronto Star, where he became their foreign correspondent.  Soon afterward, he met and married Hadley Richardson in 1921, and they both set off to Paris that year.    Their apartment on  Cardinal Lemoine was without running water, and without a private toilet  or bath, yet his recounts of their early days were joyous of being together and deeply in love.

In 1923, his first son Jack was born, nicknamed Bumby.   Ernest and Hadley’s life seemed idyllic and full of blissful marital promise, until 1926, when he met Pauline Pfeiffer, with  whom he started an affair.

Once Hadley became aware of his affair,  she separated and asked for a divorce.  In 1927, Hemingway married Pauline, who eventually gave birth to two more sons, Patrick and Gregory.

In 1928, Hemingway’s father committed suicide, which was a veritable turning point in Ernest Hemingway’s life.  Some theorists state that Earnest was consumed by guilt, as he had often wished he could have killed his father, but instead displaced the blame onto his mother for his father’s suicide.

From that time period, one can see a stark shift in his life; becoming a rebellious young man hell-bent on self-destruction through vicarious ways.   He became even more accident prone and suffered from multiple severe accidents, from a broken arm and  facial lacerations, to multiple concussions in the following years.

His restlessness and psychic disturbance plagued his personal life, undermining his second marriage in the same ways as the first.   His inability to maintain marital intimacy would soon become again apparent.

In the late 1930’s, he met Martha Gellhorn with whom he became involved with in another extramarital affair ,  resulting again in a painful divorce from Pauline.  Strangely enough, Martha, like Hadley, was a native of St Louis, and like Pauline, had worked for Vogue magazine.

Soon afterward,  Ernest and Martha moved to Cuba, and they were married in 1940.  History though would soon repeat itself in Hemingway’s inability to achieve any long lasting relationships.

In 1944 , while he was in London during World War II, he became infatuated with another woman named Mary Welsh, whom he reportedly asked to marry only after the 3 rd date and in 1946 she became his 4 th and last wife.

By this time Hemingway seemed totally immersed in swath buckling pursuits of violence and killing, camouflaged as hunting wild game in Africa, a fascination with bullfighting, and finally big game fishing in the florida Keys.

He was reportedly said to have remarked that “I spend a hell of a lot of time killing animals and fish, so I won’t kill myself”.  That statement would be extremely prophetic referring to his future demise.   Hemingway often mentioned his own intentions, in relation to his father’s suicide, saying: ” I will probably do the same”.

In 1954, Hemingway suffered his most serious injuries from two consecutive plane crashes. Having crashed into an African jungle thicket, a rescue plane sent  for him burst into flames, when he butted open the door to escape, suffering from another very severe concussion,  a fractured skull, amongst other  multiple internal organ injuries.

Continuously accident prone, he seemed drawn into dangerous and continuous swash buckling pursuits one after another.  Car and plane crashes, along with falls on his fishing boat left him undeterred, miraculously bouncing  back as if nothing severe had happened.

What was he trying to prove to himself and his world?  He had already been acclaimed as a successful writer.  He even received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.

Not only was Hemingway’s life  fraught with mental illness, but towards the end blatant physical illness, such as diabetes type 2 and hemochromomatosis that also debilitated him and contributed to his depressive slide.

He and Mary, in 1960 ,were living in Idaho, when his depression took on psychotic features.  He became paranoid, convinced that the “feds” were following him and wanted to kill him.  Despite medication and electro shock therapy, he continued to plummet in a very deep depression, where he felt he could no longer write.

On July 2, 1961 at his home, he committed suicide with his shotgun, finally fulfilling his prophetic remarks.  At first his death was said to have been accidental, and then later his wife revealed it was indeed a suicide.

The  genetic legacy of his father’s  and his own bipolar illness and alcoholism was passed down to his children and grandchildren.   Both sons, Jack and Gregory were said to have suffered from alcoholism and depression.

Gregory, the last born, had transgender issues , but tragically ended up marrying over 4 times, and had eight children, before he finally underwent a sex change to become  woman, calling himself Gloria.

Ernest’s grandchildren have also suffered from depression and bipolar illness, with his granddaughter Margaux  Hemingway, who was also bulimic, committing suicide in 1996.  Her sister Mariel  recently completed a film around her family’s tragic history of mental illness and pathology, even admitting that her father Jack had sexually abused her sisters Margaux and Joan.

When you look at this family’s tormented history, genetic tendencies of bipolar illness and alcoholism were tightly woven throughout.  If ever one had doubts about the strong  inheritance factors of both, this family should offer overwhelming evidence in favor.

Although genetics may predispose us to certain illnesses, how we see ourselves, how we cope with life’s difficulties and how we relate to other people is moulded  from our early relationship with our parents.

Given that Ernest Hemingway was deprived of having any real warmth , affection, and validation  from  either of his parents, one can understand his engulfing need to derive a sense of grandeur from all his machismo pursuits.

All of his over masculized bravado, from running with bulls to his appalling game hunting fetish, makes me think he was trying to feel a sense of power, and accomplishment, that was never mirrored back to him from his father.

Some theorists have wondered if he had gender issues himself, but I feel he was only trying to fulfill an overly macho image adopted from his father to prove what he believed to be a personification of  “manliness” that his father would approve.

The horrible relationship he had with his mother set the stage on how we would relate to future women in his life.  His abrupt abandonment from his first love Agnes, further fueled his ingrained fears of intimacy, which led to multiple incidences of infidelity.

His chronic accident prone personality probably was his own inner need to self-abuse and destruct, from deep-seated feelings of guilt, and self-effacement, all marvelously camouflaged by his narcissistic persona of bravado.

In the end, his flirting with death won, as he had often hinted of doing so by his own hands, like his father, brother and sister.   For what he was never able to achieve in life with his father, he was at least able to do in death, in a manner he thought his father would approve.

If Hemingway never was able to be faithful to any woman, he was at least faithful to his love and devotion of Paris, who was after all his perfect mistress;  willing to let him go and pursue his other loves in life, but always welcomed him back with open arms.

As Hemingway said, once we have loved Paris, she never leaves us, even if we leave the city to continue our lives elsewhere.  Throughout his life he did return often to his beloved city of light, who to this day still remembers his long ago presence,  like a celebrated adopted child of the city he grew to love.

I leave you with the prelude quoted in his book A Movable Feast:  “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris in a movable feast”.