Wives, Cats and a Yacht Reveal Papa’s Softer Side

By Nancy Pate

The importance of being Ernest Hemingway hasn’t faded. Fifty years after his death, he’s still with us in spirit as his works are read and analyzed. Papa’s boat, Papa’s wives and even Papa’s pets remain capable of reaching out to us from the past to tell us something about him and about ourselves. Three recent books about those subjects offer proof.

Award-winning writer Paul Hendrickson (Sons of Mississippi) takes an unconventional tack with Hemingway’s Boat: Everything He Loved, and Lost, 1934-1961 (Knopf), anchoring an engaging analysis of Hemingway to his love for his “fishing machine,’’ the 38-foot yacht he named Pilar.

As Hendrickson puts it in his prologue: “So it’s about such ideas as fishing, friendship, and fatherhood, and love of water, and what it means to be masculine in our culture ... and how the deep good in us is often matched only by the perverse bad in us, and – not least – about the damnable way our demons seem to end up always following us.’’

Hendrickson, forgoing the terse, laconic style of Hemingway for his own looping elegance, isn’t the first to point out that those demons arose from Papa’s past (his father’s suicide, for instance) and the flaws in his character. Hemingway cheated on his wives, belittled his friends and dealt awkwardly with his sons, especially the third – the troubled, cross-dressing Gregory (Gigi).

Hendrickson does not forgive the great man because of his great talent, but he does show “amid so much ruin, still the beauty,’’ and how he bravely engaged with life and was often at his best on Pilar.

Hendrickson interviewed Hemingway’s sons, read all the books and many of the thousands of letters Papa wrote and quotes liberally from these and other sources. Not as boat-struck as either author, I skimmed the complete guide to boat building and Pilar’s specs but found the rest of the book fascinating.

I had recently reread Hemingway’s memoir A Moveable Feast when The Paris Wife (Ballantine Books), Paula McLain’s best-selling novel, came out earlier this year. Written from the perspective of Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley Richardson, The Paris Wife is a romantic evocation of their meeting and courtship in Chicago in 1920, and then the next five years in Jazz-age Paris among the fabled “Lost Generation.’’

Many of the incidents in the novel – first encounters with F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein, Ernest’s struggles to claim his own voice, Hadley’s loss on a train of her husband’s manuscripts – were recounted by Hemingway in A Moveable Feast, so a tandem reading can double your enjoyment.

Hemingway was a great believer in finding the truth in fiction, and McLain’s sympathetic voicing of Hadley feels authentic. She was passionately in love with her younger husband, but her traditional upbringing and values were no match when the poisonous Pauline, soon to be the second of four Mrs. Hemingways, literally moved in on her marriage.

Pauline reluctantly retreated with young son Jack. And although she had regrets, she also felt that they would always have their Paris. “We got the best of each other.’’  
(If you read A Memorable Feast, you’ll know Hemingway felt much the same near the end of his life. In Hemingway’s Boat, Hendrickson writes that it was because Hadley “was his truest love, or at least his truest marriage’’ that Hemingway’s subsequent marriages were doomed from the start.

In real life – and in The Paris Wife – Ernest affectionately called Hadley “Feather Cat,’’ and in Carlene Brennen’s recently reissued Hemingway’s Cats (Pineapple Press), there are two felines similarly named.

Hemingway loved animals, especially cats, throughout his life. They brought out his softer side. At one point in Cuba, he counted 57 on the farm, writing philosophically, “One cat just leads to another ...”  The many photos in Brennen’s informative book testify to this. A favored black-and-white named Boise is shown taking a daily walk with Hemingway.

Hemingway enjoyed the company of cats when he was writing, claiming they gave him “valuable aid.” As to the term “Hemingway cat,’’ it generally refers to the many Key West cats with extra toes that still live at the Hemingway House, enchanting tourists and keeping away the rats. The polydactyl felines were thought by sailors to bring good luck, and those of us who have a Hemingway cat do consider ourselves fortunate.

I’m sure Papa would approve of my Giant Peach, who has enormous mitts, and he would dearly love my friends’ little Hemingway cat, appropriately named Hadley.  l

Nancy Pate is an author of southern-themed mysteries and a longtime book reviewer, including nearly two decades for the Orlando Sentinel. Her column appears courtesy of her books blog, “On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever,” located online at patebooks.wordpress.com.