Stuart B. McIver - Hemingways Key West

HEMINGWAYS
KEY WEST

SECOND EDITION

HEMINGWAYS
KEY WEST

SECOND EDITION

Stuart B. McIver

Pineapple Press, Inc.
Sarasota, Florida

Copyright 1993, 2002, 2012 by Stuart B. McIver

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McIver, Stuart B.
Hemingways Key West / Stuart B. McIver.2nd ed.
cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-56164-241-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Hemingway, Ernest, 18991961Homes and hauntsFloridaKey West. 2. Hemingway, Ernest, 18991961Homes and hauntsBahamasBimini Islands. 3. Hemingway, Ernest, 18991961Homes and hauntsCuba. 4. Bimini Islands (Bahamas)Social life and customs. 5. AmericansBahamasBimini IslandsBiography. 6. Authors, American20th centuryBiography. 7. Key West (Fla.)Social life and customs. 8. CubaSocial life and customs. 9. AmericansCubaBiography. I. Title.

PS3515.E37 Z74118 2001
813.52dc21
[B] 2001023495

e-book: 978-1-56164-649-4

Second Edition
10 9 8 7 6

Design by Robert Fleury
Printed in the United States of America

Many people deserve thanks for their insight, information, and encouragement during the many years this project took. Their help ranged from smoothing over a rough spot to contributing so much that this book couldnt have been completed without them. Here they are: Danilo Arrate, John Boisonault, Betty and Toby Bruce, Belkys Cedeno, Ruth Chados, Sir Michael Checkley, Jane Day, Ossie Davis, Gregorio Fuentes, Tom Hambright, Jeff Storm Harkavy, Rosemary Jones, John Klausing, Linda Larson, Hilary Hemingway, Lorian Hemingway, Mina Hemingway, Wright and Joan Langley, Michael Leech, Evadne Stewart Masters, Gail Morchower, Joan Morris, Jim Plath, Stephen Plotkin, Sylvia Robards, Gladys Ferrero Rodriguez, Carmen Roque, Carol and Edmund Sadowski, Bickford Sylvester, Jean Trebbi, Michael Whalton, Arthur Valladares, Jeff Gator Wilson, and Molly Wylly.

HEMINGWAYS
KEY WEST

SECOND EDITION

CHAPTER I

Ernest miller hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of the Windy City, as the cold, northern metropolis of Chicago was called without affection on those days when icy winds swept in from Lake Michigan. After World War I, he lived in Paris, where the rich intellectual and artistic climate was warm and inviting to a young writer. But the winters were cold and wet. In the spring of 1928, he sought out for the first time the heat of the islands in the streamthe Gulf Stream.

His goal that April was Floridas southernmost island, Key West. The ship bearing Ernest and his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, stopped briefly in Cuba, which lay on the south side of the stream. Key West lay roughly ninety miles away on the north side of the Gulf Stream.

The warm currents of the Gulf of Mexico accelerate as they flow through the narrows between Mexicos Yucatan Peninsula and the Florida Keys. The stream then turns east through the Florida Straits before veering north past the Bahama Islands and the fishing paradise called Bimini. Continuing their northern flow, the soothing waters of the stream eventually bring warmth to Bermuda, the British Isles, and such icy islands as Iceland and Greenland. However, the northern islands are not the ones that enthralled Hemingway.

Key West, Bimini, Cubathese are the three islands in the stream that claimed the allegiance of Hemingway for the final three decades of his life. Of the three, only Cuba lies south of the Tropic of Cancer, thus qualifying it as a tropical island. But both Key West and Bimini are generally regarded as tropical isles, partly because of their heat, their palm trees, and the beauty of the waters surrounding them. And partly because, in a phrase not known in Hemingways day, they were laid-back. These were easygoing, unconventional locales where a man could soothe a thirst, stroll around barefooted all year long, and go about his business free from the pressures of too much civilization.

Key West was and is a small town, as is Alice Town, the largest town on Bimini. Havana by contrast is a big, sprawling city, the largest in the Caribbean, known from early Colonial times as the Pearl of the Antilles. For his Cuban home, Hemingway chose to live not in the bustling, energetic capital but in San Francisco de Paula, a small town west of Havana.

In addition to year-round hot weather, all three islands had in common one major assetfishing. As a boy, Ernest turned to the streams of northern Michigan. Casting for freshwater fish tested his sporting skills. Catching the giant sea creatures of the Gulf Stream required much more than skill. It demanded strategy, strength, endurance, and knowledge of the behavior of the huge fish and the other ocean predators that might also be seeking the same game as the deep-sea angler. Fishing in the stream was for Hemingway a challenge, and he was a man who pursued challenge.

His biggest challenge, of course, was to reach for new heights in literature. His years on the islands were productive, but only two of his novels were about the sea. In one, The Old Man and the Sea, he achieved a masterpiece. As for the other, Islands in the Stream, we will never know how great it might have been. Published after his death, it lacked the final meticulous revision he brought to his best work. The reader has to settle for many wonderful passages, settings, and characters.

All three of his islands have changed since his death some four decades ago. But one thing has proved constant. The presence of Ernest Hemingway remains alive and well in Key West, Bimini, and Cuba, Hemingways islands in the stream.

CHAPTER II

Just the place for Ole Hem to dry out his bones. That was the recommendation John Dos Passos made to fellow novelist Ernest Hemingway. And, in fact, Hemingways bones could use a good drying out. He had spent another cold, wet winter in his apartment on Pariss Left Bank.

Key West was a perfect choice for a man with cold bones. The island had once been called Cayo Hueso, Spanish for Bone Key. It was supposedly the site of an ancient Indian massacre that had left its sands covered with sun-bleached skeletons. The bones had long ago been cleared out but part of the name stuck. Cayo Hueso was Anglicized into Key West.

The southernmost city in the United States, Key West was well placed to pour on all the heat the author could stand. It missed being a tropical island by less than a hundred miles, a whim of geography that did little to compromise the keys Caribbean spirit: laid-back, relaxed, tolerant.