My Brother, Ernest Hemingway

part II

Last month, in Part I of his biography, "My Brother, Ernest Hemingway," Leicester Hemingway examined in depth the first 25 years of the celebrated author's life. Writing with an intimacy and insight possible only to a member of the Hemingway household, he described Ernest's strait-laced Middle Western origin, his formative childhood years, the start of his journalistic career, and his first taste of battle on the Italian front in World War I, where he was wounded by enemy fire and by the rejection of his proposal of marriage to the Red Cross nurse who tended him (and who later became the model for Catherine Barkley, the heroine of "A Farewell to Arms"). Leicester also told of his brother's bizarre expulsion from the family on his 21st birthday, his subsequent marriage to Hadley Richardson, his European reporting assignments, the birth of his first son during a brief sojourn in America, and the publishing of his first books, "Three Stories and Ten Poems" and "In Our Time." At the beginning of Part II, we find Ernest back in Paris, on the brink of a marital breakup, and on the threshold of fulfilling Ford Madox Ford's prophecy of greatness.

Besides working on his own material that autumn of 1924, Ernest was periodically devoting time to Ford Madox Ford's Transatlantic Review. He worked as an unpaid associate editor, reading and rewriting manuscripts and, in turn, doing favors through the magazine for people who had helped him, like Gertrude Stein. Ernest and Bill Bird and Ivan Beede did much of the leg work around the magazine's headquarters. Ernest helped convince the others that Gertrude's The Making of Americans would be a fine piece to run as a serial. Ernest personally transcribed the first 50 pages of her only copy of the manuscript and then edited and proofed it so that it could reach a discerning public after lying around for years in Gertrude's apartment. The magazine also served as a launching pad for several of Ernest's stories.

Things were going very well for Ernest, in his home life as well as in his writing. Bumby was beginning to talk and Ernest was learning that a child could be more fun than fret. With wife and son he took off for Schruns in the Vorarlberg when good skiing weather set in. For months they were deep in the snow up there, working and enjoying the sports. Ernest wrote that his writing was going very well. In Our Time was out of print and bringing high prices, while his stories were being translated into Russian and German; he enclosed a picture of the group on skis by a hut where they had stayed.

The joyful climax of the trip had been at Madlinnhaus, one of the big huts of the Alpine Club, where a friend had brought telegrams saying that Boni and Liveright, the New York publishers, had taken In Our Time. Hadley wrote the family that Ernest's fishing story The Big Two-Hearted River was appearing in the opening number of This Quarter, an American and English magazine, and that the story of Manuel the bullfighter in The Undefeated was to be in Der Querschnitt, the March or April number.

Hadley's public relations work with our parents paid off to the extent that Father wrote and asked to see more of Ernest's work. Ernest's reply of March 20, 1925, was a calmly logical statement of his literary aims. He very much wanted Father's understanding and approval, but he had gained enough maturity to keep his emotions under control.

First he threw a straight ball. He said the reason he had not sent more copies of his work home was because Mother and Dad, having prejudged his work with a Puritanical viewpoint, had returned the copies of In Our Time. That had looked to him as if they did not want to see anything more.

He said what he was trying to do in all of his stories was to get across the feeling of actual life -- not just to depict it or to criticize it. He hoped that when anyone read his work he would actually experience the thing. He believed this could not be unless he put in the bad and the ugly as well as the beautiful. When Father saw some of his work that he didn't like, Ernest asked him to remember that he was sincere and was working toward a definite goal. Though some passage or story might seem ugly or hateful, our parents should realize that the next might be something they would like.

Then he thanked Dad for sending sporting magazines and reviews and said that though he lent them out regularly to other marooned sportsmen, he always got them back for his magazine file. He said he hoped to get in some good fishing in Spain, though for a while it had looked impossible. With a $200 advance against royalties from Boni and Liveright he was counting on it. He hoped the book would sell. His others were all out of print. Someone had stolen his only copy of In Our Time and when he had gone to the publishers he had found that every copy had been sold.

The spring and summer days of 1925 were a time of intense production. Ernest had a tremendous lot of work in progress, and the two things needed were time and money with which to live through the period so the work could get done.

At a time when funds were low, Ernest had a hunch one evening. Telling Hadley that he would be back shortly and to hold dinner until he returned, he put on his coat and went down to a gambling spot nearby where things were less rigged than elsewhere. "I had a kind of feeling. I don't know how to explain it," he said to me afterward. Putting a few francs into play, he soon ran them up until he had the equivalent of $50. "I cashed in then and came back upstairs to dinner, feeling very good. We'd won enough to live for another month and get more work done -- all in less than half an hour's time with the right hunch."

Ernest's first books, published in Finance, made only a few hundred dollars. But that spring, Scott Fitzgerald came to Paris as a successful young American writer. He had heard about Ernest, read some of his work, and wanted to talk with him. The two proceeded to think the world of each other, while occasionally testing each other's capacity for strong drink. Scott came as an unofficial representative of his publisher, Scribner's, though Ernest had already signed a contract with Boni and Liveright which contained an option for his next work.

By the summer of 1925, Ernest was deep into The Sun Also Rises, and was excited by the way the book was shaping up. This was the first serious novel of his career. He later told of writing the first draft in six weeks, though the revision required about five months. Its title was from Ecclesiastes and its motto Gertrude Stein's famous remark, "You are all a lost generation." The book captured the imagination of thousands of perceptive readers and made them feel they had a new understanding of the postwar youth of their day.

After publication in New York of In Our Time, clippings and reviews began coming in from all over. Ernest received more than 50 in one mail, and sent three from the most influential New York papers for our parents to read. He said he hoped they would arrange for the Oak Leaves or the Oak Parker to see the clippings so that the local reviewers would hear that, in New York at least, he was not considered a bum. There had been a long article on him, and information about Hadley and Bumby, with a picture, in the November issue of Arts and Decoration, and he thought it might interest the family. He hoped his book would sell well in Chicago and Oak Park because he wanted the people he knew to see what he was doing, no matter what their opinion. He said he thought Dad would like the fishing story Big Two-Hearted River and that both he and Mother might like Cat in the Rain.

At that time, Ernest was working swiftly and surely on The Torrents of Spring in a move that might bring Boni and Liveright to reject this new manuscript on which they had an option. If this happened, Ernest would be free to choose another publisher, which he wanted very much to do. He wanted to be free to go to Scribner's, where Maxwell Perkins was an editor, and where Scott Fitzgerald had been given such a good deal. Scribner's would take a manuscript like The Torrents of Spring, which spoofed the style of Sherwood Anderson and some other people, to get Boni and Liveright to give up its option.

Writing from Schruns in the Alps on December 14, he gave the family a preview of things to come. Pauline Pfeiffer, a friend of My Brother, Ernest Hemingway (continued) Hadley's, was coming for Christmas and Dos Passos was in Morocco on an assignment for Harper's magazine and would not be back until February. Then they all planned to go to Munich together. They would fly over the Alps, land on a high mountain plateau -- in the Selvretta -- and ski down from there. It was a new stunt people were trying that year, and they would be among the first.

Ernest's plan to make a shift to Scribner's worked and he got an excellent contract with them. That spring Torrents was published and in the fall The Sun Also Rises came out in a large American edition.

What Ernest did not tell our parents at that time was that he and Hadley had separated. He was not about to break that news before it became absolutely necessary. He continued to work well despite the emotional misery he was going through that winter. Some of the stories he was sweating out, phrase by phrase, will stand as examples of emotional honesty as long as men continue to read.

Our parents, when they finally read The Sun Also Rises, were as bewildered and shocked as convent girls visiting a bawdy house. Their reading of it at all was as unlikely as such a visit, except that their son was the author. They did not know what to make of the scenes and characters in the book. Their emotions were thoroughly shaken and life at home, I remember, was like trying to walk on empty egg shells without cracking any. The volume was referred to as "that book" in horrified tones.

On February 5, Ernest wrote to our parents from Switzerland. He launched into the subjects he had avoided for some time. He said he had not answered Mother's letter about the Sun book because he had been angry. It was foolish, he had decided, to write angry letters, and worse than foolish to write such letters to one's own mother. He said it was natural for Mother not to like the book and that he was sorry she had read it if it caused her pain or disgust.

On the other hand, he assured them he was in no way ashamed of it, except in that he might have failed to portray accurately the people about whom he had written, or might have failed to make them alive for the reader. He was sure the book was unpleasant, though not all unpleasant, and surely no more unpleasant than the true inner lives of some of the best families in Oak Park. He asked Mother to remember that in such a book the worst of lives was shown, while in life there was a lovely side for the public and also the kind of thing he himself had observed behind closed doors. He asked Mother, as an artist, to realize that a writer should not have to defend his choice of subject, but only his treatment of that subject. He said that the people about whom he had written were indeed burned out, hollow and smashed, and that that was how he had tried to show them. He was ashamed only if he had failed to show truly the people he had tried to present. In future books, and he believed he would write others, the subjects might be different -- but they would all be human.

Ernest then broke the news about his family life. He and Hadley had been living apart since the previous September, though they were still good friends. She and Bumby were both happy and well. Ernest had ordered all profits from The Sun Also Rises paid to Hadley, and the book was doing well. It had gone into five printings for a total of 15,000 copies as of January, he said, and had been published in England under the title Fiesta. He could not resist pointing out that Hadley would soon be back in the States, so the family would finally see Bumby on the profits of Sun.

He told them he was getting letters from Vanity Fair, Cosmopolitan and other magazines asking to see his work. But he was not going to be publishing anything for a few months, except for some stories already sold to Scribner's, because it was a crucial time in his life and it was most important to him to write in tranquility. He wanted to write as well as he could without thinking of money.

That spring of 1927 there was no talk of our older brother bandied around the dinner table. From the murmur and fade of voices behind the closed doors of the front bedroom one night, I overheard Mother say, "It's the shame and the suffering . . ."

Then Father had said, "No. It's the disgrace. I'd rather see him in his grave."

One morning, while Dad and I were digging worms for bait, he said, "You know, of course, that your brother has brought great shame on our family by divorcing Hadley, don't you?"

"No, I didn't," I answered truthfully, and with interest. "When did that happen?"

"That was last spring. And it's all over now."

And then, maybe because I had not seemed properly shocked by the big news, Father added, ". . . Oh, the shame of it -- Ernest and Hadley divorced! There hasn't been a divorce in the family for generations -- for 70 years."

In more than seven pages of longhand (that he called the longest letter he'd written since he learned to use pen and ink), Ernest tried with painstaking care to explain to Dad the divorce and his marriage that summer to Pauline Pfeiffer. It is a great credit to his diplomacy and his sincerity that he was able to smooth things over to the point where he and the family were again exchanging news, though in fairly terse dispatches.

On October 20, 1927, he wrote that he was working hard on a new book. He had some 30,000 words done. Bumby was living with Ernest and Pauline while Hadley fixed up her new apartment. Ernest said it was wonderful having him back and then apologized for not writing longer letters, explaining that his work on the book kept him feeling sucked pretty well dry. He hoped to finish it by Christmas.

The book he was working on then was Men Without Women, which Scribner's brought out the following fall. Hugh Walpole, discussing The Killers, one of the short stories in it, said, "We have no short-story writer alive in England as good as the author of The Killers, but then neither has America."

The "Key West period" for Ernest begins in the public mind with a mental picture of a bronzed giant fighting huge fish, then heading inshore for the roughest, toughest bar to celebrate, possibly pausing somewhere to beat out an account of the catch, using words growled from one corner of his mouth. It was never like that. And the contrast between the public image and the actual beginning is striking.

Ernest and Pauline arrived from Europe early in 1928 when they knew Pauline was pregnant. To give Pauline a chance to be as healthy as possible, with lots of sun and rest, they headed for Florida, determined to go to its southern tip.

Driving a yellow Model A Ford convertible coupe, they made their way down over the bridges and ferry crossings and finally reached Key West. This southernmost town in the United States was so far removed from the rest of Florida that the great real estate boom and bust had never reached it.

That spring, Ernest and Pauline rested, fished and saw the wild Everglades and unspoiled Keys for the first time. Ernest was writing well. They were enjoying the feeling of being away from everyone who knew them or cared what they did. And then their mail caught up with them. They had not told the family their plans. Letters had crossed the Atlantic, were readdressed and sent back to the States, and finally reached Ernest in Key West. That was how he learned that Dad and Mother were in St. Petersburg. On April 10 he wired them there that he had just found out they were in Florida from a letter forwarded from Paris. He My Brother, Ernest Hemingway(continued) invited them to come down for a few days' fishing, explaining that he had a car and some tackle.

The telegram was so openly friendly that our parents immediately caught a train down. They met Pauline, who was a wonderful person; everyone liked her. They all took pictures of one another and agreed that everyone in the family was pretty fine after all.

On April 23, Ernest wrote to Father back in Oak Park, saying it had been grand seeing him and Mother and that Pauline had enjoyed it tremendously. He said he was working hard and hoped to stay in Key West until the book was finished. He had some fine fishing, had landed a 63-pound tarpon and a five-foot barracuda. He had caught a small barracuda on the fly rod. He said he and Pauline had been living on snappers and grunts. He was going out after tarpon that night, and the night before he had gone out about sundown and had taken a 10-pound jack that had fought well.

Ernest was working smoothly on A Farewell to Arms at that time. They went to visit Pauline's family in Piggott, Arkansas. From there, Ernest wrote to Father on June 1 that he was anxious to get the trip over and get back to work on his book. He said he had 238 pages done, nearly 200 written at Key West.

Ernest wanted to know when Dad planned to go North. He hoped he might come to Oak Park with Pauline for a few days during the next two weeks, and then go on up to Walloon. The baby was due June 27.

That fall Ernest and Pauline stayed at Piggott until quail-hunting time, and then headed down for Key West with Patrick [the new baby], savoring the good sights and feelings they had experienced the spring before in the Keys. A Farewell to Arms was in the rewrite stage.

In Oak Park it was a time of harassments for our father. He had been thoroughly clipped in the unforeseen bust of the Florida real estate boom. He had lost the savings he had invested in land which suddenly had no resale value. The year before he had successfully passed the Florida State medical examinations and he had looked forward to retiring there in a moderate practice. Then this prospect disappeared. Collections on current bills owed him were far behind.

In the autumn Dad suspected that he had diabetes, and when he didn't like living with the suspicion any longer, he underwent some laboratory tests. Sure enough, he had "a touch of the sugar," as I heard him tell a colleague over the phone. But like most physicians, he was slow to put himself in the care of another doctor. No one knows why, but he put off any treatment. In the course of several days of cold, rainy, late fall weather, he underwent a serious loss of morale. On the morning of December 6, Dad took some personal papers and mementos down to the furnace and burned them. Then he went upstairs again, closed his bedroom door, got out my grandfather's Smith & Wesson revolver, and shot himself just behind the ear.

Within minutes the house was in an uproar, with policemen, relatives and strangers moving about and talking to each other as though we residents had no right to be there. Carol was reached by telephone at school. As soon as she got home, she did the most sensible thing anyone could do. She suggested that a telegram be sent to Ernest in care of his publisher in New York. This message, reaching Ernest while he was on a train between New York and Arkansas, allowed him to make a swift change of direction and reach Chicago a few hours later.

When Ernest arrived, he took charge of the situation and soon had the necessary funeral and other arrangements made. Mother was incapacitated by shock, and was able to make decisions only after a day of sedation.

Father's impending funeral provided a situation most of us would have liked to avoid. Ernest took me aside and pointed out some of the realities and his own interpretation as soon as he had a chance.

"At the funeral, I want no crying. You understand, kid? There will be some others who will weep, and let them. But not our family. We're there to honor him for the kind of life he lived, and the people he taught and helped. And if you will, really pray as hard as you can, to help get his soul out of purgatory. There are plenty of heathens around here who should be ashamed of themselves. They think it's all over, and what they don't seem able to understand is that things go right on from here.

"Now ... what about Grandfather's gun, the revolver that was used? Will you get it for me? You and Mother will have to go to the police, or the Cook County sheriff. But request that it be returned to the family, as a historical keepsake. It will take time, but you're going to be here. I won't be able to follow this through from down South. But that's the only gun I want. You can have all the others. And as his sons, we divide these things by agreement. All right with you? Then that's settled. When you get the gun, have Mother ship it to me. Now remember what I said about the funeral." I nodded, and was dismissed.

When Ernest and his family first went to Key West, Ernest rented an apartment in a building directly across from the present post office. In the next four years he and Pauline lived in at least three other houses. They were trying various parts of the island before finally settling on one spot.

The spot was finally located when Ernest bought the old Spanish house at 907 Whitehead Street, just across from the Key West lighthouse where the commandant of the Coast Guard lives. This house had possibilities, Pauline said. And she proceeded to clean it, rewire it and build an extension to the rear. What later became the pool house, with showers and dressing rooms and a laundry downstairs, also had an upstairs workroom for Ernest. This was separated from the main house, but could be reached by the catwalk off the second-story balcony.

Ernest soon settled into the relatively quiet life of Key West. But like any shrewd animal in a new place, he had to explore the surrounding area. The great bay of Florida stretched to the northward, the uninhabited Keys stretched to the west, and out beyond them lay the Dry Tortugas, the tip end of the barrier reef that curves down for more than 200 miles west of Miami.

In Bra Saunders' boat with its big, slow-chuffing Palmer engine, and two fishing chairs made by mounting captains' chairs in the cockpit, the first trips began. Fishing for tarpon was excellent in the spring, as Ernest had discovered the year earlier. Through the Calda Channel, that winds north and east of the main northwest channel into Florida Bay, Ernest and Pauline, Charles Thompson and his wife, Noreen, and Bra Saunders went out trolling in the evenings, season after season.

Patrick and later Gregory, who was born in 1931, were usually left with Ada, the nurse who had charge of them during most of their waking hours when they were young. Pauline would pack the frosted bottles of gin, plenty of Key limes, sugar and a thermos of ice water. Then they would load into their old Ford roadster and be off to the docks.

Pauline had a marvelous sense of humor, a petite figure, and was an amazingly good sport. Charles Thompson was an all-around friend as well as sportsman. He ran the hardware store of the Thompson enterprises on the island. A large, well-built man with a broad fore head and the calm manner of a business executive, he was the most amiable, down-to-earth member of the group. Noreen Thompson was an outspoken Georgia girl with a ready wit. Bra Saunders was a true conch. Of English background, his family had originally settled on Green Turtle Cay in the Bahamas. Bra had the pale, watery eyes that come My Brother, Ernest Hemingway(Continued) from staring into the sun-glare for years on end. He was thin and wiry and would take any chance offered.

Ernest dominated the group. He was slender in those days, but his blue-striped Basque fishing shirts were always stretched at the seams over his immense, barrelchested frame. He never bothered to put his belt through the loops of his khaki pants. Instead, he flipped it around his middle, below the loops. As one horrified local lady declared. "He always looked like he'd just pulled his pants on and planned to pull them off again any second."

After A Farewell to Arms was published, just before the great market crash of 1929, Ernest decided it was time to break new ground and explore more territory. His period of sport fishing off the Cuban coast was about to begin.

Ernest first heard about the great fishing on the other side of the Stream from Josey Russell. Joe had made the run between Cuba and the Keys regularly for a number of years, carrying profitable cargo that gurgled. He had guts beyond any mere conception of the word. Harry Morgan of To Have and Have Not was modeled after Josey.

So Ernest chartered the Anita, Josey's 34-foot fishing boat. They crossed the Stream together and fished out of Havana, using Cojímar and the Mariel and Bahía Honda as bases for stretches of hard fishing. They bought bait from the local boatmen and fished the Stream to the east or the west depending on the reports of local catches, depths and concentrations.

Among Ernest's first friends in Havana were Grant and Jane Mason. Their friendship survived great changes in all their lives. Grant was then local manager of Pan American Airways, during Pan Am's beginning years. A large, strikingly handsome man, he had inherited a fortune, but was determined to make something of his life.

His bride, Jane, was a society belle from the Kendall and Lee families. Her grave beauty had a Madonnalike quality accentuated by a middle part in her smoothed-back auburn hair. She had large eyes and fine features.

Jane liked to drink and managed it well -- an accomplishment Ernest openly admired. For sheer excitement, they used to enjoy "cross-country runs" in her small, imported sports car. These runs were somewhat removed from crosscountry driving in the usual sense.

Before lunch, they would have plenty of daiquiris and then take off. The object was to see how long whoever was passenger could ride without saying "slow down" or "watch out." The driver was free to cut away from the road and actually head out cross-country. Ditches, fences, hedges and thorn patches were legitimate hazards. So were cattle, egrets, royal palms and fallen logs. Ox carts, parked cars or corners of houses counted one point each. But they couldn't be smacked -- only grazed.

Jane and Ernest would each take a turn driving. The game lasted until one called a halt. It was a primitive version of "chicken" played in some of the most rugged terrain imaginable.

"Ernest was always a gentleman about letting me win," Jane recalled. "But I lost as many times as I won because when he drove he'd take off his glasses, in case of solid impact. He was awfully nearsighted, so half the time he didn't know enough to be scared, and I was terrified."

Not even the sport fishing could keep Ernest in Cuba every season. Between bouts with the first hundred marlin, he lived in Key West, visited Kansas City again for the birth of his third son, Gregory Hancock, and hunted quail in Arkansas near Pauline's relatives in Piggott. In the fall he liked the L Bar T Ranch in Wyoming for big game.

Out West in the fall of 1930, while elk hunting, Ernest's open Ford was forced off the road by an oncoming vehicle. As the car turned over, his right arm was pinned back by the top of the windshield and fractured badly, the bone sticking out of the muscle. There was an agonizing ride of more than 40 miles of rough road to reach the hospital. Ernest kept his right hand clamped tightly between his knees and with his left hand pulled back on the fractured arm to keep the jagged bone ends from chewing up more meat. Nevertheless, quite a bit of muscle had to be cut away. Setting the arm properly was very difficult because the muscles kept pulling the bone ends past each other. The bones were finally notched and spliced with tendon, after about 10 tries.

Soon word got around that Ernest was in the Billings, Montana, hospital and a serious, well-read young reporter rushed over. He was so impressed with the authenticity of The Sun Also Rises that he was positive its author must have suffered the loss of part, if not all, of his genitalia. He figured this was his opportunity to get the real story, a chance he could not pass up, no matter how indelicate the subject. As the reporter told me the story, years afterward, Ernest let him stammer around in embarrassment. Finally he blurted out the question pointblank. Almost convulsed with laughter, Ernest flipped back the bedsheet, revealing everything he was born with. The flustered reporter walked off with a rare literary anecdote and a thoroughly exploded rumor.

By the autumn of 1931, the first motion picture version of A Farewell to Arms had been completed. The studio insisted that the picture's premiere be held in Piggott, which was then known as Ernest's home. The studio undoubtedly hoped for favorable publicity. But in this it ran into a solid wall of frustration. Ernest took a dislike to the advance arrangements when he learned of them and calmly declined to attend the first showing.

The week of the film's premiere, I arrived in Piggott for some quail hunting. Ernest's invitation was not the kind you ignored. It had been accompanied by a check that more than covered the train fare and six boxes of shells. And it turned out to be a memorable week.

The first night there I asked how the picture had turned out.

"Tell you what, Baron. You go. Take Ginny with you."

I went with Pauline's sister Virginia. Later when he asked how certain sequences had been treated, we told him about it. I asked why he didn't go see it.

"Nope. Bad luck to see the picture now."

Next morning we had a large breakfast before sunup, and got the dogs into the back of the car. Bumby had a sore throat and was running a temperature, so he couldn't come. We headed for a farm owned by a friend a few miles away. The road was plain mud. When the sun began thawing the frozen muck, we skidded and splashed along.

"It'll be plenty bad by this afternoon when we head back," Ernest said. "But by then we may have had the kind of shooting that will make us feel good."

When we reached the far end of a large field, we pulled the car out of the ruts and let the two dogs loose. They headed down the field, the young dog racing out far and wide.

There in the early December chill, moving ever closer to the line of bare trees ahead, the older dog suddenly froze, holding her point. We had about 30 yards to come up, and Ernest motioned me out as we advanced through the stubble toward the dog.

We were almost even with her when a big quail and then another whirred out of the sparse grass and made for a brush pile near the trees. Ernest fired and got one. He fired again and then I fired. The second bird flew on, curved, and went down on the far side of the brush.

"Tough luck, kid. But we got half of them. Now see what a good animal can do." He waved his hand upward and My Brother, Ernest Hemingway (continued) the dog took a great jump ahead and then commenced crisscrossing over where the first bird had fallen. She was back in a minute, all wet with moving fast through the grass and stubble. She held the bird gently across her mouth.

"Good dog." Ernest took the bird, twisted off its head, threw it on the ground, and watched the dog chomp the head as he pocketed the bird. Then we reloaded. He talked on as we moved toward the far line of trees.

"I think you shot behind that second one. Try a little more lead, and always figure where you would go if you were the bird. Most of the time they'll break for the nearest cover. That's not necessarily the cover away from you. So think like the bird does, and you'll get more game. Also the hunting becomes more exciting. There, she's on another point."

By lunchtime when we stopped to get out the sandwiches, we'd skirted several swamps, climbed a number of fences, jumped some very large ditches, and taken 14 birds.

The next day started out even better. The air was colder and the ground stayed frozen until 10 o'clock in the morning. By then we were hunting over farms near the big river and we had another dog with us. He was a lovely red setter that had been raised by Ernest's brother-in-law, Carl Pfeiffer.

Over toward the Mississippi there were stretches of flooded bottomland that had made the high ground invaluable to the young birds that had hatched the previous spring. These youngsters didn't have all the survival sense of adults. But they had the same needs. And in their eagerness to crowd the ditch-crowns and levees and high briar patches, they were fair game.

"You take one ditch, I'll take another, Baron. We'll meet at intersections. But watch the dog. He'll teach you when I'm not there." Ernest grinned and moved off. I knew the dog wasn't the only one under observation.

Every once in a while I'd hear his 12-gauge double make a "blam" in the still air. Most of the time he only fired once. I was shooting my 20-gauge single, and the second day the birds either flew more steadily, or I was leading them just right. The sound of my own gun seemed a shameful racket on such a lovely day. But the birds whirred enticingly, and every one fell with a satisfying grace, the small downy feathers floating off in the breeze.

"Let the dog make all the decisions. He's hunted more than you have," Ernest said when we met at a lateral earthwork farther along.

"When you can drop something cleanly that is trying to get away, or catch it when it is fighting to tear loose, you get that old, primitive sensation. You feel it, too, don't you, kid?"

"Yes, but not always. Sometimes I want them to get away."

"Not when you're hungry. But maybe I'm more eager for the catch than the eating. It's better to feel it than to analyze it, I can tell you that."

The third day we tried a tougher terrain. Though it had many thorn hedges, it was reported to be full of birds. Sure enough, the birds were there. In one briar patch they were so thick we smelled them, too.

"You get that, Baron?" Ernest was inhaling, a far-off look in his eyes.

"Ummmmm. Like birds dusting, but kind of more damp?"

"That's it. You've been close before." He lifted his head, eyes closed. "They're over there." He motioned over toward the right. There the three dogs had converged on a patch of briars tinged with brown where the frost had hit them. The leaves beneath the thorns made it impossible to see more than a foot into the tangle.

As the dogs moved inward, a great explosion suddenly made us snap-shoot, reload and shoot again as the big quail continued to whir out of that one incredible patch of briars.

Then there was silence. The dogs began feeling their way through the undergrowth, scuffling for wounded birds and mouthing others to retrieve. I went in gingerly, tripped, and fell forward heavily while trying to reach one at a spot which the dogs were already well beyond. I got the bird, and broke off some thorns in my legs reaching it. Ernest watched, noting the dogs and me, and remembering where birds were downed on both sides. When I came out, bird in hand, sweating, and happy beyond reason at reaching in for a hard one and claiming it through all hazards, Ernest was having a quick one from his flat silver flask.

"You saw that one go down and the dogs missed it completely? Good hunting, Baron ... It gives me a lift right here," he patted his groin. "Feeling them take off and then reaching out and pulling them down again does something." He turned away. I saw the flask tip up. Then he let out his breath like a man who has just slaked his thirst with something better than just liquid. He silently offered me some. I shook my head and he put the flask away. We were brothers there on the high ground, whatever situations life and the world might produce elsewhere.

In the first four years that Ernest was living in Key West, he and Pauline had visited the Pfeiffer home in Arkansas every year, had been in Kansas City for the birth of each of their two sons, and had managed time to hunt big game out West. They had been in the Florida Keys during the best winter weather and repeatedly had the best spring and summer fishing there, too.

Max Perkins, Ernest's editor at Scribner's, was a good companion and visitor on the fishing trips. But Max was more mature than Ernest, and Ernest was never very content with life unless he had a kid brother -- real or surrogate -- nearby. He needed someone he could show off to as well as teach. He needed uncritical admiration. If the kid brother could show a little worshipful awe, that was a distinct aid in the relationship. I made a good kid brother when I was around, but I couldn't be around regularly.

Jane Mason became another "kid brother" as the summer expeditions to Cuba for marlin fishing developed. When Jane and Grant adopted two boys, Ernest became the godfather of Anthony, the older. And as though to set an example in godfatherly ways, he remained faithful to his charge throughout his life.

In 1932 Ernest began the development of another friendship that was to have a profound influence on his production, as well as to provide him with another spiritual younger brother. This was a relationship he developed with Arnold Gingrich. Contrary to the belief that these two were old wartime buddies, Arnold and Ernest did not meet until 1933. They had corresponded for many months before that, when Arnold was editing and doing most of the writing for Apparel Arts, a beautiful and visually exciting magazine published in Chicago.

Arnold was near Ernest's age, had spent his boyhood in Michigan where his father was a woodcarver of great skill. And Arnold loved trout fishing with a passion equal to Ernest's.

In the early Thirties Ernest was about to reach a popular, nonliterary audience for the first time through a new magazine [Esquire], "with plenty of cojones," about to be launched under Arnold's editorship. On a midwinter trip to New York, where Arnold had also gone on business, the two met for the first time, and over drinks discussed fishing and writing, until Ernest had to hurry back to his hotel and pack to catch his train.

Regarding the matter of Arnold's projected quarterly, Ernest said he had two policies about selling stuff. If the publication was a noncommercial one and published in the interest of letters, he would give the stuff away or be paid a nominal fee. But he had often found (continued on page 136)My Brother, Ernest Hemingway(continued from page 48) out, in asking for the return of such a manuscript, that the pure-hearted lover of letters would have sold the manuscript for anywhere from 10 to 100 times what he had paid Ernest for the story or article. And Ernest would then have to tear out the pages of the required material from the journal and use them for a manuscript when it came to publishing a book of stories. He said his second policy was to make all commercial magazines pay the absolute top price they had ever paid anybody. This made them appreciate a man's stuff, and then they realized what a fine writer he was.

Arnold had made a definite offer of no changes in copy, and of an advance payment of $250 for any single article Ernest might care to write. Ernest replied that he had several times within the past 12 months needed $250 in cash badly. Yet he knew he could always have received many times that for writing a piece such as Arnold had suggested. As for stories, Ernest said the only unpublishable ones were so because they would get the new magazine into trouble with the authorities. Besides, he wanted to keep a certain amount of posthumous work around to pay for his funeral expenses, since he did not carry insurance of any kind except liability. So where did that bring them? To the fact that $250 was nice pocket money but nothing serious to negotiate about, Ernest said.

He told Arnold he planned to go across to Cuba in a small boat on April 12 to fish that coast for about two months, depending on whether or not he went to Spain to make a motion picture. If the movie arrangements did not work out, he would fish for four months and then go to Spain. And if he suddenly needed $250, he would knock off and write a piece and would wire Arnold, if that were agreeable. He planned to go from Spain to Tanganyika and then to Abyssinia to hunt. He would be back the following January, he thought.

In connection with Ernest's coming African trip, Arnold urged him to count on writing four magazine pieces during the coming year and promised equal payment for each, to be paid in advance if Ernest wished. He suggested the articles be done in the form of letters which were easy to write and would cut into Ernest's creative time in a minimal way.

That spring of 1933 there were many plans under way and time was running out faster than Ernest would have liked. He had to make a choice.

"What about the movie? Do you think you'll make it this summer?" Pauline wanted to know.

"From what Milestone [Lewis Milestone, a director] wrote, we will have to wait before deciding. Now there isn't time," Ernest said. "We can try again next year. It's too late in the season now. Better to have the African trip well organized than to try to do both things only half as well as they should be done."

Jane Mason had visited Ernest and Pauline in Key West, bringing Major Dick Cooper with her. Ernest and Dick had gone bird shooting on some of the uninhabited Keys to the westward where there was an unusual variety of bird life. They got along well together and, before he left, Major Cooper gave Ernest practical information on equipping himself properly for an African expedition to the highlands.

Major Cooper had owned a coffee shamba in Tanganyika, and had hunted extensively throughout British East Africa. He had been decorated for bravery in World War I, had moved in sporting circles, and knew a good deal of what there was to know about big-game hunting in the best areas still left on the continent. He recommended that Ernest get Philip Percival, a former game ranger who was then a professional hunter, as his guide. Mr. P., as he was soon to be known, was as reticent and full of understatement as he was capable and knowledgeable. Through Mr. P. came information that guns, especially big-game rifles, were to be had at a moderate rental.

"I'll own my own guns. I don't want to rent them," Ernest said. He was damned if he was going to become fond of any firearm that might save his life, and then have to return it to the owner.

Ernest also invited his friend Charles Thompson from Key West to be his guest for the months to come. Charles was enthusiastic. He had proved himself as a fisherman and bird shot. He wasn't a literary man; he was a good sport, brave, and one who would enjoy the excitement without getting on Ernest's nerves. Charles' wife Lorraine had teaching commitments, but it was arranged that she would come over in the spring and meet them all in Palestine. With Charles and Pauline, the expedition was bound to be exciting and a success. The children were to be left with relatives, the nurse remaining in charge of details. For the first time since their marriage, Ernest and Pauline knew they were going on an adventurous trip with minimum worries and the chance of maximum enjoyment. They wanted to see Spain again and planned to stay until the conclusion of the feria of Pilar in October.

Both Pauline and Charles Thompson had plenty of things to look after, so they stayed in Key West awhile. Early in April, Ernest went over to Havana in Joe Russell's boat. When he got there, he found the big fish were not running yet. He used the time to work on his novel, and to write some short stories, disciplining himself to getting up at five o'clock in the morning and working until at least 10 o'clock, and frequently until noon. He was going good and, several weeks later, when the fish began to show along the edge of the Stream, he was ready for them, having just put in a long period of working at the desk in his fourth-floor room at the hotel Ambos Mundos on Obispo Street.

By the end of May, Ernest had taken 29 marlin and had run into more fish and luck in one three-day period than he'd known anyone else ever to experience, taking seven one day on one rod. When he told me about that day the following summer, he was still ecstatic.

"Think of it, Baron," he said, "seven huge ones, all of them blues and running to a good medium size -- between 120 and 250 pounds. I fought each one absolutely alone, with Carlos helping around the cockpit, of course. Caught a hell of a chill, from sweating and being cooled by the wind. My throat gave me hell for three days. But I still think it may have been a world's record."

By the end of July, with the Cuban piece written and pictures arranged for, and the trip to Europe and Africa shaping up swiftly, Ernest was in high gear. He was excited at the prospect of traveling, and of covering some old ground with a fresh point of view gained from five years of writing, hunting, fishing and family raising entirely in the United States and Cuba.

By November, when Ernest and Pauline arrived in Paris from Spain, there were a number of small and cheerful surprises. At Sylvia Beach's bookshop Ernest had a chance to see the first copies of Winner Take Nothing, which had just been shipped over by Scribner's. He liked the jacket which he had not seen before, since he'd had to correct proofs by cable and had been out of touch with book-production matters.

The final two weeks in France were hectic. Ernest was busy collecting the things needed for the months ahead and writing a third piece for Esquire. After a final round of parties, the expedition headed for the south of France and a breather on the boat that would take them to East Africa.

South of Cairo, the trip itself was a revelation. Ernest had taken a number of travel and reference books with him, but they had left great blank areas. In discussing his feelings when he finally reached the highlands of British East Africa, Ernest later said that nothing he had read really gave him an accurate idea of the realities of the country. The plains were immense, he said, and the wonderful animal life was as full of vitality as it must have been thousands of years ago.

The thing Ernest and Pauline and Charles Thompson felt most when they arrived was the altitude. They had been on the sea for 17 days, and the change had been abrupt. Ernest's energies were lagging and he declared he had no pep to write. It took some overlong nights of sleep to catch up. At night they used two blankets and even felt cool in the sunlight with the wind moving over the plains. In their first week Ernest had taken good heads of Thomson's and Grant's gazelles, as well as kongoni and impala. Charles was shooting well, too. Pauline, nicknamed "Poor Old Mama," did a great deal of watching and constituted the cheering section.

Ernest did not know it yet, but he was by then seriously ill with amoebic dysentery. However, late in December he was heading after kudu, and then wanted to follow up with lions, buffalo and rhino.

Ernest found he was holding his weight, even with the dysentery and the routine of getting up at five in the morning and moving fast on his feet the whole day. He reported weighing over 200 pounds again, but said he was so dead tired he could hardly write a letter, much less a chunk of reading matter. In six weeks Ernest expected to finish the safari. Afterward he wanted to go down to the East African coast and fish. They planned to head for Pemba, Zanzibar, and the coast near Mombasa to try for the huge sailfish that Zane Grey had reported as running to tremendous lengths in that area.

In the next three weeks, Ernest got his lions, rhino and buffalo. He also got jolted, thoroughly and completely, by the dysentery. Dosed so heavily with quinine and emetine that he swore he couldn't make his head go properly, he began thinking out some of his best stories, and wrote a batch of mail to catch up with the correspondence that had finally reached the Nairobi address.

The shooting on the Serengetti Plain had been tremendous. Ernest was very fond of his .30-06 Springfield rifle. He had used it out West a good deal on elk and antelope. Now, shooting with heavier loads, he had successfully killed his two buffalo and all his lions with the same rifle. He had come to have tremendous faith in its accuracy and shocking power, even on the most dangerous African game.

By the time the shooting was finished in the highlands, Ernest and Pauline had persuaded Philip Percival to take a break from the dangerous game circuit where he was the expert, and join them for a few weeks of big-game fishing on the coast. There Charles and Ernest could be teachers instead of students and the entire party looked forward to it.

Catching the liner Gripsholm on its way back to Europe from a tour to India, the Hemingway party had an easy time. When the boat stopped at Haifa, they picked up Lorraine Thompson who had come to meet them. The big boat was fast and cool and had a swimming pool. In Paris again, Ernest developed his films, both still and motion picture, and sent away illustrations to Esquire with very specific instructions as to how certain pictures were to be run. He wanted to be sure that no hasty reader would get the impression that he had first photographed game and then killed it.

Writing candidly to Arnold, he said he hoped the new magazine was making money, because he personally was broke and it was a pain to be writing such good stuff and getting chicken feed for it. In these letters he was giving how-to information that had cost him many thousands of dollars to learn. Besides that, he was dreaming of getting the kind of boat he really wanted. Such a boat would cost $7000.

By the time the expedition returned to Key West early in April the good news was there as well. Arnold had sent a check for $3000 as an advance for the next 10 letters. With that and what he was able to raise elsewhere, Ernest put through his order with the Wheeler Company in New York to complete and deliver the fishing cruiser about which he had been dreaming for so long. He had discussed specifications with members of the Wheeler organization the year before and knew just what he wanted in the way of modifications.

Back in Key West, with the house running smoothly again, mainly through Pauline's management, Ernest immediately got down to serious writing. He was in what he called a "belle epoch." His creativity, held in check for so long while he savored each moment of suspense and action and the natural beauty of Africa, flowed abundantly again. He wrote steadily, expanding the notes he had made on the trip, to make chapters for The Green Hills of Africa. He also had the long novel in process that would be called To Have and Have Not. For it, he was studying Key West and its inhabitants much as he had already studied some of the Cuban people, as a friendly but accurate observer.

The new boat occupied his conscious thoughts once the working day was over. He rechecked measurements according to plans and continued making small changes until the final work was completed. She was to be a standard 38-foot hull, planked with white cedar and framed with steam-bent white oak, with frames closely spaced. In the very bow there was a cockpit, useful for storing anchors and with its forward hatch providing access, as well as ventilation, for the forward cabin which was a double stateroom. Alt of that was a head, two bunks, and dinette that became a double bunk with galley and ice box just under the forward end of the deck cabin.

At the after end of the cockpit, Ernest had the stern cut down a foot to reduce the distance between the level of the sea and the height to which a fish had to be lifted to slip it aboard. Over the transom he had installed a gigantic wooden roller, more than six feet wide, to assist any big fish entering the cockpit.

Like most new boats, the Pilar was late for delivery. By the time she was ready and had reached Miami, I had managed to arrive in Key West in a small boat I had built in Alabama during the previous winter. With Al Dudek of Petoskey, Michigan, who had spent the winter in Florida, I had sailed her across the Gulf of Mexico in a passage of 23 days.

Later that week, Al and I were in the welcoming committee that saluted, whooped and blew horns as the Pilar entered the harbor, resplendent in her new varnish and gleaming black paint. It was the first boat Ernest had had since the Sunny on Walloon Lake.

The next day we both heard and saw what the Pilar could do. Heading out the ship channel with the morning breeze dappling the light blue water to the east, Ernest peered over the chart as he hadn't done for years. With his own boat under him and out on its first try at big fish, the situation had suddenly changed from almost a spectator sport, with others doing all the drudgery, to an intense effort, with all hands responsible for the safety and peak performance of the new vessel.

Pauline had come, too, and down below there were hampers of sandwiches, fruit, cold drinks, plenty of beer, ice, and even paper towels and napkins with which to keep everything looking new and unused.

It was a hectic day. We trolled the eastern dry rocks, and then down to Sand Key and the western dry rocks, and back again. We caught barracuda, grouper and an amber jack. But the big billfish were not to be found, and the expected excitement of the big chase and combat did not develop. Ernest was in no way disappointed. He had gained additional confidence in the feel of the boat, and he was very proud of how she handled.

"Ho, you mariners, look at this," he called from up forward. Then he swung the Pilar into a hard turn to starboard and then to port. Moving at homecoming speed, about 10 knots, we were thrown sharply over, first one way and then another. Everyone nodded in appreciation, glad that no one of us had lost his balance and gone overboard.

All the way in, Ernest was moving over the boat, checking for vibration, feeling temperatures, raising and lowering engine hatches, moving forward and aft along the deck combings so as to get the feel and sound of the boat running from every point on board. Several times in the following weeks he did the same things, when we were out at sea. When one or the other of us would ask what he was looking for, or hoped to find, he would say, "I want to know what she's like all over."He was learning in the very best way, through sensitive personal observation, just what the boat could do and how she reacted to different conditions of sea and wind, in moderate weather. Later his knowledge proved invaluable in handling the Pilar in foul weather. For no boat is so large or powerful that she can force her way anywhere. She must make her way, in the best manner possible, against superior forces when the sea and wind get tough.

Our fishing expeditions became a way of life many people dream of. Pauline came for a while, but then began staying ashore, realizing that Ernest was so involved with being captain of the boat and locating the fish that he was having damned little time to fish himself. That was less than ideal. Previously, it had always been the fishing that had given him the greatest personal satisfaction. Yet Ernest was taking such obvious delight in acting as host and champion fishing guide that his morning work continued to go well in the room over the little house in the back yard. His self-discipline was excellent and he explained to me his own private system of rewards late one morning just after we started out.

"Writing is damned hard work, Baron. If I get up early, and really produce, it gives me a feeling of reward to know you gents are down at the dock waiting to go fishing, and I will have the rest of the day out on the water with you. If I don't do so well, I know I won't enjoy the rest of the day as much either. The anticipation helps me do the best I can."

The trip home is often expected to be the dullest part of the day. But for me, that time was in many ways the most interesting. Ernest and I had some wonderful long talks during these return trips. That particular afternoon we got to talking about high school days and the writing we had both done for the Trapeze.

"What was really the first story you ever sold for dough?" I asked.

"That's a funny one," he grinned. "You know, nobody ever asked me that before. It isn't listed, because it happened before I'd put out a book. When I was working up in Toronto, another gent and I were sticking around late one night and we got talking. We made a bet on whether either of us could write a story in one hour that a current magazine would buy. Then we sat down and wrote our pieces. Both stories sold ... but that was a market I wanted to skip."

After a moment, he gave me a gentle punch on the shoulder. "Of course that story didn't win any awards," he laughed, referring to an award I'd won in a national short-story contest while I was in high school. "Are you serious about wanting to be a writer, Baron?"

"Well, yes, I am," I said and felt suddenly self-conscious, because Ernest was studying me so intently.

"You've got a hell of a load ahead," he said finally. "Everything you do they'll say you're riding on my reputation. You know that, don't you?"

I nodded. "It came up, even in that contest thing. But the entries were all numbered. There weren't any names involved."

"I know, I know. It'll be even tougher, but you can't care too much what people say. You're a good observer. In this fishing, you've learned easily, but you've got a hell of a lot of learning to do -- especially if you're going to skip college. You'll need to read a lot. You've read Huck Finn, haven't you? And Kipling and the long ones of Stephen Crane? You should study Tolstoy and Dostoievsky now, Joyce and the short stories of Henry James, De Maupassant and Flaubert -- and Madame Bovary, of course. When you've finished those try Stendhal, and Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks. We've got a lot of these up at the house. Borrow anything you like -- but bring them back. I'm not giving my books away, even to a kid brother, understand?"

I understood.

"You ought to try for a newspaper job. That's the best way to learn to write fluently. But this is a rough year for getting a job on any paper. For the time being you might as well keep on sailing. You're learning a lot, but this stuff comes easily because I think you've got real love for it."

"Anything that makes me tremble inside is for me."

"Outside, too, Baron. Remember that first big fish? Try to remember everything about everything. When something gives you the emotional shakes, try to figure out exactly what it was that shook you and remember every detail of it so you can tell what it was. If anybody else is around, find out if they were shaken, too, and how much and why. The more sides you can see to anything, the more you know. Right now you're too worried about what other people think of you--because you're young, maybe. With luck you'll learn other people are mainly interested in the impression they are making. Anyway, forget about yourself and try to get inside other people more and to see things from their points of view.

"If you really want to write, Bo, then go ahead and write. The more you write, the more you learn about writing. It's the only way to learn. I'm not going to help you if I can avoid it. I've helped a lot of guys, and will again. But mainly it weakens them.

"Now, advice is different. Advice doesn't do anybody's work for him. With good advice you can save some time and effort. The hell of it is, you need judgment to know which is good advice. By the time you've got that, you can give your own advice."

One of the most exciting events that season was the afternoon of May 23, when Ernest boated the biggest Atlantic sailfish ever taken on road and reel. The fish was not an official record because a guest had hooked it and fought it for the first 14 minutes. But it was a wonderful fight.

A sporting priest who was interested in Ernest's writing ability had come down to visit. He had a great fund of stories and Ernest and Pauline were delighted with him. He was immediately invited out for the morrow's fishing.

The day was one of those lazy openers, with a long, slow swell working and no wind. It was 2:30 p.m. when Ernest came down, after a long morning's work and a light lunch at the house. He explained that we were going out so as to give the priest whatever sport was possible.

We worked to the east and picked up 'cuda and grouper over the reef, but the Stream remained quiet until a few catspaws began darkening the water between the long, smooth swells. By 3:30 we had been through the additional sandwiches and half a case of beer, with new bottles icing all the time. Ernest liked to be well-equipped for hot days and could become lyrical on occasion.

"Sun and sea air, as they dry your body, make for almost effortless beer consumption. The body needs liquid of a nourishing kind. The palate craves coolness. The optic nerve delights in the sensation of chill that comes from its nearness to the palate as you swallow. Then the skin suddenly blossoms with thousands of happy beads of perspiration as you quaff."

The priest agreed. Talk continued on other edifying subjects. As we worked to the westward, the breeze finally came in. It was like turning a switch. Fish began leaping in the distance, birds were working over bait that surfaced, and suddenly the priest got a fine strike. Ernest was the only one who had seen the billfish come in.

"Maybe a marlin," Ernest said. "Slack it to him. Count slowly and then after you reach 10, set your drag and sock it to him."

The Father was excited, but he knew the value of doing what he was told and followed instructions well. When he finally threw down the drag, Ernest was right there coaching. "Sock him once more, Father. Keep the tip high as he jumps."

Far off, it seemed 300 yards but may have been half that distance, a really big sailfish bolted out of the water and then went flip-flip-flipping along sideways on the momentum of his falling body.

"What a fish! What a beauty! Fight him, Father." Ernest was in there chanting advice every second. The priest was perspiring with the abandon of a sinner approaching the suburbs of Hell. Part of it was the excitement in Ernest's voice. Part was the feeling of being fairly hooked to a fish much longer than himself and that was in considerably better shape to conduct a test of strength and stamina.

Then the sailfish jumped again. In all he jumped 28 times, with some success if you counted his ability to throw off the remoras hanging on his underside. But he had no chance to fling the sharp hook out of his mouth.

"With all that jumping, he's filled his air bladder," Ernest said. "Now you'll have another good fight right on top. He can't sound on you."

We watched a rapidly tiring member of the clergy. The strain and the pouring perspiration were too much for a man unused to such violent exertion.

"Ernest, you must help me. I can't handle this fish any longer."

"Look ... he's yours. He's a sailfish, not a marlin as I first thought. He may be record size. If I take over, the fish will be disqualified for any kind of record."

"But I can't go on," Father McGrath said. He made sideways motions with the rod and tried to get out of the chair.

Al and I felt for both of them right then. The priest was simply incapable of continuing what must have been the most thrilling sports event of his lifetime. Ernest had been frustrated beyond speaking because he was not holding the rod at the moment of such a magnificent strike. Now he was about to take over. But he knew the values had changed.

"All right," he said grimly. "We have to get this fish in, if only to get our tackle back."

Once he had taken over he was again caught up in the excitement.

"What a lovely!" He began to pump and work the fish around.

Ernest pumped the fish fiercely. He worked the big sail in close twice. "We're getting somewhere. Look at him come," he called out, reeling as fast as he could to recover the now-slack line.

It was true. The fish was swimming toward the boat of his own accord. It seemed great luck until the thing that every big-game fisherman dreads suddenly happened. Ernest recovered the last of the bellying line as the fish paused about 20 feet from our starboard side. Then it suddenly darted under the hull.

"He's changing sides!" I yelled.

Ernest acknowledged the fact with an unprintable but descriptive comment as he saw the line go under. Then he loosened the drag so more line could play out. "Now where is he?"

"The other side--about the same position." None of us knew then what sweat this was going to cause.

"Here, Al!" Ernest called. "Hang onto me. I'm going to pass the lines under the boat and try to keep the propeller from cutting us off. Tell me if the fish moves. Put her in neutral, Baron."

Ernest bent down low over the stern. Holding the rod in one hand, he made a long, curving sweep underwater and brought the tip up on the port side. Then he began to recover slack. The line was still whole. It had passed safely below the propeller. The big sailfish was still one, though very nervous. When he felt the pressure of the hook again, he spurted off on another long run.

"What absolute luck," Ernest said, wiping the sweat from his forehead. Then he was pumping again, steadily pumping, to get the fish headed around on a converging course with us. As we approached the fish, Ernest was warier while gentling him in. This time the fish's dark sail lay folded down in the dorsal slot. The living stripes along his sides flashed in the weaving distortion of the rising-falling surface water. He seemed to roll his big eye and hang there, just a little way beyond reach of the gaff. Then he was off again.

For another 20 minutes there was more sweat, though Ernest was working him in in the gentlest way. We were all wondering to what extent the line might have been nicked in passing under the boat.

Finally another chance came to get the fish and boat close together. The fish was winded, but still in fine condition. He seemed curious about the big, green underbody with the whining, churning spinner that had attached itself to him when he had mouthed a passing mullet.

This time when Al eased in on the leader, the fish came just enough closer. Snaking out with his big gaffing arm, he fought for control of the writhing, shuddering body and brought the big head in against the planking. We all eagerly grabbed along his bill and skinned our palms as we hoisted. In the cockpit, with the gaff removed, the big fish spattered himself furiously about until he was banged squarely on the forehead with the wooden persuader.

The sailfish was the biggest Ernest had ever seen, and he had far more experience than the rest of us. It measured over nine feet. Nine feet, one and threequarter inches, as I remember. We didn't have any scales on board to weigh it, so we all became authorities. Each one of us believed it would tip the scales at over a hundred pounds.

Later that night, in front of eight witnesses and with tested scales, four hours after the fish had been caught, he was officially weighed in at 119-1/2 pounds. His girth was 35 inches. Now, more than a quarter of a century later, this sailfish is still the largest ever taken in the Atlantic Ocean on rod and reel. The mounted body is on display in the Miami Rod and Reel Club.

The priest had to go back to Miami that night. In the morning there was a great commotion around the house. Ernest came down from his workroom to see what was causing the uproar. Pauline and the rest of us had just got the Miami Herald. There on page one, in the center, was a story on the taking of the new Atlantic record sailfish. It had been written by "Eye Witness."

"Now who . . ." Ernest mused, read on, and his eyes began to narrow. "Of all the ... I wanted him to take the credit for the catch." But Ernest had certainly earned it, and the priest had had the last word.

Ernest's morning work continued to please him. He was reluctant to change any part of the formula of his daily life, believing strongly that any change might mean an end to the luck of this "good era" of free-flowing prose.

By the middle of June, he was up to page 147 of a new book, The Green Hills of Africa. He had already done three rewrites, he said. The weather was fine, with weeks of steady easterly breezes in between calm spells. It was so cool in the evenings we had to wear sweaters. Though Ernest was feeling wonderful about his writing, he was beginning to experience a certain disenchantment with the fishing.

You could never predict what would happen in a day of fishing the Stream, the reefs, and sometimes the back channels, with Ernest as captain and fishing guide. He did some beautiful boat maneuvering the Sunday we took Lieutenant Jackson out. Jackson was commandant of the submarine base, as the Navy yard was known then. He was a fine sportsman. Out in the Stream he got a magnificent strike and lost pounds in minutes fighting the dolphin that had taken the bait. It was a bull dolphin with a forehead that bulged like a cartoon of a Washington bureaucrat, and it weighed more than 40 pounds, we found when we got back to shore hours later. From the first, the lieutenant knew he had a fish that could pull like a man, and maybe more so. In 20 minutes of fighting, he was panting, aching, and close to slumping out of the chair. (Continued on Page 143)My Brother, Ernest Hemingway(continued from page 140) Ever sympathetic with a game performance, Ernest took a hand. "The boat's going to help you, Lieutenant. I'll get ahead of the fish so he'll come right in toward you."

"Ernest, you've got to take the rod. He's going to ..."

"Nonsense. Just give him the one-two, again and again."

"But I'm absolutely finished, I tell you."

"No you're not. You're going to land him if you just last the next couple of minutes. Look, he's easing our way now."

Ernest had worked the fish with the boat, kidding the lieutenant along in a masterful way to make him feel it was all over, though there was still some time to go. In the next few minutes, we did run so deftly to one side and throttle down so well that I gaffed the big dolphin with more luck than skill on the first try. He was almost six feet long, and had bred recently and thinned to ideal fighting shape.

On the way home, Ernest was garrulous with Scotch and I sensed that a peculiar kind of boredom was beginning to set in. Something was really eating him and he had to get it off his chest. He loved everything up to a certain point, and then nothing was any good any more. The old longing for Africa would set in and he would begin to realize how little he cared for what had been so important a few hours earlier. Because I took many notes in those days, I'm able to draw on them now.

"Listen, Baron," he began. "We've been learning plenty about sailfish out here in just the last few months. We get them much easier when we're trolling to the westward. That's because they're headed that way. And around these spots" -- he indicated three areas on the chart -- "we always get strikes. It's a matter of bottom, more than current, once you are out in the Stream. You can't fish the ocean blindly, any more than you would a mountain brook. I think they're headed to the westward to go through the Gulf between Rebecca light and Tortuga, the same way the tankers go to Tampico. We've caught more this summer than the guides did at that famous Florida fishing camp all last winter. It's a better feeding time, and we've begun to shape up as the crew of a real fishing machine." He patted the Pilar's cockpit side.

"She sure is," I agreed. "I just hope you don't get discouraged with the crew, or think of something else you'd rather be doing."

"I won't get discouraged with you, Baron, because you're eager and you really give a damn. But a lot of this is just stuff in a bucket compared to Africa. Out there I found what I was after."

"With dysentery," I said.

"Hell with the dysentery. I've got only this one life to live and by Christ I want to go where it interests me. I don't feel any romance for the American scene. It doesn't move me. It's that I just want to make enough dough now so I can go back to Africa. I've worked hard and written some good stories and will again--though last week there was a time when nothing was going well. I can talk about it now it's over. Now I'm going good again and it looks like I'll be a writer yet."

"Maybe you should have had Gertrude Stein aboard to show you how to fix things," I kidded him.

"Oh hell yes," he laughed. "That would have fixed things sure."

He paused for a few moments, then continued, "But I really did learn from that woman. And I learned from Joyce and Ezra Pound at the same time. Gertrude was a fine woman until she went so completely queer. She was damned smart until then. But then she began figuring that anybody who was any good was also queer. From there she got worse and convinced herself that anybody who was queer must also be good. But before she went way off, I learned a lot from her."

Ernest took a long swallow. "Sherwood Anderson was another one I learned from, but only for a short time. I learned from D.H. Lawrence how to describe country."

Ernest fell silent for a minute, just listening to the roar of the engines and staring out across the water. Then he said, "But Jeezus, that book Stein put out last year was full of malicious crap. I was always damned loyal to her until I got kicked out on my backside. Do you think she really believes she taught me how to write those chapter headings for In Our Time? Does she think she or Anderson taught me how to write the first and last chapters of A Farewell to Arms? Or Hills Like While Elephants, or the fiesta part of The Sun Also Rises? Oh hell. I talked the book over with her all right. But that was a year after it was written. I didn't even see her between July 21st when I started it, and September sixth, when it was finished.

"But what really burnt me was when she made out that I was fragile. Damnit, the only bones I ever broke in my life were when I was wounded in Italy, and when I fractured my arm that time the Ford turned over out West. These are the scars where they had to cut off the chewed-up meat. The surgeon had to notch the ends of the bones before he could splice them together. Old Gertrude can spot the fragile types all right."

There was another short silence. Then he added, "And for good measure she called me yellow. But you know ... I'm still glad I was loyal, and kind, even after she stopped being a friend. You could say that last year was not my happiest, what with Stein and Max Eastman in the New Republic. But I wrote well anyway. I don't know. Maybe all that's part of why Africa feels so damned attractive right now." Ernest rattled the ice cubes in his empty glass. "Get me another drink, would you, Baron?"

By Bastille Day, the 14th of July, Ernest had more than 200 pages done on the new book and looked forward with tremendous eagerness to getting over to Cuba again. He finally headed for Havana on July 18. The mate of the car ferry went as navigator. The seemingly easy trip turned out to have hazards. Twice they overheated each engine through catching gulfweed in the water-cooling intakes. But they finally made it into Havana after nightfall.

Ernest performed some highly unusual feats that season. He took a 243-pound marlin in 29 minutes. Then he took a 130-pound striped marlin aboard in just three minutes, bringing the fish in green and still full of fight. "That fish would have taken me nearly an hour a couple of seasons ago," he said. Of the bigger one, he admitted, "It would have taken at least two and a half hours. They were fair hooked. There was nothing wrong with either fish. We just understand more about them, that's all."

Ernest had shown me some of the letters from readers in Esquire who doubted the veracity of his own material. I had seen what he was doing and knew that what he wrote was true. "Why are they like that?" I asked.

"They're the people who hear an echo and think they originated the sound," he said. "They hear or read somewhere I'm a phony and it's suddenly a fact in their minds. Like Heywood Broun branding me a phony on boxing. He probably got the idea from reading Gertrude Stein, and liked it. Then it became his idea. I'm getting plenty sick of this branding, and it probably hasn't even run its course as yet." Ernest took another swallow and added, "Young man, the only way I'm a phony is in the sense that every writer of fiction is: I make things up so they'll seem real. But you really know me, on fishing, on shooting, on boxing. Do I deliver?"

"Like nobody else."

"And we'll keep it that way, Baron. But I can't worry about branding -- I have to get on with my book. This book is a chance to make some real money and that's good. Because money buys freedom. I've got a chance to go into business in Tanganyika. That would give the kids a chance to grow up out there ... You've got to see it, too. I haven't got time to worry about this branding crap. I've got to keep cracking on that book."

Ernest returned to Key West soon afterward for more provisions and to make business arrangements. He went back to Havana before the end of September to finish the final spurt of writing on The Green Hills of Africa. He had been doing 20 to 22 pages a day toward the end, though his usual production was about five pages daily. His handwritten script ran to 492 pages, and he planned to start another story the very next day.

The Cuban revolt early in February was a serious one. The government troops took more than 300 people out of the prisons, where they had been held briefly, and shot them. Ernest knew some of the people included in the firing party and was very glum.

Because of the Cuban revolt, Ernest decided to fish in Bimini the coming spring. The big fish were definitely on the south and east sides of the Stream and the British waters were much less disturbed by murderous politics. Ernest had heard there was a good hotel, and invited friends to come on down and see what it was like for themselves. Dos Passos was coming. Arnold Gingrich said he would try. The Masons planned to come up from Havana with their boat.

It was as these plans were shaping up that Ernest heard from Zane Grey, who had become in the early Thirties the most noted devotee of big-game fishing anywhere. Grey could certainly arouse interest in fishing and had whetted Ernest's own appetite for the sport in early years. But Grey's writing was very general compared to Ernest's pieces in Esquire, which contained countless practical tips on how, when, where and with what tackle to catch the various marvels of the deep.

In his letter, Grey asked Ernest to join him on a gigantic world fishing cruise. He thought they might make a motion picture out of it. Ernest was to furnish his name. Grey would raise the operating money and furnish the boat and thousands of dollars worth of tackle. Later they could make a series of personal appearances and split a minimum of half a million, he thought.

Ernest considered it one of the most ingenuous offers he had ever received. With some amusement he realized he had Grey worried about the records he so blandly claimed without first checking to find out if they were authentic.

The Green Hills of Africa had come out in England in April of 1935, and Ernest received copies of the London Times and Sunday Times, giving it columns of very favorable comment. "Over there you can write about the noncompetitive sports and they'll call it literature if that is what it is. Over here they see the subject matter and say 'you can't write seriously about stuff like that.' Over here you have to write about strikes or a social uplift movement or they don't even know if you can write," he said.

One evening in May, just before returning to the United States [from Bimini], Ernest found himself drawn into a heated argument with a man whose name he didn't know; it happened on the dock at Bimini.

The scene was dramatic. Ernest had come in from a day's good fishing, though he had no big fish to show for his effort. He'd fought something, probably a tuna, that had played deep and given him a tough couple of hours before it was cut off, probably by a shark. Ernest had headed in at sundown. By the time the guests were unloaded, the boat washed down and gear readied for the coming day, it was dark. On the dock there were only a couple of lights. Ernest told me about it afterward in great detail.

"Say, aren't you the guy who claims he catches all the fish?" Ernest heard the voice from the darkness, but he was unable to see the figure immediately. He was not sure he was the person addressed and he was wary.

Then the voice came again, louder. "Say, aren't you the guy who claims ..."

"I catch my share." Ernest could make out a large figure wearing white shorts on the dock.

"Then why don't you bring in the proof? I suppose we're going to have to read all about some monster record you almost brought in today when ..."

"Look, I don't even know your name, much less who your mother was."

"Leave my mother out of this. Let's just find out if ..."

"If what? If you ever really had one? Let's ask the boys here."

There was a loud laugh from the circle of men who had come down to the dock as the interchange continued. The large figure seemed to set himself. "What I want to know is do you fake those pictures as well as ..."

"You seem to be an expert on fakery. Maybe you just need another drink. Why don't you run along and get one?"

"Oh no. You brought up the subject of my mother. Now I want satisfaction and I'm going to get it, or I'll shame you off that deck. Someone said that you were yellow and now I'm going to find out." He set himself again, crouching like someone posing for a picture.

"Look," Ernest said, "you don't know me and you don't know what you're getting into. You're only talking big so you can repeat what you've just said to me up in New York, in front of your friends. Now that's a lot of----"

"Trying to get out of it, he? That's what I figured you'd do. That's just what I figured."

Ernest was up on the dock in three barefoot leaps. His heckler lunged as he came up.

"I figured him for a mouthy drunk," Ernest told me later. "And I clipped him several good ones with my left, but he didn't go down. I couldn't understand it. He was sore and he'd been drinking, but he honestly didn't show it by his reflexes until that instant. Then he dived at me high, grabbing like a sloppy lineman, and seemed to be trying for a low blow. I hit him twice, hard, on the side of the head, and he barely let go. Then I backed off and really got the weight of a pivot swing into the old Sunday punch. He landed, and his ass and head hit the planking at the same time."

Ernest was worried about what he had done. Back in his room at the Compleat Angler, he showered and found he had ripped off the tops of two toenails on the dock. He told the friends he met for dinner about the fight, and was even more worried when the word drifted back that the man he had traded words and blows with was reputed to be Joseph Knapp, owner and publisher of Collier's, Woman's Home Companion, American magazine and others.

"That's what you call limiting your magazine markets," he observed. "That was the first bare-knuckle fight I've had since I was a kid. There must have been 60 people showed up finally -- and no purse."

In spite of the wisecracks, Ernest was seriously worried that he might have hurt his opponent's head. At about four the next morning, Mr. Knapp's yacht, Storm King, left for Miami to get medical attention for its owner. There, Knapp was very fair about the whole incident. He told Captain Bill Fagan that he was sorry he had spoken out of turn and guessed he'd gotten what he deserved.

Ernest talked seriously about the formation of an official group to keep and pass on game-fish records. Later, this group became the nucleus of the International Game Fish Association, under the sponsorship of the American Museum of Natural History. In his fishing off the Cuban coast, Ernest had already taken ichthyologists from the Philadelphia Academy of Science out to study the habits of marlin in the Gulf Stream. And one species of fish, the Neomarinthe Hemingwayi, was named after Ernest, its discoverer.

During October and November, Ernest and John Dos Passos made two visits to New York, staying as guests of the Gerald Murphys. The Riviera home of the Murphys had for years been an open house for Dos Passos and other serious writers. Except for those trips, Ernest was hard at work in Key West on further chapters of To Have and Have Not, and was again working on short stories. It was a good winter of production. By the following April, he had completed several short stories, was on page 60 of a long one, and midway through the novel. Harry Burton of Cosmopolitan had come down to Key West to make a very large offer for the serial rights to his forth-coming novel, as well as offering record prices for his short stories.

The atmosphere aboard the Pilar that summer had a curiously memorable quality. Friends there at that time agree on several details. Ernest was often morose, and angry with himself more than with others. There were many temper flareups that were unpredictable.

A record player wound by hand was part of the ship's equipment that season. Some of the records that were played repeatedly still haunt members of the guest crew of 1936. They included Experiment, Stormy Weather, and a Jimmy Durante number about fixing a boat. Then there was "Ill wind, go away ..."

Ernest had known for months, from the news reports, that conditions were getting rapidly worse in Spain. But the news dispatches of July 13, reporting the revolt of several Spanish generals against their elected government, were more than disquieting. Ernest knew what such men could do if their troops remained loyal. The news of the following days confirmed his judgment.

The Spanish War had begun.

That summer, however, Ernest was deeply committed to his writing schedule. To Have and Have Not had to be finished. He concentrated on getting the book done; but Spain was on his mind at the same time. Those early months of the Spanish War were a time of great production for him. But he managed to read the daily papers avidly, to observe and understand developments as soon as they had taken place. After each day's writing was done he talked endlessly with friends about the war. In December the novel was in final form. Then he was free.

In January he signed an agreement with John Wheeler, president of the North American Newspaper Alliance, which represented scores of the biggest daily newspapers in the United States. Ernest was to act as the news syndicate's war correspondent in Spain during the coming months on a handsome financial basis. He would receive $500 each for cable dispatches of from 250 to 400 words, and $1000 for mail dispatches of about 1200 words, with NANA securing exclusive rights for newspaper use.

This concludes the second installment in Leicester Hemingway's biography of his brother Ernest. The third installment will appear in February.