LETTERS: Correspondence with Bob and Kathy Parrish.


Three letters to Bob Parrish
On Africa, Algren and Hemingway

Gellhorn, Martha. Typed letter signed, “Martha,” Naivasha, Kenya, February 7, 1972.

One 6” x 12” leaf of airmail stationery, folded in thirds; seven emendations in black ink in Gellhorn’s hand. In a specially made cloth slipcase.

Together with:

Gellhorn, Martha. Typed letter signed, “Martha,” Gwent, Wales, September 16, 1981.

One 6” x 12” leaf of airmail stationery, folded in thirds; nine emendations in black ink in Gellhorn’s hand.

Together with:

Gellhorn, Martha. Typed letter signed, “Martha,” Gwent, Wales, February 26, 1982.

One 8” x 12” leaf of airmail stationery, folded in thirds; sixteen emendations in black ink in Gellhorn’s hand.

Together with:

Parrish, Bob. Four typed letter carbon replies; a photocopied review of Bernice Kert’s The Hemingway Women (1983); and a photocopied review of Gellhorn’s Travels with Myself and Another (1980).

Three remarkable letters to Robert Parrish (1916-1995), an Academy Award-winning cinematographer. During World War II, Parrish served in the Navy’s Field Photographic Branch. It is unknown how or when he met Gellhorn – he does not appear in Caroline Moorehead’s biography of Gellhorn – but their shared presence as Americans in Europe during World War II might have led to their acquaintance with one another.

Gellhorn lived off and on in Africa in the latter part of her life. Though she once had adored the continent, her love affair had clearly soured by the time she penned the first letter, in which she describes her unhappiness with her current residence in Kenya:

Shaw says the way I live indicates I must wish to punish myself. Until lately I found that laughable but lately I am beside myself and am going to take to drink. Hell and Satan, this is Africa in Jan-Feb, the heighth [sic] of the summer locally, and might as well be London in March … I finally realize I chose the one spot in East Africa certified to have these clouds, waterlily type the size of Texas but grey, these winds, this permanent rain drizzle, due to altitude, lake, surrounding mountains: a built in ancient bad weather trap. As I am frequently so cold I go to bed fully clothed in the afternoon, and am also coming down with malaria, I wish to Christ I were anywhere else. Or anyone else. That’s the real ticklish one. No me, dear Lord, one cries: but then who? This idea suddenly fascinates me. Does anyone know who else they’d want to be, given that many must wish not to be themselves? (Feb. 7, 1972)

“Shaw” refers to writer Irwin Shaw, whom Gellhorn met during World War II when he was a private; he went on to fall “into the category of true friends, who made her laugh and whose language of confidences she spoke and understood” (Moorehead, 331).

In 1989, Gellhorn was attacked on a beach in Kenya and reportedly raped, though she spoke little of the incident and did not press charges.

In the second letter, composed almost a decade later, in Wales, Gellhorn responds to Parrish’s acknowledgement of the death of the writer Nelson Algren. She reminisces:

I think I discovered Algren. E[rnest]. H[emingway]. used to get endless books from publishers hoping for a quote, which they never got. Among them was “Never Come Morning.” I thought it was thrilling and brilliant and when next I went to see my mama, I went to Chicago to see Algren, a pale thin young man living in a Polish section of Chi., and working now as a rent collector because He’d [sic]got too dizzy going up telephone poles as a linesman. His publisher was doing the usual (just what my publishers do to me now), no promotion, no effort made, nozzing. I got busy with famous people, and got quotes for him and myself did lots of lobbying with his publisher. Then came Fame, in due course, and I never saw him again. But I am sure he was always a nice man and I think a splendid writer, with only one territory, but that’s not a bad thing. (Sept. 16, 1981)

According to Moorehead, Gellhorn described Algren as a writer “full of juice, with good sharp eyes” (194), the same praise she gave to Arthur Koestler and Ira Wolfert.

The rest of the letter describes Gellhorn’s new home in the Welsh countryside. She explains how she is renovating the place herself, with “two small kittens for company, glorious views all round, one half acre of land set among other people’s fields.” She notes wryly, “I think this will be a fine place to wait for WW3 or the End of the World which, I am ready to bet, will be started by a preemptive strike with President Strangelove pressing the button. It must be awful to be young in such an idiot world, but it is quite relaxed and pleasing to be old.”

Gellhorn’s final letter to Parrish, dated Feb. 26, 1982, begins on a note of mixed love and exasperation: “I have thought of you often in the last few months and decided that, due to the love I bear you, I would not make a wax voodoo doll and stick pins in it to punish you.” This is in reference to a meeting Gellhorn agreed to take, at Parrish’s suggestion, with a writer named Bernice Kert. At the time, Kert was working on her book, The Hemingway Women, published in 1983, which examined the relationships Hemingway had with his mother and four wives.

Gellhorn vehemently declares to Parrish that she never speaks to anyone about Hemingway – with the exception of Carlos Baker “who was doing the King James version of E.H.’s life” – but her resolve wavered when Kert approached her. Gellhorn had been ill with the flu and a fever, and was fed up with “putting down liars such as [Stephen] Spender and [Lillian] Hellman (liars about themselves in the Spanish War, a breed I specially loathe)” so she agreed to talk with Kert.

As expected, Gellhorn regretted the meeting and blamed Parrish for arranging it. Gellhorn describes her reaction when the 300-page section of the manuscript pertaining to Gellhorn and Hemingway arrived at her door:

It made me physically ill. Aside from errors of fact, idiocieis [sic] of interpretation, it was a total intrusion on privacy, a pitted biography of my life, not only with E.H., and tasteless to the point of obscenity. She had blithely ignored clause one of our agreement, and sent this horror to her publisher. I asked my legal brother if the agreement (a copy sent to him) was binding; he said yes … Being kicked in the face by a cow would have felt the same; shock. Meantime, it took me one awful month to correct Kert’s ghastly mss., she owes me a debt of gratitude for saving her from looking as ignorant as she is. Norton’s ought to pay me an editor’s wages. Meantime, the little lady is not or cannot be as stupid as she seems. If you can believe it, she takes dialogue from my short stories and uses it as if it was direct speech from me. She alters quotations to suit herself. She is a total menace.

In spite of this tirade, the letter is signed “Always, Martha.” As expected, Parrish replied with profuse apologies – saying he was fine until “I read your letter and slit my wrists.” There are no further letters from Gellhorn, but there is a carbon of a letter from Parrish dated July 12, 1984, which he sent along with newspaper clippings (not present) relating to an unnamed mutual friend.

(#10485)

Moorehead, Caroline. Gellhorn. New York: Henry Holt, 2003.

Item ID#: 10485

Print   Inquire

Copyright © 2024 Dobkin Feminism