An interview with papa's little sister.

Sinclair, Gail

ERNEST HEMINGWAY LABELED HIS YOUNGEST SISTER Carol his "own special present" because she was born just two days before his twelfth birthday. They enjoyed a relatively close relationship during her formative years in spite of the age and gender difference, and they shared many qualities, including a strong will and an interest in writing. Hemingway readily accepted the unofficial role of Carol's protector and after their father's death in 1928 served as her legal guardian. When Carol entered Rollins College in the fall of 1930, Ernest developed a growing concern as she began exercising her selfhood in the liberating academic setting far removed from Oak Park provincialism.

In 1932-33 a rift occurred between brother and sister over John [Jack] Fentress Gardner, the man Carol had chosen to marry. Ernest reportedly denied his permission, and the couple wed without his blessings, thus evoking his wrath and rejection. The Gardners' union lasted for sixty-five years, but Carol's relationship with Ernest was irrevocably broken, and brother and sister remained at odds the rest of Hemingway's life. Carol regretted their permanent separation, but had no illusions about Ernest's controlling nature and his ability to hold a grudge.

Prior to her death on 27 October 2002 at the age of ninety-one, Carol Hemingway Gardner was the last remaining sibling of the famous author. Her memory had begun to fade by the time of our interview, and her knowledge of Ernest was chiefly limited to the years before their separation in 1933, but with the support of her daughter, Elizabeth Gardner Lombardi, Carol provided memories of people and events in a life intimately connected to one of the most famous writers of the 20th century.

GAIL SINCLAIR [GDS]: I want to thank you and your daughter for taking the time to speak with me this morning. Let's start with 1929 or 1930 and your decision to attend Rollins College in Florida. Why did you choose this particular institution?

CAROL HEMINGWAY GARDNER [CHG]: I had two reasons: I wanted to get away from Oak Park, and I wanted to be near enough to Ernest to visit him on holidays. He was living in Key West at the time, and I could visit him there.

GDS: Do you have any idea how many times you went to Key West?

CHG: Well, I was usually at Rollins when I visited, and it would take half a day by train. Sometimes he'd send a car to pick me up. I went every vacation, and once he was married to his Catholic wife, Pauline, I went down there and drove with him at the end of the school year before I went to Europe in 1932.

GDS: How did you feel about his wife, Pauline?

CHG: I liked her very much.

GDS: And his first wife?

CHG: Bumby's mother. I liked her the most, I think, of any of his wives.

GDS: My notes say that you accompanied Ernest from Key West to Piggott, Arkansas, at the end of your second year at Rollins, and that you were going to Michigan to keep house for your brother, Leicester, before you went to the University of Vienna in the fall of 1932. Can you tell me about that trip from Key West to Arkansas?

CHG: I never drove at that time, but I would have to go in and get meals for him when we were driving because Ernest was afraid somebody would recognize him. I'd bring out meals to him in the car.

GDS: Was he often recognized at that point?

CHG: No. I didn't think anybody would recognize him, but as long as he thought so, I did what he wanted.

GDS: He called you Beef or Beefy as a nickname. How did that come about?

CHG: It was a kind of a fish, a Bee fish, and it was what I was called at home.

GDS: You don't remember the origin of it? You were just always called that?

CHG: Right.

GDS: Can you tell me something of your experiences at Rollins and your years in Florida?

CHG: I remember that I was at Rollins in a time when there was prohibition, and it was there that I learned to drink a little. I had never drunk at Oak Park.

GDS: It was forbidden in your house?

CHG: My father thought that drinking alcohol was just the lowest thing you could do, and he didn't allow alcohol in our house. Ernest, of course, was a great drinker, and so I was used to it when I visited him. When I went to visit him I would drink a little, but very little. I'd make one little half a glass last for the whole evening.

GDS: And while you were there, what did you notice about Ernest's drinking?

CHG: He drank plenty.

GDS: It seems to me that there are perhaps several Ernests. There is the public persona of the macho game hunter and deep-sea fisherman, and there is the artist, just to name two. I know that his first wife, Hadley, talked about a sort of gentle spirit underneath Ernest's sometimes abrasive exterior. How would you describe your brother as you knew him?

CHG: Well, he was a great faker.

GDS: What do you mean by that?

CHG: He liked to appear wilder than he was.

GDS: So that was his public persona, and you feel it wasn't his true nature?

CHG: Right.

GDS: Ernest said of you in a letter to his fourth wife, Mary, in 1940, "Carol was the most beautiful, but looked as a girl exactly as I looked as a boy." So you and he were very similar in physical appearance?

CHG: I think so.

GDS: Did you find that you shared similar personality traits?

CHG: No.

GDS: Let's talk for a minute about your family when you were growing up. How would you describe your parents' marriage?

CHG: My father was very devoted to my mother, but she was very devoted to herself. I was closer to my father, and I never liked my mother.

GDS: You know she has gotten a bad reputation among critics with most of them writing about her rather negatively. I'm curious if that was your opinion. I spoke with John Sanford in 1994 at the Hemingway/Fitzgerald Conference in Paris, and he talked about your mother and her reputation. He said, "She was my grandmother, and my memories of her are good ones. She was nice to me." He was really the first person that I've heard say much of a positive nature. You're suggesting that your view would coincide with much of what the critics say?

CHG: I didn't like my mother.

GDS: You weren't close to her at all?

CHG: No.

ELIZABETH GARDNER LOMBARDI [EGL]: However, she's probably what you call an early career woman. When they went up to the lake, she went off to the island by herself and had her own place there.

GDS: She had a career before she was married is my understanding.

EGL: Right.

CHG: She was brought up by her family to be a really independent thinker and definitely had strong opinions. And she never did any work, I mean ordinary work, never cooked a meal. We always had a cook. She was very interested in herself, and she was raised by her parents to feel that she would have been an opera star. My mother spent a lot of time in Europe when she was growing up. She was very interested in the arts and would take us kids to operas where we would fall asleep after the first act.

GDS: You didn't like the opera?

CHG: Not especially.

GDS: Were all of you trained by your mother in music?

CHG: Everybody in the family played an instrument except me.

GDS: Why did you not?

CHG: I was no good at it. My mother tried to give me piano lessons when I was small, and I just couldn't get it.

GDS: What did Ernest play?

CHG: He played some instrument like a cello or something like that, but he really didn't have any interest in music. He liked the outdoors.

GDS: And your family was very much connected to the outdoors?

CHG: Yes, through my father.

GDS: I know Ernest hunted with him. Did you hunt and fish?

CHG: No. Those activities were reserved for the males in the family.

GDS: Because the females weren't interested, or were you excluded from those activities?

CHG: Well, we were excluded until a certain age, and then tried it out when we were teenagers. My father was very interested in the outdoors.

GDS: Did he and Ernest hunt together on a regular basis?

CHG: When Ernest was around.

GDS: I want to ask you a tough question dealing with your family history and the issue of the suicides. Your father, two brothers, and a sister killed themselves, and now in the third generation there is strong belief that Jack's (Bumby's) daughter Margaux committed suicide as well. Do you know of any history before your father, anyone earlier than this?

CHG: No.

GDS: So this seems to be something that began with your father? Do you believe that he was genetically predisposed toward depression?

CHG: No. I think my father committed suicide to relieve my mother of worrying about money. Not that he was successful, because the money he thought would be made available was not. He thought that the money he had spent all along for his insurance would be given to the family, but it wasn't.

GDS: I've seen your mother blamed for his death. What you're suggesting is that he may have committed suicide to help her financially? Would you put any emotional blame on her?

CHG: No. It was their relationship. He felt he was of more use to her money-wise.

GDS: Your father died when you were in high school, but you were able to hold yourself together and were even chosen to give the speech at graduation.

CHG: Yes, and when I got up to give my speech, I suddenly couldn't remember anything. It was terrible, and I just stood there for a while and looked around. I could see my mother in the audience being struck dumb with embarrassment for me. These were memorized speeches. I just couldn't remember this part and that part.

EGL: Tell her the subject matter.

CHG: I don't remember.

EGL: I believe she talked about Langston Hughes, and to make a black person your main subject matter was unusual in those days. This wasn't unusual for mother. When she was in about the seventh grade level they had one black child who came into the class because she was the daughter of someone who was nursing an older person. My mother thought the teacher was quite mean to this girl, so she and her friends decided that when it came time for class elections that this girl would be elected president. They divided up the rows in the class and said such things as, "You can come to my birthday party if....," and they succeeded.

GDS: So your mother was the rabble-rouser for getting this girl elected?

EGL: Right.

GDS: While at Rollins College, you were somewhat controversial also for several reasons. You wrote a story called "Two Girls" that fascinates me because in it you suggest a misunderstanding some people might have about these young women. One of the two dorm-mates says of their friendship, "It's not like that;' which hints at a lesbian relationship. I was interested in two things: first of all, you use male-sounding names for the girls, Lou and Glen; secondly, you touch upon the topic of gender experimentation that we have also discovered in some of Ernest's posthumous publications. I don't know if you're familiar with The Garden of Eden, but in that novel he also deals with gender role-reversal. Did you and Ernest ever talk about this sort of subject?

CHG: No.

GDS: Did you ever talk about issues of sexuality within your family?

CHG: No. No.

GDS: I have a copy of a letter Ernest sent to you apparently when he was in Europe, this is 5 October 1929, in which he talks about your writing. Do you remember discussing writing with him? CHG: No.

GDS: In this correspondence he said, "your letter doesn't read much as I remember you. Look, if you're trying to write I suggest that you avoid the sort of style employed by Sunny [a sister] in conversation, i.e. misused adjectives as ejaculations to cover mental vacancy," and he goes on to give you some advice about writing. Did you listen to him?

CHG: I listened to him very much in those days.

GDS: Apparently this was in response to a letter you had written him. Did he give you advice about your writing on more than one occasion, and did he read your writing?

CHG: I don't think he read any of my writing for the school paper. I was editor of The Tabula in high school.

GDS: What did you think of Ernest's writing? Did you read everything he wrote?

CHG: I thought he was wonderful. I read everything I could get my hands on when I was young.

GDS: So other than high school and college, after you left Rollins and the University of Vienna, did you continue to write at all?

CHG: No.

EGL: My mother did start to write some pieces for the Saturday Evening Post, but she didn't finish them. I think she felt daunted by the name Hemingway and expectations from that.

GDS: Tell me what it's been like for you being the sister of someone who has become so famous. I've read that his picture can be put on a magazine cover anywhere and people will recognize him without the name associated. How has that been for you? Have you let people know that you're his sister?

CHG: No. I think that when I married John I was very anxious not to be noticed as Ernest's sister.

GDS: Tell me about the incident between your brother and John Gardner. I read that John went to New York to ask Ernest's permission to marry you. Carlos Baker reported that, "Ernest not only refused, but also threatened to knock his teeth down his throat if he persisted."

CHG: I don't think John ever asked him. He had a conversation with him that one time and told him that he wanted to marry me. I don't think he asked permission.

GDS: What do you believe was behind Ernest's dislike of him?

EGL: My father, who practically never mentioned my mother's brother, was asked in his last year what he had said to make Ernest so angry. He responded, "I believe I called him an overgrown boy scout." In later years, my dad was mortified by how cocky he had been as a college student.

GDS: There has been a suggestion that Ernest was perhaps a bit of a jealous suitor. Do you think that was part of it?

CHG: No. He treated me as a sister.

EGL: He was the legal guardian of my mother. She was twenty-one and my father was twenty, so that may have been the difficulty with the age. Also, my father was very idealistic and quite sharp and probably didn't think that Hemingway was the living end the way the other admirers he had plenty of did. I'm sure that was the sticking point.

GDS: So your father followed your mother to Europe to get married?

Eat: Well, yes and no. In order to get to Europe, my father accompanied the brother of my mother's friend, Christy MacKaye. The brother had been at Yale and had a breakdown, and my father wanted to take him to see if Jung could help him.

GDS: So your father had connections to see Jung?

EGL: Well, no. Actually, he went to Switzerland, and he said, "How do you get to see Jung?" And they said, "You write a letter and you then wait six weeks and maybe you get to see Jung." He said, "I don't have that much time. Where does he live?" So he got on the Strabenbahn and went out and knocked on his door. This may suggest perhaps why he and Ernest were at such odds.

GDS: They were two strong-willed people.

EGL: Yes.

GDS: So you and John married in Europe?

CHG: Well, we tried to, but when we went to the embassy, we found out that we couldn't get married because john wasn't twenty-one yet. I had already cabled my mother that we were getting married. She sent out announcements telling people, so we just kept quiet and got married legally when we came back to New York.

GDS: What was Ernest's response to the news of your marriage?

CHG: He said it wouldn't last, but John and I were married for sixty-five years before my husband died, so Ernest was wrong.

GDS: How did your husband deal with Ernest's flame given their animosity toward each other?

CHG: How would you say? (Carol defers to her daughter.)

EGL: I would say my father didn't think it was helpful to be sort of living off that fame, and so in our family we were blessedly out of the circuit of it. It really hasn't been until the last few years with Mother as the remaining sibling that suddenly she has the attention. She's always let other members of the family have that role.

GDS: All your siblings have written a book about Ernest.

CHC: Right, and I have been very quiet.

GDS: Given the circumstances, I imagine that you didn't have Ernest's or their books lying around the coffee table.

EGL: Right. So that was of interest but it was a little like a myth because there was no personal contact. When Carlos Baker was at Princeton and gathering information for his biography I was there but didn't let him know who I was. I felt that not having known Hemingway, I had nothing to offer.

GDS: Did you read Hemingway in school, and if so, did you tell anyone of your connection?

EGL: In high school, yes, we read him. That was the first time. I hadn't read his work before then, before it was assigned. I think probably I did tell people that he was my uncle. It was sort of exciting.

GDS: As a family you kept contact with the other siblings and with Grace Hemingway, but you did not remain in communication with Ernest? You made sure that when you went to family gatherings that Ernest was not there?

CHG: Yes. He was not there on a regular basis, so it wasn't a problem.

GDS: I have a couple of excerpts where he's asking about you in letters to his sister. He mentions not being in contact with you. In correspondence from 1943 he writes, "I had a letter from Sunny from Memphis but haven't heard from Beef in years." Again to Sunny in 1949 he writes, "Poor old Beefy we busted up and I'm sorry for her but want nothing to do with her either." Did your sisters tell you about these kinds of conversations?

CHG: Yes. I knew about them, but Ernest and I never communicated.

GDS: How did you feel about this rift between you two?

CHG: I thought it was silly to end this way.

Carol Hemingway Gardner in her final years lived quietly and modestly in a small Massachusetts community. Her children grew up removed from connection, even in an informal sense, with their famous uncle. Carol's daughter says that her mother "managed to make the ordinary extraordinary not through writing something famous, but just by living a worthy life." As it seemed to me, Ernest's youngest sister exuded a quiet grace and dignity befitting any of the heroic characters the more famous Hemingway invented.

WORKS CITED

Hemingway, Ernest. Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters, 1917-1961. Ed. Carlos Baker. New York: Scribner's, 1981.

GAIL SINCLAIR

Rollins College