In all of the press and media coverage surrounding the Oct. 1, 2001 death of Nobel Prize-winning novelist Ernest Hemingway’s youngest son, Gregory, no mention was made of the eerie coincidence that he died 50 years to the day after his mother, Pauline Pfieffer Hemingway.
Several sources recount the fact that the night before she died, the second Mrs. Hemingway had a knock-down drag out argument via long-distance phone with her ex-husband, and a few repeat the suggestion that the argument was about son Gregory and his penchant for cross dressing. Ernie himself held Gregory responsible for Pauline’s death intimating the same. Some years later Gregory, who would go to medical school and become a doctor, laid the blame for his mother’s death squarely on the shoulders of his famous father when he learned his mother had a rare condition aggravated by stress. He figured the phone call caused his mother’s fatal attack and told Ernie so. The breech between father and son may have been due to that confrontation, but Greg’s evaluation of The Old Man and the Sea as “sentimental slop” may have been a contributing factor.
Pauline met Ernest through her sister Virginia. Ernie had originally been attracted to Jinny, a lesbian, but transferred his affections to Pauline. After the marriage Jinny was around a lot, especially during Pauline’s pregnancy with Greg, and later was involved in setting up housekeeping for the Hemingways in Key West. There has also been a bit of speculation among Hemingway scholars that the “menage a trois” at the core of his posthumously published novel, The Garden of Eden, was patterned after the true life adventures of Ernest, Pauline and the first Mrs. Hemingway, Hadley Richardson. Hadley’s son Jack (father of actress Mariel and the late Margaux), godson of the lesbian couple Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, died last December.
Gregory Hancock Hemingway died in jail just days short of his 70th birthday and four or five years after a sex-change operation. The suggestion is that even after the operation he did not assume the role of a woman in his everyday life, only appearing openly to friends a few days before his arrest (he kicked a cop in the groin) and incarceration as a female in the Miami-Dade Women’s Detention Center. He had bested his father by sire-ing eight children; both had four marriages…though Greg married the same woman twice. Gender issues play a continuing role in the saga of the Hemingways, back to Grandfather Clarence who did the shopping, canning and cooking and Grandmother Grace whom Ernie kept his sons away from saying she was “androgynous.” Ernie’s dad, himself, a handful of siblings and maybe even granddaughter Margaux were suicides. Grandma had a “loyal girlfriend” that shared her life and home until her final illness. And all of Ernie’s wives were into role play…Miss Mary his last, he said, was really a boy inside, but not a lesbian. What did that make him? Some folks want to lay it all at the feet of matriarch Grace Hall Hemingway, saying it was her fault for dressing little Ernie as a girl and treating him and sister Marcelline like twins. My take on it is that the family history would be a field day for geneticists and the Hemingway lives an argument for tolerance.
Women Building Chicago
Some weeks ago WCT announced the publication of a biographical dictionary of Women Building Chicago 1790-1990 edited by Rima Lunin Schultz and Adele Hast (Indiana University Press, 2001). I met Adele Hast several years ago at one of the annual conferences that CAWSA (Chicago Area Women’s Studies Association) co-sponsored at universities around the city…The Chicago Area Women’s History Conference holds the copyright on the present volume. (I was the only open lesbian on the program for five or six years.) Ms. Hast, whose credentials are legion, spearheaded the project of preserving the history of Chicago’s usually neglected females. When I suggested Pearl Hart, Valerie Taylor and Jeannette Foster for inclusion, I learned Ms. Hart was being written about, Ms. Taylor was ineligible (she was still alive at the cut-off date of 1990), and I was given forms to fill out if I wanted to write about Ms. Foster.
Now the monumental effort has been realized…423 women have their histories preserved; each entry followed by a list of sources for future historians anxious to expand their knowledge. I happily shelled out the $75 for the 1,000-plus page reference tome, knowing it would be a fountain of local information. And it is. A quick glance at the index shows only four lesbian entries…Margaret Anderson, Jane Heap, Pearl Hart and a one-liner for playwright Lorraine Hansberry. Several entries like those for social reformer Jane Addams and members of her circle stress the intimate relationships these women had as well as their impact on Chicago’s growth and culture. Other entries include the ubiquitous “and she never married” especially dicey when the subject had more than one (female) partner in life. Others like drama coach Anna Moore and sculptor Nellie Verne Walker (we share a Dec. 8 birthday) cry out for more research regarding their sexual orientation. Red flags like their relationships to the Midway Studios, friendships with gay author Henry B. Fuller, memberships in The Little Room, The Little Theatre, or the Cordon Club signal lesbian connections.
There are almost as many contributors as there are subjects. Therein lies the weakness for the editors. They must take on faith what the contributors write; the publisher has each sign a disclaimer to fend off charges of plagiarism or egregious error. So here is my problem…in entries on women whose history I know something of, I find minor errors of omission or construction. That gives me pause. But more troubling, under the sources for the entry on attorney Pearl Hart I find a reference to Ms. Hart in the article “Chicago’s Gay and Lesbian History: From Prairie Settlement to World War II,” originally published in Outlines June, 1994 and written by me. Instead of being pleased at the mention, I am shocked. Here, in print, one Barbara Dobschuetz writes: “Kuda was one of Hart’s last students at John Marshall Law School and interviewed Hart’s law colleague, Renee Hanover, as well as Hart’s companion in her later years, Valerie Taylor.” ERROR. I went to De Paul University Law School not John Marshall. I was never a student of Ms. Hart. I never “interviewed” Renee Hanover, though Bill Kelley and I did sit in on an interview of her by Greta Schiller’s minions during the research for the film Before Stonewall. We knew each other fairly well, had some mutual friends, worked together in projects related to the Gay Law Students Association, the National Lawyer’s Guild and Mattachine Midwest. Tee Corinne, author of Valerie Taylor, A Resource Book is also mis-cited. Ms. Dobschuetz never contacted me…where, I wonder, did she glean her misinformation?
Which, I guess is why academia is imbued with the necessity to cite their sources, so anyone who cares can follow up. But this leaves me with an uneasy feeling about how thorough or how accurate other entries might be. A starting resource, yes, but if you are going to use it…do your homework.
Copyright 2001 by Marie J. Kuda.