Hotel Florida: Truth, Love, and Death in the Spanish Civil War

by Vaill, Amanda

  “There are practically no words”: MG to Gunther, May 10, 1937, in Moorehead, Gellhorn, p. 128.

  “irrelevant to the great drama”: MG, review of Ken Loach’s Land and Freedom, in the London Evening Standard, October 5, 1995.

  Hemingway went to the Gare St. Lazare: Dos Passos, Century’s Ebb, pp. 98–99, Ludington, JDP, p. 374, and Carr, Dos Passos, p. 372.

  “What did you kill him for?”: Hemingway, THAHN (Scribner Classics), p. 39.

  “I had to go to Spain”: Baker, EH, pp. 312–13, and note, p. 622.

  dropping down onto the field at Sondika: Jay Allen, introduction to Death in the Making, unpaged.

  whose blueprints had been smuggled: Thomas, SCW, p. 595; Preston, SCW, p. 271.

  British and French rescue organizations: “Evacuation Work,” Manchester Guardian, May 4, 1937; Antonio Cazorla and Adrian Shubert, A Inmigración Española en Canada: Unha Visión de Conxunto, Estudio Migratorios #10, 2000, pp. 32–34. The name “Carimare” is clearly visible on the hull of one of the ships Capa photographed.

  The next day Capa headed out of Bilbao: The narrative of Capa’s experience at Mount Solluve is reconstructed from the following: “Shells and Bombs Blast Bilbao Area,” New York Times, May 8, 1937; Capa photographs and notebooks, ICP; and film fragment from Henri Cartier-Bresson, With the Lincoln Brigade in Spain. The attribution of the fragment is made by Juan Salas in “Capa and Taro: Lost Footage from the Córdoba Front,” The Mexican Suitcase, pp. 252–76.

  There, a French plane: The story of Capa’s and Allen’s meeting comes from Allen, preface to Death in the Making, unpaged.

  “a fear that tortured”: Dos Passos, The Theme Is Freedom, pp. 136–37.

  Yes, he thought, the war had been started: Barea, FR, pp. 670–72.

  Barea’s old friend Angel: Ibid., p. 672; AB, “Notes on Federico García Lorca,” Horizon, pp. 192–95.

  having lost both their business and their home: In her essay “The Eye of Solidarity” (Taro, p. 24) Irme Schaber says they were dispossessed in 1937; but in GT, pp. 272–73 she presents documentation that they had in fact possibly emigrated as early as 1935, a date she has recently confirmed in an e-mail.

  In hiding he ran across Eric Blair: Peter Wyden, The Passionate War, p. 371.

  At dusk on May 14: “Loyalist Cabinet in Spain Resigns; Valencia Bombed,” New York Times, May 16, 1937.

  The younger Vinding: Cowles, Looking for Trouble, pp. 49–50; Barea, FR, p. 677.

  She sent Capa a telegram: GT telegram to RC, May 17, 1937; ICP. The telegram’s receipt stamp is dated the 18th.

  “Now I am cold sober”: PPH to EH, April 25, 1937, in Kert, Women, p. 302.

  “I am sick and tired”: PPH to EH, in ibid., p. 301.

  Hemingway cut it by half: EH and JI statements quoted in Baker, EH, p. 313.

  MacLeish’s rather timid request: AMacL to EH, May 27, 1937, JFK.

  “The Loyalists will win”: World Telegram, May 20, 1937.

  she’d already negotiated: “Book Notes,” New York Times, June 7, 1937.

  anodyne notes: MG to EH, undated letters, BU.

  Out in the audience: A partial report of the congress, with speeches by Hemingway, MacLeish, and others, in New Masses, June 22, 1937, available on www.unz.org and in Hart, ed., The Writer in a Changing World, pp. 69–73. EH’s speech in Robert W. Trogdon, Ernest Hemingway, a Literary Reference, pp. 193–96.

  “all the foreign correspondents”: DP to JDP, undated, UVA; quoted in Ludington, Dos Passos, pp. 376–77.

  One of those beating his hands: P de P to Carlos Baker, June 2, 1967, PUL; also in Vernon, Second War, p. 91.

  “went over to the Stork Club”: DP to JDP, quoted in Ludington, Dos Passos, pp. 376–77.

  “A writer must be a man of action”: New Masses and Hart, loc. cit.

  “I wish we could meet”: FSF to EH, June 5, 1937, in Baker, EH, p. 313.

  Hemingway had come to the conclusion: EH to MP, June 10, 1937, in Baker, EH, p. 314. The story “Horns of the Bull” was eventually published as “The Capital of the World.”

  “I am now Joris’s finger-woman”: MG to EH, undated [June 1937]; BU; quoted in Kert, Women, p 302.

  “Rotfront”: MG to EH, telegram, June 11, 1937; JFK.

  “send back that sheet of paper”: JI to EH, June 17, 1937, JFK.

  eager to have it repaid: EH to Ralph Ingersoll, July 17, 1937, JFK.

  Ivens’s lack: EH to AMacL cable draft [June 16], 1937, JFK.

  immediate and poignant resonance: The Dust Bowl connection is interestingly discussed in Alex Vernon, Second War, p. 123.

  Martha (as she wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt): MG to ER, [June?] 1937, BU, in Moorehead, Selected Letters, p. 52.

  the roar of bombs was achieved: Erik Barnouw, Documentary: A History of the Nonfiction Film, p. 136.

  Ivens was finding it: Schoots, Living Dangerously, p. 129.

  “You effeminate boys”: Orson Welles interview, Cahiers du Cinéma, November 1966.

  On May 30 they had started: Beevor, Battle for Spain, p. 276; Alexander Szurek, The Shattered Dream, pp. 141–42.

  “fakery in allegiance”: Barnouw, Documentary, pp. 121–22.

  “better there than in my heart,”: Schaber, Taro, p. 218.

  the agony of retreat: Szurek, The Shattered Dream, pp. 171–72; Capa footage from “Rehearsal for War,” March of Time newsreel footage; Capa and Taro photos, vintage prints, ICP; Mexican Suitcase rolls 88, 89, 90, 91, ICP. Szurek mistakenly says that Capa and Gerda’s visit was during the Battle of Brunete; but Capa wasn’t there for that, and Gerda never spent the night, or had dinner, at the Brunete front.

  By the next day: Beevor, Battle for Spain, pp. 276–77.

  Instead they took pictures and shot footage: Photographs described in this paragraph have been dated by referring to Capa, notebook #1, Archives Nationales de France.

  “His fear and his courage”: Barea, FR, p. 678.

  “When I was thirteen”: Ibid., p. 680.

  “the forgotten brigade”: Schaber, “The Eye of Solidarity,” in Schaber, Whelan, and Lubben, Gerda Taro, p. 27.

  When the two photographers arrived: Kantorowicz, in Schaber, “Eye,” pp. 215–17; photos of Chapaiev Battalion, RC, and GT, ICP. Chapaiev Battalion newspaper cover reproduced in Schaber, Taro, fig. 79.

  In the abandoned village: GT, photographs of Valsequillo from rolls 97–99, reproduced in The Mexican Suitcase, pp. 243–51; Schaber, “Preliminary Remarks on Gerda Taro’s Documentation of the Defense of the Andalusian Mining Region,” The Mexican Suitcase, pp. 239–42; Juan Sala, “Capa and Taro: Lost Footage from the Cordoba Front,” MS, pp. 252–55.

  So perhaps it was in Valsequillo: Photos of GT by RC, in MS, p. 407. Although the Capa archive has labeled these photographs “Paris, 1935–36,” where and when they were taken (Spain? Paris?) cannot be determined: other than Taro’s figure, all that can be seen in them is a narrow brass bed, part of a mirrored armoire door, and a rolled-up newspaper on a nightstand. Several vintage prints of the images were among Capa’s possessions, and the negatives were included with the Mexican Suitcase rolls, which Capa hoped to save from the invading Germans during World War II, all of which indicates the photographs’ value to him.

  he, Ivens, and Martha: EH to Mrs. Paul Pfeiffer, August 2, 1937, in Baker, Selected, p. 460. Grammatical solecisms (“Joris and I”) are Hemingway’s.

  Both Roosevelts seemed to feel: MG to ER, July 8, 1937, in Moorehead, Selected, p. 55; Schoots, Living Dangerously, p. 130.

  along with Pauline: PPH to Sara Murphy, July 8, 1937, in Miller, Letters, p. 194.

  what emerged from her typewriter: MG to EH, July 2, 1937, in Kert, Women, p. 305; Moorehead, Selected, pp. 132–33.

  it was too soon: MG to ER, July 8, 1937, in Moorehead, Selected, p. 56.

  having a triumph in Hollywood: Vernon, pp. 94–97, Baker; EH, p. 316; Schoots, Living Dangerously, pp. 130–31; and EH to Ralph Ingersoll, July 27, 1939, JFK.

  wearing a dark
blue suit and an expression of extreme anxiety: Anthony Powell, “A Reporter in Los Angeles—Hemingway’s Spanish Film,” from Night and Day, August 19, 1937, in Valentine Cunningham, ed., Spanish Front: Writers on the Civil War, pp. 208–11.

  “THE PICTURE WAS BEYOND PRAISE”: FSF to EH July 13, 1937, and FSF to Maxwell Perkins, c. July 15, 1937, in Baker, EH, p. 316.

  “comradely greetings”: EH to André Malraux, c. May 22, 1937, JFK.

  The keynote speech: Koltsov’s speech is reproduced in Preston, WSSD, p. 194.

  Robert Capa and Gerda Taro: Descriptions of the conference from Stephen Spender, World Within World, pp. 261–64; Roman Karmen and Boris Makasseyev, K Sobitiyam V Ispani (newsreel film), July 1937; Schaber, Taro, pp. 221–23. My translation of Garro.

  Capa told Ted Allan: Allan, Ted, chapter 2: Gerda.

  André Chamson, in fact: Spender, World, pp. 265–66.

  as the congress delegates were just applauding: Malcolm Cowley in Aznar Soler and Schneider, Il congreso internacional de escritores antifascistas, p. 362; GT photo, ICP.

  “The town of Brunete”: Official communiqué quoted in Matthews, “Madrid Defenders Open New Attack,” New York Times, July 7, 1937.

  Racing out of the auditorium: GT, photographs from Brunete, ICP; Léon Moussinac, “Hommage à Gerda Taro,” Regards, August 5, 1937.

  On July 8, Jay Allen: Jay Allen, intro to Death in the Making.

  “a circus of intellectuals”: Spender, World, p. 264.

  Barea and Ilsa weren’t sorry: Barea, FR, p. 683.

  in his bunker: Ibid., pp. 681–82.

  Even Gerda’s anxieties: Schaber, Taro, p. 252.

  Capa and Gerda went dancing: Elisabeth Freundlich, The Traveling Years, pp. 52–53. Schaber, Taro, p. 234.

  at the end of her rope: De la Mora, Splendor, pp. 327–28.

  At dinner with Claud Cockburn: Jay Allen, preface to Death in the Making (unpaged).

  “Tomorrow I’ll get up at six”: Schaber, Taro, p. 237.

  Allan had resumed his puppylike attendance: Allan, Ted, chapter 2.

  “In case we do somehow get out”: Whelan, Capa, p. 122.

  on Sunday she asked Allan to come with her: The account of GT’s experience at the battle of Brunete comes from Allan, Ted, chapter 2, and Schaber, Taro, pp. 239–42.

  Fleeing from airborne machine-gun fire: Jacinto Antón, “Te has cargado la francesa!” El Pais, July 12, 2009. The driver of the first tank, Aníbal González, didn’t even realize he had hit anyone.

  “Keep her comfortable”: Irene Goldin, interview, in Trisha Ziff’s film The Mexican Suitcase.

  Richard de Rochemont’s telephone call: Except as noted, details in this section are from Whelan, Capa, Schaber, Taro, pp. 243–60, Louis Aragon, Lettres françaises, May 27–June 3, 1954, Eva Besnyö interview with Richard Whelan, ICP.

  “The war photographer’s most fervent wish”: RC to Peter Koester, in July 27, 1938, ICP.

  “A FRENCH JOURNALIST”: L’Humanité, July 27, 1937. My translation.

  the government had had 20,000 casualties: Thomas, SCW, pp. 693–96, Beevor, Battle for Spain, pp. 282–85.

  “no middle-class child ever walked”: De la Mora, Splendor, p. 7.

  “She grated on me”: Barea, FR, p. 684.

  Constancia, however, had forbidden: Fox, War and Exile, p. 61, Fischer, Men and Politics, pp. 457–60.

  Ernest Hemingway paid a visit: The Hemingway-Eastman contretemps is reported in The New York Times, August 14, 1937; “Talk of the Town,” The New Yorker, August 28, 1937; Baker, EH, pp. 317–18.

  a new contract from NANA: John Wheeler to EJH, June 8, 1937, and August 10, 1937, JFK.

  “I promised them I would be back”: EH to Mrs. Paul Pfeiffer, August 2, 1937, in Baker, Selected, p. 460.

  Hemingway obligingly gave them: Baker, EH, p. 317.

  “He is living in a world so entirely his own”: FSF to MP, September 3, 1937, in Turnbull, Letters, p. 275.

  Throughout the past month: MG, “On Apocryphism,” Paris Review 79, p. 291.

  Hellman wasn’t in good spirits: Martinson, Lillian Hellman, pp. 128–29.

  Martha didn’t like Hellman: Gellhorn on Hellman, MG, “Spanish War Notes,” October 15, 1937, Hellman on Gellhorn, Hellman, Unfinished, p. 76, Parker on Gellhorn, and Gellhorn on Parker, in Meade, Dorothy Parker, pp. 282 and 284.

  Hemingway had drinks or dinner with them: SWM to EH, September 20, 1937, JFK, in Miller, Letters, pp. 201–2.

  “a horse that has escaped”: MG in Moorehead, Gellhorn, p. 133.

  “your friends got killed”: MG in ibid., p. 134.

  Hemingway went further: EH, unpublished first-draft lede to dispatch 16, EH Review, p. 59.

  a man’s body had been found: Le Matin, September 6, 1937.

  The NKVD’s Mobile Group: Preston, WSSD, p. 84.

  He made good his own escape: Gazur, Orlov, pp. 164–66; Krivitsky, In Stalin’s Secret Service, pp. 181–82.

  Franco’s inner circle had been breached: Seale and McConville, Philby, p. 89. While Krivitsky may not have known Philby’s name, he was aware of his mission and background.

  He tossed off two glasses of wine: Barea, FR, p. 695.

  “a dictatorship under democratic rules”: Negrín in Azaña, Obras Completas, vol. IV, p. 786, quoted in Thomas, SCW, p. 750.

  Ilsa sat at the piano: Barea, FR, p. 698.

  Flying down from Barcelona to Valencia: Matthews, “Success Seen in Aragon,” New York Times, September 8, 1937.

  “sick with anger”: MG to ER, July 3–4, 1937, in Moorehead, Selected, p. 54.

  “proud as a goat”: Gellhorn, “Men Without Medals,” Collier’s, January 15, 1938, p. 10.

  There wouldn’t be any inns: EH, dispatch 14, HR, p. 53; SWM to EH, September 20, 1937, in Miller, Letters, pp. 201–2.

  Hemingway got a call: Gazur, Orlov, pp. 130–31.

  Hemingway, Matthews, and Martha set off: Szurek, The Shattered Dream, pp. 144–48; MG, “Spanish War Notes,” undated itinerary labeled “Teruel Trip,” BU. William Braasch Watson, in two articles in North Dakota Quarterly, “Investigating Hemingway: The Story” and “Investigating Hemingway: The Trip” (Summer 1991 and Winter 1991, respectively), proposes that instead of a trip to Alicante from Madrid in early November, Hemingway made a clandestine return trip to Alfambra to visit Chrost; but as proof he uses a safe-conduct issued for the relevant dates by the Army of the Centre (whose territory was Madrid and environs), not the Army of the Levante (whose territory was Teruel and Alfambra). In this case Occam’s Razor says Hemingway did go to Alicante, not on a second run to Alfambra. Watson has, however, unearthed a wealth of relevant detail about the cars Hemingway used, what kind of mileage they got, where he garaged them, and how much it cost; for these things alone, the articles would be worth reading.

  The correspondents spent their first night: Itinerary and dates, MG, “Spanish War Notes” (“Teruel Trip”); EH, dispatches 14 and 15, HR7, pp. 51–55; Gellhorn, “Men Without Medals,” Collier’s, January 15, 1938; Szurek, Shattered Dream, pp. 144–48; Matthews, “Loyalists Close Teruel Front Gap,” New York Times, September 26, 1937.

  In the lounge of the Bedford Hotel: In addition to Whelan, Capa, sources are “Capa, Photographer of War, Tells of ‘Finest Picture,’” New York World-Telegram, September 1, 1937; Allan, “Aftermath,” Ted; and Capa, Death.

  They had patched up the shell holes: Matthews, “Madrid Lays Plans for Winter Siege,” New York Times, September 25, 1937.

  the rooms he and Martha now checked in to: William Braasch Watson, “Investigating Hemingway,” North Dakota Quarterly, vol. 59, no. 1, Winter 1991, note, p. 67. Watson references the room receipt.

  “dead angle”: Matthews, Education, p. 122.

  “you never hear the one”: EH, dispatch 15, HR, p. 55.

  The new, professional order: EH, dispatch 14, HR, p. 53; Barea, FR, p. 697.

  the shops, astonishingly, were full: Matthews, “Madrid Lays Plans,” loc. cit.

&nb
sp; “the Great Adolescent”: Alvah Bessie in Moorehead, Gellhorn, p. 136.

  the opus 33 mazurka, number 4: Records for both these pieces are specified in Hemingway’s props list for The Fifth Column (reproduced in the 2008 edition, p. ix).

  To get a feel for the territory: EH, dispatch 16, HR, pp. 57–58; Gellhorn, “Men Without Medals,” Collier’s, January 15, 1937.

  The lack of anything to report: MG, “Spanish War Notes,” October 15, 1937; Hellman, Unfinished, pp. 100–103; Moorehead, Gellhorn, p. 135. Hellman’s account of the evening comes in for withering criticism from Gellhorn in “On Apocryphism” (Paris Review 79, pp. 280–304), some of which is deserved and on point. However, Gellhorn maintains, incorrectly, to have never heard of Contemporary Historians, implying it is a mendacious invention of Hellman’s; she also says there were no bullfights in Madrid during the war—which would have surprised General Miaja, who is shown in news photographs attending them. Sometimes her feelings get the better of her; this account is an attempt to reconcile Hellman’s and Gellhorn’s versions.

  “Mr. Scrooby”: MG in Moorehead, Gellhorn, p. 137. Much later, Hemingway and his fourth wife, Mary, used the nickname “Mr. Scrooby” for Hemingway’s penis.

  “It would be pleasant”: J. Donald Adams, “Hemingway’s First Novel in Eight Years,” New York Times Book Review, October 17, 1937, p. 2.

  “puerile slaughter”: Sinclair Lewis, “Glorious Dirt,” Newsweek, October 8, 1937, p. 34.

  “the necessary murder”: “Spain,” was published as a five-page pamphlet by Faber in May 1937, with proceeds from its sale going to the British medical committee in Spain.

  At one point Hemingway had wanted: EH, Fifth Column draft fragment, item 80, JFK.

  “Don’t be kind”: Quotations in the preceding pages are from Hemingway, The Fifth Column and Four Stories of the Spanish Civil War, pp. 3, 23, 38, 39, 42, 57, 61, 65, 66, 75, 83, and 84.

  Mikhail Koltsov mentioned it: Koltsov, Ispanskii dnevnik (November 6, 1937), p. 561, in Baker, EH, p. 624n.

  a long story for Collier’s: Gellhorn, “Men Without Medals,” Collier’s, January 15, 1938.

  the second piece of hers they’d taken: Gellhorn subsequently claimed (The Face of War, p. 16) that after this article Collier’s “put my name on the masthead.” This is not quite true. It was after its publication—but not until the issue of October 28, 1939, which listed her as correspondent from Russia. In the event, she didn’t go to Russia, and her correspondent credit was changed to “Scandinavia” in the issue of November 25, 1939, to reflect the assignment she then undertook to cover the Winter War in Finland. However, her name did appear, along with those of several other contributors, on the cover of the July 17, 1937, issue, the one in which her first Collier’s article, “Only the Shells Whine,” appeared.