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

by Vaill, Amanda

  the images and tastes and sounds and smells: Barea, FR, pp. 738–39.

  “march to the rescue”: Gilbert, A History of the Twentieth Century, p. 189.

  On the moonless night of July 25: Beevor, Battle for Spain, pp. 349–53; Thomas, SCW, pp. 815–21.

  The club grounds: Auden and Isherwood, Journey to a War, p. 152.

  “if it’s not the runs”: RC to PK, in Whelan, Capa, p. 141.

  His new acquaintances: Auden and Isherwood, Journey, pp. 43–44.

  he was sending back money: RC to PK, April 29, 1938; and July 27, 1938 bank draft from Capa’s account at National City Bank to Heinrich Pohorylle, both ICP.

  “I am the ‘poor relation’”: RC to PK, April 29, 1938.

  “Unfortunately,” Capa wrote Koester: RC to PK, July 27, 1938, ICP.

  “won his English in a crap game”: Whelan, Capa, p. 136.

  “He was best”: RC, “China phrases,” fragment in 1938 miscellaneous documents, ICP.

  At his residence in Prague: Gilbert, History, pp. 194–202.

  there was no point: MG to Edna Gellhorn, May 26, 1938, in Moorehead Selected, p. 62.

  “golden key”: PPH to EH, September 1, 5, 10, and 28, 1938, in Reynolds, pp. 294–95.

  they sat in the sun on the terrasse: Gellhorn, A Stricken Field, p. 288.

  “In going where you have to go”: Hemingway, preface to The Fifth Column and the First Forty-nine Stories (Scribner’s, 1938), p. vii.

  went pheasant shooting: Baker, EH, p. 334.

  “the barbarism of Fascist interventionists in Spain”: Hemingway, “‘Humanity Will Not Forgive This!’: The Pravda Article,” ed. William Braasch Watson, in HR7, pp. 114–18. In his cable to M. M. Olgin accepting the commission, Hemingway sent regards to Koltsov, suggesting that Koltsov had something to do with Pravda’s request.

  Koltsov, his teeth as bad as ever: Cockburn, Discord, pp. 310–14.

  clutching her silver fox fur: George Kennan, Memoirs, vol. 1, pp. 90–92.

  She, too, wanted to talk: Gellhorn, “Memory,” London Review of Books, December 12, 1996. Gellhorn says here that Koltsov told her all about Russia’s guarantees to Benes, and goes on to blame the Czech president for not accepting the challenge to fight for his people. Interestingly, she made no mention of these guarantees in her Collier’s article, “Epitaph for a Democracy,” nor in her otherwise information-packed letters to her editor, Charles Colebaugh. One wonders if the candor of Koltsov’s conversation, and her indictment of Benes, were both a kind of arrière-pensée. Accordingly, I haven’t included this point in my account.

  after making several more vain attempts: MG to Charles Colebaugh, October 22, 1938, in Moorehead, Selected, pp. 67–70.

  Stalin had agreed: G. Dimitrov and D. Manuilsky to Voroshilov, copy to Stalin, August 29, 1938, in Radosh et al., Spain Betrayed, p. 469. Although there had been discussions over the summer of both sides renouncing the help of outside forces, Negrín’s unilateral move wasn’t made until Voroshilov and Stalin had been asked for their “advice and instructions.”

  there were only about seven thousand: Beevor, Battle for Spain, p. 363.

  “The only thing to say”: Cockburn, Discord, p. 314.

  “I’ve spoken about you”: Barea, FR, p. 742.

  they saw an old couple: Ibid., p. 745.

  Sheean’s English wife, Diana Forbes-Robertson: Richard Whelan notes, ICP. Forbes-Robertson says she met Capa when she first arrived in Spain, and that he helped her to establish herself there as a journalist. She also says, elsewhere in the same interview, that she accompanied her husband to Spain in April 1938, after he and Hemingway had tried to forbid her and Martha Gellhorn to come because it was too dangerous. Capa, however, was in China in April; and no one, including her husband in his memoir Not Peace but a Sword, mentions seeing Forbes-Robertson in Spain at that time. It seems more likely that she first met Capa in the fall of 1938.

  On the sixteenth he went to Falset: Details of Capa’s trips to Falset and Montblanch are reconstructed from films in the Mexican Suitcase archive, ICP, supplemented by contemporary news accounts.

  Capa, who had dressed carefully: Agustí Centelles I Osso, photograph in the Archivos Estatales, MECyD, Centro Documental de la Memoria Histórica, Salamanca; Capa, photographs of “La Despedida” in ICP; Cynthia Young, e-mail to the author.

  On either side of the Diagonal: Capa’s photographs and notebook (#5), ICP; Matthews, “Loyalists Honor Foreign Fighters,” New York Times, October 17, 1938; Eby, Comrades and Commissars, pp. 410–12, Beevor, Battle for Spain, p. 366; De la Mora, Splendor, pp. 371–73.

  Martha Gellhorn wasn’t in Barcelona: Gellhorn, “The Third Winter,” The Face of War, p. 41. Herbert Matthews’s correspondence for this period reveals that neither Hemingway nor Gellhorn was in Barcelona for the disbanding of the International Brigades: a letter to his wife, Nancie (November 8, 1938), says that Hemingway has just left Spain after a three-day visit to rejoin Gellhorn in Paris, and that she will arrive later in the month for a week’s stay. As to “The Third Winter,” a search of Collier’s issues for 1938 and 1939, and of the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature for 1937–1940, reveals no trace of this article. It was included under the title “The Third Winter,” with a dateline of November 1938, in The Face of War (pp. 37–49), where the copyright page only says that “the reports on the war in Spain … appeared first in Collier’s.” No first publication information is given. It seems inescapable that this is the “outdated” story Collier’s spiked (in a letter from Denver Lindley on February 8, 1939), and MG refers to in letters to Hortense Flexner (spring 1940) and Charles Colebaugh (July 17, 1941).

  the reception for the collection: EH to Maxwell Perkins, October 28, 1938, in Baker, Selected, pp. 473–75.

  “a carnival of treachery”: Ibid. “Rotten-ness” is Hemingway’s spelling.

  Hemingway suddenly faltered: This incident is reconstructed from EH to Maxwell Perkins, October 28, 1938, in Baker, Selected, pp. 473–75; MG to David Gurewitsch, undated, in Moorehead, Selected, p. 222. In her letter, Gellhorn places the encounter in Valencia, which is impossible, since Pacciardi was not in Spain at the time, nor were Gellhorn and Hemingway, and neither of them was in Valencia after December 1937. On the other hand, they were in Paris in October 1938, and so was Pacciardi. Caroline Moorehead, in her biography of Gellhorn, mistakenly says that Gellhorn and Hemingway saw Pacciardi in the “Despedida” parade in Barcelona, which none of the parties attended.

  “In a war”: EH, preface to Gustav Regler, The Great Crusade, p. vii.

  very early the next morning they set out: The November 5 Ebro incident is reconstructed from Sheean, Not Peace, pp. 328–38; Matthews, Education, pp. 138–39; Capa photographs, ICP; Matthews, “Loyalists Retain Strong Ebro Hold,” New York Times, November 6, 1938; and Ramon Buckley (son of Henry) in Russ Pottle, “Hemingway and the Mexican Suitcase,” paper presented at the 15th Biennial Conference of the Hemingway Society, June 2012. Sheean says there were two boats, one with four oarsmen, one with two, and doesn’t mention the shells; Matthews mentions only one boat, and he and Buckley both cite the shellfire. Capa’s photos of the boat show three or four oars.

  On a street in the village: Alvah Bessie to Carlos Baker, February 19 and 28, 1962, in Baker, EH, p. 335.

  On the night of November 6: Sheean, Not Peace, pp. 339–40; Diana Forbes-Robertson, interviews with Josefa Stuart and Richard Whelan, Whelan notes, ICP.

  Hemingway got Matthews to drive him: HLM to Nancie Matthews, November 8, 1938, Columbia University.

  Within hours he was at the front: Capa’s experiences on the Segre reconstructed from photographs and newspaper clippings in the Capa archive, ICP.

  The Segre offensive: Thomas, SCW, p. 833. There is considerable controversy over the final casualty counts: for instance, Beevor (Battle for Spain, p. 358) puts the number of dead at thirty thousand; Preston’s figure (SCW, p. 291) is much lower, 7,150.

  intending to write the story:
MG to Charles Colebaugh, December 6, 1938, in Moorehead, Selected, pp. 70–71.

  “underneath she’s a lot softer”: HLM to Nancie Matthews, January 30, 1939, HLM papers, Columbia University.

  “He was my brother”: Moorehead, Gellhorn, p. 143.

  How could she write about suffering: Gellhorn, “Till Death Us Do Part,” The Novellas, pp. 296–97.

  One night he held her hand: MG interview with Richard Whelan, December 31, 1981, and letter from Peter Wyden to Ruth Cerf Berg, both in Whelan notes, ICP.

  After writing up her Barcelona story: See paragraph that begins “Martha Gellhorn wasn’t in Barcelona,” p. 330.

  Although she’d confessed to Herbert Matthews: HLM to Nancie Matthews, November 26, 1938, HLM papers, Columbia University.

  “so sick I had an absolute breakdown”: RC to Julia Friedmann, December 10, 1938, ICP.

  “No other country in Europe”: De la Mora, Splendor, p. 345. Her descriptions of life in the Soviet capital are idyllic.

  he wanted 250 aircraft: Daniel Kowalski, Stalin and the Spanish Civil War, e-book, www.gutenberg.org, chapter 3, p. 44. Beevor, Battle for Spain, fn. 6, p. 372, gives the numbers as 2,150 field guns, 120 antiaircraft guns, 400,000 rifles, 10,000 machine guns, and 410 aircraft. The numbers, varied as they are, are all substantial.

  General Secretary Stalin invited: Conversations reproduced by Enrique Castro Delgado in his book Hombres Made in Moscú, quoted in (and translated by) Fox, Constancia, p. 80. Other details, Ignacio Hidalgo de Cisneros, Cambio de Rumbo, pp. 297–301.

  “I think I’m going out of my mind”: Boris Efimov, Mikhail’ Kol’tsov, kakim on byl, pp. 71–72, in Preston, WSSD, p. 199.

  On February 1, 1940: See Preston, WSSD, pp. 173 and 197–212, for a fuller account of Koltsov’s fall from grace.

  Hemingway complained to his mother-in-law: EH to Mrs. Paul Pfeiffer, February 6, 1939, in Baker, Selected, pp. 475–78.

  a showing of The Spanish Earth: Kert, Women, pp. 322–33.

  on another evening at the Stork Club: New York Daily Mirror, January 15, 1939, p. 3.

  At least, thought Barea: Barea, FR, pp. 746–49.

  “There will be no mediation”: Preston, SCW, pp. 293–94.

  “Things are not so bad”: Sheean, Not Peace, p. 346.

  the latest, last-resort wave of conscripts: Beevor, Battle for Spain, p. 376.

  “I have seen hundreds of thousands”: Whelan, Capa, p. 154.

  “it is not always easy”: Ibid., p. 155.

  It had turned cold and blustery: Josep Andreu y Abello, in Beevor, Battle for Spain, p. 377.

  the editors of Life: Wilson Hicks (Life photo editor) to RC, January 31, 1939, ICP.

  Sheean was in a state of growing despair: Sheean, Not Peace, pp. 347 and 360.

  Capa drove through the frontier at Le Perthus for the last time: In addition to specific sources already cited, material in the preceding section comes from Matthews, “Constant Bombing Numbs Barcelona,” January 25, 1939, and “Barcelona’s Plans Upset by Apathy,” New York Times, January 26, 1939; HLM to Nancie Matthews, January 30, 1939, Columbia University; Sheean, pp. 350–57; Capa’s photographs, notebooks, and negatives, ICP.

  the word from Austria was not good: Pollak, autobiography, p. 394.

  a winning ticket for the national lottery: Uli Rushby-Smith, e-mail to AV.

  the sailors assured him: Dialogue, and preceding details, from Barea, FR, pp. 749–51.

  “In Paris there’s nothing good”: Quotes in this section are from an undated letter, RC to Julia Friedmann, early 1939, ICP. Other details, unless noted, from Capa photos, ICP.using his Life credentials: ADA–Camp de Bram telephone log, in Marie-Hélène Meléndez, “Capa, Internment Camps, Southern France, March 1939,” The Mexican Suitcase, vol. 2, pp. 397–98.

  “As long as there is a war”: EH to Ivan Kashkeen (EH’s spelling), March 30, 1939, in Baker, Selected, p. 481.

  he and Martha agreed: MG to Eleanor Roosevelt, February 5, 1939, Moorehead, Selected, p. 70.

  “at the very least, inopportune”: Voroshilov to Stalin, February 16, 1939, in Radosh et al., Spain Betrayed, p. 512.

  “The only thing about a war”: EH to Kashkin, op. cit., p. 480.

  a thank-you note to Sara Murphy: PPH to SWM, undated [December 1938?], apparently revised serially and finally sent as an enclosure with another of March 10, 1939, in Miller, Lost Generation, p. 219.

  two different hotel rooms: EH to Thomas Shevlin, April 4, 1939, in Baker, Selected, p. 484.

  She was so pleased with the result: MG to ER, March 18, 1939, in Moorehead, Selected, pp. 74–75.

  “you cannot spit”: EH, preface to Gustav Regler, The Great Crusade, p. viii.

  “show all the different sides”: EH to Ivan Kashkin, loc cit.

  “We lay on the brown, pine-needled floor”: EH, draft of For Whom the Bell Tolls, Item 83, JFK. Although the draft began in the first person, Hemingway decided by the third page to change it to third person, going back through the manuscript to change all the pronouns.

  EPILOGUE

  “Today, with the Red Army captive”: Preston, SCW, p. 299.

  Over the next few months: Preston, The Spanish Holocaust, pp. xi and xvii–xix. Some scholars, e.g., Michael Seidman in a critical review of The Spanish Holocaust in the Times Literary Supplement, September 7, 2012, believe that Preston errs in the spirit, if not also the letter (or number), of his condemnation. On the other hand, the historian Julius Ruiz, author of Franco’s Justice, maintains that the number of those executed was 50,000.

  Hemingway’s relations with the Soviet Union: John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, pp. 153–55.

  “Hemingway could describe with truthfulness”: Barea, “Not Spain, But Hemingway,” Horizon (London 1941), pp. 350–61.

  a jocular prenuptial “agreement”: MG to EH, “Marriage Guaranty,” undated, BU. Also quoted in Moorhead, Selected, pp. 80–81, and Kert, Women, p. 339.

  Hemingway was unaware: “E wants me for himself altogether now,” she told Grover, and hinted he should not write her anything that could not be shared: MG to Allen Grover, September 6, 1940, in Moorhead, Selected, pp. 101–3.

  “she thinks now”: EH to Edna Gellhorn, September 28, 1940, JFK.

  he had been “busted”: EW to Max Perkins, January 28, 1941, in Baker, EH, p. 359.

  “the old commercial fisherman”: EH to Maxwell Perkins, February 7, 1939, in Baker, Selected, p. 479.

  “his mastery of the art of the narrative”: EH’s Nobel Prize citation is quoted on the Nobel Prize’s website, www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1954/.

  “no intention of being a footnote”: This much-repeated line (even used in an interview by Gellhorn’s biographer, Caroline Moorhead) has proved impossible to source.

  “an unpalatable truth”: Official statement of the Martha Gellhorn Trust.

  “This is the last good war”: Whelan, Capa, p. 297.

  “We do not employ Reds”: Eaude, Triumph at Midnight, p. 114.

  “mi shell-shock”: AB to W. R. Wessel and William F. Stirling, June 23, 1944, BBC Written Archives Centre.

  “the man who had left them to starve”: The Broken Root (Faber and Faber, 1951), p. 56.

  Ilsa spoke of the “heartbreaking” situation: IB to Margaret Weeden, November 14, 1946, IB papers.

  “Querido Papa”: Letters from the Barea children to AB, various dates, AB papers.

  “the most successful visitor”: Report from an anonymous official at the British Embassy in Buenos Aires to the BBC, May 15, 1956, WAC.

  His body was cremated: Uli Rushby-Smith, e-mail to AV.

  all of the papers she had with her: Uli Rushby-Smith, e-mail to AV.

  “It is meaningless”: IB to Margeret Weeden, December 25, 1957, IB papers.

  GLOSSARY OF TERMS AND ABBREVIATIONS

  alpargatas Rope-soled canvas shoes worn by many Spanish government soldiers

  A
saltos Assault Guards, the blue-uniformed urban police of the Spanish Republic

  CEDA (Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas) Spanish confederation of right-wing groups, a Catholic political party

  checa Slang term, derived from the name of the Tsarist secret police (cheka), for an extra-official interrogation and detention center operated by leftists

  CNT (Confederación Nacional de Trabajo) Anarcho-syndicalist labor union

  Comintern Communist (or Third) International, Moscow-directed worldwide union of all domestic Communist parties

  Condor Legion A unit made up of Nazi German volunteers from the Luftwaffe (air force) and the Wehrmacht (Army) to fight for Spain’s Nationalist rebels

  Cortes Spanish parliament

  Ejercito Popular The centralized Spanish government army, which superseded and replaced the militias of the early days of the Civil War

  Escuadrilla España Air Squadron founded by André Malraux to fight for the Spanish Republic

  FAI (Federación Anarquista Ibérica) Iberian anarchist federation

  Falange Spanish fascist party founded by José Antonio Primo de Rivera

  Generalitat Regional government of Catalonia

  GRU Main intelligence directorate of the Soviet armed forces, the Russian military’s foreign intelligence service

  Guardia Civil Civil Guards, the paramilitary, largely rural Spanish national police force, known for their patent-leather tricorne hats

  Junta Ruling council; in wartime Madrid, the Junta de Defensa was the committee that ran the city after the relocation of the government

  NANA North American Newspaper Alliance, publishing syndicate made up of fifty major American newspapers

  latifundistas Owners of huge feudal estates, mainly in the south of Spain

  Loyalists Those loyal to the government of the Spanish Republic (see Republican)

  Luftwaffe Nazi German air force

  miliciano Member of the militias, soldiers (some affiliated with specific parties or unions) who volunteered to fight for the Spanish government

  mono Jumpsuit, generally blue, worn by Loyalist militias