Mary Welsh Hemingway ( Welsh; April 5, 1908 – November 26, 1986) was an American

journalist A journalist is a person who gathers information in the form of text, audio or pictures, processes it into a newsworthy form and disseminates it to the public. This is called journalism. Roles Journalists can work in broadcast, print, advertis ...

and

author In legal discourse, an author is the creator of an original work that has been published, whether that work exists in written, graphic, visual, or recorded form. The act of creating such a work is referred to as authorship. Therefore, a sculpt ...

who was the fourth wife and widow of

Ernest Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway ( ; July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer and journalist. Known for an economical, understated style that influenced later 20th-century writers, he has been romanticized fo ...

Early life

Born in

Walker, Minnesota Walker is a city in Cass County, Minnesota, Cass County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 966 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. It is the county seat of Cass County. Walker is part of the Brainerd, Minnesota, Brainerd B ...

, Welsh was a daughter of a

lumberman Logging is the process of cutting, processing, and moving trees to a location for transport. It may include skidding, on-site processing, and loading of trees or logs onto trucks

. In 1938, she married Lawrence Miller Cook, a drama student from

Ohio Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the ...

. Their life together was short and they soon separated. After the separation, Mary moved to Chicago and began working at the ''

Chicago Daily News The ''Chicago Daily News'' was an afternoon daily newspaper in the midwestern United States, published between 1875 and 1978 in Chicago, Illinois. History The ''Daily News'' was founded by Melville E. Stone, Percy Meggy, and William Dougherty ...

'', where she met

Will Lang Jr. William John Lang Jr. (October 7, 1914 – January 21, 1968) was an American journalist and a bureau head for ''Life'' magazine. Early career Lang was born on the south side of Chicago. While attending the University of Chicago in 1936, he wr ...

The two formed a friendship and worked together on several assignments. A career move presented itself during a vacation in London when Mary started a new job at the London ''

Daily Express The ''Daily Express'' is a national daily United Kingdom middle-market newspaper printed in Tabloid (newspaper format), tabloid format. Published in London, it is the flagship of Express Newspapers, owned by publisher Reach plc. It was first ...

''. The position soon brought her assignments in Paris during the years preceding

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

As a journalist covering World War II

After the fall of France in 1940, Welsh returned to London as a base to cover the events of the War. She also attended and reported on the press conferences of

Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British statesman, military officer, and writer who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 (Winston Churchill in the Second World War, ...

. During the war she married her second husband, Australian journalist

Noel Monks Noel Monks (1907–1960) was an Australian-born war correspondent who spent most of his career working for British newspapers. At the time of his death, he was court correspondent for the ''Daily Mail''. After his death, he was described in the ''S ...

.Koyen, Kenneth - "Snapshots of Mary Welsh Hemingway," ''Eve's Magazine'', 200

Accessed July 14, 2015

Marriage to Ernest Hemingway

In 1944, Welsh met American author

while covering the war in London, and they became intimate. In 1945, she divorced Noel Monks, and in March 1946, she married Hemingway in a ceremony in Cuba. Welsh's and Hemingway's temperaments were well-suited to one another; while Hemingway's previous wife - war correspondent

Martha Gellhorn Martha Ellis Gellhorn (8 November 1908 – 15 February 1998) was an American novelist, travel writer and journalist who is considered one of the great war correspondents of the 20th century. She reported on virtually every major world confli ...

- had chafed against his efforts to assert his dominance, Mary Welsh wrote, "I wanted him to be the Master, to be stronger and cleverer than I; to remember constantly how big he was and how small I was." In August 1946, Welsh had a

miscarriage Miscarriage, also known in medical terms as a spontaneous abortion, is an end to pregnancy resulting in the loss and expulsion of an embryo or fetus from the womb before it can fetal viability, survive independently. Miscarriage before 6 weeks ...

due to an

ectopic pregnancy Ectopic pregnancy is a complication of pregnancy in which the embryo attaches outside the uterus. Signs and symptoms classically include abdominal pain and vaginal bleeding, but fewer than 50 percent of affected women have both of these sympto ...

. After their wedding, Mary lived with Hemingway in Cuba for many years and, after 1959, in

Ketchum, Idaho Ketchum is a city in Blaine County, Idaho, United States. Located in the central part of the state, the population was 3,555 at the 2020 census, up from 2,689 in 2010. Located in the Wood River Valley, Ketchum is adjacent to Sun Valley and ...

. In 1958, while still in Cuba, she appeared in a non-speaking role, along with her husband, in

cameo appearance A cameo appearance, also called a cameo role and often shortened to just cameo (), is a brief guest appearance of a well-known person or character in a work of the performing arts. These roles are generally small, many of them non-speaking on ...

s in

John Sturges John Eliot Sturges (; January 3, 1910 – August 18, 1992) was an American film director. His films include '' Bad Day at Black Rock'' (1955), '' Gunfight at the O.K. Corral'' (1957), ''The Magnificent Seven'' (1960), '' The Great Escape'' (19 ...

's film version of Hemingway's 1952 novella, ''

The Old Man and the Sea ''The Old Man and the Sea'' is a 1952 novella by the American author Ernest Hemingway. Written between December 1950 and February 1951, it was the last major fictional work Hemingway published during his lifetime. It tells the story of Santiag ...

''. Hemingway portrayed a gambler in the film, and Mary an American tourist. It was after they had moved to Ketchum, in the early morning hours of July 2, 1961, that Mary was awakened by a loud noise, and discovered that her husband had "quite deliberately" shot himself with his favorite shotgun. According to biographer James Mellow, Hemingway had unlocked the basement storeroom where his guns were kept, gone upstairs to the front entrance foyer of their Ketchum home, and with the "double-barreled shotgun that he had used so often it might have been a friend", had shot himself. Mary and other family members and friends initially told the press that the death had been "accidental", but in an interview with the press five years later, Mary admitted that Hemingway had committed suicide.

Later life

Following Ernest's suicide in 1961, Mary acted as his

literary executor The literary estate of a deceased author consists mainly of the copyright and other intellectual property rights of published works, including film rights, film, translation rights, original manuscripts of published work, unpublished or partially ...

, and was responsible for the publication of ''

A Moveable Feast ''A Moveable Feast'' is a memoir by Ernest Hemingway about his years as a struggling expatriate journalist and writer in Paris during the 1920s. It was published posthumously in 1964. The book chronicles Hemingway's first marriage to Hadley Ric ...

'', '' Islands in the Stream'', ''The Garden of Eden'', and other posthumous works. She gave the manuscript of ''A Moveable Feast'' to

Tatiana Kudriavtseva Tatiana Kudriavtseva (; 5 March 1920, in Leningrad – 29 September 2013, in Moscow) was a Russian editor and translator of American, English and French literature. Early life Tatiana Alexseevna Kudriavtseva was born in Leningrad, in a middle-cla ...

, a translator from the Soviet Union, who was able then to publish a Russian translation simultaneous with the original's publication in English. In 1976, she wrote her autobiography, ''How It Was''. Further biographical details of Mary Welsh Hemingway can be found in the numerous Hemingway biographies, and in Bernice Kert's ''The Hemingway Women''.Bernice Kert, ''The Hemingway Women'', W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1983. In her later years, Mary moved to New York City, where she lived in an apartment on 65th Street. After a prolonged illness, she died in St. Luke's Hospital at age 78, on November 26, 1986. In her will, she had stipulated that she be buried in

Ketchum Ketchum may refer to: Places United States * Ketchum, Idaho, a city * Ketchum, Oklahoma, a town * Lake Ketchum, Washington, a census-designated place Antarctica * Ketchum Glacier * Ketchum Ridge Other uses * Ketchum (surname), a surn ...

next to Ernest, where they are now interred together."Mary Hemingway, 4th Wife of Author, Dies",

UPI United Press International (UPI) is an American international news agency whose newswires, photo, news film, and audio services provided news material to thousands of newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations for most of the 20th ce ...

Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is an American daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1847, it was formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper", a slogan from which its once integrated WGN (AM), WGN radio and ...

, November 30, 198

Accessed July 14, 2015

References

External links

*
Mary Hemingway letters
at

Washington University in St. Louis Washington University in St. Louis (WashU) is a private research university in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. Founded in 1853 by a group of civic leaders and named for George Washington, the university spans 355 acres across its Danforth ...

Mary Welsh and Ernest Hemingway manuscript, MSS 8188
a
L. Tom Perry Special Collections

Brigham Young University Brigham Young University (BYU) is a Private education, private research university in Provo, Utah, United States. It was founded in 1875 by religious leader Brigham Young and is the flagship university of the Church Educational System sponsore ...