Mary Welsh Hemingway ( Welsh; April 5, 1908 – November 26, 1986) was an American journalist and author 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. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century fic ...

Early life

Born in

Walker, Minnesota Walker is a city in Cass County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 941 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Cass County. Walker is part of the Brainerd Micropolitan Statistical Area. Minnesota State Highways 34, 200, an ...

, Welsh was a daughter of a lumberman. 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. Of the List of states and territories of the United States, fifty U.S. states, it is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 34th-l ...

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

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

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. During the war she married her second husband, Australian journalist Noel Monks.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 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 and pregnancy loss, is the death of an embryo or fetus before it is able to survive independently. Miscarriage before 6 weeks of gestation is defined by ESHRE as biochemical ...

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 sympt ...

. 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, 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 the communities s ...

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

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

s made by them 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 ...

film version A film adaptation is the transfer of a work or story, in whole or in part, to a feature film. Although often considered a type of derivative work, film adaptation has been conceptualized recently by academic scholars such as Robert Stam as a dial ...

of Hemingway's 1952 novella, ''

The Old Man and the Sea ''The Old Man and the Sea'' is a novella written by the American author Ernest Hemingway in 1951 in Cayo Blanco (Cuba), and published in 1952. It was the last major work of fiction written by Hemingway that was published during his lifetime. On ...

''. 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 Hemingway'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, translation rights, original manuscripts of published work, unpublished or partially completed w ...

, and was responsible for the publication of ''

A Moveable Feast ''A Moveable Feast'' is a 1964 memoir '' belles-lettres'' by American author Ernest Hemingway about his years as a struggling expat journalist and writer in Paris during the 1920s. It was published posthumously. The book details Hemingway's fi ...

'', '' 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 (russian: Татьяна Кудрявцева; 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 Kudriav ...

, 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: Towns, cities, and, geographic features * Ketchum, Idaho, United States * Ketchum, Oklahoma, United States * Lake Ketchum, Washington, United States * Ketchum Glacier, a glacier in Antarctica * Ketchum Ridge, a large ri ...

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

Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television a ...

, November 30, 198

Accessed July 14, 2015

References

External links

*
Mary Hemingway letters
at Washington University in St. Louis
Mary Welsh and Ernest Hemingway manuscript, MSS 8188
a
L. Tom Perry Special Collections

Brigham Young University Brigham Young University (BYU, sometimes referred to colloquially as The Y) is a private research university in Provo, Utah. It was founded in 1875 by religious leader Brigham Young and is sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day ...