In the Footsteps of Ernest Hemingway

by Maggie Cobbett

As our little plane flew over the mangroves and aquamarine waters of the Straits of Florida, we braced ourselves for a bumpy landing on Key West’s short runway but need not have worried. Our pilot had only been teasing us and we hardly felt the wheels’ first contact with the asphalt. The heat and glare of the afternoon sun, on the other hand, hit us like a clenched fist as we made our way towards the low rise buildings of the little airport. To be allowed simply to walk across from the plane seemed delightfully informal by today’s standards and we were very quickly ushered through the baggage claim and out to the taxi rank. This laid back attitude was shared by our driver and, indeed, by just about everyone else we met during our brief stay. If there is one part of the United States of America where ‘anything goes’, this seemed to be it.

Key West, the southernmost city in the continental United States, is much closer to Cuba than to mainland Florida. Ernest Hemingway first stopped there in 1928 on a visit home from Paris via Cuba and fell in love with the island despite its rather seedy reputation. It is very easy to understand why. Flat as a board and measuring only four miles long by one mile wide, its 13 000 inhabitants shared a huge expanse of sea and sky, balmy weather, spectacular sunsets, big game sports fishing and a deep rooted drinking culture. Its many bars were gregarious, rough and ready places that suited Hemingway, for whom the word ‘macho’ might have been invented, down to the ground. Prohibition was never taken seriously in Key West, supplied as it was by Cuban rum runners.

There are twice as many residents now as in those days and their numbers are swelled each year by throngs of visitors, many of whom make their way to a Spanish colonial style house on Whitehead Street. Quite secluded in the 1930s and rather dilapidated, it was a belated wedding present for Hemingway and his second wife Pauline from her rich Uncle Gus. Having lived in rented properties for their first three years, the young couple immediately set about improving it. The Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum has long been Key West’s main tourist attraction and was the one that I was keenest to explore.

Firstly, though, we had to settle into the room we had booked. Although only one block away from bustling Duval Street, which runs from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic and is the main thoroughfare of Key West, the Best Western Hibiscus had the dual advantage of being in a quiet setting and within easy walking distance of everything we wanted to see and do. Our taxi dropped us off there much earlier than was usual for new arrivals, but the friendly receptionist, not at all put out, arranged for us to access our light and airy room straight away. Overlooking the big pool and jacuzzi, it had everything we needed, including a fridge, microwave and coffee maker.

We took that first day at a mellow pace, ambling around the streets, eating Key Lime pie for lunch and pausing regularly for liquid refreshment in the many bars. At some point we also visited the cemetery with its above ground graves and read some of the funny inscriptions. Where else would you find, ‘I told you I was sick’, ‘At least I know where he’s sleeping tonight’ or ‘I’m just resting my eyes’? Right beside a stern notice forbidding gravestone rubbing, removal of tree fronds or coconuts and tours for profit, a small package was changing hands for a wad of notes. Had we come across this scenario anywhere but Key West, we might have been in danger of our lives, but the young men involved just gave us a casual nod and carried on with their business. Later on, we mingled with the street entertainers and crowds gathered in Mallory Square to watch the sun go down, picked up some black bean and spinach chimichangos from the Old Town Mexican Café and headed for bed.

Bleary-eyed after over indulgence in mojitos the previous day, I was glad to hear the coffee maker already percolating and drank several cups before heading for the shower and complimentary breakfast.

Set up for the morning, we headed off in search of Whitehead Street. The opportunity to meet the descendants of Hemingway’s famous white polydactyl cat Snowball, given to him by an old sea captain and with six toes on each paw, was as much of a draw for me as the house itself. I was not disappointed. Dozens of cats, sleek, well fed and as relaxed as any other inhabitants of Key West, had the run of both the house and its extensive gardens. Not of any particular breed, they all had enormous feet and were named individually after film stars of Hemingway’s day like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. As well as their own cemetery in the grounds, the cats had a special drinking fountain, a water trough installed by Hemingway himself. The story went that it was an old urinal, taken from Sloppy Joe’s, his favourite bar. Pauline had tried unsuccessfully to disguise its origins by tiling the sides and attaching an old Spanish olive jar to the top.

She also oversaw the installation of a large swimming pool in the grounds while her husband was working as a war correspondent in Spain. Not only was the pool, five feet deep at one end and ten at the other, tremendously expensive to build, but it was the first one on the Florida Keys and regarded by some as a folly. Digging a hole 24 feet wide and 60 feet deep into solid coral at a cost of around $20 000 was certainly a massive undertaking by anyone’s standards. Although Hemingway planned it himself and Pauline is thought to have paid for it, he flung down a coin on his return and accused her of having spent ‘his’ last cent. She kept the coin and had it embedded in the concrete.

The pool, with gardenias blooming at the water’s edge, had a magical quality about it. Elizabeth Bishop, a friend of Pauline’s, wrote to fellow poet Robert Lowell:

The swimming pool is wonderful – it is very large and the water, from away under the reef, is fairly salt. Also it lights up at night – I find that each underwater bulb is five times the voltage of the one bulb in the lighthouse across the street, so the pool must be visible to Mars – it is wonderful to swim around in a sort of green fire, one’s friends look like luminous frogs.

Our guide, who was a great raconteur, assured us that Hemingway had become so reconciled to the pool that he had a six foot brick wall erected round the property so that he could swim nude. What a coup that would have been for the paparazzi, had they been around at the time! They would also have enjoyed taking pictures of the peacocks and, before the construction of the pool, the boxing matches organised on the lawn. The ring was moved a few blocks to the site in Petronia Street now occupied by Blue Heaven Restaurant, of which more later.

Given the vulnerability of the Keys to tropical storms and hurricanes, we wondered how the house had survived intact since its completion in 1851 by marine architect and salvage wrecker Asa Tift. The man knew his business, though, and built it on the second highest site on the island, almost five metres above sea level. Further protection is afforded by eighteen inch thick limestone walls. When Hurricane Irma struck in 2017 the Museum’s staff defied the order to evacuate the Keys and both they and the cats survived intact. Superstitious sailors believed that six-toed cats were lucky and maybe they were right!

Pauline and one by his first wife Hadley, auctioned off the property for $80 000. The new owners, who had bought it as a private residence, were forced by the sheer volume of interest in Hemingway to open it as a museum in 1964.

I stood for a few minutes in his writing studio, where a battered typewriter on an equally battered wooden table took centre stage. There were hunting trophies on the walls and a black and white photograph of Hemingway’s much beloved fishing yacht Pilar. The guide reminded us that, amongst other work produced in that very spot, was his 1937 novel ‘To Have And Have Not’, later immortalised by the film starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.

The interior of the house was a little disappointing after the grounds. Some of the original furniture and the chandeliers with which Pauline replaced the ceiling fans were still in place, but many other pieces were removed after Hemingway’s death in 1961. His three sons, two by

I should have liked to visit Pilar, who used to be moored only a few blocks away from Whitehead Street at the Navy Yard, but it was not to be. She is on permanent display at Finca Vigia, the home overlooking Havana to which Hemingway moved with his third wife, Martha. His fourth and final wife, Mary, later gave Pilar to Gregorio Fuentes, who had served as her captain and also as the inspiration for Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea. What could be more appropriate?

Sloppy Joe’s on Duval Street, which holds an annual Ernest Hemingway look-alike contest, was very lively but not, we discovered, the bar in which the writer actually drank and first met Martha. The story goes that an unpopular rent rise led to staff and customers removing everything from the premises on Greene Street and setting up there instead. The original establishment with its wooden ceiling and cracked-tile floor was taken over in the 1950s by a charter boat captain who named it after himself. Captain Tony’s, we decided, was also well worth a visit. Already much refreshed, we then took ourselves off for dinner at The Blue Heaven Restaurant, which proved to be another very memorable experience.

Described in our guidebook as ‘hippy run’, the prices in this former bordello, where Hemingway was said to have hung out watching cockfights, were not our idea of ‘hippy’, but everyone was very friendly. Our table, in an area open to the sky, stood on a dirt floor across which passed a constant parade of both cats and chickens. We had an excellent veggie stir fry with brown rice, raised several glasses to Hemingway and finished off with Blue Heaven special coffees. Topped with cream, they included more than a dash of Baileys. Truth be told, it was all rather a blur towards the end, which seemed quite fitting after a day devoted to following in the footsteps of a legendary drinker.

A Yorkshire girl through and through, Maggie Cobbett lives on the edge of the Dales. With five books to her credit, she also writes short stories, features and even the occasional poem. Her many travels, as well as careers in modern language teaching and television background work, have furnished an inexhaustible supply of inspiration. http://maggiecobbett.co.uk/