Hemingway,Capote & Gibraltar

Hemingway loved Spain and spent considerable time attend ing bullfights and carousing with matadors all over the country, very often in Andalusia at towns such as Algeciras and Ronda. And yet I have been unable to find, in any of his works or biographies, even one mention of Gibraltar. When I wondered in this space some years back if the great man had ever actu ally been here" (see end of story)

1 received a letter from a resident who said he saw Hemingway in the 1950s gassing up his car at a petrol station near Waterport Gates. Last month 1 found further confirmation in the form of a magazine article written by Valerie Hemingway,nee Danby-Smith.

Danby-Smith was a 19-year-old freelance writer when she inter viewed Hemingway in Madrid in 1959 for a Belgian News Service. She must have made quite an im pression because she was invited to join the'cuadrilla'(the nickname for Hemingway's entourage) to travel to bullfights around Spain and to attend Hemingway's 60th birthday party at Malaga. Danby-Smith went on to work for Hemingway and married (and divorced) his youngest son Gregory. Today she lives in Bozeman,Montana and is in frequent demand for interviews as one of thefew surviving people who knew Hemingway in the last years of hislife—he committed suicide by shotgun on 2nd Julyl961 two years after they first met and just 17 days shy of his 62nd birthday.

Many years after Hemingway's death Valerie wrote an article enti tled: The Garden ofEden rei'isited: with Hetningivay in Proi'cnce in thesummer of'59. The article tells of her travels with Hemingway that summer and in it she confirms that he had indeed been on the Rock:

"I can remember the day Ernest, Bill [Bill Davis a friend of Heming way's with a villa at Malaga], and 1 were driving in the Pembroke Coral, the nickname for the car Ernest and Mary[the last of Hemingway'sfour wives]had rented in Gibraltar at the beginning ofthe summer,and which we used while the Lancia was being repaired."

So there we have confirmation that Ernest Hemingway was in Gibraltar in 1959. It would be in teresting to find out what type of car the Pembroke Coral was, and which company rented it to him, but Valerie does not give any further detail in her article. It would seem a

Gibraltar mechanic had the honour of repairing the Lancia.

And whataboutthatother famous writer Truman Capote?(His non-fic tion novel /" Cold Blood, a gripping account of terrifyingly, senseless murders and the subsequent execu tion of the killers, is one of the best books I have ever read).

Like Hemingway, Capote was a world traveller but he didn't spend nearly as much time in Spain as his older contemporary. In 1949, however,he did spend three months in Tangier, where he socialised with the likes of writers Paul and June Bowles, the wealthy socialite Barbara Hutton and various artists and writers, including Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal, who en joyed the liberated sexuality(mairrly homosexual)of the Moroccan city.

To get to Tangier Capote took the ferry from Algecirasso he obviously had, at the very least, a good look at Gibraltar. And yet 1 have been able to find only one minor refer ence which appeared in his book Answered Prayers (unfinished and pubbshed after his death).

"Tangier is a white piece of cub ist sculpture displayed against a mountainside facing the Bay of

Gibraltar."

That's it. That's all that this hugely talented writer has to say, the Rock itself doesn't even get mention.

I can only suppose that Gibraltar wasn't his sort of thing. The very camp Capote was more interested in writing about high society and peoples' mores rather than history and wars.

His most famous books, besides In Cold Blood,are Breakfast at Tiffany's and Answered Prayers. The former is the story of a young country girl. Holly Golightly, trying to climb the social ladder in sophisticated New York while the latter is a gossipy commentary on the decadent lives of the international jet set.

Capote never finished Answered Prayers but three installments were published in Esquire and caused a sensation. In the book Capote drops names, real and fictional, but all of the characters are easily recognisable. For an outsider it's a good,fun,read but for those named it must have been a tremendous embarrassment.

I will keep up my search for men tions of Gibraltar by Hemingway and Capote and any help from readers would be greatly appreci- ated. Fortunately Capote did leave us some witty and acerbic observa tions of Tangier written in letters to his friends.

To Catherine Wood, his high school English teacher:

"I do miss Italy but it is quite strange and beautiful here. I am living in a wonderful house in the Casbah; it is really great fun, and promises to be more so, for Cecil Beaton and Greta G. [Garbo] are coming here week after next...

"It is hot here, but it is a dry, not too unpleasant hot, and there are excellent beaches nearby — though 1 must say I don't go often."

To Andrew Lyndon,a non-celeb rity friend:

"I have written Phoebe [Phoebe Pierce a poet] about the journey through Spain, so maybe she has told you;it was ghastly.Such a beau tiful country,though.I even went to a museum:TTne Prado,natch.But am mad for Africa; life in the Casbah is quite my cup of tea. I don't think Jack [Jack Dunphy, Capote's life long companion]is so aazy about it; he says it is no fun to live in a place where you are frightened to walk in the streets alone. All the shadiest people are gathered here because it is an international city. The most extraordinary people. It's the most exciting place I've ever been.There is the most divine nightclub here called Parade... We are living on a mountain in a little tiny house with a fabulous view over Tangiers and the harbour..."

To Cecil Beaton, Internationally famous photographer: "...are you still coming? I very much hope so. We've had a few adventures — the most dazzling of which happened between Granada and Algeciras when suddenly ev eryone on the train began to scream and throw themselves on the floor; bandits! Bullets flying though the air.

"Only it wasn't bandits — just a group ofSpaniards who had missed the train and were firing on it to make it stop: one old man got hit in the head. But I like Tangiers, a marvellous cit>' really. We are living on the mountain at a place called Farhar — I should not recommend it to anyone,but it will suffice.

"It is an excellent day here, cool and the water crashing on the rocks and the sky classic in its clearness: just below me there is a quite beau tiful Arab standing stark nude on a rock..."

To Irwin Edman,American phi- losopher and writer:

"Several weeks ago something happened here which might inter est a philosopher. Four Arabs were walking down the road near my house, and one of them suddenly disappeared; he'd fallen down a hidden overgrown water well. And his three friends simply leaned over the well, calling miktoub (it is fate) miktoub'. Then they walked away, calmly shaking their heads.The next day the police passed and nailed a tip on the wall. Nobody seemed to care about the poor man,long since drowned. This is perfectly true."

Again to Andrew Lyndon:

"Yesterday was Jack's birthday, and we had the most beautiful party. Cecil Beaton is here,and helped me arrange it; we gave it in the grotto at the caves of Hercules, there was champagne and an Arab orchestra and it lasted all night. I've gone nuts on the subject of Arab music — Abu Muhud has replaced Billie [Holliday]in my affections..."

When Capote grew tired of Tang ier he and Dunphy travelled to Paris and then back to New York where the collection of short sto ries he wrote while in Tangier, A Tree of Night and Other Stories, was released.

Truman Capote wasbom Truman Streckfus Persons in New Orleans, Louisiana, to salesman Archulus "Arch" Persons and 17-year-old Lillie Mae Faulk. When he was four, his parents divorced, and he was sent to Monroeville, Alabama, where he was raised by his mother's relatives. In 1933,he moved to New York City to live with his mother and her second husband,Joseph Capote, who adopted him and renamed him Truman Garcia Capote. When he was 17, Capote ended his formal education and began a two-yearjob at The New Yorker.

Between 1943 and 1946, Capote wrote a continual flow of short fic tion published in both literary quar terlies and well-known magazines, including The Atlantic Monthlif, Harper's Bazaar, Harper's Magazine, Mademoiselle and The New Yorker.

His first published novel was Other Voices, Other Rooms(1949).

Capote achieved popular fame with Breakfast at Tiffany's in 1959 and recognition as one of the truly great writers of his time with In Cold Blood in 1966.

His writing career and infamous social life peaked that year when he threw the highly publicised Black and White Ball for several hundred select guests at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. But he angered and alienated most of those same people with the publication of the excerpts from Ansioered Prayers. The excerpts revealed scandalous secrets they had confided in him. An alcoholic and drug addict, Capote and his work deteriorated over the follow ing ten years and he died on 25th August 1984 at Los Angeles in the home ofJeannie Carson,wife oftalkshow host Johnny Carson, one of the few friends who had remained loyal to him.

*Hemingwayfirst saw Gibraltar in 1919 when the ship bringing him homefrom the war(he zoos an ambulance driverand had been wounded)stopped here.