by Steve Newman

Created on: June 11, 2009   Last Updated: August 17, 2009

Ernest Hemingway worked well on the novel that was to become 'Islands in the Stream', but throughout 1947 he was in a bad way, both mentally and physically. Look at photographs of the man from this time and there is a far away, dreamy look in his eyes. But the novelist, and his new wife, Mary Welsh, pretty much had the Finca Vigia to themselves in the early part of that year and were looking forward to Ernest's two youngest sons arriving.

But on a visit to their mother (Pauline Pfeiffer) both Patrick and Gregory were involved in a car crash. Although Gregory recovered quickly Patrick began to complain of headaches. Soon after the boys arrived in Cuba Mary was called away to Chicago, where her father had been taken seriously ill with prostate cancer.

By the morning of the 14th of April Patrick was feverish and delirious. Ernest quickly turned the finca into a hospital and his staff into a team of nurses, with each of them taking turns to watch over Patrick, with Hemingway himself taking the midnight watch.

On the the 16th Pauline arrived and took control of her son's health. Hemingway reported to Mary that his ex-wife was 'behaving admirably'. Pauline stayed until the 10th of May when Patrick was well enough to be left.

Mary returned to Cuba on the 18th of May completely exhausted. She just wanted to sleep. Five days later Pauline reappeared, and much to Ernest's surprise, the two Mrs Hemingways got on very well, and amused him with "...some girlish banter about their attendance at the Hemingway University."

But it was becoming obvious to both Mary and Pauline that Hamingway was exhausted, and showing signs of nervous strain that exploded into rage when he read in the press that fellow novelist, William Faulkner, had called him a coward.

Faulkner had said nothing of the sort of course. When talking with some students at the University of Mississippi Faulkner had said that Thomas Wolfe, Jon Dos Passos, Eskine Caldwell, Hemingway, and himself were the best modern novelists of the last twenty years, but that they were all victims of what he called 'splendid failure'. According to Faulkner Wolfe had made the best failure because his courage was the greatest, that he had risked clumsiness, and even dullness, in order to 'shoot the works, win or loose, and damn the torpedoes'. Jon Dos Passos had sacrificed some courage, said Faulkner, 'to the demands of style', and that Hemingway stood last on the list, 'because he lacked the courage to go out on a limb of

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