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‘All my life idiotically, I thought sex seemed to matter so desperately to the man who wanted it that to withhold it was like withholding bread, an act of selfishness.’ This to an ex-wife of Cary Grant. So she went through with it, and the men seemed duly grateful. It is just that the roll-call of the grand is so relentless, as is, curiously enough, the turnover. One moment the chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank is ‘some sort of golden gift of good fortune’, and then he, too, is gone, bobbing astern just like her husbands, though, unlike them, remembered fondly.
For when men were of very great help she did tend to marry them. Her mother said as much:
When you were very young, what interested you was France, and you found or were found by the most complete Frenchman available. Then you were interested in writing, so you found or were found by what you thought the finest writer.
And that was her first two marriages done. ‘I did tend to collect kings,’ says Martha lamely. Others might say she was just being pushy.
Old Mrs Gellhorn went on:
In the war, finally, you were interested in bravery and you found or were found by one who was considered perhaps the bravest of all. But some day you will find a man, and not someone who represents something.
Martha was honest enough to say of this, that ‘it was a kind way of putting it’. But she seems never to have found such a man.
Instead they come and go, at first as objects of all those professions of love (throughout her life, like those incapable of love, she was lavish with such), all those nicknames (Hemingway, her husband from 1940 to 1945, was variously ‘beloved Bug’, ‘beloved Binglie’, ‘Pup-pup’, ‘Muckle-bugletski’). But then Mucklebugletski, having turned war correspondent himself, became the rival who beat her to D-Day, so there was General Gavin. It didn’t take long: one year the nickname, the next just the passing reference in a letter to someone else. Finally the vengeance:
Such a ghastly lover — wham bam thank you maam, or maybe just wham bam. No experience. Two virgin wives before me, and me not about to raise my voice in complaint because I imagined it was my fault, not getting anywhere. The great sex talker and writer must, in fact, have been terrified of women. Interesting…
Mucklebugletski had, bleakly, become E. H. ‘I think I am, largely, a man,’ reflects Martha.
The war ends, as, naturally, does her affair with the General. ‘I must straighten that up; I can’t go on being romantic and wasting his time… and also get some clothes and furniture.’ For there are other people to meet, places to see (‘I wish to see Amsterdam. I’ve got a sudden intense curiosity about it’).
Another time, improbably, it was Clapham Common, where some murder involving Teddy boys had provided new grist for her mill (‘I am going to start a new life on Clapham Common’). It was all one to her, becalmed between wars, and it is a great pity that, but for the timing, she might have encountered Ron Davies.
New addresses, new recipients of her letters. The main casualty seems to have been her adopted son, who had two main faults: he was ordinary and he was fat. But she was a brave woman who, when there were no new places to see or people to meet, killed herself.
I think I should have liked her more had I been less exposed to Martha; in short, had there been fewer letters. That is Caroline Moorehead’s one editorial mistake. There are no others.
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