Halloween Special: The Graves of Famous Writers

Ernest Hemingway: July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961

Although Hemingway’s mental state was questionable in the summer of 1960, he again traveled to Spain to obtain photographs for his manuscript. His fourth wife, Mary Welsh Hemingway, did not travel with him and he was lonely, taking to his bed for days, retreating into silence. The first installments of The Dangerous Summer were published in Life in September 1960 to good reviews. When he left Spain, he went straight to Idaho, but was worried about money and his safety.

Hemingway believed the FBI was actively monitoring his movements. In fact, the FBI had opened a file on him during WWII, when he used the Pilar to patrol the waters off Cuba, and J. Edgar Hoover had an agent in Havana watch Hemingway during the 1950s.

Hemingway suffered from physical problems as well: his health declined and his eyesight was failing. In November he was admitted to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, where he may have believed he was to be treated for hypertension. Hemingway’s FBI file contains an agent’s January 1961 letter regarding a Mayo clinic request of authorization to tell Hemingway that having entered the clinic under an assumed name, which had been advised by the clinic to avoid undue publicity, was not a concern to the FBI. The letter relates the Mayo clinic concern that “this worry was interfering with the treatments of Mr. Hemingway.”  In December 1960 he received electroconvulsive therapy as many as 15 times. In January 1961 he was “released in ruins.”

In the early morning hours of July 2, 1961, Hemingway “quite deliberately” shot himself with his favorite shotgun. He unlocked the gun cabinet, went to the front entrance of their Ketchum home, and “pushed two shells into the twelve-gauge Boss shotgun, put the end of the barrel into his mouth, pulled the trigger and blew out his brains.”

Hemingway’s family and friends flew to Ketchum for the funeral, which was officiated by the local Catholic priest, who believed the death accidental. Of the funeral (during which an altar boy fainted at the head of the casket), his brother Leicester wrote: “It seemed to me Ernest would have approved of it all.”

In a press interview five years later Mary Hemingway admitted her husband had committed suicide.