fishing logs, and list-makings on the front and back of envelopes, translate to manna from heaven for anyone trying to grasp a life. And yet at other times, Ernest Hemingway has a canny way of disappearing from sight, like Houdini doing a trunk trick. Documentation for a significant moment, event, incident, or day just goes missing. Maybe heâs having a great horse laugh about it now from wherever he is
.
The sad fact is we know next to nothing about the day he went to Cropsey Avenue. I am convinced the date was Thursday, April 5
,
no matter that others have fixed it as April 4
.
(You can consult the endnotes for my argument.) Did he and Pauline flag down the first taxi they saw outside Scribners? What time of dayâearly afternoon? What was the route to Brooklyn? How long did they stay at the boatyard, and with whom did they shake hands there, and what did they do afterward, when theyâd motored back into the city? (There had to have been magnums of champagne involved.) Biographer Carlos Baker, in his 1969 pioneering study
, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story,
has him coming back to his hotel âin a state of raptureââand whoâd want to disagree?
What we do have are some excited Hemingway descriptions of the boat in letters to friends and business associates in the days and weeks and months afterward, and two documents from the company. The first is a postdated purchase order, the second a bill of sale (which shows the date that the balance was paid off, in Key West, on the day after the boat had arrived). The purchase order, dated April 18, 1934
,
states the price (which ended up changing by a modest amount, reflected in the subsequent bill of sale); provides a description of
Pilar
âs power plant; gives an anticipated
delivery date (which wasnât far off from the actual delivery date); and lists the agreed-on modifications and alterations to âone 38
-
foot twin cabin Playmate cruiser.â This one-page document on legal-size paper tells us nothing, though, about the emotional texture of that day in Brooklyn. That you have to make up almost entirely in your mind
.
STATES OF RAPTURE
At sea, that first or second summer
I HAVE NO PROOF that the boat-owner-to-be, with Gingrichâs wad in his pocket, took the elevator (or maybe the stairs) from Max Perkinsâs fifth-floor office down to the street and grabbed the first taxi he saw. Maybe he went to his hotel and changed into different clothes. Maybe he went straight to his bank and deposited the check. Maybe he and Pauline, feeling flush, had an expensive lunch on
Esquire
. But what I picture (guided by the maps and hunches of the reference assistants at the Brooklyn Public Library) is that at some soon-after point a cabbie conveyed husband and wife over the Manhattan Bridge, got onto Flatbush Avenue, negotiated around Prospect Park, connected to Ocean Parkway, and then followed that down through the spine of the borough before turning back west and taking several side streets over to Cropsey and then to Cropseyâs foot.
Was the old man waiting to greet them when they arrived? He must have been. He loved taking people through, making personal introductions, the more so if they were somebodies. Wouldnât they have hit it rightoff, the monarch of literature, the purveyor of pleasure boats, both sharing the name Ernest?
As noted, the purchase order has the date April 18 on it, but surely thatâs the date the document was typed up and mailed to Hemingway in Key West for his executing signature. This piece of paper was the formal sealing of the bargain that had been made two weeks before in person at the shipyard. The modifications Hemingway ordered for
Pilar
at Wheeler raised the cost by $455 from the $7,000 catalog price that he had fixed in his mind and had been contemplating since Africa. But Hemingway wouldnât know the âfinalâ price (it wasnât) until he received the purchase order in the
.
The sad fact is we know next to nothing about the day he went to Cropsey Avenue. I am convinced the date was Thursday, April 5
,
no matter that others have fixed it as April 4
.
(You can consult the endnotes for my argument.) Did he and Pauline flag down the first taxi they saw outside Scribners? What time of dayâearly afternoon? What was the route to Brooklyn? How long did they stay at the boatyard, and with whom did they shake hands there, and what did they do afterward, when theyâd motored back into the city? (There had to have been magnums of champagne involved.) Biographer Carlos Baker, in his 1969 pioneering study
, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story,
has him coming back to his hotel âin a state of raptureââand whoâd want to disagree?
What we do have are some excited Hemingway descriptions of the boat in letters to friends and business associates in the days and weeks and months afterward, and two documents from the company. The first is a postdated purchase order, the second a bill of sale (which shows the date that the balance was paid off, in Key West, on the day after the boat had arrived). The purchase order, dated April 18, 1934
,
states the price (which ended up changing by a modest amount, reflected in the subsequent bill of sale); provides a description of
Pilar
âs power plant; gives an anticipated
delivery date (which wasnât far off from the actual delivery date); and lists the agreed-on modifications and alterations to âone 38
-
foot twin cabin Playmate cruiser.â This one-page document on legal-size paper tells us nothing, though, about the emotional texture of that day in Brooklyn. That you have to make up almost entirely in your mind
.
STATES OF RAPTURE
At sea, that first or second summer
I HAVE NO PROOF that the boat-owner-to-be, with Gingrichâs wad in his pocket, took the elevator (or maybe the stairs) from Max Perkinsâs fifth-floor office down to the street and grabbed the first taxi he saw. Maybe he went to his hotel and changed into different clothes. Maybe he went straight to his bank and deposited the check. Maybe he and Pauline, feeling flush, had an expensive lunch on
Esquire
. But what I picture (guided by the maps and hunches of the reference assistants at the Brooklyn Public Library) is that at some soon-after point a cabbie conveyed husband and wife over the Manhattan Bridge, got onto Flatbush Avenue, negotiated around Prospect Park, connected to Ocean Parkway, and then followed that down through the spine of the borough before turning back west and taking several side streets over to Cropsey and then to Cropseyâs foot.
Was the old man waiting to greet them when they arrived? He must have been. He loved taking people through, making personal introductions, the more so if they were somebodies. Wouldnât they have hit it rightoff, the monarch of literature, the purveyor of pleasure boats, both sharing the name Ernest?
As noted, the purchase order has the date April 18 on it, but surely thatâs the date the document was typed up and mailed to Hemingway in Key West for his executing signature. This piece of paper was the formal sealing of the bargain that had been made two weeks before in person at the shipyard. The modifications Hemingway ordered for
Pilar
at Wheeler raised the cost by $455 from the $7,000 catalog price that he had fixed in his mind and had been contemplating since Africa. But Hemingway wouldnât know the âfinalâ price (it wasnât) until he received the purchase order in the
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