Ernest Hemingway — The Spanish Civil War
“ …soldiers passed by, stragglers at first, then steady streams of troops, some with weapons, some not. Then anti-aircraft guns pulled by trucks, then trucks full of troops. Hemingway couldn’t be sure if they were advancing or retreating…”
In the spring of 1937 Paris became the great staging area for journalists on their way to the Spanish Civil War, and a centre for thousands of disaffected artists and intellectuals, mainly from Germany and Italy, who had no intention of going anywhere further south than a cafe table on the Boulevard du Montparnasse.
After arriving in Paris with the bullfighter, Sidney Franklin, Ernest Hemingway spent most of his time at the American Embassy trying to persuade the rather bored representative of the State Department to issue Franklin with a visa for Spain. Hemingway told the bullfighter not to worry, that everything would be okay. Franklin was refused his visa.
Disappointed, the two men then headed for a lunch date with the journalist Janet Flanner, and her lesbian lover, Solita Solano (one time theatre critic, Sarah Wilkinson) at La Coupole. Flanner always remembered that Franklin, because of a recent goring in Mexico, sat rather gingerly on the edge of his chair as he pecked, like some small exotic bird, at his food, with his knife held aloft like a matador’s sword. They were strange…
