Cody hotel preserves Hemingway's memory
By MARTIN KIDSTON The Billings Gazette
The Associated Press
CODY, Wyo.
By MARTIN KIDSTON The Billings Gazette
The Associated Press
CODY, Wyo.
The room is tastefully adorned in red brick, crown molding and a tile mosaic inlay.
There's a steamer trunk and a cushy chair, a king-size bed and the warm glow of a bedside lamp _ the accoutrement you might expect from a boutique hotel.
But look closer _ the 1930s Royal typewriter set on the desk, the vintage rotary phone, the black-and-white photo of Ernest Hemingway staring out over the surf.
It was here that Hemingway mailed the final draft of "Death in the Afternoon." An ode to the Spanish bullfighting culture, it was a subject he would refer to in his writing throughout his career.
While Cody may be a long way from Hemingway's home in the Florida Keys, not to mention Pamplona, Spain, his signature in the Chamberlin Inn's historic registry places him here on Oct. 16, 1932, the year the book was published.
Recent research conducted by a UCLA graduate student also has found more about Hemingway's days in northwest Wyoming, where he fished the local rivers, hunted big game and drank whiskey at the local taverns.
"At that time in his life he was writing a lot of short stories," said Ev Diehl, who owns the Chamberlin Inn with his wife, Susan. "I've always been a big fan. I've read everything he's written. I remember when he shot himself. It was kind of a tragedy for me."
The Diehls purchased their hotel, then known as the Paawnee, in 2005, vaguely familiar with its history.
Their first order of business was to change the name back to the Chamberlin, honoring Agnes Chamberlin, the pioneering businesswoman who founded it as a boarding house in 1903.
Changing the name was the easy part.
"There were a lot of rooms you couldn't get into," said Susan Diehl. "The basement was completely full of antiques and things she collected."
Any sense of the hotel's original charm had been covered up with clutter or stripped from the property. But from that clutter came a few old ledgers used during the hotel's golden days.
Intrigued, the Diehls scanned the ledgers line by line, looking for nothing in particular. Then they found Hemingway's signature.
"When we got the ledgers, we'd heard rumors that Hemingway had stayed here," Susan said. "I was with my daughter when I found it. I screamed and said, `We've got some history here.' "
Not much was known about Hemingway's days in Cody. But that changed in 2006 when a travel writer named Richard Carroll, a graduate student at UCLA, arrived to complete his thesis on Hemingway.
"Hemingway loved Wyoming," Carroll wrote in a letter to the Diehls after completing his research. "He told his friends that the best fishing in the world was at the Clarks Fork branch of the Yellowstone River."
Using books written about Hemingway, Carroll started piecing together the author's Wyoming adventures. Citing an excerpt from the 1969 book, "Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story," by Carlos Baker, Carroll noted that Hemingway received a deep cut on his chin while riding at a local ranch that many believe was the L Bar T.
That night, according to Baker's book, Hemingway went to the Crandall Ranger Station and rented a "decrepit car" from the ranger.
"He reached Cody about midnight and roused Dr. Trueblood, a one-time veterinarian who offered Hemingway whiskey," Baker wrote. "After the stitching, they took the whiskey and went across the street to an all-night restaurant for more drinks."
Carroll believes the restaurant was likely the Irma Hotel. Founded by William "Buffalo Bill" Cody in 1902, the Irma still holds a prominent corner in town, a short walk from the Chamberlin Inn.
It's easy to imagine Hemingway bellied up to the bar while mixing it up with the locals. At least that's how Diehl likes to picture it.
"We just assumed he probably hit the pubs pretty hard with all the local boys," Diehl said. "There were also a couple other bars around the corner, including the Wonder Bar, which is now the Proud Cut Saloon."
Hemingway was doing more in Cody than fishing and drinking. He was also working, and it was from here that he mailed "Death in the Afternoon," along with several short stories.
During that 1932 visit, Carroll said, Hemingway had been hunting in the Closed Creek and Pilot Creek area. He arrived back in town just ahead of a winter storm.
"By that night, he and Charles are in Cody with the smell of snow in the air and winter setting in thickly behind them," wrote Michael Reynolds in his 1997 book, "Hemingway: The 1930s," from which Carroll pulled some research.
But Carroll's favorite anecdote was found in "Selected Letters: Ernest Hemingway," edited by Carlos Baker. Among the letters, Hemingway wrote from Cody to his editor, Maxwell Perkins.
"Did you get a second lot of sheets signed to be bound and mailed from Cody? Mailed about Oct. 15-17," Hemingway wrote.
"I mailed about 14 letters with them (rather left them in the mailbag of the Studebaker garage in Cody in the a.m. before mailman came by for him to mail on the morning we started) and have never had an answer from any of them.
"Will you answer this by return mail so I can write to Cody. All the letters are important. It was my summer's correspondence which I finally answered before leaving the ranch."
Carroll called the letter a marvelous background detail connecting Hemingway to the Chamberlin Inn and the city of Cody.
As for the photo hanging in the wall of the "Hemingway Suite," as the Diehls now call it, Carroll said it was taken by a man named Walter Hauk.
Hauk was a writer-photographer who was married in Hemingway's "finca," or property, in Cuba.
"Walter was working as first secretary of the American Embassy in Havana at the time, and his wife was Nita Jensen, Hemingway's secretary," Carroll explained. "Hemingway was Walter's best man.
"The photo was taken on the Pilar, Hemingway's famous fishing boat. There are only three copies in existence. Walter has the original, he made one copy for me, and now you have one for the Hemingway Suite."
Feb 22
Well, I am well behind schedule for a new update. Thankfully I had the other one ready to send, but I just haven’t, and now you’ll basically get a two for one deal.
Last week was Dan week. Monday was just another day to wait. The boys and I had to go to the library of congress for a research class. It’s not like we’re going to do hard-core real research here. I kind of suspect that only doctorate students and professors do that kind of research. It’s basically set up like the BYU library anyways. I also read through my text book and finished the short story section so that Dan could read some of my favorite stories while I was at work. Now I’m in the Poetry section. Poetry is kind of beyond me, but hopefully this text book will help me figure it out. After work, I came down with the Migraine of my life and basically got bed confined. That was fun. I’m glad it happened before Dan got here. By Tuesday morning, I was basically better though, and I had all work day to wait for Dan’s arrival at Union station.
He got there like 15 min before I could escape work, so I guess he just explored the station a little. It’s basically a mini mall the size of the Billings mall with a good food court downstairs. When I got out of work I sped walked as best as I could to meet up with him in Union and we had one of those Hollywood-type reunions. That night, we took a slow meander to my place where I set up his bed and we just watched some TV. We were both pretty tired to say the least. I also introduced him to my roommates. We also made some alfrado pasta.
On Wednesday, he walked me to work so he could figure out how to get there to get his capitol tour. He came in just in time and I guess Macy and Elisabeth made fun of him a little which I find kind of annoying. Our tour was great. It’s a good thing Dan was my first tour because I definitely stumbled on a lot of things and went the wrong way once. Our tour took way longer than it should have… but then we got lunch break after, and we met up with Kelsey in the Senate dining room. It was fun to have him meet Kelsey. Anyhow, I brought him to the new senate chamber and we got to see Barrasso give a little speech in there! That was cool.
Our Capitol Tour!
Dan fails at taking self pictures with things in the background.
Sorry this is sideways. That's Brigham Young by the way
Old House chamber roof
Wednesday night was another chill night. I had to do laundry and we watched some Beauty and the Beast which I bought for him for V-day. I was also suffering from some major vertigo. It’s finally all gone, now, so no need to worry about that. We also made some dinner which consisted of a Hungry man, romen noodles with eggs, and yogurt.
On Thursday, Welchie and I had a big tour group of a bunch of students from Star Valley. It was a special high school for students that struggle in traditional schools I guess. As far as I could tell, how they do it is each class is intensive for like a month, then they get that credit and move on to the next class. This helps because it helps them see an end to their hard work. The students seemed bright enough, and pretty interested in everything. The guys were really great throughout the tour, but the girls were SO not into it. They were at first, one girl was like “I’m never going to come back again” and I said, “sure you will” then she complained about not having enough money, and I said she could save, then she said that she will probably marry someone who won’t care and I told her “well marry someone who does care!” and she kind of gave me this look like it had never occurred to her to set her bars a little higher. It was pretty sad. By the end of the tour, though, the two girls just lost it. They were all dressed up to meet with the senators and rep and they wanted nothing more than to take off their skirts. They were complaining about wanting lunch and being tired and so forth. It was really frustrating. Like I said, the boys in the group were great, but the girls were really really annoying. And I guess that’s the reason why I preferred to hang out with boys in high school! I pretty much just talked to students who weren’t listening about the capitol and such. I asked one boy what his plans were after high school and he said he wanted to go to UW which I replied was a great idea, and then maybe he could be an intern like me! I just wanted the kids to be motivated to do something with their lives… to know that life is so much bigger than Star Valley. It really makes me sad. The grown ups there liked talking to me. They were all LDS as well, and a couple of them were teasing me for going to BYU because one was a U student and another was a UW student. I also hate to say this, but sometimes you can kind of tell how smart someone is by giving them a capitol tour. The students seemed bright enough, though.
After the first tour, I met up with Dan for lunch again. I ran home and we ate there. It was fun to go home during lunch. We had romen noodles with eggs. It was good to break up my day like that and see Dan. I had to hurry back for my second tour, though. Actually, as I was leaving for lunch, my second tour did come. Elisabeth told them they were quite early and she signaled for me to leave for lunch and told them to check out the library of congress or something and then come back. I’m glad she did that for me. Well, Jon came with me for the second tour. I was glad to have some company. It was a dad with his senior son and twelve year old daughter. To my horror, I found myself being really really dull. I was afraid that Jon was going to say something after but he just said “that was a tough crowd. They weren’t giving you anything!” I hope that’s all that was wrong, but I appreciate Jon saying that. I will have to work on being a lot less dull though! Especially because I have another tour today…
After work, Dan came to pick me up and we were going to get dinner but we ended up sitting on the fountain of the Library of Congress. I think that fountain is hilarious! I will have to find pictures. There’s just random mere-people riding on horses with fins and randomness like that. I love it though because it is completely unnecessary. We were chilling there when we heard a girl’s voice say “Dan? Is that you?” and there was a girl that Dan went to high school with! It was totally random and we both laughed about it for like ten min after. Then we went up the steps of the library to look in. I think that’s my favorite building here. It’s so random and frivolous. There’s naked men holding up windows and busts in windows and just silly things like that. I totally love that building. We sat up there for a long time just talking and laughing and singing. We also watched this amazing sunset going on behind the capitol building. It couldn’t have been more perfect. After, we walked to the corner market to get some goodies.That night we ordered some cheesy bread sticks and watched TV with the roommates until bed time.
The next morning, I woke with more vertigo than ever and with a migraine. I had also slept in too late to go to work so I hurried up and called the office and explained what was up. I’m in a little bit of trouble because I should have called them first thing in the morning. It was kind of bad. But I just rested up for a couple of hours and Dan took care of me. It was good for Dan and me, though, because we got to explore. We went to the Library again and just chilled out there on the grass. Some security guard thought we were homeless people at first and came to get us away. He saw we were just tourists chilling in the grass. We tried to take a timer picture from there and it just didn’t turn out right so a passer-by took one for us. Then we walked around the capitol and found the Botanical gardens and then went to the reflection pool. We stayed there for a bit and then decided that the Washington monument didn’t look that far away so we set off on our journey. What an optical allusion that is! That walk took forever! I wanted to get to the Lincoln Memorial but by the time we got to the Washington Monument, we had just about had it! The mall is flipping huge! It’s frustrating how the Smithsonian is set up that way. It takes like four hours to just walk from museum to museum and not even go in. Well we took a cab back to the Corner Market so we could get some more goodies.
These are of Dan and me chilling in the grass by the Jefferson Library Building. This last picture looks bad, but he was tickling me.
Fail self timer picture
Kindly pedestrian saw our failed attempt and offered to take one for us.
The awesome fountain i mentioned in my last post.
Could I be any more of a ham?
By the reflecting pool in front of the capitol. we are upside down...
I enjoy these shoe shots...
D'oh! more sideways shots.
Saturday morning was very sad for us because Dan was leaving. I walked him to Union and we said our goodbyes. I just sort of hung out at Union for a bit than walked to the Pharmacy which was closed. It was a beautiful day though. Well, it was really windy. I was listening to my awesome new pink Ipod and enjoying the weather. It was a really special week. Y’all should ask Dan about it and what he thought. I know he mostly worked on his business the whole time while I was at work. I’m glad he had something to do while I was all tied up.
Sunday, church was good. Jessica was able to pick me up and didn’t get sick at all! I took notes during the whole thing just to keep myself paying attention. After, Jessica wanted to stay for a baptism. It was for a Haitian dude. He told his conversion story. He said that he was watching TV one night and there was an ad for a free bible so he called the number. The next day, there were elders at his door and he said “I wanted a free bible, not the mormons!” so that was funny. He wasn’t ready at that point, yet, but later, the sister missionaries found his name on a slip of paper and went to his house and it happened that he was thinking about the mormon faith. It was sweet. There’s one Chinese sister and Jessica said she was panicked by the convert’s pit bull. Like screaming and stuff. She’s so cute. I love Asians.
After church, Jessica invited me to her place for dinner and a game. She lives with a couple that she’s known since high school. They are from SLC and super liberal I guess. They have been dating for ten years and he has asked the girl to marry him twice but she said no because she’s a super feminist and thinks marriage is a woman trap. They were really nice, and it was so good to have a home cooked dinner! It was also nice to talk about Utah and all that for a bit. After dinner, we played settlers of Catan because I had never played it before. I had no idea what I was doing the whole game and yet, for most of it, I was winning. They all gained up on me, though, so I ended up losing. They were yelling and getting really into it. I was really thankful for the experience, though and thanked them tons. I told Clare about it and she knows the couple! I think that’s crazy. I will def have to tell that to Jessica next week.
Yesterday, I had work off! I didn’t have any plans. Miles had invited me to go to Georgetown with him and get cupcakes so I invited my roommates to come along, but he never texted back and Michelle and I ended up not having anything to do so we were going to go to Georgetown ourselves to get them. The metro ended up not going to that stop so we went to China Town instead and walked around and found a cupcake place there. We accidentally ran into the Mall! I didn’t know it was so close like that. Well we went to the Natural History museum and drooled over gems and jewels. It made me really want some fancy jewelry. We also looked at the stuffed animals and other things. She learned that I’m freaked out by monkeys and half monkey, half human things. We both got insanely tired even though it was only three thirty. We took the metro home and I stopped by the Barnes and Noble in Union station to buy Ender’s Game for a book club that my relief society president is running. I read about a hundred pages worth and then slept, woke up, read some more, ate, talked to clare and the recently returned Kyra. She went to NYC with one of her friends for the three-day weekend. That sounded like fun. I think I will have to make a trip one of these days. Clare also spent the night with a guy she barely knows in a hotel... i don't want to think too hard what went on there but that's intense! Then I was off to bed and that gets me to today.
Marie Antoinette's earings
Gifts Napoleon gave to his second wife. another reason to have Napoleon as my history crush...
Hope Diamond
Anteaters are oddly really cute
National Archives.
Cool Square
Okapi!
So far Ender’s Game is alright, but I wish he hadn’t written Ender to be six. It’s just unbelievable. I also think its risky business for a writer to attempt to write about the most genius kid in the world. And of course, some of his details about Mormonism is pretty off and a little uncomfortable, like how Ender’s formerly mormon mom gave him a blessing with the laying on of hands. Research is usually a good thing. So in the book, 80 years prior to the current plot, these aliens came and wiped out most of the human race. Now, just a mere 80 years later, there’s an overpopulation problem and each family can only have two kids. Also, the military leaders spend most of the time complaining how the aliens have probably multiplied in strength and they’re struggling to have enough forces to fight against them when they come again. So why the heck do they have the two kids rule??? It makes no sense! IDK why but that really gets on my nerves. I’m sure the overpopulation thing is just Orson Scott Card trying to make some political statement. Also, everyone is supposed to renounce religion but everyone still talks about God. I wish the author would just make up his mind already because it just makes the book uncomfortable. But this is just me being overly picky so I’m going to try to turn off my brain and enjoy this book. I’m also only a third of the way finished so maybe I’ll end up liking it in the end.
Just gave my tour of the day. It went way well! It was a mother and her ten year old daughter who was the cutest. They were actually chatting with me and making my job really easy. They were very easy to talk to. I thought it would be hard to give a tour to a little girl, but it ended up being ok. I brought up Disney references like when I showed them the Magna Carta replica I talked about Robin Hood, and Pocahontas and the little mermaid came up. I asked her questions and since she’s in fifth grade, she is taking American history so I tried to tie that in. it turned out really well which really makes me happy. I was sad to end the tour! Now just three more hours to go…
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