Episode #35： Hemingway’s Guns
Episode Stats
Summary
Ernest Hemingway loved firearms, and his love for them infused his writing. But what firearms did this famous hunter and marksman own? What do his guns tell us about him the man? In this episode, we speak with Silvio Calabi, the co-author of the new book, "Hemingway's Guns," about the sporting arms of the famous writer.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
00:00:19.780
If you've read Ernest Hemingway's novels and short stories, you know that guns often
00:00:25.720
Whether he's writing about safaris in Africa or the fictional world of guerrilla soldiers
00:00:31.000
in the Spanish Civil War, Hemingway often included rich asides about the guns he or his characters
00:00:37.360
Hemingway loved firearms and his love for them infused his writing.
00:00:40.900
But what firearms did this famous hunter and marksman own?
00:00:43.800
What do his guns tell us about Hemingway the man?
00:00:46.740
Well, our guest today has spent the past three years researching this very topic.
00:00:50.680
His name is Silvio Calabi and he's the co-author of the book Hemingway's Guns, the sporting arms
00:00:59.440
He organizes and guides hunts all over the world.
00:01:02.380
He's also been an editor of several sporting magazines for the past 30 years and he continues
00:01:06.700
to write professionally about hunting from his home in Maine.
00:01:10.600
Well, Silvio, thank you for being on the Art of Manliness podcast.
00:01:17.020
So, Silvio, tell us a little bit about why you decided to write about Hemingway's guns.
00:01:28.680
Yeah, I guess it is obscure, but Hemingway himself is anything but obscure.
00:01:32.460
You know, he's become something of a cottage industry unto himself.
00:01:37.560
I mean, every year, 50 years after his death, books are still written about him, such as this
00:01:42.920
one, for example, but specifically it came about because I was asked to contribute to an academic
00:01:55.820
And I was asked to write a chapter about him on safari, you know, the nuts and bolts of safari, the
00:02:04.120
guns, the game, how safaris are carried out, you know, today and in his time so that the
00:02:13.140
people who read the book, you know, the academic portions of the book would have sort of a foundation
00:02:21.360
And these are things that I know pretty well, so I was happy to do it.
00:02:28.040
I mean, what we found out about the man and about his guns and so on, it was so captivating
00:02:36.980
that when this particular project was over, a couple of friends of mine said, you know,
00:02:41.140
we'd love to help you research his other guns, the ones that he used in, you know, in the
00:02:48.660
And we just kept on going and it turned into a book.
00:02:53.320
What was interesting about it was that it was a, it wound up being sort of a new way to
00:03:02.900
I mean, this man's been dissected and studied 16 different ways, you know, and yet here was
00:03:08.940
a new angle to the man, you know, as every hunter or shooter knows, one's choice of guns
00:03:20.520
You know, it's a really personal decision, much like the kind of car one drives or even
00:03:26.760
the person one marries, you know, and somebody who's well versed in shooting lore and gun
00:03:32.280
making and so on can tell a lot about an individual simply by looking at his or her guns when they
00:03:37.440
arrive in camp and his guns painted a very interesting picture of Ernest Hemingway.
00:03:43.180
So what did Hemingway's, what do Hemingway's guns tell us about Hemingway the man?
00:03:47.680
Well, he was, he had a lifelong fixation, almost an obsession with truth and credibility, you
00:03:56.260
know, with knowing what he called the true gen about things.
00:04:00.880
True gen was a, was a term that was coined by the Royal Air Force in World War II when he
00:04:08.580
The true gen was, okay, here's the real situation over Germany, for example, that the RAF gave
00:04:16.460
its Bomber Command and Fighter Command before they actually left England.
00:04:20.160
Here's the weather, here's the state of opposition and so on.
00:04:25.720
He was driven by this need to be really good at everything he did and he became an expert
00:04:30.400
in everything he did, or at least in everything he cared about, you know, and it turned out
00:04:39.780
I mean, he became a wealthy man and he could have afforded very expensive guns that were,
00:04:46.940
you know, heavily engraved and made with exhibition-grade wood and things like that, but he had no
00:04:55.120
He, he, he, he went straight for the high quality, highly functional guns.
00:05:01.620
They weren't necessarily the most expensive at all, but they were, he simply selected the
00:05:06.060
ones that were really perfect for the task at hand and then he followed through.
00:05:13.760
And so what were Hemingway's favorite guns, uh, throughout his life and his, his collection
00:05:19.860
Did he have any particular favorites that he enjoyed the most?
00:05:22.580
It's not fair to call him a collector because a collector usually buys the, uh, you know,
00:05:28.300
the aesthetic flourishes, the engraving and so on, but, but he, he amassed a number of
00:05:34.240
guns, uh, and they were all, as I say, these very, um, useful guns.
00:05:39.480
He had three that I, I would say were, were favorites and two of them stayed with him his entire
00:05:47.300
One was a, a Winchester model 12 pump action shotgun and 12 gauge that judging by a serial
00:05:55.820
number, he bought in the late, um, in the late teens.
00:06:00.260
And this stayed with him, as I say, throughout his entire life, he figured that he put something
00:06:08.540
And he wore every bit of finish off it, but he, he kept it up very well.
00:06:14.800
I mean, he, he, if anything, he, he over oiled his guns and, uh, uh, somebody, actually one
00:06:21.180
of his sons told me that at the end of that gun's life, it, there was so much oil soaked
00:06:28.000
into the head of the stock that when you slammed the bolt back or the, um, you know, the bolt
00:06:33.480
back, the, you could actually see oil start to come out of the wood.
00:06:42.020
Springfield was the American military, uh, infantry rifle for many years from, dating from, uh, 1903
00:06:53.960
And these were available to civilians through the NRA, the National Rifle Association.
00:07:02.060
And you could buy a Springfield pretty, pretty inexpensively and then turn it over to a gunsmith
00:07:07.200
and have it sporterized, have it turned into a, uh, a hunting rifle.
00:07:12.940
And in 1930, Hemingway had Griffin and Howe, the famous gunsmithing firm in New York City,
00:07:24.780
And of course, that was in the .30 out of six, uh, military caliber.
00:07:48.140
And then there's a third one, uh, he had a real fondness for a little, the little Woodsman
00:07:55.240
.22 automatic pistol that Colts made for many, many years.
00:07:59.840
He had at least three, possibly four of these dating back from, uh, you know, the 19 teens
00:08:11.680
And he gave at least two of them away to good friends of his as, as mementos.
00:08:17.100
The 20, a .22 pistol is not a serious hunting weapon, as you, you know, as you know, but it's,
00:08:22.300
it's great fun for target practice or for plinking, which is a sort of informal shooting around camp.
00:08:28.480
And on safari in Africa, Hemingway used his, uh, little Woodsman pistol for all kinds of things.
00:08:35.840
He even shot, uh, scorpions as they crawled out of the, uh, out of the firewood pile in
00:08:42.300
Now, did any of these guns that Hemingway really enjoyed using, do they end up in any
00:08:48.960
Like, you know, one of the characters used a shotgun that he was fond of or a pistol?
00:08:57.000
And in fact, that was really the, the genesis of, or the foundation of much of our research.
00:09:01.700
Um, we spent a lot of time reading Hemingway's, uh, novels and, um, his, uh, magazine pieces
00:09:13.920
And then as soon as I found a mention, then we, you know, you'd start to backtrack and see
00:09:19.680
whether you could find any evidence that he himself owned any of these.
00:09:24.820
Uh, Hemingway liked to, he wrote about things that he knew and he understood and that he
00:09:32.360
Uh, his war novels had to do with the Spanish civil war, for example, you know, and he covered
00:09:39.660
Uh, and in some cases, uh, over the river and into the trees, for example, the, um, Colonel
00:09:46.640
Kentwell, who was the hero of that book, uh, he, he parallels Hemingway so close to
00:09:53.100
that you could almost simply change the names, you know, and insert Hemingway where you have,
00:10:00.340
It was, it was difficult in Hemingway's life and in his writings to know, you know, where
00:10:06.300
the reality stopped and, and, and the, uh, literary invention, uh, took over.
00:10:14.820
Uh, I, I know he, the book you mentioned, he, he did use and own several, you know, dozens
00:10:22.340
What happened to him after they left his possession?
00:10:24.300
Uh, are there any interesting stories in particular that you found about the owners that came after
00:10:29.760
We've, we've, we've tracked down maybe, maybe half of the guns in the book.
00:10:36.100
Some of them are now in the hands of, of, of, of private collectors.
00:10:40.440
Uh, one is about to be sold at auction in, um, two weeks, as a matter of fact.
00:10:46.780
I think the most interesting story of all is, is, is, is, is, again, that Winchester model
00:10:54.540
Ernest Hemingway died in, in, uh, 1961, and two years later, his wife, Mary, sent four
00:11:01.620
of his guns to New York, to Abercrombie & Fitch, to be, on consignment, to be sold.
00:11:07.320
One of them was this, uh, this really beat up, by now, ancient model 12 pump gun.
00:11:14.580
We found in the Griffin & Howe, or Abercrombie & Fitch, it was the same company at that point,
00:11:19.640
uh, in the ledgers, in their sales records, that it had been sold to an individual named
00:11:26.220
Well, through sheer good fortune, we were able to find John Nodop, who, uh, is now a retired
00:11:39.240
And in 1963, he was a, I think he was a freshman in college, and he would go into New York City
00:11:45.820
to have lunch with his dad, who worked in an office somewhere in Manhattan.
00:11:50.020
And then after lunch, once in a while, they would, they would go into Abercrombie's and
00:11:55.140
take the elevator up to the gun room on the seventh floor, which was kind of a legendary
00:11:59.200
place for people, uh, you know, who hunted and fished and so on.
00:12:03.200
So they're up there one day, and in, in the, the, the racks of expensive guns from England
00:12:09.320
and Spain and Italy and, and America, um, and Germany, John Nodop told me that he came
00:12:18.560
across this really beat up old 12-gauge pump gun.
00:12:21.760
And it had a price tag on it that was an order of magnitude lower than anything else at Abercrombie's.
00:12:27.960
And he turned to his dad and he said, look, look, here's a gun at Abercrombie's I can afford.
00:12:34.280
Well, he wound up buying it as he was, uh, doing the deal.
00:12:39.120
He, he asked the salesman at Abercrombie's why there was some, some rust on the gun,
00:12:46.920
And the salesman told him that, he said, oh, this belonged to some duck hunter out on
00:12:52.560
Long Island, you know, used it out in the salt water.
00:12:55.760
Don't worry, that'll, that'll, that'll just buff right out.
00:12:59.300
So John took it home, took it to school, used it for many years.
00:13:05.840
Uh, he, he, he finally, in the 1980s, wound up trading it in on something else and lost
00:13:14.580
Well, he never gave it another thought until last Christmas when I called him out of the
00:13:20.800
blue and I told him who I was and what we were working on.
00:13:24.660
And, and he even remembered the serial number of this gun.
00:13:28.020
And until then, he had no idea that the model 12 that he had paid $35 for had been Ernest
00:13:37.500
So that gun is out there probably somewhere, you know, we figured the book may well flush
00:13:45.660
Somebody is going to read that book and say, oh my God, serial number 525, whatever it is,
00:13:54.160
We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.
00:14:01.000
Uh, you mentioned a little bit that you'd read the novels and kind of picked up on guns
00:14:06.420
Um, but how, after that, how did you track down, you know, what happened to the guns
00:14:12.700
I mean, I can imagine this was probably something very extensive and very, uh, time intensive.
00:14:20.120
And there were, there were two sources that turned out to be absolutely invaluable.
00:14:24.520
One was the sales ledgers from both Griffin and Howe and Abercrombie & Fitch.
00:14:33.440
And that was established in around the time of, what was that, around World War I.
00:14:39.020
But in 1930, it was acquired by Abercrombie & Fitch, the famous sporting goods retailer in
00:14:45.340
And, um, they kept, of course, careful records of all their firearm sales.
00:14:55.220
Uh, there are, um, I remember right, it's something like 60,000 pages or, no, I believe it's 60
00:15:07.600
They're all, they're all in storage in a basement in New Jersey.
00:15:10.720
Uh, Abercrombie & Fitch doesn't exist anymore, but Griffin and Howe does.
00:15:14.140
And there's a gentleman at Griffin and Howe named Bob Beach, who is their more or less
00:15:21.300
And Bob has, he helped us tremendously by combing these ledgers, these sales records for any
00:15:30.420
And then he would provide us with serial numbers.
00:15:32.980
The other way that it worked was if we had a serial number or a make and model and caliber
00:15:38.360
of a gun, we would go to Bob and say, look, you know, have you ever found one of these in
00:15:44.320
And once in a while we'd get lucky and he'd say yes by God, and it was purchased by E.
00:15:51.540
So that was one, one really important resource.
00:15:54.960
And the other was the Hemingway archive, which is stored at the, um, John F.
00:16:06.180
Um, and I spent quite a bit of time there going through the photo files looking for photos
00:16:12.920
of Ernest Hemingway carrying one or another gun.
00:16:16.300
Um, it was probably the only person who ever went through those files looking specifically
00:16:21.120
Everybody else was looking for family members or, or, or whatever.
00:16:24.160
Um, uh, so with, with the narrative mentioned, with the sales information from Griffin and
00:16:31.800
Howe, and with the photos, uh, that we can find in the archive, that gave us, we were able
00:16:42.280
And then, but there were, there were other sources as well.
00:16:45.700
Um, there are a few friends and family members of, of Ernest Hemingway who still survive, uh,
00:16:55.360
Uh, and then there was a certain amount of serendipity, and then simply the word began
00:17:01.700
I mean, this research went on, it started in 2007, and the book was published in November
00:17:07.880
of 2010, so, um, there was time for, you know, the ripples to spread far and wide.
00:17:16.120
Certainly don't have the, we know that he owned more guns than what we've detailed in
00:17:21.340
the book, and we're still looking for them, and we certainly don't have the full story
00:17:26.640
on absolutely every gun that's in the book, but we figured that the book itself would,
00:17:32.940
would, as I, I think I said earlier, would flush some of this, some of these guns out of
00:17:39.520
And we've, we've heard of, um, three more that we're researching now to, uh, you know,
00:17:50.220
So, um, we all know that Hemingway was an avid hunter.
00:17:53.040
So what were some of his favorite hunts that he went on during his, during his life?
00:17:57.700
Well, he, he grew up hunting in, uh, Michigan, hunting and fishing.
00:18:02.300
Um, he was posted to Europe as a, uh, as a newspaper and magazine writer in the 20s, and he traveled
00:18:14.120
around Europe skiing, but also hunting and fishing.
00:18:17.880
And then he, in the 20s, he began to go out, he began to go to Montana and Wyoming, and he
00:18:25.420
hunted out there, deer and elk and bear and, and so on.
00:18:30.300
Um, the high points of his hunting career were, were certainly his two African safaris.
00:18:36.420
He went in 1933, late 33 into early 34 in East Africa, which is Kenya and, and, and what was
00:18:49.120
And then 20 years later, he went, uh, on a much longer safari, I think it was five months
00:19:00.180
An African safari is usually the, uh, pinnacle of, of, of any hunter's, um, career.
00:19:07.480
He, he was also, I mean, much as he hunted with a rifle and hunted big game, he was first
00:19:15.700
and last, I believe, a, a wing shooter, a bird hunter, and I think he, he simply loved
00:19:26.560
So, when, the last few years of his life, he owned a home in, uh, just outside, outside
00:19:32.300
Sun Valley, and he had been visiting the area for, uh, for many years.
00:19:38.260
He was drawn there in part by the terrific, uh, bird hunting.
00:19:42.100
So, I think it's best, we can, we can think of him as a, as an avid, lifelong bird
00:19:47.860
hunter, but, um, uh, a man who, who really would never forget his African safaris.
00:19:56.060
So, I know this is kind of a morbid question, but I know it's something that Hemingway fans
00:20:00.860
In fact, my dad and I were having this conversation before, uh, I found about your book, and it's
00:20:06.860
something they wonder about is, do we know which gun Hemingway used to end his life?
00:20:12.100
Actually, I think we do, um, and it is a bit of a morbid question, but I have to say
00:20:18.180
that most people who, you know, they hear about this book, that's one of the first questions
00:20:24.100
And it's interesting, the, the, the conventional wisdom has it that he killed himself with a
00:20:30.820
Boss is a, uh, is a very upper-end firm in London that builds a few very expensive, uh,
00:20:42.380
And we thought this was strange, because we could find no evidence that he ever owned
00:20:50.720
Roger Sanger, one of my colleagues, lives in Sun Valley.
00:20:54.700
Purely by chance, well, let me back up and say that the reason that there's a mystery around
00:21:00.340
this gun is because after Hemingway's death, his family turned the gun over to a local welder
00:21:08.680
in Ketchum, in Idaho, with orders to destroy the gun and dispose of the pieces, because the
00:21:16.840
family did not want it to become some kind of a macabre curiosity.
00:21:20.900
Roger lives in Sun Valley, as I say, and, uh, he heard that, um, not all the pieces had
00:21:31.040
And it turned out that the welding company that had destroyed the gun in 1961 was still
00:21:38.760
there and still in business and now being operated by the grandson of the man who cut
00:21:45.380
And so Roger went to meet him, and, uh, the man said, oh, would you like to see some pieces
00:21:53.400
And it turned out that his grandfather had kept five little scraps of this thing.
00:21:59.480
And I mean, when I say little scraps, I mean it.
00:22:12.400
Uh, Steve and Roger, my two co-authors and I all had the same reaction when we saw the
00:22:25.780
So we, we, we went through what sort of a CSI style investigation that we called on some
00:22:35.800
We called on some gun collectors, some real specialists.
00:22:38.660
And we realized after a while that what we were looking at was pieces of a particular
00:22:51.160
And we already knew that Hemingway, in fact, owned a Scott gun.
00:22:57.520
So by comparing the engraving patterns on the remnant little bits of steel and so on, we think we're, we're, we're, we're quite
00:23:07.460
definite that, um, uh, the gun that he killed himself was, in fact, his W.C.
00:23:14.560
And sort of the last piece of the puzzle was that the Scott gun itself is nowhere to be found.
00:23:19.360
So, you know, it may well have been the one that was cut up and destroyed.
00:23:24.400
So at this point, when I tell the story, someone always says, well, oh, oh, and then the, the major
00:23:30.380
pieces of the gun were, were taken out into a field and simply buried.
00:23:35.580
So then someone always says, well, can't you go find that field and go out there with a
00:23:39.960
Well, well, it turns out that, um, uh, that the house that was now sitting in that field
00:23:48.300
and the house in fact belongs to Adam West, who was TV's Batman.
00:23:56.380
Well, well, it's very, uh, very sad, uh, story of how he ended his life, but it's, you know, very
00:24:00.900
interesting how you guys were able to uncover that, um, kind of mystery.
00:24:04.940
Cause yeah, it gets floated around all the time.
00:24:06.760
People always, I, whenever we talk about Hemingway, that's one of the questions that always comes
00:24:10.220
And when, uh, I told my dad about this book, that was one of the first questions that came
00:24:15.900
So if you go to Wikipedia, you know, for instance, and it'll mention the boss gun and the Wikipedia
00:24:24.460
So again, we don't know where this, this came from, but we're quite confident that that's,
00:24:32.460
Well, you guys need to get on there and update it.
00:24:39.100
Uh, before we leave, is there any place that our listeners can go to, to learn more about
00:24:44.500
I would invite people to go to, uh, Amazon and, uh, look for Hemingway's guns.
00:24:51.120
For one thing, it's, uh, far and away the least expensive, uh, the lowest price on the
00:24:57.400
And Amazon's been doing very well with the book, but, um, uh, they also sell a number
00:25:04.080
of my, uh, earlier books, uh, they're, they're out of print, but used copies are available.
00:25:10.080
Um, um, I worked for almost 30 years for outdoor magazines, fishing and hunting magazines as
00:25:18.780
And I'm sort of semi-retired now and, and, um, gone back to, uh, my original love, which
00:25:27.620
Uh, but I think Amazon is a good place to start.
00:25:38.660
He's the coauthor of the book, Hemingway's guns, and you can check out his book and buy
00:25:46.640
Well, that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast.
00:25:50.200
For more manly tips and advice, make sure to check out the art of manliness website at
00:25:54.300
art of manliness.com and until next time, stay manly.