A visit the local papers have been heralding for months finally begins: Ernest Hemingway and his wife, the war correspondent Martha Gellhorn, arrive amid dreary weather on a Pan-Am Clipper piloted by Captain S. Bancroft. They tell journalists that they’re staying at the Repulse Bay Hotel but in fact head off to the Hong Kong Hotel and Hemingway is ‘immediately swept up by the bustle and gaiety of Hong Kong’.
Later in the day they’re taken to Happy Valley Race Course as the guest of U. S. Consul Addison Southard, who Hemingway first met in 1933, but the races are cancelled because of the rain.
The couple have come on the way to cover the Sino-Japanese War, but Hemingway has also been asked by the State Department to gather intelligence about the Kuomintang, who were receiving money and supplies from the USA. Gellhorn will spend most of her time gathering copy in the Colony’s streets, while Hemingway is learning from the tales of a colourful circle of drinking companions in the bar of the Hong Kong Hotel, a circle that includes policemen, Chinese criminals, and Morris ‘Two-Gun Cohen’.
Cohen becomes a particular favourite with Hemingway, who considered writing a book about him – ‘Cohen was the type of rough-edged raconteur that Hemingway adored’. It was Cohen who arranged for the couple to meet Madame Sun Yat-sen (Soong Ching-Ling).
At some point Hemingway and Gellhorn will meet fellow writer Emily Hahn and her lover Major Charles Boxer. Soon after learning she’s pregnant by Boxer – who was still married at the time – Hahn bumped into Hemingway sitting outside the Hotel sipping a bloody Mary. He asked her what would happen to Boxer – ‘Won’t they kick him out of the army?’ Hahn says that would be impossible as ‘he’s the only man they have who can speak Japanese’:
Hemingway looked doubtful for a moment. ‘Tell you what,’ he finally told her. ‘You can tell ‘em it’s mine.’
Hahn later credits Hemingway with introducing Bloody Marys to Hong Kong.
See also the entries for March 1 and May 3 1941.
Sources:
Peter Moreira, Hemingway On The China Front, 2007:
- Arrival and Races: 27-29
- Cohen as raconteur: 32
- Cohen and Madame Sun ; Hahn’s baby: 57
- Bloody Marys: 34