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Yours, for Probably Always: Martha Gellhorn's Letters of Love and War 1930-1949

Janet Somerville (Editor)

4.02 · Rating details · 45 ratings · 25 reviews

(starred review) Somerville makes an impressive book debut with a life of novelist, journalist, and intrepid war correspondent Martha Gellhorn (1908-1998), told through a captivating selection of her letters to friends, family, husbands, and lovers. The volume is enriched by Somerville's biographical narrative and her decision to include responses of many recipients and, i (starred review) Somerville makes an impressive book debut with a life of novelist, journalist, and intrepid war correspondent Martha Gellhorn (1908-1998), told through a captivating selection of her letters to friends, family, husbands, and lovers. The volume is enriched by Somerville's biographical narrative and her decision to include responses of many recipients and, in some cases, letters between individuals who were especially significant in Gellhorn's life... An engrossing collection that burnishes Gellhorn's reputation as an astute observer, insightful writer, and uniquely brave woman. --Kirkus, July 08, 2019

"A titan of American letters. It's high time for Gellhorn to emerge from the shadows of twentieth-century literature into the bright light of mainstream recognition." --The Washington Post Book World (on Martha Gelhorn)

Before email, when long distance telephone calls were difficult and expensive, people wrote letters, often several each day. Today, those letters provide an intimate and revealing look at the lives and loves of the people who wrote them. When the author is a brilliant writer who lived an exciting, eventful life, the letters are especially interesting.

Martha Gellhorn was a strong-willed, self-made, modern woman whose journalism, and life, were widely influential at the time and cleared a path for women who came after her. An ardent anti-fascist, she abhorred "objectivity shit" and wrote about real people doing real things with intelligence and passion. She is most famous, to her enduring exasperation, as Ernest Hemingway's third wife. Long after their divorce, her short tenure as "Mrs. Hemingway" from 1940 to 1945 invariably eclipsed her writing and, consequently, she never received her full due.

Gellhorn's work and personal life attracted a disparate cadre of political and celebrity friends, among them, Sylvia Beach, Ingrid Bergman, Leonard Bernstein, Norman Bethune, Robert Capa, Charlie Chaplin, Chiang Kai-shek, Madame Chiang, Colette, Gary Cooper, John Dos Passos, Dorothy Parker, Maxwell Perkins, Eleanor and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Antoine de Saint-Exup�ry, Orson Welles, H.G. Wells -- the people who made history in her time and beyond.

Yours, for Probably Always is a curated collection of letters between Gellhorn and the extraordinary personalities that were her correspondents in the most interesting time of her life. Through these letters and the author's contextual narrative, the book covers Gellhorn's life and work, including her time reporting for Harry Hopkins and America's Federal Emergency Relief Administration in the 1930s, her newspaper and magazine reportage during the Spanish Civil War, World War II and the Vietnam War, and her relationships with Hemingway and General James M. Gavin late in the war, and her many lovers and affairs.

Gellhorn's fiction of the time sold well: The Trouble I've Seen (1936) -- her Depression-Era stories based on the FERA activities, with an introduction by H.G. Wells; A Stricken Field (1940) -- a novel inspired by the German-Jewish refugee crisis and set in 1938 Czechoslovakia; The Heart of Another (1941) -- stories edited by Maxwell Perkins; and The Wine of Astonishment (1948) -- her novel about the liberation of Dachau, which she reported for Collier's.

Gellhorn's life, reportage, fiction and correspondence reveal her passionate advocacy of social justice and her need to tell the stories of "the people who were the sufferers of history." Renewed interest in her life makes this new collection, packed with newly discovered letters and pictures, fascinating reading. ...more

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Published September 27th 2019 by Firefly Books

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Oct 31, 2020 Shane rated it really liked it

Letters go beyond biography, even autography, for they peer into the heart and soul of a person, exposing fears, feelings, falsehoods and frailties without censor or editor. This compilation of Martha Gellhorn’s letters during the formative years (1930- 1949) of her long journalistic career is an excellent glimpse into the intimate corners of a complex woman, a woman from—and connected to—privilege, who risked her life to display the world’s warts and fight for the underdog.

Starting from her doo Letters go beyond biography, even autography, for they peer into the heart and soul of a person, exposing fears, feelings, falsehoods and frailties without censor or editor. This compilation of Martha Gellhorn’s letters during the formative years (1930- 1949) of her long journalistic career is an excellent glimpse into the intimate corners of a complex woman, a woman from—and connected to—privilege, who risked her life to display the world’s warts and fight for the underdog.

Starting from her doomed affair with a married, older man, Bertrand de Jouvenel who could (or would?) never get a divorce, and an absentee marriage to Ernest Hemingway, Gellhorn goes onto have many relationships with men of influence. Even the doddering 69-year old sex fiend, H.G. Wells, falls “ass over tea-kettle” for 26 year-old Martha at one point and helps get her first book published. Many of the letters are love letters, of pining from a distance (mostly suffered by the men, particularly Betrand and Ernest), a distance Martha seems to have sought, for she was self-confessed about preferring being desired by men rather than having sex with them. Some of her letters to Hemingway and Wells amount to overt flattery just to string them along. There were times when I felt she was flagrantly using her contacts to further her career, although as a journalist she was often without money and constantly on the move without acquiring firm roots.

The letters also expose a very close and sometimes mutually fawning relationship between Gellhorn and Eleanor Roosevelt, a relationship that opens many doors for the young journalist, particularly to provide her with letters of safe passage from President Roosevelt during her peregrinations in war-ravaged zones and to get her preferential treatment when, having no success at giving birth to a child, she adopts one as a single parent. This latter move was something unheard of at the time, and would not have happened if not for the intervention of Aunty Eleanor.

Although claiming not to be only about Hemingway, the bulk of this book, focusses on the affair Martha began with him while Ernest was still married to Pauline Pfeiffer, while they were both covering the Spanish Civil War, and during the subsequent five years when they were married to each other. Most of those married years were spent apart, as these two ambitious writers selfishly pursued their respective careers. Professional jealousy permeated the marriage, and while Gellhorn helped Hemingway with his masterpiece, For Whom The Bells Toll, during this time, and he was able to get her a better publisher in Scribners, her letters indicate that she roiled in the shadow of his literary greatness. “You are a very great writer and what you see gets compacted into a book. I’m not a very great writer and function more like colonic irrigation.” For his part, Hemingway wanted a wife minding the home fires, taking care of him, and not gadding about the world covering hot spots. The final straw snapped when Ernest stole Martha’s press pass to cover D-Day, leading her to stow away aboard a hospital ship to get to the war zone and scoop him.

Gellhorn was the consummate writer and used the craft for mind and spirit purgation, not for just earning a living, although as her war correspondent’s reputation grew, she earned top dollar for her on-location pieces with Colliers Magazine, more than she did with her early books. The angst and rejection of the writer comes out in some of her letters as she tries valiantly to aim for the masterpiece but always falls short, in her opinion. She was also born at the wrong age – she espoused feminism in an age of femininity, and bemoaned that being a woman didn’t help perform her dangerous job. Her desire to throw herself in harm’s way was also driven by the need to be recognized and escape her drab hometown life in St. Louis, Missouri. “If you are part of a big thing, you are safe.”

And yet, I feel she believed in some form of immunity for her class, nationality, and sex during her travels through theatres of war. Somehow, it was somebody else’s job to get wounded or die, not hers, for why else would she have left her gas mask back in New York when she travelled to the European battlefront, or embark upon torpedo-infested seas to get to Finland to cover the Russian invasion, or live in a hotel that was smack in the line of fire between Nationalist and Republican forces in Spain?

The value of her writing, both in her fiction and non-fiction, is the insider’s view that she brought to the reader. She was the quintessential witness to the horrors of the 20th century – this is probably the underlying motive that drove her, for even the promise of literary greatness is not sufficient to put oneself in harm’s way repeatedly, like she did, like a punch-drunk boxer looking for the next fight.

Her summation: “Half of the world is bullied and terrorized by dictators, and the other half is soppy with cowardice and selfishness. The young men will die and the old, powerful men will survive to mishandle the peace.” True today, as it was then, making me wonder whether Martha gave of herself in vain—the world is not going to change overnight, selfless journalists, notwithstanding. ...more

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Feb 24, 2021 Jim rated it liked it

Shelves: canadian-authors, hemingway, non-fiction, war_journalist, world-war-2

If it hadn't been for the 'rona, I probably would never have finished this book. I borrowed it from the library and then they went into 'rona shutdown, so I had it for months. I needed every day of it. To be honest, I knew nothing about Gellhorn except that she was married to Hemingway, and this connection was my motivation behind signing out the book.

As one might deduce from the title, Ms Somerville has gleaned sufficient information from Gellhorn's correspondence to write a book. I don't know If it hadn't been for the 'rona, I probably would never have finished this book. I borrowed it from the library and then they went into 'rona shutdown, so I had it for months. I needed every day of it. To be honest, I knew nothing about Gellhorn except that she was married to Hemingway, and this connection was my motivation behind signing out the book.

As one might deduce from the title, Ms Somerville has gleaned sufficient information from Gellhorn's correspondence to write a book. I don't know how to file it: it's not sufficiently detailed to be a biography and, since the correspondence is mostly of a personal nature, it can't properly be considered a memoir. The documents are arranged chronologically and I was surprised to find little from Hemingway. According to whom you believe, she either returned his letters to him at his request or burned them up. And Hemingway doesn't make an appearance 'til well into the book, which means I had to gag through a lot of cutesy-wutesy baby talk until I got there.

Basically Somerville reproduces the content of the letters verbatim and in chronological order, providing explanatory narrative of her own when there is a need to explain events. It's a sensible setup, and there are a lot of great glossy photos of the principal characters and documents. But Somerville couldn't make me like Gellhorn. My take on her was that she was manipulative and used people to get ahead, and perhaps even cultivated relationships with personal advancement in mind. I'm not sure how Bertrand de Jouvenel fit in; his letters to her were so sticky-sweet they made my teeth ache. She doesn't seem to have benefitted from this affair, but all other personal relationships seem to be with people who could open doors for her. Odd that a woman who didn't particularly enjoy sex would enter into so many sexual relationships.

Gellhorn was a friend of Eleanor Roosevelt and was very solicitous in her letters to the President's wife. Naturally, this relationship opened doors for the young author. H.G. Wells had access to publishers. Hemingway, of course, was arguably the best known writer of his time so the benefits of a relationship with him are obvious. And, if you're reporting in a war zone, who better to be have an affair with than General James (Jumpin' Jim) Gavin? It was disheartening to see the tough general, probably still exhausted from his fling with Dietrich, writing love talk to Gellhorn in a most unsoldierly way.

She gets full points for guts, though. She was there for the Spanish Civil War and stowed away on board a hospital ship to become the only female correspondent at the Normandy landings. She was also a staunch advocate for the poor and downtrodden of the world and tried to use her influence with the Roosevelts to have the USA take in Spanish war orphans. Probably reading her letters gave me an unfairly biased view of the woman and I know nothing of her output as a writer. I might just have to track down one of her titles to see how she fared in her chosen profession.

For fans of Gellhorn, if such there be, this will probably be an interesting read. Hemingway fans will likely be disappointed. ...more

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Sep 06, 2019 Literary Redhead rated it it was amazing

Shelves: autobiography-biography-memoir, history, netgalley-review, reviewed

Martha Gellhorn is most famously known as Hemingway’s third wife. But she was a pioneer war correspondent — the only woman to land at Normandy on D-Day and among the first to report from Dachau after its liberation by US troops.

Yours, for Probably Always, is a superb collection of her letters, with insightful background by author Janet Somerville.

Gellhorn corresponded with the best and brightest of the day, including close friend Eleanor Roosevelt, with a huge number of their letters included. ...more

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Jul 12, 2019 Samantha rated it really liked it

An interesting collection of Martha Gellhorn’s correspondence, interspersed with biographical detail for context.

For the most part, this is a worthy selection of correspondence that provides greater insight into Gellhorn’s life as seen through her own eyes and those of her correspondents.

This is a denser read than most compilations of personal letters, and that’s a good thing. This is partially due to the substance, tone, and beautiful writing that mark out Gellhorn’s missives as different fro An interesting collection of Martha Gellhorn’s correspondence, interspersed with biographical detail for context.

For the most part, this is a worthy selection of correspondence that provides greater insight into Gellhorn’s life as seen through her own eyes and those of her correspondents.

This is a denser read than most compilations of personal letters, and that’s a good thing. This is partially due to the substance, tone, and beautiful writing that mark out Gellhorn’s missives as different from much of the frippery we usually see in collected letters. The fact that she had so many pen pals who were themselves impressive personages and compelling writers didn’t hurt either.

As is often the case with correspondence collections, the volume of writing included between select parties is largely determined by what was available to the compiler. This sometimes (and is the case here) provides quantities of letters with certain correspondents that don’t seem to have the quality required to justify that.

In this book, there is a huge number of exchanges between Gellhorn and Eleanor Roosevelt. While Roosevelt is of course a fascinating woman in her own right and certainly there is good information to be gleaned from letters between the two, their exchanges are mostly personal fondness and were clearly included in the book in such large volume because said large volume was readily available, rather than because they really needed to be there.

Conversely, while many of Martha’s letters to Hemingway appear in the book, there is but one letter from Hemingway to Gellhorn included. This is likely because of three things: Gellhorn returning much of Hemingway’s half of their correspondence to him upon their divorce in 1945, the fact that many of their letters were likely heavily censored because they were written during the war, and that Gellhorn zealously destroyed much of the correspondence between she and Hemingway shortly before her death.

None of this is the fault of the author of this book, who did well with what she had to work with. Still, it’s a good lesson in why compilations of correspondence often don’t truly give the full picture of the subject’s life. In this case, the author did an admirable job of making up the difference with the biographical information interspersed with the letters throughout the text.

*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.* ...more

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Dec 03, 2019 Bob H rated it it was amazing

Shelves: biography, history, military-history, literary-history, social-history

This is a candid, vibrant encounter with a warm, intelligent and remarkable personality. This is Martha Gellhorn, through her correspondence with her friends and lovers but speaking to us now, as she lives through some of the most turbulent times and scenes of the mid-20th Century. A pioneer in many ways, she reported on, wrote about, lived through the Depression, the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War and continued reporting through the Vietnam era, although this book mainly spans the 1930 ...more

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Apr 07, 2020 Rick rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

Somerville has selected letters from the journalist Martha Gellhorn's correspondence from the 1930s and 40s to present a compelling story of one of the 20th century's important war and travel writers, who was also an underestimated fiction writer, and a trailblazer who had a privileged and politically connected upbringing, a contrarian's heart and soul, and an abiding commitment to life's underdogs. She was decidedly anti-fascist and loathed those who compromised or took a stance of malign neutr Somerville has selected letters from the journalist Martha Gellhorn's correspondence from the 1930s and 40s to present a compelling story of one of the 20th century's important war and travel writers, who was also an underestimated fiction writer, and a trailblazer who had a privileged and politically connected upbringing, a contrarian's heart and soul, and an abiding commitment to life's underdogs. She was decidedly anti-fascist and loathed those who compromised or took a stance of malign neutrality. She was fiercely loyal but as fiercely independent. Her mother was a founder of The League of Women's Voters and a passionate liberal, as was her father, a doctor. A daughter of St. Louis, who escaped the city as soon as she could, she lived in New York, Paris, Cuba, London, Mexico, and many other places, often traveling to cover wars or to see new places.

She wrote, "and life with one suitcase is my idea of life with exactly enough possessions." Later she observed, "I'll never see enough as long as I live."

Among her correspondents were her parents, brother, Eleanor Roosevelt, lovers and former lovers, some of whom included Collette's step-son, H.G. Wells, Ernest Hemingway, and General James Gavin. Men fell in love with her. She was quasi-married once and legally married twice. A divorced woman, she adopted a war orphan from Italy and raised him on her own. She covered the betrayal that was the Munich Pact in Czechoslovakia, the Spanish Civil War from Spain, as well as advocating for the Republican cause in the U.S. and abroad, went to China when Japan was at war with them, covered World War II from London, including sneaking aboard a hospital ship that took part in the Normandy invasion, and covered the Nuremberg Trials. (She also covered many other wars, including Vietnam, that occurred in years beyond the scope of Somerville's fine book.)

Gellhorn could write: "I do not believe that Fascism can destroy democracy, I think democracy can only destroy itself. Is must have so weakened and cheapened and denied itself that it is no longer a moving or inspiring reality."

Or: "Did you know that a torpedo could weigh 1500 kilos and travel five or six miles. Men are too clever. It has really gone too far."

"A country isn't big enough if it has no room for children."

She was brave, resourceful, and admirable in living her life as she felt compelled to. Her rules. "I do not even now what I scream against, except the barbarousness of the human animal. I scream for kindness. Let there be kindness."

She worked into her 80s, suggesting a follow-up to Yours, for probably always might be possible. But first buy and read this one, which will increase the likelihood of a second volume. ...more

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Nov 27, 2019 Kate rated it it was amazing

Shelves: bio

I love this book. With that said, I doubt everyone will love this book, so let me tell you about it.

Martha Gellhorn was a noted war journalist and writer who wrote about the Spanish Civil War, the invasion of Prague, and many campaigns during WWII. She continued reporting on wars zone up the Vietnam era. She was a passionate person who could not bear injustice, and hence was constantly emotionally wrecked by each new atrocity. She is also a marvellously descriptive writer, both of emotion and ex ...more

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Dec 29, 2019 Kat Ayres rated it it was amazing

To be honest, when I requested this book, I knew little to nothing about Martha Gellhorn. What I found was a total badass. She was such a fantastic representative of early-ish feminine independence and strength. She paved a way for modern feminists to really live boldly. I was really inspired reading her correspondence and learning about her life, and I can’t wait to live my life a little more boldly. I’d like to think if we had been born in the same time and ran in the same circles, we would ha ...more

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Dec 23, 2020 Lynne rated it really liked it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jan 30, 2021 Kim Shepherd rated it it was ok

Martha Gellhorn was a strong-willed, self-made, modern woman whose pioneering journalism paved the way for women who came after her. An ardent anti-fascist, she abhorred “objectivity shit” and wrote about real people doing real things with intelligence and passion. Her life, reportage, fiction and correspondence all reveal her passionate advocacy of social justice and her need to tell the stories of “the people who were the sufferers of history.” Gellhorn is most famous, to her enduring exaspera Martha Gellhorn was a strong-willed, self-made, modern woman whose pioneering journalism paved the way for women who came after her. An ardent anti-fascist, she abhorred “objectivity shit” and wrote about real people doing real things with intelligence and passion. Her life, reportage, fiction and correspondence all reveal her passionate advocacy of social justice and her need to tell the stories of “the people who were the sufferers of history.” Gellhorn is most famous, to her enduring exasperation, as Ernest Hemingway’s third wife. Long after their divorce, her short tenure as “Mrs. Hemingway” (1940-1945) invariably eclipsed her writing and, consequently, she never received her full due.

Yours, for Probably Always is a curated collection of letters between Gellhorn and the extraordinary personalities that were her correspondents in the most interesting time of her life. Her work and personal life attracted a disparate cadre of political and celebrity friends, among them, Ingrid Bergman, Leonard Bernstein, Norman Bethune, Robert Capa, Charlie Chaplin, Sylvia Beach, Colette, Gary Cooper, Maxwell Perkins, Eleanor and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Orson Welles, H.G Wells: the people who made history in their time and beyond. Through her letters, and with Janet Somerville’s contextual narrative, the book covers Gellhorn’s life and work, including reporting for Harry Hopkins and America’s Federal Emergency Relief Administration in the 1930s, newspaper and magazine reportage during the Spanish Civil War, World War II and the Vietnam War, plus her time with Hemingway and General James M. Gavin late in the war.

As with a previous book I read “Beautiful Exiles” I just expected more.... more of Martha’s story and not just some excerpts of letters written trying to explain why she was who she was.

I received this ARC for free in exchange for my honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. Thank you NetGalley, Janet Somerville and Firefly Books
...more

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Dec 21, 2019 Schmimmerock rated it really liked it

Shelves: bios-and-memoirs, history, nonfiction, netgalley

If there are only two things I have in common with Ernest Hemingway, it's that I hate Ernest Hemingway, and I love Martha Gellhorn. It's really a shame that so many people only know her as Hemingway's wife, because that's a massive disservice to Martha Gellhorn the writer, Martha Gellhorn the traveller, Martha Gellhorn the journalist and war correspondent.

What a seriously cool lady, you guys.

I appreciated the contextual bits amongst the letters. As with any collection of letters, there are gap ...more

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Jul 21, 2020 Janis Mckay rated it it was amazing

Shelves: biography, history

A much needed corrective to the numerous Hemingway books and their very snarky and biased presentation of the incredible reporter Martha Gellhorn. When you can see both her letters and the letters from others, in their entirety, it becomes clear that some Hemingway scholars have been interpreting these to suit their theories. Hemingway himself wrote numerous untruths about Gellhorn, as he did with so many other people who were his friends and lovers. Gellhorn was flawed, but no more flawed than ...more

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Nov 08, 2019 Susan rated it it was amazing

I devoured every page. If you didn’t love Martha Gellhorn before, you will after reading this book.

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Sep 16, 2019 Susanne rated it liked it

Shelves: netgalley, 2019

Thank you to Firefly Books and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Martha Gellhorn is a fascinating figure, and this compilation of her correspondence gives us a bit of insight into her personal life. What she is most famous for, i.e. being Ernest Hemingway's third wife, and being one of the first female war correspondents, doesn't merit much attention here. Instead, there is quite a lot of material on her relationship to her parents, and to Eleanor Roosevelt. However, much of ...more

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Jan 02, 2020 Sara rated it really liked it

Martha Gellhorn lead an amazing life travelling the world as a war correspondent, journalist and author. This book chronicles her life through the letters she wrote and many that she received. Sommerville uses just the right amount of narration between the letters to keep the book on track and to set the scene. I found this to be a long book, but worth it. Through her letters, you can see Gellhorn’s passion for travel, people and writing about the important events of the day. Yes, she was Heming ...more

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Dec 22, 2019 Karenna rated it really liked it

Shelves: collectible, signed

Fascinating to read the correspondence of an extraordinary woman during extraordinary times. Somerville does a great job summarizing the essential events in Gellhorn’s life as well as curating the letters so that you finish the book with a real sense of Gellhorn and her era. I also appreciated that Somerville included one of Gellhorn’s short stories. It really provided me with a sense of Gellhorn’s literary style and talent. Finally, Firefly did a wonderful job of producing the book. Its beauty ...more

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Nov 11, 2020 Glenda rated it it was amazing

Beautifully written and thoroughly researched, Janet Somerville's study of Martha Gellhorn's life and loves is a truly engaging read. Through Martha's letters to luminous historical figures, including husband and writer Ernest Hemingway, and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Gellhorn's life and travels as a journalist and war correspondent are revealed to us along with her fierce intelligence, courage, wit, and forthright political beliefs. A woman outstanding in her time, in Somerville's able hands ...more

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Jan 01, 2020 Lynda Lippin rated it really liked it

Journalist Martha Gellhorn tried to control her entire life, even when she couldn't. She was married to Ernest Hemingway, embedded with troops in WWII, and visited Dachau right after the liberation. These years of correspondence are not all so interesting, but in total tell a great story of a fascinating woman. ...more

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Feb 26, 2021 Carol rated it liked it

Shelves: memoir, non-fiction

I confess I found the first third this a bit of a slog. It picks up around wartime when she's writing less about herself and more about the world. Note she casually drops racist terms midway through that made me cringe. Janet Somerville's narrative contextualizes the letters well. And although Martha Gellhorn led an interesting life, I found her hard to like. ...more

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Apr 20, 2020 Lorna rated it did not like it

Shelves: giveaways

I won this book as part of a GoodReads giveaway! I was really excited to learn more about Martha Gellhorn, as I think that she is an extremely interesting woman. Unfortunately, try as I might I just could not enjoy the book. I've read other books in similar formats, so I am not sure why I could not get into it, but overall I just found it too much of a slog.
...more

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May 16, 2020 Kevin rated it it was amazing

Beautifully and insightfully written biography of one of the most interesting journalists of the twentieth century.

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Jul 28, 2020 Sherry rated it liked it

I didn't read all nor even most of the letters. Just the parts that told Gellhorn's biography. She had an interesting life. ...more

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Jan 21, 2020 Doris Raines rated it liked it

I LIKE THIS BOOK.

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Jul 07, 2020 Laura rated it liked it

A collection of letters - it feels odd to read someones personal letters yet also familiar. It makes me want to write more letters.
The thoughts on the war and on life and love I enjoyed.

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