The Spanish Civil War as Historical Romance: The Lovers of Hotel Florida (III)

Over the last hundred years, historical romance  has become a feminine turf with its focus on the heroine and its attention to feminine psychology and womanly concerns. In Hotel Florida, Amanda Vaill applies the genre’s tropes to a non-fiction work. As she deals with the events that shaped the Spanish Civil War and the last days of La Republica, she also recreates three love affairs. While delineating the dangers of living in a Madrid under fire or in crossing the politics of a radicalized Republic, she marvelously details the adventures of three young courageous, committed and charming women bent into being attractive in a world marked by death, blood, and betrayal.

The way the romances are reconstructed lets us see that Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn were bad for each other, that Robert Capa’s adoration for Gerda Taro was totally one- sided, and that the love that Arturo Barea and Ilse Kulcsar shared was the most precious item they dragged from the war’s debris. But Vaill does the reconstruction with such affection for her characters that her honest chronicle makes them terribly romantic and endearing. I hope she won’t take offense if I say she writes like a woman about women, a subject she knows and understand so well.

Ilse Kulcsar around the time she met Barea

Because Martha Gellhorn, Gerda Taro, and Ilse Kulcsar lived in a patriarchal world, they were seen—even by the men who loved them— from a machista perspective and that point of view would shape their public image through the years. The book is rich in examples that let us understand the realm upon which Vaill’s female protagonists treaded. Then, and now, beauty was the first trait that men noticed in a woman. After their first encounter, Arturo Barea thought Ilse wasn’t that good-looking; Hemingway described Gellhorn as owning “legs that started at her shoulders”; and on meeting Taro, fabled Dr. Norman Bethune had only eyes for her bosom to which Brigadista (and later writer) Ted Allen added the appropriate postscript “yum yum!”

Gellhorn's famed legs

From a generous bibliography (comprised by books, papers, diaries, letters, archives and photographs) the author draws out prodigious and novel interpretations and conclusions. Nevertheless, what makes Hotel Florida particularly appealing to me (and others like me who grew up in the heyday of Women Studies) is her approach to the Feminine whether it stems from matters of the heart or the mundane.

Martha looking chic in Spain. Next to her is Robert Merriman who led the Lincoln Battalion

The book is filled with feminine details. Martha’s adventures in shopping; her disciplined attempts to continue having her hair washed and set by professionals; her lovely outfits that made her the chicest of the journalistic community; and her joy on finding curlers and varied toiletry (including a vaginal douche) at a bombed-out house. On arriving to Spain, Gerda Taro had donned the blue overalls and rope alpargatas that were the unofficial uniform of milicianas, but once rode to the front on a skirt and high heels to raise morale.  “Men haven’t seen a woman in so long,” was her coy excuse.  Even no-nonsense Ilse cried her eyes out when her favorite pair of shoes became a bombing casualty.

 Gerda in miliciana outfit

 Amanda Vaill delights in showing her protagonists (male and female alike) at their silliest, pettiest or most whimsical. This even encompasses other women in her story like the British girl broadcaster (her name was Milly Bennett) who creates a striptease show called “General Mola’s Widow “ that she would reenact for the customers at the Miami Bar. Or poor Virginia Cowles, Hearst’s reporter in Spain, fending off the amorous advances of sinister Pepe Quintanilla—Madrid’s chief executioner—: or annoying Lilian Hellman who stopped in Madrid on her way to get an abortion in Moscow.

Virginia Cowles

My favorite anecdote concerns the Duchess of Atholl. Nicknamed “The Red Duchess” by the British press, this grand lady came to Madrid as a war observer to find arguments to convince the British government to give up its no-intervention policy.  But, in the context of the book, she is most remembered for eating all the spinach at the Florida’s ice box!

Duchess of Atholl around the time of her trip to Madrid

Gerda told her friend Ruth Cerf that if she ever surrendered her sexual freedom (a bone of contention in her affair with Capa) it would be for a rich man not for a penniless photographer. Martha once left the Hotel Florida in the dark after fuses blew up due to her overusing her electrical heater. Anybody who’s seen Nicole Kidman in the HBO biopic “Hemingway & Gellhorn” should read Vaill’s book to discover the real Third Mrs. Hemingway.

Vaill does not dwell on her subject’s shortcomings to undermine those women. She deftly juggles their flaws with their virtues, or whatever made then human and loveable. She also shows us how liberated women exercised their rights while taking advantage of the men in their lives. Gellhorn abused Hemingway’s influences brazenly; when in need to get to the front with Capa, Gerda would tell puritan generals (Communists then were a bit straitlaced) that they were a married couple; and once Ilse commandeered a car by convincing the driver she was the daughter of the Soviet Ambassador.

Drawing of Gerda Taro's death

It’s poignant to read about these six people now long dead. Gerda was the first casualty, killed in the Battle of Brunete while Capa was in Paris. She was ran over by a tank and despite her adoring Ted Allen’s efforts to drag her to the nearest hospital, the brilliant beautiful photographer bled to death. It was Capa’s boss, poet Louis Aragon who broke the news to him. Something in Capa died with Gerda. Throughout the rest of his life, he had many affairs, but never again loved like he had loved La Rubita (the little blonde) as she was known in Spain. Of all the characters in the book, I loved Capa the most and it’s my impression that since the loss of Gerda, he sought to die.  This is why he was such a daring war correspondent.

Robert Capa and Ingrid Bergman

After the Spanish Civil War, Capa photographed every conflict in the globe from the Sino-Japanese War in 1938, to the Arab-Israeli Conflict of 1948. World War II found him on every front: London, North Africa, Italy, and Normandy. He covered the Liberation of Paris and went to Berlin. In 1940, he took time to photograph Hemingway and Martha’s wedding. When not having wars to take pictures of, he hobnobbed with Hollywood stars (he had a two-year affair with Ingrid Bergman) and Parisian artists. In 1947, together with Henri Cartier-Bresson, he founded Magnum Photos. His last war was the conflict that preceded Vietnam. In 1954, he stepped on a land mine in Indochina and Death got him. He reminds me of the Spanish Legion ‘s anthem “Soy el Novio de La Muerte.” Robert Capa was the Bridegroom of Death.

1954 Indochina. Capa before his death.

Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn had five years of marriage bliss and hell before the inevitable divorce. Hem wrote his best novels in the 40s and 50s and won the Nobel Prize. He married another blonde whom he too would divorce. To cure his alcoholism,”Papa” submitted to electroshock. His depression worsened, and he ended up putting a bullet through his brain.

The Hemingways when they were still a happy couple.

Martha spent the rest of her life shaking away the stigma of being the third Mrs. Hemingway plus all the mental and physical abuse “Papa” had inflicted on her. Like Capa, she went to every front. She was active until her old age, acquiring the deserved recognition as a great war correspondent, and yet today, there are those who still think of her as “that blonde Hemingway took to Spain.” She covered all the wars her former husband could no longer cover: The Six Day War, Vietnam, Nicaragua. She became an expatriate during the McCarthy Era, living abroad in places as distant as Wales and Mombasa.

After her first divorce, Martha Gellhorn had several love affairs, including one with married General James Gavin. She remarried and re-divorced. She even adopted a boy and found she was a failure as a mother. She had more luck with cats and friends and until her death, she was still charming, classy, stylish and bent on looking good. In her late 80s, ravaged by cancer and almost blind, Martha took her own life.

Martha in her old age

The Barea-Kulcsar couple left Paris and settled in England. Eccentric Lord Farringdon, who had driven an ambulance in the Aragon front, took them under his protection and offered them a house on his state near Oxford. Arturo joined the BBC as a broadcaster, job he held until his death. Ilse had the fortune to have her family nearby after the Pollacks managed to flee the Nazis and settled in England.

The Barea-Kulcsar in England

In Oxfordshire, Arturo and Ilse led a typical, almost bourgeois, British country life. They raised dogs, went fishing and joined their host in shooting parties. In between, Ilse became an accomplished translator and Arturo worked on the trilogy that would turn him into a celebrity in Spanish literature:  The Forge (La forja de un rebelde).

Barea and his dog (El País)

Ilse translated her husband’s work into English and Barea’s name become famous among the exiled Spanish community as well as the literary circles in Great Britain and across the Atlantic. He was invited to tour the United States and only McCarthyistic suspicions kept him from getting a teaching post at some prestigious American university.  He returned to the English countryside to continue writing and learning to live with sudden recognition.

Arturo working for the BBC (El Mundo)

On Christmas Eve 1957, Arturo already in bed, complained of a sudden chest pain. His wife held him until he expired in her arms. Undetected cancer had provoked a fatal but quick heart attack. Ilse survived him for fifteen years. During that time, she became a successful editor, returned to her native Vienna, and wrote a book about Austria. In 1972, she died of kidney failure. Unlike Gerda who died too early, or Martha, who never found emotional fulfillment, Ilse Kurlsack was the luckiest girl in this book. She had everything a woman could ambition: a diverse career, plenty of adventure, and a lifelong love.

Ilse Kulcsar-Barea in her old age

I recently read historian Paul Preston’s review of Hotel Florida for The Guardian. As I would expect from an avowed Marxist, he resented the book’s slant against the Soviet Union, and Stalin’s politics in Republican Spain. He also notes some very minor geographical and chronological errors in the book, but at the end of his article he drops what to me is a compliment:

“This book should be read for its sensitively told stories of three love affairs, but not for authoritative views on the Spanish Civil War. “

I may differ with his last inference, but I embrace the concept of Hotel Florida as a sensitive retelling of three very romantic affairs. Thus, even Professor Preston agrees with me in the importance of Amanda Vail’s book as a new genre:  historical romances based on true events.