In the following letter Martha Gellhorn, the first female war correspondent, addresses Alvah Bessie. The two met during the Spanish Civil War; Gellhorn was working as a reporter while Bessie volunteered for the International Brigade. Their shared experience would later be recorded in Bessie’s The Un-Americans, which poked merciless fun at Gellhorn’s then-husband, Ernest Hemingway. Despite Gellhorn’s frustrations with her inconstant memory, she would soon begin writing her memoir, Travels With Myself and Another, published in 1978.
To: Alvah Bessie
January 3 1970
Temporarily at Pangani, Tanzania
Dear Alvah
…It’s amazing that you think I have so much to say and can say it. I feel I can say nothing; my writing strikes me as dull and slow and boring. And as to having anything to say, even there I have no confidence. If I had a fine memory (one of the basic ingredients of talent), I might be able to write Memoirs, better than George Kennan for instance because, from my worm’s eye view, I do believe I saw the world more truly. But I have absolutely no memory; this is not a joke. I honestly cannot recall whole hunks, months, years, of time: I remember only high spots and am never sure how accurately I remember and how much I have embroidered. And I never kept notes. I have the curious impression of my life as a sieve, once crowded or packed, but every day emptying again. And lately I have lost the sense that experience can be turned to account; I don’t exactly know who is doing my semi-living for me. Who is this tall, fierce, irritable, impatient, sunburned driven woman?
Nothing in my life (or anyone’s) that love and laughter wouldn’t cure.
Love
Martha
From Selected Letters of Martha Gellhorn. New York: Henry Holt and Co. (2007).
FURTHER READING
Gellhorn’s confused and “awe-inspiring” rage, with mention of her many lovers.
A tribute to her career as a journalist, with a link to her O. Henry award-winning short story.
An interview with Gellhorn in which she discusses keeping the record straight.