Mary (Mrs. Ernest) Hemingway Letters, 1965 | MS Manuscripts

Hemingway, Mary Welsh (1908-)
Wenning, Henry

Mary Welsh Hemingway (April 5, 1908 – November 26, 1986) was an American journalist and the fourth wife (and widow) of Ernest Hemingway.  Born in Minnesota, Welsh was a daughter of a lumberman. When she was 32, she married Lawrence Miller Cook, a drama student from Ohio. Their life together was short and they soon separated. After the separation, Mary moved to Chicago and began working at the Chicago Daily News. A career move presented itself during a vacation trip to London, when Mary started a new job at the London Daily Express. The position soon brought her assignments in Paris during the years preceding World War II.

After the fall of France in 1940, Welsh returned to London to cover the events of World War II. She also attended and reported on the press conferences of Winston Churchill. It was also during the war years that she married Australian journalist Noel Monks. In 1944, she met Ernest Hemingway in London and they became intimate.  In 1945, Mary Welsh divorced Noel Monks, and in March 1946, she married Ernest Hemingway, the ceremony taking place in Cuba. In August 1946, she had a miscarriage due to an ectopic pregnancy. Mary lived with Ernest in Cuba and, after 1959, in Ketchum, Idaho.  In 1976, she wrote her autobiography, How It Was.