THE DAY HEMINGWAY QUIT

I was a cub reporter on the long defunct Evening Telegram, which later became The Telegram and is now, I suppose, The (Toronto) Sun. . . .

I knew a lot of the veteran reporters who were around when Hemingway was at The Star. One of them was my uncle by marriage, Greg Clark, who is believed by many to be the patron saint of Canadian journalism and the literary life. Greg actually got Hemingway his first job on The Star when he returned wounded and shattered by the war.

Harry Hindmarsh was an editor in the tradition of the much-hated Charles Chapin of the New York Herald. And as you point out, he sadistically enjoyed humiliating Hemingway. One day he gave him the worst assignment a general- news reporter can get--he hired him out to the promotion department to write a fluff piece on a white peacock The Star was donating to the Toronto zoo.

Hemingway went out and got very drunk instead. Returning to the office stiff as a teakwood plank, he sat down at his typewriter and wrote his resignation. To hear from the news people present, it was one of the great moments in Canadian journalism, certainly one of the most unforgettable.

Hemingway knocked off page after page of vitriolic prose in which he castrated the unfortunate peacock and the loathsome Hindmarsh. As the pages flew from his machine the reporters would scoop them up and pin them to the walls. There were so many of them--at least 30--they looked like a short story by Thomas Wolfe.

The newsmen who read Hemingway’s diatribe recall the writings were more venomous and vicious than anything by Ambrose Bierce or H. L. Mencken at their most venomous. The word “masterpiece” was used.

The story gets cloudy here. Some reports have it that no one collected the pages and the janitors got them. Other tales have it that someone did collect them and took them home. If they are still around today they would be worth a fortune.

The report was that Hindmarsh liked to hire famous writers like Hemingway and Pierre Van Passen and humiliate them because he was a failed writer and jealous of their talent. I don’t think so. Harry Comfort Hindmarsh was a revolving son-of-a-bitch, that is, a son-of-a-bitch any way you looked at him.

One memorable story about him that followed him to his grave was the time he fired seven or eight newsmen on Christmas Eve. He sent Van Passen to cover the war in Spain. He then heard through sources--and Hindmarsh had them--that Pierre was not in the trenches in Madrid. He was shacked up with a blonde in Paris.

Hindmarsh promptly hopped on a ship, went to Paris and knocked on Van Passen’s door at the George V. When the unfortunate Van Passen opened the door, Hindmarsh told him “You’re fired” and hopped on a boat back to Toronto. As he explained it later, cackling no doubt: “I wanted to see the look on his face for myself.”

When Hindmarsh died, I helped write his obit. I phoned Hemingway in Havana. I told him I admired his work, he recalled Uncle Greg with kindness, and I said Hindmarsh was lying in the funeral parlors of McDougal and Brown with a stake through his heart.

There was a long silence and heavy breathing. “Mr. Williams,” said Hemingway, “this started out as a shitty day. It is raining and cold and my old wounds are bothering me. I ran into bad rum last night.” Pause and more breathing. “He is really dead, you say?” I assured him. More chuckles and then hellish laughter. “That saves me killing him,” said Hemingway. Finally, we managed to agree on a publishable quote--something like--”Mr. Hindmarsh was a rare figure in Canadian journalism and we will not see his like again.” To which Hemingway probably added: “Thank God!”

The obit was written by our best man, Allen Kent. He was beside himself. “I’ve talked to 50 people and can’t get one to say a good word about him. I called his son, Harry, and he said although his old man was a bastard he had a lot of good points and would call me when he could think of them. He never called.”

And I, like the dumbest cub, forgot to ask Hemingway about the White Peacock Letter.