Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. Since the Guano Islands Act came up on
Speaker 1: the show recently, we thought we would loop back to
Speaker 1: our past episode on Lester Hemingway, which has a connection
Speaker 1: to it. It also reminded Tracy a little bit of
Speaker 1: our recent episode on Emily Sargent in that we know
Speaker 1: so much about her brother and have so little detail
Speaker 1: on her. It's kind of the scoop with Lester and Earnest. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this originally came out February twenty fourth, twenty twenty
Speaker 1: Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Holly Frye and I'm Tracy view Wilson. Tracy. Everybody's heard
Speaker 1: the name Ernest Hemingway. I think most people have at
Speaker 1: least heard of him. Yeah, they may not have read
Speaker 1: his work, or maybe they did. And his life is
Speaker 1: pretty well known and well documented because he was so
Speaker 1: famous even in his own time. But his brother is
Speaker 1: another story. But Lester, and that is spelled the same
Speaker 1: way that the city in England is spelled, but it
Speaker 1: is pronounced Lester similarly, much younger than his famous sibling,
Speaker 1: has quite a story of his own and it is,
Speaker 1: as you'll see, a life very much lived in relation
Speaker 1: to his brother. In some ways, his identity growing up
Speaker 1: was I'm Hemingway's little brother. We're going to talk about
Speaker 1: the biography that he wrote about Ernest, and really anything
Speaker 1: about himself is through the lens of how his brother
Speaker 1: influenced him or how it related to his brother. It
Speaker 1: really was not until after Ernest Hemingway's death that Lester
Speaker 1: made his boldest moves in life. And we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about all that as a heads up. As you
Speaker 1: may or may not know, if you know any details
Speaker 1: about Hemingway's life and the Hemingway family, there are going
Speaker 1: to be several instances of suicide that we talk about
Speaker 1: in today's show, not in great detail, but they do
Speaker 1: come up as elements that happen along the way. So
Speaker 1: when Lester was born on April first, nineteen fifteen, his
Speaker 1: brother Ernest, who would become just wildly famous, was already
Speaker 1: sixteen years old. The family was living in the Oak
Speaker 1: Park suburb of Chicago at the time. The oldest of
Speaker 1: the Hemingway siblings was their sister Marceline, who was born
Speaker 1: a year before Ernest in eighteen ninety eight. They also
Speaker 1: had two more sisters, Ursula born in nineteen oh two
Speaker 1: and Madeleine, who was called Sonny, born in nineteen oh four.
Speaker 1: Another daughter, Carol, came along in nineteen eleven, so Lester
Speaker 1: was the baby of the family, also unplanned. His father
Speaker 1: was Clarence Edmunds Hemingway and his mother was Grace Ernestine Hall.
Speaker 1: The Hemingways were supporters of the arts and of missionary efforts,
Speaker 1: and Clarence founded a local chapter of the Agasy Society,
Speaker 1: which was focused on collecting and studying natural objects. They
Speaker 1: were also very interested in science in the natural world.
Speaker 1: Clarence was a doctor and he worked for several insurance
Speaker 1: companies as their medical examiner while also leading the obstetrics
Speaker 1: department at Oak Park Hospital. There's a moment in the
Speaker 1: biography Lester wrote that he was also working for a
Speaker 1: dairy as like their physical exam guy for their employees.
Speaker 1: And Grace had been on the cusp of what could
Speaker 1: have potentially been a pretty successful career as a singer
Speaker 1: when she decided to give that up and instead mary
Speaker 1: Clarence and start a family, and that is something that,
Speaker 1: according to Lester, naged at her for the rest of
Speaker 1: her life as she wondered what could have been. According
Speaker 1: to Lester's biography of his brother, which we'll talk about
Speaker 1: later in the episode, Ernest was very much a father
Speaker 1: figure to his much younger sibling. Ernest did everything from
Speaker 1: changing stapers to teaching him how to shoot and fish
Speaker 1: and fight. He also gave his little brother one of
Speaker 1: a lot of nicknames that he would use throughout their relationship.
Speaker 1: That was the Baron. Grace was also assisted by a
Speaker 1: number of nurses and servants. She was not particularly interested
Speaker 1: in the more domestic aspects of family life. They were
Speaker 1: able to afford help, sometimes hiring students on summer breaks
Speaker 1: to assist to them. Yeah, Grace was not so interested
Speaker 1: in cooking and housework. And I mean, if you can
Speaker 1: afford help to do that and you don't like to
Speaker 1: do it, go you. In his very young years, Lester
Speaker 1: saw his older brother start his career as a writer,
Speaker 1: taking his first job as a police reporter at the
Speaker 1: Kansas City Star through a family connection, and then Ernest
Speaker 1: moved quickly on to joining the American Red Cross Field
Speaker 1: Service to join the war effort during World War One.
Speaker 1: Ernest had actually wanted to go straight into the war
Speaker 1: from school, but their father forbade it. It is very
Speaker 1: clear through all of this, and really the entire biography
Speaker 1: that he wrote, that Lester idolized his big brother. Ernest
Speaker 1: was injured by a mortar shell while distributing cigarettes and
Speaker 1: chocolate to the men on the front lines in Italy
Speaker 1: during the war. He managed to carry an injured soldier
Speaker 1: on his back to the aid station before he passed out,
Speaker 1: and that was a feat that was made even more
Speaker 1: impressive because he was hit by two bullets from a
Speaker 1: machine gun along the way. His legs had also taken
Speaker 1: most of the blast from the mortar. For years, this
Speaker 1: incident grew in its telling in public circles, and it
Speaker 1: was something that Ernest seemed to even encourage in not
Speaker 1: correcting any of them. But Lester, in writing about it,
Speaker 1: set the record straight that his brother had not taken
Speaker 1: hundreds of bullets to the groin or had any kind
Speaker 1: of mental or emotional breakdown as a result of this incident.
Speaker 1: Ernest later referenced and kind of fueled this rumor that
Speaker 1: his genitalia had been irreversibly injured in the writing of
Speaker 1: his character Jake in his novel The Sun also rises,
Speaker 1: so he definitely kind of enjoyed the oversized versions of
Speaker 1: this story that went around. Ernest was seriously injured and
Speaker 1: he required several months to recover, but he did return home.
Speaker 1: He was hailed as a war hero, and Lester would
Speaker 1: later write of it, quote, it was pretty glorious stuff
Speaker 1: being kid brother to the guy who had personally helped
Speaker 1: make the world safe for democracy. When Ernest and his
Speaker 1: first wife, Hadley Richardson traveled to Europe, Less wrote him
Speaker 1: what he described as fan mail that struck me as
Speaker 1: so interesting that he calls it that, but clearly very
Speaker 1: adoring of his brother. In the fall of nineteen twenty six,
Speaker 1: Lester's grandfather on the Hemingway side passed away, and it
Speaker 1: was the first of many events that culminated in a
Speaker 1: depression for their father, Clarence. Soon after, Ernest wrote to
Speaker 1: tell the family that he and his wife were separated
Speaker 1: amicably and they were getting a divorce. This was something
Speaker 1: Clarence was very upset by. He told Lester, who was
Speaker 1: just a little over eleven years old at the time, quote,
Speaker 1: you know, of course that your brother has brought great
Speaker 1: shame on the family by divorcing Hadley don't you. Ernest's
Speaker 1: rapid second marriage to Pauline Pfeiffer, who became pregnant soon
Speaker 1: after the wedding, was another blow. Even though the Hemingways
Speaker 1: loved Pauline and were happy to welcome a new grandchild,
Speaker 1: Ernest sort of insulted his father, who, as we said earlier,
Speaker 1: was an obstetrician, by asking kind of pointed questions about
Speaker 1: the quality of the hospital where he was working as
Speaker 1: he and Pauline try to decide where they were going
Speaker 1: to have the baby. Yeah, it's interesting. There is a
Speaker 1: letter in this biography that Lester publishes. He doesn't publish
Speaker 1: any of his brother's letters, which we'll talk about in
Speaker 1: a moment, but the letter that Clarence wrote back to
Speaker 1: him is very polite and he kind of is like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: the hospital's here might not do for you. Maybe you'd
Speaker 1: be better off having the baby elsewhere. And it sounds
Speaker 1: very polite and not upset. But Lester is very clear
Speaker 1: that his father was really injured and heartbroken that the
Speaker 1: quality of the care that he was part of was
Speaker 1: questioned in this way. Additionally, there was some ongoing strife
Speaker 1: between Ernest and Clarence, even though his eldest son was
Speaker 1: making a name for himself as a writer and was
Speaker 1: lauded as one of the great literary voices of the time.
Speaker 1: By this point, Clarence and Grace just didn't understand Ernest's work,
Speaker 1: and they often did not like it when they read it. That,
Speaker 1: coupled with their ongoing dismay earnest life choices, had really
Speaker 1: put a strain on the father son relationship. Then, as
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty eight played out, Clarence had to run of
Speaker 1: bad luck. He had invested in property in Florida, planning
Speaker 1: it as a retirement destination, but then the bottom dropped
Speaker 1: out of the real estate market in Florida. The property
Speaker 1: was significantly devalued, the heavyways owed a lot more on
Speaker 1: it than it was worth, and Clarence was not going
Speaker 1: to be able to set up a retirement practice there.
Speaker 1: Several months later, Clarence was diagnosed with diabetes. This was
Speaker 1: something he had suspected for a while, but he had
Speaker 1: put off getting tested. It's one of those the cobblers
Speaker 1: children have no shoe situation. He is one of those
Speaker 1: doctors that did not want to go to the doctor.
Speaker 1: These events all accumulated, and Lester described in his writing,
Speaker 1: Clarence having a quote serious loss of morale, and it
Speaker 1: was something he also called an emotional illness. On the
Speaker 1: morning of December sixth, nineteen twenty eight, Clarence burned a
Speaker 1: few of his personal items and papers, and then he
Speaker 1: retired to an upstairs bedroom and he shot himself in
Speaker 1: the midst of the household's grief and turmoil. Ernest had
Speaker 1: traveled in to manage the funeral arrangements and some other business.
Speaker 1: He told Lester, who at this point was thirteen, that
Speaker 1: a he should not cry. That the Hemingways did not cry.
Speaker 1: It was just kind of a horrible emotional burden to
Speaker 1: give a kid, and b that he wanted Lester to
Speaker 1: get the gun that their father had used to end
Speaker 1: his life from the police and have it shipped to him.
Speaker 1: Ernest Hemingway wanted that weapon. So you might think that
Speaker 1: something like that would sour the younger brother's admiration for
Speaker 1: his older sibling, but this was not the case at all.
Speaker 1: A few years later, as the movie adaptation of The
Speaker 1: Sun Also Rises was coming out, Lester visited his big
Speaker 1: brother in Piggott, Arkansas, where Pauline's family lived. It went
Speaker 1: and saw the movie and reported back about it to
Speaker 1: Ernest and then went hunting with him. And this whole
Speaker 1: trip in Lester's account, reads as though Ernest was keenly
Speaker 1: aware that his brother needed somebody to step into the
Speaker 1: shoes of their like father, and the two of them
Speaker 1: talked about their family. Ernest made sure that Lester had
Speaker 1: enough money. Yeah, it's interesting. Ernest did not want to
Speaker 1: go see the movie, but he didn't want to hear
Speaker 1: if it was okay, So that's why he sent his brother.
Speaker 1: And this relationship, to be clear, was also something that
Speaker 1: benefited Ernest. He really liked having someone in his life
Speaker 1: that looked up to him. Lester later wrote, quote, Ernest
Speaker 1: was never very content with life unless he had a
Speaker 1: spiritual kid brother nearby. He needed someone he could show
Speaker 1: off to as well as teach. He needed uncritical admiration.
Speaker 1: If the kid brother could show a little worshipful awe,
Speaker 1: that was a distinct aid in the relationship. I made
Speaker 1: a good kid brother when I was around, but I
Speaker 1: couldn't be around regularly. We'll talk more about the relationship
Speaker 1: between the Hemingway brothers as Lester grew into adulthood after
Speaker 1: we take a quick sponsor break. As the years went on,
Speaker 1: Lester and Ernest remained close, although other friends filled that
Speaker 1: kid brother roll for the writer when Lester was busy
Speaker 1: with school. The younger brother joined his brother on the
Speaker 1: sea in Key West when the novelist took delivery of
Speaker 1: his famous fishing boat Pillar in nineteen thirty four, and
Speaker 1: during their trips out on the water, they continued their
Speaker 1: long talks. This was something that they would do for
Speaker 1: years and years. It was a bored pillar that they
Speaker 1: discussed the fact that Lester also wanted to be a
Speaker 1: professional writer, just like his older brother, and the shared
Speaker 1: knowledge that anything the younger Hemingway wrote would be compared
Speaker 1: to Ernest's work. Everything you do, Ernest told his brother,
Speaker 1: they'll say you're writing on my reputation. You know that,
Speaker 1: don't you. Ultimately, Ernest was supportive of Lester's desire to
Speaker 1: write and told him he could give him some advice,
Speaker 1: but he did not want to help him in any
Speaker 1: way beyond that. Over the years, he offered up some
Speaker 1: tips like, if you can't make up stories, you shouldn't
Speaker 1: try to write a real one remembered as always sort
Speaker 1: of flat compared to a made up one. Yeah, perfectly
Speaker 1: happy to do all that advice, but he didn't want
Speaker 1: anybody to be able to say that Lester hadn't earned
Speaker 1: his place as a writer. He also advised that Lester
Speaker 1: should do what he had done, which was start out
Speaker 1: in newspapers. He felt like that was a really good
Speaker 1: way to develop your own voice and also to basically
Speaker 1: get in the habit of having to write all the time,
Speaker 1: whether you felt like it or not. And that was
Speaker 1: precisely what the younger Hemingway brother did. In nineteen thirty five,
Speaker 1: Lester started working for the Chicago Daily News, writing regional
Speaker 1: news and fielding questions from his coworkers about his famous brother.
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty three, almost twenty years after the two
Speaker 1: brothers had started talking about Lester becoming a writer, he
Speaker 1: published his first novel, The Sound of the Trumpet, and
Speaker 1: that was based on his experiences in Europe during the
Speaker 1: Second World War. It was compared in the press to
Speaker 1: Ernest's work and often was deemed derivative and heavily inflat
Speaker 1: winced by Ernest Hemingway. Lester wrote several other books that
Speaker 1: also existed but went unpublished. We didn't mention that he
Speaker 1: went to Europe during the Second World War. And there's
Speaker 1: a reason, which is that Lester's life is not documented
Speaker 1: in any way as well as his brothers. It kind
Speaker 1: of comes up in these these things. Oh yes, of
Speaker 1: course I went to Europe. It was in my book.
Speaker 1: But he's so busy always capturing his brother's life that
Speaker 1: he never really seemed to record a lot about his own. Lester,
Speaker 1: for example, married twice. I couldn't tell you the dates
Speaker 1: because I could not find them, despite looking around very
Speaker 1: energetically about it. His first wife was Patricia Shed. The
Speaker 1: couple had two sons together, Peter and Jacob, who went
Speaker 1: by Jake, although that marriage did not last. He next
Speaker 1: married Doris May Dunning, a marriage which produced two daughters,
Speaker 1: ann in Hillary, and he was married to Doris for
Speaker 1: the rest of his life. So documenting Ernest Hemingway's life
Speaker 1: was something that Lester said was his brother's idea. Ernest
Speaker 1: wanted quote somebody who really knew me to write a
Speaker 1: book about me, and Lester took up that challenge, writing
Speaker 1: about his brother's quote absolute integrity, both emotional and esthetic.
Speaker 1: But the famous Hemingway did not want a biography to
Speaker 1: be published about him while he was still alive. So Lester,
Speaker 1: who worked on the project for some time, just held
Speaker 1: onto that manuscript. On July second, nineteen sixty one, Ernest
Speaker 1: Hemingway was found dead in the foyer of the home
Speaker 1: in Idaho that he shared with his fourth wife Mary.
Speaker 1: The obituary, which ran in the New York Times, printed
Speaker 1: Mary's statement, quote, mister Hemingway accidentally killed himself while cleaning
Speaker 1: a gun this morning at seven thirty am. No time
Speaker 1: has been set for the funeral services, which will be private.
Speaker 1: But the obituary also noted that Ernest had been treated
Speaker 1: at the Mayo Clinic in recent months, and quoted a
Speaker 1: friend of the authors from the police force as saying
Speaker 1: that friends had relayed that in the time leading up
Speaker 1: to his death, Hemingway quote looked thinner and acted depressed.
Speaker 1: The coroner also gave a quot quote in this obituary
Speaker 1: story that stated quote, I can only say at this
Speaker 1: stage that the wound was self inflicted. The wound was
Speaker 1: in the head. I couldn't say it was accidental, and
Speaker 1: I couldn't say it was suicide. There wasn't anybody there.
Speaker 1: Lester's book was published eight months after Ernest's death, titled
Speaker 1: Simply My brother, Ernest Hemingway, and it was dedicated to
Speaker 1: his wife Doris. The opening of the book offers so
Speaker 1: much insight into the reverence for Ernest that his brother had.
Speaker 1: It reads quote. The conversations recorded in this biography are
Speaker 1: as accurate as I could make them. I did not
Speaker 1: have a tape recorder, and I do not possess total recall,
Speaker 1: but my own notes, ship's log and memory enabled me
Speaker 1: to reproduce many conversations. In writing dialogue, Ernest polished, edited,
Speaker 1: and was the supreme master of this art. In presenting
Speaker 1: Ernest's conversations, I have been mindful of the obligations of
Speaker 1: a brother, a friend, and a biographer. Ernest did not
Speaker 1: favor the publication of his letters, so they have not
Speaker 1: been reproduced here. He regarded all biographies as unlucky during
Speaker 1: the subject's lifetime, Yet at the end of the last
Speaker 1: letter I had from him, he wished me luck with
Speaker 1: this book. Lester acknowledged the version of his brother's death
Speaker 1: that Ernest's wife Mary had shared with the press, that
Speaker 1: it may have been an accident rather than an intentional
Speaker 1: effort to end his own life. But Lester also attributes
Speaker 1: full intention to his brother's actions. He wrote really candidly
Speaker 1: about his brother's depression, his sadness at having lost several friends,
Speaker 1: and during that time at the Mayo Clinic, he was
Speaker 1: undergoing electroshock treatments. He also notes in the text that
Speaker 1: Ernest was, unlike any author before him, mourned globally as
Speaker 1: though he had been a statesman rather than a writer.
Speaker 1: Lester's biography of his brother was well received, and it
Speaker 1: is still read today by Hemingway enthusiasts. And it is
Speaker 1: definitely an adoring picture of the man. And it is
Speaker 1: filled with a lot of stories about them hunting and
Speaker 1: fishing together, a lot of details regarding all of that,
Speaker 1: not the best for people who might be squeamish about
Speaker 1: the details of such activities. Okay, so we're going to
Speaker 1: go ahead and stop for a sponsor break, because after
Speaker 1: his brother's iconic life had ended, Lester made some really
Speaker 1: bold decisions of his own. We will get to that
Speaker 1: right after a sponsor break. Okay, this is gonna sound
Speaker 1: like we edited two different episodes together because it's a
Speaker 1: little bit of a track jump. But we have to
Speaker 1: pause for a moment here in the story of Lester
Speaker 1: Hemingway's life. We did not edit two episodes together accidentally
Speaker 1: to discuss bird poop. Before synthetic fertilizers were commercially produced
Speaker 1: in any kind of cost effective way, the name of
Speaker 1: the game in soil fertilization was guano. All kinds of
Speaker 1: natural fertilizers had been used since the beginning of time. Manure, compost,
Speaker 1: and river silt have all been used to enrich soil
Speaker 1: to produce crops for centuries. We talked about some of
Speaker 1: this in our episode on the discovery of phosphorus, yeah
Speaker 1: and guano. In this case, seabird excrements rather than bats,
Speaker 1: was used in the Andes and the Previing Coast, as
Speaker 1: well as other areas to enrich the soil. It became
Speaker 1: really coveted by a lot of countries in the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: and this was a significant part of several conflicts. The
Speaker 1: First and Second Wars of the Pacific, which started in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty four and eighteen seventy nine, respectively, were fought
Speaker 1: over occupation and exploitation of South American territories that were
Speaker 1: rich in a lot of resources, one of them being guano.
Speaker 1: But before either of those conflicts, in eighteen fifty six,
Speaker 1: the US Congress passed the Guano Islands Act. Seabirds, particularly
Speaker 1: in places where their colonies have been allowed to flourish
Speaker 1: without humans getting in the way, produce a lot of
Speaker 1: very rich fertilizer. The US and the eighteen fifties did
Speaker 1: not have a whole lot of islands with productive sea
Speaker 1: ee bird populations to fill this need, so this federal
Speaker 1: law was intended to generate territory that would give them
Speaker 1: access to this natural resource. The acts opening reads as follows. Quote,
Speaker 1: Whenever any citizen of the United States discovers a deposit
Speaker 1: of guano on any island, rock, or key not within
Speaker 1: the lawful jurisdiction of any other government, and not occupied
Speaker 1: by the citizens of any other government, and takes peaceable
Speaker 1: possession thereof and occupies the same such island, rock, or key, may,
Speaker 1: at the discretion of the President, be considered as appertaining
Speaker 1: to the United States. According to this Act, the discoverer
Speaker 1: of such a spot is required to notify the Department
Speaker 1: of State of the possession and provide proof that all
Speaker 1: of the conditions of the law are met. If the
Speaker 1: person who discovers the guano resource were to die before
Speaker 1: all this paperwork and proof is taken care of. His
Speaker 1: widow or heirs can follow through and they will get
Speaker 1: credit for the discovery, as well as rights to live
Speaker 1: there on this declared land and to harvest and sell
Speaker 1: the guano there. The claimed land and guano shipment is
Speaker 1: also to be protected by the US. And I am
Speaker 1: using present tense language here because this federal law still stands.
Speaker 1: We're going to get back to this bird poop, but
Speaker 1: for a moment, we're going to go back to Lester Hemingway.
Speaker 1: The publication of my brother Ernest Hemingway made a bit
Speaker 1: of money for Lester, and he had some plans for
Speaker 1: how to use it. He had gotten twenty five thousand
Speaker 1: dollars from Playboy magazine to publish the story as a serial,
Speaker 1: and the biography was really successful, eventually being translated into
Speaker 1: eleven languages. Everyone, it seemed, wanted the inside story of
Speaker 1: the Hemingway family and its most famous member. On July fourth,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four, Lester Hemingway took all of the proceeds
Speaker 1: from the book and made his own history by creating
Speaker 1: his own country. He floated a raft made of bamboo.
Speaker 1: It was also fortified. We'll talk about that in a
Speaker 1: minute to a spot eight miles that's twelve point eight
Speaker 1: kilometers to the southwest of Jamaica, making that international waters.
Speaker 1: The raft, which was eight by thirty feet or two
Speaker 1: point four by nine point one meters, was then anchored
Speaker 1: with a Ford engine block. It was fortified with pipes
Speaker 1: and steel, and Lester Hemingway declared that this raft was
Speaker 1: an island. He further claimed that half of this island
Speaker 1: was the brand new country of New Atlantis, but the
Speaker 1: other half, he said, was claimed for the United States
Speaker 1: under the Guano Islands Act, which at that point was
Speaker 1: more than one hundred years old. The Guano Islands Act
Speaker 1: made it possible for Lester to gain the protection of
Speaker 1: the US government over his new country, simply because his
Speaker 1: man made island was so small that there would be
Speaker 1: no way to really coordinate off as two separate entities
Speaker 1: in any sort of practical sense. So he wrote a
Speaker 1: constitution for New Atlantis sort of. He actually just used
Speaker 1: the exact wording of the US Constitution, but he subbed
Speaker 1: in the name New Atlantis everywhere the original document had
Speaker 1: said United States. Seven months after claiming this new territory,
Speaker 1: which was a public Lester held elections the resident. Voters
Speaker 1: of New Atlantis were Lester, his wife Doris, their two daughters,
Speaker 1: pr specialist Edward K. Moss, and Julia Celini, who was
Speaker 1: Moss's assistant. Lester was elected president in a unanimous vote,
Speaker 1: and then all of this, the Declaration of New Atlantis,
Speaker 1: the elections, Lester's constitution, all of that was covered in
Speaker 1: the press. Lester gave quotes to reporters that his new
Speaker 1: country was peaceful and had no intention of threatening its neighbors,
Speaker 1: that he did not know of any laws forbidding starting
Speaker 1: your own country. Yeah, I feel like we should also
Speaker 1: note that two of the constituents who voted in that
Speaker 1: presidential election, his daughters, were the little kids at the time,
Speaker 1: so voting rights were converted at a very young age.
Speaker 1: There was also currency for New Atlantis, which was, in
Speaker 1: case you're wondering, named after the Francis Bacon idea. New
Speaker 1: Atlantis commerce was done in scruples, which appeared to be
Speaker 1: just items scavenged from the sea, such as fish hooks
Speaker 1: and sharp teeth, et cetera. The joke there is that
Speaker 1: Lester Hemingway thought that if you were rich, you should
Speaker 1: have a lot of scruples. You could not gamble though
Speaker 1: on New Atlantis that was for boten against the law.
Speaker 1: Lester's wife, Doris, stitched the country's flag, which featured a
Speaker 1: gold equilateral triangle pointing down on a royal blue background.
Speaker 1: It also had a circle of royal blue in the
Speaker 1: center of the triangle. There were actually several of these flags,
Speaker 1: because some had blown away in the wind and whatnot.
Speaker 1: There is one remaining to this day. And then there
Speaker 1: were the stamps. New Atlantis designed print and sold stamps
Speaker 1: at five different values. President Lyndon B. Johnson was featured
Speaker 1: on the one hundred cent stamp, which resulted in a
Speaker 1: thank you note from the White House. And all of
Speaker 1: this sounds a little bit silly. It is easy to
Speaker 1: imagine that an eccentric with a bit of privilege and
Speaker 1: some money was just mucking around with this idea of
Speaker 1: starting a country, or that it was some sort of
Speaker 1: publicity stunt for his writing. And he did admit that
Speaker 1: he was motived by fun and the desire to see
Speaker 1: if he could make money off of starting a new government,
Speaker 1: But there was also a scientific goal for the fledgling
Speaker 1: Republic of New Atlantis. Lester Hemingway wanted the island to
Speaker 1: become home to the International Marine Research Society. They could
Speaker 1: do science work there and for sales of stamps to
Speaker 1: finance that endeavor, and he also wanted his country and
Speaker 1: any money that they made out of stamp sales to
Speaker 1: be used to protect nearby fishing resources. In the autumn
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty five, Lester worked with the librarian at
Speaker 1: the University of Texas Humanities Research Center in Austin to
Speaker 1: create an exhibit about his new country, including what may
Speaker 1: be the only copy of the constitution, as well as
Speaker 1: a number of other artifacts. This collection remains at the
Speaker 1: University of Texas at Austin Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center. Yeah,
Speaker 1: some of those pieces they have photographs of online. But
Speaker 1: New Atlantis you may have noticed, you don't have to
Speaker 1: memorize it in a list of countries, and that is
Speaker 1: because it was a short lived price. Its demise was
Speaker 1: not that the Universal Postal Union refused to acknowledge its stamps,
Speaker 1: although that was a very real problem, But the culprit
Speaker 1: here was nature itself. New Atlantis, which Lester had been
Speaker 1: hoping to expand and further fortify, was destroyed in a
Speaker 1: storm in nineteen sixty six before he could make improvements
Speaker 1: on it. After the demise of his little country, Lester
Speaker 1: continued to write. He started working as a freelance journalist,
Speaker 1: writing about fishing and the outdoors activities he had learned
Speaker 1: about from his brother. He wrote for various periodicals and
Speaker 1: also started his own newsletter, the Bimini out Island News,
Speaker 1: which he described as the smallest newspaper in the world. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In one quote, he said something like, you would need
Speaker 1: two copies to wrap a piece of fish, so very little.
Speaker 1: As he aged, Lester also let his beard grow out,
Speaker 1: and to a lot of people, he started to look
Speaker 1: like the spitting image of his deceased brother. During this time.
Speaker 1: In his mid sixties, Lester had a heart attack and
Speaker 1: then was diagnosed with DIYBEA, which led to a number
Speaker 1: of surgeries, including having artificial arteries put into his legs.
Speaker 1: His health continued to decline, and his doctors, noting his
Speaker 1: poor circulation, suggested that he have both of his legs amputated.
Speaker 1: This was more than he was willing to consider, and
Speaker 1: like his father and his brother before him, Lester Hemingway's
Speaker 1: medical issues brought on depression, and at the age of
Speaker 1: sixty seven, in September of nineteen eighty two, Lester Hemingway
Speaker 1: ended his life via a self inflicted gunshot wound to
Speaker 1: the head. I had not heard about Lester until fairly recently,
Speaker 1: and I was immediately fascinated. Yeah, because it is a
Speaker 1: story of someone who seems very I don't know if
Speaker 1: contented is the right word, but comfortable living in the
Speaker 1: shadow of a much more famous sibling, and even to
Speaker 1: the point that they're willing to pursue the same career
Speaker 1: knowing it will count against them in some ways. But
Speaker 1: then once Ernest is gone, Lester does some really fascinating
Speaker 1: things of his own. He's an interesting dude, and I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people don't know about him. I
Speaker 1: think people that are really into the Hemingways and their
Speaker 1: family history and Earnest probably have an inkling of him.
Speaker 1: But Lester gets a little bit lost in the historical record.
Speaker 1: So that's what I wanted to talk about him, because
Speaker 1: I love the story of an eccentric and I love
Speaker 1: the idea of starting one's own country, even if it
Speaker 1: does not go tremendously well, it is such a fun idea. Though.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday, since
Speaker 1: this episode is out of the archive. If you heard
Speaker 1: an email address or a Facebook RL or something similar
Speaker 1: over the course of the show, that could be obsolete now.
Speaker 1: Our current email address is History podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: You can find us all over social media at missed
Speaker 1: in History, and you can subscribe to our show on
Speaker 1: Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, and wherever else
Speaker 1: you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class
Speaker 1: is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.