Martha Gellhorn - Personal Life

Personal Life

Gellhorn's first major affair was with the French economist Bertrand de Jouvenel. It started in 1930, when she was 22 years old, and lasted until 1934.

She met Ernest Hemingway in Key West in 1936. They were married in 1940. Gellhorn resented her reflected fame as Hemingway's third wife, remarking that she had no intention of "being a footnote in someone else's life." As a condition for granting interviews, she was known to insist that Hemingway's name not be mentioned.

While married to Hemingway, Gellhorn had an affair with US paratrooper Major General James M. Gavin, commanding general of the 82nd Airborne Division. Gavin was the youngest divisional commander in the US army in World War II.

Between marriages, Gellhorn had romantic liaisons with "L" Laurance Rockefeller, an American businessman (1945), journalist William Walton (1947) (no relation to the British composer), and medical doctor David Gurewitsch (1950). In 1954 she married the former managing editor of Time Magazine, Tom Matthews, and settled down in London, which was to be her home for the rest of her life, although she and Matthews were divorced in 1963.

In 1949, Gellhorn adopted a boy, Sandy, from an Italian orphanage. Although Gellhorn was briefly a devoted mother, she was not a maternal woman. She eventually left Sandy to the care of relatives in Englewood, New Jersey for a long period of time. Sandy endured many absences from Gellhorn during her travels and eventually attended boarding school. He grew to disappoint her, and their relationship became embittered.

However, the legacy of Gellhorn's personal life remains shrouded in controversy. Supporters of Gellhorn say her unauthorized biographer, Carl Rollyson, is guilty of "sexual scandal-mongering and cod psychology." Several of her prominent close friends (among them Betsy Drake, the actress who was once married to Cary Grant; investigative journalist John Pilger; writer James Fox; and Martha's younger brother, Alfred) have dismissed the characterizations of her as sexually manipulative and maternally deficient. Her supporters include her stepson, Sandy Matthews, who describes Gellhorn as "very conscientious" in her role as stepmother.

In 1972 she wrote:

If I practised sex, out of moral conviction, that was one thing; but to enjoy it ... seemed a defeat. I accompanied men and was accompanied in action, in the extrovert part of life; I plunged into that ... but not sex; that seemed to be their delight and all I got was a pleasure of being wanted, I suppose, and the tenderness (not nearly enough) that a man gives when he is satisfied. I daresay I was the worst bed partner in five continents.