Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Africa Hemingway's or Ruark's First Safari?

Here's Ruark about his martinis:



Forty six bottles of gin... that's 34.5 liters (better than 9 gallons!), to a "little less than 1/2 a bottle of vermouth", so let's call that 350 ml. Basically a 100:1 ratio. Yeah, he liked them dry.

Ruark and Selby was by far the better read, but I would give anything to spend 8 weeks with Papa in pre war Africa.

You found it! I was going on memory. You gotta love "Gin-and-nonsense"

I love the part about the pre leopard hunt where Shelby bans him from gin, but offers him a beer. "Beer is food, it is not tipple" I use that line far too often to justify a cold one.

I tend to disregard the vermouth tally. As a dry martini man myself for many years, I've known a bottle of Noilly Pratt to last close to a decade before it required replenishment. The tale here is the gin. Forty-six bottles of gin consumed by 3 people in 42 days (which doesn't include whisky, or the beer they quaffed at lunchtimes) is, by even my bleary-eyed standards, fair heavy drinking!!

Nonetheless, if I could use my time machine to wrangle a tag-along invite on either Ruark's safari or Hemingway's, I'd probably choose Ruark's.

Ruark may have been a drunk, but by all accounts he was a convivial companion, so I think he'd have been good company at the dinner table and sipping drinks at the campfire after sundown. That characteristic alone would make Bob my choice over Wemedge. Ruark was well-educated in a rough sort of way, had "seen the elephant, and was making a good living as a writer in the years leading up to the HOTH safari, all of which speaks of a man who's BTDT. Yet he was an honest man by all accounts, not overly egotistical, not inclined to inflate claims about himself or make himself to be something he wasn't. He may have been a fledgling rifleman and big game hunter on his safari, but he was a lifelong bird hunter and wingshot, something I can identify with; most of the real bird hunters I know are damn fine company and true hunters. Ruark acknowledged his greenhorn status, and chose to learn from arguably one of the best PH's that ever was. All of which speaks to the concept that Ruark was a good man and a good, honest hunter.

If I'd joined ol' Bob and Harry (and Virginia, of course) on that trip I think I'd enjoy it enormously. I'd drink too much, I'd laugh immoderately, sleep in more than I should, and probably not collect the quality or quantity of trophies I could get hunting with Selby on my own because of socializing, but in the end I'd come home wonderfully relaxed & rested, and I'd have happy memories to warm my heart for the rest of my life.

The Big Three of 20th century American pre-war writers, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway, were all fairly hard drinkers themselves. I believe Hemingway was a terribly hard drinker, in no small part because he was self-medicating his lifelong struggle with the disease that eventually took his life: major depression.

I've read just about everything Hemingway ever wrote, both of the big biographies and multiple smaller ones, and it all paints a consistent picture of the man that isn't pretty. He was a vain and insecure man who put other people down to make himself look bigger, who belittled his friends and vilified anyone who criticized him. He could be hugely, malignantly competitive (as his tales from GHOA illustrate). Yet if he liked you, he could be kind, generous, affectionate, and a wonderfully engaging companion. If he admired you for something you could do that he wanted to take advantage of, he could be an incredible suck-up. But he was also a keen observer of life in general and humanity in particular, and hugely intelligent.

So I think that the Hemingway safari would be hugely different from the Ruark safari. Conversation around Hem's campfire would not be convivial or humorous: it would be erudite, challenging, illuminating. But there would be a lot of silence, and a good chance that there would be some sharp criticism of one's words, thoughts, or conduct if it crossed any of Ernie's "rules". In short, I think you'd find yourself walking on eggshells much of the time. Add to that the fact you'd have to put up with Pauline, who by all accounts had the temperament of a dyspeptic she-badger, and I'd have to guess that the Hemingway safari would be a miserable excuse for a vacation.

In contrast to my homecoming from the Ruark safari, I anticipate that if I could tough out the whole month with Ernest, Pauline, and Percival, I'd be bone-weary and emotionally frazzled by the end of it. I'd probably write a book about my month with Hemingway, which would be panned by the critics due to the enormous popularity of His Hemingwayness, and would die a bitter old man, alone, in the rain.

I cannot begin to tell you how many times I've read "Horn of the Hunter". There are many parts, and that is one of them, that stick in the mind.

I knew I'd like Ruark after reading the first couple of paragraphs of Horn of the Hunter. Harry asked Virginia or 'mem saab' how she was doing and the 'mem saab' replied something to the effect that she was "God D*mned tired of being in the bush, in the bouncy lorry, etc, "and wondering what she had gotten herself into. Not to mention her encounter with the 5 or so lions while she was in the jeep and Robert and Harry had the lioness 10' from them.

The chapter on tipping had me crying I was laughing so hard. Went Harry went to tell the staff, I felt like I was right there listening to him.

OK, so this has been up for a couple of days now and no one has taken the obligatory swipe at Capstick. Things are slipping.

Ha! Now there's a thread derailer if ever I saw one!

From everything I've read that Capstick wrote, and everything I've heard from people who knew him, Peter was a tremendously likable fellow and a great conversationalist, rancounteur, and a pretty decent hunter when hunting was the order of the day.

I'd still rather be on safari with Ruark & Company in 1950 than Hemingway in 1934 or Capstick in 1970.

I don't want to hijack my own thread, but I knew Peter and he was a great guy. He never claimed to be Percival or Selby (and wasn't), but just a guy who wanted to go to African and live in the bush and write about it.

We never talked about Hemingway's 1956 safari. True at First Light didn't do much for me. Seemed he worked to hard to make a story out of that trip, but I wished he'd made it a narrative.

Anybody for that one?

Well, if Capstick's added to the mix, without question, I'd choose him! True at First Light was about the SUCKIEST book I ever read on Africa.

The scotch drinker arrives! Got aquatinted with Peter over a glass of Dewer's in Reno at the Long Bar at the old MGM.

Problem is, back in the day the only scotch you got on safari would be J&B, Cutty Sark, and maybe..... Johnnie Walker.

Ya, u betcha! (no beer for me! )

So, if I read the trend right, the question has now expanded to include:

1) Hemingway's 1933 Green Hills of Africa safari with Philip Percival;
2) Ruark's 1950 Horn of the Hunter safari with Harry Selby;
3) Hemingway's 1953-54 True At First Light safari;
4) Unspecified date Death in the Whatever safari with Peter H. Capstick (somewhere in the late 60's, I'm guessing?).

For purposes of fun, hunting, and a rolicking good experience, I would pick, in order: 2-4-1-3.

For source material to write a book about the author, I'd pick 1-2-3-4.

Well, as a fellow Hemingway aficionado, I have to say that I don't consider TAFL a Hemingway book. It was partially written shortly after the 1953-54 safari, then put aside while he wrote The Old Man and the Sea, then permanently put away shortly after that. Hem's health problems ruined him, from a writing standpoint, at that time and he never picked the manuscript up again.

His son Patrick, who was neither a writer nor a professional editor, then "edited" the manuscript and published it. It was a mess.

I bought the book when it was first published it and read it several times over. It seemed to me at the time that the passages/parts that were true to Hemingway's writing style and manner were very good, but they were mixed up willy-nilly with the nonsense that Patrick thought made a good tale. If you excerpt out that junk, you come up with a short but pretty good novella.

God save us from the well-intentioned editorial efforts of great writers' offspring...

Ok, if I have to pick it would be Hemingway's Green Hills Of Africa. To me there is still that innocence (for lack of a better word) of the time before WWII turned the world upside down. To think in a couple of years Papa would be reporting from the precursor in Spain.

I did enjoy Ruark, but for the moment it would still be Papa.

I loved to read both authors, but I wouldn't want to live next door to Hemingway, or travel with him. Men who go to bars to pick fights aren't my friends.

I don't care about them being alcoholics, some of my best friends fit that description. I was something of an alcofrolic myself when I was younger. But I never liked bullies.

Ruark by a mile.
I believe he is (was) my kind of people.

Kind of my thoughts. As much fun as it would of been to hang out with Earnie, I have to believe we'd of been rollin' in the mud before the end of a week.

Reading part of Green Hills last night. One passage gave me reason to consider Hemingway's first.

They were hunting rhino in the thick bush, and flushed out a cow and a young one, then found a bull rhino with smallish horn (by those standards).

They debated with Percival whether or not it was big enough, when it was pointed out "I 'd still have three on license" if he took it. Imaine that in today's world!

J A Hunter was charged as Game Warden in Kenya to wipe out all the rhino pestering the Kikuyu in one district because they were plentiful to the point of dangerous. All just 80 years ago.

Both authors give me a nostalgia fit. They shot game for leopard bait and camp meat that you and I would pay trophy fees for.