The Hemingway Rifle with a nice old dagga boy
By John Mattera
There are days that stand out in our mind above others, days that pass in the field and will be remembered. This was one of them …
Seventy-yards away, the old bull turned and presented a quartering away broadside shot after a long morning on the spore. The hunter slid down his big double rifle and lined up on the old buffs shoulder, pressing the rear trigger. The big .577 Westley Richards boomed with authority, and the buff bucked to the shot. The old boy was dead but didn’t yet know it.
Most buffalo hunts rate up there in memorable moments, but this one was special.
The hunter was Bill Jones, and the rifle that he took the old buff with had travelled the African lowveld before. A hundred years of owners prior to today.
The rifle is a century-old Westley Richards hammerless, single-trigger drop lock double rifle capable of sending a 750-grain bullet out of the muzzle at a little over 2000 fps.
If this rifle were not steeped in history, it would still deserve our attention. It is however its lineage that generates its aura. The historic provenance of this fine double gives it a character of its own.
It is legend.
The big double changed hands a few times since it left Westley Richards in 1913. The trades in ownership were notable and may grab your attention.
The .577 was built for a British cavalry officer, Stephen Henry Christy. The young Christy developed a taste for Africa as a young man attached to the 20th Hussars. Ten years later Christy ordered the WR, a unique single-trigger full load .577, planning for Africa once again. However, the Great War interrupted his hunting designs permanently as Christy never made home from France, where he died in a Cavalry charge and was buried outside of Paris.
For the next 20 years the big double flew under the radar screen, but then showed up in New York, it was rumored to have been owned by a member of the Vanderbilt family. Plausible, but without any physical verification.
The next owner of the great double was Winston Churchill Guest, a hunter by avocation and career international playboy by design. The Guest/Phipps families were friends and neighbors of the Vanderbilts on Long Island and in New York City.
Guest took the 577 to Kenya in 1933 on safari with hunting legend Bror Blixen, where he met fellow hunter and man-about-the-world Ernest Hemmingway. The two developed a friendship that would last their lifetime. Between these two rogues passed many adventures, not the least of which were their WWII anti-espionage exploits.
Guest traveled to Havana in September 1942 to check on his family interest on the island nation, and the Westley Richards .577 came with him. Guest fast became part of the Crooks Factory, Hemingway’s fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants counter-intelligence network, designed to catch Nazi agents operating in the Caribbean. Social standing hath its privileges, and Guest was named number two spy, soon to sign on board with Hemingway’s Navy.
On board Papa’s fishing boat the Pilar, the .577 did anti-submarine duty off the Cuban coast. The WR joined all manner of weapons big and small. The ragtag one-vessel navy’s goal was to pose as an unsuspecting fishing boat and lure in German U-boats for attack. The theory was that the double rifle would punch big holes in the steel hull of the vessel, while Hemingway’s Basque separatist did what Basques are famous for – throwing bombs – in this case, down the conning tower of the seemingly unsuspecting battle vessel. While this outrageous plan seems to defy logic, it was classic Hemingway.
When Guest left Cuba later in the war, the big .577 stayed behind, changing hands once again.
Ernest Hemingway’s Westley Richards .577 double rifle in the foreground Elmer Keith’s Westley Richards .470 double rifle in the rear Both from the Bill Jones collection
With the end of the Westley Richards eccentric World War II tour of duty, the new owner Ernest “Papa” Hemingway and the big .577 ventured back to the Dark Continent in the fall and winter of 1953-54. Chasing dangerous game, shaking Philip Percival out of retirement for the adventure.
Hemingway and Percival had history. Percival was Hem’s PH on his first safari in 1933-34, having many a grand escapade, collecting five lions, a score of Cape buffalo, and numerous other game. In the course of events Percival provided Hemingway with fuel for many a great hunting story. Immortalized by Papa’s “Jackson Phillips” or “Pop,” it was also Percival who relayed to Hemingway the scandal involving John Patterson of Tsavo fame, which inspired The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.
Percival needs no introduction to anyone with even a passing interest in African adventures. He had been part of the famed 11-month Roosevelt expedition of 1908, which inspired Roosevelt’s book African Game Trails. He was a true living legend in his day.
Hemingway was a man’s man, a hard-drinking habitual womanizer, straight-shooting, two-fisted, larger-than-life character, who happened to be the greatest American storyteller squared. Hemingway was an avid shooter and hunter, but save for his immortal writings, both would have passed unnoticed into the annals of history.
Of all the guns Hemingway owned, it is the .577 that epitomizes the man. Certainly he loved his Springfield ’06, and yes he seemed more comfortable with a shotgun to his shoulder. But, it is the .577 Westley that was Papa personified. Big, brash, and bold, both the rifle and the man. Delivering large hunks of lead in the same direct manner in which Hemingway delivered prose.
Hemingway posed with a respectable Cape Buff and the .577 in a photo on his second safari. We can assume that the rifle was used to land the beast, but as with so many things Hemingway, we just don’t know. He did use the big WR to collect a large male lion and a rhinoceros. But, Hemingway, being the preeminent writer that he was, seemed bored keeping recorded facts.
The big .577 next ended up in the hands of Charles Thompson, a friend and hunting companion of Hemingway. Hemingway portrayed Thompson as “Karl” in Green Hills of Africa. Thompson took the rifle back to Africa and harvested at least one bull elephant with it. Thompson’s estate sold the rifle sometime in the early 1970s for just under $3,000.
For decades the .577 sat in a glass display case at the Curry Mansion Inn on Caroline Street in Key West, gathering dust, a sad state for such a historic piece of hunting hardware. Luckily for the owners, the double rifle appreciated faster than Key West real estate, eventually finding its way to the James D. Julia fine firearms auction.
The day of the auction found Bill Jones sitting on top of his safari truck, beside the Nile River in the long-closed hunting fields of Uganda, very close to the place where Papa and the .577 suffered through two plane crashes in 1954. With the satellite phone pressed to his ear, longtime hunting companion Craig Boddington offered moral support as the bidding soared into the stratosphere. The phone call ended, and history had a new guardian.
Bill Jones is a hunter of the first order with a deeply respected, almost fabled status in today’s hunting circles. “Old School” is the term that best applies when speaking of him. Be it filming for video productions, hunting, or supporting cultural or anti-poaching projects, Bill Jones spends months each year exploring the African Continent. The depth and extent of his hunting experience is without peer.
Bill Jones is in love with history and the golden age of Africa in particular. So what does a history aficionado with a passion for Africa do with such a storied piece of shooting lore? A double gun that emerges from the pages of a time when men carried big rifles and walked upon elephants?
If you were Bill Jones, there would never be any question.
You take your 100-year-old Westley double and return with it to the great hunting fields of Africa to track dangerous game across its width and breadth. While such a historic rifle is one day destined for a museum where many may share in its history – not yet!
For Bill Jones and Westley Richards, number 17425 went hunting.
Its legacy still being written…
Remember, DSC receives 4% of purchases made at AMAZON
Like the Dallas Safari Club on Facebook!
Visit the Game Trails YouTube Channel!
Follow DSC on Twitter!