HEMINGWAY ERNEST: (1899-1961)

HEMINGWAY ERNEST: (1899-1961) American novelist, Nobel Prize winner for Literature, 1954. An exceptional A.L.S., Ernesto, seven pages (two bifolia), 8vo, n.p., n.d. (February 1941; ´Night before we get to Hawaii´), to George [Brown], on the printed stationery of the Matson Line. Hemingway writes (in bold pencil) a social letter full of wonderful anecdotes relating to his recent activities, beginning by reporting on a trip to Los Angeles where he had enjoyed the hospitality of Gary Cooper, ´Stayed with Coopers who met us with the big new cadillac double funeral hearse he bought his wife for Xmas and they had a dinner that night with one swell broad (Carole Landis) that all the marrieds or uglies jumped all over because she got a little drunko´, adding ´But she was only 22 and I said to them they should have seen what guys like me or Cooper were like when we were drunk at 22´, continuing to refer to a mixed doubles tennis match, ´Coopers wife (Rocky) and I beat Cooper and Marty 5 sets of tennis to win 11 dollars in two days. But no money changes hands......I think Marty and I could beat them but Mrs C. likes to win very much......She has very extensive taught ground strokes but she has a high bouncing serve that I could set myself and murder so it is better for her happiness that we are partners´, remarking that Martha was ´much prettier´ than the other ladies in Hollywood and ´looked like a human being instead of a kennell (sic) entry but I shudder to think what would pass with the Colonel faced by them blondes altho lots of them were 22-23 years old which is aged in the Colonel´s book´, also reporting on a visit to San Francisco, ´We ate very well and saw Mike Ward, an old pal, and his wife and Selznick shipped up Ingrid Bergman to look her over for Maria for the picture. She is perfect. Really swell. Not like those Hollywooders´. Hemingway also comments on his experiences on the boat that they are travelling on, ´it has been rough as a bastard all the time. The gym guy wouldn´t box. He rubs too and he says he is afraid it would hurt his hands altho he says he teaches boxing (he comes from Hollywood too where I guess hands hurt easy. Probably his thumbs swell up). It was a shame because I was going to left hook him in the profile.....But I worked on the big bag instead but couldn´t rouse no really dirty feeling against it on such short acquaintance and when you get close to it the fucking thing seems sort of dead and helpless and not like ones fellow man. I practiced hitting it in the balls a little´, and further writing ´Tomorrow we get into Honolulu. It sounds more like a 1/2 jig Coney Island or Polynesian Miami Beach all the time´, before concluding ´Marty sends her love. We got a bang out of the wire. I miss you and the reading Colonel and working out and all the fun we have, but will be back soon with a lot of new lies and stories´. A truly wonderful and characteristic Hemingway letter, written with energy, humour and a touch of rudeness, giving an exact idea of what conversations between the writer and his friends might have been like. The stories that delighted his friends are preserved here in an autograph letter, so that we may now share in the delight too. VG George Brown, who owned a gymnasium in New York, was a friend of Hemingway´s for more than a quarter of a century and coached the writer in the sport of boxing. It was Brown who drove Hemingway home to Idaho from the Mayo Clinic in 1961 shortly before the Nobel Prize winner committed suicide. Brown was also one of the pallbearers at Hemingway´s funeral. Hemingway mentions another friend in his letter, Taylor Williams (´the Colonel´), who would be a regular hunting and shooting partner of the writer. Furthermore, Hemingway writes of his time with his good friend Gary Cooper and of meeting Ingrid Bergman, the two actors who would go on to star together in the film adaptation of For Whom The Bell Tolls in 1943. Hemingway also writes of the attractive young actress Carole Landis who, despite her relatively short lifetime (Landis also committed suicide, at the age of 29), was married four times. In addition Hemingway writes affectionately of his third wife, the writer and war correspondent Martha ´Marty´ Gellhorn (1908-1998), whom he had married in 1940.