The 30 Minute Rule begins November 19 at 7:00 PM EST. An Initial Bid Must Be Placed By November 19 at 6:00 PM EST To Participate After 6:00 PM EST
World War II-dated TLS signed in pencil “old mountain man E Hemingway,” one page, 8.5 x 11, personal Finca Vigia stationery, April 14, 1945. Letter to his future wife, journalist Mary Welsh, written from San Francisco de Paula, Cuba. Hemingway discusses his repeated concussions, admits concealing an injury before D-Day, and reassures Welsh about his recovery. In part (spelling and grammar retained): “This morning wrote seven letters and have one for you to mail but am so cockeyed lonely for you write now again. It's twenty five minutes to five. Wrote Giggy, Buck, Pauline, Max Perkins, and business letters. Also have put a thousand bucks in a saveings account for Tom. Don't tell him so he won't get nigger rich.
Dr. Jose Luis Herrera who is a fine brain surgeon and did thousands of operations on the head when he was chief surgeon for our old 12th Int. Brigade was out today and we had lunch by the pool. He has been studying my head. What should have been done was open and drain the original hemmorage (from 1st concussion) but that was impossible on acct of me haveing to lie about it and deny the concussion on acct. D.Day. The second one, it seems was very bad for it. A lot of the things we took as just unlovely (as they certainly were unlovely) traits were symptoms. Brandy, for instance, is a definite poison when your head is like that. Champagne does very little harm. Almost none. Wine, unless too heavy, neither. But the slowness, loss of verbal memory, tendency to write backhand and backwards and the headaches, condition Mr. S. was in and the inertia, headaches and ringing in the ears were all symptoms of what had been done to head. Everything will clear up and be fine but he says have to take it easy, not worry about it at all, and let everything recuperate same way other things did. But remember how it was always either Brandy or the poison gin that made me not myself. He said it was a miracle kept going at all. (He is not a bit romantic and knows me for ten years and all my faults).
Says I should have had three months convalescence after the London incident (had four days in bed and put the blue clothes on the fifth) and by all rules would have been liable to bad cerebral hemmorage after the August 5 business. He says we have it whipped now and I won't have any more headaches and that you and me should just take care of head for a while and train it slow and good. Do some intellectual work each day and not too much and will be better than ever because will know more. But it seems Pickle that it was pretty bad. So that's the Gen as of now. Nothing to be worried about. All up to date. But have had 5 concussions in a little over two years. Which is not the way to treat what you make your liveing with. But we know, from poem, that she is still a fine instrument and we will bring her into form again good. I know that truer than I know anything.” An unknown hand has added marks and underlines in ballpoint to the letter. In fine condition. Accompanied by a custom cloth-bound presentation case.
Ernest Hemingway arrived in London in May 1944 to cover the Allied invasion for Collier’s, and soon met Mary Welsh, a correspondent for Time and Life. Both were married at the time: Hemingway to the journalist Martha Gellhorn, Welsh to Australian reporter Noel Monks. In the early hours of May 25, after a party thrown by Robert Capa, Hemingway accepted a ride with a fellow guest whose car crashed, and his head struck the windscreen hard, resulting in a concussion and a deep head wound. The London Clinic discharged him on May 29, consistent with his recollection here of four days in bed before putting “the blue clothes on the fifth.” On June 6, he watched the landings at Omaha Beach from a landing craft offshore. He suffered another concussion that August, when he banged his head hard on a rock while seeking cover after the motorcycle he was riding came under German fire. He went on to accompany Colonel Charles T. “Buck” Lanham’s 22nd Infantry Regiment through the fighting in the Hürtgen Forest that fall, before returning to Cuba in the spring of 1945.
At the Finca Vigía, Hemingway’s recovery was overseen by José Luis Herrera Sotolongo, a Cuban physician who had served as a surgeon with the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War, where the two first met, and who remained his doctor for years. When Hemingway wrote this letter on April 14, his eldest son, Jack, an OSS officer captured in the Vosges the previous October, was still a German prisoner of war; he was liberated on April 29, 1945. Hemingway’s divorce from Gellhorn became final on December 21, 1945, and he and Welsh married in Havana on March 14, 1946. Important work still lay ahead: after Across the River and Into the Trees (1950), he published The Old Man and the Sea (1952), which won the 1953 Pulitzer Prize, and he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.
This item is Pre-Certified by PSA/DNA
Buy a third-party letter of authenticity for
$150.00
*This item has been pre-certified by a trusted third-party authentication service, and by placing a bid on this item, you agree to accept the opinion of this authentication service. If you wish to have an opinion rendered by a different authenticator of your choosing, you must do so prior to your placing of any bid. RR Auction is not responsible for differing opinions submitted 30 days after the date of the sale.
Third-party authentication service applies only to signatures and handwriting, and does not cover the addition of sketches, artwork, musical quotations, etc.
