Hemingway, Ernest

Two autograph letters signed ("E. Hemingstein" and "E. Hemingway"), together 10 pages (the first 6 3/4 x 5 1/4 in, 170 x 132 mm; the second 8 1/2 x 5 1/4 in, 210 x 135 mm), New York, n.d. [January or February] 1937  (the year written in, most likely by the recipient), and n.p. [Mont St. Michel] 6 August 1944,  to his third wife, the writer Martha Gellhorn ( addressed as "Dear Marty" and "Dearest Mook");  both letters in pencil, the first on stationery of The Barclay Hotel in New York, the second on six sheets of tan graph paper, the first with a few marginal paper-clip rust stains.

"The Property of a Lady," [Martha Gellhorn] (Christie's, 8 November 1996, lot 30)

Not in Letters, ed. C. Baker, and presumably unpublished.

Two autograph letters signed ("E. Hemingstein" and "E. Hemingway"), together 10 pages (the first 6 3/4 x 5 1/4 in, 170 x 132 mm; the second 8 1/2 x 5 1/4 in, 210 x 135 mm), New York, n.d. [January or February] 1937 (the year written in, most likely by the recipient), and n.p. [Mont St. Michel] 6 August 1944, to his third wife, the writer Martha Gellhorn ( addressed as "Dear Marty" and "Dearest Mook"); both letters in pencil, the first on stationery of The Barclay Hotel in New York, the second on six sheets of tan graph paper, the first with a few marginal paper-clip rust stains.
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"I am crazy enough myself to understand a good healthy streak of insanity in a pal."  Hemingway met Martha Gellhorn, a twenty-eight-year old correspondent and author of two books, at Sloppy Joe's Bar in Key West in December 1936. A strong friendship intensified into a romantic relationship when the two were in Spain together in 1937–1938 covering the Civil War.  Following the divorce from Pauline, his second wife, Ernest and Martha were married on 21 November 1940.  (The previous month Hemingway's enormously successful fourth novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls—which he dedicated to Martha—was published.)

[Jan. or Feb. 1937], shortly after they met:  "No it wasn't me in the book [the unrevised manuscript of To Have and Have Not, the novel not being published until October] and that is what made me cheerful about it and you were smart to see it. You're being awfully good damned good to me writing letters when you know I'm alone in this lousy town [New York] and if you for Christ sake get over it now before I start thinking of you as something permanent like the horses in the fountain of the Place de l'Observatoire or the Lion de Belfort  that Bumby [his oldest son] saw, out of a dead sleep, coming back from Austria one time in a taxi from the gare and I said 'what's that Bum?' and he said 'Le Lion de Belfort, a good friend and an old friend' ... I think the real reason I have to go to Spain [to cover the Civil War] is what the hell Jesus Christ let's not talk politics ... But if they have [improved?] war any and I can describe it accurately I can scare people here in the U. S. enough to keep us maybe out ... And Marty if you want to be a man in this or the next world that is fine and I'll swear you are to you whenever it hits you because I am crazy enough myself to understand a good healthy streak of insanity in a pal ... but either be a man or a woman or nothing or a writer but don't joke about Fairies because I don't believe in Fairies and I do believe, largely by accident and certainly with pleasure, in you and remain, and rest, and remain again your old lecturer at Bryn Mawr [Gellhorn's college]  and former platoon commander, now dead, I mean missing ..."

6 August 1944. Hemingway, in Normandy as a war correspondent with Allied forces, was at Mont St. Michel recuperating from injuries in a jeep accident caused by a German shell;  Martha Gellhorn was on assignment as a correspondent in Italy. Hemingway's liaison with Mary Welsh, who would become his fourth wife in 1946, was now some two months old.  He writes: "... Am so glad you are happy and having [sic] a fine time and getting some sun. Am sure you will get good stories too and anyway living [sic] and being happy is better than stories. Please take everything I say straight and do not read in hidden meanings nor insults ... Day before yest. while in advance of infantry I got knocked down by a tank shell—enemy tank then fired on us and on me playing dead by road with machine gun. Threw dirt all over head and cut leaves from hedge all over helmet. They also had at least 2 machine pistols in cross fire on each side of road. Two Germans crawled up to hedge and could hear them talking.  Was quite a time ... If we had not run into that place first they would have killed many people. Am very good at imitating a dead [man] under such circumstances ... Think instead of piece will write short stories of life in [the infantry] Division. Have good ones and will write them and cable them ... The stuff is too wonderful to write as journalism ... So I will just write the stories as well as I can. Please do not think I have been being a crazy. Have been working very close to the bull but everything have done has been useful ... I am going to stay with it [the Division]. I don't care about being the first into any place nor about 'the story.' Would rather be with those who do the fighting in some useful capacity and then go home finally and write book & be buried in a good country like France which have always loved very much anyway and see and love better than ever did before. Only hope I can write as well about it as I should ... E. Hemingway, War Correspondent."

These two are apparently the only surviving Hemingway letters to Martha Gellhorn.  Some months before her death in 2008, Gellhorn—according to her son Sandy Gellhorn—went through her correspondence files, feeding much of it, including her letters from Ernest Hemingway, into her fireplace flames. Sandy Gellhorn was able to interrupt the process, saving these two letters and ten letters from Hemingway to Edna Gellhorn, Martha's mother, from destruction (one is in the following lot).