Hemingway, Ernest

Autograph letter signed ("Papa") twice, 2 pages on Finca Vigia airmail stationery (8 1/2 x 11 in.; 277215 mm), San Francisco de Paula, Cuba, "0200" hrs. 8 November 1949 to Marlene Dietrich, inviting her to dinner with him and his wife at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel in new York and to read the rough manuscript of his latest novel, Across the River and Into the Trees; one spot on second page.

Marlene and the "Welt-Meister." Hemingway seeks Dietrich's opinion on his last novel. Affectionately addressing the glamorous actress Marlene Dietrich as "My very dearest and most beautiful," Hemingway invites her to dine with him and his wife in private at his hotel in New York. "Got your cable and it made me and Miss Mary so happy. Christ will it be wonderful to see you ... We will fly from here on Nov 10 and be in Sherry-Netherlands in time for dinner Tuesday night. Please have dinner with us and no one else up in the room. Will call you at the Plaza when we arrive. Will only be in N.Y. 3 days and sail on the ILE [SS Ile de France]." 

Hemingway next invites Dietrich to read the manuscript of his latest novel, Across the River and into the Trees, the title derived from the last words of Confederate General Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson. He swells with pride at his accomplishment (the novel was nearly complete by early November): "This will be best book I have written and I would like you to read it the first of anyone. you can take the MSS. over to the Plaza. Only have to go one more round in it and if I can go it, and I god-damn will, will be Welt-Meister. ... Hope you will like and that then I will not care what anybody else ever thinks."  While hard at work on the novel he confesses Marlene was never far from his ken and that he "put in all my love (most neglected love there ever was) never done anything about (most neglected love there ever was) for you, all for Mary, all for two girls in Italy ^concentrated it and hit one girl in book with it like you but with good Panzer Division." He clearly desires Dietrich's approval of his work but defiantly warns her: "Hope you will like & the hell with you if you dont because you will be crazy."

Marlene Dietrich met Hemingway during a transatlantic crossing on the Ile de France in 1934. As she herself explained in a ghost-written magazine article, she had entered the dining salon to attend a dinner party that was already seated. "The men rose to offer me a chair, but I saw at once that I would make the thirteenth at table. I excused myself on the grounds of superstition." Hemingway stood in her path and gallantly offered to take the fourteenth seat.

Hemingway then tongue-in-cheek tells her of his near fatal bout in Italy that past March with erysipelas, a contagious disease of the subcutaneous tissue. "Was very ill in Padua with three kinds of infection all of which I cannot spell. Strapolycocus, streptococus, and Erysipelis. Had 13 million Penicillin there, 2,500,000 first at Cortina ... OK now." The doctors feared that the infection might spread to his brain and so administered massive doses of the antibiotic to arrest the disease. "By this time, his whole face was covered with what he called 'crut,' his eyes were swollen shut, and his discolored beard thrust up through the dark ointment like stubble in a muddy field" (Baker, Ernest Hemingway. A Life Story, p. 471).  Hemingway then slyly asks the seemingly ageless and immortal actress: "How are plans for your funeral going? We can work on them together."

He ends the letter by openly admitting that his writing is fueled by alcohol, regardless of the hour of day or night. "I wrote 1235 on Sunday and 586 on Monday and must stop now to drink a 1/2 bottle of Roederer Brut to try to sleep to write good today." In a post-script he adds: "wrote 5366 since I wrote this. Please excuse love letter."