- 54
Hemingway, Ernest
Estimate
15,000 - 20,000 USD
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Description
- Hemingway, Ernest
- Six letters and one short literary text comprising 4 ALS, 2 TLS (including one with a pencil sketch of a roulette table, another on Finca Vigia stationery, and a 1-page typed wartime recollection, together 16 pages, various sizes, written from Oak Park, Paris, and Cuba, 1920-1933, to members of the Connable family, signed "Ernest Hemingway," or "Ernest," with three autograph envelopes, all in good condition. With: 5 pp. related correspondence from Hadley and Clarence Hemingway.
- ink, paper
Hemingway on his gambling strategy, shutting down a rogue biographer, and the research for Death in the Afternoon
After attending a Hemingway lecture on his wartime experiences, Harriet Connable, wife of a Canadian Woolworth executive, was so taken by the young author that it was arranged that he would spend time as a companion to her crippled son of the same age, Ralph, at their mansion in Toronto. The adventure in Canada lasted six months in 1920 and resulted in fondly held friendships with everyone in the family, including the daughter, Dorothy.
Writing to Mrs. Connable and Dorothy on May 5, 1925, after inviting them to join Hadley and him in Spain, "I'm doing the Spanish trip on a commission from a German(?) publisher to write a book on bull fighting to be illustrated by Picasso and Gris.... Bone and Liberight are bringing out a book of mine in the fall - In Our Time.... also translated and sold in Germany.... They are giving me 2500 gold marks advance on the book..."
"hunches aren't any good. a hunch may be right once, but it's wrong a lot more times " Writing to Dorothy on 16 February, 1920, Hemingway goes into great detail on his preference for roulette over other casino gambling, going so far as to draw a plan of the table to demonstrate the best placements for bets. He gives her hard earned advice, "This is merely a treatise on the evils of gambling. Probably you aren't really interested in roulette any way. But it is the best game in the world, having the advantage over craps that in craps you are winning your friends money and consequently it is not so much fun. But in roulette you are bucking the wheel and there are no ethics against quitting when you are ahead. You can't do that in craps or poker. It is the loser who has to say when to quit. But in roulette when you get a decent way ahead - quit."
Hemingway replies to Dorothy from Cuba, 17 February, 1953 after years of being out of touch. Concerned with a biographer looking into his early years, including his friendships with the Connables, he cherishes the times past, "... it is a miserable thing to have people writing about your private life while you are alive.... Anything about Toronto is yours, your father's, Ralph's and my business.... We had such a fine time in Toronto, and I loved and admired your lovely mother so much and learned from your father and liked Ralph and was useless to him, that I hate to have the [bastard]'s of this world put their dirty hands on it."
It was during his stay with Connables that Hemingway began his work for the Toronto Star. A short 1 1/2 page typescript included herein that begins questioning the popularity of Toronto mayor, Thomas Church, suddenly becomes a scene that might have been lifted from In Our Time five years later, " I remember an old school house that was being used for a dressing station on the lower Piave river seeing a white haired man seated against a wall looking glumly at the blood soaked emergency that covered the shattered stump at his wrist. While we were waiting our turn on the table I spoke to him. He was a volunteer...He had been 18 months at the front. He would be fifty-five years old next month. He grunted his answers and looked at the wall. 'You're too old for this war' I said. He resented that... 'Corpo di Bacco!' he snapped ; 'I can die as well as any man.'"
After attending a Hemingway lecture on his wartime experiences, Harriet Connable, wife of a Canadian Woolworth executive, was so taken by the young author that it was arranged that he would spend time as a companion to her crippled son of the same age, Ralph, at their mansion in Toronto. The adventure in Canada lasted six months in 1920 and resulted in fondly held friendships with everyone in the family, including the daughter, Dorothy.
Writing to Mrs. Connable and Dorothy on May 5, 1925, after inviting them to join Hadley and him in Spain, "I'm doing the Spanish trip on a commission from a German(?) publisher to write a book on bull fighting to be illustrated by Picasso and Gris.... Bone and Liberight are bringing out a book of mine in the fall - In Our Time.... also translated and sold in Germany.... They are giving me 2500 gold marks advance on the book..."
"hunches aren't any good. a hunch may be right once, but it's wrong a lot more times " Writing to Dorothy on 16 February, 1920, Hemingway goes into great detail on his preference for roulette over other casino gambling, going so far as to draw a plan of the table to demonstrate the best placements for bets. He gives her hard earned advice, "This is merely a treatise on the evils of gambling. Probably you aren't really interested in roulette any way. But it is the best game in the world, having the advantage over craps that in craps you are winning your friends money and consequently it is not so much fun. But in roulette you are bucking the wheel and there are no ethics against quitting when you are ahead. You can't do that in craps or poker. It is the loser who has to say when to quit. But in roulette when you get a decent way ahead - quit."
Hemingway replies to Dorothy from Cuba, 17 February, 1953 after years of being out of touch. Concerned with a biographer looking into his early years, including his friendships with the Connables, he cherishes the times past, "... it is a miserable thing to have people writing about your private life while you are alive.... Anything about Toronto is yours, your father's, Ralph's and my business.... We had such a fine time in Toronto, and I loved and admired your lovely mother so much and learned from your father and liked Ralph and was useless to him, that I hate to have the [bastard]'s of this world put their dirty hands on it."
It was during his stay with Connables that Hemingway began his work for the Toronto Star. A short 1 1/2 page typescript included herein that begins questioning the popularity of Toronto mayor, Thomas Church, suddenly becomes a scene that might have been lifted from In Our Time five years later, " I remember an old school house that was being used for a dressing station on the lower Piave river seeing a white haired man seated against a wall looking glumly at the blood soaked emergency that covered the shattered stump at his wrist. While we were waiting our turn on the table I spoke to him. He was a volunteer...He had been 18 months at the front. He would be fifty-five years old next month. He grunted his answers and looked at the wall. 'You're too old for this war' I said. He resented that... 'Corpo di Bacco!' he snapped ; 'I can die as well as any man.'"
Literature
See Baker Letters and A Life Story pp. 66-69