Lot 47
  • 47

Hemingway, Ernest

Estimate
35,000 - 50,000 USD
bidding is closed

Description

  • Hemingway, Ernest
  • Two typescripts signed, one a working draft with a long portion in holograph, of Hemingway’s two fables for children, “The Faithful Bull” and “The Good Lion” 
  • ink, paper
10 pages (10 5/8 x 8 1/4 in.; 270 x 210 mm), Venice, dated 6 March 1950; laid down on larger leaves, eight illustrations (picture postcards; photographs, etc., cut from books) also affixed to larger leaves, all bound, with a signed (“Ernest Hemingway”) holograph general title-page by the author, in a quarto-size canvas album with two cloth ties; covers slightly stained, slight wear at ends of spine.

Provenance

Christie’s London, 13 October 1976, lot 284

Catalogue Note

"One time there was a bull and his name was not Ferdinand and he cared nothing for flowers." Hemingway’s carefully lettered title-page reads: “A Book for Olgina de Robillant with The Good Lion and The Faithful Bull by Ernest Hemingway [a large signature]. Fait a Venice 6/3/50.” “The Faithful Bull” fable, which comes first in the album, consists of a working draft of four pages, the first two and two-thirds being triple-spaced carbon typescript, the remainder of the tale being penciled (nearly all) holograph by Hemingway (150 words). There is also a 17-word revision in pencil by the author and he has inscribed the top of the first page in ink: “The Faithful Bull. To Olgina with love and good luck from Mister Papa.” Just above this he has penciled: “Corrected to copy EH.” The second fable has it’s own holograph title-page by Hemingway, “The Good Lion / (E .H.),” and is comprised of six triple-spaced typed pages, also carbon copy; there are a few penciled typographical corrections by the author. At the top of the first page is the typed dedication: “For Gherardo Scapinelli, from his friend, Ernesto Hemingway.” The last page is type-signed: “Ernest Hemingway 17/1/50, Venezia.” One of the illustrations is a reproduction of a Goya painting of a picador; the others shows scenes of Venice (including the Lion of St. Marks), etc.

Hemingway wrote “The Good Lion” for Gherardo Scapinelli, the three-year-old nephew of Adriana Ivancich, a young Italian woman with whom he was infatuated. (Another copy of this typescript, bearing the same date and inscribed to Gherardo, was sold at Sotheby’s New York, 14 February 1986, lot 469.). The charming fable tells of a young winged lion in Africa who is despised by the other lions because he likes to drink negronis and eat pasta instead of animals and men (especially fat Hindu traders). One day the other lions get so angry they attack him and he flies away to Venice, where his father is the Lion of St. Marks. The story ends with “the good lion” going to Harry’s Bar where the owner Cipriani greets him and offers him a negroni. Instead, he asks for a “very dry martini” and orders a “Hindu trader sandwich.”

In the other fable, “the faithful bull loves to fight so much that he fights other bulls and reduces their value to the owner, who finally decides that rather than send the bull to the bull ring to be killed, he would put him in with the cows in the pasture and produce more bulls with the good fighting blood. But the bull falls in love with one cow only and refuses to mate with any of the others. So the owner decides that he must, after all, send the ‘faithful bull' into the bull ring to be killed. [The typed portion of the tale ends here; the remainder is in Hemingway holograph.] The matador is impressed by how well the bull fights, and his sword handler says, ‘Yes, his owner had to get rid of him because he was so faithful.’ And the matador says [as the bull is being dragged by four horses out of the arena], ‘Perhaps we should all be faithful’” (Charles M. Oliver, Ernest Hemingway: A to Z, p. 89). Both “The Faithful Bull” and “The Good Lion” were published, with illustrations by Adriana Ivancich, in Holiday magazine for March 1951. At the time he wrote these tales for children, Hemingway was in Venice working on his novel Across the River and into the Trees, which was also set there. Adriana Ivancich was the inspiration for Renata, the young Italian countess and love interest for Colonel Cantwell, the novel’s protagonist.