Letter from Ernest Hemingway’s widow could solve Cuban farmhouse mystery

Finca Vigía/ en.wikipedia.org

The Guardian

Alison Flood

Ernest and Mary Hemingway at their Cuban farmhouse, Finca Vigía. Photograph: Popperfoto/Getty Images

The mystery of whether Ernest Hemingway’s widow volunteered or was coerced into leaving their Cuban house to the nation has come a step closer to being solved, with the discovery of a letter in which she states that her late husband “would be pleased” that Finca Vigía be “given to the people of Cuba … as a centre for opportunities for wider education and research”.

Hemingway lived on the 19th-century Cuban farm for 21 years, between 1939 and 1961, writing his masterpieces The Old Man and the Sea and For Whom the Bell Tolls there as well as posthumously published works including A Moveable Feast and Islands in the Stream. He committed suicide in Idaho in 1961. The property became a museum in 1962, but it has been unclear whether this was following the wishes of Mary Hemingway, his fourth wife, or at the insistence of the Cuban government, with differing accounts from different parties.

The newly discovered letter, dated 25 August 1961, sees Mary Hemingway specifically donate the Finca Vigía to the Cuban people. “…Whereas – my husband, Ernest Hemingway, was for twenty-five years a friend of the Pueblo of Cuba … he never took part in the politics of Cuba … he never sold any possessions of his, except his words, having given away cars, guns, books and his Nobel prize medal to the Virgen del Cobre,” she wrote to her husband’s friend Roberto Herrera.

“I believe that he would be pleased that his property … in Cuba be given to the people of Cuba … as a center for opportunities for wider education and research, to be maintained in his memory. With this document, as the only heir of Ernest’s estate, I hereby give to the people of Cuba this property, in the hope that they will learn and profit from, and enjoy it, as much as Ernest and I did.”

The letter from Mary Hemingway to to her husband Ernest’s friend Roberto Herrera. Photograph: Alexander Historial Auctions©

Sold this week via Alexander Historical Auctions, the letter was found among the papers of Herrera. “Ernest Hemingway had committed suicide in Ketchum less than two months earlier. However, at some point shortly thereafter, Mary backtracked and stated that after Hemingway’s suicide, the Cuban government contacted her in Idaho and announced that it intended to expropriate the house, along with all real property in Cuba. These documents show that Mary did indeed intend to donate the home to the Cuban people,” said the auction house in its catalogue. The handwritten note was snapped up on Wednesday for $1,100 (£716), a price well below the estimate of $2,000-$3,000.

Valerie Hemingway – who was Ernest’s secretary before marrying his youngest son, whom she met at the author’s funeral – went to Finca Vigía with Mary shortly after Hemingway’s death to sort through his papers. She said via email that “what is being auctioned is a draft of a memo Mary intended to give to [Fidel] Castro that Roberto Herrera was going to translate. As far as I can remember Mary never actually sent the memo; she gave the draft to Roberto afterwards.”

Her own memoir, Running with the Bulls: My Years with the Hemingways, sees Valerie write that Mary “genuinely wanted to see her husband’s memory endure by creating a shrine of the home he loved and dedicating it to the Cuban people, among whom he had lived for more than a third of his life … Mary’s first idea was that the finca would become a learning centre, and to that end she wanted to leave there as complete a record of her husband’s life and most especially of his work as was prudent.”

But Naomi Wood, author of the novel Mrs Hemingway, said that Mary Hemingway’s own memoir suggests the situation was not quite as straightforward. “The question is whether the Hemingway house was ‘donated’ by Mary, or coerced from her, or extracted from her via diplomacy. In all likelihood it was a mixture of all three,” she said.

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Ernest and Mary relax on their fishing boat, Filar. Photograph: Popperfoto/CPL

“In her memoir, How It Was, she uses the words ‘acquisition’ and ‘appropriation’, which suggests the takeover of Hemingway’s property was done with some unwillingness on her part, rather than a donation as the auctioned letter suggests. Though the auctioned letter suggests a donation, her memoir suggests bullying, though Castro does it in the most gentlemanly fashion, even asking her: ‘Why don’t you stay here with us in Cuba?’”

Mary Hemingway recounts a telephone conversation from the time in How it Was, in which she says to a Cuban official that “I’m not sure if I wish to give you our finca. [They could appropriate it, of course, as they had done to so much US property there.] Perhaps your government would give me permission to go down to remove our personal papers. Would you find out and call me back tomorrow? This same hour? Muy bien.”

She was advised, she writes, “to take the chance of recovering Ernest’s manuscripts, if nothing more. By this time United States citizens were prohibited journeys to Cuba, but the US immigration authorities in Miami gave me the exit and re-entry permits.”

The author’s widow would bring back crates of papers on a shrimp boat travelling from Havana to Tampa. “Mary also recounts her negotiations with Castro to remove a few paintings back to the US: including a Paul Klee and Juan Gris,” said Wood. “She also manages to remove Hemingway’s wax-sealed manuscripts they’d found at the Banco Nacional. Mary’s cargo left on a shrimp boat back to Tampa, which was the last to have any clearance papers from the US. More importantly for scholars than the nature of the deal for the Finca Vigía donation or appropriation was the fact that she managed to get those manuscripts out.”

Dr Susan Beegel, editor emerita of The Hemingway Review, said the discovery of the letter – first covered in Fine Books & Collections – was “new and interesting”.

“It’s nice to see her thoughts on how she intended the people of Cuba to enjoy the museum – still thriving today,” said Beegal. “It’s well-known that Mary deeded the Finca Vigía to the people of Cuba. After the Castro revolution, the house could have been appropriated, as was the case with other US property in Cuba, but instead the Cuban government approached Mary to request the house as a gift, to be used as a monument to Hemingway. She negotiated with them (and the Kennedy administration as well, because US citizens were not allowed to visit Cuba) to be able to return and remove personal belongings, art, and Hemingway’s manuscripts from the house in exchange for the donation.”

“So Che Guevara’s murdering innocent Cubans?’ “I’ll drink to dat! Let’s go WATCH!” (whooped Ernest Hemingway)

Babalú Blog
By Humberto Fontova

“There's something you should see,” Hemingway told Plimpton while preparing a shaker of drinks for the outing....they got in the car with a few others and drove some way out of town. They got out, set up chairs and took out the drinks, as if they were going to watch the sunset. Soon, a truck arrived. This, explained George, was what they'd been waiting for. It came, as Hemingway knew the same time each day. It stopped and some men with guns got out of it. In the back were a couple of dozen others who were tied up. Prisoners.
The men with guns hustled the others out of the back of the truck, and lined them up.--FUEGO!!!-- Then they shot them. They put the bodies back into the truck.”

From the BLOCKBUSTER(!!!) forthcoming book, The Longest Romance. The meticulous documentation proving Hemingway's drunken celebration of Che's firing squad massacres passed full muster with the legal dept. of the publishers of books by Thomas Sowell, Victor Davis Hanson, David Horowitz, John Bolton, Andrew McCarthy, Jean Francois-Revel, Robert Bork, among many other conservative superstars.

Come to papa: Ernest Hemingway's papers return from Cuba

latimes.com

Ernest Hemingway at Finca Vigia in Cuba with, from left, an unidentified woman, his wife Mary Hemingway, and guests Juan "Sinsky" Dunabeitia and Gianfranco Ivancich. (Associated Press)

By Jenny Hendrix

Records from the estate in Cuba where Ernest Hemingway wrote many of his most famous books have been digitized and brought to the United States, the Associated Press reports. The materials will be held at Boston's John F. Kennedy Library, which holds a Hemingway collection of over 100,000 pages.

The Boston-based Finca Vigia Foundation -- named after the estate near Havana where Hemingway lived from 1939 to 1960 -- has been working in Cuba to preserve the papers, books, and belongings that have remained at the house since the Nobel Prize-winner died in 1961. 

The foundation was started by Jenny Phillips, the granddaughter of Hemingway's editor Maxwell Perkins. In 2001, she noticed that the Hemingway home had fallen into disrepair and that many of the author's papers were being stored in a damp basement. After long negotiations navigating the complex relationship between Cuba and the U.S., permission was obtained for the U.S. Treasury and State departments to send conservators to Cuba to help save the artifacts. The foundation also seeks to restore and maintain Hemingway's Cuba home and grounds.

Because of travel restrictions to Cuba, this will be the first time most U.S. citizens will have the opportunity to see and examine these Hemingway papers. Among the 2,000 records that have been digitized are passports showing Hemingway's travel itineraries, letters, shopping lists, bar bills (undoubtedly large), notes from Hemingway to his wife, Mary, and handwritten notebooks full of weather observations, including hurricane sightings.

"This is the flotsam and jetsam of a writer's life," Phillips said. "All these bits and pieces get assembled in a big puzzle." 

Sandra Spanier, a Hemingway scholar at Penn State who reviewed the documents, said that they would undoubtedly help future biographers. "While there is no one single bombshell document," she said, "these new details add texture and nuance to our understanding of the man."

Included in the records is a letter written by the critic Malcolm Cowley, praising Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea": " 'The Old Man and the Sea' is pretty marvelous,' " Cowley writes, "the sea is, too, and so is the fish."

A telegram from poet and writer Archibald MacLeish contains more praise, this time for Hemingway's novel, "For Whom the Bell Tolls": "The word great had stopped meaning anything in this language until your book. You have given it all its meaning back. I'm proud to have shared any part of your sky."

There is also a carbon copy of a confidential note Hemingway wrote to actress Ingrid Bergman, telling her he wanted her to have the female lead in the 1943 film version of "For Whom the Bell Tolls," opposite Gary Cooper: "There is no one I would rather see do it and I have consistently refused all suggestions that I endorse other people for the role," he wrote. Bergman did win the role of Maria.

The documents also reveal more about Hemingway's role in World War II: While in Cuba in 1942 and '43 he was authorized by the U.S. Embassy to patrol the island's north coast in his fishing boat, searching for German submarines.

Restoration is ongoing at the Finca Vigia estate. Among other projects, a climate-controlled building is being constructed at the site to house Hemingway's books and the original records. 

Although tensions still exists between the US and Cuba, Phillips sees the Hemingway project as a unique feat of cooperation forged through literature. "Because of the political situation between the two countries, the Cubans held on very fast to what they had there," Phillips said. "I think this is an extraordinary, one-of-a-kind collaboration."

Ernest Hemingway's granddaughter returns to author's Cuban home to mark 50th anniversary of his suicide

with a very smiling face for such a tragic anniversary
---------------------
By Louise Boyle

He was perhaps Cuba's most famous American resident and the preservation of Ernest Hemingway's home lead to a rare collaboration between the U.S. and its communist neighbour.

The author lived in Cuba between 1939 and 1960, writing The Old Man And The Sea at his home Finca Vigia for which he received the Nobel Prize in 1954. He donated the award to the people of Cuba in gratitude.

His granddaughter, actress and author Mariel Hemingway, 50, returned to his Cuban home last month after a restoration project which took two years.

Step back in time: Ernest Hemingway's granddaughter, actress and author Mariel Hemingway, tours her grandfather's property with Msnbc reporter Natalie Morales

Following in his footsteps: Mariel Hemingway returns to the Bodeguita del Medio, one of her grandfather's favourite haunts

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2076184/Ernest-Hemingways-granddaughter-returns-authors-Cuban-home-mark-50th-anniversary-suicide.html#ixzz1h1HJLlKJ

50th aniversary of Hemingway dead: Hounded by the Feds

By A. E. HOTCHNER*

New York Times

*A. E. Hotchner is the author of “Papa Hemingway” and “Hemingway and His World.” 

EARLY one morning, 50 years ago today, while his wife, Mary, slept upstairs, Ernest Hemingway went into the vestibule of his Ketchum, Idaho, house, selected his favorite shotgun from the rack, inserted shells into its chambers and ended his life.

[Henrik Drescher]

There were many differing explanations at the time: that he had terminal cancer or money problems, that it was an accident, that he’d quarreled with Mary. None were true. As his friends knew, he’d been suffering from depression and paranoia for the last year of his life.

Ernest and I were friends for 14 years. I dramatized many of his stories and novels for television specials and film, and we shared adventures in France, Italy, Cuba and Spain, where, as a pretend matador with Ernest as my manager, I participated in a Ciudad Real bullfight. Ernest’s zest for life was infectious.

In 1959 Ernest had a contract with Life magazine to write about Spain’s reigning matadors, the brothers-in-law Antonio Ordóñez and Luis Miguel Dominguín. He cabled me, urging me to join him for the tour. It was a glorious summer, and we celebrated Ernest’s 60th birthday with a party that lasted two days.

But I remember it now as the last of the good times.

In May 1960, Ernest phoned me from Cuba. He was uncharacteristically perturbed that the unfinished Life article had reached 92,453 words. The contract was for 40,000; he was having nightmares.

A month later he called again. He had cut only 530 words, he was exhausted and would it be an imposition to ask me to come to Cuba to help him?

I did, and over the next nine days I submitted list upon list of suggested cuts. At first he rejected them: “What I’ve written is Proustian in its cumulative effect, and if we eliminate detail we destroy that effect.” But eventually he grudgingly consented to cutting 54,916 words. He was resigned, surrendering, and said he would leave it to Life to cut the rest.

I got on the plane back to New York knowing my friend was “bone-tired and very beat-up,” but thinking he simply needed rest and would soon be his old dominating self again.

In November I went out West for our annual pheasant shoot and realized how wrong I was. When Ernest and our friend Duke MacMullen met my train at Shoshone, Idaho, for the drive to Ketchum, we did not stop at the bar opposite the station as we usually did because Ernest was anxious to get on the road. I asked why the hurry.

“The feds.”

“What?”

“They tailed us all the way. Ask Duke.”

“Well ... there was a car back of us out of Hailey.”

“Why are F.B.I. agents pursuing you?” I asked.

“It’s the worst hell. The goddamnedest hell. They’ve bugged everything. That’s why we’re using Duke’s car. Mine’s bugged. Everything’s bugged. Can’t use the phone. Mail intercepted.”

We rode for miles in silence. As we turned into Ketchum, Ernest said quietly: “Duke, pull over. Cut your lights.” He peered across the street at a bank. Two men were working inside. “What is it?” I asked.

“Auditors. The F.B.I.’s got them going over my account.”

“But how do you know?”

“Why would two auditors be working in the middle of the night? Of course it’s my account.”

All his friends were worried: he had changed; he was depressed; he wouldn’t hunt; he looked bad.

Ernest, Mary and I went to dinner the night before I left. Halfway through the meal Ernest said we had to leave immediately. Mary asked what was wrong.

“Those two F.B.I. agents at the bar, that’s what’s wrong.”

The next day Mary had a private talk with me. She was terribly distraught. Ernest spent hours every day with the manuscript of his Paris sketches — published as “A Moveable Feast” after his death — trying to write but unable to do more than turn its pages. He often spoke of destroying himself and would sometimes stand at the gun rack, holding one of the guns, staring out the window.

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