Ernest Hemingway, Who Narrowly Survived Two Plane Crashes Just the Year Before, and Who Died by Suicide, Reflects on Death: “Maybe we are only alive when we are dead but I have not believed that for a long time.”

“When you are dead you are dead for a long time.”

 

He advises a young woman friend, “Please be careful about aircraft…It is one of the great pleasures of life but you pay off accordingly.”

 

Hemingway will send her an animal skin from his African safari to decorate her new house”

 

Our trophies ( sic ) were shipped July 18th from Mombassa via Amsterdam to be trans-shipped to NY and then here.”

After covering the Spanish Civil War, in 1939 Hemingway purchased Finca Vigía (“Lookout Farm”), an unpretentious estate outside Havana, Cuba. In 1940 he published “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, which many consider his best book. All of his life Hemingway was fascinated by war – in “A Farewell to Arms” he focused on its pointlessness, and in “For Whom the Bell Tolls” on the comradeship it creates. During World War II, he flew several missions with the Royal Air Force and landed with American troops on D-Day. He saw a good deal of action in Normandy and in the Battle of the Bulge. He also participated in the liberation of Paris. Following the war in Europe, Hemingway returned to his home in Cuba and turned his attention to writing again. He also traveled widely, and at the end of their 1953-1954 African safari, the Hemingways survived a near-fatal plane crash, only to have their rescue plane crash the very next day. Though they survived the second crash as well, newspapers around the world carried brought the details to the reading public.

Soon after, he received the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for “The Old Man and the Sea”, a short heroic novel about an old Cuban fisherman who, after an extended struggle, hooks and boats a giant marlin only to have it eaten by voracious sharks during the voyage home. That book also played a role in gaining for Hemingway the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. It ran in its entirety in five million copies of Life Magazine, and the 50,000 copies printed in book form sold out in ten days.

In 1955, back in Cuba, Hemingway turned fifty-five and tried to follow his doctors’ advice by reducing his drinking. In October it is announced that he has been awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature. All of his wife’s’ efforts to protect his privacy were sabotaged by the crush of worldwide press and the fact that Hemingway invited any and all to the Finca Vigia to visit. In the summer of 1955 he was working on the filming of “The Old Man and the Sea” starring Spencer Tracy. The pace of people and press, of lunches and drinking, finally takes its toll and in the autumn of 1955 Hemingway took to his bed for two months, suffering from hepatitis and nephritis.

Hemingway’s relationship with faith was complicated. Raised protestant, he converted to catholicism but was largely religiously indifferent. He had seen so much death and tragedy. At this point evidently, he had long since abandoned the faith of his youth.

Mary Lou Firle, a second year student at CCNY, was in Cuba in early 1955. Before she left she bet a friend that she would have Ernest Hemingway sign the book she had, “Farewell to Arms.” She picked up the phone and called Ernest Hemingway. When he answered she introduced herself and added, “I have a friend at Fordham University.” Hemingway immediately assumed the friend was Prof. Bob Brown who had been in touch with Hemingway on several occasions. Brown was writing a book or articles about Hemingway. Hemingway told Mary Lou that his wife Mary was away and he had to entertain visitors from the French Embassy that afternoon. He asked her if she would come to his home and help him. Mary Lou agreed and Hemingway sent his driver to pick her up.

After the meeting the group drove her back to Havana. Hemingway invited her back the next day for lunch and sent his driver to pick her up. They spent the afternoon talking. She had told him of her family background, that her parents were born in Germany. Since she had been at Veradero Beach for a week she had a deep tan, and Hemingway called her the “Black Kraut.” The reason for the nickname, Hemingway said, was that he called his good friend, Marlene Dietrich, the famous German actress, “Kraut”; so Mary Lou, who was very tan, would be the “Black Kraut.” Later that day Hemingway’s driver drove her back to Havana. The two exchanged letters in July 1955. She wrote him again in October and received this response.

In the summer of 1955 he was working on the filming of “The Old Man and the Sea” starring Spencer Tracy. The pace of people and press, of lunches and drinking, finally takes its toll, and he was grateful to have the weather interrupt the filming. Hemingway famously rewrote the ending to “A Farewell to Arms” numerous times, and that is possibly the writing he refers to.

Typed letter signed, with typewriter corrections and a pencil notation by Hemingway, Finca Vigia, San Francisco de Paula, Cuba, October 6, 1955, to Mary Lou, on his fear of flying and unbelief in the afterlife, signed EH, with the original envelope sending it. He also jokes about the equity that hurricanes are named invariably after women.

“Thank you for writing and I wish to congratulate your mother and your new step father if they would like that. I hope they are happy. With a good daughter like you they should be.

“Am very happy you took your vacation up north as down here it was rugged with the effects of the different hurricanes. Hope we are not going to have Za-Za. I knew a girl named Janet once but she never killed any people in Barbados nor Tampico. It is easy to get tired of this naming tropical storms after girls and I think it is in bad taste especially when you have been through bad tropical storms.

“Please be careful about aircraft. If I ever see you will tell you how and why. It is one of the great pleasures of life but you pay off accordingly. No second thoughts will help you and when you are dead you are dead for a long time. Maybe we are only alive when we are dead but I have not believed that for a long time. Excuse me if I am pedantic about aircraft but everybody is pedantic about something.

“I am very proud of your new house and that you made it yourself, I hope without hitting yourself too many times with any blunt instrument, and I will send you the skin of a good African beast when I receive them. Our trophies ( sic ) were shipped July 18th from Mombassa via Amsterdam to be trans-shipped to NY and then here. The old hides have been ruined by the humidity of the many hurricanes they have gone through and I would rather send you a fresh, newly tanned one.

“In return will you see Mr. and Mrs. Bob Brown and tell them that I have not written because it has been a tough year in many ways but that we are winning good and I have all my stuff; worse even that Mr. Podres and am on page 613 and do not have to do any more photography on the picture until April 15 and not think about it until March first. Have been working so hard and so long I must take some kind of vacation but not until this wicked month of October for hurricanes is over. We are not yet out of the woods but I know the woods ok.

“Take care of yourself Black Kraut and please deliver this message to Mr. Bob and please do not put in the television, but use any dough to buy more good records instead and I will send you the hide of a good beat that will be good for the joint. Please let me hear and if you keep contact with the Bob Browns I would be happy because while I have never met him I know he is a good man.” Signed by Hemingway with initials.

A fascinating letter showing Hemingway’s feelings about life after death, the importance of life, love but of but fear of flying, and interest in hunting game in Africa. It has been in the recipient’s family’s possession since it was received, and we acquired it direct from them. Mary Lou had promised Hemingway that she would not sell the letter during her lifetime and kept her promise. She told Morris it would be ok to sell it after she passed.