![HEMINGWAY, Ernest. Typescript with interlinear typed and pencilled autograph corrections (totalling some 100 words in Hemingway's hand), top of page one labeled by the author "Havana Letter Ernest Hemingway 1st Serial Rights only," end marked "30." N.d., [ca. 1950?]. 8 pages, 4to, typed on rectos only of 8 sheets typewriter bond, page 5 with a few stains (fishblood, rum?), otherwise in excellent condition. Quarter blue morocco gilt slipcase.](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2005/NYR/2005_NYR_01579_0183_000(111535).jpg?w=1)
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HEMINGWAY, Ernest. Typescript with interlinear typed and pencilled autograph corrections (totalling some 100 words in Hemingway's hand), top of page one labeled by the author "Havana Letter Ernest Hemingway 1st Serial Rights only," end marked "30." N.d., [ca. 1950?]. 8 pages, 4to, typed on rectos only of 8 sheets typewriter bond, page 5 with a few stains (fishblood, rum?), otherwise in excellent condition. Quarter blue morocco gilt slipcase.
AN ARTICLE ON MARLIN-FISHING OFF CUBA, A PRELIMINARY SKETCH POINTING THE WAY TO "THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA"
An engaging, very conversational piece of journalism, apparently unpublished, and strongly evoking the flavor and content of his The Old Man and the Sea, published in 1952. From his discovery of marlin fishing when he crossed over to Cuba in April 1932, the deep-sea sport became a long-term passion with Hemingway and "his admiration for these great fish knew no bounds" (Carlos Baker, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, 1980, p. 292). In the spring of 1934 he purchased his own boat, the Pilar, to devote himself to Gulf Stream fishing. Hemingway's article has echoes of an early article published in Eugene V. Connett's American Big Game Fishing (New York: Derrydale Press, 15 May 1935); that same article was reworked and condensed for Esquire magazine, entitled "Marlin off the Morro: A Cuban Letter," in the first issue, Autumn 1933. A typescript of "Marlin off Cuba," discovered among the Jane Mason papers in 1999 was sold at Christie's 19 May 2000, lot 291, $44,650). Hemingway also penned an article "Sailfish off Mombasa A Key West Letter," for the March 1935 issue of Esquire and later, one entitled "Cuban Fishing," for Vesey-Fitzgerald and Lamotte, Game Fish of the World (London & Brussels, 1949).
"The sun on the water is the roughest part of fishing the north coast of Cuba for Marlin in July and August," he begins. "Havana is cooler than most northern cities in those months because the north east trades get up about ten o'clock in the forenoon and blow until four or five o'clock the next morning, and the north coast trade is a cool and pleasant wind, but out on the water, even with a breeze, the sub gives you something to remember him by... I do not believe it is very bad for the eyes if you wear glasses with Crooks lenses..."
"You have a lot of time to think, out in the gulf...Yes, you say, but why do they have to work into the sun?...Of course you may not ask that question at all. You may be bored blind with the whole thing and be waiting for the action to start. Gentlemen I'd like to oblige you but this is one of those instructive ones. This is one of those contemplative pieces of the sort that Isaac Walton used to write (I'll bet you never read him either. You know what a classic is, don't you? A book that everyone mentions and no one reads) except that the charm, the quaintness and the literary value of Walton are admitted. Are they omitted intentionally?...."
He describes the slicing wake made by the marlin's fin in the water, the great blue pectorals wide-spread, the marlin's mouth open, the cut away of the great fins to the side of the boat, "To see that happen is something worth waiting for, sun and all, and as I say, while you wait there is plenty of time to think. What makes intelligence and courage in a fish like the mako - who will refuse to pull, when hooked, unless you pull on him, who will deliberately charge a fisherman in a boat who seems to be thinking while you are fighting him and will try different tactics to escape and come to the top of the water and rest during the fight.The mako is a strange fish his mouth full of those curved-in teeth that give him his Cuban name of dentuoso."
Most of the remaining typescript is in a similar style to the internal narrative of The Old Man and the Sea, questioning the growth, habits, and gender of the marlin: "Curiosity, I suppose, is what makes you fish as much as anything and here is a very curious thing. This time last year we caught a striped marlin with a roe in it. It wasn't much of a roe it is true. It was the sort of a roe you would expect to find in certain moving picture actresses if they had roe, or in many actors. Examining it carefully it looked about like the sort of roe an interior decorator would have if he decided to declare himself and roe out. But it was a roe and the first one any of the commercial fishermen had ever seen in a striped marlin. Until we saw this roe, and I wish I could describe it to you without getting too medical, all striped marlin were supposed to be males. All right then. Was this striped marlin how shall we put it or, as I had believed for a long time, do all marlin, white, striped, silver etc. end their lives as black marlin, becoming females in the process. The jewfish becomes a female in the last of its life no matter how it starts and I believe the marlin does the same thing. The real black marlin are all old fish. You can see it in the quality of the flesh, the coarseness of the bill, and, above all in fighting them, in the way they tire."
Not traced in Philip Young and Charles W. Mann, The Hemingway Manuscripts: An Inventory (University Park, 1969).
Provenance: Property of a Lady (sale, Christie's, 21 October 1977, lot 97).
AN ARTICLE ON MARLIN-FISHING OFF CUBA, A PRELIMINARY SKETCH POINTING THE WAY TO "THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA"
An engaging, very conversational piece of journalism, apparently unpublished, and strongly evoking the flavor and content of his The Old Man and the Sea, published in 1952. From his discovery of marlin fishing when he crossed over to Cuba in April 1932, the deep-sea sport became a long-term passion with Hemingway and "his admiration for these great fish knew no bounds" (Carlos Baker, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, 1980, p. 292). In the spring of 1934 he purchased his own boat, the Pilar, to devote himself to Gulf Stream fishing. Hemingway's article has echoes of an early article published in Eugene V. Connett's American Big Game Fishing (New York: Derrydale Press, 15 May 1935); that same article was reworked and condensed for Esquire magazine, entitled "Marlin off the Morro: A Cuban Letter," in the first issue, Autumn 1933. A typescript of "Marlin off Cuba," discovered among the Jane Mason papers in 1999 was sold at Christie's 19 May 2000, lot 291, $44,650). Hemingway also penned an article "Sailfish off Mombasa A Key West Letter," for the March 1935 issue of Esquire and later, one entitled "Cuban Fishing," for Vesey-Fitzgerald and Lamotte, Game Fish of the World (London & Brussels, 1949).
"The sun on the water is the roughest part of fishing the north coast of Cuba for Marlin in July and August," he begins. "Havana is cooler than most northern cities in those months because the north east trades get up about ten o'clock in the forenoon and blow until four or five o'clock the next morning, and the north coast trade is a cool and pleasant wind, but out on the water, even with a breeze, the sub gives you something to remember him by... I do not believe it is very bad for the eyes if you wear glasses with Crooks lenses..."
"You have a lot of time to think, out in the gulf...Yes, you say, but why do they have to work into the sun?...Of course you may not ask that question at all. You may be bored blind with the whole thing and be waiting for the action to start. Gentlemen I'd like to oblige you but this is one of those instructive ones. This is one of those contemplative pieces of the sort that Isaac Walton used to write (I'll bet you never read him either. You know what a classic is, don't you? A book that everyone mentions and no one reads) except that the charm, the quaintness and the literary value of Walton are admitted. Are they omitted intentionally?...."
He describes the slicing wake made by the marlin's fin in the water, the great blue pectorals wide-spread, the marlin's mouth open, the cut away of the great fins to the side of the boat, "To see that happen is something worth waiting for, sun and all, and as I say, while you wait there is plenty of time to think. What makes intelligence and courage in a fish like the mako - who will refuse to pull, when hooked, unless you pull on him, who will deliberately charge a fisherman in a boat who seems to be thinking while you are fighting him and will try different tactics to escape and come to the top of the water and rest during the fight.The mako is a strange fish his mouth full of those curved-in teeth that give him his Cuban name of dentuoso."
Most of the remaining typescript is in a similar style to the internal narrative of The Old Man and the Sea, questioning the growth, habits, and gender of the marlin: "Curiosity, I suppose, is what makes you fish as much as anything and here is a very curious thing. This time last year we caught a striped marlin with a roe in it. It wasn't much of a roe it is true. It was the sort of a roe you would expect to find in certain moving picture actresses if they had roe, or in many actors. Examining it carefully it looked about like the sort of roe an interior decorator would have if he decided to declare himself and roe out. But it was a roe and the first one any of the commercial fishermen had ever seen in a striped marlin. Until we saw this roe, and I wish I could describe it to you without getting too medical, all striped marlin were supposed to be males. All right then. Was this striped marlin how shall we put it or, as I had believed for a long time, do all marlin, white, striped, silver etc. end their lives as black marlin, becoming females in the process. The jewfish becomes a female in the last of its life no matter how it starts and I believe the marlin does the same thing. The real black marlin are all old fish. You can see it in the quality of the flesh, the coarseness of the bill, and, above all in fighting them, in the way they tire."
Not traced in Philip Young and Charles W. Mann, The Hemingway Manuscripts: An Inventory (University Park, 1969).
Provenance: Property of a Lady (sale, Christie's, 21 October 1977, lot 97).