Hemingway, Ernest. Pairing of typed letters signed., one dated 14 January 1944...

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Hemingway, Ernest. Pairing of typed letters signed., one dated 14 January 1944 Pairing of typed letters signed ("Ernest Hemingway", "E. Hemingway" and "Ernest"), 4 pages total (8.5 x 11 in.: 216 x 279 mm.), both written on "Finca Vigia San Francisco De Paula Cuba" letterhead, the first dated 14 January 1944; the second is undated (ca. early 1944), both written to Hemingway's mother, Grace Hall-Hemingway. Both exhibit usual folds and remain in fine condition. Ernest Hemingway spills his heart to his mother as his marriage to writer/war correspondent Martha Gellhorn crumbles. "My one ambition was always to write well so I would never have to do journalism; which I hate; to bring up my children well (am now allowed to see them at stated intervals instead) and later to try and make Marty happy and a good writer. It turns out final that last is the only job I have." "Mother you know me pretty well and over quite a long time. I haven't changed at all except that I have learned to keep my temper better...I'm not a monster and it is bad to be treated as one unless the person doing it is ill...I only want to know truly and honestly if you think Marty is absolutely sound mentally now. Because if she is then I am relieved from much responsibility. If she isn't then I want to look after her as well as I can. Either way my life is ruined. And that is not a wild nor exaggerated statement." Letter 1: Ernest Hemingway typed letter signed ("Ernest" and "Ernest Hemingway"), 2 pages (front and back), dated 14 January 1944, with 5-line postscript written in pencil. Hemingway writes in part: This is just a note which shall send in and have mailed in Havana. This is my last trip as shall be closeing [sic] up everything and going up North to see if can get a newspaper job to go across and join Martha. Since I hate journalism as much as Martha hates to miss excitement and world shakeing [sic] events this is what is known as a compromise I suppose. My one ambition was always to write well so I would never have to do journalism; which I hate; to bring up my children well (am now allowed to see them at stated intervals instead) and later to try and make Marty happy and a good writer. It turns out final that last is the only job I have. Her article on the Bomber Boys was dull and boreing [sic], I thought. I had read it all before, much better written, and seen it several times in the movies. If she is going to be a journalist she should read, at least, her contemporaries and learn what has and what hasn't been written...Maybe Colliers will think it a wonderful piece. In which case she doesn't need me or anything but yes-men. You say "there is much in my heart and head to say to you, but I do not trust myself to say it as I feel lest words and moods give wrong impressions." Please say it whatever it is. If it is something about Martha and what I should or shouldn't do am grown up enough to understand it. When I was dead pooped, really dead worn out, after writing and doing proofs, and re-writing proofs etc. on For Whom Bell Tolls and needed a long rest at shooting or something in the last of the world there was we had to go to China. In China when I finally got into the middle of my job and was going on some absolutely wonderful military trips..., Marty said, "Darling if you love me get me out of China." She couldn't stand China which was dirty principally. So we left China. Now it is this other thing. I think there is more to life than chaseing [sic] ambulances no matter to what nor how great a disaster those ambulances are going. It is infantilism. This is probably because I am very tired from year and a half of this plus the last four months and ten days of celibacy in the forty fifth year of my age. And for what?...In all the wars she has gone to she has seen, I think, one dead man which I showed her the first day she was in Madrid. There is always a chance she will see a lot of dead sometime and decide she doesn't like war. She has seen lots of wounded and writes of them very well. Well this is how my mind works now and it is not good company.. If you have anything bad to write me don't hold it back as it can't be worse than how I feel. And how I feel is a long way from just a vague sadness. For me to quit my duty seems an ordinary request to her for her to make...[written in Hemingway's hand:] What about that? She does exactly what she wants to do and them justifies it. Well, much love, excuse this but better to get off chest than let simmer. Am probably just crabby and feel much more cheerful already. Ernest Ernest Hemingway Letter 2: Ernest Hemingway typed letter signed ("Ernest" and "E. Hemingway"), 2 pages (on separate leaves), undated (ca. early 1944), with 3-line postscript written in pencil. Hemingway writes in part: Martha has been home now (or rather back; London is home) a week and last night it seem as though she were beginning to rest a little. I was very difficult the first two days finding her so changed and all but then I realized the only thing was to be good so have been quite good ever since. I took the advice you gave me in the letter you sent. But in the state Martha arrived in and has been in most of the time since nothing is much good. For a while - thought maybe she had paranoia. There were so many symptoms, loss of memory, distortions, delusions of grandeur, false accusations and inability to thing about anything except ones self. But now I think she was just plain spoiled and the sort of inhuman selfishness could just be inhuman selfishness. Am very polite and kind now and don't provoke any more. But mother Martha is a very changed girl. I don't mean the ghastly thing she had done to her insides (I must always keep her from knowing how terrible that is) but a sort of lack or moral sense that is frightening. What business had I to be lonely? If I were lonely why didn't I go with other girls...She says things and writes me things that no one in their right mind could write unless they were inhuman...She loves the war; just as war; and says she never was happier in her life. Yet in all that time she was away she never saw one man, woman, nor child killed nor did she see a dead body...But it is bad luck to have given up ones children, and put another, good, woman out of business and devoted ourself [sic] to some one and their writing and their career to have them come home and say the things that she has said and act as though there were no obligations in a marriage that was as seriously undertaken as ours was...I'm going to take as good care of her as I can and you can depend on me for that. It would help a lot if you would tell me if she seemed perfectly ok in her head to you. Because if she means some of the things she says I should act one way; if she is not responsible for them another. Always, of course, there is the possibility that I am crazy; but I think if people admit that possibility they usually aren't... Mother you know me pretty well and over quite a long time. I haven't changed at all except that I have learned to keep my temper better...I'm not a monster and it is bad to be treated as one unless the person doing it is ill...I only want to know truly and honestly if you think Marty is absolutely sound mentally now. Because if she is then I am relieved from much responsibility. If she isn't then I want to look after her as well as I can. Either way my life is ruined. And that is not a wild nor exaggerated statement...[written in Hemingway's hand:] It was a crime Pauline sent the children down when Martha was here. I did everything I could to have her send them before. They keep out of her way though. Ernest E. Hemingway In the spring of 1939, Hemingway crossed to Cuba in his boat to live in Havana. This was the separation phase of a slow and painful split from second wife Pauline Pfeiffer, which had begun when Hemingway met writer/war correspondent Martha Gellhorn. Martha soon joined him in Cuba, and they almost immediately rented "Finca Vigia" ("Lookout Farm"), a 15-acre property 15 miles from Havana. Pauline and the children left Hemingway that summer, after the family was reunited during a visit to Wyoming, and when Hemingway's divorce from Pauline was finalized, he and Martha were married 20 November 1940. Hemingway credited Gellhorn with inspiring him to write his most famous novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, which he started in March 1939 and finished in July 1940. Increasingly resentful of Gellhorn's long absences during her reporting assignments, Hemingway wrote her when she left Cuba in 1943, to cover the Italian Front, "Are you a war correspondent, or wife in my bed?" Hemingway himself, however, would later go to the front just before the Normandy landings, and Gellhorn also went, with Hemingway trying to block her travel. When she arrived by means of a dangerous ocean voyage in war-torn London, she told him she had had enough. After four contentious years of marriage, they divorced in 1945.