Ernest HEMINGWAY struggles with his publishers and gives up alcohol.

Ernest HEMINGWAY (1899.1961)

Autograph letter signed “Papa” to his friend Gianfranco Ivancich.

Three pages large in-4° on finca Vigia letterhead.

Cuba, Havana, Finca Vigia, May 24, 1957

“Have not had a drink since March 5th except wine. It’s lonely.”  

From Havana, the American writer fights fervently against his Italian publishers and gives an overview of the political situation in Cuba. He also confirms his (almost) total cessation of alcohol.

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“Dear Gianfranco, Have started many letters to you but have always held them up waiting to hear from those two Princes Mondadori and Einaudi [the Italian publishers Arnoldo Mondadori and Giulio Einaudi] . Now Einaudi writes he paid Dr Camerino 5 million lire (without taxes) May 20th. Sure he is Einaudi I have to ask:

Did he really do this?

How much did he promise to pay?

How much does he owe?

Did he ever make a stock payment?

Thanks for paying (…). I feel badly you had to use some of farm money. Let me know so as to make a credit. Or rather skope you took back what you paid Mario for me out of that use Einaudi payment.

I have called Mondadori May 10. Nando letter gave no business details stop Einaudi did not mention collected editions stop impossible for me to give consent until Einaudi deposits money (…) he has owed and promised for so long stop must also know royalties proposed to be paid me all editions cheap and collected and see whether I agree with these royalties stop you can see impossibility allowing me Einaudi dispose of my property that he has not paid for and then me agreeing to accept reduced royalties on my property which he would sell to you stop First Einaudi must pay me what he owes stop then I must examine your terms which I have never received stop. Sent this and he answered that he had written an exhaustive letter about terms etc. But it has never come and today is the 26th of May. So, you please if you let me know exactly what Einaudi has paid since the first of the year. (I need to know that for income tax anyway) and what Einaudi has promised to pay and not paid.

Here we have rain, rain, rain just as we used to have drought. It has rained all but 3 days for 3 months. Sometimes day and night both. Very strange weather. We are now on the 3rd planting of the garden. I enjoy your letters about the country very much but each time I have started to write you on Sundays there has been some of this cursed Mondadori and Einaudi business that have been waiting an answer for. They want me to agree to something like a Pazzo without being given the details and I am afraid that they fear to give the details because they are crooked and so much to my disadvantage .

Denis, our friend in the game department in Kenya was supposed to come over here in June to fish. Now he doesn't arrive until July. That makes it impossible to go to Pamplona. I had hoped we all could go. Will have to figure out something else. Have not had a drink since March 5th except wine. It's lonely. Weight 209 – 210. Blood pressure good again. Mary is healthy but is fed up with the weather and not doing anything creative.

We both miss you very much. The pool is fine and the place green as jungle. Politics uncertain but country very prosperous with 6 cents sugar [The Cuban Revolution – initiated in 1953 by Castro and Che Guevara – will find its culmination a little more than a year after this letter with the fall of Batista] . Skyscrapers everywhere now like in Caracas. Gregorio, René, Paco Garay, Sinsky all send their best. Your letters about the country and the people and the river make me very happy. Please forgive me for writing such poor letters. Much love to the family. An abrazo. Dad "

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Hemingway met Gianfranco Ivancich in 1949, at the bar of a hotel in Venice: they started a conversation about their first point in common: war wounds, which were still painful. In the process, Hemingway met Adriana, Gianfranco's sister, then aged 19, who would become his muse. She inspired Renata in Beyond the River and Under the Trees , for which she designed the cover for the Scribner edition.

Gianfranco made his first trip to Cuba in 1950; “Hemingway allowed him to live for three years in the Finca tower and offered him his paternal friendship” (Jeffrey Meyers). Gianfranco, short, stocky, handsome, quiet, modest and distant, was hardly in unison with Hemingway's noisy companions, Meyers says. Between several trips to Venice, Gianfranco made another long stay at Finca Vigia, between 1954 and 1956. Hemingway saw in Gianfranco " a masculine version and a substitute for Adriana " (Meyers) but above all a confidant and discreet companion, whose absence weighs on him: “ We miss you a lot, and it’s very sad to see someone leave who was always around, a bit like a brother. Now I have no more friends, no more drinking companions and no more brave banana pickers .”

It was thanks to The Old Man and the Sea that Hemingway gained international fame – and the 1952 Pulitzer Prize. He returned to settle in Cuba, permanently, in 1957, and this letter is the first he sent to Ivancich since its new installation at Finca Vigia , this residence acquired thanks to the rights of For Whom the Bell Tolls. Located in San Francisco de Paula, ten kilometers southeast of Havana, Finca Vigia is today a museum, left as it is since the death of its owner in 1960.

Twenty letters from Hemingway to Gianfranco Ivancich are known and referenced at the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library Center, between August 14, 1950 and September 20, 1960. The JFK maintains the most important collection in the world dedicated to Ernest Hemingway gathered in one place: the “Hemingway Room”, designed by IM Pei, has been open since 1981.