ERNEST "PAPA" HEMINGWAY - THIRD PERSON AUTOGRAPH DOCUMENT - HFSID 160236

ERNEST HEMINGWAY
Handwritten 1936 manuscript likely intended for publication in Esquire magazine, vividly describing the horrors of war, with his third person signature in the text
Autograph Manuscript signed in text:"Mr. Ernest Hemingway" in pencil, 1 page, 8½x11. No place, c. 1936. Headed by him: "Please Mr. Ernest Hemingway by Paul Harris, The American Criterion, Dec 1935, about 'letters' appearing monthly in Esquire…." Ernest Hemingway was a frequent contributor to "Esquire" magazine. He wrote a total 31 "letters" which were published in "Esquire" in the 1930s. In the September 1935 issue, he wrote: "Notes on the Next War: A Serious Topical Letter". This may be a rough draft of one of the 31 "letters". Hemingway has made an "X", crossing out the entire letter. In part: "Mr. Hemingway, you were at the front. You saw people die? I was ten and I saw people, I saw something in them die and they had to go on making believe they were alive still with their guts out of them. I saw people age. I saw the unseeable, the drawn faces, the haunted eyes…A child is sensitive to change in those he knows [he is referring to an aunt, a cousin, involved in changes resulting from life in wartime]. I felt the silent death creep over the hearts of people; something came to…their eyes…their hands…clenched with fear. They lived half-heartedly, their energies sapped by worry." Hemingway lists four "Letters to Mr Harris 1st dated Dec. 12 35 (explains column) 2nd (dated) Dec 21 (35) (refuses to let letter be pub.) 3rd (dated) (Dec) 24 (35) (ref to Lawson & suicideepisode) 4th (dated) June 18 36 (refers to Richter releases?…You're so much better than my own conscience that sometimes I wonder if you must not feel pretty happy at what a good man you are. (is really to protect by name to Perkins) or should be…an Esquire piece about murder of sundry people guilty of public offenses…." In May 1918, Ernest Hemingway volunteered to serve in the Red Cross Ambulance Corps in WWI. On July 8, 1918, Austrian artillery hit the 19-year-old. The injuries were so severe that he had to be hospitalized in Milan. Hemingway would later condemn the savagery of war, evidenced in the manuscript offered here and in many of his works. After his return to the United States, he became a reporter for Canadian and American newspapers and was soon sent back to Europe to cover such events as the Greek Revolution. A Farewell to Arms (1929) was the study of an American ambulance officer's disillusionment in the war and his role as a deserter. Hemingway used his experiences as a reporter during the civil war in Spain as the background for his most ambitious novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). He was a war correspondent in China (1941) and Europe (1944-1945). Hemingway was awarded the 1953 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for The Old Man and the Sea and the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature. Very fragile. Creased. Nicked, worn edges. 6¼-inch horizontal separation at lower blank creased margin. Toned. Professionally encapsulated for protection.