Une superbe lettre d’Hemingway

Lettre signée « Ernest », adressée à son ami Bill Davis. 5 septembre 1960 ; 6 pages in-4°. En-tête gravé : « Finca Vigia, San Francisco de Paula, Cuba ». Superbe et longue lettre à son ami qu’il avait surnommé « Negro ». Le corps de la lettre est de la main de Valerie Danby-Smith, une journaliste qu’Hemingway avait connue à Pamplona quand il avait des difficultés avec sa vue. Il est question d’un article sur la tauromachie écrit en trois parties pour le magazine Life. Le manuscrit sera finalement édité à titre posthume dans ce qui sera considéré comme son dernier roman, The dangerous Summer [L’Été dangereux].« Thank you very much for doing such a wonderful job with the two Krauts. Annamarie’s letter finally came through and you were right that she does not know when she is well off. I cannot give her exact publication dates nor give her some clarity as to her working program for the next few years having just this morning…gone over 92,000 words on something that I hoped would not exceed 18,000 when I started with it. Still at least 15 days of steady work to go. I had to postpone the Paris Book from this fall. But you have to do one damned thing at a time… It was impossible for me to contract with Rowhowlt to write the book since over 60,000 words of it was written before he made the offer. It would be nice to have that money tax free… if Rowhowlt published it before Scribners did I could lose the American copyright… I would prefer not to have him advance me any money on anything where there are possible angles… For years I have never taken advances ever from people that I trusted. Then I took this advance from Life & it has been nothing but a headache… I could have stopped the work at a certain date… rewrite on the Paris book, had it in shape for Scribners & then returned to the bullfight thing & finished it off. But my head was forced by having to produce that cash to pay out Rice’s mistake… I hate to ask you to do anything else… [but] can you get me an account of the Cuenca fight. All I remember is the terrible state of the piso and how dangerous it was and that Pepe Casares would not deal with his bulls and that Chicuelo II & Antonio could, due to greater experience… preoccupation with the dangerous ring drives the rest of it out of my head. I also need accounts in the local papers of the fights in Muncia… I might be wrong in remembering whether Antonio did the truco of kneeling in front of the bull & throwing away the munleta & the sword in the first or the second fight… do you remember too what was done exactly about the picadorsat Cuenca, Villara… & Ronda? Juanito Quintana has looked up several of the fights… Have handled the picador business OK so far & have only one more fight to write, the Ronda one. It is a hell of a difficult book to write, Negro, because of the because of the way it ended & the moral angle & what transcends it is the only frame it goes on… I still have to keep on writing… Val has caught 2 good white marlin & is handling rod very well. Sorry this letter is all business & begging … »Hemingway a finalement soumis un manuscrit de 75 000 mots au magazine, duquel un extrait de 30 000 mots a été édité en trois parties, la première partie a été éditée le même jour où cette lettre a été écrite. The Dangerous Summer sera publié après sa mort par Charles Scribner’s Sons en 1985.