Beschreibung:

HEMINGWAY, Ernest (1899-1961). Autograph letter signed ("Ernest") to Charles Thompson in Key West; [Paris], 19 November [1929]. 4 pages, 4to, in brown ink on tan paper, creased from folding, two small fold holes with loss of a few letters . "['A FAREWELL TO ARMS'] HAS SOLD 46,000 COPIES" "...No news yet about when we leave [to return to America]. Trying to get this apt. settled up [his second wife Pauline's place on the rue Frou]. Have to do that and know where we stand before we can leave...Wire from Max [Perkins] says that the book [ A Farewell to Arms , published 27 September] has sold 46,000 copies up to last Friday, the 15th -- When it gets past 50,000 copies I'll start to make money. I'm going to put $20,000 in a trust fund and Uncle Gus [Pfeiffer, Pauline's uncle] is going to put $30,000 to make a trust fund for my mother. Then won't have to worry about that. But it starts us off poor again -- Still it is damned good to have it settled...Haven't done any shooting -- or hardly any exercise all fall -- got hurt in the gut down in Spain and have been waiting for it to heal thoroly [ sic ] so will be able to pull properly on tarpon. But have a good alibi now for not lifting any turtles..." Hemingway spends the next two pages of the letter primarily discussing fishing gear he wishes to give Uncle Gus as a Christmas present; he closes, "...When I'll feel good is when we're out in the boat with a lot of those stuffed eggs -- Thanks so much for looking after the Xmas business..." Hemingway met Charles Thompson in 1928 when he first went to Key West. As Carlos Baker notes ( Ernest Hemingway: a Life Story , 1980 ed., pp. 247-8): "His closest friendship [in Key West] was with Charles Thompson, a broad-shouldered, brown-blond young man roughly his own age. Charles loved hunting and fishing with something of Ernest's own passionate devotion...The Thompson family ran a fishhouse, a cigarbox factory, a ship's chandlery, an icehouse, and a hardware store and tackle shop. Almost nightly after Charles got off from work, he and Ernest went out fishing..." Thompson was the only one of Hemingway's friends to accompany him on his 1933-34 African safari and, of course, figures in The Green Hills of Africa (1935), Hemingway's account of the adventure. In For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) in a discourse on friends (p. 381) Robert Jordan mentions four names, among them Charles Thompson (see Baker, p. 852). None of the Hemingway letters in this and the following two lots are in Letters , ed. C. Baker, and are presumably unpublished. Other letters from Hemingway to Thompson were sold at Christie's, New York, 17 May 1989 (lots 72-79) and 9 December 1993 (lots 94-96).