ID 1108752
Lot 33 | Hemingway, Ernest | Typed letter signed to Marcelline, forbidding her the use of Windermere
Estimate value
$ 3 000 – 5 000
Typed letter signed in pencil ("Yours always, Ernest"), to his sister Marcelline Hemingway Sanford ("Dear Marce"), forbidding her the use of Windermere
1 ½ pages (215 x 215 mm, irregular at top margin), typed single-spaced on recto and verso of poor quality typing paper, Cat Cay, British West Indies, [July 1937], holograph return address and postscript in pencil, four typed words scored through in pencil and a total of about four typed lines typed over and scored through in pencil by Hemingway, an explanatory docket by Marcelline on the second page; browned, a horizontal tear (perhaps initially caused by Hemingway's crossing-out and overtyping) across a few lines artlessly repaired with transparent tape leaving stains and with partial loss to some words, a small hole mended with tape causing damage to a few letters, top margin torn irregularly with loss.
"Please remember that what is my property is my property." Clarence Hemingway's suicide in 1928 left his wife, Grace, a fifty-six-year-old widow with two children (Carol, 17, and Leicester, 13) still living at home. Despite his well-documented animosity towards his mother, Ernest Hemingway, together with his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, set up a trust fund to help support Grace, and, according to Marcelline, in gratitude Grace deeded to Ernest the family's summer cottage, Windemere, on Walloon Lake in northern Michigan.
Marcelline maintains in a docket written on the present letter that she had merely written her brother about his permitting their younger siblings to use Windemere, as well as her family borrowing and repairing the old rowboat at the cottage, but his inexplicably churlish response indicates either that her letter expressed jealousy that he had been given the family's summer retreat or that Hemingway wildly misinterpreted her letter:
"Thanks for your charming letter. Reading it made me slightly sick. Windemere happens to belong to me and if you wanted me to let you use something out of it you could have done so without writing a hysterical letter full of insults. But I suppose people do not change much. I had planned to go up there this summer but have to go back to Spain instead." He explains that the keys to Windermere are at his Key West workroom while he is the British West Indies, so “Getting the keys to you is out of the question. It is absolutely impossible.” As a compromise, Hemingway encloses "ten dollars … for Sunny [their sister Madelaine] to get a locksmith to open or cut the padlock off wherever her canoe is, take out the canoe and replace the padlock with another equally good one, and when she goes, lock it and send the keys to me at Key West marked hold.”
Hemingway continues outlining his strictures on the use of Windemere: “If Sunny is still there she can live in Windemere but must lock it up and see that it is cleaned and fully shuttered when she leaves. If Sunny is not there you may use the row boat but I do not want you to use the house or anything else. Please remember that what is my property is my property as much in Michigan as in Key West. Because you would like to have it does not change that. Nor did your way of writing me make me feel friendly toward you. Windemere is not for rent nor is to be used for your guests.” He does write that their sister Ursula “is welcome to use it any time for herself and family. I know Ura and how careful she is of things. If she wants to use it write me and I will have the keys sent her when I return to Key West. I haven’t seen Sunny for a long time but the last time I did see her she was no one to trust a house with, being careless. If I let her live there I am relying on her haveing changed and takeing the necessary responsibility to keep things decent and close it properly."
For a short paragraph Hemingway takes a somewhat conciliatory tone—"Thank you for telling me about the repairs which are necessary to the cottage. When I am up there I will them attended to."—but immediately returns to a repetitive recitation of his rules and grievances: "The question of why mother deeded Windemere and contents to me does not arise. As I told you before it is as much my property as home in Key West. I give Sunny permission to live in it this summer if she wishes. Leicester and his wife are very welcome to stay there this summer if they wish. Ura and her family can go there if they wish. I expressly forbid you to enter or use it in any way except in the matter of using the row boat which you offer to repair and return in good condition in return for this use. If you go into the house for any other purpose, except if you go there as a guest of any of the people that I have given the right to use it, I will regard it as trespass and proceed accordingly." He adds a handwritten note at bottom: "They must write me first for permission. Excuse torn letter—had only ½ hour to catch the weekly plane. Just received yours today."
On the second page Marcelline has penciled this marginal annotation: "Note. Later Ernest wrote an apology—this letter came in answer to mine asking if he could not let the younger children use Windermere. Especially Sunny & Ursula & because I told him Mother had said we might use the family rowboat—we had our own cottage & did not wish to use Windemere at all. Other children did."
It is perhaps telling that At the Hemingways does not include the letter by Marcelline that sparked Ernest’s furious reply. Marcelline’s response to the present letter (which she terms "terrible," "cruel," and "unkind"), 30 July 1937, is printed (pp. 351–53), however, and in it she seeks to “add a few facts to the letter I wrote to you a few days ago”: she had intended no sarcasm; she had only entered the cottage once after it was given to Ernest and on that occasion she had their mother’s permission to use the rowboat; she thought he would want to know that renters were available since he was not using Windemere himself; she assumed he would care enough about the "family home" to want to know that it was not being kept up and that a neighbor had reported that "couples had used it overnight"; and that that "since you were not coming up yourself, you might like to offer it to your less fortunate brother & sisters. …"
Hemingway seems not to have replied directly to this letter from Marcelline; however, At the Hemingways does include a brief note from almost a year and half later, 22 December 1938, in which Ernest tells her, “Am awfully sorry I wrote you such a rude and boorish letter about Windemere that time” (p. 354).
| Artist: | Ernest Miller Hemingway (1899 - 1961) |
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| Auction house category: | Prints, graphics, books |
| Artist: | Ernest Miller Hemingway (1899 - 1961) |
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| Auction house category: | Prints, graphics, books |
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Sotheby´s 1334 York Avenue 10021 New York USA | ||||||||||||||
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