A 1954 letter legendary American writer Ernest Hemingway wrote to his lawyer, Alfred Rice, recently sold at auction for $237,055, according to Nate D. Sanders Auctions in Los Angeles, Calif.
During the same year that Hemingway won the Nobel Prize in literature for “The Old Man and the Sea”, he apparently was also having some issues with his bills from Abercrombie & Fitch.
“Dear Al: Roberto [Herrera] wrote me he had a letter from either Abercrombie and Fitch or a collection agency saying they would go to law if my bill with them was not paid. Please pay it at once out of my funds available. Pay under protest,” read the April 17 letter, which was misdated as 1953.
While Abercrombie & Fitch is now known mostly for their jeans and preppy clothes, the business began as an outdoor specialty retailer that sold camping gear. By the 1940s, the company was supplying military equipment.
Hemingway added that “I have never received any bill of any sort from A and F, since I was in their store in June,” and that they “sent me two .22 rifles of a type I did not order,” among other gripes.
“Had to shoot my first lion with a borrowed .256 Mannlicher which was so old it would come apart in my hands and had to be held together with tape and Scotch tape. Their carelessness in shipping imperiled both my life and livelihood,” the celebrated writer complained.
He sent the letter from Venice, Italy, on Gritti Palace-Hotel stationery. According to Roman Candle Tours, Hemingway was there to recover from a plane crash in Uganda.
Born in Oak Park, Ill., in 1899, Hemingway started his writing career in a Kansas City newspaper office when he was just 17. He would soon enter World War I and served as a volunteer ambulance driver. After Hemingway was wounded while serving at the front, he was decorated by the Italian government.
Hemingway would continue to travel extensively for most of his life. He was a member of an expatriate American group in Paris, covered World War II as a war correspondent for Collier’s and lived in Havana, Cuba. In the letter to his lawyer, Hemingway noted that Abercrombie & Fitch should have sent bills to a Paris address.
Apart from his work as a reporter and “The Old Man and the Sea”, he penned several other well-known novels, including “A Farewell to Arms”, “The Sun Also Rises”, and “For Whom the Bell Tolls”.
His letter from Venice came near the end of his life – he would die around seven years later in Idaho. Hemingway told Rice in the correspondence that he was headed to a hospital in Genoa to address his internal injuries. He also said that he couldn’t write many letters or type due to bone-deep burns on his right arm.
“The trouble is inside where right kidney was ruptured and liver and spleen injured,” he explained to Rice. “We’ll get them checked out at this clinic where they have the best man at that stuff in Europe.”
He also mentioned his wife, Mary Welsh Hemingway, and Adriana Ivancich, a muse he met in Italy, who were in Paris together. Hemingway planned to meet the women in Madrid, Spain, where there was a doctor he had a “lot of confidence in,” before going home to Havana.
“I am more valuable to them alive than dead and at present am trying [to] stay alive and get fit to produce,” he added near the end before signing as “Ernie.”
Bidding on the letter closed Aug. 31. Overall, there were 12 bids on the four-page letter and final price far exceeded the $19,250 minimum bid.