Ernest Hemingway

An autograph letter signed “Ernest”, to Bill Davis (“Negro”), reflecting upon the tranquility of his home in Ketchum, Idaho, in the year before his death.

• Ernest Hemingway (American).
• Four pages.
• Ketchum, Idaho, 13 January 1960.
• Housed in collector’s slipcase and chemise.

A touching letter containing perhaps Hemingway’s last attempt at writing.

"It is very beautiful today after three days of snowing — sharp and cold and high clear mountain sky and the snow squeaks when you walk on it. 

From the window of the big bedroom you can watch a pair of mallards feeding on water cress at the big pool just below the house and day before yesterday two others turned up in the same pool. There is a good place for them to make a slide if they want to stay. 

Wish you could see this place now. George is coming over in his lunch hour and Duque (McMullan) and Bud Purdy and we are going to have a handicap trap shoot." 

Bill Davis was a friend of Hemingway who lived near Málaga. In 1959 Hemingway used Davis's home, La Consula, as a base while preparing to write The Dangerous Summer. Hemingway writes that he is enclosing a check with the letter to cover some of his expenses at La Consula. He also provides Davis with A. E. Hotchner's telephone numbers in New York and shares, "Hotch is in N.Y. and will be until end of month. I am spooked about him doing 5th Column and wish he wasn't." Hotcher adapted Heminway's only play, The Fifth Column, for an episode of The Buick Electra Playhouse on CBS. The teleplay aired on 29 January 1960 and featured Richard Burton and Maximilian Schell. 

A fine unpublished epistle.

Maurice Neville (his sale, Sotheby’s New York, 24 April 2017, lot 46).