Just how bad was classic post-modernist author Ernest Hemingway at bullfighting? Bad enough to write home about, according to an authentic letter Hemingway wrote to his father in 1924, and which yesterday sold for $25,000 at an auction in New York.
Hemingway addressed the letter — written across eight faded yellow pages on two folded sheets — to his father on September 3, 1924, with the first three letters of “August” hastily scratched out beside the actual date. (Write drunk, edit sober?)
This is an especially valuable item because the letter was handed down directly from Clarence Hemingway, the addressee, and Ernest’s father. The letter has never been published in any of the official or unofficial anthologies of Hemingway’s letters and “has remained hidden from scholars until now,” according to Bonhams’ description of the item.
The letter itself was mailed from Paris, but in it Hemingway covers his recent trip to Pamplona, Spain, a city he visited multiple times to try his hand at bullfighting, according to Atlas Obscura.
But as much as Hemingway loves thinking and writing about bullfighting, he had next to no talent in it himself, and failed spectacularly each time he tried to best the belligerent bovines.
He just really, really wasn’t good at it.
From Bonhams:
“I was in the bull ring 5 different days and was tossed 3 times, once as the bull was about to hit me I went in between his horns and hung on, and was carried … for about two full minutes … I am too old to take up bull fighting seriously as the great ones all start when they are about six years old … a man’s courage needs exercise just as much as his legs do … I have some great bull fight stories to write.”
Great stories, indeed. Two years later, Hemingway published The Sun Also Rises, a novel about an aging, emasculated man who splits his time between cafes in Paris and the the bullfights in Pamplona, Spain.
Hemingway doesn’t actually devote the entire letter to bullfighting — he speaks about life with his nine-month-old son, Bumbie, and his wife, Hadley, both healthy and happy at the time. Bonhams’ description also mentions that the family was spending time with The Red Wheelbarrow poet William Carlos Williams while they were in Paris. Williams apparently adored Bumbie and took meticulous care of him.
Bonhams has sold many similar, and more expensive, Hemingway paraphernalia in the past. An advanced, autographed copy of a first edition of For Whom The Bell Tolls sold in December 2017 for upwards of $80,000.
Featured Image Via Bonhams.