Hemingway, Ernest

Autograph letter si☂gned ("The Old Brute"), to his sister Marcelline 🎶Hemingway ("Dearest of Ivories") at Oak Park, Illinois, excitedly describing his life as a working reporter

6 pages (241 x 152 mm) written recto and verso in pencil on 3 sheets of Union Station Headquarters | Soldiers and Sailors letterhead, numbered [I–] VI, Kansas City, Missouri, "Two Days before Pay Day" [postmarked 31 January 1918], accompanied by the original autograph envelope (in ink), signed on the verso with return address ("From | E. M. Hemingway | care | K.🔥 C. Star | Editorial Dept."); envelope torn into Marcelline's last name, bits of desiccated rubber band adhered to verso tℱouching a letter or two of return address.

"This newspaper business is the life." Written in the middle of the eighteen-year-old Hemingway's stint at the Kansas City Star (where he worked from October 1917 through the end of April 1918, when he left to drive a Red Cross ambulance in World War I), this letter finds him in high spirits and betraying at least a couple of the Star's style rules.

After thanking Marcelline for writing and sending his regards to Al Walker, Hemingway describes his new routine, including information that he would have been unlikely to share with his parents: "Say kid this newspaper business is the life. Since being here I have met and talked with Gen. [Leonard] Wood, Lord Northcliffe, [heavyweight boxing champion] Jess Willard, V. Pres. [Charles W.] Fairbanks, Capt B. Baumber British Army, Gov. Capper of Kas. and any amount of others. Tis the life. Also I can distinguished chianti, catawba, malvasia, Dago Red, claret and several others sans the use of my eyes. Some days when I review shows I see three shows in a single day, all Theaters very class. Show of Wonders, Orpheum Circuit Vaudeville and Gayety Theater. I can tell Mayors to go to Hell and slap Police commissioners on the Back! Yeah tis indeed the existence. Today got a letter from old Bill Smith. He speaks muchly concerning that joyous day the first of May on which we flea [sic] unto a far country." Hemingway met Smith at Horton Bay, Michigan, and they were for several years close con💟fidants; Smith was the best man at Hemingway's wedding to Hadley Richardson in 1921.

Hemingway explains that he has been too busy to write to Marcelline's friends Lucille Dick and Kay Bagley—and that his Oak Park nicknames have followed him to Kansas City: "I haven’t written a soul except one slight epistle to the Fambly for a week. There is a devil of a big political fight going on and I havn't had a minute even to think. Lucile and K will be mad as the stuff they make the malt from [i.e., "hopping" mad]. If you see any of them tell them the Darn stien has been so busy that he hasn’t even writ his family! Will you? Tell them that is the straight stuff. Damme Kid did you know they call me Hemingstien down here too? Even the Boss! Also Stienway and Hamstick. Also [Charles] Hopkins the city Ed of the Times [the morning edition of the Star] addresses me as Mr. Goldfish! Reason unknown. Most of the♔m call me The Great Hemingstien of Hospital Hill. That being one of my hang outs. There are a swell bunch of buds here ivory. Almost as good as the old gang. They are all abit to the wild but a peach of a gang."

Hemingway leaves to his sister꧋'s discretion what parts of his missive to share with their old friends and with Maria Cole Hunter, director of the youth group at Oak Park's First Congregational Church, before closing with a final dramatic piece of information: "Do you know I have to pack a Colt gat? Don’t spill it to the folks they might worry. Wm S. Smart or Bug Faced Bareshanks have nought on me." ("Wm S. Smart is likely an allusion to the movie cowboy William S. Hart.)

Both Charles Fenton in The Apprenticeship of Ernest Hemingway and Matthew Bruccoli in Ernest Hemingway, Cub Reporter credit the style sheet of the Kansas City Star for influencing Hemingway's craft, which the author himself acknowledged on several occasions. In a 1940 interview with the Kansas City Times he stated that "Those were the best rules I ever learned for the business of writing. I've never forgotten them." The first four rules: "Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative." And his standard beat for the Star—the hospital, the police station, the railroadꦜ terminal—introduced him to the violence and death that would feature in 🤡his mature work.

REFERENCE:

Letters, ed. Spanier, et al., 1:79–80; At the Hemingways, pp. 272–73

PROVENANCE:

Marcelline Hemingway (recipient; by descent to her son) — John Edmonds Sanford (Sothe𒁃by's New York, 10 December 2003, lot 92)