No American author has so thoroughly captured the imagination of the American people quite like Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961). Thousands, perhaps millions, of Americans who have never read a word he has written revere him as a "personality,"' much as they do sports heroes, rock stars and movie actors. Through motion pictures and television adaptations of his works, his stories have reached an enormous audience. But it is Hemingway himself - the burly, square-shaped, wiry-bearded, hard-drinking, fast-talking, sensitive and generous man's man - who has brought to life the myth of the American hero. A seasoned war correspondent, he lived the life he would have created for one of his salty characters, stronger and bigger than life itself, and determined to prevail.
Born in Oak Park, Ill. 100 years ago, Ernest was the second of five children of Clarence and Grace Hemingway. After graduating from high school, he went to work as a cub reporter for the Kansas City Star. Prevented from joining the armed forces because of deficient eyesight, he volunteered as a Red Cross ambulance driver in Italy during World War I, an experience that provided the background for one of his most successful novels, A Farewell to Arms.
In 1921 he married Hadley Richardson, the first of his four wives, and in December of that year, they sailed for France. Based in Paris, Hemingway traveled extensively in Europe as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star. It was during this time that his serious writing began, and in 1923-24 he published two slender books of prose and poetry.
Hemingway was relatively unknown in the United States until 1925, when his first volume of short stories, In Our Time, was published. This collection, which included the first of the Nick Adams stories, contained elements of the honest, matter-of-fact style blended with touches of unique realism and romanticism that were to become the hallmark of Hemingway's prose.
In 1926 he published The Torrents of Spring, followed by The Sun Also Rises. An instant success, the latter novel established him as a leader of the so-called "lost generation."
In 1928 Hemingway left Paris for Key West, Fla., where he remained for 12 years. There he completed A Farewell to Arms (1929), which was an outstanding success. It was during this time that his son Patrick was born and his ailing father committed suicide.
By the 1930s, Hemingway's fame had extended worldwide. In 1933-34 he experienced one of his highly memorable "great adventures," a big-game safari in Kenya and Tanganyika, from which evolved his non-fictional Green Hills of Africa and two short stories, The Snows of Kilimanjaro and The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.
In 1937 he published To Have and Have Not, which was followed three years later by For Whom the Bell Tolls. During World War II Hemingway volunteered for duty on anti-submarine patrols in the waters around Cuba, his new home. Returning to duty as a war correspondent, he flew missions with both the United States Air Force and Royal Air Force. He also accompanied the U.S. Army when it broke through France and Germany, and was awarded the Bronze Star.
After the war, Hemingway wrote The Garden of Eden (not published until 1986) and Across the River and Into the Trees (1950), which was more widely attacked than praised. Then in 1952 came a crowning moment - publication of his novellaThe Old Man and the Sea - a simple, yet compelling, saga about an old fisherman and his heroic battle with a giant marlin. The book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1953 and the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954.
Despite two near-death airplane crashes in 1953-54, Hemingway's productivity continued into the late 1950s with A Moveable Feast, a memoir of his youth in Paris, and a three-part novel, Islands in the Stream. However, his physical and mental health began to decline rapidly. Despite repeated hospitalizations in the United States, he failed to recover fully, and killed himself with a shotgun in his Ketchum, Idaho home on July 2, 1961.
Hemingway's letters, sometimes seemingly harsh, bawdy, vulgar, and occasionally written from a grandstanding macho-man's point of view, have several interwoven threads. They are always vividly candid, sincere, engrossing, often intriguing, and quite frequently memorable. He holds nothing back, calling everything as he sees it.
For example, in a 1936 ALS to Abner Green, he writes, "The only time the H. name is in the dirt is when little pricks like you and your pals put it there. Only it doesn't stay there. You stay there." The letter sold for $2,750 at a 1977 Sotheby's auction.
When asked to write a blurb for the dust jacket of a book by Ogden Nash (whom he disliked), Hemingway replied in a 1931 ANS to Richard Simon: "Ogden Nash gives me a pain in my ash - E.H." The note fetched $2,200 at Swann Galleries in 1995.
While values and demand for certain American authors have slumped over the last 20 years, desirability for, and prices of, Hemingway material have basically remained stable. Content is everything when it comes to pricing Hemingway material, and when a letter has the right stuff, prices will easily range between $2,500 and $7,500.
Other writers saw Hemingway as a teacher, and came to him with their literary problems as well as their marital difficulties. The great novelist consoled them with the wisdom of a seasoned sage, when in fact he was just as adrift as they were.
Hemingway was a great letter writer, honestly and openly pouring his thoughts and emotions into them much as he did his novels, writing about anything and everything that touched his life or that of his correspondents. In one of his last letters, he even confided to his 30-year-old son Gregory the anguish of his worsening medical condition shortly before committing suicide.
More than most authors of his time, Hemingway has been available in "collections" of letters. In the last 20 years, nearly two dozen such collections have been sold at auction. The largest of these contained 62 letters to Arnold Gingrich, and fetched $25,000 at Sotheby's in 1978. About the same time, another collection - a group of some 30 unpublished letters Hemingway wrote to his parents - brought $65,000, the highest group price ever paid. In the 1990s several other small collections ranging from three to 30 letters have come on the auction market, most selling in the $5,000-$22,000 range.
Although more than 200 Hemingway letters and documents have been sold at auction in the last 20 years, less than a dozen signed photos have crossed the block. Most sold in the 1990s, with prices ranging from $2,000-$3,500. During this same period, simple signatures have remained in the $250-$600 price bracket. Exceptions are bullfight-related items signed by both Hemingway and a noted matador, which go for $2,000 to $3,000.
During the last few years a healthy sampling of signed Hemingway books has appeared at auction. For $2,500 to $4,500, one can acquire such titles as For Whom the Bell Tolls, Green Hills of Africa, Men without Women and Across the River and Into the Trees. More expensive signed copies, which sell in the $4,600-$7,000 range, include Death in the Afternoon, A Farewell to Arms, The Sun Also Rises, The Torrents of Spring and Winner Take Nothing.
A 1924 Paris signed first edition of In Our Time (limited to 170 copies) is now worth $14,000. This same limited edition is equally pricey in unsigned copies. For collectors of 20th century unsigned first editions, Hemingway's popularity remains steady, with dozens of copies of his books coming to auction each year.
Not surprisingly, Hemingway has been the object of a rash of recent forgeries. It is always unsettling to receive a catalog in which I find occasional forgeries. Needless to say, to receive a catalog in which practically everything in it is a forgery is particularly exasperating.
Such was the case when I first saw a 250-lot catalog of mainly Hemingway material that was to be auctioned in England in September 1998. It was a collection purportedly from Hemingway's godson, whose father was one of the author's drinking buddies in Spain.
In it were Hemingway letters, logbooks, elaborate signed photo groupings, an unpublished manuscript of a novel, guns, Hemingway's typewriter and endless signed ephemeral pieces. Also included were letters, photos and articles of clothing purportedly signed by Ava Gardner, Clark Gable, Frank Sinatra, Grace Kelly, Laurel and Hardy, Richard Nixon, Winston Churchill, Robert Graves, Albert Einstein, even Abraham Lincoln and, curiously, Charles Darwin. Many bore the archival hand stamp of the godson's family.
At first I thought my eyesight might be failing, since every one of the Hemingway illustrations somehow looked "wrong." By the time I got to the center of the catalog and saw fake Einsteins, Ava Gardners, Grace Kellys, Fred Astaires, then a fake Lincoln and ludicrous fake Dali and Chagall drawings, I was huffing, if not hyperventilating.
I quickly called several dealer friends, but none had seen the catalog. They all must have thought I was nuts - talking about an entire auction consisting entirely of forgeries! Could this slick, color-illustrated catalog be a joke? I decided to call my old friend John Wilson, a noted British dealer.
Wilson not only knew about the sale and had viewed the material, but also was audacious enough to tell the auction people to their face that none of the items were authentic. In its Sept. 25, 1998 edition - five days before the auction - The London Times broke the story under the headline "Hemingway collection is vast forgery." The article generously quoted Wilson and his colleague, Felix Pryor.
"This is a monumental fraud," Wilson told the Times. "I've never seen anything like it . Whoever has done this has spent an awful lot of time trying to make it look right, (even) making rubber stamps to give documents a semblance of authenticity." Pryor, formerly of Sotheby's, questioned the literacy of the letters when he saw the originals, noting that many - purportedly in Hemingway's hand - were fumbling, if not inept, examples penned by someone who was not a native English speaker, much less a writer possessing the literary talent of Hemingway.
"It is better than the Hitler diaries by miles," Pryor said, adding "... To have your whole sale a forgery ... is the ultimate nightmare." Although the auction firm made veiled threats about taking legal action against Wilson and Pryor, they withdrew the entire 250 lots the day before the sale. A few days later, Pryor published his own account of the forgery discovery in The Spectator. He amusingly titled the article "The Men Who Faked Ava Gardner's Bra."
Back on this side of the pond, another catalog came to my attention, this time from Swann Galleries. In thumbing through it, my attention was drawn to illustrations of two photos allegedly signed by Hemingway. Troubled, I thought to myself, "I know this handwriting much too well!"
Grabbing the English catalog containing the fake Hemingway material, I was stunned to see that more handiwork by the same forger was right here in my own back yard. I immediately called George Lowry at Swann, who readily agreed to discuss my research. For our meeting, I prepared charts comparing examples of forged and authentic Hemingway handwriting.
When Lowry showed me the elaborate album that housed the Hemingway photos, I could see that it was from the same source as the English material. Carefully studying the handwriting, I determined that every photograph and letter in the album clearly was a forgery. Needless to say, Lowry immediately withdrew the items from his auction.
While all of this was going on, another culprit was at work in New England creating Hemingway forgeries in scarce first edition copies of his works. The items - initially questioned by book dealers who had purchased copies - were brought to my attention by California book dealer John Crichton, head of the security committee of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America.
As a prelude to possible legal action on behalf of the book dealers involved, Crichton asked me to help substantiate that the signatures in question were in fact forgeries. After a thorough investigation of the questioned inscriptions, I reported that they were indeed forgeries. Efforts were then set in motion to catch the forger.
This article has been reprinted with the permission of Autograph Collector Magazine.
