A 1935 letter in which Ernest Hemingway
details his capture of a 500lb blue marlin, an escapade that is
believed to have partly inspired his novel The Old Man and the Sea, has
been sold for $28,000 (£22,000).
The handwritten letter was sent by Hemingway on 8 May to the fishing
editor of the Miami Herald, laying out in great detail how the author
and his friend Henry Strater battled to keep sharks away from the marlin
after catching it off the Bahamian island of Bimini.
“Landed Blue Marlin which weighed 500 lbs [226kg] … Fish hooked off
Bimini, hooked in corner of mouth … jumped 18 times clear, brought to
boat in an hour such a heavy fish jumped hell out of himself. We worked
him fast our system. Had him at boat when shark hit him,” wrote the
novelist, who would go on to recount the story of the ageing Cuban
fisherman Santiago’s battle with a gigantic marlin in The Old Man and
the Sea.
In his letter, Hemingway recalls how the sharks bit so much meat off
the marlin that it would have weighed between 700 and 900lbs if it had
been reeled in intact. “Had two buckets full of meat that knocked off
but wouldn’t weigh it as didn’t want try to beat Tommys record with any
conniving,” he writes (referring to the angler Tommy Gifford’s 800lb record),
and promising to measure the fish with a steel tape when he had the
chance. “Fish would have weighed between 700 and 900 – He weighed 500
before 20 some witnesses. We could have brought him plenty up above that
by weighing the loose meat.”
Nate D Sanders,
which sold the letter at auction, said it documented for the first time
in Hemingway’s own words not only the size of the marlin, but also the
attack by sharks, reflecting the plot of the novel.
The company added that Hemingway’s account of the marlin catch
differed from other anecdotal stories of it, one of which described
Hemingway using a machine gun on the shark, which purportedly attracted
more sharks to the feeding frenzy. “It’s likely Hemingway left out this
detail, as Strater would blame its use on attracting more sharks to the
marlin” – thus depriving him of a world record marlin catch. The Old Man
and the Sea has been said by Hemingway scholars to have probably been
inspired by the fishing trip, on 7 May 1935.
The novel was also inspired by an anecdote told by Hemingway’s Cuban
friend Carlos Gutierrez. In the April 1936 issue of Esquire, Hemingway
wrote that Carlos had told him about “an old man fishing alone in a
skiff out of Cabanas”, who “hooked a great marlin that, on the heavy
sashcord hand-line, pulled the skiff out to the sea”.
“Two days later the old man was picked up by fisherman 60 miles to
the eastward, the head and forward part of the marlin lashed alongside.
What was left of the fish, less than half, weighed 800 pounds,” wrote
Hemingway. “The old man had stayed with him a day, a night, a day and
another night while the fish swam deep and pulled the boat. When he had
come up, the old man had pulled the boat up on him and harpooned him.
Lashed alongside the sharks had hit him and the old man had fought them
out alone in the Gulf stream
in a skiff, clubbing them, stabbing at them, lunging at them with an
oar until he was exhausted and the sharks had eaten all that they could
hold. He was crying in the boat when the fishermen picked him up, half
crazy from his loss, and the sharks were still circling the boat.”
Three years later, Hemingway told his editor Max Perkins that he was
planning a new book of short stories, “one about the old commercial
fisherman who fought the swordfish all alone in his skiff … I’m going
out with old Carlos in his skiff so as to get it all right.” Instead, he
ended up writing For Whom the Bell Tolls, not returning to what he
called the “Santiago story” until January 1951. It won him the Pulitzer
in 1953, and was specifically cited when he was awarded the Nobel prize
in 1954.
via https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/nov/13/ernest-hemingway-old-man-sea-fishing-trip-letter-sold-28000
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