A "wonderful night" with Hemingway
Inscription signed.
Original Cabaret Nacional envelope with reproduction photo print mounted. 188 x 253 mm.
€ 3,500.00
Inscribed by Hemingway in red ballpoint, "To my friend Andy drinking and enjoy [!] of a wonderful night with my best wishes / Ernest Hemingway". The envelope on which the inscription is written advertises the Cabaret Nacional, a club in Havana which is the presumed location of the aforementioned drinking and wonderful night. A later photographic print of Hemingway, bottle of rum in hand, has been pasted into the envelope, likely replacing an earlier photo which was damaged or lost.
The Cabaret Nacional can still be found in the basement of the Gran Teatro, and was a haunt for Hemingway, who in the 1950s was spending most of his time in or near Havana, where he enjoyed the nightlife. A different hand has dated the envelope "Habana Marzo 27 de 1952", placing this in the period just after the publication of the critically panned "Across the River" and "Into the Trees" and shortly before Hemingway would write "The Old Man and the Sea", which would win him the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature.
Envelope severely worn and chipped, signature bright and clear.
