SUPERB HEMINGWAY AUTOGRAPH LETTER TO VIRGINIA "JIGEE" VIERTEL, 1950, RECOUNTING HIS TRAVELS SINCE THEY PARTED AND AN INCIDENT WITH THE MANUSCRIPT OF ACROSS THE RIVER AND INTO THE TREES THAT HAS LEFT HIM "SLIGHTLY GOOSE-FLESHY"

HEMINGWAY, Ernest. Autograph letter signed as "Papa" to Virginia Viertel ("Jigee"). Venice: January 2, 1950. Two pages (with text on one side of the two sheets of blue paper), measuring 8-1/4 by 10-1/2 inches. Handsomely framed with original 1959 large photographic portrait of a smiling Hemingway by Morris Warman.

Superb Hemingway autograph letter signed as "Papa" to Virginia Viertel, with his initialed postscript in the margins of the second page and a long autograph note signed ("M.") from Mary Hemingway to Viertel on the lower half of the second page.

In December 1949 Ernest and Mary Hemingway vacationed in the South of France with A. E. Hotchner of Cosmopolitan, writer Peter Viertel and his wife Virginia ("Jigee"). When the group reached Nice on December 27, the Viertels decided to return to Paris by train. Hotchner accompanied them, taking with him the final chapters of Across the River and into the Trees, which Jigee and Hotchner had helped edit (at Hemingway's urging), for publication in Cosmopolitan. Hotchner accidentally left the manuscript on the train, causing Hemingway great consternation, although it was eventually recovered. Written less than a week after the Viertels' departure, Hemingway's letter reads in full:"Hotel Gritte— Venice— Italy, 2/1/50. Jige: We drove Nice to Nervi (a small town after Genoa) on 31/12/49 and then here yesterday lunching at Bergamo enroute. Good food, nice people, good, not too good country, for the plain was dead with winter, and we made good time. No non-working friends here, all in the country or up at Cortina. Nanyuki Franchetti with whom was going to shoot, broke his leg a week ago. Will go out to see him in the country tomorrow. Gran Maestro looks in bad shape. Everyone else fine. Wonderful weather. Good place to work. Checked on all mss. (also re-checked and triple checked) and cabled George at Ritz Bar to locate Ed Hotchner, last address Opal Hotel, and deliver him important message about mss. [of Across the River and into the Trees] that was missing. Detailed exactly. Also Ed left the original of last part (starting `mortaring the hell out of everything') and all original from there on until the end in the briefcase plus Madame LeGros' [the elderly woman who typed the manuscript] typing of it and four carbons. Certainly must have a bad effect on good reliable people; but they forget when they see me being careless at 1100 [hours] that I have been up since 0300 or 0400 or 0600 being careful. Didn't get any mails from Paris but maybe what— can't remember what. Love to you and to Peter and to Hotch. Signed: Papa. [Postscript in margins:] Am slightly goose-fleshy about mss. since is first time since 1921 [actually 1922, when a valise containing virtually all of Hemingway's manuscripts was stolen at a Paris railway station] that found original first copy and four carbons all in same container. EH." At the end of the letter, Hemingway has written: "Mary continues from here:" and Mary Hemingway's note reads: "Dear Jige— Here's the card which should persuage the consierge at the Ritz that you can have my typewriter. Sorry to take so long about it. We've missed you all. Terribly— and Papa is upset about no word from Ed and an apparent big mix-up in the mss. Also no friends here to divert him— but it's still a wonder town— Love— M."

In Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences (pp. 556, 558), Peter Mellow discusses Hemingway's infatuation with women other than his wife Mary, including Viertel: "There were others, like Virginia 'Jigee' Viertel, wife of screenwriter Peter Viertel, who had accompanied Mary and Hemingway on their fall 1949 voyage to Paris on the Ile de France. At the Ritz, Mary complained to her diary, `It is now one hour and a half since I left Jigee Viertel's room, #94, and Ernest said, 'I'll come in a minute.'" In a later memoir of his friendship with Hemingway, Peter Viertel writes that he had "questioned Jigee about her relationship with Papa… she admitted that Papa had suggested she marry him… I felt that I had been betrayed by both Hemingway and my wife." Commenting on Hemingway's infatuation with another woman, Viertel writes that Hemingway "had behaved the same way with Jigee, had made her the heroine of his daydreams, but had never made an overt physical advance."

Very handsomely framed with a superb original photograph of Hemingway (titled "Happy Pappy" as he is smiling broadly) by Morris Warman, dated November 12, 1959. An extraordinary Hemingway letter.