Lettre autographe inédite signée à Roberto Sotolongo du coeur de la savane

I slapped a giraffe on the ass

To our knowledge unpublished autograph letter signed by Ernest Hemingway to Roberto Herrera Sotolongo, 2 pages in blue ink on both sides of a sheet, and envelope postmarked September 19, 1953 with his autograph return address ("E. Hemingway...") on the back. The letter begins in Spanish and continues in English, before ending with a few Spanish words signed "Mister Papa".
A magnificent letter from Hemingway to his Cuban friend and secretary, recounting his 1953 safari in Kenya. Hemingway reveals the true outcome of the hunt for the black-maned lion, a central theme of his posthumous novel True at first light (1999) later published as Under Killimanjaro (2005). The writer shares his encounters with a giraffe and an impala, as well as unpublished spear hunts with the Masai, reconnecting with the emotions of his first African adventure twenty years earlier which had inspired classic parts of the Hemingway canon – The Green Hills of Africa, The Snows of Kilimanjaro and The Short happy life of Francis Macomber. He also recalls a family tragedy: a rare attempt at reconciliation from his third child Gigi, who was suffering from gender dysphoria.
Hemingway wrote this letter from his camp on the banks of the Salengai River, 40 miles south of Nairobi in the Southern Reserve of Kajiado. Enjoying the success of The Old Man and the Sea, he began his Kenyan adventure on September 1, 1953, accompanied by the famous hunter Philip Percival, inspiration for “Karl” in The Green Hills of Africa and the Baron Bror von Blixen in The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. This warm letter to his Cuban friend Herrera was sent on September 19 during a stopover of the expedition's photographer in Nairobi: “Monstruo, you would love it here. More grouse, perdices, and big guineas”.
The first hunts were a success, and Hemingway enthusiastically rediscovers the thrill of adventure, sharing events ultimately left out of his manuscript published after his death: “Had a hell of a lion hunt on foot. Tracked all day […] This morning we try again. It is 0500 now. Last night chasing animals at night to get a “lions eye view”. Had an impala jump over the jeep. I slapped a giraffe on the ass” The territory recently reopened to hunters and was teeming with game and large predators “we had a lion hunt with the masai with spears […] maybe we will have another hunt tomorrow or this afternoon as the lions were bothering the native village last night and we have a bunch of them tracking now” The writer was traveling with his twenty-four years younger Cuban friend Mayito Menocal, whose shooting skills surpassed those of an aging Hemingway : « Mayito is fine and shooting beautifully could you call little mayito or mayito's family at his home […] and say you had just heard from me he is very well and happy and just killed a magnificent black-maned lion and we are hunting lions with the masai now” The hunt for the legendary black-maned lion was to occupy a large part of the story (published under the title True at First Light) he began writing after the safari. Hemingway built the story around his wife Mary's obsession with the noble beast, who kept slipping away in the tall grass, prolonging the hunt for long months across the Kenyan reserve. As a happy ending, the writer chose to credit the first shot to Mary, and not to Mayito as he indicated in the letter. The writer later added to his story his remark on Mary's small stature, first mentioned to Herrera in the letter:“I found the big colsie sound asleep but waited for Mary and by then he was difficult for her as she is short to see in the grass”
An important passage in the letter refers to the great dispute between him and his then son "Gigi" (Gregory) born to his second wife Pauline Pfeiffer: "Letter from Gigi. He says, very beautifully, he finds impossible to stay angry with me allegedly ‘he tried for seven months” Gigi had been arrested a few years earlier for wearing women's clothing. Hemingway blamed Pauline, who died shortly afterwards. Hemingway blamed his wife's death on Gigi's behavior, who suffered from gender dysphoria for the rest of her life. Despite this rare attempt at reconciliation mentioned in the letter, they remained mostly estranged until the writer's death.
A few months after this letter was written, Hemingway suffered two plane crashes while flying over Uganda. The writer was briefly declared dead by the press and never fully recovered from his serious injuries. According to his biographers this tragic event marked the beginning of a dark period that forever affected his writing: « a seven-year descent that dried up his creative confidence, engulfed him in paranoia, delivered him to electroshock treatments and rendered him frail. The words, he said, just wouldn't come anymore. »
An exceptional example of Hemingway's prose, revealing the tumultuous reality of his adventures behind the autofiction of his published writings. These happy moments written in the Kenyan wilderness capture the very essence of the bon vivant traveler-writer: “the most peripatetic of the authors who shaped American literature” (Miriam B. Mandel) a few months before his terrible accident.