HEMINGWAY ERNEST: (1899-1961) American novelist, Nobel Prize winner for Literature, 1954. An excellent A.L.S., Papa, two pages, (separate leaves), 4to, Gritti Palace Hotel, Venice, 8th April 1954, to Leonard Lyons ('Dear Lenny'). Hemingway writes a detailed letter, just a few months after having been almost fatally injured in two successive plane crashes with his wife, 'Miss Mary is fine now. Her ribs ok. She was banged worse than she knew but she is very brave and has the guts of a badger. After a proper examination they found I bought it pretty thoroly (sic) Full concussion; loss sight left eye (optic nerve is regenerating ok) loss hearing left ear, ruptured right kidney, ditto liver and spleen, intestines collapsed, paralysis of sphincter etc. couldn't shit for 22 days then I had 62 movements (complete with cramps in 20 hours) all standing up. If sit down lower intestine comes out…..was urinating kidney cells that looked sort of like black quill tooth picks. Only semi soft. So will skip the atrocities. But tell the boys nothing is bad if you say to it go fuck yourself', adding that he would have appreciated joking with Lyons ('Lenny you get very fond of your friends when you are up shit creek'), continuing with a further account of his recent misfortunes, this time during a fishing expedition undertaken in February, '….Ray [Marsh, his pilot] and [I] land on a beach with the Cessna. This is a little show boat but a little bit good too. So what happens? It is very dry again and wind force 7 and I am in bed and a bush fire starts right behind the camp and will burn out a place……so we have to turn it and try to canalize it. You know that is very rough with primitive methods. But the system is the same. So I get 2nd degree burns on legs, abdomen, chest and mouth. Had burned on left hand and right forearm. You can see the tendons and the bone. We keep this out of the papers on acct no reporters……and we don't have to make a report because we win. But everything breaks loose inside again and everyone is judging how we do on the burns by how I smell. Patrick [Hemingway's son] has shoved back to Tanganyika. Young Denis, my partner has an attack of amoebic and can't move, Miss Mary is crazy as a goat but doesn't know it. It is a magnificent situation. So Miss Mary takes the safari to Mombassa (sic). At this time she is in her watch buying epoch and she gives a watch to every game scout and gun bearer that is worth more than they make in a year. They are all in love with her anyway and she doesn't have to give watches. But she has just pranged in a couple of kites and burned in one and watches are the smallest things she can think of. She starts with Omegas and goes through the Rolex Oyster perpetuals', and also writing of his passage to Europe and future travel plans, 'I bring the chartered ship back….in to the old anchorage at Fort Jesus (very easy) and stay aboard 4 days while we wait for the Lloyd Triestino boat. It is very pleasant in the old harbour. Never thought would make Venice but made it OK. All wounds healed good and sound. Here there exists always certain problems. Fine, beautiful, lovely problems. Tomorrow we go to the country. Then Paris to pick up a couple of clothes and bet 6 horses. Then to Spain to try to get in shape. Very good RAF doctor told me I could live 2 months if I kept my mind on it. Could live 2 years if I made it a career. We figure to beat him by ten. But lost so much blood, internal, that must pace myself and so will skip NY and come straight home. Tell Toots and the mob that will come up quiet, I don't want to see some jerk like Billy Rose when I still have a concussion and think you can use the portable gallows. The objectives now are Paris, Madrid, Santiago de Compostella (sic) and the Finca [Vigia] and Black Dog…..Read this letter to Toots would you mind, or Sherm too. Fuck 21 and all their…..air-force colonels'. Accompanied by the original envelope hand addressed by Hemingway and signed ('E Hemingway') by him in the upper left corner above the printed emblem and name of the Gritti Palace Hotel. A letter of rich content written in the year that the writer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. VG Leonard Lyons (1906-1976) American newspaper columnist for the New York Post where his columns, The Lyons Den, became a New York institution covering theatre, movies, politics and art. In January 1954 Ernest and Mary Hemingway were on safari in Africa when the novelist chartered a sightseeing flight over the Belgian Congo as a Christmas present to his wife. The plane made an emergency landing and a report printed in the New York Times at the end of January declared the cause of the crash in the blue and silver single-engine Cessna to have been a result of the pilot having to dive at low altitude to avoid hitting a flying flock of ibises - jungle birds large enough to smash the canopy of the aircraft. The article continued 'Mr. Hemingway said that to miss the ibises the plane had to land either on a sandpit where six crocodiles lay basking in the sun or on an elephant track through thick scrub. Mr. Marsh chose the scrub and landed the plane with minor damage. They spent Saturday night around a camp fire surrounded by the elephant herd and caught a ride yesterday morning in a launch filled with tourists back to Butiaba on Lake Albert. When the second plane ground-looped and caught fire Mr. Hemingway said he butted open the rear door and scrambled out. His wife and the pilot also escaped, but all their luggage was destroyed. Even when the first crash stranded them overnight in the jungle, Mr. Hemingway said he was not worried. ''We had emergency goods, but were short on water,'' he said. ''We took turns going to the river, but the elephants were very stuffy about it. There were a lot of hippos and crocs wandering around the river bank.''' Hemingway's two plane crashes had brought about worldwide press coverage, including reports of his death, and whilst spending two weeks recuperating the writer read his erroneous obituaries. Hemingway's biographer, James Mellow, wrote that the novelist 'had coveted the Nobel Prize', which he received in October 1954, but that 'there must have been a lingering suspicion in Hemingway's mind that his obituary notices had played a part in the academy's decision'. Still suffering from pain from the African accidents, Hemingway decided against travelling to Stockholm to be presented with the Nobel Prize.