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Hemingway took up residence at the Ambos Mundos in room number 511; it was to be the nearest thing he had to home for several years. With its view of the beautiful Plaza de Armas and the surrounding buildings, its proximity to the American Embassy and the ease with which he could go down to the harbour, the hotel was conveniently located for Hemingway to write and it was here where he began the final draft of For Whom the Bell Tolls. It was also comfortingly close to his favourite bar, the Floridita. It was there that he repaired in the morning to drink sugarless daiquiris; his record was eleven of them before eleven o'clock in the morning. |
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your bar stool and walk that you wonder whether you should have had the last three.
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In 1940, Hemingway married Martha Gellhorn and they bought a large estate 15 miles outside the city. Finca Vigía, 'Lookout Farm', was very run down but Martha determinedly set about restoring it. The marriage soon began to disintegrate, though, due to Hemingway's drinking, outbursts of temper and bullying and Martha's departure to cover the war in Europe for Collier's magazine.
The war provided Hemingway with an excellent excuse for going to sea to search for something more substantial than marlin. By 1942, German U-boats were entering the Gulf of Mexico to attack American shipping and encouraged by the American ambassador in Havana, Spruille Braden, Hemingway fitted the Pilar with machine guns and ammunition for U-boat-hunting voyages. Unfortunately no opportunity for heroic behaviour presented itself and eventually Hemingway followed his wife to Europe to write for Collier's. This trip sounded the death knell for the marriage when he met another journalist, Mary Welsh, whom he brought to Cuba in 1946. They lived at Finca Vigía with crowds of cats and dogs, but travelled frequently to the United States, Europe and Africa in search of excitement. Finca Vigía has been maintained since Hemingway's departure from Cuba exactly as he left it. Visitors are not allowed into the house but may walk around it, peering in through the open windows. The place looks as though Papa has just gone fishing for the day, with his books, papers and personal possessions much in evidence. Nearby in the woods, the Pilar, his beautiful little boat, has been carefully preserved. The collection of original letters and manuscripts held at the house is unique; recently the Cuban government agreed to send copies of the papers to the John F Kennedy Presidential Library in the interests of continuing scholarly research into Hemingway's life and work. |
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After the triumph of the Revolution in 1959, the majority of Americans in Cuba swiftly returned home but Ernest Hemingway, who had closely observed the corruption and oppression of the Batista regime, wished Fidel Castro 'all luck' in his endeavours to bring social equality to the troubled island. He stayed in Cuba until the summer of 1960. Those were to be his last days in a country he had always considered as "a good place to live in." Of his long stay in Havana, he wrote subtle evocations like this one: "He got into the car and told the chauffeur to go up O'Reilly to the Floridita. Before the car circled the plaza in front of the embassy building and the Ayuntamiento and then turned into O'Reilly he saw the size of the waves in the mouth of the harbor and the heavy rise and fall of the channel buoy. In the mouth of the harbor the sea was very wild and confused and clear green water was breaking over the rock at the base of the Morro, the tops of the seas blowing white in the sun. It looks wonderful, he said to himself. It not only looks wonderful, it is wonderful." |
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