“ I am weak from so much interior bleeding , ” the novelistErnest Hemingwaywrote . “ Have been a good boy and tried to remain … ”
But this was no fabrication . In the spring of 1954 , asSmithsonian reports , the author ofThe Old Man and the SeaandA Farewell to Armssat down andwroteto his lawyer to address various fiscal topic . He also take the clock time to detail injuries nurture in not one , but two carpenter’s plane crashes that occurred just hours apart .
The debaclebeganin East Africa , where Hemingway and Mary Welsh — his quaternary ( and final ) married woman — were on a rubber-necking trip in Uganda , which was mean as a Christmas nowadays for Mary . The small Cessna plane they had just boarded suddenly pivoted toavoida flock of birds , collided with a telegraphy conducting wire , and wound up in the Nile .
This first clangor , while surely redoubtable , allow for both Hemingway and his married woman with minor harm : Mary with crack rib and Hemingway with a sprained berm . After camping out for the dark , the two were spot by a tourer boat in the aurora . The vessel submit them to Butiaba , where theyboardedanother aeroplane . implausibly , the aircraft caught fire during lampoon and tumbled back to the ground . The airplane pilot and Mary were able to take to the woods through a window . But Hemingway , a rich man , could n’t fit through the hatchway . or else , he smashed through the door like an eruditeKool - financial aid Man , spite his head in the process .
Such was the state of the news - gathering procedure of the time that word of the crash lead to several medium outlets untimely declaring the Hemingways at rest .
compose to his lawyer some month afterward , Hemingway link his injuries in a matter - of - fact whole step . His right arm was “ cut to the osseous tissue ” ; his right kidney , ruptured ; liver and spleen , wound . Mary could have suffered a head injury . Her remembering was , Hemingway wrote , “ not too hot yet . ”
Some historians believe cumulative psyche injuries , including the one from the crash , may have impart to depression and cognitive fall later in his living . Hemingway go by suicide in 1961 .
Hemingway ’s letter about the incidents , which recently surfaced at Nate D. Sanders Auctions and fetched an impressive $ 237,000 , was handwritten because the author ’s fingers were too severely burned to typewrite .
