Visiting Hemingway in Cuba

David with Hemingway in CubaFor twenty years of his life, Ernest Hemingway lived on the outskirts of Havana, Cuba. I spent some time recently visiting with the man who wrote The Old Man and the Sea. In fact, I visited the place where the real old man used to put to sea.

This isn’t my first visit to Hemingway’s home. A few years ago I was in Key West, Florida, where he lived prior to moving to Cuba. It turns out Hemingway was a “crazy cat lady,” favoring six-toed cats that wandered freely throughout his compound. No sign of any cats roaming today’s Hemingway farm in Havana, although he remained a cat lover and there was no shortage of stray cats and dogs on the island.

Before arriving at Finca Vigia, which means “Lookout Farm,” I stopped in Cojimar, a small town east of Havana. It was here that Gregorio Fuentes, the real life inspiration for Hemingway’s fictional character Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea, set out for his daily fishing trips. Next to a ancient castle-like structure sits a plaza and memorial bust to Hemingway, loved by Cubans as much as Americans.

Finca Vigia is aptly named. It sits on hill overlooking Havana. The airy one story home is filled with books as Hemingway never threw anything away and loved to read. Even the bathroom has bookshelves (it also has his daily weight scrawled on the wall adjacent to a professional doctor’s scale). He would entertain friends on his six acres of land, which includes forest paths and a swimming pool tucked into the woods. Today, next to the pool, sits Hemingway’s 38-foot fishing boat, Pilar (Pilar was Hemingway’s nickname for his second wife, Pauline).

Hemingway studio in Cuba

Hemingway’s actual writing studio was at the top of a small tower next to the house’s back veranda. With views on all sides of Havana and the coastline, the room seems perfect for writing. Oddly, however, it seems Hemingway preferred writing in his bedroom. The beautiful tower studio was relegated to the cats.

I learned two interesting aspects of Hemingway’s personality in Cuba. While I already knew he was a big game hunter – every wall in the house has some stuffed animal head gazing down at visitors – Hemingway liked hunting animals that fought back. Big, angry animals that weren’t going to stand still waiting to get shot, and who, if you were to misfire, might kill you just as quickly as you intended to kill him. Perhaps today’s “hunters” using high powered rifles shooting placid animals held in “shooting parks” should take a note from the Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winning writer. I also learned that, besides being a “crazy cat lady,” Hemingway was a bit obsessive-compulsive. All of his hundreds (thousands) of books are ordered on the shelves by size. Not topic, order of acquisition, author. Nope. By size.

As a writer I can say it was inspirational to visit Hemingway’s homes, now two of them. Whether you like his writing or his lifestyle, every writer has to appreciate that he lived his life fully and is considered an icon in the writing world.

Now, back to writing.

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

Ernest Hemingway was a Crazy Cat Lady – A Writer’s Life

The key lime pie was a bit too sweet at the Six Toed Cat cafe on Whitehead Street, but the Cuban-inspired sandwich was perfect. We had stopped to get a very late lunch after driving to Key West from Key Largo in search of Ernest Hemingway. Little did we know the name of the cafe, next door to the Hemingway house, reflected the little known fact that Hemingway, considered one of America’s greatest writers, was a crazy cat lady.

Six toed catsNot literally, of course, but as the guide informed us during our tour, Hemingway let dozens of feral cats roam his grounds freely. Many of them had six toes, a condition called polydactyly for you scientist-types out there. I recalled from my marine biology days that sailors thought polydactyl cats were good luck, or at the very least were better at catching rats. In any case, Hemingway was given a six toed cat by a ship’s captain and well, cats breed. There are currently 40-50 cats on the Hemingway property, which the guides regularly trot out for photo-ops.

The two-story Spanish colonial house had been built in 1851 by wealthy marine architect and salvage wrecker Asa Tift, but a battle between heirs left the house boarded up and vacant for the 40 years before Hemingway and his second wife Pauline bought it in 1931. After Hemingway ran off with Martha (who eventually become his third wife), Pauline decided to spend $20,000 of his money replacing Hemingway’s prized boxing ring with a built-in pool. He was not amused.

Hemingway's writing studio

Not surprisingly, the most fascinating part of the house was his writer’s studio. Accessed by a catwalk over a gallery connecting his second-floor bedroom with an old carriage house, Hemingway had a large comfortable room where he consistently wrote from 6 am to Noon every day. I envied his discipline (not my strongest point) and his studio, though I have to admit I’m very happy to have computer keys to tickle and not his old (now rusty) manual typewriter.

Hemingway's typewriter

Hemingway wrote about 70 percent of his body of work in the nine years he lived in the “crazy cat lady” home on Key West. For those who don’t know, he moved to Cuba for many years, escaping when Fidel Castro’s revolution changed his world. He lived an exciting, some would say crazy, life, and when he wasn’t out deep sea fishing, crashing planes in Africa, or running with the bulls in Pamplona, he was winning a Nobel Prize for Literature. Tragically, for some reason he chose the slow-paced land of Idaho for his later years, where he tried to deal with alcohol abuse, a growing paranoia, and bouts of depression by getting electroconvulsive therapy at the Mayo Clinic. While a common treatment at the time, the therapy destroyed his memory and ability to write, leading Hemingway to deal with the ensuing boredom by excitingly ending his life with a double-barreled shotgun.

Notwithstanding his sad ending and the unlikelihood that I’ll ever live such an interesting life as he, Hemingway remains an icon of American writing. I envy his tight prose; his simple narratives accessible to all readers mirror what I would like to accomplish in my own writing. Where Hemingway brought his adventurous life to the masses, I seek to do the same with the science traveling life.

I’ll have more on the Florida trip, including stops in Miami Beach, the Everglades, Biscayne Bay, Key Largo, Key West, and the remote beauty and history of Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas. Stay tuned.

David J. Kent is an avid traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, now available. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (both Fall River Press). He has also written two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

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