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eBook Category: Travel
eBook Description: Hemingway House in Cuba: Finca Vigia--Photo eBook is the first eBook to deliver 45 high-resolution color photographs of Ernest Hemingway's Cuban residence, Finca Vigia. The photographs, taken by James Reese in December 2002, reveal rarely seen details of Hemingway's Cuban home lifestyle and idiosyncrasies. Each photograph can be printed and is suitable for 8 x 10 or 8.5 x 11 framing. Photographs have been optimized for the new free Adobe Reader 6.0, which allows full screen viewing with complete zoom and pan control. Popup notes in the margins provide comments without cluttering the printed photograph. Zoom and see that Hemingway kept copies of Today's Japan, Gadfly, and Fishing Gazette in his living room magazine rack; zoom to see his US military insignia and lieutenant's bar, duck call, spent cartridges/shotgun shells, all on his study desk; zoom to count the number of books in his bathroom "library" and to see that "Houdini" is four books away from "The Accounting"; zoom on his bathroom wall to see that on April 1, 1960 he recorded 200 as his weight; zoom to see that it is a Royal Portable typewriter on his bookshelf where he typed standing up; zoom on the scenic view from the Tower to see the Capitolio Nacional in Old Havana. Since 1960 few Americans have seen Cuba, and even fewer have seen Finca Vigia. Finca Vigia or "Lookout Farm," is a 19th century villa set on the top of a hill overlooking the village of San Francisco de Paula. These days Finca Vigia functions as a showpiece museum, Museo Hemingway de Cuba. It is left exactly as it was when Hemingway lived there, filled with his books, music and his collection of hunting memorabilia, looking as if the writer had gone on an errand. James Reese is an economics professor at the University of South Carolina Spartanburg. During 2002, Dr. Reese attended seminars at the University of Havana and served as consultant to and member of the official South Carolina trade delegation to Havana.

eBook Publisher: 864.com, Published: 2003
Fictionwise Release Date: September 2003

Available eBook Formats:
All formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
Adobe Reader ISBN: 1932572007

History of Finca Vigia

The house's origins go back to the last century. In 1887 the Catalan architect Miguel Pascual y Baguer bought the property for his wife to recover from the loss of two of their children. He built the house and lived there with his family until 1903. Years later he sold it and it was inhabited successively by several French families until 1939.

Ernest Hemingway moved to Cuba in 1939 with his soon-to-be third wife Martha Gellhorn. Martha finds a newspaper ad to rent a rustic 13-acre farm residence on a hillside on the outskirts of Havana and convinces her husband to visit it. Hemingway rents the house and later he becomes its new owner.

After the war and the breakup of his marriage to Martha, Hemingway returned to Cuba with his soon-to-be fourth wife, Mary Welsh Hemingway. In 1947 Mary Welsh added her touch, most notably building the ?Tower? with the objective that it would be her husband's work place.

During the 1950?s, Hemingway suffered with a long list of health problems. By 1960, Mary was no longer able to take care of Hemingway by herself, so they left Cuba and moved to Ketchum, Idaho where they had bought a home near Sun Valley. They left their Cuban house as is, leaving behind books, letters, photographs, manuscripts and clothes. Six months later Hemingway committed suicide. In 1962, Mary donated Finca Vigia to the Cuban government. The house is preserved exactly how the Hemingway's left it in 1960.

The House

Palms and jacarandas line the long driveway that today opens onto a large car park and kiosk, with a pedestrian-only driveway continuing up to the house. The house is a white, one-story hacienda shaded by palm trees. A multitude of tropical flora and exotic plants grow everywhere.

The house has large, well-proportioned rooms, tile floors and tall, arched windows. Rooms flow into one another without hallways and few doors. The windows are open and unscreened. Furnishings are simple. There are clean, modern lines in the furniture, stacks of magazines and about 9,000 books, works of art, and 800 records (mostly jazz). Hunting trophies are everywhere--antelope heads in the dining room, a water buffalo in the study/bedroom, and a leopard skin on the library sofa. In the bathroom, there are yet more books (50+) next to the toilet, and a record of his weight that he penciled messily on the wall from 1955 to 1960 when his health was failing due to diabetes, cirrhosis and high blood pressure.