Miscellaneous materials relating to Hemingway's East African air safaris, from the collection of his pilot, Captain Roy Marsh; [together with] by HEMINGWAY, Ernest - 1953

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,, 1953. The Old Man and the Sea. Together 13 items, all signed or inscribed by Hemingway to Marsh unless otherwise stated. The Old Man and the Sea: octavo. Original pale blue cloth, spine lettered in silver. With the dust jacket. 4 autograph letters: between 1 and 2 sheets, written in blue or black ink, dated between 2 February–12 June 1954. 1 typed letter: single sheet on Finca Vigia, San Francisco de Paula, Cuba headed note paper, dated 1955. 2 Hallmark Christmas cards: both single sheets folded twice, the second inscribed by Hemingway and his fourth wife Mary. 3 envelopes: hand or type written Airmail envelopes addressed to the Marshes at both their Nairobi, Kenya and Kericho, Kenya Colony homes. Marsh's unpublished manuscript account of the crashes: 33 pp., hand written on faintly lined cream notepaper in a "paperblanks saddleworn leather" notebook with magnetised fold-over fore-edge cover, signed and dated "Roy Marsh 18th. Oct. 2005". Includes coloured map of routes taken and a photocopy of a newspaper clipping picturing Hemingway and Marsh, taped-in on p. 30 verso. 1 blue folder containing transcriptions of Marsh's "Pilot's Account of the Hemingway Crashes" and the letters, with assorted other memorabilia. A remarkable archive of material, including a first edition, presentation copy of The Old Man and the Sea, inscribed from the author, from the collection of Captain Roy Marsh, Hemingway's pilot on the two near-fatal aeroplane crashes in East Africa in early 1954. Roy Marsh (1924–2014) later served as chief pilot with Air Mahe in the Seychelles and then as a private pilot for the Pahlavi royal family of Iran, who purchased D'Arros Island in the Amirantes Group of the Coralline Seychelles in 1975. "In order to view his beloved East Africa from another perspective, Hemingway hired a pilot named Roy Marsh to take him and Mary up in a Cessna 180 for a series of flights over such marvelous spots as the Ngorongoro Crater, the Mountains of the Moon in Ruanda-Urundi and the Murchison Falls in Uganda [all pictured on Marsh's map], where the Nile descends in various levels, rather than abruptly plunging down like Niagara. As Marsh circled over the Falls for the third time, he saw a flight of ibis in front of the plane and dove sharply under them. The plane's propeller and tail assembly struck a telegraph wire suspended above the gorge and Marsh was forced to crash-land in heavy bush. Mary suffered two broken ribs and Hemingway another shoulder sprain, but Marsh was unhurt" (Kenneth S. Lynn, Hemingway, 1987, p. 571). Hemingway recounts the incident in "The Christmas Gift", published in By-Line: Ernest Hemingway, Selected Articles and Dispatches of Four Decades (1967). On the following day, while attempting to reach medical care in Entebbe, the Hemingways boarded a second plane that exploded at take-off, with Hemingway suffering burns and another concussion, this one serious enough to cause leaking of cerebral fluid. Eventually they arrived in Entebbe – only to find reporters covering the story of the writer's demise. Hemingway briefed the reporters and spent the next few weeks recuperating and reading his erroneous obituaries. Marsh recounts these events in detail in his manuscript account, entitled "The Pilot's Account of the Hemingway Crashes". The Old Man and the Sea is the third printing with the title page dated 1953, the Scribner Press imprint on the copyright page and Scribner's "A" absent (as called for by Grissom). Hemingway's inscription on the verso of the front free endpaper reads: "For Roy Marsh, with all good wishes from his friend Ernest Hemingway, [illegible: possibly "Laitokitok" (present day Oloitokitok), the Kenyan town known to Hemingway, or "hailobilok", Hindi for "Hello guy"—Hemingway refers to Laitokitok and its "Hindu store"] 7/12/53 (1620)". Marsh's book label appears on the front pastedown.