Ernest Hemingway’s personally-owned and -worn baseball cap, given to his longtime friend and biographer A. E. Hotchner during a fishing trip on the Pilar. The dark leather-brimmed cap measures approximately 7″ in diameter with a 3.25″ long brim. In overall very good condition, with expected wear. Accompanied by a letter of provenance from Hotchner, in full: “In 1955 I was on Ernest Hemingway’s boat, the Pilar, with him, when a heavy squall erupted and blew my cap into the sea. Ernest handed me his cap, and said he had another in the hold, and this was the cap he gave me. I wore it every time I went out on the Pilar with him.” Also includes an image of Hotchner wearing the cap in old age. Hotchner, who wrote the 1966 biography Papa Hemingway, visited Hemingway for three days from July 3–6, 1955, to discuss dramatizations of Hemingway’s works and to work on a screenplay for a television adaptation of The Snows of Kilimanjaro. A fantastic Hemingway relic with solid provenance.
