After the Conch Tour Train, we had lunch on busy Duval Street and headed east 8 blocks to the Ernest Hemingway House for a tour.
Loren, the tour guide (who lives on a sailboat in the harbor), spoke for 30 minutes as he led us through Hemingway's house, studio, and grounds, giving insight into the Nobel Prize winning author who lived and worked here from 1931 to 1939. It was here that Hemingway wrote the final draft of A Farewell To Arms.
Hemingway's wife, Pauline, furious that her husband went overseas as a war correspondent with his mistress, spent $20,000 on an in-ground pool. When he returned he allegedly said, "Well, you might as well have my last cent." That penny is embedded today in concrete near the pool. Hemingway converted a urinal obtained after a renovation at Scotty's Bar into a water fountain in the yard, where it remains today and serves as one of the water sources for the house's cats.
Apparently none of the items in the house, including furniture or books, except for one chandelier, can be documented as having belonged to Hemingway. In 1935, when the visitor's bureau included the home in a tourist brochure, Hemingway had the high brick wall built that surrounds the property.
