A recent post on the Hemingway Review blog inadvertently shared incorrect information about Ernest Hemingway visiting Jaén, Spain, on October 20, 1960.
Brewster Chamberlin’s book The Hemingway Log: A Chronicle of his Life and Times indicates that although Hemingway had recently visited Spain, he would have been back in the United States, traveling to Ketchum, at that time.
Robert Daley recounts in his book Swords of Spain that Kenneth H. Vanderford, a man perhaps better known as Hemingway’s double, is the individual who visited the Civil Governor of Jaén (134-35). Swords of Spain is available on Internet Archive (at archive.org). Gerry Dawes has also written about the incident in his book Sunset in a Glass: Adventures of a Food and Wine Road Warrior, as has James Michener in his book Iberia.
Despite Vanderford's denials that he was the real Hemingway, the Civil Governor invited him to dinner and proclaimed that Hemingway had honored him and several of his friends and deputies by dining with them. Vanderford explained to all the guests that he was not Hemingway and that he was often mistaken for him; they did not believe him and laughed, thinking that the writer was joking. When the Governor later realized the truth, he wanted to have Vanderford arrested.
Given Vanderford’s remarkable resemblance to Hemingway and the extraordinarily large number of apocryphal stories about Hemingway, it’s easy to see how the confusion arose.
I am grateful to Gerry Dawes and Miguel Izu for their efforts to correct the historical record.
Lisa Tyler, Editor, Hemingway Review blog