The Hotel Mercure Sevilla, where we recently stayed in 2015, is where Hemingway wrote some of Farewell To Arms, but it’s also known as the place Graham Greene chose to write one of his many prize-winning novels.
Typically when we went on holidays to some other country, I read works that told me something about the country I was visiting. So, in preparation for our trip to Cuba, I read The Old Man And The Sea by Hemingway, and Our Man In Havana, by Graham Greene.
I was surprised to discover, while I was there and in the midst of reading Greene’s novel, that the author had used the Hotel Sevilla as a backdrop in his novel, a story about Wormold, a vacuum cleaner salesman, who becomes an unlikely British spy just before Cuba’s revolution.
Maybe the hotel’s criminal past inspired Greene to use it in his novel to emphasize the shadiness of what his protagonist was involved in.
“They groped their way through the darkness of the Seville-Biltmore Bar. They were only dimly aware of their fellow-guests, who sat crouched in silence and shadow like parachutists gloomily waiting the signal to leap.”
You have to admit, that excerpt from Our Man In Havana is wonderful writing. It’s always a delight to discover a writer who can so vividly immerse you in his story.
An Unexpected Surprise
And then when I read, “the rooms were built as prison-cells round a rectangular balcony”, I could see it, as our room was on the fifth floor that looked just like that.
And of course, the line, “ Wormold got to the bottom of the stairs while Dr. Hasselbacher was still manoeuvring the first step; 501 was close by”, prompted me to investigate that very room. It was just down the hall from 509, the room where we stayed.
Much to my delight, the hotel had a ceramic plate beside the 501 door, mentioning the fact that the author had written about this room in his novel. I love little surprises like that. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I love writing and reading so much, that I place stock in the well-written word and a story that is rooted in reality.
The hotel is also where mobsters – Lucky Luciano, Al Capone, and Meyer Lansky – conducted business in the 1920s. It was called the Hilton Baltimore back then, and had a casino.
And Josephine Baker was one of the performers who entertained the guests.
As for the hotel, I did see some young men buried in their laptops in the lobby, tapping away while an opera singer entertained the guests seated on nearby couches.
Were the laptop enthusiasts writers? I don’t know. But since I’m an opera fan, it bothered me that they were oblivious to the arias that were being sung so beautifully.
But then again, maybe they were writing an epic story. Or maybe they were just using the Wi-Fi in the hotel, a service not easily found in Havana.
Comments are always appreciated.
What a cool trip! So much literary history.
Yes, that was a surprise. I knew about Hemingway, and stumbled upon Graham Greene. Now I want to read more of his works.