Lot n° 69
Estimation :
4500 - 5000
EUR
Result with fees
Result
: 4 613EUR
colette (1873-1954).
31 L.A.S. "Colette" (a "Colette de Jouvenel"), [1914-1917 and n.d.], to Annie de PÈNE; 120 pages of various sizes (the 1st in pencil, qqs cracks in the center folds), several on hotel headers, 9 envelopes.
Very nice set of letters to her friend Annie de Pène, notably from Verdun during the War, then from Italy, where she accompanied her husband Henry de Jouvenel.
[Désirée Poutrel, known as Annie de PÈNE (1871-1918), woman of letters and journalist, that Colette evokes in Le Fanal bleu, was first married to Charles Battendier (from whom she had a daughter, writer and journalist known as Germaine Beaumont, 1890-1983), then separated to live with the journalist Gustave
Téry. She met Colette around 1910 and became a close friend.
Colette will say that she was "like a precious refuge, at the beginning of the "great war"", welcoming Colette in the "phalanstery" of women, with Musidora and Marguerite Moreno. Annie de Pène died prematurely of the Spanish flu in 1918. Colette evokes in particular in these letters the War, and her husband Henry de Jouvenel ("Sidi"), whom she joins in Verdun, then follows in Italy in his diplomatic functions; but also her friend and confidant
Léon Hamel, the Confidences de femmes (1914) and Annie's reports in L'OEuvre, and the director of this newspaper, Annie's companion, Gustave Téry]. [Verdun, mid-December 1914]. She has still "not seen much of Sidi, but enough to see that he is as "very pretty" as a first class pharmacist, and that I have not been too much of a demerit in his eyes. [...] But what a fright at the Verdun station! The gendarme wanted to get us back on the train - simply. He threatened to come and get us here in four days, but... we'll get out of it"... Louise Lamarque did not sleep a wink on the train: "We passed on a gun track. Beautiful lightning in the night and beautiful deaf "boom". Don't be afraid, there was only one shell, in the whole day, that fell near the track. We are fighting very actively, Sidi tells me, a few kilometers from here"... [Around Christmas]. "Annie, if you heard Sidi's plans for the future, you would be divided, just by the middle, between admiration and scandal. I refuse to write them down, but I will tell them to you in the last detail." She would like to have "new springs put back on my big box spring in place of those which are... anaemic [...] But this borders on the chapter of sauciness". She talks about her cat (who made a stain on the letter), with "emerald eyes, a little blue.
[...] Hamel will tell you that I went to "see the battle" on the square of the Citadel. It is already beautiful to see, so close, the source of the pink gleams, and the round auroras in the mist, which light up and go out in the same tenth of a second. The noise is magnificent, varied, as varied as a storm, near, far, dry or round. Apart from "that", well, there is only that one does not speak about the war, here, and that one does not take care of it. The people of Verdun would twist themselves, if they saw Paris at the time when "La Liberté" shines...
Saturday [beginning of January 1915]. She is going to leave. "Sidi assures me that I will be able to come back here three weeks later"... She talks about black pudding, butter, truffles and gastronomic successes: "you will teach me beef in red wine, and crackers? [...] I am already planning crazy movie nights and incomparable hours at the Petit-Casino. The General Governor of the Place de Chaville, if he does not accompany us, will issue us a theater permit, round trip. If you had heard Sidi laughing on your paper of L'OEuvre! I say on, because he laughed on it as one wallows on a cushion"... [February]. "O Annie, how bad is this butter! I didn't have time to warn you, and I should have, because I had tasted, at Potin's, what ultra-salty nectar they were preparing for our soldiers. If they eat it, they will be forced to get drunk. [...] Le Matin? But throw yourself, claws out, on Beaurain, on my behalf, and all the couriers for Verdun will be at your feet! Your last two letters made us happy, Sidi only wants letters from you. (Like that, in Paris, I will be relayed: the even days for Annie, the odd days for me! She learns to play chess with Sidi: "I had only this proof of love to give him: I give it to him"... Verdun [May]. She announces her return. "My little Annie, I have nothing to say to you; your godson, revolted, wants to write to Téry to have another godmother. He has uttered abominable things about the inconstancy of women, at the same time as he spoke of you as one of his landed properties"... She tells of meeting Madame du Gast on the train, "wearing a hat covered with cherries, made up like an August peach, unclothed and adorned with a thousand false pearls [...] They say the war is going well. I see it here under a very local aspect, which con
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