COLETTE (Sidonie Gabrielle). - Lot 73

COLETTE (Sidonie Gabrielle). 1873-1954. Born in Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye. Novelist. L.A.S. "Colette de Jouvenel" to a lady. [Paris] 9 Bd Suchet, n.d. (Great War, from 1916). 1 folio page. Slate paper. Colette has received a note from her husband: ...He has an accidental 48-hour leave and is going on Sunday. I find myself embarrassed... she continues, ...to have given an appointment on Saturday to Mrs. Lota Besnard, whose address I do not know. May I have recourse to your extreme kindness? If she would like to come on Wednesday at 2:30 a.m.? In 1914, Colette was 40 years old, divorced from Willy, her first husband. Colette now wrote columns for Le Matin, whose editor-in-chief, Henri de Jouvenel, had become her husband in 1912. Mobilized in 1914, Jouvenel went to Verdun. After the men had left, Colette wrote about the women working and the wounded in a capital deserted by its inhabitants. In 1915, she visited Henri de Jouvenel in Verdun, and pushed her curiosity a little further into the Argonne. She brought back war reports for Le Matin. They were published in Les Heures Longues in 1917. La République, L'Éclair, La Vie parisienne, Marie-Claire, Paris-Soir all wanted Colette's signature. She even published in Le Figaro. In November 1916, Colette moved to 69 boulevard Suchet, in a house that had belonged to the actress Ève Lavallière.