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LETTER 06

IT’S SO CURIOUS

Colette to Marguerite Moreno

10 April 1923

Born to Jules-Joseph Colette and Adèle-Eugenie Sidonie in Burgundy in 1873, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette – known simply as Colette to her many fans – was a leading French writer responsible for dozens of bestselling novels and short stories, and, as a journalist, numerous essays and articles. She also lectured, wrote plays, danced and acted. In 1948, she was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1912, her mother, Sido, died of cancer. Just as Sido had refused to wear mourning clothes following the death of Colette’s father, so too did Colette when her mother passed away. She also chose not to attend her funeral. But for many years she continued to grieve. Eleven years after the death of her mother, Colette wrote this letter to French actress Marguerite Moreno.

THE LETTER

Paris, April 10, 1923

Hello, my dear creature,

As I think you will get this letter in the morning, how did you sleep, and for how long?

I’ve just come back and can’t shake the memory of your departure from this house, from which you left shrouded and crying like an exile.

Guess what, I arrived home – to lunch on my own – and I opened the drawer of my little desk to get some money – and a single letter fell out: it was a letter from my mother, one of her last, written in pencil with unfinished words and already suffused with her departure.

How strange: one can successfully resist tears and “hold” oneself very well in the hardest hours. But then, someone makes a friendly gesture behind a window, one notices a blossom which was just a bud yesterday, – or a letter slips from a drawer – and everything falls apart.

I’ll pick up some green paper for you this afternoon. How good you were, how kind. I admire you, I’m so used to the feeling. See you soon. You’re coming the day after tomorrow? Will I see you? I kiss you from the bottom of my heart. Don’t forget me amongst your friends, they are equally mine because they love you, and I’m only jealous of the good they do for you.

Your

Colette