COLETTE, Sidonie-Gabrielle (1873-1954)

COLETTE, Sidonie-Gabrielle (1873-1954)

Autograph letter signed « Colette » to Jean Guillermet
[22nd March 1945], 1 p. 1/4 in-4° on blue paper
Period fold marks

Colette can’t wait to see her friends from the Beaujolais region

« Cher Jean Guillermet,
Je suis mélancolique parce que Waterman ne m’a pas renvoyé mes trois stylos, et je ne sais à qui, ni ou, les réclamer.
Quand revenez-vous à Paris ? Je vous envoie à tous deux mes pensées bien amicales. Quand j’aurai du gruyère et tout et tout, j’essaierai de réaliser la recette de soupe à l’ognon qui est dans l’Almanach 35 [Almanach du Beaujolais, edited by Jean Guillermet].
Votre vieux ami
Colette »

Colette’s concerns may seem futile here when we know that a few weeks earlier she was asked to defend Robert Brasillach (who himself had approached the German Institute to rescue her husband from the clutches of the Gestapo in 1941). She joined Valéry, Cocteau, Claudel and Camus in signing the petition asking for the writer’s pardon. De Gaulle refused to commute the sentence and Brasillach was executed by firing squad on 6 February 1945.

A humanist and philanthropist, Jean Guillermet (1893-1975) strove all his life to make Beaujolais known. Among other things, he published an annual Almanac extolling the qualities of this terroir and in particular its wine. Colette met Madeleine, wife of Jean Guillermet, in the summer of 1943. Madeleine immediately invited Colette to stay at her home in Limas near Villefranche-sur-Saône, in the heart of the Beaujolais vineyards. It was therefore very natural that Colette, a great epicurean and lover of good wines, became friends with the Guillermet couple. They maintained a regular correspondence until the writer’s death in 1954.