Saint-exupery: A Biography

by Stacy Schiff

  Early in 1917 François de Saint-Exupéry fell ill and withdrew from school. By May he had still not returned to Fribourg, and Madame de Bonnevie broke the news to Antoine that his brother was suffering from rheumatic fever. On July 10, at the age of fifteen, François died of a heart attack in his bed at Saint-Maurice. He was buried in the small family cemetery on the estate.

  Saint-Exupéry wrote directly about the event only once. By the time he did so twenty-five years had elapsed, and he was inaccurate on at least two counts. He claimed to have been fifteen at the time, when in fact it was François who had been fifteen. (Not too much should be made of this slip, as Saint-Exupéry was habitually inexact with dates.) And he claimed he had only recently learned of the body’s relative lack of importance, a lesson he felt he should have gleaned—and clearly had—at the time of his brother’s death. (As he phrased it in 1943, “The body is an old crock that nobody will miss.”) Saint-Exupéry had lived the better portion of the intervening years in perfect defiance of this. Otherwise the account, the only one we have, is peculiar but could well be true: Twenty minutes before he was to die François had asked his nurse to call his brother to his bedside. It was 4:00 a.m. He was evidently in great pain, but this he waved away with his hand: “ ‘Don’t worry,’ ” he assured Antoine, ‘I’m all right. I can’t help it. It’s my body.’ ” With pride and embarrassment he settled his worldly possessions on his elder brother: “Had he been a builder of towers he would have bequeathed to me the finishing of his tower. Had he been a father, I should have inherited the education of his children. A reconnaissance pilot, he would have passed on to me the intelligence he had gleaned. But he was a child, and what he confided to my care was a toy steam engine, a bicycle, and a rifle.” If the demise of another blond-haired boy in Saint-Exupéry’s work has any connection with this event, François then “remained motionless for an instant. He did not cry out. He fell as gently as a tree falls.” Shortly thereafter, Antoine photographed his brother on his deathbed.

  To only one friend did he seem to speak at any length about François in the next few years. (He was in general circumspect with his emotions, and his silence is best read as an indication of an event’s import.) Clearly he had lost his closest confidant: “He reckoned that he had lost a friend whose company would have been valuable to him at all times.” Especially distraught by the loss was Gabrielle, who had been inseparable from François, to whom she was closest in age. Her surviving brother folded her in his arms after the death. Quietly he promised, “I will do my best to replace all the brothers in the world for you.” He was now the only man in the family.

  ~

  During the summer of 1917 Madame de Saint-Exupéry did all she could to distract her son from his sorrow. A change of locale seemed the most effective remedy, and late in July Antoine was shipped off for a series of visits, some more successful than others. (His sisters appear to have stayed with their mother.) He alighted first on his grandparents in Le Mans, where Fernand de Saint-Exupéry, who had been at work on a history of the family, attempted to interest him in his genealogical investigations. With his cousins he went to the family villa in Carnac, on the coast of Brittany, to which he had been a visitor during his Le Mans years. This time he was less than perfectly amused, on account of his cousin Guy, to whom he had developed a strong aversion. He journeyed next and more happily to the Bonnevie château in the Creuse, arriving for a monthlong visit in late August, during which he fell in love once again. He spent four hours a day on horseback and somewhat less time on math, which he seemed to enjoy; he wondered when he might hope to see his mother again.

  Sometime during the summer it was decided—if it had not been already, in which case it was odd that Antoine had until now concentrated his studies on arts and letters—that he would aim for admission to the École Navale, the French equivalent of Annapolis. It was a natural choice for a Saint-Exupéry in 1917, if not for a future aviator. He was without the example of a father, which in the great majority of cases determines one’s profession in a tradition-bound country (and in any event Jean de Saint-Exupéry had not blazed a particularly illustrious path for his son), but three and four generations back there were naval officers in the family. Moreover, there was a war on. Traditionally, too, in France the navy—the monarchist stronghold among the armed services—suffered fewer casualties than the other branches of the military. The first step toward the entrance exam for the naval academy was a preparatory school in Paris, where Saint-Exupéry—along with the candidates for some of the other grandes écoles, institutions that existed apart from the university system, to which no competitive exam was required—was to be steeped in higher mathematics. An assembly of the country’s best and brightest, the Lycée Saint-Louis boys were divided into groups named for their destinations: the flottards for the naval academy, the cyrards for the military academy at St. Cyr, the taupins (or moles) for the École Polytechnique, the pistons for the school of engineering. A healthy rivalry kept them in their places; the pistons were the flottards’ mortal enemies; the flottards were, in Saint-Exupéry’s opinion, the most vivacious, the cyrards the least so. Together one day the graduates of these schools would, along with the alumni of the other grandes écoles, the great majority of them engineers by training, make up the mandarinate which ran, and still runs, France.*

  Henry de Ségogne arrived at the École Bossuet, in Paris, in the fall of 1917 and was almost immediately assaulted by a hulking cyrard. He was saved by “a big guy, very strong, broad-shouldered, a bit ill at ease in his body. He was hardly an Adonis, but his slanted eyes and turned-up nose hinted at a strong and unique personality.” Immediately the two became friends—it was in Ségogne whom Saint-Exupéry confided his regret about François—and with three others formed an inseparable group that would make its way daily from the École Bossuet, where the boys boarded and studied, to the Lycée Saint-Louis, on the other side of the Luxembourg Gardens, where their courses were held. With Ségogne, Bertrand de Saussine, Albert de Dompierre, and Élie de Vassoigne (whose father was at the time an aide-de-camp of the French president), “Saint-Exu,” as he now became, had a tight circle of friends. He seems to have thrived because of it, but he was not always available to the group either. He remained somewhat aloof: “A cloud would pass—and Saint-Exu would retreat into himself.… It was easy to think he was pouting, but that was not the case. He had momentarily withdrawn into his fortress.” The bande concocted pranks of all kinds, but Saint-Exupéry’s engagement with another world kept him from associating entirely with his friends; the man whose philosophy would be founded on the camaraderie of men was, during these years, more often described as shy, secretive, and unsociable. It was also true that the first social circle of this democratic champion of the work ethic was a thoroughly aristocratic one.

  Saint-Exupéry worked, wrote Ségogne, the way he played: when he felt like it. He was capable of fierce concentration bordering on obsession; the tragedy, according to Ségogne, was that his gifted classmate could not seem to muster any interest in the assigned course work. In the highly directed, competitive atmosphere of Saint-Louis this was a huge liability. Had advanced mathematics not been part of the program it seemed sure that Saint-Exupéry would have devoted himself to its study, as he indeed did later, when it was too late to prepare for the École Navale. His unorthodox approach was not lost on his professors, although it may have been less apparent to his mother, who knew of her son’s academic limitations but to whom he wrote always of how hard he was working. “I am well physically, morally, and mathematically speaking,” he signed one letter; he reported that in his professor’s opinion there was every hope that he would pass the Navale exam; he was moving up in the class, despite the fact that he had a good deal of catching up to do after three years in which he had prepared only letters; he had received the equivalent of a C–, which for him was not bad. No one seems to have wondered what this irrepressible litterateur was doing at Navale, least of all Saint-Exupéry himself; suc
h questions were not asked in France, in wartime, in the 1910s, especially of young aristocrats.

  Impressed by their student’s obvious if undirected talents, Saint-Exupéry’s professors mercifully did their best to play to his strengths. On occasion this proved impossible. In the Bossuet study hall Ségogne and Saint-Exupéry enjoyed the rare privilege of working at individual desks at either end of the room, while the rest of the class of forty occupied wooden benches along a long communal table. The desks were luxurious in several respects: the chairs were markedly more comfortable than the bench, which had no back and which could not be rocked backward; those who worked at the communal table were forced to store their books neatly in a set of open cubbies, while the desks offered more privacy. Saint-Exupéry abused this privilege, to the extent that his desk was described as “an appalling mess.” His disorder did not escape the attention of Abbé Genevois, who repeatedly asked his student to clean out the desk if he did not want to risk losing it. Saint-Exupéry ignored this advice, with the result that one day the Abbé—“like Jupiter unleashing his thunder”—announced that he was to spend his break changing places with a classmate, to whom he was to relinquish his post. Always sensitive to criticism, Antoine was visibly shaken by this outburst. He did not, however, choose the obvious course of atonement.

  First he vented his spleen, dissecting the Abbé’s irreproachable character before Ségogne, who had remained at his side. Then he calmly fished a clean sheet of paper from his desk and composed a ballad, one of the few to have been passed on to posterity from the Lycée Saint-Louis:

  I sat in the back, to the side, J’étais dans le fond de l’étude

  a desk hardly worth a dollar. un petit bureau sans valeur.

  Yet I was like a badge of pride Je faisais la béatitude

  to my illustrious owner. de mon illustre possesseur

  Black as a native of the tropics, Noir comme un citoyen d’Afrique,

  worn down by years of bleakest tasks, usé par d’austères travaux,

  I was, prudent and pacific, j’étais, discret et pacifique,

  by far the most serene of desks. le plus paisible des bureaux.

  Well positioned by the window, Bien au frais sous une fenětre,

  sunning myself like a lizard, gonflant mon dos comme un lézard,

  I was endowed by my master j’étais gratifié par mon maître

  with disorder, approaching art. d’un beau désordre, effet de l’art.

  Our serenity was profound. La paix, là-bas, était profonde.

  Nothing troubled our staid repose. Rien ne troublait notre repos.

  We were more sheltered from the world Nous étions retirés du monde

  than the happy dead in their tombs. mieux que les morts dans leur tombeau.

  Any wish I might have expressed Les souhaits que je pouvais faire

  was confined to the status quo. se bornaient tous au status quo.

  But my peace was evanescent. La paix ne fut que passagère.

  And I, old hunk of rococo, Et moi, vieux meuble rococo,

  was banished from this perfect calm. banni de cette quiétude,

  Like a king, I was driven out, je fus exilé, comme un roi.

  to moulder in another room, Je moisis dans une autre étude,

  o my dear master, far from thou. o mon vieux maître, loin de toi.

  ENVOI ENVOI

  You, who in a single motion, Prince, qui par un geste inique,

  denied all our good protests, êtes devenu son bourreau,

  please, touched by its petition, daignez, touché par sa supplique,

  do return to me my little desk. me rendre mon petit bureau.

  Once he had completed his petition he copied it on to the blackboard, from which the Abbé, on his return, asked that it be erased immediately. Ségogne saved the day, copying down the ballad and sharing it with the instructor in his office that evening. The Abbé, a man not known for the kind of outburst Saint-Exupéry had provoked from him, could not resist this elegant entreaty. Saint-Exupéry was told he could keep his desk, but advised to keep it in order. Charming though it may be, the incident could not have done much to disabuse him of the notion that a different set of rules applied to the rich in spirit.

  Otherwise his high spirits were held much in check during his first year at Bossuet, partly by the financial constraints he experienced while a boarder in Paris. Ségogne theorized that his friend restrained himself from some of the boys’ more outrageous episodes out of deference to his mother, who had made certain sacrifices for her son, and whom he did not want to disappoint. If this was indeed the case, Antoine almost certainly drove her to hand-wringing on other counts.

  Demanding: This was the word that Saint-Exupéry’s letters to his mother from Saint-Louis most often bring to mind. The first of these set the tone for the rest. In it the student requested a letter every day; his photo album (“the album, not the binder”); chocolate truffles, in quantity. He was particularly specific on this last count: “I don’t like rissoles.… I like real pâtisserie, macaroons, chocolate truffles (not praline-flavored!!!) and candies.” He reminded his mother that she was well-informed and, in jest, coined a formula that would seem less and less droll as it appeared over the next years more and more true: “Antoine propose, et la famille dispose. “Within a month or so he had asked for a bowler hat (or that the money with which he might buy one be sent to a friend of Madame de Saint-Exupéry’s in Paris), toothpaste, shoelaces (purchased in Lyons and not in Ambérieu, because the Ambérieu laces were decidedly inferior), stamps, a sailor’s hat, his atlas, photographs of his sister, more letters from home. His letters so habitually closed with requests that after a while he abbreviated them only to shopping lists: “shoes—rubbers—spending money.”

  As exacting as these letters were—and would remain, although soon enough the student would confine his demands to mail, money, and his mother’s opinion—Saint-Exupéry showed himself to be “hugely tender-hearted.” Ségogne was quick to recognize his acute sensitivity: “He had a fierce need for friendship, warmth, and trust, let us say for a good deal of affection, without which his personality did not flourish.” He keenly felt the distance from his mother and his sisters, from the tenderness of Saint-Maurice. In his letters he was as adoring as demanding. He complained of his ten-hour workday but told his mother he was happy; if only she were nearer he would be in seventh heaven. Repeatedly he mentioned that when he was made an officer he would want her to come to live with him: “I will rent a little house where we will live the two of us together; I will have three days in port and four days at sea, and during the three days on land you and I will be together. It will be the first time I will be alone in life, and I will certainly need my mother to protect me a bit in the beginning! You will see, we will be happy.” He made every attempt to divert her when he knew her to be ill, even when he claimed there was nothing “remotely amusing” to his days. He must have succeeded; the letters are charming, even when they consist mostly of gibberish and caricatures. And, too, he knew the way to Madame de Saint-Exupéry’s heart. He issued a report on the morality of the Bossuet dormitories, in which he assured his mother that while there were obviously fewer religious souls than at a religious school, there was, “oddly enough, much more human respect.” His classmates were more serious than the ones he had known in the past, regardless of their convictions. As for any fears Madame de Saint-Exupéry might have had about her adolescent son in the City of Light at a time when its morals were more than usually lax, he assured her that “I believe I will always remain your same Tonio who loves you so.”

  ~

  In fact Saint-Exupéry was, under the wings of various cousins and family friends, quickly discovering the glories of Paris. He had the best of guides. From his accounts of his social life it is difficult to believe that he was working ten-hour days and six-day weeks, much less that France was at war during his Saint-Louis period. He sought out a number of people, perhaps of his own initiative because
he was a little lonely, perhaps at his mother’s insistence. The Sinétys were in Paris from time to time, as were, more frequently, the Bonnevies; the Bonnevies allowed him the occasion to see Jeanne de Menthon again, with whom he had fallen in love during the summer of 1917 and who continued to charm him. Both Ségogne and Bertrand de Saussine invited him home regularly. He saw his aunts Alix and Anaïs de Saint-Exupéry, as well as his mother’s younger brother, Jacques de Fonscolombe, and the family of his great-aunt de Fonscolombe, as well as his mother’s second cousin Yvonne de Lestrange. Among the friends of his mother’s on whom he called was Madame Jordan, whom he visited weekly, occasionally spending Saturday night with her family. Madame Jordan charged herself with the young man’s moral supervision and bestowed on him a series of brochures to forewarn him of the kinds of dangers that he might encounter. He reported to his mother that he had dutifully shared these with his classmates; their reaction can too easily be imagined.

  First among the relatives he ranked Yvonne de Lestrange, whom he designated the most charming, creative, refined, intelligent, kind, superior person he knew. “Yvonne is a marvel, she is exquisite, it is impossible to be bored for a second with her, she explains all the wonders of Paris—what a pleasure. She has ideas, she is interested in everything, in math as well as the rest—in short, she is perfection.” At the time the Duchess de Trévise, Yvonne de Lestrange occupied a lavish hôtel particulier on the quai Malaquais, steps from the Gallimard offices and very nearly the publisher’s unofficial boardroom; most of the staff of the La Nouvelle Revue Française, the prestigious, Gallimard-owned literary monthly known as the NRF, went home at night via her salon. She not only took her young cousin for walks through Paris but played the piano for him, invited him to the opera, and read his verse, which she pronounced mediocre and overly sentimental. If Saint-Exupéry was discouraged by this opinion we have no record of it; in any event, Yvonne de Lestrange would later provide the key to her cousin’s literary future. Every bit as cultivated as Antoine reported her to be, she proved to be a revelation to her sensitive cousin, who for all of his fine education and privilege was still far from being a Parisian.