by Stacy Schiff
30. “a big guy, very strong,” “Saint-Exu,” and “A cloud would pass”: From Henry de Ségogne’s recollections in Icare I, 91. Ségogne’s observations regarding SE’s work habits come from the same text.
31. “I am well”: LSM, 48.
32. “an appalling mess”: Generally the best descriptions of the drama leading to the writing of the ballad come from Ségogne’s published text (Icare I, 91–92) or his unpublished interview (archives of the Association des Amis de Saint-Exupéry). The ballad has been reprinted frequently and can be found in its entirety in the catalogue from the 1984 Saint-Exupéry exhibition at the Archives Nationales, 9.
33. “the album, not the binder”: LSM, 39. “I don’t like rissoles” and “Antoine propose”: LSM, 41. The remainder of his requests figure either in his published letters from Paris (LSM, 41ff.) or in the unpublished texts, ANAT. “Shoes—rubbers”: LSM, 84.
34. “hugely tender-hearted”: Ségogne, unpublished text. “He had a fierce”: Ségogne, Icare I, 91.
35. “I will rent”: LSM, 46.
36. The morality report and “oddly enough”: LSM, 43.
37. “I believe I will always”: LSM, 52.
38. SE’s report on Madame Jordan’s brochures, LSM, 56.
39. “Yvonne is a marvel”: ANAT.
40. The “irreproachable” wardrobe and “It was with her”: LSM, 53.
41. On Parisian life during World War I and especially on its gastronomic habits, no book is as delightfully informative as Gabriel Perreux’s La vie quotidienne des civils en France pendant la grande guerre (Paris: Hachette, 1966). See also William Wiser, The Crazy Years (London: Thames & Hudson, 1983).
42. “Aunt Rose is as ever”: LSM, 62.
43. “All of Paris is painted”: ANAT.
44. “witnessed a bit of war,” “It was just after,” and the plea for chocolate truffles: “Lettre d’un adolescent” published in Cahiers Saint-Exupéry I, 15.
45. On SE’s reenactment of the bombing, Simone de Saint-Exupéry in Cinq enfants dans un parc, as in most of her other pieces.
46. “very well-seated”: ANAT.
47. On the censors, and “That will put an end alive”: LSM, 57.
48. “What a bunch”: LSM, 58.
49. “The Gothas are back” and “N.B. I am”: LSM, 60.
50. “It’s a beautiful evening,” “I wish you were,” and “Useless to take”: LSM, 63.
51. SE’s letter to Simone regarding his Besançon schedule belongs to the family archives and was shown to me by Frédéric d’Agay.
52. SE wrote his mother of his enlistment plans, LSM, 71.
53. On the hijinks at the Lycée Saint-Louis, see Ségogne, Icare I, 92, and unpublished text, Association des Amis de Saint-Exupéry archives.
54. The irony of his having: LSM, 78.
55. “Grown-ups never question”: LP, 16 (translation mine).
56. “When I’m an engineer”: LSM, 86.
57. On his newfound love of theater, LSM, 82.
58. SE’s citation for drawing at Saint-Louis figures in the Archives Nationales 1984 exhibition catalogue, 9.
59. The École des Beaux-Arts has no record of SE having attended the school. Bernard Lamotte remembered him there, or at least in the neighborhood, Icare I, 96.
V SILVER LININGS
1. For a vivid and lively description of postwar literary Paris, see Noel Riley Fitch, Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation (New York: W. W. Norton, 1983). I have drawn as well on Marcelle Auclair and Françoise Prévost’s Mémoires à deux voix (Paris: Editions du Sevil, 1978) and Pierre Assouline’s Gaston Gallimard (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988).
2. “He himself must have” to “always a bit awkward”: Bernard Lamotte, Icare I, 96. “But … what the devil”: ANAT.
3. Theodore Zeldin has suggested that the bac failure rate has taken its toll on the French population, in France 1848–1945, II, 293.
4. “feed my nascent”: ANAT.
5. “everywhere I come across”: LSM, 79–80.
6. Renée de Saussine recalled SE’s toga recitations in “Les miroirs de l’Hôtel Créqui,” Miroir de l’Histoire, January 1958, 82.
7. “What a magnificent” and on SE’s silence: Renée de Saussine in her preface to LJ, 10.
8. On the Hôtel La Louisiane, Chevrier, 32. Carlos Baker gives a fine idea of Saint-Germain and its prices at this time in Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1969).
9. “well-liked friends”: LSM, 80.
10. “the sound of Niagara Falls” and “Why are you being”: Yvonne de Lestrange, Icare I, 95.
11. “What I shall be”: Jean Escot, “Un grand ami: Saint-Exupéry,” undated, unidentified clipping, Association des Amis de Saint-Exupéry archives, 20.
12. SE described his Strasbourg lodgings to his mother, LSM, 94. “An exquisite city” comes from the same letter.
13. “there is categorically”: LSM, 95. In the same letter he lobbied for a motorcycle and wrote of his boredom.
14. For the best account of the training of civilian and military pilots in the 1920s, see Petit, La vie quotidienne dans l’aviation, 177. Additional details of these years came from Edmond Petit during a conversation with the author, December 9, 1992.
15. “I will have a classroom”: ANAT. The arrival of the texts—and the requests for money—figure in this correspondence as well.
16. Asking his mother to take up his case with Captain de Billy, LSM, 97. Asking Gabrielle to do same, LSM, 99.
17. Robert Aéby wrote up his account of the odd goings-on at the Neuhof field a number of times. The account in Icare (“Le complot de Strasbourg,” Icare I, 98–101) is the most complete, but additional details can be gleaned from his article in DNA, April 14, 1973, and that in La France de l’Est, January 21, 1936.
18. “rather a pleasant thing”: Icare I, 99.
19. “memorable acrobatics sessions”: André Huguenet, Icare I, 102.
20. “My senses of space” and “the spins, the loops”: LSM, 102.
21. SE on the friends who took him up and “It holds the air”: LSM, 102–103. On the idea of volunteering for Morocco, LSM, 101.
22. “Maman, if you only knew”: LSM, 104. “It seems to me”: ANAT. “I’ve thought”: LSM, 106. “I swear to you” and “You told me”: LSM, 107.
23. “I need an occupation”: LSM, 107.
24. On Commander Garde’s conditions, see Aéby, who refers to him as Commandant Moser in his DNA article but as Garde in his other accounts. “A veritable conspiracy”: Aéby, Icare I, 98.
25. “I beg you, Mother”: LSM, 107.
26. The air time figures come from Aéby’s records, as SE—piloting clandestinely—had no logbook. Aéby’s logbook was in fact confiscated by the Germans in 1940, but he had previously copied out passages from it.
27. On the required hours of training, see Petit, La vie quotidienne dans l’aviation, 190.
28. “conservative flying”: LSM, 115. In the same letter SE voiced his frustration with the Farman.
29. Aéby recalled the conversation leading up to SE’s first solo in Icare I, 100. “If you only knew, Madame:” Aéby, Icare I, 101.
30. SE reported on the ministry’s decision, LSM, 114–15.
31. SE’s complaints about the heat and “To go as a pilot”: LSM, 115–16.
32. “Where are the; banana”: ANAT, and cited in the 1984 Archives Nationales exhibition catalogue.
33. “When I come across”: LSM, 123.
34. “You cannot commune”: From the original typescript of Terre des hommes, BN, microfilm no. 2343.
35. “The open-air barrack”: LSM, 120.
36. “Still this anguish”: LSM, 131. On SE’s newfound love of drawing, LSM, 121.
37. “Verse, drawing, all that”: LSM, 131.
38. “Tonight, by the peaceful”: LSM, 127–28.
39. “I spread out my maps”: WSS, 6–7.
40. “You’ve done everything
”: LSM, 124.
41. “Send me photos”: LSM, 125.
42. For SE’s air time and his itinerary, I am grateful to General Lucien Robineau at SHAA.
43. “of the Crusaders”: LSM, 134.
44. “If you could see me”: LSM, 131. On the cold: LSM, 134.
45. There is some confusion about Marc Sabran, who is always assumed to be the friend SE lost in 1926. French air force files do reveal the existence of two Sabrans (Marie Charles Emmanuel, born in 1897, and Marie Paul Émile, born in 1890), but neither died in Morocco in 1926. No other branch of the military has any record of a Marc Sabran. SE’s letters home allude to a death that seems to have been that of Sabran, of whom he never speaks after 1926; Simone de Saint-Exupéry as well reported in Saint-Exupéry (Hachette), 64, that Sabran had died in Morocco at that time.
46. “an appalling school,” on the planned resignation, and “mechanical and insipid”: LSM, 126.
47. “One feels as if”: LSM, 127. The descriptions of the stays with Priou: LSM, 126–30.
48. “I write you from”: LSM, 129.
49. “greatness comes first”: CARNETS, 66.
50. “I can’t complain” and the anticipated return: LSM, 136–37.
51. SE told Escot he had done all he could to fail the exam: Escot, Icare I, 107. The results of the qualifying exam are reproduced in Icare I, 106.
52. “Pants too large”: Escot in Icare I, 105. Louis Noirot remembered choosing his kepi with SE, Icare I, 120. SE bragged to Noirot about his Beaux-Arts background. “I didn’t like the looks”: Noirot, Icare I, 117. Emmanuel Breguet at SHAA very patiently fielded my questions about the early days of French military aviation.
53. “a surprising density of occupation”: The phrase is Jean Leleu’s, from his portrait of SE in Icare no. 30bis, Summer 1964 (hereafter Icare), 54.
54. “I am writing”: LSM, 140.
55. “Then I will marry,” “hard and bitter man,” and the request for money: LSM, 140.
56. if his mother’s telegram: Louis Noirot reported on SE’s habit of borrowing funds, Icare I, 117. Maximilian Becker gave him high marks for repaying his loans in a conversation with the author, November 8, 1991.
57. it is important to all that came: In all air force appraisals of his talent, SE was deemed a gifted and intelligent pilot. “Excellent pilote, ayant le feu sacré,” reads one report of 1924; “très consciencieux, excellente tenue et bon esprit militaire,” reads another. “Très bon pilote fin et précis ayant beaucoup de cran.… Apte à rendre les meilleurs services. Bel espoir, beau service,” read a report filed after an April 1926 training period. Dossier IP 6678, SHAA.
VI WALKING ON AIR
1. “I wonder what there is”: From Curtis Cate’s splendidly researched Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (New York: Paragon House, 1990), 68.
2. “At the very top”: Ségogne, unpublished interview, op. cit.
3. SE on the three Americans and “I don’t need her”: LSM, 142–43.
4. “to foster among,” “frugal bursar,” “Grand Poète”: Henri-Jean de Saussine very kindly provided me with a copy of the GB Club’s hilarious charter.
5. the magic of her childhood: Jean Chalon, Florence et Louise les magnifiques (Paris: Éditions du Rocher, 1987), 131.
6. “You spend your days”: ibid., 140.
7. “The queen of Italy” and “There was once”: ibid., 138.
8. “The magician of our adolescence”: Louise de Vilmorin, “Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Carrefour, August 26, 1944, 4.
9. “a tamed sprite”: Chalon, 116.
10. “They wanted to marry me”: Quoted in Jean Bothorel, Louise, ou la vie de Louise de Vilmorin (Paris: Grasset, 1993), 64.
11. an heirloom string of pearls: The story of Louise and the ill-fated necklace can be reconstructed from SE’s unpublished letters at ANAT.
12. “If Louise loved him”: André de Vilmorin, Essai sur Louise de Vilmorin (Paris: Pierre Seghers, 1962), 35–36.
13. The report of SE’s accident appeared in Le Figaro, May 2, 1923, 3. Additional details concerning the accident are drawn from Lt. Col. Delafond’s reports of May 1, 1923, and May 11, 1923, Air Force files, SHAA.
14. “I beg your forgiveness”: ANAT.
15. “lieutenant Saint-Escupéry”: Charles Sallès in Icare I, 82.
16. “his too-lively interest” and “Made to be a fighter”: Air Force files, SHAA.
17. “There is nothing”: ANAT.
18. “general staff”: Cocteau, cited in Vilmorin, Essai, 47.
19. “vague pachyderm”: Cited in Eric Deschodt, Saint-Exupéry (Paris: Lattès, 1980), 62.
20. in light of his upcoming nuptials: ANAT. He thought only of Louise: SE to his mother, ANAT (“Je ne pense qu’à Loulou,” he reported). “I’ve been trying”: ANAT. The jointly written letters are conserved at ANAT as well.
21. “He describes for me” and the rest of Louise’s description of the Reconvilier trip—including “Secretly, we manage” and “Like all the youth”—come from “Fièvre Promenade,” Marie-Claire, October 1955, 107–11.
22. “My wife’s opinion”: ANAT. SE was explaining to his mother why he was staying in Paris with Louise, at her suggestion, and not coming to Saint-Maurice.
23. “diplomatic calls”: ANAT.
24. “The practical side” and “Your impoverished son”: ANAT.
25. “Nothing satisfies Antoine”: Louise de Vilmorin, “Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,” Carrefour, August 26, 1944, 4. Renée de Saussine nearly repeated the same words, to Quercize, Marie-France, op. cit., May 1965, 251.
26. brother-of-the-bride: An especially fine photograph of the October wedding is reproduced in Icare 1, 67.
27. He was aware: SE’s apology is articulated most fully in the correspondence at ANAT. It figures in part in LSM, 144–45.
28. “clear things up” and SE begging for silence on the matter of the broken engagement: ANAT. The taxi incident is here as well. Marcelle Auclair saw SE just after this near-encounter with Louise and found him pale and shaken, Mémoires à deux voix, 179.
29. “I shall love you”: Cited in Chalon, 136.
30. “I have no faith”: Louise de Vilmorin, Carnets (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), 12.
31. “Oh, Loulou”: Quoted in Vilmorin, Essai, 37.
32. “What I need”: Cited in Bothorel, 65.
33. “Ne m’oubliez pas trop”: Ibid., 47.
34. “I should so much like”: Vilmorin, Essai, 39.
35. her father-in-law’s home: Frank Wright of the Nevada State Museum and Historical Society provided invaluable details on the Hunts and on Las Vegas in the 1920s.
36. “She knew the sesame”: SM, 36.
37. “She was a woman”: Chalon, 129. “Marilyn Malraux”: Chalon, 131. “Her union”: Chalon, 156. Louise confided the names of her great loves to Chalon, 142.
38. “frail child”: SM, 27. “underwater fairy”: SM, 30.
39. golden-haired sister: It was Simone who speculated as much, in Cinq enfants dans un parc.
40. “heavy-footed explorer”: SM, 22. “light-footed as the moon”: SM, 30.
41. “a habit of fortune” and “the 1,000 objects”: SM, 50.
42. “It was as if I had”: SM, 103.
43. “The day dawns”: WSS, 74; translation mine.
44. “the smile of superiority”: Anaïs Nin, Paris Revisited (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Capra Press, 1972), 7.
45. “Love me”: Cited in Chalon, 162.
46. “in which no action”: Cited in Vilmorin, Essai, 36.
47. “retain the light imprint”: SM, 117.
48. “I wasn’t made”: LSM, 153.
49. “I’ve tried every trick” and “It is precisely”: Letter to Charles Sallès, reprinted in Icare I, 88.
50. “like an evening gown”: Cited in LJ, 15.
51. “You would laugh to see me”: LSM, 149.
52. “douce intimité”: LSM, 150.
53. “Like a broken heart”: Sallès letter
, Icare I, 88.
54. “When I am rich”: LSM, 160.
55. On Saint-Maurice, its sale, and SE’s financial burdens: ANAT.
56. “I will probably get to be”: ANAT.
57. “I am the most discouraged”: Sallès, Icare I, 89.
58. On the Titania: Mme. Sautour kindly showed me around the hotel and verified the dates of SE’s stay. The writer occupied what is today room no. 75.
59. “Let me go first” and “Leave me the bigger”: Escot, Icare 1, 114.
60. shirt collars from his socks: LSM, 155.
61. “It will be my first joy”: LSM, 152.
62. no two joys resemble each other: LJ, 37.
63. “Je me porte”: ANAT.
64. “refaire son trousseau”: LSM, 156.
65. “special rates”: SM, 60.
66. “une cure de silence”: LJ, 53. Also in a letter to Ségogne reproduced in the 1984 Archives Nationales exhibition catalogue, 67.
67. “The I-haven’t-the-foggiest,” “Midnight sharp,” “The twentieth century,” “because it was nighttime,” “the day after yesterday,” “I don’t give,” and “The annual client”: A fine selection of Escot’s letters is reproduced in Icare I, 112–14.
68. “What a responsibility” and “full of little”: Sallès, Icare I, 88.
69. “sous-préfet’s ball”: LJ, 43. Also, LSM, 166.
70. “I set my hat down”: LJ, 45.
71. “My life is empty”: From a 1925 letter to Marie-Madeleine de Saint-Exupéry, reproduced in the Archives Nationales exhibition catalogue, 17.
72. an aristocrat-salesman: The point is made by Jesse R. Pitts, In Search of France (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), 244–49.
73. “Customers are selfish,” “Don’t even bother,” and “Here lies the last”: Escot letters in Icare 1, 112–14.
74. The average Saurer salesman: Or so reported Louise Régner in an interview with the author, November 18, 1991. It was Mlle. Régner who was to remember SE—with some consternation—as a different breed of salesman.
75. “After so long”: SM, 21.
76. “like an explorer”: LSM, 168.
77. “I don’t like people”: ANAT.
78. “You must forgive me”: LSM, 165.
79. “The more intimate the feeling”: ANAT.
