by Stacy Schiff
80. “One needs to learn”: LJ, 35.
81. “One needs to live.” LJ, 22.
82. “Métaphysique de concierge:” Renée de Saussine recalled the line and the incident in a radio interview broadcast on France-Culture, July 30, 1974.
83. “concerned themselves overly”: LSM, 157.
84. “I have never loved anything”: ANAT.
85. “Café society” and “I like people:” LJ, 69–70.
86. “the obstacle”: SE, Oeuvres (Paris: Gallimard Pléiade, 1959), 139. Hereafter cited as Pléiade.
87. “Mozart assassiné”: Pléiade, 261.
88. “I cannot live”: ANAT.
VII FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES
1. Hemingway on shortchanging Prévost: Fitch, 145. After 45 seconds, Baker, 145.
2. “Go sit in back”: Michel Prévost, Les Nouvelles Littéraires, August 1, 1946, 1.
3. “I met him through friends”: Prévost’s editorial note appears at the end of “L’Aviateur,” Le Navire d’Argent, April 1926, 287.
4. “Dear Sir: I regret”: Auclair and Prévost, Mémoires à deux voix, 177.
5. “an aviation and mechanical expert”: Le Navire d’Argent, April 1926, 287.
6. “who flies like a pig”: ibid., 284. “Shut down”: ibid., 285. “Ils font un métier”: ibid., 282.
7. “is wholly contained”: Guéhenno cited in Herbert R. Lottman, The Left Bank (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1982), 9.
8. “l’esprit NRF”: Pierre Assouline, Gaston Gallimard (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988), 24.
9. General Édouard Barès: For many details concerning the general’s position and responsibilities I am grateful to his son, José Barès. Barès’s inscribed copy of Wind, Sand and Stars belongs today to the Musée Air France.
10. like a dance card: The CAF flights appear in SE’s early logbook, a copy of which is conserved in the archives of the Association des Amis de Saint-Exupéry.
11. “Madame, let me”: Quoted in Deschodt, 75.
12. SE complained to Escot: Escot, “Un grand ami: Saint-Exupéry,” op. cit., 20.
13. “with sadness and humiliation”: Cited in Richard McDougall, The Very Rich Hours of Adrienne Monnier (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976), 196. See also Adrienne Monnier, Les Gazettes d’Adrienne Monnier, 1925–45 (Paris: Julliard, 1953), 49. “this perpetually temporary life” and “beaucoup de petits”: LSM, 16. Only ever met one woman: LSM, 161.
14. “That’s what one needs”: LSM, 168.
15. “unreal little existence”: This letter—which SE had written to Diomède Catroux in early 1944—was published for the first time in Le Monde, July 29, 1950. The line in full reads: “J’éprouve un vague malaise à vivre ces nuits hors du temps, parmi cette végétation parasite; ces gens me font l’effet de champignons qui, greffés sur un arbre qu’ils ignorent, poursuivent avec candeur leur cruelle petite existence.“
16. “All my friends get married”: Decour, Le Figaro Littéraire, July 8, 1950.
17. The qualifications: LSM, 162.
18. “You are not the first”: Anne Roque and Arnaud de Ségogne kindly shared this letter to their father.
19. Lucie-Marie Decour: Jean-Marie Scapini described to me the history of his mother’s relationship with SE.
20. “trop aventuré mon coeur”: From a letter to Ségogne, reproduced in part in the 1984 Archives Nationales exhibition catalogue, 67.
21. “Drearily I court” and “waiting rooms”: LSM, 162.
22. The publication touted: Cited in Theodore Zeldin, France 1848–1945, I (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), 99.
23. “this tall young man”: Beppo de Massimi, Vent debout (Paris: Plon, 1949), 296. Massimi’s memoirs are invaluable in reconstructing the circumstances of SE’s arrival at Latécoère.
24. “And then?” and the conversation that follows, Massimi, 296–98.
25. “I’m not a very nice”: LJ, 75.
26. On October 11: Latécoère’s letter is reproduced in part in Chevrier, 46.
27. “People write every day”: Cited in Deschodt, 108.
28. Daurat noted in his memoirs: Didier Daurat, Dans le vent des hélices (Paris: Seuil, 1956). Daurat’s accounts of these events are legion but offer up little to no variation. “possessed a clear moral”: Didier Daurat, Saint-Exupéry tel que je l’ai connu (Liège: Éditions Dynamo, 1954), 7. See also Daurat, “Saint-Exupéry, pionnier de La Ligne,” Le Figaro Littéraire, July 31, 1954, 1.
29. “You should take the boat!”: From the text of a lecture given by Daurat at the Cercle des Transports, Paris, April 18, 1958, 18.
30. “Massimi referred him”: Mossé, 117. Lefèbvre was remembering a conversation he had had with Daurat in 1967, more than forty years after the events in question.
31. “I learned that any delay”: Marianne, October 26, 1932, 2. (The translation is from Living Age, January 1933, 425.)
32. “armor of pride”: Didier Daurat, “Souvenirs sur Saint-Exupéry,” Historia, July 1964, 52.
33. “without brio”: ibid., 53.
34. a book floating, and “Are you sick?”: Léon Antoine, Icare I, 147.
35. “like skeptics lost”: Fleury, La Ligne, 44.
36. “When I joined”: Marianne, October 26, 1932, 2.
37. Along with two additional restaurants: Marius Fabre, Jean Macaigne, and Jean-Marie Conty generously supplemented the written accounts of the early days in Toulouse with their recollections.
38. “But, on the other hand”: Fabre letter to author, October 4, 1992.
39. “manifested the imperious”: LJ, 92.
40. “One is who one is”: LSM, 165.
41. “Mermoz défriche”: Quoted in Marcel More, J’ai vécu l’épopée de l’Aéropostale (Paris: Éditions de l’Aéropole, 1980), 69.
42. He said: “You leave”: WSS, 4–5. “It’s easier” and “Guillaumet did not teach”: WSS, 6–7.
43. reprimand the countryside: LJ, 133–34.
44. “Little by little”: WSS, 7.
45. “à l’oeil et à la fesse”: The apt comment is mechanic Marius Fabre’s, from a conversation with the author, January 23, 1991.
46. “Late in the night”: Daurat, Icare 1, 136.
47. In an interview: Daurat confided as much in Edmond-Marie Dupuis during a recorded interview in Dupuis’s Paris apartment, December 6, 1978.
48. “I am immensely fond”: LJ, 102.
49. “I alone was in the confidence”: WSS, 8. “wrapped in the aura,” “smelled of the dust,” and “their dreary diurnal”: WSS, 9. “the birth within him”: WSS, 10. “Old bureaucrat”: WSS, 12.
50. Daurat’s copy: A copy of SE’s inscription can be found in the archives of the Association des Amis de Saint-Exupéry, Paris.
51. “a knight of the Holy Grail”: Jules Roy, Saint-Exupéry (Paris: La Manufacture, 1990), 43.
52. “Don’t forget that imagination”: Petit, La vie quotidienne dans l’aviation, 194.
53. “The proprietor and the waiter”: To Decour, op. cit., 1.
54. “little provincial path”: LJ, 110.
55. fear of habit: LJ, 114.
56. “Would you call” and “It doesn’t mean”: WSS, 11.
57. “where dates ripen”: LJ, 119.
58. “Monsieur … the plane”: Raymond Vanier, Tout pour la Ligne (Paris: Éditions France-Empire, 1960), 135.
VIII THE SWIFT COMPLETION OF THEIR APPOINTED ROUNDS
1. an ambitious young industrialist: The best source of information on Pierre-Georges Latécoère is Emmanuel Chadeau’s Latécoère (Paris: Olivier Orban, 1990).
2. “I’ve reworked”: Chadeau, 99. Beppo de Massimi’s memoirs make for invaluable reading here: Vent debout, op. cit.
3. “It’s a handkerchief”: Fleury, La Ligne, 10.
4. “That didn’t go”: ibid., 1–0.
5. Less than a month later: For the most scientific overview of the airline’s early days see Raymond Danel’s two-volume history: Les Lignes Latécoère 1918–1927
(Toulouse: Éditions Privât, 1986) and L’Aéropostale 1927–1933 (Toulouse: Éditions Privât, 1989). Fleury’s, Massimi’s, and Daurat’s accounts are equally invaluable but anecdotal.
6. “We have a fair amount”: Afrique 1918–1940, file no. 361, report from the French ambassador in Spain to the minister of foreign affairs, Madrid, May 26, 1928, QO.
7. SE’s trip to Timbuktu: London Times, January 23, 1937, 14.
8. “a series of forays”: Chadeau, 182.
9. the company’s annual report: I am grateful to R. E. G. Davies at the Smithsonian Institution for having opened his extraordinary archives, which include a copy of the Latécoère 1927 annual report.
10. “It’s hardly worth”: LJ, 142.
11. crowded history of early aviation: For overviews of these years I have consulted a great number of texts. Generally the voices of Gibbs-Smith and R. E. G. Davies ring loudest.
12. “You apply for the right”: LJ, 134.
13. “took the opportunity”: Decour, op. cit.
14. On another occasion: LJ, 118.
15. fear, he was to say later: From an unpublished interview with Gaston and Raymond Gallimard, conducted for Icare, archives of the Association des Amis de Saint-Exupéry, n.d.
16. Just before he left: LSM, 171.
17. “I was startled”: WSS, 76–77. Supplementary details are drawn from SE’s original account of the incident, Marianne, November 2, 1932.
18. “a handsome crash”: 1984 Archives National exhibit catalogue, 68.
19. “baptěme de solitude”: Marianne, November 2, 1932.
20. “Sitting on the dune,” “You weren’t frightened?” and “I said no”: WSS, 78–79.
21. “The trip went well”: LSM, 172.
22. gauge its accuracy: Fleury sums up the evening in only one line, La Ligne, 99.
23. In one account: The sergeant weeps in SE’s description of the evening in Paris-Soir, November 14, 1938. The first published account of the Nouakchott evening is that in Marianne, November 2, 1932.
24. “all present”: WSS, 80.
25. “We went to sleep”: Reproduced in Archives Nationales exhibit catalogue, 68.
26. the incident found its way: The account of the Nouakchott visit differs greatly—more so than any of the rest of the text—in the excerpt from SM that appeared in the NRF (May 1, 1929) and in the final text of the novel. The WSS account comes directly from the November 1932 Marianne article. SE made an additional reference to the evening in a piece of Russian journalism for Paris-Soir, May 14, 1935.
27. “Are you the Sergeant” and the remainder of Bernis’s story: CS, 110–12.
28. “Our hostess shows us”: BN, manuscript microfilm no. 2343.
29. “It is a little lonely” and “It is also lonely”: LPP, 72.
30. SE complained: ANAT, and very eloquently in the letter to Sallès reproduced in Cahiers
31. I, 21–22, as in the letter to Brun in the d’Agay family archives.
32. Noëlle Guillaumet never forgot: See “L’album de Noëlle Henri Guillaumet,” in Icare 37, Spring 1966, unpaginated. On reading Plato: Werth (who did not know him at the time), Icare (Summer 1964), 92.
33. “those little village”: Sallès letter, Cahiers I, 22.
34. “Everything is here”: To Brun, op. cit.
35. “I have a little parcel”: Cited in Chevrier, 49. Similarly, LJ, 128.
36. in a letter to Sallès: Cahiers I, op. cit.
37. “I know that I am”: To Brun, op. cit.
38. “Sometimes I think” and “I wonder what”: To Decour, op. cit., 5.
39. he wrote his brother-in-law: LSM, 183.
40. He dreamed: To Decour, op. cit. Similarly LJ, 133.
41. “The world would not lose”: LJ, 127.
42. “It’s hogwash”: To Decour, op. cit., 5.
43. “I don’t even know”: ibid.
44. “a touch of anger”: SE supplied his description of courage in a letter to Yvonne de Lestrange, from which Gide quoted in his preface to NF, 6.
45. “Good aircraft” and “Look here, Lefèbvre”: Lefèbvre recalled the incident in Mossé, op. cit., 120–22.
46. “Flying an airplane”: ibid., 123.
47. “Once you have learned”: William T. Piper, “Plain Facts About Private Planes,” The Pocket Atlantic, 1946, 19.
48. One went so far: See Léon Antoine, Icare I, 147–48. Fabre corroborated the statement in a conversation with the author, January 23, 1991.
49. “How is it possible”: Anne Morrow Lindbergh reviewing WSS in the Saturday Review, October 14, 1939, 8–9. “the frozen glitter”: SE, WSS, 117.
50. “there is no fraternity”: Journal de Moscou, May 23, 1935, 15.
51. excerpt from Vent de sable: The excerpt appeared in Le Figaro Littéraire on November 30, 1929. For a sense of the legend that had begun to flourish around SE, see Yves Courrière, Joseph Kessel (Paris: Plon, 1985).
52. Cendrars admitted: Confluences, Vols. 12–14, Paris, 1947, 54.
53. two distinct individuals: Joseph Kessel, “Portrait de Saint-Exupéry, Gringoire, January 10, 1936.
54. “this big, rough-hewn devil,” “on behalf of the civilian,” and “clumsiness and his lively”: From General Lionel-Max Chassin’s account in Icare I, 188–90.
55. as Daurat had also observed: Daurat in Le Figaro Littéraire, July 31, 1954.
56. “not much fun”: ANAT.
57. In a melancholic mood: My thanks to Anne Roque and Arnaud de Ségogne for having shared this letter to their father of May 1929.
58. was quick to note: Ch.-Yves Peslin, “Antoine de Saint-Exupéry à Brest,” Les Cahiers de l’Iroise, no. 1, 1975, 25–26.
59. His Parisian cousin: Honoré d’Estienne d’Orves fought in the Resistance and did not survive the war. Entries from his journal were reprinted in Biblio, March 1955. See also Rose and Philippe Honoré d’Estienne d’Orves, Honoré d’Estienne d’Orves (Paris: Éditions France-Empire, 1990).
60. “My publisher, who is also”: André Beucler, Les instants de Giraudoux (Geneva: Éditions du Milieu du Monde, 1948), 14.
61. Gaston Gallimard’s roommate: Beucler, De Saint-Pétersbourg à Saint-Germain (Paris: NRF, 1980), 102–105.
62. “Saint-Exupéry is not a writer”: From Beucler’s preface to the original edition of CS (the preface was omitted in subsequent editions), i.
63. “He seemed to hold”: From an unpublished interview with Beucler, conducted by Madame Castillon du Perron, 2.
64. “Give me the name”: Chassin, Icare I, 190.
65. “superb blonde”: Verneilh, op. cit.
66. the eminent Edmond: Les Nouvelles Littéraires, July 6, 1929.
67. “the music-lover,” and “pour avoir à exprimer”: Henri Delaunay, Araignée du soir, op. cit. These pages are reprinted in Cahiers Saint-Exupéry III (Paris: Gallimard, 1989), 30–31.
68. “bad businessmen”: Noëlle Guillaumet in Icare, Spring 1966, unpaginated.
IX TOWARD THE COUNTRY WHERE THE STONES FLY
1. “No one was around”: Decour, 5.
2. He reported that: ibid.
3. “You’ll be more comfortable”: Cited in Fleury, La Ligne, op. cit., 218.
4. the Great Pyramid: LJ, 139.
5. Buenos Aires in 1929: For facts and figures pertaining to the development of Buenos Aires I have relied especially on Charles S. Sargent, The Spatial Evolution of Greater Buenos Aires (Tempe: Arizona State University, Center for Latin American Studies, 1974), J. A. Hammerton, The Real Argentine (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1916), and R.M. Albérès, Argentina (Paris: Hachette, 1957).
6. “a giant slab”: Cited in Chevrier, 75.
7. “the world’s most prodigious”: Hammerton, 37.
8. So disenchanted was Le Corbusier: The architect is quoted in Sargent, 91.
9. like a set for Charlie Chaplin’s: “Escales de Patagonie,” Marianne, November 30, 1932. dented, he wrote later: WSS, 45.
10. “gratifying re
venge”: ANAT.
11. “succeeded not so badly”: Cited in Chevrier, 76.
12. The photograph of the October 29, 1929, banquet figures in the collection of the Archivo General de la Nación Argentina.
13. The speed limit: Fleury, La Ligne, 218–19.
14. landing was another ordeal: The best description of this odd exercise figures in Paul Vachet’s Avant les jets (Paris: Hachette, 1964), 185–90. Jean-Marie Conty recalled SE’s description in an interview with the author, January 15, 1991.
15. SE and the cyclone: Marianne, August 16, 1939, and WSS, 44–57. “I was a man who”: WSS, 48. “I had been spat”: WSS, 50.
16. Later, too, he was to say: Conty interview of January 15, 1991.
17. “I climbed out”: WSS, 56.
18. “Yet, in passing over”: Charles Darwin, quoted in W. H. Hudson, Idle Days in Patagonia (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1924), 205.
19. “in which one traded”: “Escales de Patagonie,” Marianne, November 30, 1932, 7.
20. “Imagine,” he wrote: “Princesses d’Argentine,” Marianne, December 14, 1932, 2.
21. “We will come to fetch”: ibid.
22. “Nowhere have I encountered” and “Arrived to build”: Marianne, November 30, 1932, 7.
23. “Ambition, jealousy, honor”: ibid. The leper made a huge impression on SE, who was still writing of him ten years later, in Citadelle.
24. “a town born of”: WSS, 60.
25. “these men who, accustomed”: LSM, 210.
26. “as if from a cracked”: “Une Planète,” NRF, April 1, 1933, 584.
27. Madame Guillaumet’s tales: See Icare, 29, and Icare II, 34.
28. In a piece he wrote later: “La Fin de l’Émeraude,” Marianne, January 24, 1934, 1.
29. “the delta of the Nile”: Albérès, 90.
30. He reported having covered, LSM, 210. On writing in midair: Jean Macaigne recalled this habit of his colleague’s in an interview, January 4, 1991.
31. “But you’re sick” and “We would have got”: Raoul Roubes, Icare I, 215.
32. “to play the fool”: ibid.
33. “second by second”: LJ, 139.
34. “one of the most remarkably”: Hammerton, 131.
35. Now that he had bought himself: SE complained to Renée de Saussine of the weight of his possessions, LJ, 138.
