Saint-exupery: A Biography

by Stacy Schiff

37. “All you have to say” and “I don’t want to”: Jean Renoir, Ma vie et mes films (Paris: Flammarion, 1974), 183.

  38. “the two mastodons”: Lamotte, Icare V, 83. See Wendy Goodman, “The Man Upstairs,” New York, June 19, 1989, for more on Lamotte in New York.

  39. “more like a bird”: Raoul de Roussy de Sales, The Making of Yesterday, 175.

  40. Legends of all kinds: See Robert Van Gelder, The New York Times Book Review, January 19, 1941, 2, and Stephen Vincent and Rosemary Benět, “Saint-Exupéry, Flyer and Thinker,” New York Herald Tribune Books, January 19, 1941, 5.

  41. half hero, half clown: From the diaries of Selden Rodman, the young poet and editor of Common Sense, who visited with SE on several occasions in 1941.

  42. “You never have to”: Otis Ferguson, Common Sense, May 1941, 133.

  43. It was not their understanding: Interview with Elizabeth (Reynal) Darbee, August 28, 1993. He was touched and delighted: ibid.

  44. Outlining a rather unusual: From a deposition written by SE and prepared by Reynal and Hitchcock for the U.S. government, January 13, 1941, HBJ archives.

  45. Of Curtice and Peggy Hitchcock: Interview with Joan Rich, August 7, 1991.

  46. He had no idea: SE explained his grasp of English to Adèle Breaux; see Breaux, Saint-Exupéry in America, 1942–1943 (Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University Presses, Inc., 1971), 38. It was she who deemed his ear for English acute.

  47. “When I want a cup”: SE used this excuse on everyone; this version comes from John Phillips, interview of November 28, 1990.

  48. “I haven’t finished learning”: Interview with Maximilian Becker, September 21, 1990.

  49. “arrache-poussière”: Jacques Tiné, letter of January 1993.

  50. “What’s going on”: Yvonne Michel, interview of January 4, 1991.

  51. From Saks he called: André Maurois, “Saint-Exupéry,” Les Nouvelles Littéraires, November 7, 1946, 1. Max Becker remembered having been at the receiving end of some of these calls.

  52. “Sprechen Sie Deutsch”: Ruth Belt, Cited in Crane, 287.

  53. He had little love of America: SE was not shy on this front, confiding his disdain with nearly everyone he knew, always in the same terms. Madame de B, interview of January 7, 1991; Elizabeth Darbee, interview of July 22, 1991.

  54. “Yes,” agreed the aviator: Raoul Aglion, interview of October 4, 1990.

  55. “kind of preaching friar”: Galantière letter to Howard Scherry, April 8, 1972.

  56. “It was more like”: Natacha Stewart Ullmann, “Let’s Play Portraits,” The New Yorker, January 27, 1962. The piece stands as a shining example of a perfect match of subject and author.

  57. “The point is—this man”: Lieutenant Colonel Busbee to Colonel Ralph C. Smith, MID, March 22, 1941, MID 2307-C-109, NA.

  58. “If at the time of”: His opinions made their way to the State Department in a memo of May 8, 1941, written by R. Gordon Wasson, 740.0011/11539, NA.

  59. “For the record, this Division”: Memo of June 23, 1941, from War to State, G-2/2307-C-109, NA.

  60. Pétain was quoted: The New York Times, January 1, 1941, 24.

  61. “20 Anglophiles”: Werth, Déposition, 126.

  62. he had no political agenda: The New York Times, January 31, 1941, 7.

  63. Look at it this way: SE’s letters—biting, then conciliatory—to Breton are conserved in Paris at the Bibliothèque Jacques Doucet. I am grateful to Elisa Breton and Aube Gelleonèt for having allowed me to consult them. The letters went through multiple drafts; a portion of one early draft—from which this thought was taken—was reproduced in the Ader Picard Tajan catalogue for the Drouot sale of July 6, 1984, item no. 26. A letter in which SE defends himself on the subject of the Vichy “appointment” is reproduced in Cahiers Saint-Exupéry 3, 9–21.

  64. “How can you expect”: Raoul Aglion, Roosevelt and de Gaulle (New York: The Free Press, 1988), 84. (A different version of the same book appeared in France as De Gaulle et Roosevelt: la France libre aux États-Unis [Paris: Plon, 1984].)

  65. Fanned by both sides: The recollections of Raoul Aglion, Elizabeth Darbee, Lewis Galantière, and Yvonne Michel have all been of help here. Pierre Brodin’s Lycée Français office received the indignant phone calls, interview with Pierre Brodin, December 17, 1990. See also Guy Fritsch-Estrangin’s gossipy, invaluable New York entre de Gaulle et Pétain (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1969).

  66. Aglion holds that of all: Aglion, interview of October 4, 1990. For one indication of de Gaulle’s eagerness to bring SE into the fold, see his telegram of September 18, 1941, to René Pleven in de Gaulle, The Call to Honor (New York: The Viking Press, 1955), 365.

  67. “They are not waging”: Denis de Rougemont, Journal des deux mondes (Paris: Gallimard, 1968), 519. The entry is for July 10, 1942.

  68. “the bubonic plague”: Lindbergh, War Within and Without, 161. “stay free, pure and untouched”: ibid., 166. The saint’s point of view: ibid., 309.

  69. “I detest the French” and “I am happy”: Dido Renoir and Alexander Sesonske, eds., Jean Renoir, Lettres d’Amérique (Paris: Presses de la Renaissance, 1984), 103–104.

  70. The letter is dated June 2, 1942.

  71. “I have been more courageous”: EG, 272.

  72. in dire need of an archangel: From a 1941 letter from SE to Renoir, Renoir papers, Arts Library, University of California, Los Angeles.

  73. half the French in occupied France: Ted Morgan, An Uncertain Hour (New York:

  74. William Morrow & Company, 1990), 110–11. See also Diomède Catroux, Icare VI, 72.

  75. from their vantage point: Elizabeth Darbee, interview of July 22, 1991.

  76. “When tact failed”: Galantière, The Atlantic, April 1947, 135.

  77. he was still hoping: As he continued to tell many friends, among them the Rabat-based Pierre Charpentier, Icare, 108, première trimestre, 1984 (hereafter Icare VII), 57.

  78. His crippling fevers: See Galantière’s Atlantic piece (April 1947, 135) as well as his papers, BL. Forty-one-degree fever: ibid. Also Robert Boname, March 19, 1991; interview with Becker, September 21, 1990. He wore dark glasses: Rodman, interview of October 16, 1991.

  79. “without a doubt the most”: Renoir, Lettres d’Amérique, 37. The letter dates from April 29, 1941.

  80. “something truly monumental”: SE quoted in Renoir, Lettres d’Amérique, 27.

  81. “I wouldn’t bother you”: To Charpentier, Icare VII, 57.

  82. “He’s a pig! He’s a pig?”: Renoir, Icare V, 28. See also Renoir, Ma vie et mes films.

  83. “Dido, I know you’re there”: I am hugely grateful to Alain Renoir for having unearthed this recording, from which the information about the WSS screenplay is derived.

  84. “It’s problematic” to “I think that I will”: ibid.

  85. “certain familiar treacle”: ibid., 78.

  86. In retrospect he mellowed: See Jean Narboni, éd., Cahiers du Cinéma: Jean Renoir, entretiens et propos (Paris: Éditions de l’Étoile, 1979).

  87. He chastised his friend: Renoir papers, Arts Library, University of California, Los Angeles.

  88. he took up a lot of room: See Renoir, Icare V, 27–30. On the verge of emotional collapse: Alain Renoir, letter of October 18, 1991. Annabella also recalled SE’s eccentricities, Icare V, 56–69.

  89. sick to the point of delirium: Interviews with Bita Dobo, January 31, 1991, and August 29, 1993. Dobo was Pierre Lazareff’s assistant at the time.

  90. his own gloss: To Galantière, BL.

  91. “a neurasthenic little girl”: ibid.

  92. “Everyone in New York”: Recollections of Dr. J. L. Lapeyre, family papers.

  93. “not very sterile zone” and Guatemala all over: To Galantière, BL.

  94. She found him: Interview with Annabella, December 12, 1991. See also Annabella, Icare V, 56–69.

  95. “But he doesn’t” and “Of course I don’t”: Renoir, Icare V, 28–29.

  96. “As things sta
nd”: Ruth Belt, cited in Crane, 288. I am grateful to Carolee Lapeyre for having granted me access to her father’s papers.

  97. “brain child” to “Gracias a Dios!”: Ruth Belt, cited in Crane, 289.

  98. he wrote Madame de B: See especially the New York letter reproduced in Paul Nayrac, L’Angoisse de Saint-Exupéry, Discours à la séance inaugurale du Congrès de Psychiatrie et de Neurologie de Langue Française, Strasbourg, July 21–26, 1958.

  99. Patiently Galantière explained: Galantière papers, BL.

  100. Later he was to say: Max Gelée, Icare IV, 65.

  101. “I prefer the sale” and pointing out that Descartes: EG, 219. The original missives are at BL.

  102. “What is the use”: EG, 222.

  103. At the top of a sheet: The page is now in the collection of Max Alder.

  104. He claimed that his sudden: EG, 191. (From the second half of the letter cited in part in Nayrac, op. cit.)

  105. “a kind of flunkey”: FA, 387. “I don’t care a button”: FA, 388.

  106. “I think it was awful”: Charles Lindbergh cited in Anne Morrow Lindbergh, War Within and Without, 249–50.

  107. half of what he paid: I am grateful to Howard Scherry for having provided a copy of the contract with Marie Bouchu McBride, as well as a copy of McBride’s letter to Adèle Breaux of February 19, 1973.

  108. “I don’t think”: Galantière, “The Most Unforgettable Character I’ve Met,” The Reader’s Digest, December 1957, 176.

  109. “Listen, Bernard” to “Because it is two”: Lamotte, Icare V, 85.

  110. they thought him: Annabella, Icare V, 58.

  111. The writer had agonized: Interview with Madame de B, January 17, 1992.

  112. She would claim that: Breaux, 112.

  113. the Hoboken pier: Fleury, Icare V, 36–37.

  114. That afternoon SE telephoned: Interviews with Elizabeth Darbee, July 22, 1991, and September 6, 1991.

  115. According to Fleury: Fleury, Icare V, 37.

  116. missed their mutual friend: Renoir, Lettres d’Amérique, 120. The letter is dated August 21, 1942

  117. “Hum like that”: FA, 328.

  118. “It is becoming”: Original manuscript, microfilms 2336 and 2337, BN.

  119. “This narrative and Churchill’s”: Edward Weeks, The Atlantic, April 1942.

  120. “like a soliloquizing angel”: E. Edman, New York Herald Tribune Books, February 22, 1942, 1.

  121. “For President Franklin Roosevelt”: My thanks to Raymond Teichman at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library for supplying a copy of this inscription.

  122. “I want to talk to you”: Ping Lawrence provided the description of SE’s appearance at Anne Morgan’s, interview of April 1, 1991.

  123. far wall of the auditorium: Breaux, 20–21.

  124. An hour before: Pierre Bédard, letter of February 21, 1951, reproduced in Crane, 291.

  125. “the calumnies and resentments”: EG, 227. The note—probably to Nada de Bragance—was written in February 1942.

  126. the French consul-general: Monsieur d’Aumale’s letter, commending FA and its author for rising above politics, is dated March 27, 1942, and resides in the archives of the French Embassy in Washington. It was reprinted in part in the 1984 Archives Nationales exhibition catalogue, 120.

  127. SE racked his brains to “Yes, but you made it look”: EG, 284. SE grappled with these objections in a December letter to Jacques Maritain.

  128. “The man of letters”: Jean Guéhenno, cited in Assouline, 253.

  129. “another demented Judeo-bellicose” and “M. de SE chooses”: P.-A. Cousteau, “À propos d’une provocation,” Je suis partout, January 15, 1943, 1. See also P.-A. Cousteau, “Antoine de Saint-Exupéry au secours d’Israël et de la guerre Juive,” Le Cahier jaune, January 1943.

  130. As for the reviewers: Pierre Masteau, “M. de Saint-Exupéry quarante-huitard attardé,” Au Pilori, January 21, 1943.

  131. Vichy commissioner of Jewish affairs: The astonishing document—the commissoner’s response to an offended reader—is reproduced in Chevrier, 313–16.

  132. In Casablanca a request: L. A. Triebel, The Literature of Flying and Flyers (Sydney: Les Éditions du Courrier Australien, 1955), 13.

  133. Heller was severely: Heller, EG, 300.

  134. He was later able: Assouline, 300, 312–15.

  135. Israël read: Interview with Israël, January 22, 1991.

  XVI ANYWHERE OUT OF THIS WORLD

  1. “Oh, he was wonderful”: Fay Wray, On the Other Hand (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989), 226.

  2. “a virile male”: Elsa Maxwell, “Elsa Maxwell’s Party Line,” New York Post, July 20, 1943, 15.

  3. enormously sexy: Interview with Kitty Carlisle Hart, September 28, 1990.

  4. Those who did: Interview with Anne Morrow Lindbergh, December 5, 1990.

  5. “I don’t know”: Interview with Nadine Bertin, November 6, 1991.

  6. “le beau blond”: Interview with John Phillips, December 4, 1990. Becker, Brodin, and Elizabeth Darbee all thought SE more than aware of his effect on women to whom, reported Mrs. Darbee, “he was catnip.”

  7. “he found himself”: Galantière, The Atlantic, April 1947, 138–39.

  8. “They only call me”: Cited often, but early on by Janet Flanner in the second of her magnificent four-part profile of Pétain, “La France et le Vieux,” The New Yorker, February 19, 1944, 32.

  9. “Let’s stop right here” to “Only please don’t”: Galantière papers, BL. A toned-down version of the same events appears in Galantière’s Reader’s Digest profile, December 1957.

  10. the cornerstones of French democracy: Galantière papers, BL.

  11. tall, blond, and titled: Elizabeth Darbee, interview of September 6, 1991.

  12. Madame de B’s political leanings: See OSS reports on Madame de B in RG 226, Entry 190, Box 380, Folder 514; Entry 108A, Box 133, BD 241–940; and NA76–785 London X2. With friends in all kinds of high places, she attracted her share of attention, although this did not guarantee that the OSS drew accurate conclusions regarding her activities.

  13. “Don’t work yourself” and “You know”: Interview with Madame de B, December 4, 1991.

  14. “Her face, which is that of”: Interview with Madame de B, January 13, 1992.

  15. “Don’t speak like that”: Interview with Madame de B, December 4, 1991.

  16. “entirely private, out of the ordinary”: Interview with Hedda Sterne, October 25, 1993.

  17. “spiritual assistance”: SE to Hedda Sterne, Hedda Sterne collection, AAA.

  18. “an episodic necessity”: Pélissier, 125.

  19. superb legs: Quoted in Renée de Saussine, Icare III, 63.

  20. flown at high altitude: Radio France interview with Consuelo, conducted by Jacques Chancel. Also, interview with Pierre Brodin, December 17, 1990.

  21. drug him with Seconal: The lover has requested anonymity; the attempt failed.

  22. “I desperately need”: From the bundle of letters sold at Drouot, December 4, 1991, item no. 30, letter 4.

  23. “that light of milk”: ibid.

  24. “but such is the nature”: Drouot, December 4, 1991, sale, item no. 30, letter 6.

  25. “Tell him I love him” to “Oui, oui”: Interviews with Silvia Reinhardt, March 23, 1992, and September 16, 1993.

  26. “a slender, attractive”: Lillian Ross, Picture (New York: Limelight Editions, 1984), 40–41. “I won’t mingle”: ibid, 42. “Gottfried, nobody ever”: ibid., 44.

  27. No one else communicated to “Je suis usé”: I have drawn on a long series of conversations—especially those of September 26 and 27, 1991—with Silvia Reinhardt for these details concerning the relationship.

  28. an irate vigil: Ader Picard Tajan catalogue, July 6, 1984, Drouot sale, item no. 15.

  29. The letter is wrenching; even SE’s handwriting looks tortured.

  30. “You are low”: The letter was generously supplied by Howard Scherry, wh
o rescued it from Marie McBride’s files under unusual circumstances years after Marie McBride had retrieved it—to the sound of SE’s returning footsteps—from the author’s waste-paper basket.

  31. “When I’m dead”: ibid.

  32. Consuelo told people: Breaux, 112.

  33. A housekeeper: ibid., 109.

  34. a number of objects fly: Interview with Bita Dobo, August 29, 1993.

  35. a nonaggression pact: Interview with Pierre Brodin, December 17, 1990.

  36. “If you’re not here”: Interview with Robert Tenger, January 19, 1991.

  37. prone to vanish: Pierre Brodin remembered as much, interview of December 17, 1990, as did many others.

  38. “Do you think” and “Oh, yes”: Breaux, 130.

  39. “Surrealism made flesh”: Galantière, letter to Howard Scherry, April 8, 1972.

  40. She spent a cocktail party: Helen Wolff to the author, December 10, 1990.

  41. “Well, I was honest”: Breaux, 136.

  42. “incurably infantile”: Helen Wolff letter of December 10, 1990.

  43. “All I ask for”: Consuelo de SE to Madeleine Goisot, May 2, 1955.

  44. Asked about his political: See Alfred Ayotte, “Entretien avec Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,” Le Devoir, April 30, 1942, 2.

  45. “amounted to a sophisticated”: Pierre Baillargeon’s Amérique Française reporting can be found in the Quartier Latin tribute to SE, March 23, 1945.

  46. “Oh, my God”: Interview with Elizabeth Darbee, September 6, 1991.

  47. U.S. exit permit: State Department files do not indicate an exit permit for SE in May. A visa case was opened for SE on June 1 and a visa issued on the fourth, 811.111, NA.

  48. ordered to get him out: Elizabeth Darbee, August 28, 1993.

  49. “in no danger”: From Curtice Hitchcock’s Department of State affidavit in support of SE’s re-entry into the U.S., April 30, 1942, HBJ archives.

  50. “If I insist” and “It has other things”: SE to Hitchcock, ANAT. Elizabeth Darbee does not as much remember having lost her patience as she remembers SE’s imperiousness. correcting his first sentence: Marcel Raymond, “Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,” Quartier Latin (Montreal), March 23, 1945. For more on SE’s lectures, see L’Action Catholique (Quebec), May 5, 1942, 13; L’Action Universitaire, January, 1944, 11; and Le Devoir, May 2, 1942, 1. In perhaps the least flattering description of SE on the dais, Jean Issalys noted the Frenchman had “une těte de batracien rěveur.” (Quartier Latin, March 23, 1945.)