COLETTE is elected to the Royal Academy of Belgium.

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette , known as COLETTE (1873.1954)

Autograph letter signed to Hélène Berthelot.

Two pages in-4° on blue paper.

La Treille Muscate (St Tropez). Undated [April 1936].

Newly elected to the Royal Academy of Belgium, Colette is taking advantage of her Saint-Tropez haven despite a gloomy spring and wishes to organize a friendly meeting with her correspondent.

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“Dear, charming Hélène, it’s raining. One beautiful day, just one, showed us what spring could be here, when it wants to be – but it doesn’t want to. Clad in wool, with soaked hair, we pull out the young onions, we cut the small artichokes , and we destroy the nests of processionary caterpillars in the pines. The rest of the time we work. And we eat, to console ourselves. The port is very pretty, without tourists.

You were lovely in Brussels, dear Hélène. I dream of a Brussels – or another city – where there would be neither academies, nor speeches, nor receptions between us. We would replace all this with a lot of laziness, a little curiosity, gluttony and cinema. What do you think ? In the absence of foreign capitals, we could do this in Paris. On May 1st ^, we return.

I kiss you tenderly, dear Hélène whom I love. Delighted to approach you in Brussels, Maurice Goudeket is the most respectful of your servants , and I am still your friend Colette. »

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Colette was elected, as a foreign member, to the Royal Academy of French Language and Literature of Belgium, in Brussels, on March 9, 1936, to succeed Countess Anna de Noailles, who had died three years earlier.

On Saturday April 4, she came to Brussels to deliver her reception speech at the said Academy.

Grasset Editions published the contents on April 30, 1936, in a small octavo volume of fifty-nine pages entitled “ Colette – Reception Speech at the Royal Belgian Academy of French Language and Literature ”.

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La Treille Muscate . On November 6, 1925, Colette bought a small house in Saint-Tropez, at the Baie des Canebiers, for which she fell in love at first sight. She calls it La Treille Muscate. In the garden which goes down to the sea, Muscat grapes proliferate in the middle of a hectare of fruit trees, flowers and vegetables. “ I found it at the edge of a road that cars fear, and behind the most ordinary gate... a small, low-story house... its terrace is covered with wisteria... the sea limits, continues, extends, ennobles, enchants this piece of a luminous shore (…). Here I am free now to live, if I want, to die, if I can..."