COLETTE is elected to the Royal Academy of Belgium.

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette , known as COLETTE (1873.1954)

Autograph letter signed to Hélène Berthelot.

Two quarto pages on blue paper.

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

Newly elected to the Royal Academy of Belgium, Colette enjoys her haven in Saint-Tropez despite a gloomy spring and wishes to arrange a friendly meeting with her pen pal.

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“Dear, charming Hélène, it’s raining. One beautiful day, just one, showed us what spring can be like here, when it wants to be—but it doesn’t. Bundled up in wool, our hair soaked, we pull up the young onions, we cut the small artichokes , and we destroy the processionary caterpillar nests in the pine trees. The rest of the time we work. And we eat, to console ourselves. The port is quite lovely, without tourists.”

You were ravishing in Brussels, dear Hélène. I dream of a Brussels—or any other city—where there would be no academies, no speeches, no receptions between us. We would replace all that with plenty of laziness, a little curiosity, some delicious food, and the cinema. What do you say? If foreign capitals are unavailable, we could do this in Paris. We're returning on ^1st .

I embrace you tenderly, dear Hélène, whom I love. Delighted to meet 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, in the Baie des Canebiers, and fell instantly in love with it. She named it La Treille Muscate. In the garden that slopes down to the sea, Muscat grapes flourished amidst a hectare of fruit trees, flowers, and vegetables. “ I found it beside a road that cars shun, and behind the most ordinary gate… a small, single-story house… its terrace is covered in wisteria… the sea borders, continues, extends, ennobles, enchants this patch of luminous shoreline (…). Here I am now free to live, if I wish, to die, if I can…”