Colette and her worries during the First World War. 

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette , known as COLETTE (1873.1954)

Autograph letter signed to Philippe Berthelot.

Two pages in-4° on blue paper. Slnd [1914 or 1915].

“This, dear friend, is what a Jouvenel is used for. »

Colette worries to Berthelot about the situation of her husband, Henry de Jouvenel, during the First World War. 

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“Dear friend, you gave me good words through Decourcelle when you left yesterday. I had news of Sidi's arrival last night , and I want to tell you the essentials, so that you know it and say it. Accompanied by Lémery to an “unknown destination”, he learned en route that he was going to Vailly in Champagne. Lémery had to leave him, further than Vailly, on a completely impassable path, where Jouvenel, carrying the rest of his luggage and guided by a soldier, was taken to the place chosen by Jeanneney .

It's a place that was called Maison-Rouge when it existed.  It was destroyed and nothing is left standing. So Jouvenel was taken to the only accommodation that is inhabited and that he will live in from now on: the gut. I don't have his postal address. Friends telephoned me with this information. This, dear friend, is what we use a Jouvenel for – who you know, so I don’t have to talk to you about him.

Would I add that the commission of inquiry (or control, I no longer know?) found him, because of his age and his record of service, unassailable. I thank you for being our friend and I sign your friend Colette de Jouvenel. »

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Henry Lémery (1874-1972) was very close to Henry de Jouvenel since their student years and the Dreyfus Affair. “In 1917-1918, Lémery, colleague of Jules Jeanneney in the government, came to plead with him the cause of Henry de Jouvenel who was mobilized in Paris, at the famous Maison de la Presse, when there was talk of sending him to the forehead. He was very poorly received and Jouvenel left” (Jean-Noël Jeanneney).

Indeed, Lémery had been appointed in November 1917 undersecretary of state for Transport in the government of Georges Clemenceau (the first Martinican to occupy a position in a French government). But, on that date, Jouvenel had returned from the front: the letter probably dates from the beginning of the war, when her husband was sent to Verdun.

(From March 1917, Jules Jeanneney sat on the Manpower Control Commission responsible for resolving the cases of ambushers and sending them to the front.)