Jean COCTEAU in despair at Mireille HAVET's descent into hell.

Jean Cocteau (1889.1963)

Autograph letter signed to Hélène Berthelot.

One page in-4° on lined paper. Trace of stamp.

Paris [1931]

“Poor Mireille? What to do ? »

Cocteau, in despair at Mireille Havet's descent into hell, seeks help from those close to him: Misia Sert, Louis Moyses, Hélène and Philippe Berthelot, as well as Coco Chanel.

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“My dear Hélène, Yes, this triumph with the anonymous public moved me a lot and consoles me for the infamy of journalists (which I am told because I do not read them).

Poor Mireille [Havet] ? What to do ? I begged Misia [Sert] to go to rue R [aynouard] . I sent my doctor who treats her at my expense. But I am poor and he condemns her unless she goes to a nursing home urgently. (the hospital [opital] would save her, because I know that she hides things from us whose suppression would bring death).

It's atrocious. Moyses [Louis Moyses, founder of the cabaret Le Boeuf sur le Toit ] gives me a Ford. I would like to sell it – but would it be enough to cover the facts for 6 or 7 months at 200 francs per day, I doubt it. Yesterday there was no money to buy tangerines. Couldn't we soften a rich person? Coco [Chanel] is in St. Moritz, we scratched her to the bone . What does Philippe think? I love you. Jeans "

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A tragic destiny if ever there was one, Mireille Havet (1898.1932) enchanted Parisian letters at the beginning of the last century. Nicknamed the “Little Poyetess” by Apollinaire, noticed by Georges Izambard – Rimbaud’s literature teacher – she frequented the all-literary Parisian scene in the 1920s.

Free spirit, declared homosexual, passionate, night owl, Mireille Havet did not resist the temptations of artificial paradises and sank, irremediably, at the mercy of her addictions, despite the unfailing support of Jean Cocteau and the Berthelot couple.

Struck by tuberculosis in 1929, marginalized, destroyed by drugs and illness, she died at the Montana sanatorium, in Switzerland, in March 1932.

Having fallen into oblivion, the poetic figure of Mireille Havet was resurrected in 1995 thanks to the rediscovery of the manuscript of her diary (1913-1929) by Dominique Tiry, granddaughter of Ludmila Stavitzky, the executrix of Mireille Havet's will.

The thousands of pages of the said diary were published in 2003 by Éditions Claire Paulhan, allowing readers to discover, almost a hundred years later, the tragic destiny of this prodigy poet.