COLETTE (Sidonie Gabrielle Colette, known as)... Lot 21

COLETTE (Sidonie Gabrielle Colette, known as) [Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye, 1873 - Paris, 1954], French novelist. Autograph letter signed and addressed to her beloved Winnie (Princesse de Polignac). 3 pages in-4°. Colette is in the South of France, asking for news of her friend and lamenting the crowds in St Tropez. She has started a new book on the pleasures of the senses. "Where are you? Already in Venice? Jouy again? Will you pass this way? Will you write me a note? You see, anxiety is turning me into a Hyppocampus, the symbol of the question mark. (Do you remember that Robert d'Humières called the armadillo "the ancestor of the pineapple?") This year, St Tropez is uninhabitable! A triple belt of Rolls and Bugattis, naked women with backs like men, satin crepe pyjamas made at the haberdasher's, Louis XV heels and so many pleasure yachts that two submarines couldn't fit in the harbor - this is the truth! (and the rest, too). My awful book is dragging on. Serves me right for wanting to write a book about the pleasures of the senses. I'm gradually discovering that it's a subject that doesn't fill two hundred and fifty pages....".