by Colette
Contents
Cover
About the Author
Also by Colette
Title Page
Preface
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Copyright
About the Author
* * *
Colette, the creator of Claudine, Chéri and Gigi, and one of France’s outstanding writers, had a long, varied and active life. She was born in Burgundy in 1873, into a home overflowing with dogs, cats and children, and educated at the local village school. At the age of twenty she was brought to Paris by her first husband, the notorious Henry Gauthiers-Villars (Willy), writer and critic. By dint of locking her in her room, Willy forced Colette to write her first novels (the Claudine sequence), which he published under his name. They were an instant success. But their marriage (chronicled in Mes Apprentissages) was never happy and Colette left him in 1906. She spent the next six years on the stage – an experience, like that of her early childhood, which would provide many of the themes for her work. She remarried (Julie de Carneilhan ‘is as close a reckoning with the elements of her second marriage as she ever allowed herself’), later divorcing her second husband, by whom she had a daughter. In 1935 she married Maurice Goudeket, with whom she lived until her death in 1954.
With the publication of Chéri (1920) Colette’s place as one of France’s prose masters became assured. Although she became increasingly crippled with arthritis, she never lost her intense preoccupation with everything around her. ‘I cannot interest myself in anything that is not life,’ she said; and, to a young writer, ‘Look for a long time at what pleases you, and longer still at what pains you.’ Her rich and supple prose, with its sensuous detail and sharp psychological insights, illustrates that personal philosophy.
Her writing runs to fifteen volumes, novels, portraits, essays, chroniques and a large body of autobiographical prose. She was the first woman President of the Académie Goncourt, and when she died was given a state funeral and buried in Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris.
ALSO BY COLETTE
Fiction
Claudine and Annie
Claudine at School
Claudine in Paris
Chéri
The Last of Chéri
Gigi and the Cat
Chance Acquaintances
Julie de Carneilhan
The Ripening Seed
The Vagabond
Break of Day
The Innocent Libertine
Mitsou
The Other One
The Shackle
Non-Fiction
My Apprenticeships and Music-Hall Sidelights
The Blue Lantern
My Mother’s House and Sido
The Pure and the Impure
Claudine Married
Colette
Translated by
Antonia White
Preface
I have told in Mes Apprentissages how, some two years after our marriage, therefore about 1895, Monsieur Willy said to me one day:
‘You ought to jot down on paper some memories of the Primary School. I might be able to make something out of them . . . Don’t be afraid of racy details.’
This curious and still comparatively unknown man, who put his name to I know not how many volumes without having written a single one of them, was constantly on the look-out for new talents for his literary factory. It was not in the least surprising that he should have extended his investigations as far as his own home.
‘I was recovering from a long and serious illness which had left my mind and body lazy. But, having found at a stationer’s some exercise-books like the ones I had at school, and bought them again, their cream-laid pages, ruled in grey, with red margins, their black linen spines, and their covers bearing a medallion and an ornate title Le Calligraphe gave my fingers back a kind of itch for doing “lines”, for the passivity of a set task. A certain watermark, seen through the cream-laid paper, made me feel six years younger. On a stub of a desk, the window behind me, one shoulder askew and my knees crossed, I wrote with application and indifference . . .
‘When I had finished, I handed over to my husband a closely-written manuscript which respected the margins. He skimmed through it and said:
‘“I made a mistake, this can’t be of the slightest use . . .”
‘Released, I went back to the sofa, to the cat, to books, to silence, to a life that I tried to make pleasant for myself and that I did not know was unhealthy for me.
‘The exercise-books remained for two years at the bottom of a drawer. One day Willy decided to tidy up the contents of his desk.
‘The appalling counter-like object of sham ebony with a crimson baize top displayed its deal drawers and disgorged bundles of old papers and once again we saw the forgotten exercise-books in which I had scribbled: Claudine à l’école.
‘“Fancy,” said Monsieur Willy. “I thought I had put them in the waste-paper basket.”
‘He opened one exercise-book and turned over the pages:
‘“It’s charming . . .”
‘He opened a second exercise-book, and said no more – a third, then a fourth . . .
‘“Good Lord,” he muttered, “I’m an utter imbecile . . .”
‘He swept up the exercise-books haphazard, pounced on his flat-brimmed hat and rushed off to a publisher . . . And that was how I became a writer.’
But that was also how I very nearly missed ever becoming a writer. I lacked the literary vocation and it is probable that I should never have produced another line if, after the success of Claudine à l’école, other imposed tasks had not, little by little, got me into the habit of writing.
Claudine à l’école appeared in 1900, published by Paul Ollendorff, bearing Willy’s sole name as the author. In the interval, I had to get back to the job again to put a little ‘spice’ into my text.
‘“Couldn’t you,” Willy said to me, “hot this – these childish reminiscences – up a little? For example, a too passionate friendship between Claudine and one of her schoolmates . . . And then some dialect, lots of dialect words . . . Some naughty pranks . . . You see what I mean?”’
The pliancy of extreme youth is only equalled by its lack of scruples. What was the extent of Willy’s collaboration? The manuscripts furnish a partial answer to a question that has been asked a hundred times. Out of the four Claudine books, only the manuscripts of Claudine en ménage and Claudine s’en va have been saved from the destruction which Willy ordered Paul Barlet to carry out. Paul Barlet, known as Paul Héon – secretary, friend, Negro and extremely honourable man – suspended the execution, which had begun to be carried out, and brought me what remained, which I still possess.
Turning over the pages of those exercise-books is not without interest. Written entirely in my handwriting, a very fine writing appears at distant intervals, changing a word, adding a pun or a very sharp rebuke. Likewise one could also read (in Claudine en ménage and Claudine s’en va) two more important re-written passages pasted over the original which I am omitting in the present edition.
The success of the Claudine books was, for the period, very great. It inspired fashions, plays, and beauty-products. Being honourable, and above all indifferent, I kept silent about the truth, which did not become known till very much later. Nevertheless, it is today for the first time that the Claudine books appear under the single name of their single author. I should also be glad if, henc
eforth, La Retraite sentimentale – a pretty title suggested by Alfred Vallette – were considered as the last book in the Claudine series. The reader will find this far more satisfactory from the point of view of both logic and convenience.
COLETTE
One
Definitely, there is something wrong with our married life. Renaud knows nothing about it yet; how should he know?
We have been home for six weeks now. It is over, that lazy, feverish, vagabond life that lasted for fifteen months and in which our wanderings took us from the rue de Bassano to Montigny, from Montigny to Bayreuth, from Bayreuth to a village in Baden that I thought at first, to Renaud’s huge delight, was called ‘Forellen-Fischerei’ because an enormous signboard above the river announces you can catch trout there and I don’t know German.
Last winter, in a thoroughly hostile mood and clinging tight to Renaud’s arm, I saw the Mediterranean. A cold wind was brushing it up the wrong way and it was lit by a thin, harsh sun. Too many parasols, too many hats and faces ruined this meretricious south of France for me. What ruined it most of all was the inevitable meeting with first one, then at least a dozen, of Renaud’s friends; with families whom he provided with complimentary tickets; with ladies at whose houses he dined: this appalling man makes himself agreeable to everyone and puts himself out most for the people he knows least. As he explains, with impudent charm, it is not worth while doing violence to one’s nature to please one’s real friends, since one’s sure of them anyway . . .
My puzzled simplicity has never been able to see the point of those winters on the Côte d’Azur where lace frocks shiver under sable stoles!
Moreover, the abuse I showered on Renaud and the abuse he showered on me overstrained my nerves and made me ill able to bear the petty irritations of everyday life. After being dragged from pillar to post in a half-painful, half-delicious state of physical intoxication and a kind of giddy daze, I ended up by demanding mercy and rest and a fixed abode. Well, here I am back at home! So what is it that I need? What is it I still feel lacking?
Let’s try and put a little order into this hotch-potch of memories still so recent, yet already so remote.
What a fantastic comedy my wedding-day was! By the time that Thursday arrived, three weeks of being engaged to this Renaud whom I love to distraction, with his embarrassing eyes, his still more embarrassing (though restrained) gestures, and his lips, always in quest of a new place to kiss, had made my face as sharp as a she-cat’s on heat. I could make no sense at all of his reserve and abstention during that time! I would have been entirely his, the moment he wanted it, and he was perfectly aware of this. And yet, with too epicurean a concern for his happiness – and for mine? – he kept us in a state of exhausting virtue. His uncontrolled Claudine often gave him angry glances after too brief a kiss, broken off before the proper time. ‘But, goodness, in a week’s time or less – what difference does it make? You’re exciting me for nothing, you’re wearing me out with frustration . . .’ With no mercy for either of us, he left me, against my will, completely intact until after that slap-dash wedding.
Genuinely annoyed by the necessity of informing His Worship the Mayor and His Reverence the parish priest of my decision to live with Renaud, I refused to help Papa or anyone else in any way at all. Renaud dealt with the matter with expert patience; Papa with unwonted, furious, ostentatious zeal. Mélie alone, radiant at being present at the climax of a love-story, sang and daydreamed at the window overlooking the gloomy little courtyard. Fanchette, followed by Limaçon, still unsteady on his legs and ‘fairer than a son of Phtah’, sniffed at open cardboard boxes, new materials, and long gloves that made her retch slightly and diligently kneaded my white tulle veil with her front paws.
This pear-shaped ruby that hangs round my neck on such a thin gold chain was given to me by Renaud two days before our wedding. How well I remember his bringing it! Enchanted by its clear-wine colour, I held it up against the light, at eye-level, to admire it, with my other hand resting on Renaud’s shoulder as he knelt in front of me.
‘Claudine, you’re squinting, like Fanchette when she’s after a fly.’
Without listening to him, I suddenly put the ruby in my mouth, ‘because it ought to melt and taste like a raspberry fruit-drop’! Renaud, baffled by this new way of appreciating precious stones, brought me sweets the following day. Honestly, they gave me as much pleasure as the jewel.
On the great morning, I woke up irritable and surly. I raged against the Town Hall and the Church, the weight of my long-trained dress, the scalding chocolate, and Mélie, who had put on her purple cashmere at seven o’clock and kept gloating, ‘My precious, what a time you’re going to have!’ I raged against those people who were going to come: Maugis and Robert Parville, Renaud’s witnesses, Aunt Cœur in Chantilly lace, Marcel, whose father had forgiven him – on purpose to annoy and make fun of him, I believe – and my own witnesses: a very eminent (and very dirty) malacologist whose name I have never discovered, and Monsieur Maria! Papa, serenely forgetful, saw nothing in the least odd in this remarkable devotion on the part of my martyred suitor.
And Claudine, ready long before the time, a little sallow in her white dress and precariously balanced veil – this short hair can be a nuisance at times – sat beside the basket where Fanchette was having her stomach massaged by her striped Limaçon, thinking: ‘It revolts me, this wedding! The ideal thing would have been to have had him here, for the two of us to have dinner and then lock ourselves up in this little room where I’ve gone to sleep thinking of him, where I’ve thought of him and not been able to go to sleep, and . . . But my little four-poster bed would be too small . . .’
Renaud’s arrival, and his slightly flurried gestures, did nothing to drive away these preoccupations. Then, at the urgent request of Monsieur Maria who was going demented, we had to rout out Papa and hurry him up. My noble father, surpassing himself in a manner worthy of the rare occasion, had quite simply forgotten that I was getting married; we discovered him in a dressing-gown (at ten minutes to twelve!) calmly smoking his pipe. He greeted the unfortunate Maria with these memorable words:
‘Come along in, Maria. You’re devilish late today, just when we’ve got a very difficult chapter. What’s the idea of turning up in dress clothes? You look like a waiter!’
‘But, Monsieur . . . Monsieur . . . Mademoiselle Claudine’s wedding . . . We’re only waiting for you . . .’
‘Hell!’ replied Papa, consulting his watch instead of the calendar. ‘Hell! Are you sure it’s today? If you go on ahead, they can begin without me.’
Robert Parville bewildered as a lost poodle because he was not trotting at the heels of his mistress; Maugis glazed with mock solemnity; Monsieur Maria pale as death; Aunt Cœur supercilious, and Marcel stiffly formal – they hardly constituted a crowd, did they? To me, there seemed to be at least fifty of them in the poky flat! Isolated under my veil, I was acutely conscious of my failing, twittering nerves . . .
What followed gave me the impression of one of those confused and muddled dreams in which you feel as if your feet were tied together. A pink and purple ray falling on my white gloves through the stained-glass windows; my nervous laugh in the sacristy when Papa insisted on signing his name twice on the same page, ‘because my first flourish isn’t impressive enough’. A stifling sensation of unreality; Renaud himself far away and insubstantial . . .
When we returned home, Renaud, thoroughly anxious at the sight of my drawn, unhappy face, questioned me tenderly. I shook my head, saying, ‘I don’t feel much more married than I did this morning. What about you?’ His moustache quivered and, at that, I blushed and shrugged my shoulders.
I wanted to get out of that ridiculous dress and they left me to myself. My darling Fanchette found me easier to recognize in a pink linen blouse and a white serge skirt. ‘Fanchette, am I going to leave you? It’s the first time ever . . . I’ve got to . . . I don’t want to drag you about in railway trains, along with your precious child.’ A
slight desire to cry, an indefinable uneasiness, a painful contraction of the ribs. ‘Oh, let my beloved take me quickly and deliver me from this idiotic apprehension which is neither fear nor modesty. How late night comes in July, how this white sun makes my temples throb!’
At nightfall, my husband – my husband! – took me away. The noise of the rubber-tyred wheels did not stop me from hearing my heart-beats and I clenched my teeth so tight that his kiss did not unclench them.
In the rue de Bassano, I hardly caught more than a glimpse of that flat ‘too like an eighteenth-century engraving’ that he had hitherto refused to let me enter. The only light came from shaded writing-lamps placed on the tables. To intoxicate myself still more, I breathed in that smell of light tobacco and Russian leather that permeates Renaud’s clothes and his long moustache.
I seem to be still there, I can see myself, I am there.
So, the moment had come? What should I do? For a split second, I thought of Luce. Without realizing it, I removed my hat. I took my loved one’s hand to reassure myself and I gazed at him. Carelessly, he threw off his hat and gloves and drew back a little, with a trembling sigh. I looked lovingly at his beautiful dark eyes and his arched nose and his faded gold hair that the wind had artfully ruffled. I went up close to him, but he retreated mischievously and contemplated me from a little distance, while all my splendid courage drained away. I clasped my hands.
‘Oh! Please do be quick!’
Alas, I did not realize how funny that remark was.
He sat down.
‘Come here, Claudine.’
Sitting on his knees, he could hear that I was breathing too fast; his voice became tender.
‘Are you my very own?’
‘You know I am. I’ve been yours for so long.’
‘You’re not frightened?’
‘No; I’m not frightened. To begin with, I know everything!’
‘What, everything?’
He slid me down, so that I lay on his knees, and bent over my mouth. I put up no defence and let his lips drink deep. I wanted to cry. At least, I felt as if I wanted to cry.