The Tale of the Rose (34 page)

Authors: Consuelo de Saint-Exupery

Telegram sent by Saint-Exupéry on December 31, 1943, just before his disappearance: “Consuelo my love am plunged into despair by Christmas far from you. Letters only consolation in immense sorrow. Only joy in life would be to see you again. Have aged a hundred years thinking of you and love you more than ever, Antoine de Saint Exupéry.” Consuelo wrote back: “Your telegrams got me out of bed where I’ve been for a month. You are my only music. Two months without letters from you—your silences—make me lose my horizon, our love and your work. Beg you to start your big novel. Friends and editor await it as I await your return. Weep so much my eyes may not decipher your tiny script, but will listen to the admiration and praise of friends who await you faithfully. My only Christmas present was your telegrams. My celebration began quietly preparing your bed, since God is willing for you to come soon. I kiss you with all my heart, Consuelo Saint-Exupéry.”

Drawing done by Consuelo after her husband’s disappearance (probably in the 1950s).

Consuelo at the ceremony to name the Saint-Exupéry rose, on June 24, 1960. In the background is a bust of the aviator sculpted by Consuelo, which she called
Night Flight.

*
Enrique Gómez Carrillo: Internationally renowned journalist, novelist, and man-about-town who married Consuelo in December 1926 and suffered a fatal stroke eleven months later. Among his numerous books (an edition of his complete works published in 1923 filled twenty-six volumes) was a biography of the notorious World War I seductress and secret agent Mata Hari, in whose arrest he was rumored to have played a role, though he always denied it.

*
Hipólito Yrigoyen (1852–1933), president of Argentina from 1916 to 1922, reelected in 1928, and overthrown in a 1930 revolution led by General José Félix Uriburu.

*
Saint-Exupéry’s first book,
Courrier-Sud,
a barely fictionalized account of his experiences as a mail pilot, was published in France in 1928 and appeared in English in 1933.

*
However, in 1963, Simone de Saint-Exupéry wrote, evoking her brother, “Certain women marked his life deeply, first of all Consuelo Suncin, the wife he married at Agay in 1931. This charming and fantastical creature with her inexhaustible vitality was, amid the material worries that harried his existence, an unfailing source of poetry.
The Little Prince
embodied her in the character of the rose” (“Antoine,
mon frère,
” in
Saint-Exupéry,
1963). [Note by Alain Vircondelet.]

*
Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949): Belgian playwright and essayist who won the Nobel Prize in 1911. His drama
Pelléas et Mélisande
(1892) was reworked into an opera by Claude Debussy.

*
In his memoirs, Gómez Carrillo wrote of having flirted with Oscar Wilde, and claimed that Wilde once sent him a bouquet of flowers. As for the great French poet Paul Verlaine, Consuelo’s late husband had often helped him out financially by buying small things from him—articles of clothing and even his cane—all of which Consuelo kept until her death.

*
The
Nouvelle Revue Française:
France’s most influential literary magazine, which was cofounded by André Gide.

*
Port-Etienne: A town on the Mauritanian coast, at the border of Western Sahara, now known as Nouadhibou.

*
Jean Mermoz (1901–1936): One of the most famous French aviators of the day and the first to fly from France to South America. A longtime friend of Saint-Exupéry, he disappeared during a flight over the South Atlantic; his book
Mes vols
(My Flights) was published posthumously in 1937.

*
Cisneros: A town to the north of Port-Etienne on the coast of Western Sahara, now known as Dakhla. Cap-Juby: A town to the north of Cisneros on the Moroccan coast, just above the border of Western Sahara, also known as Tarfaya.

*
Kif or kef: Hashish.

*
Vol de nuit
was published in France in October 1931 and came out in English as
Night Flight
the following year.

*
Léon-Paul Fargue (1876–1947): A French poet best known for his 1939 book
Le Piéton de Paris
(A Pedestrian in Paris), a collection of incidents, memories, and visions happened upon while strolling idly through Paris.

*
In fact, Saint-Exupéry set off on his Paris–Saigon flight on December 29, 1935; Consuelo’s memory is a few days off the mark here.

*
On December 30, 1935, Saint-Exupéry’s plane crashed in the Libyan desert, 125 miles west of Cairo. He and his mechanic, André Prévot, walked through the desert for four days until they were picked up by Bedouins and returned to civilization.

*
Marshal of France Louis Hubert Lyautey (1854–1934) organized the French protectorate of Morocco and kept that country under French control during World War I.

*
The woman Consuelo refers to as “E.” is almost certainly Nelly de Vogüé, who for many years was Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s mistress. In 1949, under the pseudonym Pierre Chevrier, de Vogüé published a biography of Saint-Exupéry that was long considered the definitive work on his life.

*
On January 29, 1937, Saint-Ex and his faithful mechanic, André Prévot, set off on a 5,500-mile flight from Paris to the town of Timbuktu in central Mali, east of Mauritania and south of Algeria. They flew without a radio over trackless desert but arrived safely. After spending some time in Algeria, the two flew back to Paris in late March.

*
The French original,
Terre des hommes,
and the English translation were both published in 1939. The Académie Française awarded the book a prize as a novel, and it won another prize, as nonfiction, from the American Booksellers Association.

*
Lettres d’une religieuse portuguaise,
first published in France in 1669, was a collection of love letters purportedly written by a Portuguese nun and translated into French. For centuries, writers from La Bruyère to Stendahl to Rainer Maria Rilke hailed it as a great work of literature spontaneously created by the passionate outpouring of a woman’s heart. Not until the twentieth century was it determined that the book had in fact been written by a Frenchman, a minor literary figure and sometime French ambassador to Constantinople named Guilleragues, whom some editions had billed as its translator.

*
In 1945 Consuelo published a book entitled
Oppède
(New York: Editions Françaises Brentano’s), which came out in English the following year as
Kingdom of the Rocks: Memories of Oppède
(New York: Random House).

*
The Little Prince
was published in the United States in 1943 but did not appear in France until after the war, in 1945.

*
André Maurois (1885–1967): A prolific author of essays, novels, and literary biographies, and a member of the Académie Française.

*
On November 29, 1942,
The New York Times Magazine
published Saint-Exupéry’s “Open Letter to Frenchmen Everywhere,” in which he urged his compatriots to put their differences behind them. The letter was seen by many as an attack on Charles de Gaulle. Jacques Maritain, a highly respected Catholic philosopher, wrote an essay in response, accusing Saint-Exupéry of being vague and unrealistic, which appeared in an anti-Vichy weekly magazine,
Pour la Victoire,
along with a brief statement of rebuttal by Saint-Exupéry.

*
Jean Gabin (1904–1976): A beloved actor who appeared in many French films.

The Tale

of the

Rose

THE PASSION THAT INSPIRED

The Little Prince

Translated by Esther Allen

RANDOM HOUSE

NEW YORK

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

R
ANDOM
H
OUSE
and colophon are registered trade marks of Random House, Inc

This work was originally published in France as
Mé moires de la rose
by Les Editions Plon in 2000. Copyright © 2000 by Plon. This edition published by arrangement with Les Editions Plon.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Saint-Exupéry, Consuelo de.

[Mémoires de la rose. English]

The tale of the rose: the passion that inspired

The little prince / Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry; translated by Esther Allen.

p. cm.

1. Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de, 1900–1944—Marriage.

2. Saint-Exupéry, Consuelo de. 3. Authors,

French—20th century—Biography. 4. Air pilots— France—

Biography. 5. Authors’ spouses—France—Biography.

I. Allen, Esther, 1962– II. Title.

PQ2637.A274 Z828335 2001