Dialogues de bêtes
Enriched with an autograph letter signed to the journalist Georges Maurevert (pseudonym of Georges Leménager), a friend of Léon Bloy and Jean Lorrain. Colette, ill with a “nasty bronchitis,” writes that she has “only for the past few days been well enough to attend daily rehearsals for my tour, which departs on Tuesday (we shall pass through Nice around the 15th, I believe). I come to the essential point of my letter: your article never reached me, and you must send it to me at once…”
In early 1910, Colette embarked on a thirty-city tour, performing in two plays by Georges Courteline, La Cruche ou J’en ai plein le dos de Margot and La Peur des coups. Courteline himself directed the rehearsals: “This great writer is also, as you know, an inimitable actor, whose slightest directions and intonations are for us like flashes of light. Working with him is a joy, a pride, and requires no effort. I assure you that once he is done with me, I shall have talent!” (“Colette Willy en tournée,” Comoedia, 3 April 1910). She did indeed perform in Nice on 15 April, thanking her correspondent for remaining “always for me the kind and considerate colleague you have always been. I am having the Dialogues de bêtes sent to you at once. If only you could see my five dogs!… I shall bring two of them to Nice, they are following the tour […].”
This is the first book published under the name Colette Willy: a theatrical text, an apologue recounting in nine scenes the story of a cat and a dog (Toby-Chien and Kiki-la-Doucette). Three dialogues were added in 1905 for Sept dialogues de bêtes.
A fine copy.