Jeu du pendu représentant Silvia Hamilton

Silvia Hamilton Reinhardt was Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s great New York love: it was to her that he gave, before his departure for North Africa, the original manuscript of The Little Prince (now held at the Pierpont Morgan Library), a token of the mark she had left on the book, written in New York during the months of their relationship. They parted bitterly in 1943, Saint-Exupéry rightly suspecting an affair between Silvia (whom he spelled “Sylvia” in his letters) and the German-born film director and producer Gottfried Reinhardt, then working for the Fox studios.

This pencil sketch is probably the study, or even the original idea, for another, better-known and more finished drawing, executed in ink and watercolor: it shows Saint-Exupéry hanged on his own planet while, on the “Fox” planet, a couple embraces. That drawing, which reappeared at auction in 2020 (Kâ-Mondo, June 2020), had been among the many drawings sold in 1976 (Laurin-Guilloux-Buffetaud-Tailleur, Drouot RG, May 1976); the two are the only ones to evoke, so tragically, this painful separation, although in the catalogue preface Silvia Hamilton gave quite a different account, attributing Saint-Exupéry’s sadness to MGM’s decision to withdraw the film Night Flight from circulation. This less romantic reading has become the accepted version of the end of their relationship and of these two “hanged man” drawings: the first, in which one of them is to be hanged, presumably out of anger, and the second, in which the other hangs himself, presumably out of despair.

Here Saint-Exupéry draws a second gallows, and two more dandelion flowers, both emblematic details of his masterpiece. The letters “AEX” — his own initials — are crossed out in the lower right corner: the hanged man to be guessed is not him, but her! Had the game continued, would the second gallows have spelled out “Gottfried”? Probably!

Silvia Hamilton Reinhardt later gave a precise account of their meeting: “When we met he told me the story of The Little Prince, which he had not yet begun to write. Since he was constantly making wonderful sketches, I suggested that he illustrate the book himself. […] In the spring of 1943 he finally managed to reach North Africa. The conditions he found there made him unhappy, as the last two letters he sent me describe particularly well. […] The day of his departure was approaching (for North Africa, April 1943). I had a gold identity bracelet made for him. […] I gave it to him on the morning he came to say goodbye. As he left he told me: ‘I would like to give you something splendid, but this is all I have.’ He placed in my hands his old Zeiss Ikon camera and the French manuscript of The Little Prince” (Icare, no. 84, 1978; the same issue reproduces the famous testamentary letter of May 1942, written from Algiers).
br/>From the collection of Claude Seignolle.