I love my past. I love my present. I'm not ashamed of what I've had, and I'm not sad because I have it no longer. - The Last of Cheri - Colette.
One has to admire the French novelist Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette - simply known for her pen name as Colette. She was born in the Burgundy region of France in 1873 and obviously was one of those rare creatures who knew herself better than most. When she was twenty she married Henri Gauthier-Villars a rascal 15 years her senior and known as Willy. And it was under his name she published her series of novels about a self-assured French girl who becomes a charismatic woman. Of course they are believed to be autobiographical and were "shocking" at the time, even to the liberal French. Willy himself was a faithless reprobate by all accounts and by 1906 she left him and moved in with American writer Natalie Barney with whom she had a short affair that ultimately became a friendship.
After Natalie, Colette took up with another woman, Mathilde de Morny, whom she called Sissy, and the two took to performing a pantomime entitled Rêve d'Égypte. wherin they had an onstage kiss that nearly caused a riot in the Moulin Rouge and were banned from further performances. And even though they continued their affair, they were no longer able to openly live together.
But fear not for Colette's sake, she was also having a affair during the same time with male Italian writer Gabriele D'Annunzio.
In 1912 she married newspaper editor Henri de Jouvenel with whom she had a daughter whose primary care she turned over to a nanny, probably because Colette was more absorbed with her writing and art than with motherhood. By 1924 she and Henri divorced. It was rumored that the split was caused by her having an affair with her stepson, Bertrand.
In 1935 she married her third husband Maurice Goudeket. Maurice later published a book about his her and their life together.
Colette went on to publish 50 novels, many of them about the struggles and darker side of love relationships - a subject she was intimately familiar with from her own life. One, Cheri (1920), tells the story of an affair between the aged courtesan, Lea, and her pretty and pampered younger man, Cheri. In the novel, Colette casts Cheri as feminine in the way he dresses and acts, and Lea as masculine in her resourcefulness and skills.
By the end of the 1920's Colette was considered France's greatest woman writer. Her most popular novel, Gigi was later turned into a a play and a movie.
Colette died in Paris in 1954 but not before having truly lived life to its fullest as woman, lover, novelist, actress, playwright and poet. Je soulève mon verre à vous Colette, vous ai vécu la bonne vie.
Some stuff that happened on this day in History:
After just one day of marriage, Adolph Hitler and Eva Braun commit suicide. Need more be said?
The first commercial television set was introduced at the 1939 World's Fair in New York and bought by a guy named Albert Foils who became the world's first couch potato.
Tennis pro Monica Seles is stabbed by a hooligan who was obviously pissed when he learned the ticket the bought wasn't to a soccer game.
It is the birthday of writer Annie Dillard and singer Willie Nelson - and probably several other people.
And now from Ye olde Vault to which Big Sal keeps the key between her ample bosoms the following poem by a cat named Billy, and in keeping with today's racy theme:
Johnnie D’s Pecker
Killer walks into a coffee bar and says, “Give me
2 guns and a latte. The barista looks at him and
Says, “Hey, what’s that thing hanging out of your
pants?” Killer looks down and says, “Oh, I forgot to zip
Up.” Barista says, “Why you must be John Dillinger.”
The thing is as fat and slick as a river eel.
Later, after Johnnie D is gunned down outside the
Biograph in Chicago, J. Edgar orders his pecker whacked
Off and sent to the Smithsonian where it is to
This day in a glass jar alongside Geronimo’s
hat, Billy the Kid’s trigger finger, Mario Lanza’s
Toenails, Ernest Hemingway’s computer, Clark Gable’s
False teeth, Hitler’s busted skull, a piece of
Marie Antoinette’s cake, Lincoln’s lucky rabbit’s foot,
And other items of distinction kept in good order by a guy named Fred
(no last names please).
Like a white eel, just floating in that jar of amber
Liquid, like something you might find in some cheap
Deli: Special, Pickled Eel - $4.99 a pound!
Johnnie D’s pecker.
There is still one lady left from the old days living in
A blue trailer down in Florida who remembers when
Johnnie D used it on her one night in a Chicago
Nightclub parking lot in the back of a black Packard
Sedan. “Johnnie, oh Johnnie,” she cried. The thing was
Alive and fatal, could ruin a girl for life and did. No
Man could ever satisfy them once Johnnie D. got done
Doing his business. Christ, she thinks,
I’d like to go see it just once more before I die!
sleep well, do right by others and live like there's no tomorrow - because there may not be...
www.authorbillbrooks.com
