Simone de Beauvoir - Letters to Sartre

1930

[91 Place Denfert-Rochereau
Paris 14]

Tuesday [6 January 1930]

My love,

Im writing this in bed. Yesterday, I couldnt have managed it but just slept, with gargling as my sole distraction. I had a very sore throat and even some temperature. My grandmother nursed me with the most tiresome devotion. She told me all the gossip, and I was very pleased with her.

If one has to be ill, its nice to do so just after youve left, my dearest love. Id be sliding from sleep into wakefulness and back, without ever quitting the memories of that miraculous week we spent together. There you were at my side, dearest little man, all tenderness and solicitude like at That Ladys last Sunday and as for me, I was brimming over with love for you and happiness. Today Im fine and my benign feelings persist. Im still in bed, just to be on the safe side, but Ive eaten two nice little boiled eggs and some bananas and I feel like reading Rabelais, seeing my sister whos due to drop in, and playing the convalescent.

My love, I never felt our love more strongly than that evening at Les Vikings, where you gazed at me so tenderly I felt like weeping. And what a delightful train took us to Saint-Germain, my love! If I werent so uncomfortably positioned for writing, Id spend pages telling you how happy I am and how much I love you. But I take comfort from the fact that you felt it clearly yourself, didnt you, little man? Here are a hundred kisses, each carrying the same message.

I was very annoyed yesterday by a pneu I got from the Llama, trying to be wounding in a really infantile way. I shall be very sweet to him on Wednesday, but I find such injustice towards both you and me highly unpleasant. Im copying out his note word for word, including the significant crossings-out:

10 oclock. Forgive me for disturbing you amid all the tender and colourful memories that are doubtless prolonging for you your own dear loves passage. Nevertheless:

Can you be at home on Wednesday afternoon? I shall probably arrive at about 3-3.15, since I have a lecture at the Ecole at 1.30. Otherwise (and Sartre must have shown you how unnecessary it was to put yourself out on my account) come and have lunch at Adolphes on Thursday at 12.15 (my apologies for not being able, alas!, to take you to Pierres). I take the liberty of insisting insofar as I still have any right to do so - that I see you on either Wednesday or Thursday. I have some quite important things to tell you, since it is possible I shall never see you again. For you must understand that I have had my fill of the pretty situation that now exists, as a result of that September of yours and the two months of lying which followed it, and that I deserve something better than the crumbs the relations continued out of charity because I am unhappy that you both offer me with such elegance.

Do not be alarmed, at any rate. And, above all, do not write to me. That would be the best way not to see me again at all As things are, I shall tell you quite frankly I am too unhappy to have been able as yet to take any final decision. I shall postpone this, I promise you (and my promises I keep), until Wednesday.

I shall assure him, of course, that neither you nor I is prolonging our relations with him out of pity. I want, above all, to try and make him feel my affection for him and yours too. But I shall tell him, all the same, how astonishing I find this note of his. For absolutely nothing had happened between us from the Saturday when I left him and he was so pleased with me until this Monday he always said that he accepted this situation, and that what he feared was seeing it change. He, who finds it so easy to reconcile his affections for his wife, for me and for the Humous Lady, is really the last person who can reproach me for loving somebody besides him. I feel, too, that Ive put myself out for him more than once, and that these parentheses are pointlessly unpleasant. I was very upset that day at the Napoli and the Caf des Sports, when I saw the Llama being so nice after the letter was discovered. I was still a bit upset at the Closerie des Lilas the other day. But this note hasnt upset me at all, because I see it as mere jealousy of a thoroughly disagreeable kind.

How are you, little man? Im really longing for a letter from you tomorrow. Well be seeing each other soon, wont we, my love? You promised, so Im taking good care of myself. I love you, I love you. I am, most tenderly, your own Beaver.

S. de Beauvoir

Monsieur Sartre
Villa Polownia
St Symphorien
(Indre et Loire)

1935

Hotel du Midi
Place des Marronniers
Valgorge (Ardche)

Valgorge, 28 July [1935]

My dear love,

Here is the first of the two letters youll find in Paris, a few days from now. I still have no news of you, of course, since I havent yet been to Villefort; I do so hope youre not being too bored. Know always how tenderly I love you, my beautiful little marvel. The days are beginning to orient themselves most delightfully towards you, and this morning Im enjoying telling myself how, in a weeks time, at this very hour, I shall be in the presence of yourself. For I shall certainly go and pick you up at 1 in the morning on Saturday at Ste Ccile dAndorge: I cant wait to see you again, as though youd been away from me for ages.

My poor dear love, I shall be giving you a detailed account of my trip, map in hand. Its becoming more and more agreeable. Since the day I wrote to you, the scenery has become really beautiful. Some parts are rather similar to the Hautes-Alpes, with great, bleak, undulating grasslands like the ones we saw near the Col du Lautaret. Then, just a day later, youre transported from these to spots looking exactly like Corsica. On the other hand, there are plenty of landscapes resembling nothing but themselves, very beautiful and strange. I slept 1,700 metres up in a windswept mountain hut, where I was really cold; but that doesnt matter, since Im resolved not to buy him another. By and large I find my bearings like a dream, making 30 or 35 km. a day on excellent trails. In the afternoon I usually take a bus. They never do more than 10 km. an hour in these parts, so that covering 20 km. takes up two hours, while lunching and reading Le Petit Marseillais (the only paper you can buy hereabouts, since the area is a kind of suburb of Marseilles, inhabited solely by tourists and holiday-makers from the Midi) takes up another two. The hot hours of the day are usually spent in this way; I walk only in the mornings, and in the evenings after four. I also make use of private cars a lot, either when Im tired or as part of a concerted plan; by now I stop them as easily as buses.

With everything ordered in this way, I dont have a moment to be bored, or even to wonder how to fill my time. This morning, exceptionally, having arrived at ten at a godforsaken place from which a bus Im planning to take leaves only at three, I have lots of time to spare. I ordered a coffee, read Le Petit Marseillais and am now writing to you. The weather is delightful, as usual. Since Ive so far been almost continuously in the mountains, theres a breeze even at noon and at the same time the sky is completely clear. I hope we shall be equally lucky.

My dear love, Im going to take such good care of you, Im going to be very sweet to you, I so much want you to have a nice little holiday. Ill write another note in two or three days, to give you the very latest news. Until Saturday evening, my love. If Im not at Ste Ccile, come to Florae by noon on Sunday as arranged. If Im not there either, go to the Htel Central and ask whether theres any mail for you; and if Im not there by four in the afternoon, alert the local police. Im really looking forward to this little trip with you. I love you passionately, my beloved.