106 - MERMOZ, Jean

MERMOZ, Jean L.A.S. “Jean,” Cap-Juby, October 11, 1926, to his grandparents, the GILLETs; 2 pages, in-4 (one edge slightly frayed). The doctor he saw in Toulouse cleared him to return to work, and he “left immediately on a flight to Casablanca as a pilot, where I arrived that same evening. The next day I left for Juby again, returned last Friday morning, and then left again on Saturday to fill in for a colleague going on leave. So here I am, and I’m taking this opportunity to write and chat with you a bit. I’m glad to be back in top form despite the rough time I went through. You know how much I love my job and the wonderful life it gives me. What despair it would have been for me to give it up. That’s what I feared most. I would have far preferred a fatal end to the prospect of becoming useless! Anyway, now all that is nothing more than a nightmare. My appetite has returned, and the beautiful Moroccan sunshine, along with the atmosphere created by the return of everything I thought I’d lost and have finally regained, have helped me recover quickly. It’s unimaginable just how long that lost time seemed to me!” He explains that he put his application in the wrong envelope when applying to “join the Paris-Constantinople International Company, where I had almost received a job offer”; the application ended up at Latécoère. When he returned to Toulouse, “the Director, happy to see me again after the fear he’d had of losing me […] made a host of assurances, promising to place me wherever I wished on the route, asking me not to follow through on my plans, and finally putting me on a pedestal from which I quickly stepped down to return to Casablanca, my favorite spot, while waiting for something better. All in all, this mistake did me a world of good: it became clear that I might one day be missed… so! A little more consideration never hurts”… Correspondence, No. 95. Source: - Jean Mermoz (1901–1936); - Gabrielle Gillet-Mermoz (1880–1955); - Then passed down through the family