213 - MERMOZ, Jean

MERMOZ, Jean L.A.S. “Jean,” Natal, June 21, 1930, to his “Beloved Mother”; 4 pages on tissue paper via Aéropostale (the edge of the last page is slightly frayed). Fruitless attempts to get the Comte de La Vaulx seaplane airborne again after crossing the South Atlantic. He hopes his mother’s leg is feeling better, and that he’ll find her “able to stand on her toes like a prima ballerina!!”… His mother has met her son’s fiancée: “So… have you met my little Gilberte?? Doesn’t she deserve to be loved just as much as I love her??”… “And meanwhile, I’m champing at the bit in this dull little town called Natal. I’m bored to death. What a nightmare!! On top of that, a few mild bouts of fever—nothing serious, but certainly not helping to balance out my mood and the frayed nerves of the last few days… Thirty-three attempts to leave between June 8 and 11. I was crying out of helplessness. I’m not used enough to giving up, to resigning myself, to not winning. I finally manage to get the next letter out. I covered three hundred kilometers along the coast to find a suitable spot. I found a gorgeous lake 60 km from Natal inland… I made arrangements… and then disaster struck!! Departure banned due to reinforcements… in short, utter nonsense. Laurent Eynac got an earful—oh! admittedly with tact and respect… but… it made Daurat very happy!! So now, knowing Gilberte is on the other side in Paris, being forced once again to hurt her with these constant disappointments—you, suffering and back in Paris too—my spirits have sunk… sunk. I drag my sadness and inactivity through the dirty, dreary streets of Natal… and the days and hours drag on endlessly.” There’s only one wretched hotel: “The rooms have no ceilings; it rains inside just like outside; the beds are infested with bedbugs; ants are moving in and tearing down the walls. So my navigator, my radio operator, and I moved into an unfurnished villa—but one that’s as clean as a Brazilian house can be. We each bought a hammock to sleep in, gasoline drums to use as wardrobes, chairs, and a table, a Brazilian servant to cook for us, and an old, rattling Chevrolet that lurches us down to town… we’re not denying ourselves anything. […] In short, it’s a makeshift camp and a real mess in every sense of the word!! ” And he has “an overwhelming amount of correspondence”—20 to 30 letters with every mail delivery, from all over the world: stamp collectors, military personnel, “young women asking me to take them out—especially American girls from Miami, Florida”… We’re enclosing another handwritten letter “Jean” to his mother (4 pages, in-8 format, on Via Aéropostale paper): he writes little and “with his mind numb, in a dazing half-sleep.” The weather here right now is exhausting—constant tropical rains and sweltering heat. Everyone has been sick. Even I, who had managed to avoid it, had three days of fever in Buenos Aires, where I’d stopped over between two mail runs […] I was deeply saddened by Baptiste’s death […] yet he had a wonderful death in the prime of his youth… in the midst of a dream… he was too good, too handsome, too pure to deserve to suffer from all the filth of the world… It is very sad for those he leaves behind and who loved him. I will go see his mother as soon as I return; that will be the first visit I wish to make”… Also enclosed are two airmail letters signed “Jean” to his mother (one 8vo page each on Via Aéropostale paper). Provenance: - Jean Mermoz (1901–1936); - Gabrielle Gillet-Mermoz (1880–1955); - Then passed down within the family