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Edith PIAF

Lettre autographe signée adressée à Jacques Bourgeat : « Tu sais que je parle très bien l'anglais, ici on ne parle que ça alors j'arrive à présent à bien me débrouiller, t'as pas fini d'entendre "My tailor is rich" »

Stockholm 28 mai 1947, 17,9x26cm, 2 pages sur un feuillet, enveloppe jointe.

Handwritten letter signed by Edith Piaf addressed to Jacques Bourgeat, two pages written in black ink on a leaf of headed paper from Castle Hotel in Stockholm. Envelope attached. Transverse folds from having been sent, a small piece missing at the top losing a few letters but not affecting the reading.
 
Beautiful letter addressed by “Piafou” to her best friend Jacques Bourgeat known as “Jacquot”.
 
It is in October 1935, when Edith was aged nineteen and had just tragically lost her mentor Louis Leplée, that she met Jacques Bourgeat. He was aged forty-seven and will become a substitute father for "La Môme Piaf". The two friends then never left each other; he wrote her first song “Chand d'habits” and alternated between her tutor, her confident and her confessor.
Jacques Bourgeat donated the majority of Edith Piaf's letters to France's National Library in 1964, demanding that they not be published before 2000.
The letter that we have is unpublished and was sent
by Piaf from Sweden while she was touring with Les Compagnons de la Chanson in North Europe: “We continue our work and you know that it is rare for me not to receive any flowers in an evening, when Les Compagnons receive boxes of chocolates, people are truly wonderful, for that matter, it is exciting to get to know a country with its mentality and its customs.” It is the first time that La Môme performed outside of France and our letter
testifies to her enchantment: “But you see, France is adored everywhere and you cannot know how proud we are, the Frenchman may have his faults but he has even more qualities and I understand that he is so loved.” To her friend, who also educated her by getting her to discover literature, she praises her progress: “You know that I speak very good English, here we only speak that so I can now manage well, you haven't finished hearing 'My tailor is rich'”.
 

In its newspaper Le Grenier d'Arlequin 1916-1940, Carlo Rim recounts the first Édith Piaf concert he attended: “9 December 1935. La môme Piaf, at Gerny's where the smart set begin to flock to listen to her. Some small woman, humble and pitiful in her cheap black dress. The hounded air of someone who has just received a good beating. But we barely only see, in the brutal light of the spotlight, her huge white forehead, her child-like hands clenched on her chest or pressed against her thighs like a starfish. Muffled, as if choked with tears, her voice elevates, rises, tears off into an interminable cry of a mortally wounded animal, an almost inhuman voice that takes you by the throat, grabs your heart – a voice that feels misery and disturbance. And in that moment, la môme Piaf becomes the most beautiful girl in the world.”
 
Provenance: Carlo Rim, then his son Jean-Pierre Richard. A Provençal writer, caricaturist and filmmaker, Carlo Rim was the friend and confident of many of the greatest artists and authors of the 20th century: Antonin Artaud, Marcel Pagnol, Fernandel, Raimu, Max Jacob, Tristan Bernard, Jacques Prévert...




 

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