Colette’s vacation at Le Crotoy, a source of inspiration and a mark of emancipation

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“It is said that Colette sometimes opened the door naked to people who came to knock on her house,” reports Léontine, fictional character from the compagnie Arcadiastaged for narrated visits organized at Crotoy. If this is perhaps just gossip, theFrench writer was known as a free woman, in her body and her actions.

Colette, whose real name is Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, was born in 1873. If we still talk about her at Le Crotoy, 150 years after her birth, it’s because she stayed there for four years. A short passage which visibly left its mark on people’s minds and his writings.

An assumed bisexuality

During her adolescence, Colette met Henry Gauthier-Villarsa journalist and critic 14 years his senior, in the early 1890s. Nicknamed “Willy”, Henry wrote works, or at least had them written in part entirely by a writer: Colette. Both married in 1893 but finally separated in 1905.

The same year, Colette published her first texts under the name Colette Willy and met Missy. Known to all as Mathilde de MornyMarquise de Belbeuf, daughter of the Duke of Morny, himself half-brother of Napoleon III. At that time, Colette was 32 years old, Missy was ten years older, and the two women quickly became lovers.

A four-year break

In 1906, the couple found a pied-à-terre in Crotoy. Colette and Missy stay there regularly between 1906 and 1910. They rent two villas, first the Belle-Plage villa Then the village of Dunes. If the first has now disappeared, the second is still located along the dike Jules Noiret.

At Crotoy, Colette and Missy enjoy the sea, swimming and fishing. The couple walks in the Crécy forest and goes horseback riding. Colette quickly found a source of inspiration in her stays by the sea.

In his collection of short stories The Tendrils of the Vine published in 1908, two of them take place in many the Somme. A year later, Colette began writing The Wanderera short story in which she uses her personal experience to discuss marriage in particular.

Colette and Missy finally leave Crotoy in 1910 and move in Brittany where Missy acquires the Rozven mansion. The same year, Colette collaborated with the newspaper The morning. In 1911, Colette and Missy separated and the following year the writer married Henry, editor-in-chief of the newspaper.

For her part, Missy ends her life in solitude. After a first tentative de suicide in May 1944, she inserted her head into the oven of her gas stove a month later and died.

Writer, journalist, actress… Colette has passed away in August 1954. She was the first woman honored by national funeral. Nearly 10 years earlier, Colette was the second woman elected to theGoncourt Academy. In 1949, she became its president, a first for a woman.

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