The author of Gigi was born on January 28, 1873 in Burgundy, the rich wine country of France. She was named Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette after her mother but, prophetically for one of France's most honored writers was called Bel-Gazou, short for beau gazouillis (beautiful language). As a child she was not rich but was surrounded by love, by nature and by a beautiful simple country life. In the winter she wore wooden shoes and carried a box of live coals and ashes to school to keep her warm. When she was seventeen, the family fell into poverty. She met Henry Gauthier-Villars (called Willy) who was 31* and who fell in love with her. He was trained in science but turned to writing poetry and studying music and became a critic. They married when she was 20 and moved Paris..

Willy introduced her to the fast life and, in essence, corrupted her. They settled on the Left Bank, the refuge of poor artists. It was the time of Toulouse-Lautrec and Zola; Maxim's had just been founded, the Eiffel tour was just four years old, and there were still more carriages than motor cars. They lived in rooms at top of old house with no kitchen and noisy traffic outside. Later they moved to a third floor apartment which was not much better and very dark. She had exchanged country life and love of family for the slums of Paris and the prurient Willy. While she entered a glittering social life, her domestic life was one of misery. Soon she fell into depression and lost her will to live. Every day she wrote to her mother who came to Paris to care for her daughter and return her to the love of life.

Still a country girl, she wore pigtails when attending the salons with the famous which including Anatole France and Proust, Debussy, Ravel and César Franck, and Gide and Cocteau. No one had any idea she would turn out as she did and regarded her as an innocent. She wasn't. Willy discovered she could write and encouraged her to write about her life including the spicy details. At first he decided they were commercially worthless but soon changed his mind and, in 1899, published her first novel Claudine à l'école (Claudine at School) under his own name, not hers. Nobody realized she was the author! It was an account of schooldays and was a roman a clef, her own life! After it sold 40,000 copies in two months, Willy locked her up for hours a day to make her continue to write. Her books, still published as his, helped their finances, and they moved to the Right Bank where they entertained leading musicians, writers, painters,, actors and actresses and went out riding horseback in the Bois de Boulogne.

Other Claudine novels followed and were later dramatized. Willy continued to treat her like a child, continuing to publish her books under his own name. He even made pictures of himself with "Claudine". It was said that "only God, and perhaps Alfred Dreyfus were a celebrated as Willy". He spent no money on his wife; she didn't even own a winter coat until her mother bought her one. He also had a string of mistresses. When she finally tried to have a new novel published under her own name, Willy refused and insisted she write a sequel as well. It wasn't until 1909, after they divorced that she managed to produce these two works under her own pen name "Colette Willy".

She had lost her childhood dreams, was disillusioned and hurt, but she managed to hide her tears. In a way Willy had made her what she had become. She claimed, if he had not forced her to write, she would never have become an author. (After they separated in 1906 she found he had sold the rights to her works and she never received any profits from them.) She debuted as a mime and dancer taking the part of a faun, and she also took a lover. She became a subject of gossip, and Willy basked in her fame. However, she was finally able to publish under her own name as Colette.

Soon she met Henry de Jouvenel, the editor of a major Paris paper, who was three years younger than she. He already had two sons; one, Renaud, wrote about them, and he is the source of much of our information. She called Henry "Sidi". Soon they were living together. When she became pregnant in 1912 they married. On July 3 1913 she gave birth to her only child, Colette de Jouvenal also, like her mother, known as Bel-Gazou. Sidi was involved in the political life of France, and Colette entertained the President of the Republic. She continued to write.

When England and France declared war on Germany in 1914, Bel-Gazou was sent to live in the country with an English nanny. In some ways Colette was a devoted mother, but Bel-Gazou was seldom with her. After the English governess she spent most of her time away at schools. Sidi was in military service and spent most of the four years of World War II at the front. After the war, Sidi advanced through the political ranks and might have become President. He was a senator and representative to the League of Nations where he worked on the Geneva Protocol. Colette was not an asset for his career; her life style was not suitable for the Élysée (the presidential palace). He had other women; she began a love affair with Renaud, Sidi's son. Sidi finally left her, and they divorced.

Maurice Chevalier, who was later to appear in the film of Gigi, became a great admirer, but he did not dare to declare himself. He later wrote: "I became her friend ... later. She had become the great Colette. I confessed to her that once, in Lyons, my feelings for her became very disturbing. ‘You really mean that, my dear Maurice? ... Oh, how ridiculous. You should have told me. What a pity, I'm a fat old woman now. Its too late'." He was very proud of her friendship and the interest she continued to show him later. He said "[I] found her very desirable in her youth and very admirable in later life".

In 1925 Colette was to meet the man who was to be her third husband and the love of her life. Maurice Goudeket was Jewish, the son of a diamond-broker. He had discovered the works of Colette when he was 15 or 16 and finally met her when he was 35 and she was over 50. (Willy had been 13 years older and, although Sidi was three years younger than she, he was a distinguished diplomat. With both of them had been over shadowed). After a few months she invited Maurice to lunch and soon he was a regular at her house where they talked long into the night. She responded to his intense devotion, and they began an affair. Bel-Gazou detested Maurice. She was a Jouvenel! Yet when her father was appointed the ambassador to Rome she refused to go with him and preferred a rather bohemian life. Ten years after Colette and Maurice met, they went to New York where she was largely unknown. In preparation for their visit they married, and the trip on the maiden voyage of the liner Normandie was their honeymoon. Soon after, her daughter also married but Colette did not attend. The daughter's marriage was disastrous and, after two months, ended in divorce.

In 1926 Colette and Maurice were guests at a hotel near Saint-Raphael where one of the owners told her about her young niece who had just made a marriage which had astounded the demimonde. Fifteen years later this was to become the germ for Gigi. (In this case the man was in his sixties, but Colette made Gaston 33. Gigi and Gaston have about the same ages as Colette and Willy had had.) Because it was published in occupied France, it had to be approved by the Nazi censors.

In 1935 Colette was voted "the greatest living writer of French prose" by her fellow writers. She won many other honors but could not be elected to the Académie-Françaises; it would be twenty-five years after her death in 1954 that it would finally admit a woman! She continued to write and, with Maurice, traveled constantly including to North Africa. She also began broadcasting to America. Honors included the Cross of a Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor.

World War II brought additional trials. Since Maurice was Jewish they feared life in German occupied France. He converted to Christianity but could not change the fact of his "Jewish blood". He was arrested on Dec. 12 by the Gestapo and charged with being a Jew and of having been awarded a medal during the World War I! He was sent to a camp in France. Colette had many distinguished friends; they worked on her behalf, and Maurice was released in February. That summer they moved to the unoccupied zone of France. Her health began to fail but, although her mobility was limited, she continued to write including her best known short novellaGigi which debuted in 1945. In 1948 Colette's complete works were published, and there was a film of her life.

Colette was still little known outside of France, but there she was considered a "National Glory". She was fading rapidly, but celebrated her 80th birthday with a cake from the President. She had published about fifty novels. In February 1954 the staged version of Gigi was presented in Paris, and the performance was televised. She died the following August. She was the first French woman to be given a State Funeral, the highest tribute which could be paid to a French citizen. Because of her divorces she was banned from having the funeral in a church. She was buried privately at Père-Lachaise with no religious ceremony.

*Many echoes of Colette's own life are found in Gigi.

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Revised August 2010
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