"Tout-Petit que j'aime, je t'envoie des pensées, toutes blanches. Garde-les dans ta chambre, auprès de toi, où sont mes vraies pensées, tu le sais."

Autograph manuscript letter by Renée Vivien signed "Pauline," addressed to Natalie Clifford Barney and written in black ink on a double sheet with the poetess's silver monogram letterhead.
A very charming letter evoking the flowers so dear to Renée ("Tout-Petit que j'aime, je t'envoie des pensées, toutes blanches. Garde-les dans ta chambre, auprès de toi, où sont mes vraies pensées, tu le sais." ["Little one I love, I send you pansies, all white. Keep them in your room, near you, where my true thoughts are, you know."]) as well as a gift from her "tout petit chéri" ["dear little one"]: "J'adore mes tablettes, tu te rappelles les tablettes des deux petites joueuses de flûte ? - seulement, elles les ont perdues, et moi, je ne veux pas perdre les miennes. J'ai écrit dessus [en grec] J'aime Natalie ! Cela m'a fait tant de plaisir ! - quelle bonne et jolie pensée tu as eue là ! -" ["I adore my tablets, do you remember the tablets of the two little flute players? - only, they lost them, and I don't want to lose mine. I wrote on them [in Greek] I love Natalie! It gave me such pleasure! - what a good and lovely thought you had there! -"] Renée Vivien's Hellenist passion was born from her encounter with Eva Palmer during their stay in the United States where she accompanied Natalie Clifford Barney. This beautiful twenty-six-year-old redhead who, it is said, had translated all of Plato's Symposium with the Amazon, gave Renée her first lessons in ancient Greek and awakened in her the passion for the poetess Sappho that never left her thereafter.
It was at the end of 1899 and through Violette Shillito that Renée Vivien - then Pauline Tarn - made the acquaintance of Natalie Clifford Barney "this American more supple than a scarf, whose sparkling face shines with golden hair, sea-blue eyes, and implacable teeth" (Colette, Claudine à Paris). Natalie, who had just lived a summer idyll with the sulfurous Liane de Pougy who had initiated her into sapphism, paid only discreet attention to this new acquaintance. Renée, however, was totally captivated by the young American and would relate this love at first sight in her autobiographical novel Une Femme m'apparut: "I evoked the already distant hour when I saw her for the first time, and the shiver that ran through me when my eyes met her eyes of mortal steel, her sharp blue eyes like a blade. I had the obscure presentiment that this woman was giving me destiny's order, that her face was the dreaded face of my future. I felt near her the luminous vertigo that rises from the abyss, and the call of very deep water. The charm of peril emanated from her and attracted me inexorably. I did not try to flee her, for I would have escaped death more easily." "Winter 1899-1900. Beginning of the idyll. One evening, Vivien is invited by her new friend to Mme Barney's studio [Natalie's mother], 153 avenue Victor-Hugo, at the corner of rue de Longchamp. Natalie ventures to read verses of her own composition. When Vivien tells her she loves these verses, she replies that it is better to love the poet. A response quite worthy of the Amazon." (J.-P. Goujon, Tes blessures sont plus douces que leurs caresses) Two years of unequal happiness followed, punctuated by Natalie's recurring infidelities and Renée's pathological jealousy, whose letters oscillated between passionate declarations and painful mea culpa. "Renée Vivien is the daughter of Sappho and Baudelaire, she is the flower of evil 1900 with fevers, broken flights, sad voluptuousness." (Jean Chalon, Portrait d'une séductrice)
In 1901 came an important rupture that would last almost two years; Renée, despite Natalie's solicitations and the intermediaries she sends to win her back, resists. "The two friends saw each other again, and it was, in August 1905, the pilgrimage to Lesbos, which constituted a disappointment for Natalie Barney and remained without consequence. [...] The spring was definitively broken. The two former friends ceased to see each other from 1907, and Vivien died without their having met again." (J.-P. Goujon, Ibid.)
Precious and very rare letter from Sappho 1900 to the Amazon.