"une [nurse] attachée à ma personne, me baignant, me lotionnant, me frictionnant de mains adroites, couchant en long peignoir bleu et les cheveux défaits dans ma chambre"

Autograph letter signed by Victor Segalen addressed to Emile Mignard, four pages written in black ink on a double sheet of blue letter paper. Transverse creases inherent to the sending. Trace of white paper hinge.
Emile Mignard (1878-1966), also a doctor and from Brest, was one of Segalen's closest childhood friends whom he met at the Jesuit college Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours, in Brest. The writer maintained with this schoolmate an abundant and very sustained correspondence in which he described with humor and intimacy his daily life in the four corners of the globe. It was at Mignard's wedding, on February 15, 1905, that Segalen met his wife, Yvonne Hébert.
Segalen, who left Le Havre on October 11, 1902 bound for Tahiti, saw his voyage interrupted by contracting typhoid fever which would ultimately immobilize him for two months in San Francisco: "Pleine convalescence mon cher Emile. [...] Aucune complication. Ma fièvre aura été de type « ambulant » car j'ai promené tout mon premier septénaire en sleeping. [...] J'ai renoncé à prendre le paquebot du 6 Décembre. Une rechute à bord et je ferais immanquablement connaissance avec les bas-fonds du Pacifique. Je partirai seulement le 11 Janvier. L'hiver est très doux à S[an] Franc[isco]. Dans 10 à 12 jours je m'installerai en ville. [...] New-York m'eût été infâme pour un séjour d'un mois. San Fr[ancisco] m'agrée." ["Full convalescence my dear Emile. [...] No complications. My fever was of the 'ambulatory' type as I spent my entire first week in the sleeping car. [...] I've given up taking the steamer of December 6th. A relapse on board and I would inevitably make acquaintance with the depths of the Pacific. I will only leave on January 11th. The winter is very mild in S[an] Franc[isco]. In 10 to 12 days I will settle in town. [...] New York would have been dreadful for a month's stay. San Fr[ancisco] suits me."] After sharing with his correspondent his feelings when approaching a possible death ("[...] je cherche à définir mon état d'esprit, quand, lucide j'ai appris que j'avais 41° et plus, la réaction de Vidal et des taches rosées lenticulaires. J'ai envisagé froidement l'éventualité d'une issue fatale. Au point de vue religieux siccité absolue. Tout s'est reporté sur mes parents, mes amis." ["[...] I seek to define my state of mind, when, lucid, I learned that I had 41° and more, Vidal's reaction and lenticular rose spots. I coldly considered the eventuality of a fatal outcome. From a religious point of view absolute dryness. Everything was transferred to my parents, my friends."]), Segalen - always very interested in womankind - gives his doctor friend details about the hospital nurses: "Etonnement de trouver un Hôpital Français en ce répertoire cosmopolite du Grand Océan. Etonnement d'y voir comme personnel une quarantaine de « nurses », 20 à 25 ans, jolies parfois, toutes munies de brevets littéraires, « graduées » comme on dit ici, dont une attachée à ma personne, me baignant, me lotionnant, me frictionnant de mains adroites, couchant en long peignoir bleu et les cheveux défaits dans ma chambre, me parlant de Rudyard Kipling, Tennyson, écrivant entre deux bains froids à ses « amis »..." ["Astonishment at finding a French Hospital in this cosmopolitan directory of the Great Ocean. Astonishment at seeing as staff about forty 'nurses,' 20 to 25 years old, sometimes pretty, all equipped with literary certificates, 'graduates' as they say here, one of whom was assigned to my person, bathing me, lotioning me, rubbing me with skillful hands, sleeping in a long blue robe with her hair undone in my room, speaking to me of Rudyard Kipling, Tennyson, writing between two cold baths to her 'friends'..."] This convalescence, which would last until early January 1903, would be an opportunity for Segalen to discover China Town.
Autograph letters by Victor Segalen are of great rarity.