"Je souhaite la garder longtemps car, eu égard aux vahinés des camarades, soûlardes, tarées, phtisiques, c'est une excellente acquisition."

Autograph letter signed by Victor Segalen addressed to Emile Mignard. Six and a half pages written in black ink on two double leaves. Transverse folds inherent to postal transmission.
Emile Mignard (1878-1966), also a doctor 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 an abundant and very regular correspondence with this comrade 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.
Fine letter relating the discovery of Manga-Reva and Segalen's Polynesian pleasures.
Returning from the rescue mission to the Pomotou Islands, devastated by a cyclone, Segalen discovers new Polynesian lands, notably the Gambier archipelago and the island of Manga-Reva: "Manga-Reva my dear Emile, is the capital island of the Gambier group. Finally, it's a change after our funereal journey through the devastated Pomotou, to see trees that are still standing, and intact huts: then, for the natives of the Low Islands that we have on board, it's astonishing to perceive a mountain, undulating horizon lines. Indeed: diagram of the Pomotou:" [a small drawing by Segalen's hand depicting a plain and coconut palms] "Manga-Reva on the contrary raises two peaks of 400 m (almost the Menez Hom!" [One of the highest points in Brittany with its 330 meters altitude] ") at the base of which we anchored yesterday." Segalen seems enchanted by the discovery of this new territory ("No colleagues in these paradoxical lands; the indigenous clients are numerous; docile and respectful.") and the resources it abounds in: "This tiny little place doesn't lack charm. A very temperate climate and fruits in superabundance. Bananas. Mangoes. Oranges. Pineapples. I supply the wardroom with abundant desserts, fees from my consultations." But the young European has become passionate about another Polynesian wealth: "A new passion: Pearls. In France, they seem dead, pale. Here, one handles them, kneads them, caresses them with a certain voluptuousness. One knows them like people, the beautiful Pearls of the colony. They have their stages, their lines of purchasers; their own life, too, for some die, literally. I was fortunate, for my beginnings; I bought for 15 Chilean piastres, that is 30 f, a pretty little one-carat pearl that was estimated to me, at Paris rates, at least 150 f. It's basically a way of not badly investing one's money. But that one and its future companions, I will probably not part with them. It will be very sweet, upon return, to finally have this mounted at friend Lalique's. Or again, to entrust to the Hamms brothers a large opalescent mother-of-pearl to mount in pewter, as a fruit bowl."
In the second part of this letter, written from Tahiti where he has returned, Segalen describes his days after this return to calm: "Have definitively settled ashore. Until now, not yet the colonial lethargy: I'm finishing, for the Governor who intends it for Armée et Marine, an account of the cyclone and the tour of the Durance." On April 12, 1903, a long article indeed appeared entitled "Vers les sinistrés - Cyclone des Îles Tuamotou 7 janvier 1903" ["Towards the disaster victims - Cyclone of the Tuamotou Islands January 7, 1903"] and here is an excerpt: "Thus, stay-at-home Europe will learn that the Pomotou islands exist, since they have just been devastated; that people live there, since one counts, in a single one of them, nearly four hundred dead; that pearl and mother-of-pearl fishing was fruitful there, since the fisheries are silted up, ruined for a long time." ["Ainsi, l'Europe casanière apprendra que les îles Pomotou existent, puisqu'elles viennent d'être dévastées ; que des gens y habitent, puisque l'on compte, en une seule d'entre elles, près de quatre cents morts ; que la pêche des perles et des nacres y était fructueuse, puisque les pêcheries sont ensablées, ruinées pour longtemps."] This studious writing is accompanied by learning: "I work hard at my Tahitian. Not that shapeless pidgin that one belches out left and right, but the ancient Maori language. Mara, my native spouse, and who absolutely ignores French, serves as my authentic teacher." The evocation of this vahine, with whom he has maintained a relationship since his arrival in Polynesia, is again an occasion for ribald and sensual allusions: "I nevertheless aspire, from time to time, to finally embrace a woman otherwise than in English, than in Kanaka...No matter: she doesn't clash with my exotic setting. I possess her with a pleasure experienced in drinking a fresh coconut or peeling a mango. She moreover smells of fruit. Neither more, nor less. I wish to keep her long because, with regard to the comrades' vahines, drunkards, tainted, consumptive, she's an excellent acquisition."
Very fine and long letter, important testimony of Segalen's beginnings in Polynesia.