"Pendant mes quinze jours de mer je vais avancer ma documentation pour pouvoir dès mon arrivée à Tahiti, me mettre à l'ouvrage."

Autograph letter signed by Victor Segalen addressed to Emile Mignard. Four pages written in black ink on a letter card. Monogram of Victor Segalen, created by him and drawn in his hand at the bottom left of the address.
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 with this comrade an abundant and very regular 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.
In a letter of March 25, 1903, Segalen had spoken to Mignard about the probable creation of a doctor's position in Polynesia: "Le Gouverneur de Tahiti a demandé en France, par le précédent courrier, des médecins de renfort pour les îles Gambier, l'archipel de la Société et les Pomotous. Ces médecins seraient en même temps administrateurs." ["The Governor of Tahiti has requested from France, by the previous mail, reinforcement doctors for the Gambier Islands, the Society archipelago and the Pomotous. These doctors would be administrators at the same time."] This new letter, written a little more than a month later, informs us of the failure of this project: "Je devais t'avertir, mon bien cher Emile, des débouchés possibles. Je l'ai fait ; en te les déconseillant sous la forme de fonctions d'administrateur colonial. Je t'en dissuade d'autant plus maintenant que l'on m'apprend le rappel en France du Gouverneur de Tahiti. Avec lui sombrera sans doute son projet. Tu n'as pas à le regretter." ["I had to warn you, my very dear Emile, of the possible opportunities. I did so; by advising you against them in the form of colonial administrator functions. I dissuade you all the more now that I am informed of the recall to France of the Governor of Tahiti. With him will undoubtedly sink his project. You need not regret it."]
Segalen, present in Polynesia since the end of January 1903, is now well integrated with the colonists and natives, with whom he now practices hunting: "Pourtant je te dirai avoir pris quelque plaisir à chasser, sur un grand pied, le cerf. Comme rabatteurs : des chiens, des gendarmes, des canaques. Comme armes : des mousquetons Lebel dont nous avions limé les balles pour les transformer en dum-dum [balle destinée à s'écraser dans le corps de l'animal sans le traverser] Comme gibier, une dizaine de cerfs acculés dans une presqu'île." ["Yet I will tell you that I took some pleasure in hunting deer on a grand scale. As beaters: dogs, gendarmes, Kanakas. As weapons: Lebel carbines whose bullets we had filed to transform them into dum-dum [bullet intended to crush in the animal's body without going through it] As game, about ten deer cornered on a peninsula."]
Despite these very picturesque leisure activities, Segalen still thinks about fictional creation: "Néanmoins j'ai besoin de moins de remue-ménage pour m'attaquer à ce qui me hante. Et mon Promeneur de nuit m'obsède. Pendant mes quinze jours de mer je vais avancer ma documentation pour pouvoir dès mon arrivée à Tahiti, me mettre à l'ouvrage." ["Nevertheless I need less commotion to tackle what haunts me. And my Promeneur de nuit obsesses me. During my fifteen days at sea I will advance my documentation to be able, as soon as I arrive in Tahiti, to get to work."] The work will finally bear the title Les Immémoriaux and will appear in 1907 at Mercure de France under the pseudonym Max-Anély (Max in homage to Max Prat and Anély, one of his wife's first names), Segalen not being authorized, in his capacity as military doctor, to sign a fictional work with his patronymic name. For the time being, Segalen is ready for all sacrifices to devote himself to this work that obsesses him: "Je liquide ma femme comme trop absorbante et pas assez maorie : j'ai changé de case et je vais loger face récif." ["I'm getting rid of my woman as too absorbing and not Maori enough: I've changed huts and I'm going to lodge facing the reef."]
Fine letter evoking the obsessive creation of Les Immémoriaux, superb homage by Victor Segalen to Maori civilization.