Letter from Marie Laurencin, Paris, to Paul Rosenberg, 1939 October 11 : autograph manuscript signed.

Life is drab. The members of the co-op [the building where she lives] decided to turn everything off--the hot water, etc. She says they probably don't have the right to do that, but she's the only one in the building right now, and she has a fireplace. She says she needs go buy a gun. A bombardment would end all the wishful thinking in Paris, but she'd still rather be living there than somewhere else. She needs to go buy her meager ration of food. She met the concierge [Olive Larousse] of the building across from hers, who invited her to join her in their heated shelter for lunch with Charles Gillet and an [unnamed] American. She's sorry to have missed Rosenberg's phone call; she must have been wandering around Paris with Suzanne [Moreau]. Now she's living full time on the rue Savorgnan[-de-Brazza], and she's planning to get to work. Someone named Armand [probably Armand Loewengard, with whom she had an intimate relationship] has a one-year convalescence period from the army. His wound had reopened, but he was on the front for 4 days, anyway. The N.R.F [Nouvelle Revue Française, a French literary magazine] is taking a long time to come out. There will probably be some flights of fancy of Laurencin in it. She thinks the director is a communist, and finds him to be strange, especially as regards women. She says she hates Passionnaras, and they should all go to Russia. There are very few children around. They had to move their model, Suzanne's niece, and another little girl and her mother out of Paris (to the département of Loire Inférieure). Rose Descat is trying to resist and asks if she will succeed.