Letter from Marie Laurencin, Paris, to Paul Rosenberg, 1939 December 13 : autograph manuscript signed.

The [Ecole des] Beaux-Arts earned a distinction. Madame Laboureur was appointed as a teacher at the high school in la Baule [in Brittany]. Monsieur Huisman sent her the file via Robert Rey. She answered the two men, but if Rosenberg hadn't been at her house at the moment of the phone call, she never would have had the idea of contacting the Beaux-Arts. What pleases her most is that M. and Mme Laboureur don't know that Mme Laboureur got her job thanks to herself and Rosenberg. Her social life has quieted down. Not much on the social scene right now. She hopes the weather improves so that she can have better light to paint. She says it's good that Rosenberg wrote to her that she should work, otherwise she'd just wait around. She says that what Rosenberg said to her about Duvernois doesn't surprise her [probably Henri Duvernois, screenwriter and novelist, who died in 1937]. She always liked his books, filled with little Parisian seamstresses and the atmosphere of Paris. Olga [Picasso] is leaving for Switzerland. Since she was never involved in politics, her passport is in order. She'll be able to do simple things for her son that his father probably wouldn't be able to do. If the war continues, every country will have its own Maginot Line, impossible to cross. Everyone will stay home with his/her cars, planes, dresses, hats, books, and paintings, and children. And everyone would be happy in a different way. Armand [Loewengard] is okay. She says he's young, "the king of warriors," but she feels like an old woman, sitting by the fire knitting socks starting at 3:00 in the afternoon and thinking about everything that's going on.