“People where you live, the little prince said, grow five thousand roses in one garden… Yet they don’t find what they’re looking for… And yet what they’re looking for could be found in a single rose.”
So said the Little Prince – an absolutely beloved character in the canon of Western Literature. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote this story, a children’s story on the outside and a very adult study of human nature and morality on the inside. Saint-Exupéry, a French national, had fled Europe at the onset of World War II and wrote much of his tale during his 27 week stay in North America and Canada. Now normally we would do a blog on Saint-Exupéry’s life story and how he came to write such a popular and precious children’s tale, but today we are speaking of a specific day in this author’s life… the day he disappeared from the skies.
Saint-Exupéry was not only a writer, but an aviation enthusiast and a pilot. He began his career as a basic rank soldier in the French army when he was a mere 21 years old, but soon after accepting private flying lessons he was offered a place in the French Air Force. After taking a brief break from flying for an office job in the mid 1920s, Saint-Exupéry was back at it by 1926. Over the next many years, Saint-Exupéry worked as a pilot for Aéropostale, working as a mail courier, navigation specialist, and as the negotiating correspondent for downed fliers taken hostage by native Saharan tribes in the Spanish zone of South Morocco. In 1929 he was transferred to Argentina, where he spent his time surveying new piloting routes and also ran search missions for downed fliers… ironic, as eventually Saint-Exupéry would not only become a downed flier himself, but flying would ultimately lead to his disappearance.
By 1929 Saint-Exupéry had already been trying his hand at writing, having published a novella in a literary magazine in 1926, and his first book in 1929. His 1931 publication of Vol de nuit (or Night Flight) was the work that established him as a writer, however. An important event in Saint-Exupéry’s life happened during this time, as a matter of fact, and it would prove to be a great inspiration in his future authorship of The Little Prince. On December 30th, 1935, Saint-Exupéry and his mechanic/navigator crashed a small plane in the Libyan desert. They had very little sustenance with them – some grapes, two oranges, a madeleine cookie, a pint of coffee and a pint of white-wine (how very French!) was all they carried with them. Miraculous was the word of the day, however, as the two had somehow survived the crash and were once again able to survive on these meager rations for three full days (hallucinating, but still alive). Finally on the fourth day a local Bedouin on a camel happened to come across the pair and rehydrated them – saving their lives. This airplane crash – and brush with death – would be revisited in The Little Prince almost a decade later. 
Unfortunately, less than that decade later Saint-Exupéry would be fleeing his homeland and arriving in New York City, winning writing prizes and rubbing shoulders with the literary crowd in New York, all the while simultaneously trying to convince the US government (through its higher-ups) to join in on the fight against fascism. Saint-Exupéry did not stay away from Europe for long through, as he returned to his homeland in 1943 (right around the publication of The Little Prince) to help with the war effort. On a fateful day in 1944 – July 31st, 1944, to be exact – Saint-Exupéry left on a reconnaissance mission from the island of Corsica. His plane, a Lockheed Lightning P-38, and Saint-Exupéry himself were never seen again. Many theories arose, that he had lost control of the plane, that he had committed suicide (French president Charles de Gaulle had implied publicly that Saint-Exupéry supported the German war effort and this caused the author to begin to drink more heavily than regularly and gave him bouts of depression), or that he had been shot down near Marseille and his plane lost at sea. Until 1998, no clues had arisen of his whereabouts and he had become the Amelia Earhart of the literary scene. In 1998 fishermen off of the coast of Marseille dragged up a silver bracelet with Saint-Exupéry’s name, publisher’s name and New York address on it – an ID bracelet. Shortly thereafter, divers picked up a wrecked plane, believed to be Saint-Exupéry’s, and even more theories arose. A German fighter pilot emerged who claimed to have felt shame for decades that he had been the one to shoot down one of his literary idols (after all, Saint-Exupéry wrote often of pilots and aviation before publishing The Little Prince). Perhaps we will never know the truth. But what we do know is infinitely more important… and was taught to us by Saint-Exupéry himself.
“You – you alone will have the stars as no one else has them…In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night…You – only you – will have stars that can laugh.” Well said, Little Prince. Here’s to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry… may he rest in peace.
For those new to RBS, things kick off Sunday afternoon, 5ish. There’s a reception, a Michael Suarez welcome speech & restaurant night. The latter an opportunity for ~ 10 students to share a meal at one of the local ‘Corner’ restaurants, in my case, Lemongrass Thai. Wonderful food, wonderful company!
Eric Carle was born on June 25th, 1929 in Syracuse, New York, but his family originally being from Germany they moved back there and he was educated in art in Stuttgart. His father was drafted into the German army at the beginning of WWII, and eventually taken prisoner by Soviet Forces. Carle himself was also conscripted by the German government at the age of 15 to spend time with other boys his age building trenches on the Siegfried Line. Throughout all this time, Carle dreamed of returning to the United States, and finally, upon turning 23 he moved back to New York City with only $40 to his name. Carle was able to land a job as a graphic designer at 
It was at this agency that author Bill Martin Jr. spotted a lobster Carle had drawn for an advert illustration and Martin decided to ask Carle to collaborate with him on a book for children – the result of which is one of Carle’s best known works… Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? was published in 1967. The book was an immediate success for Martin (who authored the story) and Carle, and in relatively short time it became a best-seller. This popularity jump-started Carle’s career in books, and within just two years he was both writing and illustrating his own.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born on May 29th, 1874, in Kensington, London. His childhood is not elaborately researched, but we do know that he was born to a family of Unitarians, and as a young man was interested in the occult and regularly played (or practiced) with a Quija board with his younger brother (and only sibling) Cecil. He was educated at St. Paul’s School in London, but instead of continuing on to a university as you might have expected, Chesterton attended the Slade School of Art in London – in hopes of eventually becoming an illustrator. Though at Slade Chesterton took lessons in both art and literature, Chesterton left without a degree in either!
When Chesterton was 27 years old, he married Frances Alice Blogg – an author herself, who would prove to be a major influence on Chesterton’s writing and religious life throughout the years. As www.chesterton.org mentions, Frances was in charge of all aspects of Chesterton’s life – kept his schedule for him, kept house, and kept him in check. According to the site, Chesterton often “had no idea where or when his next appointment was. He did much of his writing in train stations, since he usually missed the train he was supposed to catch. In one famous anecdote, he wired his wife, saying, ‘Am at Market Harborough. Where ought I to be?’” To which Mrs. Chesterton would almost inevitably respond with “Home.” The Chesterton’s were perhaps the epitome of the phrase “Behind every great man is an even greater woman.”
Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, on December 10th, 1830. She was the second of three children, with one elder brother named Austin and a younger sister, Lavinia. Her father was not only a lawyer by trade, but a trustee of Amherst College, where his father had been one of the founders of the school. With their background in education, the Dickinson children were given a thorough education for the time, certainly when it came to the two girls. At the age of 10 Emily and her sister began their studies at Amherst Academy, which had begun to allow female students a scant two years before their studies began. Emily remained at the school for seven years, studying math, literature, latin, botany, history, and all manner of respected academia. Upon finishing her studies at the Academy in 1847, Dickinson enrolled in the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (now Mount Holyoke College). Although the Seminary was only 10 miles from her home, Dickinson only remained at the school for 10 months before returning home – for reasons many have tried to unearth but none can be sure of.
Though throughout her late teens Dickinson seemed to enjoy life in Amherst socially, and was certainly already writing poetry (a family friend Benjamin Franklin Newton hinted in letters before his death in this time that he had hoped to live to see her reach the success he knew possible), by her twenties Emily was already feeling a melancholy pull, exacerbated by her emotions when it came to death, and the deaths of those around her. Her mother’s many chronic illnesses kept Emily often at home, and by the 1860s (Dickinson’s 30s) she had already largely pulled out of the public eye. By her 40s, Dickinson rarely left her room, and preferred to speak with visitors through her door rather than face-to-face. Unbeknownst to any, Dickinson worked tirelessly throughout this period on her poetry, and by the end of her life had amassed a collection of roughly 1,800 poems neatly written in hand sewn journals. That being said, less than one dozen of her poems would be published during her lifetime. The first book of her poetry, published four years after her death on May 15th, 1886 by her sister Lavinia, was a resounding success. In less than two years, eleven editions of the first book had been printed, and her words spread across nations.
