In 19O5, to assure the casting of his newspaper, " La Semaine de Suzette ", Henri Gautier offered, in free gift, a small doll named " Bleuette ". This graceful operation with purpose only advertising did not last naturally, but the small doll accompanied this newspaper until its disappearance in 1960. So, several girls' generations had, knew and sewed for Bleuette.

 

If during the years she knew several versions, very close some of the others, not enough precise information on the doll of origin reached us. The only ones of indubitable and verifiable information could allow us better to know the first of them. Through Tante Jacqueline ( tante := aunt ) we can a little progress..

" Of the true name, Tante Jacqueline was called Madam Bernard de LAROCHE. She was a girl of officer and was risen at Home of " La Legion d' Honneur ", in Saint-Denis. From the end of her studies, she began to write, dedicating the feather especially to the girls. She signed of Jacqueline RIVIÈRE's pen name.

She collaborated very fast and very actively in " Les Veillées des Chaumières ". When was decided the creation of " La Semaine de Suzette ", the literary management of the newspaper was offered to her. She hesitated, frightened by this extra work adding to an already heavy task, but eventually accepted. " ( La Semaine de Suzette n ° 12 of April page 22, 1920 - notification of death-).

So she occupied from the beginning, within this newspaper, an excellently important post, and was in the heart of things. It was she who gave her impulse and printed unmistakably the style, taking charge notably of the Doll Bleuette for which she conceived and realized every week patterns of simple appearance but really full of craftiness and difficulties which small sewing well know. Bleuette was so for her a working tool which she knew and owed know better than whoever.

This is indisputable and when she asserts (number 11, Page 166 of April 12, 19O6 of " La Semaine de suzette " ): " Those that complain that clothes made on our patterns are too small for Bleuette (who is a Bebe Jumeau n ° 2 ) are, obviously not shaped to this prescription of not included sewings " we can only take good note and it, definitively , of this information which totally raises persevering doubt on the nature and the category of first Bleuette of whom we knew dimension (27 cms) the mould ( Jumeau ) but imperfectly the number of size. It is a question so well Jumeau size number 2. What everybody knew without nobody - in my knowledge brought the proof of time of this. This information had been already given always in the small post office ( " La Petite Poste " ), twice time :

For Argentine : Bleuette is a " Jumeau Taille 2 " ( N ° 37 of the 12.10.1905 )

For Petite Barcelonnaise: Bleuette is " une poupee numero 2 " ( N ° 49 of the 4. O1. 1906 )

To notice, and this is also very important, that if 2O.OOO Dolls Jumeau say " Bleuette " were sold in the fortnights previous year, this sharply posterior information of April, 1906 (more than a year after the First number of " La Semaine de Suzette "), proves that after a shortage of stock, other dolls Jumeau, say Bleuette, were forwarded and that as a consequence, there was more of it. How much?... What one knows, always by the Small Post office " La petite Poste ", the 'square meadow' of Tante Jacqueline, it is that in July 1906 there were already 80.000 subscribers! (N ° 23 of the 5.7.1906), what is confirmed second time some numbers later: about 80.000 subscribers (N ° 29 of the 16.8.1906)

So, at the time and in advance in the application of the newspaper and its publication, Bleuette in free gift had to doubtless be the object of studies and meticulous reflections within the committee of editorial staff and the team in the summit. Madam Jacqueline RIVIÈRE, approached then duly designated, was a part so of it; her daughter Suzanne, been born in 1886, had probably possessed and possessed still maybe, as all the small bourgeois girls of her time, a personal doll, " HER DOLL "(why no doll Jumeau... Size... 2...???)...; Madam Jacqueline Riviere, well knowing so this one, would have so been able to present her to her peers, pointing out the interest of her size - little cumbersome-, of the mould - Jumeau's always magic name-, of her weak crowding and weight in the expedition; her retained idea, she would have then conceived patterns , what she had maybe already realized for her daughter, patterns whom she had to elaborate, perfectly adapted in Jumeau size 2 exactly.... that she knew so well ... And it, until her death, in 1920.....

All the small sewing kits know it : no more problem from the realizations proposed by her daughter Suzanne after her disappearance : the paterns are absolutely perfected .

It is, for the paterns, a hypothesis of search which can explained it only if, in the beginning, Bleuette was during long months the Jumeau size 2 - head and body -, paterns, on the impetus of Tante Jacqueline, continued to dress this pretty Bleuette without concerned by a possible change of body, few little importance for the editorial staff, idea being to learn to sew to the young girls.

The advertisement of the death of Tante Jacqueline appeared in number 12 of April 22, 192O; as of number 16,  2O May we can read at the head  of "La Petite Poste", page 192 :

"Prayer to the courrierists of "La Petite Poste"to in the future address their correspondence to Miss Suzanne RIVIÈRE, daughter of our regretted collaborator. Miss Suzanne RIVIÈRE is already known of our readers by charming novels which she published in this newspaper under the name of Arlette de MAILLANE. "

Here still, a new and invaluable precision who does not go from oneself: the name of RIVIÈRE was one pen name common to both writers, it was not obvious that it can be a question of the mother and daughter, the latter having been brought to change pseudonym (ex Arlette de MAILLANE) to ensure the continuity of the work of her mother.

This information, of which importance, especially 1st, will not escape the collectors from Bleuette, prove once again, if it were need, the reference impossible to circumvent and inexhaustible what constitutes La Semaine de Suzette and that any cannot work with the one without scanning the other with the magnifying-glass until making some, or almost, her (or his) bedside book.