To Mme Gaston de Caillavet:
[June 1907.]
Dear friend (if I may be permitted to call you that),
as you know I only get up once in every two months. So it is very difficult for us to see one another. Would you care to do this: come with Gaston to the Ritz hotel next Monday the 1st of July at about 10 o'clock, quarter past 10 at the latest. Ask for the small drawing-room which I have reserved. For the first time in years I am entertaining a few people and you will hear Fauré by Fauré (two illegible words) and Mlle Hasselmans. Simply because there will be so very few people there I beg you (and Gaston too) not to speak about it. It is far too difficult to explain to you by letter the people who I wouldn't want to know about it. So if in doubt don't mention it to anybody. I am not promising that I will see very much of you, nor that we will be able to chatter very much, that would not be very fair for the musicians, but at least I will see you and that alone means a great deal to me. You will meet Mmes d'Haussonville, de Clermont-Tonnerre, de Ludre, I can hardly remember myself who else, anyway hardly anybody. I am in no fit state to carry on further. I send you a thousand respects and my tender affection for Gaston.
Marcel Proust.
To M. and Mme Robert de Flers:
[late 1905 - 1906.]
I preserve a charmed memory tinged with dizziness of the brief apparition of yesterday evening which remains rather like a dream with no connection to the rest of my life. A painful dream in which I have come to appreciate everything which is awful, irreconcilable, about a creature who over the years, without any self-interest or payment, showed herself to be so full of devotion and sweetness for me. I recall certain sayings, certain times, and when I compare them with what you told me I cannot believe it, it isn't possible. Yet it is true! It is the consolation of lives such as mine - and it is even a little the reason for which one adopts them and prefers not to be tortured by the spectacle and knowledge of such things. They are revealed to you in the rare days of happiness such as yesterday. Because sadness is mixed with everything and corrupts everything.
Marcel Proust.
To Mme Gaston de Caillavet:
[c.Dec 1906.]
Dear, dear, dear Madame!
I have been wanting to write to you since
the day I received your letter. And I already have so may things
to say to you that I don't think it will be possible. First of
all so that you will understand on the day you come: I have been
at Versailles for four months, but is this really being at
Versailles? I haven't left my bed, not once have I been
able to see the Palace, the Trianon, or anything; I open my eyes
in the middle of the night and keep asking myself whether this
hermetically sealed and electric-lit place where I find myself
couldn't be absolutely anywhere rather than Versailles, where I
haven't watched a single dead leaf whirling down over a single
fountain. Such is my glorious youth and my glorious life. Alone
in my most utterly resigned thoughts, like somebody who has lost
everything and has nothing left to lose, your letter brought me
much sadness. You, the radiant apparition of so many of my
dreams, you have been ill? you are despondent? and sad? It is not
possible, I must see you in Paris. If you have a material
cause for your illness you must see a doctor. Who are you seeing?
It is very important. And if you don't have a material cause then
I will cure you. And if I don't succeed I shall ask
Gaston to entrust you to me, and without compromise I shall take
you to Berne to consult Dubois and you will be cured. But you
must be cured and comfortable. That is the first point. The
second, which was much less important up until yesterday, is no
longer of any importance today.
Having been thoroughly indignant at the cruel,
iniquitous, ignoble tone with which Paulus's matinée was
described in the Figaro ("Paulus has aged, his type
is obsolete, he resigns himself to oblivion") and other
idiotic lies, no doubt from friends who want to make themselves
appear generous by helping him to earn some money, but are merely
humiliating the pride of a great artist who was and always will
be, even if his voice has left the camp, I wanted to ask Robert
de Flers to sign a little letter to the Figaro with me
about Paulus. And as it is tiring for me to write, having had to
write to you about yourself, I was going to ask you to pass on my
proposition to him since he is a great admirer of Paulus. But
yesterday evening I saw in the papers that he had written a piece
about Paulus's matinée. So consequently he wouldn't want to sign
a letter of protest. So it is pointless and I only mention it
retrospectively. Reynaldo, who is a great admirer of Paulus, had
asked to sign it with us. He realizes now that it is no longer
possible.
Goodbye Madame, I hope to be back in Paris
soon; I have been renting an apartment there since October and I
still can't move into it because of circumstances which have
reached epic proportions, even though I am partly the proprietor
of the house. I don't know when I will be able to move in and I
don't know if you would like to visit me there. It is a truly
ugly apartment, situated amongst the dust and the trees,
everything which is hateful to me, which I took because it was
the only one I was able to find which mama knew, and having been
through the distress of leaving rue Courcelles which was too
expensive, I hadn't the courage to move into an apartment where I
would have felt that she had never set eyes on it, which she
would not have known or had any opinion about. This one is still
far too expensive and I don't think I will be able to stay there
(if I am ever able to move in at all!) but for me it would be a
transition between what is for me a real and dear grave-yard, the
apartment in the rue de Courcelles and (I see that this sheet was
already started, I beg your pardon but I haven't the heart to
start all over again) the unknown, something completely strange.
Tell Gaston and Robert that I have in mind a rather
good (!) idea for a piece but I don't have the strength to
do it. On the other hand (which has nothing to do with my idea
for a piece) have they read (in extenso in the
supplement of the Débats) a communication from M.
Berger of the Institute on Aliénor, that wife of Louis VII who
was so badly behaved that he sent her to the Crusades so that she
couldn't get up to any mischief in his absence, but she ended up
sleeping with the Sultan etc. The story continued with a very
amusing and picturesque plan about a hanging which had to be
given to the marvellous Vergy, which is one of the most delicious
things I've seen and which I applauded so loudly that I could not
stop myself knocking three times on the wall of my neighbour M.
Hervieu.
I hope that you are going to get better
(charming syntax), that all of yours are well and I send you my
most respectful affection.
Marcel Proust
Hôtel des Reservoirs.
To Mme Gaston de Caillavet:
102, Boulevard Haussmann
[1908.]
(The 102 is my address which is shown, alas!, by my name in the telephone directory. My number is 292-05)
Madame, dear Madame,
I am writing with some difficulty because I have a fever after having caught cold (fortunately because of it my asthma has not been so bad), but I wanted to tell you that you are extravagantly kind, in yourself and also in relation to the Calmann Affair. For the first kindness (your natural kindness) I love you and admire you, and for the second (Calmann) I am grateful to you and love and admire you more. - I have just written to M. Calmann. It is unfortunate that it should be to him. Because he is very sympathetic to me: the consequence is that I have written him a very persuasive letter to explain to him that it would please me most if he didn't publish the articles. Doubtless he will not stand in the way of this solution. And now I am very upset about it! During the time it takes for him to take note of my letter and notifies me of his refusal, it would be very kind of you if you could ask Gaston if there aren't any publishers who are less smart and who it would be easier to deal with. It would be all the same to me to pay the costs of publication. All I want is to be extricated from it. You know that it was Gaston who put this terrible idea into my head. I found your hanging gardens, your antique pillars, the climbers all over the bare trees, and even, in spite of my feigned disdain, the signature of Napoleon, all that more than sympathetic. But I loved your daughter more and the prodigious distillation of understanding of a look or an exclamation. "I do what I can" (being kind to you) was sublime. She has made me understand something which I have never experienced: shyness. I understand what it must be like, I think for the first time. I did not like the concierge, but without fully understanding why. And the ephebe who remembered nothing about the rue Miromesnil: whatever. I still think that you looked a hundred times nicer with your bare neck, golden apples and your compact mass of hair than "done up for the evening" and I propose to accompany you in society like that. Goodbye, Madame, I love and admire you much more than you know. And in any case there is no reason why you need to know. Your respectful
Marcel Proust.
To Mme Gaston de Caillavet:
[1908.]
Dear Madame,
thank you with all my heart for your
charming letter. I don't think it is worth you taking the trouble
to write to M. Calmann. Perhaps I could telegraph him. Do you
agree? If you know his address, to spare you the trouble of
writing, you could telephone it to me, and ask that it is written
down under your dictation, otherwise telephone messages can be
rather vague. Read the article at the head of this morning's Figaro.
Any moment you expect to come across "dog in the soup"
etc... It lacks Gallicism and it is truly comical not to find a
single French phrase in three whole columns.
Your respectful friend,
Marcel Proust.
To Mme Gaston de Caillavet:
[1908.]
Dear Madame,
I am so ill, but in the unlikely event that
I am in a fit state to go out I could be a possible theatre
companion. I will fall into your box like a "dog in the
soup" and the "vicissitude" (1) would be yours. How good it is that it is a triumph!
how delicious this scene is! The "infamous" Calmann
has still not replied to me! from eleven days ago! And it
was so urgent! If he refuses now I wouldn't have enough time to
apply to anybody else. That's all there is to it!
You did not understand my letter, I didn't say
that I wanted him to refuse. On the contrary! I said that as he
is so kind I couldn't take the same liberties with him as I could
with somebody less agreeable and I didn't want to torment him.
But that doesn't lessen my wish that he accepts. In any case I
think that it would be very advantageous for them if they did
accept. I am held in high regard for Les Plaisirs et les
jours ...
In spite of that I would really like them to
take my pastiches, now more than ever as their silence has caused
me such delay. If he refuses now I won't be able to publish them.
I didn't reply to your letter because I thought that this
clarification of my misunderstanding with you over Calmann would
leave you cold during the awakening of Roi. And for
myself I must say that with good reason Roi has
preoccupied me a hundred times more. But now that it is a triumph
I am telling you all this so that you don't carry on believing
that I don't know what I want and that I would have the
effrontery to not want Calmann after you had asked him.
Please excuse this note written under the
influence of so much medication that I literally don't know what
I am writing, and trust in my respectful affection. My admiring
respects to Mlle Simone and my goodwill to Gaston.
Marcel Proust.
(1) Allusions to Roi, a piece by Gaston de Caillavet and Robert de Flers which they had just put on at the Variétés.
To Robert de Flers:
[1908.]
Read this letter to the end.
My dear little Robert,
I read in the Figaro that alarming
news has been put out about M. Sardon's health, which I didn't
know about, that the news is false gives me great pleasure; but
all the same reading between the lines I realize quite well that
he must have been very sick, I was ignorant of it and I sent
somebody to ask you what it is all about. Sending somebody to
your house gives me the idea of asking you to do me a favour.
This is it. Would it be possible for you to write a few words of
dedication in a copy of Roi, that wonderful piece of
yours, for the young son of some people who have been very kind
to me ...
I am not at all well, my dear little Robert, I
hardly ever get out of bed, have awful, incessant asthma attacks
... I hope that your life is happier and the bad state of
Sardon's health has not been serious enough to cast too unhappy a
shadow over it. I don't know how I found the strength to go to Roi.
But it was a marvellous enchantment for me.
Best to you,
Marcel.
To Gaston de Caillavet:
[1910.]
My little Gaston,
in a flood of tears, all of the past, the
whole beginning of our great friendship, when you were a soldier,
then when I was, wells up again in my heart, which I assure you
is a very brotherly heart, very tenderly leaning over your own
broken heart today. I don't think that anybody was more loved,
more admired than your poor mother was by me who knew her so
well; I assure you that nobody will remember her more faithfully
and more eternally.
It is very distressing for me not to be with
you; I have been in bed with a fever for some time; I shall try
to come tomorrow morning. Please could you place this wreath
beside her? I knew of her end at once and her illness, and how
exquisitely your wife cared for her during her suffering. Her
sweet tenderness will give you something in your distress which I
have always lacked because I have always wept alone. I am with
you with all my heart.
Marcel Proust.
To Bertrand de Fenelon:
My dear Bertrand,
If you only knew the enormous pleasure your
letters and even your postcards bring me you would take the
trouble to write more legibly so that they don't strain my eyes
with a sort of mockery, the irritating mystery of a precious and
indecipherable secret. - I have not been able to make out one
single word from your last two postcards. If your Ts were always
Ms and your Ps were always Os one could accept that convention.
But you are no more capable of staying faithful to your literary
caprices than to any others. When you write you are nothing more
than a drawer of patterns, yet I can no longer even make out the
shapes.
Dear Bertrand, if I were sure, if I had your
solemn promise that you would send them back, I would return your
last two postcards so that you could explain to me what they were
meant to tell me. But I am too frightened that you would not send
them back to me and so I keep them as objects bearing bizarre
inscriptions in unknown characters which are precious to me
because they have been brought by you to me, I who am not an
artist and don't have the right to speak in order to say nothing
and to know about it has no charm.
I am writing to you in all honesty as legibly
as I can, to thank you for having thought of me and to show my
great friendship for you.
Marcel.
To Simone de Caillavet:
[1910.]
Dear Mademoiselle Simone,
it may be a little indiscreet of one who
doesn't have the honour of knowing you very well, to allow myself
to approach you in your time of grief. But your grandmother, whom
I had enormous admiration for, had spoken to me about you before
I knew you; it was through her that I first learned about you
what I later found out for myself. She loved you so much! I think
that you must have a very large heart and I assure you that mine
is no longer happy and that it would do me good to weep beside
you. But I think about you very, very much. I wanted to tell you
so and also how grateful I am that your tenderness will be so
good for your papa who will have so much need of it at this time.
Very respectfully yours,
Marcel Proust.
To Mme Gaston de Caillavet:
[1910.]
Madame,
Thank you so much for your letter and I am
so moved by the one from Gaston. Since, even at such a time, you
have shown so much kindness towards me, could I ask another? I
have recently had a wreath sent to avenue Hoche (by the same
person who brought my four letters, and who delivered it at the
same time). But I know how at these times servants simply place
any flowers in a corner: and for me, who remembers the way she
would look at flowers, when I had sent her them, smell them, ring
for somebody to arrange them, I attach, if I may say so, a
particular pleasure to these - the last ones! - but the first
ones which I am able ! to have placed beside her. If you have a
second to do this you will easily recognize it, it is made up of
camellias, arums (I think they are arums, with white bells),
lilac, roses and violets. Would it be possible to do this for me?
... Thank Gaston enormously for having the courage to write to
me. Don't tell him that I am filling myself with drugs, against
his advice, to try to come tomorrow morning, and above all hug
him, you are everything to him at this time.
Your respectful friend,
Marcel Proust.
To Mme Gaston de Caillavet:
[1910.]
Madame,
What emotion! what sweet joy mixed with such
feelings of sadness! So many years of my life brought together in
that dear envelope. You would need a heart utterly incapable of
memory not to tremble a little when opening it. And it all seems
like yesterday. I am not talking about you, because that word has
no meaning for you, since yesterday or today you are the same.
Was the photograph of you at the tennis court between little
Daireaux and one of the Dancougées taken long ago or was it this
summer ... it is impossible to tell since you are exactly the
same person. And what has given me such a blow to the heart is
that "nothing in it has changed ... except me!" I think
of you with so much affection, and now I can say it! that I love
you! As for your poor mother-in-law, my grief becomes greater
every day, and the sad things that I was told yesterday, which I
never suspected, add to my terrible anguish.
Your respectful and grateful friend,
Marcel Proust.
To Mme Gaston de Caillavet:
[1910.]
Madame,
I am only writing you a few lines to tell
you that I know how delightful you were to your poor
mother-in-law. What a sweet consolation it will be for Gaston to
remember that! How all his friends thank you and trust you for
alleviating the hours for him when sadly I am not able to come
and be with him! I can hardly write. But even if I could I would
not be able to tell you how much I love you.
Your respectful friend,
Marcel Proust.
To Mme Gaston de Caillavet:
Madame,
I don't know how to thank you for your
delightful letter. And Reynaldo came this evening at midnight
(who I couldn't see because I was having a very severe attack)
leaving me word saying that you were asking to see me. Alas! it
is impossible. It's not that there aren't some days, about once a
month, when I am well. On those occasions I get up, go out, but
usually too late to go to visit you. On the other days I am
having attacks and fumigations. I don't allow anybody to come in,
not even my doctor. The only person I sometimes see is Reynaldo
because he comes constantly, and at unreasonable hours, and if
one time out of six I have finished my fumigations, on those
occasions I allow him to come in, because he is so used to my
ailments, getting replies to his questions written on little
pieces of paper if I can't talk etc. ... The other day I went out
at one o'clock and I went to call on Mme Lemaire. I hadn't seen
her for a year. And she is one of the people who I do see. It has
been seven years since I have been able to see Mme Greffulhe. And
it is the same with plenty of others. I am talking about myself a
lot but I assure you that you are the only person I think about.
I feel like I am going to get better any moment and then I shall
come to see you. But at least while I can't do anything I am
working a little, I am working on a long novel which I would have
been so anxious to show to your mother-in-law. I think back about
her marvellous intelligence, about the admiration with which she
spoke to me about you at the time of your marriage: "Jeanne
is wonderful, she has a gift such as I have never known,"
she said.
You told me - and I believe it because you said
it - that she was less friendly afterwards. It is possible. No
doubt that was during one of the periods when I was ill when a
disagreement, which I can't think back on today without tears,
caused a distance between us. But personally I never knew
anything about it. And it is a great comfort to me to think that
if there was any misunderstanding between you that it vanished
completely in the final days when she came to know you as you
really are ... which you would also have understood and admired.
And I thank God for having granted this reconciliation thanks to
which Gaston can reunite you both in his memory of his mother,
and with all the reasons he has for adoring you, would also have
the gratitude for the care you took of her and your noble
attitude. It is very tiring for me to write. Nevertheless I
wanted to tell you, however badly, what is in my heart. But it
takes a long letter to show you only a little of the tenderness I
have for Gaston and yourself.
Your respectful and unswerving friend,
Marcel Proust.
To Mme Gaston de Caillavet:
Madame,
If it doesn't tire you or debilitate you to
write, what was the very pretty phrase that your daughter used
when you told her that she did not look like you? I can't
remember it very exactly.
Your respectful friend,
Marcel Proust.
To Bertrand de Fenelon:
My dear Bertrand,
I am writing a few insignificant lines
(intimidated by the clear understanding of her sorrow) to your
unfortunate sister. And I send you my thoughts which are always
so affectionately united with your own. Such misfortunes make us
truly realize how even those who think themselves assured of a
long future can be taken away so quickly and even more so to
think about those who, like me, only continue to live by pure
chance, which makes me tell myself that we must see each other
again; so that, and I say this without arrogance, and in complete
sincerity, perhaps I would not be the only one to gain by it,
that you could profit to some extent from my disposition, my
culture which absolutely do not merely seem unnecessary
repetition alongside yours.
Let's try to see each other on your return. I
would even travel outside Paris to see you. There is nothing to
stop me. I am still here this year for reasons which would amuse
you were it not for your grief over the death of your
brother-in-law. I have been playing the stock market!... and I
have lost a lot of money, so I have not been able to absent
myself yet.
Times have changed since you made me look for
the "Bourse" journal which I couldn't find, and it was
excusable that I couldn't since you had me look for the Sunday
evening!
Marcel P.
To Bertrand de Fenelon:
My dear Bertrand,
Thank you so much for your card, it gave me
much pleasure, it reminded me of a lovely day which, thanks to
you, I spent at Trouville, not a few years ago. Affections are
like the dead in that nature never brings them back: Happy is the
friendship out of which is preserved a beautiful summer's day, a
hedgerow in flower; one always remembers them with charm.
There is much more in my friendship for you, my
dear Bertrand, a constant desire for your good fortune, an
unceasing feeling of solicitude. The news which you were given
about my health is totally false; I hope that yours is good and I
send you a thousand affectionate wishes.
Marcel P.
To Robert de Flers:
[Nov 1913.]
Excuse me bothering you once again.
Grasset, my publisher, wants to have the
imminent publication of my book announced in a news item in the Figaro.
Since M. Hébrand has given one of his writers the task of
interviewing me and doing an "atmospheric article"
about me, I wanted to wait for that which would have made up the
main elements of the piece, but as I don't know which day I will
be well enough to see this gentleman, I am worried that this will
delay it too much because it is essential that the piece leaves
here in the next day or two. My book is appearing on the 14th and
this is a "literary indiscretion" (the publishers
words). The whole work will be called A la Recherche de Temps
perdu; the volume which is about to appear (dedicated to
Calmette): Du côte de chez Swann. The second: Le
côte de Guermantes, or perhaps: A l'Ombre des Jeunes
filles en fleurs or perhaps: Les Intermittences du Coeur.
The third: Le Temps retrouvé. What it is essential to
say is that it is not all articles from the Figaro, but
a novel which is at the same time filled with passion, meditation
and landscape. Above all it is totally different from Plaisirs
et Jours and is neither "delicate" or
"refined". Although one part resembles (though it is
much better) "Fin de la Jalousie". I don't want the
long silence which I have maintained and which has left me
unknown when others have had the chance to make themselves known
to cause it to be announced as a book devoid of importance.
Without attaching as much to it as certain writers who definitely
exaggerate their value, I have put all my ideas, all my heart, my
very life itself into it. If you could announce the book in a few
lines you would be doing me a great service.
Best to you,
Marcel Proust.
To Madame the marquise de Flers:
My eyestrain makes correspondence extremely
painful, even more so as I have never been able to see an
optician and get some glasses, never going out other than when
all doctors are in bed.
Mme Straus has in fact spoken to me about you
with the most profound tenderness. Unfortunately that goes back
quite a long time; her health, and mine, the similarity of our
conditions, the difference in our hours only allows me to see her
on very rare occasions. It is a terrible loss for me because I
love nobody more than her and have done for many years.
If my attacks at least have the good grace to
warn me before the day when they allow me to get up - if in a
word I were able to carry it through, I would ask Mme Straus to
invite me with you because I would very much like to see you
again. Unfortunately I never know when I will be able to get up
until the last minute. The "forward plans" which I have
made to see Robert have caused me, through the medication which
they necessitate, terrible heart pains!...
To Mme Gaston de Caillavet:
44, rue Hamelin
Address confidential
I am encamped in a dingy, awful furnished
apartment which looks like servants' lodgings.
But what does it matter! He is working. He has
finished his "long novel". He leads his principal and
already legendary characters on their way to old age or death. He
has become ruthless towards the world in which he has worked like
a herbalist on the side of a mountain accumulating the most rare
and poisonous flowers in his herbarium. He shows no indulgence
other than for Saint-Loup. As for the others he is going to
underline or aggravate their imperfections and their
ridiculousness: the vice of M. de Charlus, the baseness of
Jupien, the noisy authority, the later and unforeseen snobbery of
Mme Verdurin, the ingratitude of Morel. He is even going to be
pitiless towards the dear duchess de Guermantes. Age having
effaced the grace and beauty of Oriane, and Marcel having been
himself stripped of all snobbery, will no longer see her other
than with her faults and her tics. He will observe her meanness,
her spite, and "that she talks in endless absurdities and
lies". He will draw our attention to her "russet head,
her salmon-coloured body constricted by jewellery..." He
will compare her to "an old sacred fish encrusted with gem
stones, with cheeks like nougat."
He reveals to us that she, formerly so proud of
her nobility, occupying the highest place in Paris society, has
come down in the world and is now "occupied in the political
and artistic world for an ill-defined creature, a defrocked
member of the fauberg Saint-Germain... a half-title",
pursuing ministers and actresses.
Marcel always placed a hundred masks over the
faces of all the characters in his magisterial comedy. But all
those who lived in close connection with his innumerable models
could recognize in the duc de Guermantes some of the duc de X's
shortcomings..., some of the ridiculousness of comte W..., a
story told by Y..., an event which happened at Z...; the whims,
the outrages, the words of Mme Verdurin were taken from three or
four women with famous salons or tables; likewise for Mme
Villeparisis, Legrandin, etc. La Berma is a mixture of our great
Sarah and the wonderful Réjane. But the two characters who
dominate the work, who no mask can conceal, the two great
portraits are those of M. de Charlus and the duchesse de
Guermantes. Certainly they are also a compound known from two or
three separate physiognomies which intersect, superimpose and
intermingle over the course of the book and the years, but he
disengages from both a great force of truth, so they appear to
break free at every moment from the framework which Marcel has
imposed on them allowing us to call out their names as their
masks are lifted.
To Robert de Flers:
[1919.]
I have a small service to ask of you and at
the same time a great service to thank you for (I didn't know
about it). In two words: the service I want to ask of you today
is this: I see in Les Débats that I have been
decorated. Unfortunately I am surrounded by people of no great
literary value. Would it be possible by means of a small note
from you to place me a little beside some genuine writers such as
Mme de Noailles or M. Fabré (I am not very sure who is decorated
because I am suffering with otitis and only caught a glimpse of
the newspaper which has been taken from me). But this is the
essential thing: a word from Reynaldo informed me that you
behaved with great kindness to me with M. Honnorat. I cannot tell
you how touched I am by that and I thank you from the bottom of
my heart. My gratitude is on a par with my fondness, which is no
small thing.
Your very devoted and admiring,
Marcel Proust.
To Robert de Flers:
44, rue Hamelin
My dear little Robert,
I can't tell you what joy I felt in reading
your article from this morning, to see all at once your beautiful
blue eyes turned to me, your hand outstretched. What you say
about me is magnificent, much too magnificent; I don't deserve
such a eulogy. But I make allowances for friendship, happy to
shut my eyes to it, and my joy is not diminished but increased. I
was not able to go to see Conte d'Hiver, so that it made
me rejoice to experience the performance, thanks to you, from my
bed instead of a theatre seat. But I don't take any notice about
what people say about me, such as when Gide holds his discussions
(narrow portraits is splendid and certainly one could not be more
fair. I like the people at the Nouvelle Revue Française very
much but we have few ideas in common. Even the praises they give
me, strongly exaggerated, don't seem at all to be what I might
merit.) H... came to dine the other evening, on his way through
Paris. It would be all very well of me to "send
signals" to you, as "people" say, but we know that
you will never come, that you will not reply, it is discouraging.
But you are well loved. Oh! how I would love to see you again!
Perhaps even after only this word reaches you I may succeed! But,
alas, with me everything is so improbable, so exhausting. I send
you once again, whilst begging you to pay my great respects to
Mme de Flers, my tender and grateful affection.
Your friend who admires you,
Marcel Proust.
To Robert de Flers:
My dear Robert,
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for the infinitely kind way you have presented an extract from my book in Le Figaro. I cannot understand what made Gallimard choose these lines with no signification, but your little preface made me literally overflow with gratitude and tenderness. I will express it all to you straight away, even though I have not been in a fit state to write for four days. But to delay thanking you afterwards, when I wrote to you at such length before, would be a moral torment for me. And over and above that you are not familiar with the sudden terrible variations in my health and you could form a false judgement of my ingratitude, when my heart is so full of you. Through reading Le Figaro frequently I am very aware of false judgements caused by ignorance where one is led to make unforeseen alterations in the things we believe. I really like Capus's articles where things seem to be viewed with depth and clarity, with fixed and decisive outlines like a piece of rock crystal. Only on the first page where he demonstrates, more geometrorum, why Bar-le-Duc's speech illuminates and reconciles us definitively with M. Lloyd George, we learn at the last moment in the same issue that this minister criticized M. Poincaré's resolutions in unbecoming terms and he is rather in agreement with M. Barthou. Unfortunately pretty rock crystal cannot change lines like those dry immodifiable points of Helleu's which you don't want to hear my opinions about. And it needs a new lucid, heavy mineral to resist the sudden fractures of the following day. That is not to say that one can do better than Capus, that matters, and especially day to day matters, even more so if they are distant, and with Genoese aggravation, do not lend themselves to the translucid beauty of a peremptory art with fixed boundaries. And in this disagreement between things and the director's luminous "paper", in my opinion it is not things which prevail. I don't want to imitate their injustice, and yet the disintegration of a worsening health just like the Conference makes you bring a judgement en bloc which it will not apply to itself. Likewise I have written to you straight away, even though incapable of doing so. I regret not being in contact with you more. The sad event has verified what I had written to poor Deschanel to such an extent and in the smallest details that I would have given you a living article on he who is alas dead. I will send you my book as soon as Gallimard deigns to "send" it. Not that I wouldn't quite willingly buy one, but I don't want to give you anything other than a first edition. With all my deepest fondness and gratitude,
Marcel Proust.
To Mme Maurice Pouquet: (1)
44, rue Hamelin
[19 April 1922.]
Dear Madame,
No, I have no friends around me, and in any
case I wouldn't be well enough to receive them. I certainly have
a typist (the niece of my chamber-maid), I have not seen her for
a long time because I am too ill, but she lives here and never
goes out, so that tonight I was able to dictate this note to her,
which would have been too tiring for me to have written. But even
though you appear to authorize it, I would not dare to allow
myself to write to you by machine like this, and wouldn't have
called for the girl to do it had it not been for my strength
deserting me. Please excuse me for talking about myself so much,
but it is simply so that you understand the reason (which is
rather confidential because I don't like a lot of talk about my
health) why I have not written to you more.
No, I didn't know Gaston at school. Perhaps he
studied at the same school as me (Condorcet), but in any case I
didn't know him there. I don't know who took me to Gaston's
mother's house, I know that I was about to leave for my military
service, which I took at a very young age because it was the last
year of what they called the volontariat. I don't know whether
Gaston did it under the same circumstances. In any case it was
going to finish at the same time I was starting and it was during
the course of my brief "leaves" that I caught my first
glimpse of him at his mother's house. But he was so kind to me
that our friendship began immediately. I would really like to
know if there aren't some of the letters which he wrote to me at
that time (I suppose 1889), when he hardly knew me, in one of the
three large trunks where all my things are stored. Because at
that time, having a great esteem for my "intelligence",
which I didn't deserve, his letters were not only wonderful in
their sentiment but he put a veritable coquettishness into the
writing. One page on the musical science of numbers (and perhaps
partly inspired by M. France) filled me with admiration. This
friendship which was born like this virtually through
correspondence, he kept up for a long time with a goodness, an
infinite thoughtfulness which I will never forget. When you think
that at that time there were no taxis, you will be astonished to
learn that every Sunday evening when I was going back to Orléans
by the 7:40 train, he came every time to take me by car to the
train. He had to set off before 7 o'clock, getting back at half
past 8, not to mention having had no dinner. And he even came to
Orléans. These memories break one's heart; how can one relive
them without weeping? And it demonstrates his merit even more in
that he persevered with our friendship on several occasions at
least to such an extent that I was disliked by almost all of his
friends. A certain L... would not even say one word to me, any
more than would G... from l'avenue Messine. Another (Paul) on the
other hand was very kind to me but that didn't last. The friendly
ones were Louis K... and Fernand P... as well as a future theatre
director whose name escapes me. I was very touched, meeting him a
few years ago at Cabourg (most probably the year before the war),
by the way he spoke to me about Gaston. This rather unappealing
man certainly has a great heart and with regard to Gaston behaved
not only very well, but perhaps even better than Gaston ever
knew. My friendship for Gaston was enormous, he was the only
person I talked about in the barracks, to my batman, the corporal
etc. who regarded him as some kind of god, so that on New Year's
Day they would send him a message of respect. Only God can say
how it must have been interpreted! At that time Robert de Flers
did not yet know Gaston who even took my affection for his future
collaborator rather badly. My friendship with Gaston around this
time acted like an unexpected vaccine for me. It immunised me
against real suffering, in the love which Mlle Pouquet inspired
in me. Knowing that they were half engaged I didn't allow myself
to entertain a single hope. You were perhaps less beautiful than
now but quite different; you gave the impression of a clear
spring. I feel as if I am beginning to get tired, I will have to
break off abruptly; I beg you to remember me fondly to M. Pouquet
who I saw at about this time at your dear mama's house at rue
Miromesnil. He created an extremely sympathetic impression on me,
though I scarcely saw him and he certainly won't remember me.
Please accept my kind respects Madame.
Marcel Proust.
(1) After the war Mme Gaston de Caillavet married her cousin M. Maurice Pouquet.