Correspondence with Madame Straus (continued)
CXI
[11 November 1918.]
Dear Madame Straus
We have thought about the war together too much for us not to share a tender word with each other on the night of Victory, happy because of it, melancholy because of those we have loved and who will not see it. What a marvellous allegro presto in this finale after all the slowness at the start and everything which followed after. What dramaturge that Destiny or that man has been the instrument of! I would have written to you on the night of the Armistice even if I hadn't anything to ask you. But as it turns out I have a multitude of things to ask you. First of all I would like to disencumber you of my carpets, and also to sell them for diverse reasons of which this is one. Recently my barber told me that his brother needed some carpets, and so that he could have a look at mine, wanting to save you the trouble of writing to me, I had word sent to your concierge asking if it would be possible for them to be viewed. Well the brother of the barber (at least I think that he was the one who the barber sent a few days after Céleste went to see the concierge) said that the carpets did not fit his requirements (in any case he is an imbecile and doesn't even know the names of the different types of carpet) and that they were all moth-eaten. So now I am in even more of a hurry to sell them while they are still all in one piece. Plenty of people who I told that you were being kind enough to look after them wanted to go to see them. Princesse Soutzo would like to send the Minister for Greece, who it turns out is a great connoisseur; Lucien Daudet wants to send Flament. But as M. Sibilat specifically wants to have them sold to the Hôtel des Ventes and since on the other hand I have an overflowing dining-room which is a furniture store for mirrored wardrobes, nice leather chairs, chandeliers etc. buried under dust, which I never make use of, but which I could make very good use of right now if I can get a good price for them and which are entirely suitable for the Hôtel des Ventes, the best thing, if M. Sibilat agrees, would be that without delay on the one hand he makes a sale of the carpets, and on the other if he would like to send a lorry and some workmen (you can tell me how much I should give them) to remove them from my dining-room one afternoon which he should fix with me, and as late as possible in the afternoon. I am hoping that the quantity will compensate for the quality, which is mediocre, and the increase in price of certain articles such as leather and crystal would maybe help them to fetch a good price. I have absolutely no idea whether bronzes have any sale value whatsoever. If they do I will clear my room of the ones I don't like. Lastly I have a vast quantity of silverware which I never use since I either take my meals at the Ritz or else I just drink coffee in bed. You tell me whether I ought to include it with all the rest. I know that when I started I wanted to ask you still more things which, however purely material, bring us back through some connection to the sublime Peace. But I don't know what momentary blank has formed in my memory while I have been writing to you, but I have completely forgotten what it is. I think that you are no longer in Saint-Germain and I was going to visit you, if I had got over a sort of flu which I don't think is contagious, but because of my uncertainty I preferred not to pass on to you. In any case I don't think that there was the slightest risk there. It is scarcely more than a slight cough. Only I know how susceptible you are to throat infections and how M. Straus has been ill for such a long time that I would be mortified if I passed a cold on to either of you (even if I was positively suffering from cold and flu myself). I say that I think you are back from Saint-Germain, but I only half wish it. No doubt for you who are such a profound observer and portraitist of the Crowd, these days which evoke the Revolution which we did not know, and the 14th of July, must be fascinating. But however great our happiness over this immense and unexpected victory, we weep so much for the dead that some forms of gaiety are not the forms of celebration which we should prefer. In spite of ourselves we think of Hugo's verse:
Happiness, sweet friend, is a solemn thing.
And joy is closer to tears than laughter...
(I am not sure that it is "sweet friend", it is in the last scene of Hernani.) In any case you know very well that I would not permit myself to say such things to you yourself, I merely quote them to you. Being less timid Reinach would be able to address them to you. No doubt you recall Mounet-Sully saying them sweetly to Doña Sol. It is to another poet, Musset, that my haste to receive the money from my carpets, old furniture and silverware makes me turn and necessity which drives me:
My pocket is like a steep and
borderless isle,
One would not be able to return to it when one is outside;
To the merest broken thread the skein unravels,
Deadly temptation and all the more treacherous,
As I had through all times the sacred horror of emptiness
And as after the battle I dream of all my deaths.
(Musset, Une Bonne Fortune.)
To finish on the subject of great writers, you know that you figure in my Saint-Simon, I think that you will be pleased with that part, which I hope moreover to finalize in the proofs. Certain people will be less pleased such as the princesse Murat, the duchesse de Montmorency, M. de Flers, the Spanish Infanta etc. But you must keep all this secret. It will be enough to receive all the ill feeling afterwards. Beforehand, that will prevent it all.
Please accept, Madame, for M. Straus and for yourself my highest respects of grateful and ardent affection.
Marcel Proust.
If the carpets have to be sold separately and not with the dining-room contents (which is not so much a dining-room as a furniture store), the soonest opportunity will be best. Besides, as for the dining-room contents, if it is acceptable by M. Sibilat, he has only to name me the day and I will leave everything ready to be taken off. I have given what was in the bedrooms and the coach-house to the refugees.
CXII
[November 1918.]
Dear Madame Straus
In your fairy palace of weariness and glory
where you are like Sleeping Beauty, you are now, half opening
your beautiful eyes and resting your beautiful hands on the
writing paper which are so much a language in themselves that
they affirm Mme de Thèbes - you are now troubling yourself again
since I saw one of the people sent by M. Sibilat, M. Mortier
about whose visit it will be easier for me to relate to you face
to face. In practical terms the result of his visit, where he
valued everything which I didn't want to sell rather highly, is
that he advised me to have everything ugly taken off, as if he
had discovered a few pretty things but which it is impossible to
discern amid the confusion of my dining-room, to the Hôtel des
Ventes and to direct them to M. Lair-Dubreuil. As I was speaking
about the latter's fees he told me that that did not matter as he
would get a percentage of the sale. As I am forced to get up on
Saturday perhaps they could send me the men with transport on
that day, enough men so that they won't have to come until half
past 2 and tell me what I should give them so as they will agree
to do everything in one visit should they have to stay until
seven o'clock in the evening. And lastly should somebody
accompany them who can account for all the things so that
everything arrives safely at the Hôtel des Ventes and nothing
gets lost on the way. If I sell the nice things next I shall do
it without you, because the thought of your fatigue only adds to
mine, which is just torture. Perhaps Saturday is too imminent, in
which case we should look for a day the following week or even
Monday when I will doubtlessly not be getting up, having got up
on the Saturday, but which would be quite suitable. M. Mortier
told me that according to M. Sibilat my Smyrna carpet would not
be sold for less than a certain sum per metre (I forget the sum
but M. Mortier said that it would make close to 4,000 francs for
the one carpet). Not now but eighteen years ago la Place Clichy
valued it at a minimum of 1,000 francs. In any case leave it to
M. Lair-Dubreuil. That carpet (and also the Wiltons) is a
nuisance to you, and because of that they have become an
obsession with me as they are of no use to me if I take them back
whereas the money they fetch would be extremely useful to me, and
M. Mortier said that I should profit by what is selling well at
the moment and not wait.
You were talking to me about old Persian carpets. I have a very
large one here, very beautiful, which my father brought back from
Persia when he was there on a mission in 1859. But I will deal
with that separately because it is still down and it would be
better not to delay so I can get rid of the others.
I still don't have the proofs from the pastiche in which I
mention you, and which I could only lend you for one day anyhow.
In any case I scarcely mention you (relatively scarcely because I
think it takes up one page) but in the appropriate manner I think
and in the same manner I often use in society when I am talking
about you. Less disabusing of the vanities where it concerns you
than you are yourself, I rather like to dazzle those people of
the Harcourt, Boisgelin, your Arenberg etc. circle who you have
never had the occasion to see, by showing them the kings and
queens laying siege to your door which you keep closed in order
to try to sleep. And I have tried to show that in the Saint-Simon
pastiche by saying that princesses of the blood go to your house
without you disturbing yourself by returning their visits (as
much as I can remember these lines which were already written
quite a long time ago and I don't have a duplicate) that under
the pretext of illness in a reversal of privilege you do not see
the Dauphine to the door (the duchesse de Bourgogne) when she
comes to see you. None of this is expanded upon of course, you
appreciate how little space one has in a pastiche, so much the
more as all the artistic reasons force one to give most of it
(because of the space) to names from the seventeenth century.
Without that it would not be a Saint-Simon pastiche. But as I
intend to write some longer pieces about you (and which would be
about the essence of your character) it hasn't amused me any the
less, by waiting, to let you see yourself in this oblique way,
amid this Louis XIV crowd. How I would like you and M. Straus to
be finally completely recovered! But I feel as though I myself am
on the point of falling ill this evening; and I am so sad, so
disheartened that perhaps it is for the best; that doesn't
prevent me looking for opportunities for sadness; and perhaps I
shall resign myself to ignoring the things which cause me pain,
by leading a more apparently unhealthy life, in reality more
healthy, a life reproached by others, regretted by me, in former
times. Please accept, Madame, and pass on to M. Straus my deep
respects.
Marcel Proust.
CXIII
[November 1918.]
Dear Madame Straus
I am in despair that you have been suffering, you have no idea how much I think about you. I assume that you have unhooked the telephone so as not to be disturbed, because Céleste has only had about one reply out of ten. And I don't come so as to leave you in peace. I don't want to bore you to death with the tale of my carpets, we will talk about the triple misunderstanding another time. But if you get in touch with M. Lair-Dubreuil tell him that he would be doing me a great kindness by selling the carpets and Wiltons at the "best price", as they say in the Stock Exchange, as soon as he can. I know that reading is just as tiring for you as writing. So it not through curtness, it is out of respect for your rest that I don't tell you of my thousand infinitely tender feelings and grateful respect.
Marcel Proust.
I have just now received word from M. Sibilat who doesn't reply to my letter but asks me on which day he can come and see me at half past 2. I am going to reply that that is an hour when it is very difficult for me to accept even my own company. I would be able make the days when he certainly couldn't. But now I am going to rest for a few days. I'll write to him again afterwards. Perhaps also without offending him I could have it done by somebody else, if less well. - What I want is for you to be finally well again. What sadness it is to feel the whole time the suffering of one who one loves like oneself, but I must say more than that as I hardly love myself. I know that I don't console you in your woes in the slightest by telling you that I suffer on my side. My health is rather less bad, but I have embarked upon sentimental affairs without issue, without joy, and the perpetual authors of weariness, suffering and absurd expense. - I hope that M. Straus is better. Perhaps even you yourself are well at the time I am writing. But I end up asking myself whether "being well" is something that can never happen to those who deserve it.
CXIV
[13 November 1918.]
Dear Madame
What a beautiful letter! But it makes me suffer when I think about the effort of writing the words and gathering your thoughts. Thank you a thousand times over for the evaluator. As regards M. Sibilat I am going to write him that they can come to see my shabby dusty mess of a dining-room on Saturday to leave at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. I went out a little while ago and returned very ill, which makes me think that on Thursday or Friday it will be essential that I take my fumigations. I don't want to say that I shall be up on Saturday, but Céleste can easily show around whoever comes, and he will be doing me a great kindness if he doesn't tell her the valuations, especially if they are low. I will explain why. -
........ (1)
Your evocation of Shakespeare in relation to the present
tragedy is so profound and is so imbued with a great literary
tradition that it immediately brings to mind Sainte-Beuve's
calling your father the greatest scholar of his time and this
scholar's having been permanent secretary of the Institute. Only
in plays of Shakespeare does one see all the events culminating
in a single scene: Wilhelm II: 'I abdicate.' The King of Bavaria:
'I am the heir of the most ancient race in the world, I
abdicate.' The Crown Prince cries out, signs his abdication, his
soldiers assassinate him. One must not recriminate against
Destiny, particularly when the delayed action of clockwork, which
had seemed motionless for four years, gives us this final shower
of triumphs. Still I, who am so much the friend of peace because
I experience man's suffering too deeply, I believe, just the
same, that since we wanted a total victory and a hard peace, it
would have been better had it been a little harder.
I prefer, among all the different kinds of peace, those which
leave no bitterness in anyone's heart. But since we are not
dealing with that kind of peace, since it will perpetuate the
desire for revenge, it might then have been wise to make it
impossible. Perhaps it is being done. However, I find President
Wilson pretty gentle, and since there is no question of a
conciliatory peace, and never could have been, through Germany's
own fault, I should have liked more rigorous terms; I am a little
afraid of German Austria's coming to fill out Germany as a
compensation for the possible loss of Alsace-Lorraine. But these
are only suppositions and perhaps I am mistaken, and we already
have a lot to be thankful for as things stand. General Gallifet
said of General Roget: 'He talks well, but he talks too much.'
President Wilson doesn't talk very well, but he talks a great
deal too much; there are times in the lives of nations, as in the
lives of men (I have, alas, had occasion to apply this to
myself), when the right motto is de Vigny's verse: 'Only silence
is great, all else is weakness.' You know that is in 'The Death
of the Wolf', and you remember all those bloody and stoical
verses. But I myself have now been too long unfaithful to the law
of silence, which must also be your doctor's prescription, and I
must have tired you. So I bid you adieu, begging you to
accept and to share with M. Straus my expressions of respectful,
grateful, and ardent devotion.
Marcel Proust.
(1) The last part of this letter was translated by Mina Curtiss, Letters of Marcel Proust, Chatto & Windus 1950, letter no 188.
CXV
[about November 1918.]
Dear Madame Straus
How good and delightful you are to have arranged everything so well! The end of the nightmare of the carpets is a deliverance for me because I know it is just as much for you. And I might add that I am far from indifferent to the three thousand francs! The sale was carried out perfectly (like everything you do) and fills me with gratitude and satisfaction. I don't want to tire you by writing at length, and in any case I will be prevented from doing so, because Céleste really is a bit foolish (she had three thousand things to ask of you on my behalf the other day - not three thousand francs! - and forgot everything!) and has left me this evening with an almost dry ink-stand and I don't know where to find the ink. However I would like to say a few words about the Pastiches. I am going to soften, since you tell me that it would displease you to be portrayed as a haughty Vasthi. I am going to ask for the special proofs of my toned down version and I will submit them to you. Only then, because of the unheard of difficulties which I am having with the printers, I will not be able to do more than ask you one thing: accept the passage as it is or refuse the whole thing. I don't believe I will be able to redo the corrections. In any case you would have the proofs, if possible I will still change it, if that is impossible and you are not pleased with the toned down version, I can always cut out that passage. These are the difficulties because at the same time as they are working on the second volume of Swann I give them a volume of pastiches instead of the third, fourth, fifth and sixth volumes of Swann which are all ready. As nearly all their workers had been mobilized, the Nouvelle Revue Française (my publishers) has taken two printers for me, and at the same time has abandoned the Swann series. But all this is far too boring. Tell M. Straus that I have freed him from the drudgery of my cheque as the money from the carpets is enough! You may remember perhaps that he had agreed to take it back to the Palais again, from the hands of my solicitor. I had it taken back by Céleste quite simply, and it was done in the wink of an eye. I dined with eighteen people this evening which will explain to you my abruptness to some extent. As soon as I have the proofs I will send them to you and until then please share with M. Straus the acknowledgement of all my gratitude and my most lively and respectful affection.
Marcel Proust.
CXVI
[November - December 1918.]
Dear Madame Straus
I am writing you a couple of lines in the middle of a terrible asthma attack to ask you if this toned down version, which I've had Céleste copy out, can go ahead. Unfortunately I am obliged to return the proofs immediately, the correction of which was delayed by a bad laryngitis which I have had, and I am distressed to ask you once again to go to the trouble of replying to me. But you have only to send me back the text with these words (which you could get your valet to write) "can go ahead" (at least I hope you will come to that judgement). I would prefer you not to tell Montesquiou beforehand that I mention him, because even though it is (in my intention) more than kindly he will come to Paris to enquire about it etc. and I am already so tired. Please accept and share with M. Straus my lively and affectionate respects and gratitude.
Marcel Proust.
CXVII
Saturday [November-December 1918.]
Dear Madame Straus
Thank you with all my heart for your authorization. It gives me such great pleasure to put that passage in my pastiches, which from another point of view bore me so much because of the purely literary necessity which forces me to speak ill of the Murats, the Fels, the Cambacérès, the duchesse de Montmorency etc. At least about you I only say things... however inadequate (the exact passage which Céleste copied out word for word). The pleasure which your letter gave me was marred, a few hours later, by a vexation which you will appreciate. Without warning me my aunt has sold the house where I live; as I have no lease the new landlord might eject me, and in any case because of a verbal agreement with my aunt, which she has neglected to transfer to him, whereby I haven't had to pay my rent since 1916 until I can cash my 30,000 franc cheque, any day now I am going to have to pay my arrears to the new landlord, about twenty thousand francs in one go, which is not particularly easy to get hold of right now! I am immediately setting about proceeding with the sale of more furniture, but this time, don't worry, I won't trouble you, I have sent my tapestries, armchairs etc. to my friend's house, M. Walter Berry, who is the president of the American Chamber of Commerce, and who is going to take care of the sale as he takes care of all my troubles and everything which exhausts me and which multiply on every side, with his untiring goodness. What makes it even more kind of him is that I only got to know him through "Swann", that is to say not very long ago. The only thing which I might ask of M. Straus is this: I have had my infamous cheque recovered, so as not to trouble him, and I have had it re-endorsed in my name by M. Raphaël Georges Lévy. M. Straus told me that the simplest means of cashing it would probably be through the Rothschild bank. Perhaps, with his favour (or through Guiche if it is a nuisance for M. Straus, although I think that Guiche might have too little authority to do it) they would consent to discount it (I use the word even though I don't know exactly what it means, probably that they buy it at less than its value). Its value is 30,000 francs plus five year's interest (because the reason that the Comptoir d'Escompte haven't paid R. G. Lévy is that it doesn't have the stock). Consequently the delay is the fault of Warburg who sent the cheque without depositing the money (which I think makes it close to 40,000 francs). You would be doing me a great kindness if you don't speak ill of my aunt who has acted very badly, but initially towards whom I feel some remorse for having been impolite. Then as I learned that she had made reductions for the other tenants because of the war, which she had not done for me, there is still a chance (although very improbable) that she will ask the new landlord not to demand more from me than she did from the other tenants (apart from Williams who I don't think she had made any reductions for), this chance will evaporate if she discovers friends who I care for as much as you are speaking badly about her... I have just received from her in response to a letter in which I asked her if it was really true etc. a "masterpiece" of a reply in which she tells me that she prefers the "sweet name of aunt to that of landlady" and that if my health were improved and we could get to see each other again, her decision would be the better in that we would talk about nothing but literature and not mention the house! - This makes me think that I only ever talk to you about the most boring things! Whatever you do don't reply. I have only told you all this to give you some idea of my terrible worries, at a time when, delayed in my work by laryngitis, I receive entreaties from my editor to hurry. But none of this makes work easy! Please accept, Madame, and share with M. Straus my most affectionate, grateful and fervent respects.
Marcel Proust.
CXVIII
8 bis, rue Laurent-Pichat
[11 July 1919.(1)]
Dear Madame Straus
Your delightful letter distressed me at first sight and above all because you tell me about the state of your health. And then what do you mean to say by "toned down". I haven't changed a single comma in the portrait I did of you and had submitted to you. Perhaps in the page which follows it I might have brought it forward a little so that it is in the middle of yours, the part about Mme Standish, but that is to show the elegance of your circle to better advantage. One thing that you said makes me think that you are alluding to "at the end of the meal etc. (2)" So not only is that identical to what I sent you (or else in that case I copied the section that I had finished inexactly, but in that case it is the good version which was printed), but do you not know that "in the end" in Saint-Simon does not have the literal sense but means: "it soon happened that". Like in the portrait of the Infanta: "In the end he endured the disgust of it etc." Now I don't think that the Infanta was more than twenty nine or thirty years old at the time, and it was some years previously that he endured this "disgust". I took it upon myself to speak about your health in order to show that you make a pretext of it by letting the duchesse de Bourgogne come without showing her out etc. There is no toning down. It was you who initially wanted it toned down before I submitted the text to you. The text which I sent you a few months ago was therefore a toned down text, but it was identical (apart from any errors in the copying) to the text as it was printed. Please accept, Madame, and have M. Straus accept, my very grateful and very ardent respects and affection.
Marcel Proust.
(1) Date of postmark.
(2) Pastiches et Melanges
"Montesquiou... Having spent his youth among the highest
society, his mature years amongst poets, was easily comfortable
with both, he feared nobody and lived in a solitude which he made
more and more strict by every old friend whom he banished. He was
close to those such as Mme Straus, daughter and widow of the
famous musicians Halévy and Bizet, wife of Emile Straus,
barrister to the court of Aides, whose wonderful rejoinders were
remembered by all. Her appearance had remained charming and would
have been sufficient even without her wit to win over all those
who flocked around her. Is was she who on one occasion in the
chapel at Versailles, where she kept her hassock, when M. de
Noyon whose language was always so exaggerated and so far removed
from the everyday asked her if she did not think that the music
which they could hear appeared octagonal, replied to him:
"Oh Monsieur, that's just what I was going to say!" as
if to somebody who had pronounced before everybody something
naturally witty.
It would take a whole book if one were to put down everything
said by her and which deserves not to be forgotten. Her health
had always been delicate. She had profited by this well by
excusing herself from the Marlys, the Meudons, not making her
court with the king but very rarely, where she was always
received alone and with great esteem. The fruits and waters which
she took at all times to a surprising extent, with no liqueurs or
chocolate, had flooded her stomach, which Fagon preferred not to
notice since it was abating. He denounced all those who gave out
remedies or who had not been received into the Faculty as
charlatans and because of this he dismissed a Swiss who would
have been able to cure her. In the end, as her stomach was unused
to rich food, her body unused to sleep and long walks she turned
this weariness into a distinction. Mme the duchess de Bourgogne
was coming to visit her and did not want to be escorted any
further than the first room. She received duchesses, sitting
down, who visited her all the same as it was such a delight to
listen to her. Montesquiou was not sparing."
CXIX
[25 December 1919.]
44, rue Hamelin
Madame,
I haven't had the strength to write letters, I have been dictating; this has been much more agreeable for the recipients because since I have not been able to write they have been able to read me. But after dictating several letters I found yours and then another; I said to myself: it is too idiotic not to reply "by hand". So if I am illegible do not reproach me, it is through scruple and predilection. But I hope my scruples abate, Because I have eight hundred letters I haven't replied to; I certainly have no intention of writing myself. You say that your typewriter is out of order, but even that is so prettily expressed that it proves that it is not out of order at all. I would really like to see you, to see you, to find out how one can express oneself so well, what treatment you are undergoing, if you are able to sleep without Veronal when I take a gramme and a half every day and don't sleep. Sadly on the rare days when I am able to get up it is not until eleven o'clock at night, and no doubt your treatment forces you to go to bed before nine. This alternation in our lives, when mine extinguished any hope of a coincidence between us long ago, is frightful. I would very much like M. Straus to tell me when I should sell my Royal Dutch and Mexican Eagle. When I sold my seventy Royal Dutch in 1913 I kept about four of them, I don't know why. Now these four have become eleven due to successive sets of issues and each one is worth 33,000 francs. If they are going to fall it would be best to "take it for better or worse", but above all don't write to me about it. It seems to me that one can hold on to those which are going up so much without any risk. If you see Ganderax would you be good enough to tell him that his gift touched me deeply but as I have no idea of his address I can't write to thank him?
I have given up every scrap of my strength to you since eight o'clock, and I am wondering if I will be able to hold out as far as the signature. Please accept my respects, share them with M. Straus and pass on to Jacques my good wishes.
Marcel Proust.
CXX
44, rue Hamelin
(address confidential) [1920.]
Dear Madame Straus
Alas you have been so ill and I never suspected anything! Perhaps my body, so mysteriously connected with yours ("and we are once again bound together one with the other" even though we have never slept together, nor even at the same hours, and for my part I hardly ever sleep at all) knew, because a 40 degree fever which retrospectively I find quite insufficient followed without my knowing of your terrible 41. I only thought that you were going to be bled, and that afterwards you would want some peace, that my visits and my letters would deprive you of that, moreover I have had one hour of vitality in fifteen (now I understand what you mean when you say "living death"). During the recent awful months, as a consequence of the upheaval of moving house, only one single thing could add to the excessive horror and that would be to know that you are suffering. And through your letter I learn that you are suffering. What a blessing it would be if you were cured! What an equal blessing when you allow me to come and sing alleluia beside you. You have no idea how much you mean to me. My closest friends know. Pierre de Polignac, a charming fellow, said to me when he became engaged to the Prince of Monaco's daughter: "I may also know she who kept her hassock in Versailles and replied so prettily to M. de Noyon." At first I didn't understand that he was referring to you, having forgotten my pastiches which my friends know better than I do. They also discover words of yours in Le Côté de Guermantes which made them laugh so much when I recounted them to them and which I have the duchesse de Guermantes say (whose red shoes you will not see until the second volume), without mentioning your name since you asked me not to put your name into my novels and save it for pastiches and present and future articles. But everybody knows the sayings and will put a name to them. What is troubling me about Le Côté de Guermantes is that it has such an anti-Dreyfusard appearance, purely by chance, simply because of the characters who feature in it. It is true that the next volume is extremely Dreyfusard which will compensate for that, because the prince and princesse de Guermantes are Dreyfusards as is Swann, whereas the duke and duchesse are not. I am talking about myself so naïvely to you. But I am frightened of irritating you by talking to you about yourself. Tell M. Straus who has always been so good to me in my troubles that I am still no further on with my cheque, but that I have discovered twelve Royal Dutch which I didn't know about and which has allowed Céleste some very ugly feathers in her hat. More than anything tell me when I can come and please share with M. Straus my very grateful respects.
Your Marcel.
CXXII
[before 23 October 1920.(1)]
Dear Madame Straus
A 40 degree fever (which is not contagious) doesn't make writing easy. But I wanted to send you my book before it appears and I didn't want to send it with no explanation (don't give it away because it is a very rare edition despite the arbitrary number of the copy). Everything spiritual in it is from you. You didn't allow me to put your name to the "sayings" because it was a novel. I shall take my revenge in the second pastiche because you are more tolerant of that "genre". Please don't think that I have become anti-Dreyfusard. I write under the dictates of my characters and as it turns out in this volume many of them are (and were already in 1913, because some short extracts from the book were published then in La Nouvelle Revue Française). Since, to some extent in the following volume, and much more in the one that follows that, my anti-Dreyfusards have become Dreyfusards, and others who we think are anti-Dreyfusards are foolishly Dreyfusards the equilibrium will be re-established. All this is to show you that when I am finally re-established (?) you will find me unchanged. I recommend a delightful article by Léon Daudet which appeared about ten days ago in L'Action Française: A new novel by Marcel Proust. Apart from an unjust phrase relating to Hérvieu, which upset me, it will amuse you very much. If you see Montesquiou, who I have also sent my book, please tell him that I have had a 40 degree fever for the past ten days like the King of Greece, and by it actually attacking somebody who lives like the mayor of Cork it could give the impression that I have abandoned him, even though it is the truth. Please, my dear Madame Straus, share with M. Straus my ardent affection and grateful thanks.
Marcel Proust.
(1) Madame Straus's reply was dated 23 October 1920.
CXXIII
[1921.]
Dear Madame Straus
I am positively incapable of writing. But have you read Léon Daudet's article (which is a masterpiece) about Carmen in L'Action Française? If you have don't reply. If not I will send you it. If you want to write a note to Léon Daudet he is staying at 31, rue Saint-Guillaume. Share all my respects and gratitude with M. Straus.
Your adoring admirer.
Marcel Proust.
CXXIV
[after 15 June 1921.(1)]
Dear Madame Straus
I am very late sending you this little note from Léon Daudet to whom I passed on your letter. If you can read it, he writes wonderfully but totally illegibly. "Gracious" shows that I sought and succeeded in giving him pleasure by sending him your charming lines. The terrible state of my health has been the only thing which has prevented me from sending you my friend's respects sooner.
Please share my grateful respects with M. Straus and accept my tender admiration.
Marcel Proust.
(1) Léon Daudet's letter which was enclosed with Marcel Proust's is dated 15 June 1921.