[Saturday 30 March 1907, or shortly before]
Excuse my lateness my dear Louis. The other night after leaving you I remained for a few hours as you had left me, that is to say not too bad, but towards the morning I started to have a truly terrible attack which lasted twenty four hours and left me prostrate. Here is the draft which seems to me to be suitable. If anybody poses you any awkward questions and asks where the expression "the sad advantage" comes from you can recall that it is in Oronte's sonnet in The Misanthrope:
"Hope comforts us 'tis true
And lulls our cares for a while
But Philis, the sad advantage
When nothing works after him".
You might do well to point out which are your two homes so that they
don't think that it concerns a house on the other side of the water where
you are going to spend St Valentine's day (the kissing festival).
I think it would be best if you use two envelopes.
One for Gaston Calmette. The other for the Editorial Secretary (in the
absence of M. Gaston Calmette). And you can address the letter to me
(which I will have delivered) in whichever of the two envelopes would suit
depending on Calmette's return. But I fear that Calmette might be
unhappy about something, seeing that your letter hasn't appeared for so
long, although on second thoughts that doesn't seem likely to me. In any
case if it is delivered by hand it has less chance of getting lost. I have
a thousand things to say to you but I am still shattered by my attack.
Marcel Proust.
I didn't dare put in "the article by my friend Marcel Proust" but perhaps that would be more honest. In any case I think that as it stands it will be fine. Besides, you can make any modifications you deem necessary.
*
Dear Sir,
you were good enough to insert the first time in your column: The
Telephone Scandal, my grievances against an administration that makes
itself very much too comfortable on behalf of its unfortunate fee payers.1
On this occasion the matter does not concern the young ladies of the
telephone, those whom M. Marcel Proust described most aptly the other day
as the "Faceless goddesses" and the "Daughters of the night". His article2
found a great success in these pages and even more copies of Le
Figaro were snatched up that day than usual. We no longer say "I'm
going to telephone you", but "I am going to ask the Industrious Virgins to
give me your number", and more often than not, alas, the "Jealous Furies"
do not want to know anything about it.
But today it is the central administration that I have to complain
about. I have the sad advantage of being the title holder of two telephone
numbers, 677-17, and 674-61. Towards the end of 1906 I went to the rue
Grenelle to inquire how I should go about obtaining a transfer of these
two telephone extensions to two other locations to which I was about to
move. There it was explained to me that the administration allowed me the
choice, as if between two very serious evils, of a so called transfer or a
renewed subscription. Around 10 January I returned to the rue Grenelle, at
the special window, and after a new consultation I decided upon the
transfer which was recommended me as the lesser evil. Here for once I must
pay tribute to the celerity of the Administration; they told me that the
transfer of 677-17 would take a month at the minimum, it only took three
days! But, to its credit, this happy case was, alas, the only one. As for
the second telephone extension (674-61) the transfer has not been carried
out to date, more than three months later! Three months of constant visits
on my part, three months of constant comings and goings, and labours by
the telephone workers at my old as well as my new home.
But if all of that is intolerable, it is so common that I would not
have written to you about so little. This is where the beauty of it all
comes in. On 18 March I received a payment notice for 1 April for my two
contracts under pain of having all my "communications cut off" (rather a
token punishment in fact, since no communications have been available to
me and the second transfer that I am required to pay for has not been
carried out). Conclusion: the business, not content with having taken my
money without providing me any service, for a whole three months, claims
to continue thereafter to be paid for a service that it does not perform.
And we dare to talk about buying back the railways which reimburse any
payment I am due. I would have liked to tell you all this over the
telephone so as to hear these truths through the instrument of my torture.
But the "Angry Servants" of the Mystery not having granted me "the
Venerable Inventor of Printing" as M. Marcel Proust refers to Gutenberg, I
have taken recourse to this letter which I ask you to publish for the
edification of your readers, and to which, Monsieur Director, please allow
me to add the assurance of my very best wishes,
Marquis d'Albufera.
Vingt lettres de Marcel Proust à Louis d'Albufera, François Proulx, Caroline Szylowicz, Claire Baytas, Bulleiin d'informations proustiennes, no. 51, 2021, p. 24-26.
1. "Across Paris. The Telephone Scandal (continued))", Le
Figaro, 10 January 1907, p. 1. "M. Marquis d'Albufera recounts
this tale for us. The day before yesterday evening, needing to use the
telephone, it rang for thirty five minutes continuously,
before the employee on duty consented to come to the device. He remarked
upon this to the nonchalant employee when he had her on the line and
thus attracted this rather rude retort:
"That's not true!"
"Put me through to the head clerk! he replied, wishing to complain about
the insolence of his interlocutor. But the latter declared:
"The head clerk is not here. It looks like it's just me. Make your
complaint to me if you want. There, that's all seen to!..."
This is the service that our dear - very dear - telephone company offers
to its subscribers."
2. Proust's article, Journées de lecture, had appeared
in Le Figaro, 20 March 1907, p. 1.
Created 01.03.23