MARCEL PROUST
16
[March 1915]
Madame,
Yesterday I was grieving most profoundly. After so many family and friends killed in the war, the dearest perhaps after M. Hahn (who is in Argonne but doing well) a person rare and delightful Bertrand de Fénelon has been killed.27 I did not believe that God could add to my pain, when I was informed of yours. And I have so much fallen into the habit, without knowing you, of sympathizing with your sorrows and your joys, through the wall where I sense you invisible and present, that this news of the death of Monsieur your brother has acutely saddened me.28 I always think of you a great deal, I will think of you even more since you are grieving. Alas I know that this sympathy is a small thing. When we are suffering, the only words that touch us are the words of those who have known the person we loved and who can recall him to us. I myself have only an experience of sadness that is already very old and almost uninterrupted. Please be so good as to remember me to the Doctor, would you also thank your son (whom I have never seen either!) and who it appears asks so kindly for news of me from my servant. If I knew of some plaything or some book that might please him, how happy I would be to send it to him. But you would have to direct me. I hope that his tenderness and that of the Doctor will help you bear your hard affliction and I ask you Madame to accept my sincerest regards.
MARCEL PROUST
Lucien Daudet who came to see me this evening gave me better news of J. Clary.
17
[July or August 1915]
Madame,
I hope that you will not find me too indiscreet. I have had a great deal of noise these past few days and as I am not well, I am more sensitive to it. I have learned that the Doctor is leaving Paris the day after tomorrow and can imagine all that this implies for tomorrow concerning the ‘nailing’ of crates. Would it be possible either to nail the crates this evening, or else not to nail them tomorrow until starting at 4 or 5 o’clock in the afternoon (if my attack ends earlier I would hasten to let you know).
Or else if it is indispensable to nail them in the morning, to nail them in the part of your apartment that is above my kitchen, and not that which is above my bedroom. I call above my bedroom that which is also above the adjoining rooms, and even on the 4th since a noise so discontinuous, so ‘noticeable’ as blows being struck, is heard even in the areas where it is slightly diminished.29 I confess that it bothers me very much to speak to you of such things and I am more embarrassed by it than I can say. My excuse for doing so today is perhaps first that I haven’t done it at all this year; then that the circulars of the Minister of War follow one another so rapidly and so contradictorily that my military situation, already settled three times it seemed is once again called into question.
I await my visit from the Major announced ten days ago and which has not yet occurred, something that gives me only too many reasons to live ‘keeping an ear out’, interferes with my fumigations which might bother him (since I don’t know the day or the hour of his coming) and thus leaving me more defenceless in the face of my ailments.30 Following upon your trip, this situation has prevented me from repeating a visit that had left upon me such a charming impression. And your son is no longer here which saddens me also, for he at least could perhaps have ‘come down’ if I cannot ‘go up’ and I have with respect to him numerous debts which cry out to me about promises not kept. I don’t know if you have seen Clary at the Hôtel d’Albe.31 I have not been able to visit him yet and dread at the same time as I desire the emotion of such a moment.
Please accept Madame my very respectful greetings.
MARCEL PROUST
Don’t tire yourself out answering me!
18
[summer 1915?]
Madame,
I had ordered these flowers for you and I am in despair that they are coming on a day when against all expectation I feel so ill that I would like to ask you for silence tomorrow Saturday. Yet as this request is in no way conjoined with the flowers, causing them to lose all their fragrance as disinterested mark of respect and to bristle with nasty thorns, I would like even more not to ask you for this silence. If you are remaining as I am in Paris and if one evening I were not suffering too much, I would like since the Doctor and your son I believe have left and perhaps you are feeling a little lonely to come up sometime in the next few weeks to keep you company. But actually doing this encounters so many obstacles.
I have three times in the evening and with what difficulty hired rather leisurely cars to go to see Clary, who Madame Rehbinder said was asking to see me.32 The 1st time I went with Madame de la Béraudière to the rue du Colisée where we were told he no longer lived and was at 32 rue Gali Colisée lée.33 At 32 rue Galilée the concierge got out of bed to tell us that he … did not know Clary. Madame Rehbinder corrected the mistake and told me that he lived at 33. I went off again another evening when I rang at number 33 a fantastic house with no Clary. Finally on the 3rd attempt I got it right with number 37. But then, I mistook the floor the elevator went up to the top causing me to do the opposite of what the Doctor’s clients do each day ringing at my door. And when I went back down I felt [word missing: that] the concierge would not let me go up again, swearing to me that Clary had gone to bed.34
Your very respectful and devoted
MARCEL PROUST
19
[August 9 or 10, 1915]
Madame,
Since you have been so good as to ask me, you permit me to tell you very frankly. Yesterday at about 7.30 a.m., today at about 8, 8:15 I was a little bothered and you will understand why. Having had yesterday (at last) the visit from the Major who deferred me for a few months,35 I had promised myself to change my hours in order to be able to experience a little daylight. And to start with, not having slept for several days, I had granted myself four hours of sleep to quiet an attack. And at 10 o’clock in the morning I was supposed to get up. But at 8 o’clock, the light little knocks on the floorboards above me were so precise, that the veronal was useless and I woke, only too early for my attack to have been quieted.
[Insertion of this little phrase below ‘woke’] This could have started before, I was asleep, I’m not saying that the loudest was at 8.15.
I had to give up my fine plans to change my hours, (which I will perhaps resume, but that does not depend on my will but on my health), take once again (since my attack is raging) medications upon medications, too much, which has made everything worse. —. I tell you this since you ask me because I know that you understand this, the regret for a reform of myself will wait for such a long time, prevented by such little noises (to which in a few days the reform had it been successful would no doubt have made me indifferent). What bothers me is never continuous noise, even loud noise, if it is not struck, on the floorboards, (it is less often no doubt in the bedroom itself, than at the bend of the hallway). And everything that is dragged over the floor, that falls on it, runs across it. —. It has been four days now that I have wanted to send you the vegetal reply to your Roses.36 The wait for the Major prevented me from sending it. At last I will be able to. —. But I am disappointed: you had promised me you would ask me for some books, some illustrated ones, some Ruskin? It is perhaps heavy on your bed … How I would like to know Madame how you are. I think of you all the time. Please be so kind as to accept my respectful gratitude
MARCEL PROUST
[Above the word ‘Madame’, on the first page] What I do not express to you because I am suffering so today that I can’t write, is my emotion, my gratitude for those letters you have written me, truly admirable and touching in mind and heart.
20
[November 1915?]
Madame,
I have been wanting for a long time to express to you my regret that the sudden arrival of my brother prevented me from writing to you during the last days of your stay in Paris, then my sadness at your leaving. But you have bequeathed to me so many workers and one Lady Terre37 – whom I do not dare call, rather, ‘Terrible’ (since, when I get the workers to extend the afternoon a little in order to move things ahead without waking me too much, she commands them violently and perhaps sadistically to start
