7 Pleasures and Days

WHILE MARCEL AND REYNALDO WERE IN BRITTANY, Mme Lemaire contacted M. Jean Hubert, editor at Calmann-Lévy, regarding the production schedule of Le Château de Réveillon. During the remaining fall months Proust and Lemaire would each urge Hubert to intervene with the other in order to expedite matters. In one letter Mme Lemaire, citing Anatole France to back up her claims, beseeched Hubert to persuade Proust to make a few changes, such as eliminating certain pieces that were “somewhat muddled and of no interest” and shortening the rather long dedication.1 Clearly, the young author required a great deal of assistance, and Mme Lemaire was eager to provide it.

Both the writer and his illustrator were to blame for the delays. If she had missed deadlines time and again by taking countless vacations and accepting too many other commissions, he had complicated matters by adding new stories, removing some of the older ones, and changing the order of the contents. By early November, Marcel began to lose patience and pleaded with Hubert to persuade Mme Lemaire to produce the illustrations with no further delay because he wanted a publishing date of February 1896. He also sought Hubert’s advice on the delicate matter of his contract and royalties. Marcel admitted that because of his timidity he had never dared bring up the subject with the publisher Calmann-Lévy, having had only one meeting with him. Did Hubert think they should agree on the amount Proust would receive for each volume? Would the costs of the reproduction method used considerably modify the amount? Nothing came of Proust’s query, just as nothing had come of the single meeting with Calmann-Lévy. Proust did not press the matter, and the book was published without a contract. His expectation that the book would sell enough copies to earn him royalties was naïve.

Proust’s frustration with Calmann-Lévy and Lemaire was temporarily forgotten on October 29, when his story about the death of Baldassare appeared in the Revue hebdomadaire, dedicated to “Reynaldo Hahn, poet, singer and musician.”2 Proust was paid 150 francs for the story, apparently the first money he earned with his pen. Replying to Reynaldo, who had thanked him for the dedication, Marcel told his friend: “I would like to be master of all that you desire on earth in order to bring it to you—author of all you admire in art in order to dedicate it to you. I’m beginning in a very small way! but, who knows, if you encourage me . . .”3

Once introduced to Alphonse Daudet’s circle by Reynaldo, Proust became acquainted with such distinguished writers among Daudet’s friends as Edmond de Goncourt and Maurice Barrès. On November 14 Marcel and Reynaldo dined at the Daudets with the Parnassian poet and playwright François Coppée, a member of the Académie française, and the realist novelist Charles-Louis Philippe. Coppée had enjoyed enormous success with his poems and plays, including his 1869 play Le Passant, in which Sarah Bernhardt had won fame as Zanetto. Coppée, like the Daudets and Goncourt, was a staunch anti-Semite. In 1899, motivated primarily by the storm over the Dreyfus Affair, he was a founder of the notorious nationalist and racist Ligue de la patrie française.

At dinner that evening Marcel heard enough expressions of bigotry and inane remarks about literature to make him vent his disgust and sadness to Reynaldo in a letter the next day. If artists and intellectuals, France’s most distinguished and celebrated citizens, held such stupid opinions, what, he wondered, could one expect from ordinary people? Because no one outside official circles had any reason to believe Dreyfus innocent, his plight had not yet captured public attention. The prejudices expressed by the Daudets and their circle, sentiments also prevalent throughout society, had made it easy, once it became evident that a spy was operating at the Ministry of War, for the army to identity a Jew as the traitor. In his letter to Hahn, Proust “noted with sadness . . . the frightful materialism, so surprising in ‘intellectuals.’ They account for character and genius by physical habits or race.” Proust doubted whether any of the writers at dinner that evening understood “anything about poetry. A person who has no feeling for poetry and who is not moved by Truth, has never really read Baudelaire.”4

On this occasion, Marcel held his tongue, apparently, when those around him uttered racist remarks. Derogatory comments about Jews, though he knew they were unfair, were commonplace and easily overlooked. Goncourt’s account of the dinner mentions none of the details that appalled Marcel; the diarist had been intrigued by Mme Barrès’s new hairdo and by Gustave Larroumet’s accounts of the ferocious tortures practiced by Moroccan Islamics.5

Sometime in November, Proust wrote to Pierre Mainguet, publisher of the Revue hebdomadaire, wondering whether his readers might be interested in a “little study of the philosophy of art, if the term is not too pretentious, in which I try to show how great painters initiate us into a knowledge and love of the external world” by opening our eyes. The artist whom Proust had chosen as his example was Jean-Baptiste Chardin, whose still lifes reveal the beauty of the most common objects. Proust informed Mainguet that he had written an essay denouncing the “obscurity” of verses being written by young poets of the symbolist school, but he hesitated to offer it because he feared its vehemence would provoke the poets’ desire for revenge when his own book appeared. Mainguet declined both pieces.6

In his study of Chardin, Proust expressed for the first time one of his “laws” or truths: art always results from the vision unique to each creative person and not from the beauty of the object depicted. A common kitchen utensil depicted by Chardin can be far more beautiful than, say, a string of pearls painted by a lesser artist. Or, as Proust later observed, applying the same principle to authors: “A mediocre writer who lives in a heroic age does not cease to be a mediocre writer.”7 Proust apparently put aside the Chardin essay, although he later attributed its basic ideas to his character Elstir.

Mad Laughter

Marcel was making plans for a dinner party to include his parents, Montesquiou, the Heredias, Antoinette and Lucie Faure—the “very intelligent daughters” of the president—as well as historian Gabriel Hanotaux, who had recently resigned as minister of foreign affairs.8 At a secret October meeting of a “petty council” to decide what steps to take in thwarting the spy ring that was operating through the German embassy, Hanotaux had been the only official courageous enough to question the nature of the evidence used to court-martial Dreyfus. Hanotaux did not dwell on the matter because his chief concern, as befitted his office, had been the effect on diplomatic relations with Germany, if its embassy’s involvement in espionage became publicly known.9

Just before the dinner party Montesquiou received a strange letter from Marcel and Lucien Daudet, who claimed that for the past week whenever they were together it was impossible for them to avoid “being seized and held by the most irrational, painful and irresistible laughter.” Because they would be with Montesquiou and other friends that evening, the purpose of their letter was to beg his indulgence and ask that he warn the others: “Since Delafosse or Gregh might take offense, would you be so kind as to tell them not to be more sensitive than M. and Mme Daudet, who have been patiently tolerating this disorder for a week.” Marcel and Lucien were particularly concerned about their behavior that evening because the reception would be attended by a distinguished friend of Montesquiou’s whom he was eager for them to meet. Before affixing their signatures, the two hysterical young men assured Montesquiou of their affection and respect.10 No doubt that remark made them giggle.

Lucien and Marcel had been playing a game that increased the likelihood of their breaking into mad laughter. They compiled lists of what they called louchonnerie, trite or pretentious expressions, such as “the Big Blue” for the Mediterranean Sea or “our little soldiers” for the French army. Whenever Marcel and Lucien heard someone utter an expression from their list, the two would give each other a knowing look and Marcel would “modestly lower his eyes,” in which Lucien would see “gleaming the diabolical light of uncontrollable laughter” that he found contagious.11 In the beginning their fits of hilarity had been merely a game, but it soon became a problem, and they could not go anywhere together without making efforts to maintain a serious, respectful demeanor. Proust seemed to take pleasure in the juvenile game; before arriving at the Daudets, he would alert Lucien with telegrams asking him to warn his parents and appeal to their indulgence.

Although Lucien’s parents tolerated this rude behavior, Montesquiou had no patience with such nonsense. He thought that Marcel and Lucien were attempting to spoil the exquisite aesthetic harmony of his parties. That evening, as soon as the two young men entered the room, Montesquiou’s stern, suspicious demeanor sent them into peals of laughter, and they had to rush out of the room, suffocating and bent over double. Lucien said that Montesquiou never forgave them; years later the count still spoke of this “impropriety.”

Montesquiou had other reasons to be displeased with Marcel. The count had heard that his disciple frequently did imitations of him at parties, mimicking his manner, gestures, voice, and even laughter. Marcel’s admission of being unable to control his laughter gave Montesquiou the opportunity to raise the issue of these imitations. Although the count broached the subject with diffidence in his letter accepting the dinner invitation, Proust became alarmed and defensive. He denied that he persisted in imitating Montesquiou and, trying to put the best face on things, claimed to have done so only as an act of homage, because his body—he ingenuously claimed—had been unable to resist following his soul in taking the poet as his model: “If anyone has said more than this, and if they have spoken of caricature, I invoke your axiom: ‘A remark repeated at second hand is rarely true.’” Then, prudently following the adage that the best defense is to attack, Marcel broached a grievance of his own. Someone had told him that Montesquiou had been less than generous in commenting about Proust’s latest poems: “I was . . . somewhat humiliated to see that my ‘latest creations,’ as you call them, were held to be not very creative, and that you addressed me with... contemptuous tolerance.”12