EARLY JANUARY 1903 BROUGHT a letter from Montesquiou referring to Marcel’s “long disappearance” and “uncustomary silence.”1 The count wanted to hear from Proust before embarking on an adventure that would take him across the sea. He and Yturri, according to an article Montesquiou had written for Le Figaro, were sailing to America as “Missionaries of Literature.”2 The missionaries would preach to the New World heathens until April.
Marcel had undertaken his own impossible mission. Because of his machinations with the Mercure de France and La Renaissance latine, he had agreed to a production schedule he could not meet. In early January, when Binet-Valmer, Constantin’s editor in chief, had not received the excerpts from La Bible d’Amiens due to appear in the February 15 issue, Constantin informed Marcel that publication would be delayed for a month. Marcel cried foul and expressed his vexation with Constantin and Binet-Valmer. Confident that La Bible d’Amiens would appear in book form on March 1, Proust feared that La Renaissance latine would not publish excerpts from a volume already in bookstores. Discounting his own tardiness, Marcel pressured Constantin to find room for the excerpts in the February issue. He blamed Binet-Valmer for not having told him when the copy was due and Constantin for not being “nice” about the matter. Marcel then boldly asserted that “fifty pages could always be displaced in a review of more than 300 pages.” Having done his best to make Constantin feel guilty, Marcel offered to write the Mercure to see whether Vallette would postpone publication of the book until after the excerpts appeared in La Renaissance latine, but he worried that this tactic might furnish the Mercure with a pretext to cancel publication of his book.3
In early January, Marcel attended a party at the princesse de Caraman-Chimay’s. Reporting on his social activities in a letter to Antoine, he proposed a visit to Bibesco in Strehaia from February 15 to April 1.4 He told Antoine about his article soon to appear in Le Figaro. Using the pseudonym Dominique, he had begun to write a series of society pieces, each portraying a leading Paris salon. Nearly eighteen months earlier, he had drafted the first of these, “Le Salon de la comtesse Aimery de La Rochefoucauld,” but had abandoned it.5 The second one, whose publication in Le Figaro he believed imminent, depicted the salon of Comtesse Greffulhe. Wishing to portray and flatter Antoine, Marcel had inserted an eighteen-line cameo of him in the text. The countess had reservations, however, and asked Le Figaro to withdraw the piece.6 Marcel, determined to depict Antoine, transferred his portrait to the description of another salon, to be published in April.
On January 19 Le Figaro announced the engagement of Dr. Robert Proust and Mile Marthe Dubois-Amiot. The following week the Prousts gave a dinner party at home in honor of their son’s fiancée. The impending marriage terrified Marcel, who, as best man, was expected to attend many daylight functions. The ceremony of signing the marriage contract was set for Thursday, January 29. Then on Saturday at 5 P.M., an hour Marcel could accommodate, although not without difficulty, the civil ceremony would take place at the city hall of the eighth arrondissement, including a speech by the mayor. Finally, at noon on Monday, February 2, the grandest of all the events, the religious ceremony, would be performed at the church of Saint-Augustin. Proust complained constantly to all his friends about the wedding extravaganza, difficult for him to bear under any circumstances but especially so while struggling to revise and proof the Ruskin excerpts for Constantin and finish the volume for the Mercure de France. Marcel teetered on the brink of nervous exhaustion. He confided to Antoine that he worried about his ability to maintain self-control during the long wedding weekend: “Will I burst into giggles while passing the collection box at Saint-Augustin—or while listening to the Mayor’s speech?”7 The situation seemed hopeless.
Another crisis related to his Ruskin work erupted in the latter part of January, when Constantin made a thoughtless remark that enraged Marcel. Constantin speculated that Proust’s Ruskin translation “must be full of mistakes, because you don’t really know English.” The offended translator controlled his anger until he returned home, where he wrote Brancovan a thoughtful letter in which he admitted his scant knowledge of English but defended his work. After expressing his fondness for Constantin and thanking him for being “so good to me and my Ruskins,” Marcel got to the point: he found it “incredible” that his friend could have said such a thing, knowing how hard he had been working for four years and how important the book was to him. He was sure that his “dear Constantin” had meant no harm, but could someone who “detested” him have said anything worse?8
He defended himself further by observing that if his translation had merit it was not because of his talent, which was “negligible,” but because of his “conscientiousness, which was infinite.” Proust then detailed his research and translation methods, all the English writers he had consulted over the meaning of “every ambiguous expression, every obscure phrase,” amassing an impressive correspondence.9 Proust readily admitted not knowing “a word of spoken English” and not reading English “easily.” But he stubbornly maintained that after fours years of tedious work on The Bible of Amiens, he knew the text by heart: “I don’t claim to know English. I claim to know Ruskin.” In fact, although there are a number of mistakes in Proust’s translation of The Bible of Amiens, his translation of Sesame and Lilies was impeccable.10
On January 26 Marcel wrote to his “dear little Antoine” to say that he had decided to remain in Paris and not go to Constantinople. Proust had hoped to see Antoine and Bertrand, but he had not wanted the latter to know the visit had been his initiative. It grieved him, he told Antoine, not to see Bertrand and the Hagia Sophia.11 The recompense for so many disappointments was the thought that he would soon be reunited with Antoine in Paris. He then chided Antoine for having given a completely ambiguous answer to the question of when Fénelon had known that Marcel might come to Constantinople. Proust was eager, without wanting to reveal it, to learn how Fénelon had reacted to news of a possible visit.
Near the end of the month Proust sent the excerpts from the fourth chapter of La Bible d’Amiens, entitled “Interprétations,” to the typist. After informing Constantin of the status of this chapter, Marcel promised to correct the new proofs just received from La Renaissance latine. If all went well, he would by Friday morning, January 30, deliver the Ruskin entirely recopied for the March 15 issue. Knowing that Constantin planned to leave soon for Romania, Marcel asked whether he intended to travel alone and, if so, whether he would mind having a traveling companion as far as Bucharest.12 Proust still clung to the idea of meeting Antoine.
As the wedding approached, the Proust family experienced a run of bad luck. When Jeanne learned that certain friends had not received invitations, she made inquiries and discovered to her dismay that the postal service had lost at least one hundred invitations sent out by the Proust side. Marcel, horrified at the offense his friends might take on believing themselves snubbed, dashed off notes explaining the fiasco and urging them to attend the various ceremonies. In one such note to Robert Dreyfus, Marcel asked him to inform Daniel: “Unfortunately I cannot notify all the people who may not have received the invitation. And how many of them will be enemies for life!”13
On January 29 Marcel sent Constantin the revised Ruskin proofs for the February issue. He thanked his friend for having accepted him as a traveling companion to Bucharest, “because there are times when I suffer from a slight persecution mania and think I annoy everyone.”14 In a postscript he told Constantin that he would have enclosed the March copy in the same packet had his mother, suffering from an acute attack of rheumatism, not forgotten to send those pages to be copied. After promising again to send the remaining pages the following day, Marcel addressed problems with the proofs that concerned him. Were his revisions being carefully followed? He had taken some alarm on seeing that in the latest proofs “the new phrase and the old one were often printed side by side.” He also thought the typeface for John Ruskin’s name was “much too small.” All these matters, he trusted, would be changed on the final proofs.15
Once he had mailed the letter, he wrote another postscript to tell Constantin that though his translation in book form would be dedicated to Reynaldo Hahn, the prince would give him pleasure by accepting a dedication of the pages to appear in La Renaissance latine. Constantin must have declined the honor, for the excerpts appeared with no dedication. The next day Marcel sent another bulletin to Constantin, telling him that he was “extremely vexed” because the typist now said the copy would not be ready until Saturday at 5 P.M., the time of his brother’s civil marriage ceremony. He promised to correct the pages all night and have them delivered to Constantin early Sunday morning. He proposed to meet Constantin on Tuesday to review the copy. Then, remembering the wedding on Monday and certain that he would be ill on Tuesday, he suggested that Constantin come to his bedside and work on the copy. Constantin was learning that being Proust’s publisher required special nerves and endless devotion.
Proust’s family had anticipated that a wedding in which Marcel played a prominent role would be a difficult undertaking. His state of anxiety and fatigue did not surprise them, but as ill luck would have it, Mme Proust’s severe bout of rheumatism persisted and she was unable to attend the civil ceremony on Saturday. On Sunday, Marcel wrote Constantin that the end of La Bible d’Amiens had been copied. He had had to reread it quickly because he was “hard pressed by the misfortunes that have hit me in connection with the marriage,” including his mother’s illness.16
The next day, when Marcel appeared for the noon wedding at the church of Saint-Augustin, the effects of sleepless nights were obvious. Mme Proust, incapacitated by rheumatism, was transported to the church in an ambulance. The bride must have wondered about the strange behavior and delicate health of Robert’s mother and brother. Valentine Thomson, a young Proust cousin, had been asked to be a bridesmaid. The pretty girl of eighteen was thrilled to be a member of the wedding and was especially proud of her beautiful dress and the large bouquet Jeanne had sent her. Valentine’s anticipation turned to horror when she saw the escort whose arm she must cling to throughout much of the ceremony, including the slow and humiliating trip up and down the aisle, while Marcel passed the collection plate. As Valentine later recalled, Proust arrived at the church grotesquely attired. Deathly afraid of drafts and cold air, he had stuffed his tuxedo with thermogene wadding and put on three topcoats. Marcel looked as though he were headed to the North Pole rather than to an indoor wedding whose guests included many of Paris’s most distinguished and fashionable citizens. Valentine was also amazed at the extraordinary pallor of this man who hardly ever went out in sunlight, ate little, and exercised not at all. The bridesmaid thought the best man looked as horrible as Lazarus must have upon emerging from the grave.17
Marcel managed to stay on his feet and control his nervous impulses. After the ceremony the bride’s family hosted a large reception and luncheon in their home at 6, avenue de Messine.18 Robert and Marthe were to reside in their new home on the boulevard Saint-Germain, near the School of Medicine. As soon as Marcel could gracefully escape the wedding festivities, he took to bed with the inevitable fever and sore throat.19 Over the next few days, he wrote various friends to say that Robert’s wedding had “killed him.”20 His brother, no doubt as relieved as he was grateful that Marcel was able to fulfill his role as best man, offered him a pelisse. Such a coat seemed ideal for Marcel, who constantly complained of freezing, but for some reason, he declined the offer.
After the wedding Marcel quickly resumed work on the proofs for Constantin, cutting thirty of the sixty-two pages he had translated about the bas-reliefs at Amiens, those describing the virtues, the seasons, and scenes from the life of the Virgin. He also cleaned up the proofs and excised repetitions that Constantin had marked.
In mid-February, Marcel wrote Antoine that he was “fully recovered” and prepared “to go to Turkey, Romania, Italy or to wait for you in Paris.” Then Marcel made a startling proposal: he would find it amusing “no end” to read Bertrand’s letters to Antoine if Antoine did not consider this an “indiscretion.”21 Although he maintained the pretense of not caring how His Blue Eyes had reacted to his hypothetical visit, Marcel apparently felt no compunction in violating Fénelon’s privacy. In the same letter, he expressed his eagerness to travel, to flee the cold Paris winter: “I’m very tired and long to go somewhere, anywhere.” Quoting Baudelaire’s Le Voyage, he said that he longed for “‘light and for flaming skies’ after so many electrically lit nights” at his desk.22
Marcel had no time to spare for planning a trip, however. He knew that he had fallen far behind on his Ruskin work and would not meet the March 1 deadline for sending the complete translation of La Bible d’Amiens to the Mercure de France. Attempting to finish his work as close to March 1 as possible, he relied continually on his friends who knew English well. Robert d’Humières responded to Marcel’s call for help, stopping by several times to explain obscure or difficult words and expressions. In mid-February, Marcel asked Pierre Lavallée’s permission to borrow a book from the Bibliothèque des Beaux-Arts, “because it is my intention to go and work there once or twice in the next few days, and it would make things much easier for me if I could do it under your protection.” Feeling guilty about asking a favor from a friend whom he had lately neglected, Marcel exaggerated his condition: “I have spent more than a year in bed, without getting up for so much as half an hour a day.”23
On March 3 Antoine Bibesco, who loved surprises and practical jokes, rang the bell at 45, rue de Courcelles. As happy as Marcel was to hear the news, he was not prepared to welcome a visitor. Writing a note to the prince who waited downstairs, he began by quoting the fervent words Blaise Pascal had expressed during his religious conversion: “Joy, tears of joy, joy.” Marcel then informed the source of such joy that it was “physically impossible” to receive him and proposed that they meet for dinner. Marcel wanted to make certain that if Antoine encountered Lauris, he would not contradict Marcel’s version of why he had seriously considered going to Constantinople. He wanted his friends to think that his choice had been determined primarily by Antoine’s whereabouts and not because of his eagerness to see Fénelon.24
Marcel’s great need for love, for exclusivity, had not changed since adolescence, nor was he any closer to obtaining it. His lack of illusions about its attainability only increased his unhappiness. He also knew, as he lay in his bed endlessly ruminating on his friends’ characters and motivations, that his expectations exceeded reality. He had lately cast Antoine as the trusted friend and Fénelon as the villain and admitted as much shortly after Antoine’s return: “Deep down you’re not as good and kind as I manage to suppose when hypnotizing myself in solitude.” He knew that, to a large degree, his friends as he saw them were already creatures of his imagination. Such longings and imaginings in which he manipulated his friends eventually gave rise to the cast of characters he created around the Narrator, who shared his many complexes.
On February 25 Le Figaro published the first of Proust’s series on Parisian salons: “Un salon historique. Le salon de S.A.I, la princesse Mathilde.” He had signed the piece Dominique, a nom de plume that was supposed to be secret tombeau, but he had, of course, confided in Antoine. “Remember,” he admonished Bibesco after the publication, “don’t let anyone suspect about the articles, which no one alas dreams of suspecting.”25 Bibesco apparently kept this secret, perhaps because he did not want to anger Marcel before his portrait was published.
Proust depicted Mathilde’s salon as he had heard it described in its glory days under the Second Empire. He included a number of anecdotes about famous guests, such as Alfred de Musset, the celebrated poet who showed up late for dinner—already a cardinal sin in the eyes of the princess, who liked to dine sharply at 7:30, early for a Parisian salon. To make matters worse, Musset was drunk and behaved rudely. After a few more amusing anecdotes, “Dominique” took Le Figaro’s readers on a tour of the home at 20, rue de Berri, during a typical soirée. Guests glimpsed in the salon included the princess’s devoted nephew Comte Joseph Primoli, the Strauses, Mme Lemaire, Charles Ephrussi, Charles Haas, Dr. Samuel Pozzi, Louis Ganderax, Paul Hervieu, Paul Bourget, and the playwright Georges de Porto-Riche, who pretended to despise the aristocracy but somehow managed to show up in the most conservative salons. Proust shared with the newspaper’s readers the princess’s famous repertoire of bons mots and anecdotes. These included the stories about her humble origins, the howlers from her reader, the baronne de Galbois, and the account of her falling out with Hippolyte Taine. Proust noted her simplicity and frankness whenever she spoke about matters of birth and rank.
Proust later used elements of his salon depiction of Mathilde for her cameo in the Search. “Her Imperial Highness” appears when the Narrator, out for a stroll with M. and Mme Swann, notices “an elderly but still handsome lady enveloped in a dark overcoat and wearing a little bonnet tied beneath her chin with a pair of ribbons.” Before making introductions, Swann draws the Narrator aside to explain the lady’s importance: “That is the Princesse Mathilde . . . you know who I mean, the friend of Flaubert, Sainte-Beuve, Dumas. Just fancy, she’s the niece of Napoleon I. She had offers of marriage from Napoleon III and the Emperor of Russia.” Then Proust evokes her character and the bygone era she embodied: “This somewhat rough and almost masculine frankness she softened, as soon as she began to smile, with an Italian languor. And the whole person was clothed in an outfit so typically Second Empire that—for all that the Princess wore it simply and solely, no doubt, from attachment to the fashions she had loved when she was young—she seemed to have deliberately planned to avoid the slightest discrepancy in historic colour, and to be satisfying the expectations of those who looked to her to evoke the memory of another age.”26 Proust saw Mathilde, as he had Mme Bartholoni, as a creature belonging to another era, who had miraculously survived into the present. But as he looked back at their youths and the historical elements that had made them interesting, he stood unknowingly on the divide between then and now. The great prolonged feast of life was ending for his father’s generation, whose youth had known the best days of the Second Empire.
Marcel seemed willing to forgo the great need he had felt for Antoine’s attention before the departure to Romania. Now he wanted to be motivated by devotion rather than sentimentality, and he concentrated on helping Antoine find a producer for his plays. “My friendship for you,” he wrote, “is in a phase that can only please you since I no longer ardently desire to see you, to see you if only for a minute each evening, etc. etc.” Then, after the offer to help, he stressed, by underlining the words three times, that “this phase requires loyalty.”27 Was this merely the latest version of Marcel’s game of possession, loosening but not releasing the leash?
At home his mother persevered in the difficult, frustrating task of trying to limit Marcel’s spending and to impose order on his chaotic life. Before Robert’s wedding Jeanne had agreed to host a dinner with Marcel for Jules Cardane, editorial secretary at Le Figaro.28 On March 9 she lost patience with her son’s lack of progress and warned him in a letter that if he did not change his ways, she would refuse to give any more dinners on his behalf. This provoked Marcel to reply in bitter recriminations: “Even with a mother’s inverse prescience, you couldn’t have devised a more untimely means than your letter of nipping in the bud the triple reform which was supposed to go into effect the day after my last dinner out. . . which was delayed by my most recent cold. It’s a pity, because afterwards it will be too late.”29
The triple reform apparently involved those she had been encouraging him to implement for several years, amounting to nothing more—and nothing less—than leading a normal life: (1) changing his bedtime to night rather than day; (2) taking his meals at normal hours; and (3) discontinuing the use of sedatives.30 Like many neurotics Marcel believed that he could make such changes only at some ideal, magical moment. The Narrator, who shares Marcel’s invalid, hypochondriacal nature and inability to set to work, responds in similar fashion whenever his mother attempts to influence his behavior in order to ameliorate his lifestyle: “I told my mother that her words would delay for perhaps two months the decision for which they asked, which otherwise I would have reached before the end of that week.” In the novel the Narrator is lucid and accepts the responsibility for having failed to heed his mother’s and grandmother’s “exhortations” to adopt a “healthier way of life.”31 But not Marcel, who accused his mother of cruelty, indifference, and unfair discrimination in gladly hosting dinners for medical luminaries on behalf of his father and Robert while refusing those for his editors that might advance his career. His mother was accustomed to such tactics and, though not optimistic about changing his habits, did not intend to abandon the field without a struggle.
In a letter to his mother defending his behavior and blaming her for his lack of success in mending his ways, Marcel listed all the work that he had accomplished on the translation and the calvary he had endured by attending all the wedding events, observing: “All this isn’t enough for you, or rather it’s nothing to you, and you’ll continue to disapprove of everything I do until I fall ill again as I did two years ago.” She had even spoiled his pleasure when the excerpts of his translation appeared in the “wretched Renaissance latine.” But that was of little consequence, for he did not “aspire to pleasure,” having given up “hope of that long ago.” If she forced him “to give a dinner at a restaurant,” she would, at a time when she had asked him to balance his own accounts, push him “back into the red.” He complained about the freezing room at home that had forced him out in search of warmth, with the result that he had caught a fever. “You can’t do me any positive good and you’re not on the way to learning how.” But she could at least help him avoid catching colds. He expressed his desire to live in his own apartment or pay rent at home, if that was what she wanted. “But considering that I pay for my own powders (which everyone finds incredible but which seems perfectly natural to me), perhaps I should also pay rent.” His parents had likely required him to pay for his drugs in hopes the financial burden would decrease his use of sedatives. In closing he professed his own purity of intention and blamed her again for being unfair and cruel: “If I make you unhappy, at least it’s over things outside my control.” He could not say the same for her; he could not imagine refusing her one hundred dinners. “But I’m not reproaching you, I ask you only to stop writing me letters requiring an answer.”32
Although he frequently lashed out against the constant pressure from Jeanne to change his self-destructive habits, Marcel worshiped his mother and always expressed his love while acknowledging all she did for him. In one letter written during the same period he speculated about living apart from her and acknowledged the impossibility of not seeing her daily: “Considering my need of being near you, you can be sure that you will not be abandoned and that I shall come twenty times a day—except at mealtimes!”33
Jeanne and her difficult son must have reached a compromise or at least a truce. By the end of the month, plans were completed for a dinner party at home on April 1. Those invited included his “dear editor in chief” at La Renaissance latine, Constantin, along with Brancovan’s sisters and their spouses, the Strauses, Paul Hervieu, Abel Hermant, Antoine Bibesco, and Mme de Pierrebourg, a novelist who wrote under the pen name Claude Ferval.34
On Wednesday evening, March 18, Marcel wrote to his mother to say that he would like d’Humières to come the next day and answer additional questions about their translation. In order to be rested for the consultation, he asked her to try and maintain silence in the house. The request seemed to contain a veiled threat that otherwise he might resort to Trional, which he had not taken for some time and wanted to avoid. But what he really preferred was that she send a message to d’Humières and have him to dinner on Friday when the two men could dine alone. A tête-à-tête encounter seemed best, for Marcel was always seized by fits of uncontrollable laughter whenever d’Humières came.
Marcel decided to follow Antoine’s suggestion that he pretend to be Antoine and write Fénelon in an attempt to discover the young diplomat’s true opinion of him. The fake letter had at least one advantage; it allowed Marcel to engage in an exercise that had always been his forte and that he had been honing recently: writing pastiche, mimicking another’s style. Writing as Bibesco, Marcel-Antoine placed some bait to see if Fénelon would take it: “It gave me no pleasure to see him [Marcel] again, I no longer feel any friendship for him. He is even stupider than when I went away.” Marcel-Antoine did mention a favorable notice in Le Figaro about Proust’s Ruskin translation.35 Fénelon’s reaction to the letter is not known. Did Fénelon suspect a trick?
The younger Dr. Proust, well-to-do and firmly established in his profession, had recently bought an automobile, an ideal acquisition for the speed-loving doctor. A photograph taken of Robert on a motoring expedition to Illiers shows him standing with the quite elderly Uncle Jules Amiot. Sporting a large motoring cap and beaming at the camera, Robert seemed as healthy, happy, well adjusted, and successful as Marcel was sickly, dependent, and miserable.
In April, Marcel asked his mother to inquire whether Robert might be willing to loan his car now and then, which would permit Marcel “to spend a little time in the country.”36 If so, Marcel would hire a driver from an automobile agency of which Robert approved or ask a new friend, Marquis Louis d’Albufera, to drive him. Proust considered Albufera eminently qualified to handle a motorcar, for he had already driven on tours of Belgium, France, Germany, and Switzerland.
Marcel needed transportation for a Ruskin expedition he was planning with his friends. Emmanuel Bibesco, who had the reputation of being an expert on Gothic architecture, had arrived in Paris in early April to visit his brother. Marcel warned Antoine not to bring Emmanuel unannounced: “Never come here with your brother.” Marcel did not want to be seen in an unkempt state by a distinguished stranger. “Mama wouldn’t allow it. I wouldn’t want to receive him in my soiled jerseys, etc.” If Antoine disobeyed, Marcel would not receive him either, and “little by little you would move into the category of friends I receive only when fully dressed, in the dining room, in other words seldom.”37 Proust had first suggested to the Bibesco brothers that they leave one evening and spend the night at Autun, visit Vézelay the following day, and return to Paris in the evening. This plan was dropped, and Marcel chose April 10, Good Friday, for a trip southeast of Paris to visit the medieval cities of Provins, Saint-Loup-de-Naud, and Dammarie-les-Lys.
Accompanying Marcel in addition to the Bibesco brothers were François de Pâris—a member of the Jockey Club and the Yacht Club—Lucien Henraux, who collected Oriental art, Georges de Lauris, and, perhaps, Robert de Billy and his wife. In the days preceding their departure, Marcel gave Antoine and other friends complicated instructions for obtaining information about car rental services and train schedules. Fearing the annual onset of hay fever, Marcel intended to travel in a closed car to protect himself as much as possible from pollen and drafts.
The chief attraction of Provins was a splendid twelfth-century donjon forty-four meters tall, visible from a great distance. At Saint-Loup-de-Naud, the group studied one of the oldest churches in the Parisian region. Its construction as part of a Benedictine priory had begun in the eleventh century. The portal under the western porch, like the royal porch of Chartres Cathedral, features Christ in majesty surrounded by the symbols of the Evangelists. Perhaps the most admirable statue, as befitted the church’s namesake, was the one representing Saint-Loup, archbishop of Sens, who died in 623. Proust remembered this name when he created the character Robert de Saint-Loup. Marcel and his companions likely stopped last at Dammarie-les-Lys to inspect the ruins of the Abbey of the Lily.
On April 21 Marcel organized another cathedral expedition, north of Paris to Laon, Coucy, Senlis, Saint-Leu-d’Esserent, and Soissons.38 His motoring companions were the Bibesco brothers, Georges de Lauris, and Robert de Billy. Marcel, who had stayed up all night to be ready for the early-morning departure, stopped several times en route to drink coffee in order to remain alert. The church of Saint-Leud’Esserent, (whose Leu is a variation of Loup), built on a cliff overlooking the Oise River, contains both Romanesque and Gothic elements. Emmanuel proved an extraordinary tour guide, enthralling his listeners with his extensive knowledge about French medieval architecture, but Antoine, true to character, took matters far less seriously. Always the clown, he approached the organ and banged out Paulus’s highly secular song “En revenant de la revue.”
At Coucy, Enguerrand III, an intrepid and renowned Crusader, had constructed one of the Middle Ages’ most impressive fortified castles. Emmanuel led Marcel up the fifty-four meters of the ancient spiral staircase of the donjon. Once they reached the top, the pristine early spring day allowed the visitors to see for miles beyond the castle’s walls, supported by no fewer than twenty-eight towers.
In front of the church at Senlis, Marcel listened attentively as Emmanuel, “with so much modesty . . . explained what characterizes the church towers of the Île de France.”39 These were distinguished by the first representations in Western sculpture of the crowning of the Virgin Mary. Here, as at Saint-Loup-de-Naud, the group observed the similarities between the sculptural groups and those at the cathedrals of Chartres, Paris, Amiens, and Reims. At Soissons, Marcel and his friends inspected the cathedral of Saint-Gervais-et-Saint-Protais, noted for its thirteenth-century purity and simplicity of style.40
Laon Cathedral presents a unique feature. Built high on a hill, its twin towers, rising higher still and appearing to touch the sky, serve as the viewing platform for eight majestic oxen. The statues were placed high on the towers because the townspeople had wanted to honor the brave beasts of burden for the years spent dragging the huge stones from the quarries far below to the top of the hill for the construction of the cathedral. Proust found Laon’s architecture fascinating, as he later wrote to Mme Catusse, because it was there “better than in the rich subsequent efflorescence, that one can see the first burgeoning of the Gothic and how ‘the marvelous flower slowly emerges.’”41 Laon had been a center of medieval scholasticism, and Proust noted the “delightfully pedantic insistence on the liberal arts in its main portal and in the stained glass of its rose window.” He described for Mme Catusse the representations of “Philosophy,” with “the ladder (of learning) placed in front of her chest, Astronomy gazing at the heavens, Geometry with her compass, Arithmetic counting on her fingers, Dialectics with the wily snake.” Although the architecture was “very splendid,” he was somewhat disappointed in the representation of Medicine, which he found “rather banal, not as at Reims, where she is examining an invalid’s urine.”42
Marcel took notes both for translating Ruskin and for original essays he wanted to write about medieval architecture, but his impressions were to be more useful in the creation of fictional churches in his novel: the church of Saint-Hilaire at Combray, much grander than Illiers’s modest Saint-Jacques, the church at Balbec, and Saint-André-des-Champs.
In mid-April, Anna de Noailles wrote a charming, affectionate note urging Marcel to come to dinner, anticipating his needs and the complications that might discourage his presence. Of all his friends, she seemed best to understand his anxieties and his temperament. The poet showed not only compassion but other qualities that Marcel prized as well: delicacy, affection, and the ability to put herself in another’s place. Such gestures erased any doubts he may have at first entertained about her nature and her goodness. Writing to him as “Dear Friend,” Anna said that she would hold his place at table to see whether he felt better at the last minute, in which case, he would find Grüber beer that she had kept warm by leaving it out in the sun.43 If he could not come, she would be happy to think that he was resting. After expressing her deep affection, she assured him that he would find her house “still warm because we have not yet turned off the heat.”44
In late April, Marcel went to the Durand-Ruel Gallery to see an exhibition of paintings by Maxime Dethomas.45 The motivation to rise from his bed during daylight hours had been Dethomas’s studies of Venice, a city that continued to occupy Proust’s imagination while he worked on Ruskin and architecture. Marcel left the exhibition, as he explained to the artist, “filled with wonder,” but also with sadness because illness made it impossible for him to visit the people and skies Dethomas had captured on the canvases. These paintings had given him “new eyes with which to view life and men and even those little windows on the Grand Canal which I should like to confront with yours.”46 Marcel’s vision of his mother framed by one of those little windows, while gazing out at the Grand Canal, remained fixed in his memory.
On Monday morning, May 11, Le Figaro published Proust’s latest society piece: “La Cour aux lilas et l’atelier des roses: Le Salon de Mme Madeleine Lemaire” (The lilac courtyard and the studio of the roses: The salon of Mme Madeleine Lemaire). “Dominique,” as Proust had signed the article, began with a page-long parody of Balzac, describing Lemaire’s neighborhood and the small house, which violated a city ordinance by protruding one-half meter onto the sidewalk.47 After an appropriate tribute to Lemaire, a great artist celebrated for her watercolors, including the well-worn mot about her having created more roses than anyone other than God, “Dominique” evoked the celebrities who frequented the salon. Among these were painters Jean Béraud, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Sarah Bernhardt’s close friend and portraitist Georges Clairin, the actress Réjane, and the writers Anatole France and Georges de Porto-Riche. Dominique also described the well-born and well-to-do who gladly suffered the indignities of perching on uncomfortable stools in the crowded rooms. Among the eager guests was Boni de Castellane, of whom the chronicler gave a flattering portrait. Marcel-Dominique even provided a blurb about Robert de Flers and Gaston de Caillavet’s “triumphant” new operetta Le Sire de Vergy.
Marcel had included the little sketch of Antoine, which described the “secretary of the Romanian delegation” conversing with two political figures. In less than two dozen lines Proust managed to compare Bibesco to Achilles, Theseus, and Apollo. Later came the “veiled reference to Fénelon,” for whom, at a party like Lemaire’s, Dominique had first felt the bonds of “an affection that was later to bring us nothing but repeated betrayals and final enmity.”48 To express the “melancholy” of days that took away with them “possibilities that never came true,” he cited Rossetti’s lines: “My name is might have been.” This cryptic remark must have perplexed everyone who read Le Figaro except, presumably, Antoine and Fénelon, and perhaps Reynaldo, in whom Marcel had never ceased to confide. Fénelon’s reaction, if he saw himself as the inspiration of such bitterness, remains unknown.
Near the end of the description of the salon, Proust turned the spotlight on “that musical instrument of genius” Reynaldo Hahn. Hahn, throwing his head back as he reached without looking at the keys, the inevitable cigarette dangling from his lips, began to sing one of his most popular numbers, “Le Cimetière de campagne.” Lemaire, like the future Mme Verdurin, shushed the playwright Francis de Croisset for chatting too loudly with a lady.
On the day the article on Mme Lemaire’s salon appeared in the newspaper, Marcel informed Antoine that he would attend her Tuesday reception because he was eager to hear the habitués’ reactions to his piece. That evening, as Proust moved among the guests, he heard talk of little else. Someone compared the column to a Fromentin novel and everyone wanted to know “Who is this Dominique?”49 Marcel was delighted. He was also highly amused when he encountered Comte Primoli, who, unaware of Dominique’s identity, told him that the essay on Princesse Mathilde’s salon was “imbecilic.”50 The mysterious Dominique was soon unmasked by an unlikely tattler: Gaston Calmette, a rising star on Le Figaro’s editorial staff.
Marcel had become friends with Marquis Louis d’Albufera and his nineteen-year-old mistress Louisa de Mornand, who had once been Fénelon’s mistress. Born Louisa Montaud, the pretty blonde actress had altered her name to make it more appealing to producers. Louisa and Louis were passionately in love and he quickly spoiled her, even though she often infuriated him by flirting with other men. Having seen how quickly he became jealous, she tormented him by refusing to allay his suspicions. The stormy relationship between the marquis and the actress gave Marcel the occasion to observe the lovers closely. He remembered them when portraying the marquis de Saint-Loup’s infatuation with his mistress, the aspiring but untalented actress Rachel. In spite of Proust’s unflagging efforts to secure her roles and publicize her appearances, Louisa was less successful on the stage than the fictional Rachel. Between 1903 and 1910 she appeared in roughly twenty minor plays before her star, which had never shone brightly, dimmed altogether.
Marcel did not hide from Louisa the physical attraction he felt for her, nor was she the only young woman he found desirable during this period. Was it for himself or for a friend that he sought information about l’Hôtel du Paradis, an aptly named maison de rendez-vous?51 Marcel, whose libido had not yet been anesthetized by drugs, began with Louisa an apparently innocent flirtation that grew bolder. Louisa often accompanied Albufera when he made late-night visits to Proust. She would come up to the dining room and “roast so charitably” in the overheated room.52 Later, when Louisa and Louis were rarely able to see each other because of his marriage, Marcel often filled the role of intermediary, message center, and comforter. Is it possible that Marcel and Louisa, at least on one occasion, gave each other the ultimate consolation for Albufera’s absence? In her memoir, Louisa hinted that their relationship went beyond the bounds of friendship.53 In spite of Proust’s flirtation with Louisa, his future testimony indicated that he felt physical attraction only for men.
On May 21, two days before Louisa was to appear with la belle Otero in the sketch On n’a pas le temps! (We haven’t the time!) at the Mathurins, Marcel had Antoine call the theater critic Abel Hermant to see whether he would insert a few lines to mention that Mlle de Mornand was “charming.”54 The next day he asked Antoine to make the same appeal to the playwright Edmond Sée for Gil Bias. Sée obliged and, while commenting ironically about Otero’s performance, said that Mlle de Mornand had played with “intelligence and finesse.”55 Marcel, who attended the première, dashed off a similar request to Francis de Croisset for Le Gaulois and even provided a short paragraph himself about the “gracious” newcomer appearing in On n’a pas le temps! and Le Coin du feu (The chimney corner) and predicted that one day this young actress would be “someone.”56 These were the first of many efforts by Marcel to publicize the beginning actress’s roles.
Marcel had always loved the theater, an art form whose nocturnal hours matched his own. During the years when he earned Albu’s gratitude for promoting Louisa’s theatrical career, he attended many performances. Assisting Louisa was another way of indulging his own love of the stage. He attempted to arrange dinners for her and Albu to meet leading playwrights or rising ones like Henry Bernstein. On July 9 Marcel wrote to Louisa, vacationing at Blois, and expressed his admiration of her beauty and his fondness for her, of which she was “well aware.” Urging her not to “suppose that this is an indiscreet, pretentious and awkward way of courting” her, which would “be pointless” for she would send him “packing,” he maintained that he would “rather die than cast covetous eyes upon the woman adored by a friend whose noble and delicate heart makes him dearer to me with each passing day.” He pleaded his case that “at least a little friendship and a great deal of admiration” might persuade his “dear Louisa” to grant him (while he “mentally” requested “Albufera’s permission”) a favor that would give him “no end of pleasure if it could some day be done otherwise than in a letter,” to “embrace you tenderly.” In the postscript he added a message to Albu, hoping to advance their friendship: “Tell him, first, to stop calling me Proust and incidentally that I am very fond of him.”57 Marcel, with his extraordinary capacity for tenderness and his keen appreciation of the beauty of both sexes, was enamored of both the marquis and the attractive young actress.