AT THE BEGINNING OF 1919 LARYNGITIS and a high fever slowed the pace of Proust’s work on the novel. By mid-January he had not corrected a single proof. Mme Lemarié sent letters urging him to work at a faster pace.1 Just as he began to feel more like working, disaster struck. On returning home from a late dinner at the Ritz, Proust found a letter from his Aunt Amélie Weil, informing him that she had sold 102, boulevard Haussmann to a banker, who intended to convert the building into a bank and offices. Proust was incredulous that she had said nothing to him about the possibility of selling the property. He had no lease, only a verbal understanding with his aunt, and he feared that the new owner might evict him, while demanding immediate payment of approximately twenty-five thousand francs he owed for past-due rent.2 Rather than finding out what his rights were, he stepped up his efforts to sell furniture and tapestries. Hauser, rather naïvely, saw Proust’s “eviction” as a providential opportunity to find a more suitable and less expensive apartment.3 The financial adviser failed to foresee the housing shortage that followed the war; Proust would have to pay higher rent for a smaller, less desirable apartment.4
On January 21 Proust wrote Berry to detail the disaster that had befallen him and to solicit his aid in selling furnishings. Would Berry be willing to receive and show at the American Chamber of Commerce “two large greensward tapestries, an antique oriental rug, a magnificent antique easy-chair, sconces, and an antique settee?” Marcel believed that these items would sell for “much more than 25,000 francs,” because he had already declined an offer of five thousand francs just for the chair. He also asked Berry how he should approach the French government regarding the Warburg check and his remaining assets at that bank. He had waited years for the war to end so that he could at last obtain the funds represented by the uncashed check; now that he sought to raise money to pay his back rent, the matter became more urgent. Proust wanted to settle with the new owner quickly because he might not live long: “for an asthmatic, moving to new quarters is usually fatal.” In late February he wrote Gide that changing apartments was certain to aggravate his serious asthma condition. While the attacks themselves were survivable, his heart condition could no longer tolerate such suffering. He now understood that “death is our only hope.”5 Even while despairing, Proust determined to use his remaining physical resources to serve his only reason for living: the completion of his book. The Narrator’s commitment to his projected book at the end of the Search sounds as heroic: “Since strength of one kind can change into a strength of another kind... since the dull pain in our heart can hoist above itself like a banner the visible permanence of an image for every new grief, let us accept the physical injury which is done to us for the sake of the spiritual knowledge which grief brings; let us submit to the disintegration of our body, since each new fragment which breaks away from it returns in a luminous and significant form to add itself to our work.”6
Eager to honor Berry for his service to France during the war, Proust asked him to accept the dedication of Pastiches et mélanges or The Guermantes Way. The Pastiches dedication would have the advantage of appearing sooner. Looking far ahead, he told Berry that he did not intend to dedicate the three volumes of Sodom and Gomorrah to anyone because of their subject matter. Berry answered that he would be “enchanted” to receive Proust’s furnishings and would show them to his friends and others without revealing the owner’s name. He was “profoundly touched” by Marcel’s intention to dedicate a book to him and said it must surely be The Guermantes Way, because the name Guermantes had brought them together.7 Within a few weeks Proust received disappointing news from Berry regarding the items for sale: the offers were extremely low.8 Proust’s furniture remained at the American Chamber of Commerce until summer, when a dealer came to collect it.9
As news of Proust’s loss of his apartment spread, friends, many of whom he had never suspected were “so nice,” offered him “their town houses, castles, which, naturally, I refused.”10 He spoke often of finding an apartment high above the ground, on the eighth or ninth floor, presumably to be far from street noise and perhaps because he thought that the air would be purer. Hauser urged him not to act too quickly but to see what his rights were regarding his current apartment. He suggested that the new owner might have to pay Proust an indemnity to move out. Sometime in late winter or early spring Hauser, in some distress, called on Proust for assistance. Because of his contacts with the Warburg Bank, Hauser had been accused of pro-German sympathies. Proust contacted Berry and both men vouched for Hauser’s innocence.11 Strangely, after little more than a year, Hauser did not recall that Proust had assisted him.
By January 10 Proust had received the proofs for Pastiches et mélanges, as well as the new edition of Swann’s Way.12 A little more than a week later, he received an advance copy of Within a Budding Grove from Mme Lemarié. Although Proust found the cover extremely attractive, he became distressed when he opened the book and saw the “microscopic” characters and tight lines. Within a Budding Grove was 443 pages long—eighty fewer than Swann’s Way. Gallimard had cautioned Proust that the second volume could not be printed in larger type than the first, but had promised that it would be set in an equivalent type size. Had this been done, each volume should have had approximately the same number of pages. Proust expressed his dismay to Mme Lemarié: “To have worked so hard for this.” Convinced that no one would read such tiny print, he considered having the volume reprinted at his own expense. But Gallimard remained in New York, and it was impossible to do anything in his absence. Proust aired additional grievances to Mme Lemarié. He had heard that when people asked for a copy of Swann’s Way at Grasset’s office, his employees did not tell them the book was available at the NRF. But what really stupefied Proust was that recently Étienne de Beaumont had asked the NRF for Swann’s Way only to be told they did not have a copy.13 Grasset’s remaining copies of the book should have been available in new covers at the NRF.
By January 22 Proust had received the proofs of his Blanche preface, which he corrected almost immediately and sent on to the editor. Having heard rumors that Blanche was “frightened” by the preface, Proust urged him not to publish it “just to please me.” Marcel had reason to be unhappy with Blanche. The painter had revised his book since the early version Proust had read, adding discussions of paintings by Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, and Auguste Renoir. Blanche asked Proust to cut what he had written on Vuillard and Denis, depriving him of the opportunity to discuss two artists whose works he knew and admired. He suggested that Proust revise the preface, but the novelist refused because of the demands made upon him by his own work. As a result, Proust had great misgivings about his preface, in which he criticized Blanche for, among other things, talking too much about Manet the man, who coveted medals and decorations, rather than about the revolutionary artist. Blanche had committed the Sainte-Beuve sin. Proust praised Blanche for having selected major painters and explaining to readers how they modified their palettes and reworked their canvases. Before publication, Proust persuaded Blanche to insert a few lines in the preface praising the “admirable” Picasso portrait of Cocteau, which “concentrated all Cocteau’s traits in an image whose rigor was so noble” that it rivaled the “most charming Carpaccios in Venice.”14
In early February that inveterate prankster Antoine Bibesco played a trick on Céleste and Proust. Antoine decided to break one of the most rigid rules that protected the writer in his inner sanctum by sneaking a beautiful, distinguished young woman into the cork-lined bedroom. The young lady was Antoine’s fiancée, Miss Elizabeth Asquith, daughter of Herbert Henry Asquith, the first earl of Oxford, who had served as British prime minister from 1908 to 1916. As Céleste related the story, Antoine came one evening with Miss Asquith, whom he left on the landing. The prince asked Céleste if he might go into Proust’s room and was told she would have to go in and see. When she turned and walked toward the bedroom, Antoine quietly picked up his fiancée “like a doll” and followed Céleste into the room. Proust was “horribly embarrassed” as he lay there “with his face in the shadow and his hands folded over his sweater and the sheet.” Turning to Céleste, Proust said, “‘You see, Céleste? I told you he was crazy!’”15 Proust described to a friend the “martrydom” he suffered when Miss Asquith saw him in bed, “wearing my sweaters with holes burned in them, etc.” Nonetheless, he and the young lady took an immediate liking to each other and later exchanged letters.16
In February, Proust sent Berry a copy of the dedication for his approval. He had decided not to wait for publication of The Guermantes Way, at least a year away, and instead wrote the dedication of Pastiches et mélanges, due out in the spring. It read “To Mr. Walter Berry, lawyer and man of letters who, from the first day of the war, confronting an indecisive America, argued France’s cause with an incomparable energy and talent, and won. His friend, Marcel Proust.”17 Proust later told Berry that he considered him the “victor in the greatest war of all the wars.” The delighted Berry replied that Proust was “mad on grandeur—for me! I expect I’ll end up in the Panthéon!”18
In spite of his illnesses and mounting piles of proofs, Proust kept a fairly busy social calendar that spring. He attended an engagement dinner for Antoine and Elizabeth, who married in London on April 30, in a ceremony attended by Queen Alexandra and Princess Victoria.19 In early March he went to a dinner party at the Ritz given by Princesse Soutzo in honor of diplomats who were in Paris for the peace conference. Marcel was particularly impressed by British diplomat Harold Nicolson. Afterward, Proust told Antoine that he found Nicolson “exquisite, exceptionally intelligent!” Nicolson, who was surprised that Proust spoke to him with no hint of affectation, did note the Frenchman’s unkemptness: “White, unshaven, grubby, slip-faced.” When Nicolson saw Proust again at the end of April at another dinner party, attended by Princesse Lucien Murat and Gladys Deacon, the diplomat was struck by the contrast between Miss Deacon, who looked “Very Attic,” and Proust, who looked “Very Hebrew.”20 Proust’s resemblance to his mother, always strong, had grown more marked as he aged. If Proust knew the story of Nicolson’s marriage, he would certainly have found it intriguing. Nicolson, a homosexual, was married to the novelist Vita Sackville-West.21 Vita enjoyed sleeping with women as well as men—not unlike a number of Proust’s female characters. Vita’s most noteworthy affair was with Virginia Woolf, who drew inspiration from it to create Orlando, an androgynous hero who changes sexes in the course of a number of reincarnations.22
In late winter or early spring Proust experienced new, troubling symptoms. He had difficulty speaking, finding certain words nearly impossible to pronounce. He confided his difficulty to Berry, fearing that he might have a serious neurological problem. Yet he knew that the symptoms were not the beginning of general paralysis because all his reflexes were excellent and he had never had a venereal disease. His only hope was that this difficulty was “due to an abuse of Veronal. But I fear there is little likelihood that this is the true cause.” All he wished for was to remain mentally alert as long as necessary to finish all his volumes. In the meantime, he would drink a lot of water and go out for a bit of air to detoxify himself, in case his careless self-medication was really the cause.23 A short time later, when Proust consulted Bize, the doctor correctly diagnosed his problems as resulting from drug intoxication and recommended that in addition to exposing himself to fresh air, Marcel take fewer drugs. Proust chose not to believe Bize’s diagnosis and for the most part ignored his recommendations.
When Blanche’s book Propos de peintre went on sale March 10, Proust sent copies of the “ravishing volume” to friends, including Mme Souzto, telling her that he was ashamed of the “stupid preface” he had written so “distractedly one evening in a bad mood.” To the extent that his embarrassment was genuine, the reactions of readers would change his mind. Proust wrote Blanche that he had, at first, thought the preface “detestable” but had begun to receive “flattering letters from ‘prominent’ men” who praised it. One evening in early spring Princesse Lucien Murat came to Proust’s door at eleven in the evening to congratulate him on the preface. He had Céleste tell the princess that he had gone out, because he did not want her to see him in bed.24
In late March, Mme Hennessy invited Proust to a dinner in his honor. Replying to the invitation, which he yearned to accept though he feared that he would be able to attend only the party afterward, he provided her with a list of practical suggestions on how to prepare for his arrival, including the following:
If your house is warm, if the windows are closed everywhere in the dining room, but above all in the room where we will be afterward, I will do everything possible to come.... I will phone around eight if I feel well enough to come to dinner and you will tell me if that is convenient for you or not. You must tell me very frankly.... I have no special diet, I eat everything, I drink everything, I think I don’t like red wine but I like every white wine in the world, beer, cider. My only dietary request would be to bring a bottle of Contrexéville or Évian, of which I will drink a little from a separate glass. Forgive me for speaking to you so candidly. But I find it ridiculous to talk pompously about practical matters. And you are too intelligent not to understand that all this is quite simple and that I cannot risk my life over a question of drafts.25
Proust did attend Mme Hennessy’s party in his honor, arriving, as he had predicted, after dinner.
Gaston Gallimard finally returned to France on March 25. Proust anticipated long sessions of correcting the proofs for his various volumes, while friends looked for an apartment for him. Proust wrote Gallimard, as did Hahn, to explain their concerns about the font size and many errors they had found in Within a Budding Grove.26 The publisher proposed no solution.
That spring, Proust replied to his first letter from Sydney Schiff, a wealthy English publicist and novelist.27 Schiff, who was fifty-one, wrote under the pseudonym Stephen Hudson. He and his wife, Violet, who both knew French, had been among the first in Britain to discover and love Swann’s Way. Schiff had another reason for writing: he hoped that Proust would publish in his review Art and Letters, whose contributors included Edith Sitwell, Katherine Mansfield, and T. S. Eliot. Proust replied that he might be willing to answer some sort of literary survey.28
On receiving Proust’s letter, Schiff wrote again to express his and Violet’s admiration for Swann, who had become “a close friend whom we love and whom we comprehend as one comprehends those one has loved for a long time.” Schiff said they had often laughed at Dr. Cottard’s jokes and silly puns. He even invited Proust to stay with them in London, offering him a room with a study where he could rest and where they would leave him “completely free.” To reassure Proust that they would understand his needs, Schiff then revealed something about himself: “I am a nervous, moody creature, but I understand the nerves of others.” Proust answered that the invitation touched and delighted him; then he explained that his asthma attacks and other health problems required isolation from others and from any noise.29
Jacques Rivière, whose health and nerves had been nearly ruined by four years in a German prisoner of war camp, was now editor in chief of the NRF. As soon as he read Within a Budding Grove, he wrote Proust to express his profound admiration. Rivière was eager to publish an excerpt from the volume in the June 1 NRF, the first since 1914, of which he planned a large printing. Rivière suggested the passages on the Narrator’s falling out of love with Gilberte.30 Because this issue would be read by a much wider audience, he wanted Proust, as the “preeminent novelist” of the day, to have the lead article. He then touched on a question of capital importance to Proust: the editor did not think that the excerpt’s appearance in the NRF would delay publication of the novel by more than ten days.
Proust, who had been waiting six long years to resume publication of his novel, at first expressed his unqualified opposition to this idea. He was fed up with the endless delays. Even though convinced that his books would “appear under deplorable conditions,” he still wanted his volumes out well before June, which he thought was a very bad time to publish. Having said this, Proust wrote: “I hasten to add that all reasons yield and all objections vanish immediately” if publishing the excerpt “pleases you, which will with the same stroke please me also.” Jacques replied that he could think of no better way to call readers’ attention to Proust’s books.31 In fact, because the new NRF edition of Swann’s Way was not ready until June 23, Gallimard ultimately decided to hold Within a Budding Grove and Pastiches et mélanges in order to put all three volumes on sale at once.32 Each delay infuriated Proust, who thought such tactics cost him readers.
Shortly before April 26 Proust wrote Mme Catusse and told her about his speech problems and why he had dismissed Bize’s diagnosis of too many drugs: “I think it’s the beginning of a state like the one in which my poor Mama ended her days.” He did have some good news: the settlement Guiche had negotiated with the banker René Varin-Bernier, the new owner of 102, boulevard Haussmann.33 The banker agreed to forgive the rent owed and pay Proust an indemnity of three years’ rent plus twelve thousand francs.34 In exchange, Proust had to vacate his apartment by June 1.
As Proust considered where to live, he remained fascinated by the idea of inhabiting Mme Catusse’s tower overlooking the sea at Nice. Such a location would be an ideal starting place to fulfill another old dream of visiting those Italian cities he had longed to know: Pisa, Siena, Perugia, and, above all, Florence. It was even possible that he would remain in Italy. He had discussed these plans with Dr. Bize, who would give him an injection on his departure; another doctor, chosen by Bize, would accompany him, along with a nurse, who would give Proust injections along the way. But such trips were dreams with which he consoled himself for no longer being able to travel. He abandoned the idea of renting the tower when Bize told him that if he made it to Nice, the doctor could not guarantee that he would be strong enough for the return trip.35
Guiche had masterfully solved Proust’s most pressing financial problem. There remained the question of the Warburg check, as Proust explained to Berry. Given the impending and complicated move, the proofs to correct, and his poor health, he had no time for such matters. He also alluded mysteriously to “an unhappy love that is ending.” Proust apparently meant his attraction to Rochat, which had indeed been short-lived. Having made the young man a part of his household, Proust could not bring himself to evict him. In the spring, when Proust invited a friend to dine at his bedside, he told him that no one else would be present “except a boy I took in several months ago, but who will not bother us since he says nothing.”36 Rochat seemed content to stay in “his room daubing at his painting,” or to hang around and play checkers.37 He occasionally took dictation when Proust’s eyes were too tired for him to write letters that were not personal. Being in Proust’s employ was certainly easier and more remunerative for Rochat than any jobs for which he could apply. Rochat contributed several details to characters in the Search: Albertine’s ambition to become a painter and Morel’s beautiful handwriting and bad spelling.38
Proust heard from Louis de Robert, who still regretted that Marcel had not followed his advice and published a shorter Swann’s Way. Louis remained firm in his belief that so many pages discouraged readers. Marcel, “greatly perplexed” by his friend’s reservations, had to confess to Louis that the three-volume work they had discussed before the war had expanded into four additional volumes, each as long as Swann. And Proust had not yet finished revising. Louis expressed surprise at such length and added, “So much the better for me, for those who first read you.” Had Proust decided to “write only for the restricted circle of elite readers who already admire you” and abandon the attempt to “touch, to win over the many delicate and profound souls who will pass by your books without knowing what treasures are hidden within?”39 Proust’s intention, of course, was just the opposite. He wanted to write a book for people who took the train and bought a third-class ticket or for electricians, who, he thought, would be more appreciative of his books than dukes and duchesses.40 But Louis’s reservations troubled him. Proust knew that he was taking the greatest gamble of any novelist in history: he had decided to put everything into one book of unprecedented scale. Could Louis de Robert be right? Could In Search of Lost Time, at least ten times the length of an average novel, appeal to large numbers of readers, or would it be a colossal failure?
On May 22 Proust sent his “Dear friend and publisher” a letter in which he released his pent-up anger at what he viewed as Gallimard’s shortcomings. He scolded Gaston for having stayed in New York so long as a theater administrator. Gallimard’s negligence had resulted in a completely “botched” edition of Within a Budding Grove. Even if all the errors were the author’s, Gallimard’s proofreaders should have caught them. He was furious at having waited so long and worked so hard to obtain such poor results. And his books were still not on sale! Now, after pleading for proofs for years, he had received them all at once: “I no longer have the same strength and perhaps it’s my turn to be somewhat slow. It would be good for the entire work to appear while I’m still alive and should things turn out differently, I have left all my notebooks numbered so that you could take them, and, therefore, I am counting on you to complete the publication.”41 Proust had given his final instructions in case death took him before he finished.
On the same day Proust heard from his former publisher Grasset, who proposed “the most amiable solution” to the indemnity matter. Grasset would forgo the indemnity in exchange for Proust’s forfeiture of the much smaller royalties owed him. He asked only that Proust give him in the future whatever excerpts or articles he could for a new magazine, Nos Loisirs, a review of modern literature that Grasset intended to launch in July. Grasset had ambitious plans for this review, telling Proust that the first printing would be an unprecedented three hundred thousand copies.42 Proust, who assumed that Grasset would pay him handsomely for a publication with a huge circulation, decided, without telling Rivière, to reserve excerpts from The Guermantes Way for Nos Loisirs. He ignored Grasset’s “amiable solution” to the indemnity settlement, which was less advantageous than the previous proposal.
Meanwhile, Proust’s friends, neighbors, and servants continued to look for an apartment with no success. By May 26 Proust had no choice but to accept an offer from Jacques Porel, who suggested as a temporary solution that Proust sublet a furnished apartment in a building that belonged to his mother, Réjane. The actress lived on rue Laurent-Pichat, “a little street between avenue Foch and rue Pergolèse.”43 Réjane occupied the second floor; Jacques, his wife, and their child lived on the third. The fourth-floor apartment that Proust rented for the month of June belonged to Réjane’s daughter, who was away in America. This solution to his housing crisis brought new difficulties. Proust would have to move twice, once to the temporary apartment and then to a more permanent dwelling, which he still must find. Marcel, who waited until the last minute to organize his move, was horrified to discover that the unused rooms at boulevard Haussmann contained enough items “to furnish many houses.”44 Réjane’s apartment was smaller and furnished, so he would have to store nearly everything he owned.
All the complications and the rapidity with which decisions had to be made and action taken overwhelmed Proust. Céleste, exhausted from all the extra errands and work, suffered from lack of sleep and became “unbearable” with him. When Proust realized how much there was to sort and move, he took the uncharacteristic action of burning a quantity of items. In a letter to Abel Desjardins, Marcel said he burned “precious autographs, manuscripts of which there are no copies, and photographs that had become rare.”45
Céleste insisted in her memoirs that no such burning took place when they left boulevard Haussmann.46 She did recall that sometime “between 1916 and 1917, after he’d finished Within a Budding Grove and had all the rest in his head,” Proust asked her to burn, “one or sometimes two or three at a time, as he came to have no further need of them,” what she referred to as “the old exercise books, which were the nucleus of the Search and of all his work. They contained the first drafts of his book, long fragments and even whole chapters written in the course of earlier years, even of his youth.” On Proust’s last trip to Cabourg in 1914, these notebooks “were the only part of his work he didn’t take with him.” Proust referred to them as the “‘black books’ because they had black imitation-leather covers. There were thirty-two of them, numbered with big white figures that looked as if they’d been written with a finger dipped in paint or white ink. They were big school exercise books.” When Proust needed to consult one, he would ask Céleste for the number required. She remembered seeing “them open in front of him. The white pages were covered with perfectly even writing without any smudges or crossings-out. I don’t think they had been written in bed for they dated from the time when he still wrote sitting down, a period I never knew.” Céleste was convinced that “they already contained the essence of his work. Starting from them he reworked, developed, expanded, embellished.” Whatever they contained, “no trace remains . . . because at a certain point he made me destroy them, and all thirty-two of them were burned to ashes in the big kitchen stove.”47 No one knows what Proust and Céleste destroyed, but it is generally believed that he burned notebooks containing early drafts that he had already used, recopied, or revised. Proust’s normal method of working was not to throw away any text that might later be useful. It is possible that Proust, exhausted and harried, burned notebooks containing sketches for characters he no longer intended to use and of which he kept no copies.48
Proust had hired an electrician to go to the new apartment and install an electrical outlet over the place where his bed would be. There would be “three switches, one for the bell, one for the bedside lamp, and one for the kettle.”49 Proust dispatched Odilon to supervise the electrician. When the installation seemed to be progressing very slowly, despite a workday that lasted from nine in the morning until seven in the evening, Proust concluded that Odilon must be telling his war stories to the electrician. Réjane’s concierge was asked to oversee Odilon’s supervision of the electrician.
Before leaving the only place he had considered home since the death of his parents, Proust took one last look at the dress his mother had worn to Robert’s wedding. Long ago, Marthe had asked Marcel for the dress, but he had refused to give it to her. Realizing that “the style of those days had come back,” he asked Céleste, “maddened by twenty nights with no sleep,” to take the dress to Mme Catusse. He had heard that her son Charles was planning to wed. No doubt Proust hoped his mother’s dearest friend would be able to wear the dress. Marcel, who had kept a number of his mother’s garments for purely sentimental reasons, sent three dresses to close relatives.50
Proust took to the new apartment all the essential items from his bedroom: the brass bed, “tarnished by the fumigations. . . . The little Chinese cabinet he was so fond of. . . and the three little tables with all he needed for his work: the exercise books of the manuscripts and notes, the pile of handkerchiefs, the box of paper for lighting Legras powder, the glasses, the watch,” and the light with the green lampshade.51 The bed being used by Rochat was moved to the room the “secretary” would occupy. Proust brought with him the oil portraits of his parents and his own by Blanche. The other items, including the cork and the grand piano, went to storage. In late May, Proust wrote Porel, telling him how pleased and proud Céleste was to be moving to such a “marvelous apartment, in the shadow of Mme Réjane’s glory.” He wanted no one except Reynaldo, who already knew it, to have his new address.52 Proust was to find the apartment anything but marvelous.
On May 31 an exhausted Proust left boulevard Haussmann and moved to 8 bis, rue Laurent-Pichat. He had hoped to do nothing but rest for a month while friends and a rental agency looked for more suitable lodgings, but he developed such a high fever and was so miserable that he wanted to leave immediately.53 Proust remained at Réjane’s for four months, during which time he suffered terrible attacks of asthma and complained about the noise that came through walls made of “paper.” He felt so wretched that he did not even inform his brother of the new address. Céleste recalled: “Death began for him with our leaving boulevard Haussmann.”54
The day after Proust moved, the June issue of the NRF appeared with an excerpt from Within a Budding Grove, about the young Narrator’s gradual falling out of love with Swann’s adolescent daughter Gilberte. This was Proust’s and the NRF’s first publication in five years; on July 1, 1914, just a month before the outbreak of war, the review had published excerpts from The Guermantes Way. Proust’s pages had a powerful effect on Berry, who wrote the author that they “awakened all my painful memories—because I have lived all that, down to the last line—but the wound has not healed. In order to elude the obsession, I walked along the quais under the mournful Moon. God, everything today is lamentable—and what . . . an incomparable artist you are—and how I admire you . . . and how everything is sad sad sad—Walter Berry.”55
In early June, Proust became annoyed at what he considered Gallimard’s inaccessibility and wrote that he had been unable to reach his publisher by phone and wondered why he kept such odd hours. He remarked sarcastically, “It was slightly more convenient when you were in America, because there was at least the boat ‘that was going to set sail.’” Proust informed Gaston that on the day he moved, while going through drawers and boxes, he found the original proofs of The Guermantes Way, made long ago when Grasset was preparing what was then the second volume. Once he recovered from his asthma and fever he would correct them. “I hope to begin within forty-eight hours and then will go like the wind.” Gallimard explained that Proust’s last letter sent to his home address had gone unanswered because he, too, had a new address.56 Gaston, who did not reveal that address, said that Proust should send all his mail to the NRF office.
Proust negotiated with Gallimard concerning the deluxe edition of Within a Budding Grove. The publisher estimated that the cost would be approximately three thousand francs. Hoping to sell fifty copies at five hundred francs, Proust asked whether the profits from the sales would be entirely the author’s. “My question may be stupid, but I haven’t the foggiest notion about this.” Gallimard answered that all the revenue would go to Proust, “after deduction of the expenses, which had actually just increased because of the institution of the eight-hour workday.”57
Around June 7 Proust wrote Tronche because he was furious that his three volumes, whose publication had been announced for the first week in June, had not appeared. Furthermore, friends who went to the NRF offices in the rue Madame to obtain his books came away empty-handed. Would they even bother to try again? Proust beseeched the NRF at least not to announce a date again until it was certain the books would be available. Tronche explained that the delay was due primarily to strikes by typesetters.58 The next week Proust wrote Gallimard to express his fear that everyone would leave Paris for summer vacation before his books were available. Tronche responded on Sunday, June 15, the day the strikes ended, assuring him that his three volumes would be in all the bookstores by the end of the week. He apologized for their having failed to “better satisfy you despite all our goodwill and this imperious desire that we have to serve your work.”59
Certain at last that his books were to appear, Proust wrote Robert de Flers to request an article in the Figaro announcing their publication.60 No one, he said, would do that as well as his old friend Robert Dreyfus. If Flers thought it impossible to place a literary piece on the front page at the moment, the novelist would resign himself to a brief notice. That was the solution adopted by Flers. The Versailles Peace Conference, nearing an agreement, had dominated the news for weeks, crowding other items off the front page.
On June 21 Proust began autographing and sending friends copies of Within a Budding Grove, Pastiches et mélanges, and Swann’s Way. He soon discovered that these copies were not first editions. Dismayed, he sent Odilon and Marie to bookstores to look for first editions. Proust learned that an “Association of Bibliophiles” had reserved all copies of the first edition. This circumstance forced him to write his closest friends, telling them why they had not received signed copies of his books. Proust urged Antoine, if he happened to see “Anna de Noailles, Princesse de Chimay, Princesse de Polignac, Comtesse Greffulhe, Maurice Barrès, etc.,” to explain his predicament. Marcel continued to inscribe copies, hoping to replace them later with first editions, if any were to be found. When he apologized to Cocteau for sending an edition that was not the first, he received a charming note: “My dear Marcel, I am not a bibliophile—any edition becomes precious when inscribed by you.”61
Although Proust was still smarting from Léon’s qualification of Swann’s Way as “stupefying,” he paid his friend a large compliment in his copy: “To Léon Daudet, who does not like my book which does not prevent me from worshipping his (See Pastiches et mélanges, p. 37) and himself...” Proust referred to the page from his 1907 parody of the Goncourts’ Journal, in which Lucien describes Proust as a person who is “completely enamored of Léon’s novels.”62 Proust was mistaken about Léon’s opinion of his work; Daudet was about to become one of the most important champions of the Search.
When Proust inscribed a copy of Within a Budding Grove for Réjane, he congratulated the actress on her great roles, especially as Germinie, a performance that left him with a “recurrent fever,” and for the “most beautiful” of all her roles as Jacques’s mother. “Respectful homage from an unbearable tenant.”63 Proust could observe another famous actor, who lived in a neighboring apartment. Céleste recalled: “On the other side of the courtyard we could see the actor Le Bargy, of the Comédie-Française, coming and going in his bathroom, occasionally letting out great howls, either declaiming his lines or quarreling with his wife—it was sometimes hard to tell. M. Proust was very amused by this.”64 Proust worried about Réjane’s health. Although she remained active at sixty-three, she suffered from a weak heart. Remembering her long and remarkable career, Proust noted his intention to use impressions of Réjane in old age for an episode recounting the last days of his fictional actress Berma.65
On June 23 Berry returned from Tours and found his copy of Pastiches et mélanges. Writing Proust to say how “delighted” he had been to find “your book— or rather my book,” Berry noted the historical moment: “The war ends today.” Germany had just accepted the conditions of the Versailles Treaty.66 In less than a month, France prepared a grand victory celebration for the first peacetime Bastille Day since 1914. It soon became evident, however, that the diplomatic, political, and economic difficulties resulting from the Great War were far from over. Proust later told Berry that he had his own idea regarding a peace accord. If France intended to ask Germany and Austria for artistic reparations, why not take the Vermeer paintings in Dresden and Vienna. “The world’s greatest painter is unknown in France (La Dentellière at the Louvre is exquisite but hardly sufficient).”67
At the end of June, Tronche wrote Proust requesting a list of critics to receive press copies. He enclosed a royalty check, the first Proust had received in years, in the amount of 2,430 francs as an advance on the sale of the first one thousand copies of Swann’s Way and the first three thousand copies of Within a Budding Grove and Pastiches et mélanges.68 Proust questioned the terms and payment. His contract called for him to receive a generous 18 percent on the price of the volumes sold, but he wanted his percentage to be calculated on the full price (7.50 francs), and he wanted to be paid immediately for all three thousand copies of each volume. This was the first of many skirmishes regarding contracts and royalty payments. After explaining to Proust that the royalties for all authors were calculated on the amount remaining after 2.50 francs in state taxes were deducted—which made 5 francs in his case—the NRF yielded. Tronche warned the writer, however, that such payment might mean the price of his volumes would have to be increased.69 Proust soon received another, recalculated royalty check for 5,490 francs.70
Although Proust’s fascination with Henri Rochat had not lasted long, he was too kindhearted to dismiss the young man. The novelist found it nearly impossible to get rid of his “secretary,” even though he tried several times. On one occasion Rochat expressed an impulse to return to Switzerland. Eager to encourage such a move, Proust obtained a pass, still necessary in the immediate postwar period. Rochat had the clever idea of waiting for his papers on the Riviera, where he quickly squandered all the money Proust had given him for the trip to Switzerland. He apparently spent some of the funds on prostitutes. The wayward secretary contracted a venereal disease, and he returned to Proust’s apartment so ill that he required nursing. In the summer, Proust tried again to send Rochat home to seek regular employment. This time he obtained a pass through Jacques Truelle. On July 9, to make certain that Rochat left for Switzerland, Proust saw him off at the Gare de Lyon.71 Afterward, a relieved Proust joined his guests Walter Berry, Mme Soutzo, and Paul Morand for a small dinner party at the Ritz.
Rivière informed Proust of his decision to write a study of the author’s work to date. Jacques, who feared that his condition might make it impossible for him to write an article worthy of his subject, predicted that he would have to struggle against an “unbearable mental fatigue.” Proust, who knew how severely the critic’s health had been undermined by all he had suffered during the war, expressed his gratitude but urged Rivière to abandon the idea and rest.72
Violet Schiff received a letter in which Proust expressed his “despair” that she had ordered his books rather than waiting for him to send copies. He enumerated all his problems in his new apartment, including the noise made by hammers from work being done nearby and his terrible asthma attacks. He had not slept “for a minute” and was in “such a weakened condition” that he had taken as “much caffeine as possible” to be able to write to her. He asked whether she knew any friends who might like copies of the deluxe edition. Proust was drawing up a list of potential subscribers. He had been “very moved” by an objection that Violet, who shared her husband’s great affection for Swann, had made regarding the turn this character was taking: “I feel I am going to have many regrets.” He assumed the Schiffs meant that they considered “Swann to be a living person” and had been “disappointed to see him become less likable and even ridiculous.” Proust assured them that transforming Swann had been painful: “But I am not free to go against truth and violate the laws of character. Amicus Swann sed magis arnica veritas. The nicest people sometimes have odious periods. I promise you that in the following volume, when he becomes a Dreyfusard, Swann will again become likable. Unfortunately, and this causes me great distress, he dies in the fourth volume.” Swann was not the book’s main character: “I would have liked it to be he. But art is a perpetual sacrifice of sentiment to truth.”73 Violet acquiesced; what else could she do after such a charming and convincing letter?
Blanche visited Proust in his temporary lodgings and found him looking well, though rather plump. Marcel seemed very animated and spoke of leaving soon for Cabourg. Céleste served Blanche a sumptuous snack. Proust entreated her to do some of her imitations, for which, he said, she had a kind of genius, but Céleste refused to perform. Blanche remembered his last dinner with Proust as only laughter and enchantment, as the two old friends evoked their youth.74
Princesse Soutzo, who during her morning walks looked for an apartment for Marcel, had found one at thirty thousand francs a year, which she thought was “quite expensive, even for Céleste.” Proust passed this amusing comment on to Porel. He then reported that another tenant in the building had complained about a noisy neighbor. Proclaiming his innocence, the writer asked Jacques to tell his mother that Proust did not have in his apartment “either a piano or a mistress.” He did, however, have an idea about the source of the noise: “The neighbors in the adjoining room make love . . . every day with a frenzy which makes me jealous. When I think that for me this sensation is weaker than that of drinking a cold beer, I envy people who can scream so that the first time I thought someone was being murdered, but very soon the cry of the woman repeated an octave lower by the man, reassured me about what was happening.”75 Proust concluded, he told Porel, from the sounds heard that as soon as their lovemaking ended the couple leaped from their bed to take a sitz-bath before performing the necessary household chores, which included taking care of children. Then Proust made an unusually frank and intimate confession—though vague, and with no indication of the identity or sex of the partner. He said that “The total absence of any transition makes me tired for them [the lovers overheard], for if there is anything I detest afterward, at least immediately afterward, it’s moving, no matter how much egotism there is in keeping in the same place the warmth of a mouth that no longer has anything to receive.”76 Proust’s description of his preferences when engaged in sex suggests fellatio. Why did he make such an extraordinary admission to Porel? It is true that there is nothing in the letter that suggests a homosexual rather than a heterosexual partner, but such a comment proves at least that Proust discussed his sexual habits frankly with a number of people whose discretion he apparently trusted.
In the opening pages of Sodom and Gomorrah, which he did not publish until 1921, Proust uses a description similar to the one in the letter to Porel when the Narrator overhears two men, Jupien and Charlus, who engage in sex, apparently anal intercourse: “From what I heard at first in Jupien’s quarters, which was only a series of inarticulate sounds, I imagine that few words had been exchanged. It is true that these sounds were so violent that, if they had not always been taken up an octave higher by a parallel plaint, I might have thought that one person was slitting another’s throat within a few feet of me, and that subsequently the murderer and his resuscitated victim were taking a bath to wash away the traces of the crime. I concluded from this . . . that there is another thing as noisy as pain, namely pleasure, especially when there is added to it . . . an immediate concern about cleanliness.”77
This scene between Jupien and Charlus, and others that occur later in the book, demonstrate the daring nature of Proust’s narrative. Balzac had only hinted at Vautrin’s desire for Lucien de Rubempré; Proust actually described, at least through sounds and a minimum of dialogue, a homosexual encounter. After Proust, there was no way to deny the existence of what he called a large colony of homosexuals.
By the end of July, Rochat was back. Unable to obtain the job he wanted with an aviation company in Switzerland, he returned to Paris without informing Proust. At first he did not dare come to Proust’s apartment. The novelist speculated that Rochat might have wanted to spend the first days back in Paris with his fiancée. Proust told Truelle that once Rochat realized that the hotel was costing him fifty francs a day compared with “nothing in my apartment, he came and asked me for hospitality, which I did not dare refuse him, but which poisons my existence.” When Proust learned that the fiancée, who was “delicious, although the daughter of a concierge,” intended to visit her grandmother in Deux Sèvres in western France, he urged Rochat to accompany her. But Rochat worried that his presence “might compromise her. Meanwhile it is my repose which is compromised.”78 Proust described Rochat to Porel as a burden who filled his “moments with a dead weight.”79 Because Rochat was “very nice” and “knew how to play checkers,” Proust put aside his proofs to “maneuver men on the board.” A year later, when a friend asked Proust how he viewed company and people in general, the novelist replied: “I do my intellectual work within myself, and once I am with others, it almost doesn’t matter to me if they are intelligent, provided they are nice, sincere, etc.”80 Rochat, like many other male servants Marcel knew through the years, seems to have met those modest requirements.
Proust complained to friends that the constant noise and his asthma attacks made him suffer so much that he could “neither work, or do anything, or speak, or write.”81 Mme de Ludre, a friend with whom he sometimes dined, sent him some Quiès wax balls to use as ear plugs. Proust used his perceptions of noises muffled by the Quiès balls for a passage in the novel on sounds and silences when the Narrator visits Saint-Loup’s barracks in Doncières.82 He might have felt wretched, but the strange apartment did stimulate him to create new scenes, especially ones involving sound effects.
Around this time, Proust and Daniel Halévy engaged in an epistolary debate over France’s role as an intellectual leader. When Halévy signed a manifesto in the Figaro, “Pour un parti de l’intelligence,” intended as an answer to the Communist Manifesto, Proust wrote to express his disapproval.83 The only criterion, the only law one should seek was truth. “If France is to watch over the literature of the entire world, that is a mandate one would weep with joy to learn has been entrusted to us, but it’s somewhat shocking to see us assume for ourselves. This hegemony, born with ‘Victory’ makes one think immediately of ‘Deutschland über alies’ and for that reason is slightly disagreeable.” After Halévy attempted to justify his position by stating the rectitude of those with whom he sided, Proust warned: “It is very dangerous to adhere to false ideas because of the virtues of those who proclaim them.” This very practice explained why military men who leaned toward supporting Dreyfus had been against revision because they knew what a good man General Gonse was and had “more trust in the Chiefs of Staff than in the anarchists.” Turning to personal matters, he told Daniel not to “imagine that ‘my lot’ is good. It’s atrocious. I am weaving nothing but my shroud, and so slowly and so painfully.”84
Yet his lot was in fact very good, at least as far as reaction to his novel was concerned. Proust’s friends with literary ambitions, such as Halévy and Gregh, found his position enviable. Praise for Within a Budding Grove continued to arrive from friends and admirers. Blanche wrote that if Montaigne had been tempted to “write a novel, he would not have surpassed or even attained, in his analysis, what each page of your astonishing book possesses.” Proust should not be surprised, Blanche said, if critics write many articles on his work; even those who, like Vandérem, admire him “hatefully” admire him “passionately.” The painter ended by saying, “I live with your books and am returning to them immediately.”85
Proust was delighted when Comte Jean de Gaigneron compared his books to a cathedral. Thanking the count, the author said that it was impossible “not to be moved by an intuition which permits you to guess what I have never told anyone and that I am writing here for the first time: I have wanted to give to each part of my book the title: Portal I Stained Glass Windows of the Apse etc., to answer in advance the stupid criticism . . . over the lack of construction in a book where I will show that the only merit is in the solidity of the most minor parts.” Proust abandoned the idea of “architectural titles” because he found them “too pretentious.” The cathedral analogy occurs again in a letter to François Mauriac, a fervent Catholic. Proust, perhaps apprehensive about Mauriac’s reaction to Sodom and Gomorrah, recalled that Jammes had asked him to cut the scene between Mile Vinteuil and her friend. Proust would have liked to grant Jammes’s request, “but I had constructed this work so carefully that this episode in the first volume explains the jealousy of my young man in the fourth and fifth volumes, so that by ripping out the column with the obscene capital, I would have brought down the arch. That’s what critics like to call works without composition and written according to random memories.”86
For the rest of his life, with the publication of each successive volume, Proust was to defend his work against those critics who, even while praising the Search as an extraordinary accomplishment, said that it lacked structure and composition. The accusation that he was writing thinly disguised memoirs or free associations of ideas amounted to the same, for either charge meant that he had not had to be selective and create a plot.
On August 15 Proust was Berry’s guest at a small dinner party at the Ritz that included Princesse Lucien Murat. Marcel arrived late and was unhappy to see they were to dine in the garden. Noticing his downcast look, the “charming” Princesse Murat stopped the dinner and insisted that the table be moved inside. This infuriated the waiters, who tried to convince the diners that it was warmer outside. After leaving the Ritz, Proust decided to enjoy the lingering effects of Berry’s excellent champagne by taking a long ride until five in the morning in the Bois de Boulogne, “sublime in silence, solitude and moonlight.” Such a sight was one of his favorites, and one he rarely saw. Walter later told Marcel that if he had stayed a little longer in the Bois, they would have met at 7:30, when Berry came to play tennis.87
Toward the end of August, Proust wrote Montesquiou, apologizing for not having sent first editions of his new volumes. Regarding Pastiches et mélanges, he wrote: “You must have known... that I had done, using Saint-Simon as my cover, a long portrait of you . . . which is not a mere reproduction of the one that appeared years ago in the Figaro, but contains new parts and new praises. And for that I hoped to receive a note from you.” Such a note, Proust wrote, “would have been for me a beneficial balm during these days when I have suffered so much.” Montesquiou replied, thanking Marcel for the books and the parody, in which he did indeed recognize himself. Here the count quoted a line from Virgil’s Aeneid describing Hector “covered with wounds”—apparently an indication that he found Proust’s portrait less than flattering. But the count had been moved by the remembrance of Yturri, the “shade which will always be dear to me and about whom you speak so well.”88 Montesquiou wrote again in the fall, complimenting the parody, saying that it “was a marvelous success, better, a miracle in the genre.” What Proust had referred to as “my ‘vice’”—that is, the count’s frequent feuds with friends—“I call the art of pruning the tree of friendship.” The count concluded his long letter of praise, “So with this you’ve become a thaumaturge, therapeutist, and a friend,” this last being “the most beautiful title of the three.” Montesquiou said that Proust would read his “memoirs since you will outlive me”; he hoped his recollections would please the novelist and inspire him to visit his last resting place.89 It is odd that the count thought that Proust would be pleased by his memoirs, which depict the author as suffering from “megalomania.”90 Montesquiou was right about Proust’s outliving him, but wrong about his surviving long enough to read the dreaded memoirs.
In early September, when Reynaldo returned from a stay at the Daudets’ country estate at la Roche, he informed Marcel that Rosny the Elder, a writer and member of the Académie Goncourt, intended to vote for Within a Budding Grove for the Prix Goncourt, as did Léon Daudet, who wielded tremendous influence. Reynaldo had strongly urged that Proust be given the prize. On learning of Rosny’s and Daudet’s intention to vote for him, Proust “quickly sent” his “book to the other members.”91 Because there was no way to campaign openly for the prize, Proust’s gesture of sending copies of his book to the ten members of the academy was interpreted as a declaration of his candidacy.92
Proust abandoned hope of finding first editions of Within a Budding Grove and inscribed a copy of a later printing to Mme Catusse. He paid tribute to his mother’s great friendship for her, saying that in “those hours in which I adhere to the most recent philosophy—and so old—that maintains that souls survive,” he turned toward his mother “so she will know that I tell you everything, everything she owes you.” He ended by saying that he had “placed all my heart in these pages. Receive them in memory of my Mother.”93 His own desire to be reunited with his mother and his ability to communicate with her silently are described in two passages from Within a Budding Grove in which the Narrator enjoys the same relationship with his grandmother. The Narrator, who fears eternal separation from his grandmother, seeks to exorcize that horrible thought by saying to her “in the most casual tone but . . . taking care that my grandmother should pay attention . . . what a curious thing it was that, according to the latest scientific discoveries, the materialist position appeared to be crumbling, and what was again most likely was the immortality of souls and their future reunion.”94 The young Narrator, at Balbec with his grandmother, is constantly reassured by his extraordinary closeness to her: “I knew, when I was with my grandmother, that however great the misery that there was in me, it would be received by her with a pity still more vast, that everything that was mine, my cares, my wishes, would be buttressed, in my grandmother, by a desire to preserve and enhance my life that was altogether stronger than was my own; and my thoughts were continued and extended in her without undergoing the slightest deflection, since they passed from my mind into hers without any change of atmosphere or of personality.”95
In keeping with his understanding with Grasset, Proust offered him the choice of excerpts from The Guermantes Way. He told his former publisher that he had thought himself unknown but had been deluged by requests for excerpts from newspapers and reviews. He had said yes to only a few, including Le Matin, to which he had sent a fragment of Mme de Villeparisis’s stay in Venice.96 He had chosen that paper because he admired Colette, who was working as an editor there. Unfortunately, Grasset was plagued by internal problems with his new magazine and did not publish any excerpts from the Search.
In September the rental agency found Proust a fourth-floor apartment, in a building with an elevator, in the sixteenth arrondissement.97 Proust liked the location, and he sent Céleste to the rue Hamelin to inspect the apartment and find out who lived in the building. After Céleste reported back, the novelist made up his mind, but with a typical Proustian variation. He wanted the landlady to empty the fifth-floor apartment and rent it to him at the furnished rate.98
On October 1, Proust moved the relatively short distance from 8 bis, rue Laurent-Pichat to the rue Hamelin. His new fifth-floor apartment lay on a line between the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower. Before moving in, he hired workers to make the necessary installations: carpets everywhere to insulate against the noise, the electrical outlet above his bed for his bell, lamp, and kettle, but nothing else, no other installations, not even the cork, for he did not regard his new quarters as permanent.99 Proust’s entourage followed him to rue Hamelin: Céleste and Odilon, Marie, and the barnacle-like Rochat, “without employment” and with no plans. Proust’s rent was sixteen thousand francs a year, nearly three times as much as his old apartment.
Céleste described their new neighborhood as “quiet, middle-class ... with nice people.” There was a baker’s shop on the ground floor owned by a M. Montagnon, with whom Céleste “arranged to do her telephoning. I used to go straight into his dining room without asking.” Proust’s apartment possessed, Céleste recalled, essentially the same floor plan as at boulevard Haussmann, though on a smaller scale: “salon, small salon (or rather boudoir) and bedroom. That was the route for visitors. I usually went by the corridor and the boudoir, and entered the bedroom through a double door... across the hall. After the bathroom came a bedroom full of books and silver not in use.”
The essential items for writing and burning the antiasthma powders, including the candle that stayed lighted all night on a table in the hallway, were placed in their positions. Daylight was blocked out as it had been at boulevard Haussmann by “long, very handsome window curtains of blue satin.” The “boudoir now contained the black bookcase that used to be in the small salon, with his favorite authors: Mme de Sévigné, Ruskin, Saint-Simon in a beautiful binding stamped with the initials M. P. Instead of the armchairs, there were now low fireside chairs.”
The only differences Céleste recalled, once Proust settled in and the “machinery of his habits resumed,” were that he said more frequently: “‘I haven’t much time, Céleste...’” She also thought he “smoked” less. In her memory, she later saw “those last two years of his life . . . in an atmosphere which already resembled the grave.” The new apartment had little charm and no warm memories. Nor did the “very small” fireplace produce the desired heat. “He couldn’t stand central heating because of the dust, I tried to light a fire. . . . But the draft wasn’t good and the smoke seeped back into the room. ‘The smoke makes me ill, Céleste,’ he said, ‘I can taste it in my mouth and chest. I can’t breathe. We will have to give it up.’ So I didn’t light a fire any more. I can see him as he lay there in bed, with the little green light falling on the pages he was writing or correcting, and the sweaters slipping down one after the other behind him as he asked me for another to put around his shoulders. And never a complaint.” When she worried about his catching cold in the freezing room, he answered that they were “‘only passing through. When I have finished we will be more comfortable.’” He told her that they would go south for a holiday after the Search was completed.
Soon after Proust moved to rue Hamelin, Tronche somehow obtained for him copies of the first editions of Swann’s Way and Within a Budding Grove. Tronche informed the author that the deluxe edition, with its corrected proof sheets and the photogravure of the Blanche portrait, was advancing well.100
In October, Paul Morand angered Proust by publishing an “Ode to Marcel Proust,” in which he depicted Proust as someone who always claimed to be on the verge of dying. But what shocked Proust were the indiscreet insinuations and the public disclosure of details regarding his private life.101 What late night revels, Morand asked in verse, did Proust attend to return home with “eyes so weary and so lucid?” In spite of the “Ode,” Proust did not break with Morand; he was indulgent, but he scolded Paul, saying that the “Ode” could be interpreted as an indication of his having been caught in a raid or left for dead by hooligans. Proust had good reason to fear being caught in a raid; had his friends or others found out about his late night visits to Le Cuziat’s brothel? He did mete out a form of punishment to Paul. It had been his intention to write another volume of pastiches entirely devoted to Morand and Mme Soutzo, “your accomplice for the Ode.” Because the book was “infinitely laudatory,” Proust said, he could not “publish it... without looking like a coward.” Reminding Morand that the “artist’s duty is to Truth,” Proust complained that the “Ode” had embarrassed him publicly with no justification. As for Morand’s “charming dedication,” in Proust’s copy, it was handwritten and private, and could not counteract the poem, “where you threw me into this Hell that Dante reserved for his enemies.”102
In a mid-October letter to Porel, Proust said, “Not only am I sicker but I fired Céleste. And then, naturally, I took her back.” The cause of this dismissal, which Céleste does not mention in her memoirs, is unknown. It seems likely that Céleste became “unbearable” again under the stress of the second move, as when she had nearly collapsed from exhaustion during the frantic days that preceded Proust’s first relocation.103 Even the normally valiant, all-suffering Céleste could be at times pushed to her limit by the demands of the most complicated and least practical man in Paris.
Rivière, struggling with his essay on the Search, wrote Proust that it had been madness to announce that “I was writing an article on your novel!” Jacques worked also to expand the NRF, creating new columns for it. Having engaged writers for the columns about poetry and painting, he “suddenly became exceedingly ambitious for the column about the novel,” which he wanted to give to “the current master of the genre.”104 This was the column formerly entrusted to Henri Ghéon, who had written the negative review of Swann’s Way. In earlier years Proust would have welcomed such an assignment; he declined the offer in order to devote himself entirely to finishing the Search.
Proust contacted his old friend Mme Lemaire, saying that he would send her a copy of Pastiches et mélanges, the publication of which had resulted in a break with the Murats and Albufera. These ruptures “pained” him a “great deal,” but as “for society I don’t give a damn,” as his parodies proved.105 The Murats were furious with him because he had depicted them as pretentious courtiers, intriguing to be granted the same rank as foreign princes. Albufera, who was related to the Murats by marriage, also took offense. To make matters worse, Proust’s intended compliment to the nobleman had been turned into an insult by a printer’s error. Proust had written of his “infinite esteem” for Albufera, but the typesetter had read infime for infinie, which changed the phrase to “minute esteem.”106 Albufera did not acknowledge receiving any of his books. Proust did not care, he told Hauser, that the Murats were incensed, but to lose an old friend like Albu, “tried and true, pains me infinitely.”107
Rosny wrote Proust at the end of October to express the “intense joy” he had felt on reading Within a Budding Grove: “I am indebted to you for having rejuvenated this literature with which I am saturated!” Rosny, who admitted having had reservations about Swann’s Way, offered to support Proust for the Prix Goncourt.108 Seemingly more moved by Rosny’s testimony than by the prize held out to him, Proust answered: “I don’t know if I will win the prize, I don’t even know when it’s given, but I am happy in any case that it exists, because it has permitted me. . . to know your gentle goodness, the kind interest you show those whose books you like.” On November 3 Rosny sent a confidential letter, telling Proust that he already had six of the ten votes. The president, as things stood, also intended to vote for Proust. If that decision held, Proust would certainly win. Rosny wrote again a month later to assure Proust that he need fear no surprises.109
That fall, when Robert de Billy visited Proust for the first time since the armistice, he found the writer in a “very somber” mood. Marcel admitted that he was in a difficult position financially. When Proust explained the dilemma regarding the Warburg check and his need for cash, Billy proposed a solution that relieved, at least temporarily, one of Marcel’s long-standing financial frustrations. Robert arranged for Proust to receive an advance of thirty thousand francs on the check by giving his personal guaranty. A grateful Proust insisted on sending a receipt so that if he died, his heirs would pay Billy immediately.110 Billy noted in his memoirs the “extremely complicated nature” of Marcel’s mind and wondered: “Did he need the money or not? I don’t know, but I do know that he needed to believe in me and . . . my friendship.”111
With his financial status looking brighter, Marcel was tempted to revert to his old habits as a speculator. Not long after receiving the advance on the Warburg check, he wrote Hauser. After complaining about his new apartment—which he described as a sixteen thousand-franc slum—he asked whether Hauser knew anything about various stocks, such as Transatlantic Cables, in which he might invest. Proust was thinking about selling his surplus at London County Bank and buying new shares.112
Hauser replied at once that Marcel’s letter absolutely appalled him. Obviously, Proust had not suffered enough from his close brush with bankruptcy. How, Lionel asked, could Marcel ever hope to maintain a sound financial footing if he continued to gamble? The stock market tips Marcel had received were exactly the kind that had led to his ruin. If he had more money to throw away, fine, “only don’t try to make me your accomplice.” Hauser marveled that Proust did not believe in God but put faith in tips from financiers. “Admit, my dear Marcel, that you are not very logical.” He then enumerated what he viewed as Proust’s excessive habits, including a household of four servants. “If I remember correctly, you had left something like 25,000 francs for income. Now, if you are currently paying 16,000 francs in rent and still keep a valet and a housekeeper... you will soon discover that after having paid the wages of your servants and their board, which must certainly be substantial, you will have just enough left to buy a package of eucalyptus cigarettes.”113
Proust waited several weeks before answering. He had not been “wounded” by the letter but complained that Hauser’s remarks about Proust’s financial ruin, his “follies, etc.,” had been dictated to Hauser’s secretary. Then Proust, who had failed to do so earlier, brought Hauser up to date regarding the large indemnity that he had received on leaving boulevard Haussmann. He also asked his financial adviser to confirm that his portfolio still contained seven shares of Royal Dutch, each of which should be worth more than thirty thousand francs.114
Hauser seized the opportunity to cut himself free from Proust and his endless financial complications: “Not only are you not financially ruined, you are almost in an enviable situation given the hard times in which we are living.” Lionel announced that he considered his “mission accomplished,” and while remaining at Proust’s “entire disposition,” he hoped the writer would never again need to have recourse to his financial rescue services. At the beginning of the letter he had brushed Proust’s complaints aside, saying that he had not been indiscreet because his employees were familiar with all aspects of Proust’s financial portfolio. The novelist had in their eyes “the prestige of someone like Balzac.” Hauser had recently spotted a copy of Swann’s Way on his accountant’s desk.115 Proust was always delighted to hear that a particular individual was reading his book, especially someone who did not belong to the leisured class.
Proust was caught off guard by Hauser’s resignation, but he had no choice but to accept it. He later wrote that although Hauser’s letter had been “very nice,” it had caused him “a lot of pain. You told me: ‘I quit.’” Proust considered this “materially a great misfortune for me. But even if it were a good fortune, the pain would still be the same. I cannot get used to things that end. I would be as sad to leave a slum for a palace, as a palace for a slum (now I’m in a slum).”116
That November, Proust suffered from unrelenting asthma. He wrote to Rosny on November 10 that his attacks often lasted “forty-eight hours,” during which he gasped for air “like a half-drowned person pulled out of the water, unable to say a word or make the slightest movement.”117
Proust finally yielded to Montesquiou’s request and gave him the rue Hamelin address. Having read Within a Budding Grove, the count sent Proust his impressions, complete with a list of quotations. He compared Proust, in a Montesquiouan way, to “two masters of the Divisionist School” of painting, Giovanni Segantini and Henri Fantin-Latour, a “comparison which seems to me laudatory.” What had struck Montesquiou was Proust’s “multiplicity of brushstrokes that make the composition vibrant and bring the subject to life.” He had noticed Marcel’s remarkable gift for creating maximlike reflections that often terminate passages describing a character’s actions or the Narrator’s reflections: “Your quotations, your observations, fly like multicolored confetti.” Montesquiou, at no loss for airborne analogies, compared the pithy observations to flower petals tossed in the air or snow-flakes or butterflies. The count’s favorite quotation, the “most beautiful,” spoke of glory and mortality: “Men who believe that their works will last—as was the case with Elstir—form the habit of placing them in a period when they themselves will have crumbled into dust. And thus, by obliging them to reflect on their own extinction, the idea of fame saddens them because it is inseparable from the idea of death.”118
Albert Thibaudet, a professor and critic who wrote for the NRF, contributed an article on Gustave Flaubert for the November issue: “Reflections on Literature: On Flaubert’s Style.” Proust, who had long been interested in Flaubert, took issue with some of Thibaudet’s statements. In mid-November, Proust wrote Rivière and offered the NRF a letter on Flaubert’s style, which would serve as a reply to Thibaudet. Proust contended that the way critics viewed the most distinguished French authors was so “defective” that it was time to “redress the many false judgments.” Proust insisted that he would write a very short article or note; he knew that it would be wiser to work on the Guermantes volume because the moments when he could read a newspaper or correct a proof page were “so rare.”119 Proust may have offered Rivière the Flaubert piece because he had told his young friend, without saying why, that it would be impossible to give him excerpts from The Guermantes Way.
Rivière was delighted for his review to be the stage of a debate between Proust and Thibaudet. He told Proust that he wanted the Flaubert essay by November 30 at the latest, for inclusion in the January issue. Proust became confused about the date and nearly missed the deadline, but when he realized his mistake, he rushed to finish. Because the books he needed were in storage, he quoted Flaubert from memory, often accurately, sometimes in error. Proust apparently located his essay on Flaubert, begun before the war; his original intention to write a note quickly swelled to a manuscript of sixty-two pages.120
One week before the Prix Goncourt was to be announced, Proust wrote Gallimard to express his concern that Within a Budding Grove would soon be out of print. By December 3, of the 3,242 copies originally printed, there were only 225 in stock at the printer’s.121 Marcel had not expected the volume to enjoy such success. He had even told Gallimard, as he reminded him now, that he had been “somewhat ashamed to bring out all by itself this languishing interlude.” To his amazement, “this book is enjoying a hundred times the success of Swann.” He observed proudly, having been informed no doubt by his friends in the diplomatic corps, that “there were copies on all the tables in China and Japan.” He enumerated the various places copies had been seen in France: on his accountant’s desk, “in houses in the Pyrénées or in the North, in Normandy, or in Auvergne.” This “direct contact with the reader,” which he had not had with Swann, delighted Proust, but he claimed to take no pride in this, noting that “often the worst books are the most popular.” If he drew no vainglory from his success, he did expect to earn some money. He also wanted to know whether Gallimard had chosen a translator for England. Here, too, Proust suspected his publisher of procrastinating. Anticipating the popularity his novel would enjoy in English-speaking countries, he stressed once more the importance of signing a contract for the translation as soon as possible: “The English like my books better than the French.” Had Gallimard received the proofs for The Guermantes Way or the typescript for Sodom and Gomorrah? If so, sending them without delay would help him to make up for “lost time.”122
Reynaldo wrote that he had been so busy with such “intolerable obligations” as “lectures, conducting, etc.,” that he had not been able to come any evening to rue Hamelin. Because Proust had no phone, Hahn never knew when his friend might be out until all hours. He gently reproached Marcel for never telling him anything, “although you have four people in your service.” Mme Gregh wanted to nominate Proust for the Prix Fémina and had asked Hahn whether the novelist was a candidate for the Goncourt. Proust’s friends and admirers were eager to see his accomplishment officially recognized. In early December, Proust learned that Henri de Régnier and his wife wanted him to receive the Grand Prize for Literature given by the Académie française.123
On Wednesday, December 10, the members of the Académie Goncourt met at their annual luncheon at the Restaurant Drouant and voted, six to four, to give their prestigious prize to Within a Budding Grove. The minority votes had gone to a war novel, Les Croix de bois (The wooden crosses), written by a thirty-three-year-old veteran named Roland Dorgelès.124 The award carried a cash purse of five thousand francs. The academicians sent the headwaiter to announce the winner to the press, while they drafted a short letter to Proust.125
Léon Daudet and several academicians set out for the rue Hamelin to inform Proust.126 On hearing the news, Gallimard, Rivière, and Tronche rushed out to congratulate their first Prix Goncourt winner.127 Both delegations arrived at the same time; the laureate was asleep.128 Céleste, who was authorized on exceptional occasions to enter Proust’s bedroom without being sent for, gave him the news. After brief, separate interviews with Daudet and Gallimard, Proust issued strict orders to Céleste that no reporters or photographers were to be admitted.129
Proust later attributed some of his negative reviews to his refusal to see journalists who came seeking him for front-page stories. He also blamed Gallimard and his colleagues at the NRF office for failing to give the offended reporters a better reception.130 Gallimard countered by saying that he did not understand why “you are advising me to be nice to reporters; I am seeing a lot of them these days and I am trying hard to satisfy them, and by talking to them about the Prix Goncourt, to clear things up.” He urged Proust to accept Gide’s suggestion that the NRF give a large banquet in his honor.131 Gaston pressed the idea repeatedly, but Proust never responded.
The day following the announcement the remaining copies of Within a Budding Grove sold out. Proust was furious with Gallimard on learning that there were no more copies available, though the publisher had admitted a week earlier that the stock was quite low.132
Letters of congratulation arrived by the hundreds; within three days Proust received 886. Louis de Robert wrote, “Bravo, cher Marcel. The surprise increases my joy. Now you are famous.” Bernard Grasset sent his “most affectionate congratulations. I don’t need to tell you to what degree I share the joy of your friends and admirers.” He regretted only that he had not been the one to publish Proust’s “beautiful book.”133 With Colette’s congratulations came the promise to publish immediately in Le Matin—if Proust could cut thirty lines—a page describing the Narrator’s stay in Venice.134 Colette had been holding the excerpt since September; now Proust’s sudden fame inspired her to publish it. Jacques Porel came on his mother’s behalf to ask what Proust would like as a present to express her happiness over the award.135 Marcel requested the photograph of Réjane dressed as the prince de Sagan, an androgynous vision that thrilled him. The actress signed the picture, “Homage from a Prince, Admiration from an artist, Friendship from a friend.”136
On December 12 Léon Daudet published a front-page article in the Action française: “A New and Powerful Novelist, Marcel Proust.” Daudet wrote that since the creation of the Académie Goncourt in 1903, “we have not, in my opinion, crowned a work as vigorous, as new, as full of riches.” He had already “read these 440 pages twice. One regrets on closing the book that there are not 880 pages.” Daudet placed Proust among the best moralistes and chroniclers of the human heart, such as Saint-Évremond, La Bruyère, La Rochefoucauld, and novelists such as Meredith and Sterne. In her congratulatory note, Anna de Noailles placed Proust in the first rank of France’s greatest novelists: “Dear friend . . . we are reading, rereading, interpreting your works, comparing you to Balzac, Stendhal.” Daudet’s article had “expressed well and in magnificent terms the miracle that you are.”137
Daudet’s opinion of the excellent work done by the Académie Goncourt was not widely shared. Between 1914 and 1918 all the Prix Goncourt had been awarded to war novels.138 In 1919 many critics and four members of the Académie Goncourt believed that Les Croix de bois was the best of the genre and clearly more deserving than a lengthy book about young girls in bloom, apparently the work of a wealthy aging dilettante who had never served a day during the war, not even at a desk job. Critics agreed that Dorgelès had written an outstanding war novel.139 As soon as Proust’s prize was announced, journalists began attacking the decision. On December 11 Gérard Bauer, in L’Écho de Paris, noted that Marcel Proust was neither young nor poor, though it was true that he had come late to literature, “at his leisure and with a sort of attentive dilettantism.” Bauer complimented certain aspects of Proust’s novel but lamented his being chosen over Dorgelès. Les Croix de bois was “a human story, moving and true, of perfect and profound beauty.” Proust’s defenders also made themselves heard. Rivière published, on the same day as Bauer’s essay, an article in Excelsior in which he said Proust’s novel was the most important “monument” of psychological analysis since Saint-Simon’s Mémoires.140
Immediately following the announcement that Proust had won the Prix Goncourt, some thirty articles on the novel appeared. By the end of January commentators would have written more than one hundred articles on Within a Budding Grove.141 Proust understood the value of negative criticism, even as he abhorred it, and he explained to Souday that though the attacks were somewhat humiliating, if it brought him readers, he preferred such attention to “all honors.”142
Jean Binet-Valmer, a conservative critic and militarist, praised elements of Proust’s work but thought it was “prewar.” He would have favored giving the Prix Goncourt to Swann’s Way in 1913 but blamed the Académie Goncourt for passing over Dorgelès’s patriotic novel for one whose morality appeared suspect. Proust wrote Binet-Valmer that he was eager to read Dorgelès’s novel once his sight improved: “Since I have not been well enough to go see an optometrist, I’m going to buy all kinds of glasses, and if I succeed in finding the right lenses, I will read . . . Les Croix de bois.”143
Proust dispatched Céleste to buy glasses, instructing her “to bring back a selection of spectacles with the lenses already in, for him to try.” When she hinted that an eye examination might be in order, he said that it would take too long. “Just bring me the most ordinary kind there is—steel rims will do.” Céleste returned with a dozen or so glasses in steel frames. He tried them, chose a few that improved his vision and told Céleste to keep them all. The ones that suited him best remained on his bedside table.144
On December 12 Dorgelès won the Prix Fémina. In the controversy over the Prix Goncourt selection, Dorgelès’s publisher Albin Michel saw an opportunity to increase sales. He had bands printed and placed around each copy of Les Croix de bois that read “Prix Goncourt: Roland Dorgelès. Les Croix de bois,” and in finer print, “four votes out of ten. Winner of the Prix Vie Heureuse.” Albin Michel also ran this text as advertisements in various newspapers.145 Proust noticed Dorgelès’s publisher was taking better advantage of the Prix Goncourt than was Gallimard.
Less than a week after winning the prize, Proust asked Céleste to telephone the NRF and express his amazement that there were no more books in stock. A few days later, he sent Marie to bookstores, looking for copies of Within a Budding Grove. There were none; nor did the merchants know when they would receive any. He sent Gallimard an “urgent” letter, informing him of the situation, which Proust said made him weep. As to the misleading advertisements suggesting that Dorgelès had won the Prix Goncourt, Proust found them “rather inelegant.”146
Gaston replied by return mail, blaming Proust partly for the delay by having waited a week to answer his question about the division of Swann’s Way and Within a Budding Grove into two volumes each.147 He informed Proust that the day after the prize announcement he had gone to the printer’s at Abbeville. The new editions of the first two volumes had been completed in the record time of three working days. To make certain that the delay did not work against them, Gallimard had sent a notice to all Paris bookstores and placed an announcement in the Bibliographie de France that the new edition would be in bookstores by the end of the week. Regarding Albin Michel’s bands and advertisements, Gallimard said that they were not only inelegant but illegal, and he announced his intention to sue.148 In May the court ordered Albin Michel to remove all the misleading bands, pay a one hundred-franc fine and two thousand francs in damages, and publish the verdict in two newspapers of the plaintiff’s choice. Gallimard used the fines to publicize Within a Budding Grove.149
In spite of the record time in which Gallimard produced the new editions, Proust remained discontented. The day after Christmas the author again pressed his publisher to secure an English translator. That his Prix Goncourt had been “sabotaged” by Gallimard’s negligence did not matter to him, but it could have consequences that would make him unhappy. Proust was thinking of the loss in sales that resulted from his book’s going out of print on the day he won the prize. Proust apparently had reservations about Gallimard’s new two-volume editions. Although the new format satisfied his wish for a larger font and more inviting pages, he feared that the slightly higher price and the complication of purchasing two volumes might discourage some readers. “Everyone” had told Proust that the Prix Goncourt should produce in rapid succession “thirty printings” of the winning book. Marcel told Gaston that although this figure was no doubt greatly exaggerated, “our” missteps would force a considerable scaling back of their expectations.150 Proust’s confidence in his publisher was rapidly eroding. He did accept Gallimard’s objection to Grasset’s offer to publish selections from The Guermantes Way in a new series of deluxe books. Gaston pointed out that if excerpts were published, the Gallimard volume could not be presented as an “original” first edition. Proust would not be so pliant in the future, especially when larger sums of money were offered.151
Paul Souday, who had not reviewed Within a Budding Grove because of his wife’s recent death, told Proust in mid-December that he would soon devote a column to the book.152 Anticipating another negative review, Proust wrote the critic. He lamented the confusion caused by his general title, In Search of Lost Time, which “perpetuates the misunderstanding between me and my readers, even the most eminent, who believe” that the book was “an unfurling of memories.”153 Proust told Souday that his novel was “so meticulously ‘composed’... that the last chapter of the last volume was written right after the first chapter of the first volume. Everything in between was written afterward, but long ago. The war made it impossible to have proofs, now illness prevents me from correcting them. Otherwise, critics would have long since finished with me.”154
Jacques Boulenger, who wrote for the Opinion, praised Within a Budding Grove as a remarkably rich and concise “psychological novel,” saying that what Proust had written would fill fifteen ordinary volumes. Among the work’s admirable qualities the critic specified were “the acuity of emotions and impressions, the delicacy and depth of its analyses.” Boulenger, however, joined the chorus of those who deplored the absence of “composition, artistry,” in the sense of shaping the text into a plot. In France especially, Boulenger observed, “art means choice.”155
Rosny, who was preparing an article on Proust for Comoedia, requested a biographical sketch. Proust sent a long letter, summarizing his career and providing a few details about his lifestyle.156 Because of his asthma, he explained, for fifteen years “I have lived in bed. I mean entirely in bed.” As for his religious life, “I have never been to mass since my first communion, which must have been more than thirty years ago.” He referred to his role in the Dreyfus case, of which he remained proud. After reviewing his early works and translations, Proust came to the Search and said that he could not remember exactly when he had begun writing it. Only his “unfortunate valet” Nicolas, who died during the war, could have determined the exact date because he “took care of my notebooks.” Proust thought that he must have begun his novel “around 1906 and finished it around 1911. When Swann’s Way appeared in 1913, not only were Within a Budding Grove, The Guermantes Way and Time Regained written, but also most of Sodom and Gomorrah. But during the war (without altering the novel’s conclusion, Time Regained) I added something on the war that was well suited to M. de Charlus’s character.” In the postscript Proust said that after receiving the Prix Goncourt he had received nearly nine hundred congratulatory letters, including “ten from members of the Académie française to whom I did not even send my book. How am I going to manage!”157 Proust was exaggerating somewhat; the entire Albertine cycle had not been written in 1913. But Proust’s essential point was true: the plot, with its quest narrative whereby the end rejoins the beginning after the hero discovers his vocation, had been in place for years.
Rosny’s article, which defended the decision of the Académie Goncourt, hailed Within a Budding Grove as “a great book, such as rarely appears. It teems with treasures, with ingenious images, with fine and original observations; it has flashes of genius.” It “will endure after the immense majority of others are completely forgotten. That anyone could reproach us for having been unfair in selecting it astonishes me. Marcel Proust is one of our finest choices, one of those of which I am most proud.”158
At year’s end, Boulenger wrote to express his regrets at not having better expressed his high opinion of Proust’s “fine book.” The critic sought to clarify what he had meant by the lack of composition: “No doubt, your book is marvelously composed according to the laws of your own sensitivity. But it seems to me that it is not according to those that preside over the composition of most” French works. “If you don’t find this distinction very clear, don’t hold it against me, please, because I boxed a lot before dinner and I am dead tired.” Boulenger told Proust that one of his detractors, Jean de Pierrefeu, intended to discuss in the Journal des débats “The Case of Marcel Proust. I will answer him in the Opinion.... So I’ve become your champion.” Boulenger was happy to defend the Search, “certainly the most ‘original’ book published . . . since X time. And I love it with all my heart. Furthermore, it’s one of those books that one could not love without taking a keen liking to their authors.” Boulenger had charmed the charmer. And Proust was delighted to have a champion who boxed for sport.159
Proust had waited six long years for the publication of his novel to resume. With roughly one-third of the work in print, he had won France’s major literary award and become famous. With such recognition, he could anticipate, even though many hours of revising remained, a triumphant conclusion to his vast undertaking. This was the moment to enjoy success and to select the best strategy for reaching his goal. But he did nothing to alter his regimen and his dangerous practice of taking drugs in heavy dosages. That December he wrote Robert de Billy that he had not “slept for fifteen minutes” in the previous ten days despite taking a number of depressants and stimulants, of which he listed five, including Veronal and digitalis. On Christmas Eve he wrote Mme Straus, who knew something about drugs, that he took “1.5 grams of Veronal daily without sleeping.”160 His mother’s old nightmare had come true: Marcel was addicted to a variety of substances.