1. According to the census of 1859, in all of France, there were only 6,600 people whose income exceeded ten thousand francs. Claude Francis and Fernande Gontier, Marcel Proust et les siens, suivi des souvenirs de Suzy Mante-Proust, Paris: Plon, 1981, 45.
2. Philippe Michel-Thiriet, The Book of Proust, translated by Jan Dalley, London: Chatto and Windus, 1989, 130.
3. Jean-Yves Tadié, Marcel Proust, Paris: Gallimard, 1996, 41.
4. Tadié, Marcel Proust, 32.
5. Michel-Thiriet, Book, 122.
6. Tadié, Marcel Proust, 29.
7. When I refer to Proust’s novel, I always mean In Search of Lost Time, referred to hereafter as the Search.
8. Jean Santeuil, 738–39. It was not known until several decades after Proust’s death that he had begun a novel at age twenty-four, worked on it for several years, and then abandoned it. These drafts were left unrevised by Proust, who did not even indicate a title for the work. When the manuscript was published by Gallimard in 1952, the editors named it Jean Santeuil after the hero. Proust’s drafts are of considerable interest because of their autobiographical nature and because they contain many of the major themes that will be fully developed in the Search. I will use such passages from Jean Santeuil, when their autobiographical content is clear, to illustrate his childhood and adolescence. I always refer to this work as Jean Santeuil. When possible I used the English translation by Gerard Hopkins, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956. Unless otherwise stated all translations from Jean Santeuil are from this edition. However, there are passages and fragments of interest in the French editions that were not included in the translation. I have translated these and refer to them as JS 4.
9. Tadié, Marcel Proust, 36.
10. Robert Le Masle, Le Professeur Adrien Proust (1834–1903), Paris: Librairie Lipschutz, 1935, 32.
11. Philibert-Louis Larcher, Le Temps retrouvé d’Illiers, Illiers: Mairie d’Illiers, 1971, 71.
12. Le Masle, Adrien Proust, 32–33, 38.
13. Larcher, Illiers, 63.
14. For my description of Dr. Proust’s war on cholera, I am particularly indebted to Francis and Gontier, Proust, 45–53.
15. Honoré de Balzac, “Lettres sur Kiev,” Œuvres Complètes, Paris: Gallimard, 23: 533. Quoted in Francis and Gontier, Proust, 47 and n. 1.
16. Michel-Thiriet, Book, 125.
17. André Ferré, Les Années de collège de Marcel Proust, Paris: Gallimard, 1959, 38.
18. For my description of the siege of Paris and the Commune, I am particularly indebted to Rupert Christiansen’s Paris Babylon: The Story of the Paris Commune, New York: Viking, 1995.
19. Michel-Thiriet, Book, 121.
20. See Denise Mayer, “Le Jardin de Marcel Proust,” Cahiers Marcel Proust, n.s. 12, Études proustiennes, V, 9.
21. Tadié, Marcel Proust, 18.
22. “Mon petit loup” is a standard term of endearment in French.
23. Marcel Proust: Letters to His Mother, translated and edited with an introduction by George D. Painter and with an essay by Pamela Hansford Johnson, London: Rider, 1956, 32.
24. Fernand Gregh, L’Âge d’or: Souvenirs d’enfance et de jeunesse, Paris: Grasset, 1947, 154.
25. Robert Proust, “Marcel Proust Intime,” Hommage à Marcel Proust, La Nouvelle Revue Française, n.s., 112, 20 (January 1923): 24. This volume is subsequently cited as NRF Hommage.
26. Francis and Gontier, Proust, 138.
27. Tadié, Marcel Proust, 48.
28. Tadié, Marcel Proust, 16. Uncle Louis was the model for Uncle Adolphe in the Search, a man who adored cocottes and actresses and at whose home the Narrator as a youth first sees Odette de Crécy.
29. Quoted by George D. Painter, Marcel Proust, vol. 1, The Early Years, Boston: Little, Brown, 1959, 12. This volume is hereafter cited as Painter, Proust 1.
30. Mayer, “Jardin,” 14.
31. Mayer, “Jardin,” 11.
32. Tadié, Marcel Proust, 19.
33. Michel-Thiriet, Book, 127. The “train de ceinture,” or Zone railway, appears in the Search 1: 489.
34. Mayer, “Jardin,” 12–13.
35. Corr. 21: 542, 547.
36. See Proust’s preface to Jacques-Émile Blanche’s Propos de peintre: De David à Degas, CSB 5: 570–76.
37. Preface to Blanche, Propos de peintre, CSB 5: 572–73.
38. Corr. 21: 540–41, and n. 3.
39. Corr. 17: 349.
40. Corr. 12: 142.
41. Sand’s novel is also used to illustrate how we remember books we read.
42. Ferré, Collège, 81. Ferré points out that Marcel also found Wilhelm Meister, Consuelo, and Le Roman comique boring.
43. JS 4: 214.
44. In the abandoned manuscript, Proust, still hesitating at the border between reality and fiction, at times calls the town Illiers; at others, he uses a name that rhymes with the hero’s family name Santeuil: Éteuilles. Both of these rhyme with Auteuil, the place that, along with Illiers, will be the primary inspiration for Combray in the Search. The sound of the second syllable, dear to Proust because it contained the resonances of the happy days spent at Auteuil, will be maintained in the final syllable of the Search’s great composer, Vinteuil.
45. Jean Santeuil, 83.
46. Search 1: 65.
47. Archives Musée Marcel Proust, Illiers.
48. Ernestine, referred to by her real name in Jean Santeuil, is the primary model for Françoise in the Search. See, for example, Jean Santeuil, 86.
49. Jean Santeuil, 86.
50. “Journées de lecture,” CSB 5: 162.
51. Search 1: 10–11.
52. In the early 1950s a citizen of Illiers, Philibert-Louis Larcher, created the Society of the Friends of Marcel Proust, which ultimately acquired Jules’s house from the heirs. An inspired local booster, Larcher re-created “Marcel’s room” and “Aunt Léonie’s room” based on descriptions in the Search.
53. Proust consulted Marquis’s history of Illiers, Archives historiques du diocèse de Chartres, 1904, when writing the pages of the Search inspired by memories of the childhood visit to the town. The canon is mentioned in a letter of July 29, 1903, as “the village priest, who taught me Latin and the names of the flowers in his garden.” SL 1: 343.
54. SL 1: 343.
55. Mayer, “Jardin,” 15.
56. Jean Santeuil, 122.
57. In 1971, on the centennial of Proust’s birth, Illiers officially changed its name to Illiers-Combray, in a brilliant public relations initiative and perhaps unique example of reality yielding to fiction.
58. Search 1: 188–89.
59. Proust sometimes refers to Swann’s way as the Méséglise way, for the walk past Swann’s also goes by Méséglise.
60. Proust remembered the connection between the pilgrims and the madeleines, when he described the cakes in the Search: “the little scallop-shell of pastry, so richly sensual under its severe, religious folds.” Search 1: 63. The stairs leading up to the tower and the sixteenth-century steeple of Saint-Jacques contain, like the Church of Saint-Hilaire in Swann’s Way, ninety-seven steps; Lucien Goron, Le Combray de Marcel Proust et son horizon, Toulouse: Imprimerie Julia: 1956, 25.
61. Philibert-Louis Larcher, “Marcel Proust et la magie de Combray,” Histoire locale, Beauce et Perche, Illiers: Mairie d’Illiers, 4.
62. Larcher, Illiers, 99–100.
63. Search 1: 121.
64. Search 1: 120.
65. André Maurois, The World of Marcel Proust, translated by Moura Budberg with the assistance of Barbara Creed, New York: Harper and Row, 1974, 13.
66. See Corr. 1: 46.
67. Search 1: 158.
68. See Recherche (NP) 1: 860.
69. Gregh, L’Âge d’or, 156.
70. Robert Proust, “Marcel Proust Intime,” 24.
71. L’Indifférent, introduced and edited by Philip Kolb, Paris: Gallimard, 1978, 42–43. An appropriate English title would be A Man with No Feelings. By coincidence, the last sentence quoted contains two words that are the keys to the Search: loss and recapture. In the original text, the two words used are forms of the verbs perdre and retrouver, the two key words of Proust’s titles modifying the word time: le temps perdu, le temps retrouvé—time lost, time regained.
72. Corr. 6: 28.
73. JS 4: 202.
74. Corr. 20: 403.
75. Dr. François-Bernard Michel, a distinguished French specialist on asthma, has concluded that Marcel’s asthma was not psychosomatic in origin, was debilitating, and was probably life-threatening. Michel validates the anxiety felt by Dr. Proust, who knew that asthma can kill quickly. François-Bernard Michel, Proust et les écrivains devant la mort, Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1995, 22, 67.
76. Corr. 2: 122.
77. Search 1: 12. And from another passage: “My grandmother . . . held that when one went to the seaside one ought to be on the beach from morning to night sniffing the salt breezes.” Search 1: 182.
78. Corr. 21: 541. Kolb indicates that the year 1881 is approximate.
79. See Corr. 1: 59, 108. SL 1: 15.
80. Recherche (NP) 4: 1128, n. 1.
81. Jean Santeuil, 125.
82. Search 5: 885–86.
83. Jean Santeuil, 104.
84. Search 1: 260.
1. Class 5 is roughly equivalent to seventh grade in the current U.S. education system. The French secondary system consists of thirteen grades, counting in reverse order in relation to the U.S. system: the first grade is 12, second 11, and so on, until the first grade is reached, comparable to our twelfth grade. Then French students matriculate for one more year, called the terminal year. In Proust’s day the school system was not coeducational, and all of his professors were men. The lycées were college preparatory schools, and the qualifications for teachers were higher than in the typical American high school. For documentation about Proust’s secondary education, I am particularly indebted to André Ferré’s book Les Années de collège de Marcel Proust.
2. Robert Dreyfus, Marcel Proust à dix-sept ans, Paris: Simon Kra, 1926, 12–13.
3. Dreyfus, Dix-sept ans, 11.
4. Gregh, L’Âge d’or, 137.
5. Tadié, Marcel Proust, 67.
6. See Dreyfus, Dix-sept ans, 9–10, 53.
7. André Berge, “Deux lettres,” Bulletin de la Société des Amis de Marcel Proust et de Combray 7 (1957): 272. The Bulletin is hereafter abbreviated BMP.
8. Comtesse Sibylle de Riqueti de Mirabeau wrote under the pseudonym Gyp. See Gyp, La Joyeuse Enfance de la Troisième République, 207. Quoted by Ghislain de Diesbach, Proust, Paris: Perrin, 1991, 53.
9. The titles of these popular books were La Famille Fenouillard (1895), Le Sapeur Camember (1896), and L’Idée fixe du savant Cosinus (1899). Colomb published them under the pseudonym Christophe, thus assuming, in French, the name of Christopher Columbus, Christophe Colomb.
10. Francis and Gontier, Proust, 146.
11. Ferré, Collège, 99.
12. Tadié, Marcel Proust, 82.
13. Quoted in Voyager avec Marcel Proust: Mille et un voyages, texts selected and introduced by Anne Borrel, Paris: La Quinzaine Littéraire, Louis Vuitton, 1994, 86–87.
14. Dreyfus, Dix-sept ans, 15, n. 1.
15. Search 5: 919.
16. “Le Gladiateur mourant,” CSB 5: 321, n. 1.
17. Tadié, Marcel Proust, 83.
18. The Odyssey of Homer, translated by Richmond Lattimore, New York: Harper and Row, 1965, book 5, 11. 306–7.
19. “Composition française,” CSB 5: 324.
20. JS 4: 263.
21. Borrel, Voyager, 39–40.
22. Corr. 21: 543–46.
23. SL 1: 5–7.
24. See Corr. 21: 548, n. 4.
25. Borrel, Voyager, 47–49.
26. See “L’Éclipse,” CSB 5: 325–27.
27. Ferré, Collège, 137.
28. “Les Nuages,” CSB 5: 328.
29. Tadié points out the romantic themes that still survive in 1885 among the young generation of symbolists: anguish, reverie, pantheism. See his Marcel Proust, 85.
30. See Corr. 1: 110, n. 6.
31. See Hayden White’s article “Romantic Historiography,” in A New History of French Literature, edited by Denis Hollier, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989, 632–38.
32. Marcel Proust: Textes retrouvés, collected and edited by Philip Kolb and Larkin B. Price, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1968, 179.
33. Textes retrouvés, 178–79. The early drafts for the Search are even more autobiographical than the published novel.
34. Search 1: 218–19. The Narrator, at the end of his quest, is finally ready to write his version of the story we have just read.
35. Ferré, Collège, 68.
36. The questionnaire was in English, but Proust’s answers were in French. No one knows Marcel’s exact age when he filled out the questionnaire. According to Kolb’s chronology he did so in 1886, when he was fourteen or fifteen. See Corr. 1: 51. When he was about twenty, Proust filled out a similar questionnaire. For my translation of the questionnaire, I consulted those of Roger Shattuck in Marcel Proust, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982, 12, and Jan Dalley in Michel-Thiriet, Book, 57–58.1 have omitted five questions—soliciting the respondent’s “chief characteristic,” favorite color and flower, favorite food and drink, favorite names, and “present state of mind”—that Proust left unanswered, though it might be said that some of his omissions are as telling as his replies. For the original text, see [Questionnaire], CSB 5: 335–36.
37. Maurice Duplay, Mon Ami Marcel Proust: Souvenirs intimes, Cahiers Marcel Proust, n.s., 5, Paris: Gallimard, 1972, 7.
38. My account is based primarily on Robert Dreyfus, “Marcel Proust aux Champs-Élysées,” NRF Hommage, 27–30.
39. See Duplay, Mon Ami, 7.
40. Dreyfus, “Champs-Élysées,” 28.
41. Ferré, Collège, 155.
42. Corr. 15: 75.
43. Dreyfus, “Champs-Élysées,” 28.
44. See Corr. 17: 175, 194.
45. Jean Santeuil, 46. In Jean Santeuil, Marie and her sister Nelly appear with their real names and family circumstances, including the house in the sixteenth arrondissement in the rue de Chaillot.
46. Ferré, Collège, 136.
47. Ferré, Collège, 153, n. 1.
48. Charles Rearick, Pleasures of the Belle Époque: Entertainment and Festivity in Turn-of-the-Century France, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985, 12.
49. SL 1: 7–8. In July 1886 the singer Paulus created at the Alcazar the immensely popular song “En revenant de la revue,” which celebrated General Boulanger and marked the peak of his appeal. See Duplay, Mon Ami, 8.
50. Search 2: 90.
51. Marcel Proust: Écrits de Jeunesse, 1887–1895, selected and edited by Anne Borrel, Illiers-Combray: Institut Marcel Proust International, 1991, 141. See also Dreyfus, Dix-sept ans, 44–45.
52. Marcel Proust: Correspondance avec Daniel Halévy, edited by Anne Borrel and Jean-Pierre Halévy, Paris: Éditions de Fallois, 1992, 169–72.
53. SL 1: 9–10.
54. SL 1: 12.
55. Dreyfus, Dix-sept ans, 16.
56. Quoted by Tadié, Marcel Proust, 91.
57. See “Dissertation française,” CSB 5: 329–32.
58. Quoted by Tadié, Marcel Proust, 90–91.
59. SL 1: 14, n. 7. The last sentence quoted is not in SL. See Corr. 1: 107, n. 7.
60. See Corr. 1: 106–7, n. 4.
61. SL 1: 13.
62. “Le Salon de la Princesse Edmond de Polignac,” CSB 5: 466.
63. See JS 4: 258, Corr. 1: 107, n. 9.
64. Gregh, L’Âge d’or, 136.
65. Proust-Halévy Corr., 7.
66. Description of Halévy from Gregh, L’Âge d’or, 137.
67. Dreyfus, Dix-sept ans, 27.
68. Tadié, Marcel Proust, 94.
69. Proust, Jeunesse, 140–41. The date of May 13, 1888, is taken from Halévy diary entry.
70. Proust, Jeunesse, 136.
71. Dreyfus, Dix-sept ans, 28–29.
72. Dreyfus, Dix-sept ans, 25.
73. Proust, Jeunesse, 41.
74. Echoes of his rebellion against his parents’ severity are found in the Narrator’s desire to defy them, “the people I loved best in the world.” See Search 5: 833. See also JS 4: 709. Quoted in Tadié, Marcel Proust, 54.
75. SL 1: 10–11.
76. Pascal’s Pensées were part of the curriculum that year at Condorcet. See Jean-Yves Tadié, Proust, Paris: Pierre Belfond, 1983, 240.
77. Quoted in Proust, Jeunesse, 38.
78. See SL 1: 11, n. 4. The translation mistakenly gives Halévy’s name as “Cléry.”
79. Jacques-Émile Blanche, Mes Modèles: Souvenirs littéraires, Paris: Stock, 1928, 1984, 100.
80. This common sexual activity was condemned by parents, priests, teachers, and doctors, including Adrien Proust. See Adrien Proust and Gilbert Ballet, L’Hygiène du neurasthénique, Paris: Bibliothèque d’hygiène thérapeutique, 1897, 154. Masturbation is the only overtly sexual expression the Narrator experiences, and that as an adolescent.
81. For the letter and Halévy’s comments, see Proust-Halévy Corr., 42–44.
82. The ellipsis is Proust’s. He often uses it to create suspense before a surprise.
83. Letters of Marcel Proust, translated and edited with notes by Mina Curtiss, with an introduction by Harry Levin, New York: Random House, 1949, 3–4. The French word pédéraste, less specific than the English cognate, can mean any homosexual, not only a pedophile.
84. Corr. 21: 550–51.
85. JS 4: 243, 245. Quoted by Tadié, Marcel Proust, 36.
86. Tadié, Marcel Proust, 32.
87. See Proust, Jeunesse, 56–58; Proust-Halévy Corr., 39–41; Corr. 21: 553–54.
88. Marcel said that he held in horror critics who adopted an ironical attitude toward the decadent writers. A contemporary critic, Paul Bourde, had named Verlaine and Mallarmé as the “two columns” of the decadent school. See Proust, Jeunesse, 59, n. 2.
89. See Proust, Jeunesse, 62, n. 10.
90. The word Proust uses for unclean is malpropre, and for normal, habituel.
91. “Avant la nuit” is not included in Pleasures and Days, no doubt because of its scandalous nature.
92. Tadié, Marcel Proust, 110.
93. The French is une grande saleté. Tadié acknowledges that we cannot know whether this confession is true because Raoul destroyed most of Marcel’s letters. See Marcel Proust, 110, n.3.
94. Tadié, Marcel Proust, 110.
95. Proust, Jeunesse, 149–51.
96. Ferré, Collège, 87–88.
97. SL 1: 15–16.
98. SL 1: 17–18.
99. Search 4: 32.
100. Acacia Gardens, now named Allée de Longchamp, remained a stylish venue from the time of the horse-drawn carriages of Proust’s youth, through the era of the first automobiles, until sometime after World War I.
101. SL 1: 19–20.
102. See Tadié, Marcel Proust, 35, where he compares Laure’s relationship with Adrien to Odette’s with Dr. Cottard in the Search. Adrien kept all such friendships and liaisons secret from his wife.
103. Cf. Search 1: 102, where the Narrator speaks about his uncle’s actress friends: “Now my uncle knew many of them personally, and also ladies of another class, not clearly distinguished from actresses in my mind.” See Tadié, Marcel Proust, 51, Corr. 1: 47; and Robert Soupault, Marcel Proust: Du côté de la médecine, Paris: Plon, 122–23.
104. Maurois, World, 78.
105. SL 1: 21–22 and n. 1. Dreyfus identified the courtesan as Clomesnil because he was mistaken about the date when Proust first met Hayman. See Dreyfus, Dix-sept ans, 47, n. 1, and Corr. 1: 118, n. 2.
106. See Paul Desjardins’s article “Un Aspect de I’œuvre de Proust: Dissolution de I’individu,” NRF Hommage, 150.
107. See Desjardins, “Un Aspect,” 146.
108. Jean Santeuil, 72–73.
109. Another work of considerable interest to Proust was France’s 1874 booklet on Racine. In the Search, Proust to a large degree based his fictional author Bergotte on France. Bergotte also writes a booklet on Racine, source of the Narrator’s initial admiration.
110. SL 2: 40. Proust read The Arabian Nights in Antoine Galland’s translation. At Illiers, he had been able to contemplate scenes from the story on the Creil plates in his Aunt Amiot’s dining room. Proust saw the Narrator as a modern Scheherazade, the creator of the Arabian tales of his era. See Search 6: 524–25.
111. Jean Santeuil, 72–73.
112. For the pupils’ opinion of Darlu, see the passage on Professor Beulier in Jean Santeuil, 159.
113. This description is based on that of Professor Beulier’s late arrival on the first day of class in JS 4: 260. All of Proust’s classmates who lived long enough to read the manuscript of Jean Santeuil when it was published in 1952 immediately recognized Beulier as Darlu.
114. Jean Santeuil, 160.
115. SL 1: 22–23.
116. This is the standard scale in the French grading system.
117. See Philip Kolb’s essay “The Making of a Novel” in Marcel Proust, 1871–1922: A Centennial Volume, edited by Peter Quennell, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971, 25, n. 1.
118. Henri Bonnet, Alphonse Darlu: Maître de philosophie de Marcel Proust, Paris: Nizet, 7–8.
119. Robert Proust, “Marcel Proust Intime,” 25.
120. Gregh, L’Âge d’or, 142–43.
121. Tadié, Marcel Proust, 107.
122. Bonnet, Darlu, 27–28.
123. SL 1: 24–25.
124. Corr. 2: 464.
125. Dreyfus, Dix-sept ans, 50.
126. See Painter, Letters to His Mother, 38; SL 1: 40, n. 2.
127. Dreyfus, Dix-sept ans, 42.
128. Maurois, World, 59, 66.
129. Proust-Halévy Corr., 63.
130. Tadié, Proust, 240.
131. See Robert Dreyfus, Souvenirs sur Marcel Proust, accompagnés de lettres inédites, Paris: Grasset, 1926, 68; Ferré, Collège, 143–44, and Jeunesse, 91–109. Jeunesse provides evidence indicating that Le Lundi and the little review previously known as La Revue de Seconde were one and the same.
132. Les Causeries du lundi, Sainte-Beuve’s famous weekly essays that appeared on Mondays for more than two decades, may have inspired the title of the boys’ first review.
133. Most notably in the 1908 series of parodies he wrote for Le Figaro.
134. Jeunesse, 106.
135. Corr. 20: 292.
136. Daniel Halévy, Pays parisiens, Paris: Grasset, 1932, 118.
137. Jeunesse, 78.
138. The probable date of composition is October 1888. For the two versions of this poem and Proust’s critique, and documentation, see Jeunesse, 156–67, and Proust-Halévy Corr., 54–61.
139. Proust-Halévy Corr., 207.
140. Jeunesse, 159–67.
141. Juvenilia, CSB 5: 868, n. 3.
142. La Revue verte, CSB 5: 332–33.
143. See Jeunesse, 118.
144. Dreyfus, Dix-sept ans, 54.
145. These texts are reprinted in [“Le ciel est d’un violet sombre . . .”], CSB 5: 333–34. One of the texts may date from 1886, but that hypothesis does not seem likely. See CSB 5: 333, n. 1.
146. Rereading these pages many years after his friend’s death, Dreyfus says that in these lines he recognizes the true voice of Proust. See Dreyfus, Dix-sept ans, 62–64. Proust resumed this practice only very late, when he “found his voice” in the early drafts of the Search.
147. Dreyfus, who preserved the original manuscript, omitted the sentence about sitting in Bizet’s lap when he first published the text. The complete version can be in found in Jeunesse, 123–24.
148. Dreyfus, Dix-sept ans, 62–64.
149. Jeunesse, 121–22.
150. According to Philip Kolb’s chronology for 1888, the productions Marcel attended in the fall were Cendrillon, Athalie, Pied de mouton, Mimi, Amante du Christ, and Ambroise Thomas’s opera Mignon, based on Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister. See Corr. 1: 53–54.
151. Dreyfus, Dix-sept ans, 60. For the complete text of Proust’s theater notes, see Impressions de théâtre, in Jeunesse, 126–27.
152. See Proust-Halévy Corr., 176–80.
153. Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Journal: Mémoires de la vie littéraire, Paris; Robert Laf-font, 1989, 2: 1028. Entry dated Wednesday, November 21, 1883.
154. Goncourt Journal entry dated Saturday, August 14, 1886, 2: 1262.
155. Gregh, L’Âge d’or, 168.
156. Goncourt Journal entry dated Monday, March 28, 1887, 3: 25–26.
157. It is possible that young Proust met the American novelist Henry James when he attended Mme Straus’s salon on December 18, 1888. See Leon Edel, Henry James: A Life, New York: Harper and Row, 1985, 351.
158. In the Search, the duc de Guermantes, constantly unfaithful and rather indifferent to his wife’s affection, takes great pride in her salon and repeats her witticisms, directly inspired by those of Mme Straus, to everyone he wishes to impress with the superiority of her intelligence and the enviability of belonging to their salon.
159. Quoted in Corr. 1: 328, n. 7.
160. Ferré, College, 161.
161. Dreyfus, Dix-sept ans, 53.
162. Corr. 21: 556 and n. 2.
163. See Proust’s preface to Paul Morand’s Tendres Stocks, CSB 5: 608. Tadié sees a more profound influence from Renan on Proust’s style: the search for laws determining behavior, and the depiction of France’s historical past. See Marcel Proust, 184.
164. André Maurois, Proust: Portrait of a Genius, translated by Gerard Hopkins, New York: Carroll and Graf, 1984, 27.
165. Henri Chantavoine wrote the negative review in the Journal des débats, May 15, 1889. SL 1: 26, n. 2.
166. In Swann’s Way, the Narrator has the same admiration for Bergotte, whom he imagines to be “a frail and disappointed old man.” See Search 1: 134. Later the Narrator is surprised to meet “a youngish, uncouth, thickset and myopic little man, with a red nose curled like a snail-shell and a goatee beard” (Search 2: 165). Some have seen this as a description of Anatole France. SL 1: 26, n. 5. Others believe that Proust was describing Renan.
167. SL 1: 25–26.
168. Bonnet, Darlu, 68.
169. Tadié, Marcel Proust, 92.
170. Dreyfus, Dix-sept ans, 14.
171. Ferré, Collège, 255.
172. Marcel’s diploma for the Bachelor of Letters was awarded several months later.
1. Mayer, “Jardin,” 31.
2. Corr. 1: 126–27.
3. Corr. 1: 132.
4. Corr. 1: 128–29.
5. Corr. 1: 131. See also Corr. 19: 558–59.
6. Maurois, World, 77.
7. This observation is made by Anthony Powell in his article, “Proust as a Soldier,” in Quennell, Marcel Proust, 149. See also Pierre-Edmond Robert, “Marcel Proust ou le paradis militaire,” BMP 33 (1983): 87.
8. Clovis Duveau, “Proust à Orléans,” BMP 33 (1983): 12.
9. PR, 150–51.
10. Jean Santeuil, 437.
11. Jean Santeuil, 471.
12. SL 1: 144.
13. Powell, “Soldier,” 151.
14. Powell, “Soldier,” 150.
15. Pierre Gallante, “Le Jockey: The World’s Most Exclusive Club,” Town and Country, April 1987, 204 ff.
16. Georges de Lauris, Souvenirs d’une belle époque, quoted by Duveau, “Proust,” 67.
17. For distinctions that Proust noted between ancien régime nobles and those of the empire, see Jean Santeuil, 435–39.
18. “I saw Captain de Borodino go majestically by, putting his horse into a trot, and seemingly under the illusion that he was taking part in the Battle of Austerlitz.” Search 3: 182.
19. Émile Hovelaque, quoted by Élisabeth de Gramont in “Proust’s France,” American Vogue, January 1948, 126.
20. Powell, “Soldier,” 153. Jeanne-Maurice Pouquet, Le Salon de Madame Arman de Caillavet, preface by Gabriel Hanotaux, Paris: Hachette, 1926, 106–7.
21. Corr. 19: 137. See Pouquet, Salon Caillavet, 84.
22. Pouquet, Salon Caillavet, 109.
23. Maurois, Genius, 41.
24. Corr. 19: 138.
25. Quoted by Duveau, “Proust,” 33–34.
26. Pouquet, Salon Caillavet, 107.
27. Quoted by Maurois, Genius, 41.
28. Pierre Corneille, Le Cid. See SL 1: 28, n. 5.
29. Search 4: 230.
30. Maurois, Genius, 70.
31. Duveau, “Proust,” 44.
32. From the Journal du Loiret, February 7, 1890, quoted by Duveau, “Proust,” 16.
33. A prefect is the chief administrator of a department, which is the basic administrative and political division of France, roughly equivalent to an American state.
34. Robert de Billy, Marcel Proust: Lettres et conversations, Paris: Édition des Portiques, 1930, 22.
35. Robert de Billy, “Une Amitié de trente-deux ans,” NRF Hommage, 31. In Jean Santeuil, Proust endowed his hero with the same intensive curiosity that had amazed Billy: “Extremely curious about every detail of army routine . . . and eager to learn in what precise way the military mind differs from others, Jean never tired of questioning his new friends, asking them . . . who they considered to be the most remarkable of the senior officers.” Jean Santeuil, 436. See also Billy, Lettres et conversations, 21.
36. See Billy, Lettres et conversations, 21.
37. SL 1: 28–29.
38. From the May 9 issue of the Journal du Loiret, quoted by Duveau, “Proust,” 37.
39. There is a similar episode in the Search in which the Narrator, who has not expressed his grief over the death of his beloved grandmother, leans over to unbutton his boot and feels his “entire being disrupted.” See Search 4: 210. Proust’s grandmother may have helped him remove his boots because of the difficulty an asthmatic has in bending over.
40. Corr. 1: 142.
41. Corr. 1: 147.
42. Corr. 15: 149.
43. Corr. 1: 155.
44. Powell, “Soldier,” 152.
45. Corr. 1: 157.
46. Painter, Letters to His Mother, 206.
47. Corr. 1: 159–60.
48. Philip Kolb, “Historique du premier roman de Proust,” Saggi e ricerche di letteratura francese 4 (1963): 253–54.
49. SL 1: 189. For the Narrator’s rapturous description of life in the barracks, see Search 3: 96–97.
50. See Corr. 19: 688, and Corr. 21: 160. In Jean Santeuil, Proust recalled his military service with nostalgia: “When you who have tasted the pure pleasures of the earthly Paradise come to search your memories, I have an idea that you will dwell with particular affection on the thought of the barrack-room bed where you took your noon siesta during your time in the army, of the roads along which you marched.” Jean Santeuil, 428.
51. Anthony Powell maintains that there is no English equivalent for the rank of sous-officier. See Powell, “Soldier,” 151.
1. SL 1: 31.
2. For Proust at the École libre des sciences politiques, see Billy, Lettres et conversations, 23–25.
3. Michel-Thiriet, Book, 70.
4. Billy, “Amitié,” 31.
5. “Les Phares” means lighthouses. Richard Howard’s translation of the title as “Guiding Lights” nicely conveys Baudelaire’s intent. Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal, translated by Richard Howard, Boston: David R. Godine, 1982, 16.
6. See JS 4: 81. This poem was ultimately published in Pleasures and Days in a section called “Portraits of Painters and Musicians,” not included in Louise Varese’s English translation of the work.
7. See Jeunesse, 169–203.
8. Other articles, published under pseudonyms or even anonymously, a common practice in Proust’s time, may be attributed to him.
9. Jeunesse, 172–73.
10. Jeunesse, 174.
11. Jeunesse, 194, n. 2, and Corr. 1: 200.
12. [“Sur Réjane”], CSB 5: 600–601.
13. Corr. 1: 162.
14. The exact date of this letter is unknown, but it is thought to date from 1891. SL 1: 32.
15. The date of Proust’s and Gide’s first encounter was established by Gide’s biographer Jean Delay. See his La Jeunesse d’André Gide, Paris: Gallimard, 1957, 2: 128. See also Proust, Jeunesse, 201, n. 7.
16. Delay, Gide, 129.
17. This description of Marcel at the “court of love” is based on Pouquet, Salon Caillavet, 108–9.
18. Years later, this villa inspired Proust to create the fictional Raspelière with similar sweeping vistas of sea and farmland.
19. Jeunesse, 195.
20. Corr. 21: 560 and n. 2.
21. Corr. 1: 164–65.
22. Philippe Jullian, Oscar Wilde, translated by Violet Wyndham, New York: Viking, 1969, 66.
23. Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde, New York: Knopf, 1988, 341.
24. Ellmann, Wilde, 344.
25. Ellmann, Wilde, 346.
26. Quoted in Ellmann, Wilde, 355. See also André Gide, Journal: 1889–1939, Paris: Gallimard (Pléiade), 1965, 28.
27. Ellmann, Wilde, 357.
28. The grandsons first told their story to Wilde’s French biographer Philippe Jullian. Their account has been repeated since by other biographers, including Richard Ellmann. See Jullian, Oscar Wilde, 241–42; Ellmann, Wilde, 347. Painter corrects the address to 9, boulevard Malesherbes. Maurois omits the encounter altogether. Proust’s encounter with Wilde was essentially as meaningless as that, late in his life, with another legendary Irish writer, James Joyce.
29. See Proust-Halévy Corr., 74; Dreyfus, Souvenirs, 67, 80–81. Bonnet believed the title was chosen to oppose the reigning philosophical doctrine of the time: positivism represented by the writings of Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer. Positivism was to be the doctrine espoused by M. Santeuil, no doubt modeled on Dr. Proust, in Jean Santeuil. See Bonnet, Darlu, 40.
30. Fernand Gregh, Mon Amitié avec Marcel Proust: Souvenirs et lettres inédites, Paris: Grasset, 1958, 153.
31. Gregh, Amitié, 41, 46.
32. Gregh, “L’Époque du Banquet,” NRF Hommage, 41–42; Amitié, 32–33.
33. Gregh, Amitié, 48–49, 153.
34. Corr. 1: 166.
35. Princesse Mathilde’s personality traits and the details about her life and salon are based primarily on two Proust texts, particularly the 1903 article he wrote for Le Figaro describing her salon, “Un Salon historique: Le Salon de S. A. I. la Princesse Mathilde,” signed Dominique, in CSB 5: 445–55.
36. Gregh, Amitié, 154. Popelin had conspicuously betrayed the princess by having an affair with the youngest of her maids-in-waiting, Maria Abbatucci. See Léon Daudet, Fantômes et vivants, Souvenirs et polémiques, Paris: Robert Laffont, 1992, 124 and n. 1.
37. Léon Daudet (1867–1942) was the elder son of the famous writer Alphonse Daudet, with whose family Proust was soon to become acquainted.
38. Daudet, Fantômes et vivants, Souvenirs et polémiques, 126.
39. “Un Salon historique,” CSB 5: 447; and Search 3: 750.
40. See Corr. 7: 240. Years later Proust could not recall which of the two salons (Mme Mailly-Nesle later became Mme Reszké) he had attended that evening, but he did remember the red dress.
41. See Corr. 1: 382. Marcel was capable, when exceptionally motivated, of rising in the early morning.
42. PJ, 65–66. In the original Le Banquet text, the comparisons of the lady to a bird were more abundant. Proust retouched the text slightly for PJ, where the resemblances between the lady and her sons and nephews were added.
43. Search 3: 69.
44. Painter, Proust 1: 149.
45. Billy, Lettres et conversations, 37–38.
46. SL 1: 38.
47. For “Snobs, 1:” see PR, 66–67.
48. SL 1: 41.
49. “‘Tel qu’en songe’ par Henri de Régier,” CSB 5: 354.
50. SL 1: 33.
51. SL 1: 35, n. 1.
52. [Preface], CSB 5: 570.
53. Tadié, Marcel Proust, 176.
54. Blanche, Modèles, 188–89.
55. [Préface], CSB 5: 571.
56. Daudet, “L’Entre deux-guerres,” Souvenirs et polémiques, 276.
57. Jacques-Émile Blanche, “Quelques instantanés de Marcel Proust,” NRF Hommage, 53.
58. Blanche, Modèles, 111; quoted in Maurois, Genius, 33.
59. [Préface], CSB 5: 572.
60. Blanche, Modèles, 112.
61. Blanche, Modèles, 110.
62. Blanche, Modèles, 100–101.
63. PR, 123–25.
64. PR, 122–23.
65. PR, 143.
66. Corr. 1: 174.
67. Corr. 1: 199.
68. Corr. 1: 176, n. 2.
69. “Un Salon historique,” CSB 5: 447.
70. Corr. 1: 176–77.
71. Gregh, L’Âge d’or, 163.
72. Gregh, L’Âge d’or, 154.
73. Painter, Proust 1: 144.
74. Gregh, L’Âge d’or, 164, 166; SL 1: 36, n. 3.
75. Charles Baudelaire had become Marcel’s favorite poet—a poet whose major themes included time and memory and some of whose poems, such as Le Flacon and Le Balcon, contained elements of the Proustian phenomenon of involuntary memory. Proust was familiar with Fauré’s musical rendering of “Chant d’automne.” Fernand Gregh recollected having often seen Marcel, his eyes half-closed, humming Fauré’s “enchanting music” to “Chant d’automne.” See L’Âge d’or, 167. I have used Richard Howard’s translation of Les Fleurs du mal, 62.
76. Corr. 1: 183–84.
77. Corr. 1: 184.
78. “Violante, or Worldly Vanities,” PR, 87–99. Corr. 1: 185, n. 1. When Proust published the story in the February 1893 issue of Le Banquet, he dedicated it to Anatole France, who in September 1892, in the collection of stories L’Étui de nacre, had dedicated “Madame de Luzy” to Proust.
79. “La Mer” appeared in the November 1892 issue of Le Banquet. See PR, 167–69. The sea always reminded Proust of his mother and grandmother. Tadié observes that the “nocturnal anguish” stems from “the absence of his mother.” Tadié, Marcel Proust, 120. In French, it is nearly impossible not to associate sea and mother, for the words mer and mère are homophonic. Marcel’s behavior, as observed from his activities and letter writing, do not indicate that he missed his mother exceptionally during this holiday.
80. SL 1: 38.
81. Corr. 1: 64.
82. Gregh, L’Âge d’or, 164.
83. Corr. 1: 188, n. 5.
84. SL 1: 39.
85. Corr. 1: 190.
86. Gregh, Amitié, 51–52.
87. Gregh, L’Âge d’or, 156, n. 1.
88. SL 1: 41–42.
89. Corr. 7: 329.
90. Gregh, L’Âge d’or, 173.
91. Gregh, L’Âge d’or, 326–27, n. 2.
92. SL 1: 42–43.
93. SL 1: 43.
94. “La Conférence parlementaire de la rue Serpente,” CSB 5: 356.
95. Dreyfus, Souvenirs, 83.
1. Lemaire, née Jeanne-Magdeleine Coll (1845–1928), served as a primary model for Proust’s domineering, aggressive society hostess Mme Verdurin. Lemaire’s painting skills, especially her endless depictions of roses, were used for another character, the bluestocking aristocrat Mme de Villeparisis.
2. Quoted by Proust in his dedication to Les Plaisirs et les jours in JS 4: 5. “La Cour aux lilas et l’atelier des roses: Le Salon de Mme Madeleine Lemaire,” CSB 5: 458. Robert de Montesquiou had nicknamed her the “Empress of Roses.” See Philippe Jullian, Prince of Aesthetes: Count Robert de Montesquiou, 1855–1921, translated by John Haylock and Francis King, New York: Viking, 1968, 145.
3. Élisabeth de Clermont-Tonnerre, Robert de Montesquiou et Marcel Proust, Paris: Flammarion, 1925, 23; Daudet, Fantômes et Vivants, 119.
4. These details and others about Yturri’s background and arrival in Paris and quotations from Montesquiou’s memorial volume to Yturri, Le Chancelier de fleurs, are all from Edgar Munhall, Whistler and Montesquiou: The Butterfly and the Bat, New York: Frick Collection, and Paris: Flammarion, 1995, 39–41.
5. Élisabeth de Clermont-Tonnerre, quoted by Munhall, Whistler and Montesquiou, 40–41.
6. Jullian, Montesquiou, 113.
7. Jullian, Montesquiou, 112. Others say that he sold gloves.
8. Proust remembered elements of both men later when creating the baron de Charlus. The physical traits of Charlus in his later years are primarily based on corpulent Doäzan rather than svelte Montesquiou.
9. Jullian, Montesquiou, 112.
10. SL 1: 46.
11. Corr. 1: 204. The volume appeared with a preface by Leconte de Lisle.
12. Corr. 1: 206.
13. Blanche, “Quelques instantanés,” 57.
14. Maurois, Genius, 34.
15. Jean Santeuil, 715. Kolb speculates that Proust attributed the painting to Blanche’s rival because he and Blanche had fallen out over the Dreyfus Affair; see Corr. 1: 174, n. 2; see also Album Proust, edited by Pierre Clarac and André Ferré, Paris: Gallimard (Pléiade), 1965, 138–39.
16. Jean Santeuil, 715. M. Sandré is Jean’s maternal grandfather.
17. Painter, Proust 1: 123. Painter incorrectly identifies the place of honor as that on Mme Proust’s left.
18. Tadié discovered that Heath’s and Aubert’s mothers were sisters. See Marcel Proust, 191, n. 1.
19. This description contained in a sentence from the dedication of Pleasures and Days provides virtually all the information that is known about Marcel’s relationship with Heath. See Maurois, Genius, 54.
20. This remark from Painter has been repeated by Diesbach and other biographers. Painter, Proust 1: 123.
21. Corr. 1: 221.
22. Corr. 1: 213, nn. 1, 2.
23. SL 1: 50.
24. Corr. 1: 216.
25. See Daudet, Souvenirs et polémiques, 337, n. 7.
26. See PR, 100–108.
27. In the Search, Proust’s narrator concludes that in society any serious conversation is taboo.
28. Jean Santeuil, 738.
29. These anecdotes are related by Proust in the preface he wrote for Jacques-Émile Blanche in 1918. See [Préface], CSB 5: 574–75.
30. SL 1: 50–51.
31. Jullian, Montesquiou, 66.
32. Corr. 1: 219, n.3.
33. SL 1: 51.
34. Corr. 1: 220.
35. L’Indifférent was published on March 1, 1896, in a short-lived review, La Vie contemporaine et Revue parisienne réunies. The story was quickly forgotten by everyone but Proust until Philip Kolb unearthed it and reprinted it in 1978. This is the story in which Proust compared being abandoned by the beloved to suffocation from asthma.
36. For this story, like several Proust wrote in 1893 and 1894, he put himself in the guise of a female narrator. See “Mélancolique Villégiature de Mme de Breyves,” “Avant la nuit,” “La Confession d’une jeune fille,” and the epistolary novel, undertaken with friends and quickly abandoned, in which he assigned himself the role of Pauline. For the three letters Proust wrote as “Pauline,” see Jeunesse, 250–58, 264–71.
37. Lepré’s “vice” could mask another that Proust was eager to depict and that also makes love between a man and a woman impossible: homosexuality. In stories written this year and the next Proust begins to study aspects of behavior that he, following society’s lead, characterizes as vice.
38. For the text of “The Melancholy Summer of Madame de Breyves,” see PR, 172–91.
39. For the original version of this text, see JS 4: 167–71. Proust did not retain this story for Pleasures and Days. Thierry Laget, in his edition of Les Plaisirs et les jours, suggests that Proust omitted it because he had used material from this story in several others that were reprinted in that volume. See Marcel Proust, Les Plaisirs et les jours, suivi de L’Indifférent et autres textes, edited by Thierry Laget, Paris: Gallimard (Folio), 1993, 346–47.
40. Proust borrowed the image of the jellyfish from Michelet’s La Mer (1861) and reprised it many years later as one of several illustrations of homosexual attraction in the extensive discourse on the topic that opens the fourth part of the Search, Sodom and Gomorrah. Search 4: 36.
41. Corr. 4: 419, n. 6, and 420. This translation (L’Intrus) marked the beginning of the Italian writer’s popularity in France.
42. “Bodily Presence,” PR, 158.
43. Tout-Paris and La Société et le High-Life were social registers published in Paris. L’Almanach de Gotha was a genealogical directory of nobility published in Gotha, Germany, from 1763 to 1945; see PJ, 313.
44. PR, 69.
45. Jeunesse, 229, n. 2.
46. SL 1: 57. In “Présence réelle” (Bodily presence) and “Rêve” (Dream), both stories Proust wrote at Évian, the narrator is attracted to phantom lovers. These stories, to be published in La Revue blanche, were reprinted as part of Pleasures and Days.
47. SL 1: 62. The license that concerned Marcel was in stories involving illicit sex. In PR he would retain one such story published earlier, “La Confession d’une jeune fille,” but not “Avant la nuit,” with its lesbian theme.
48. SL 1: 56.
49. SL 1: 58, n. 1.
50. SL 1: 57, 58.
51. SL 1: 61, n. 1.
52. SL 1: 62
53. SL 1: 61–62.
54. Billy mentions “certain scruples” on the family’s part in “Amitié,” 34.
55. Corr. 1: 239.
56. Corr. 1: 260.
57. Published in July–August 1893, La Revue blanche. See PR, 77.
58. Corr. 1: 281 and n. 2.
59. Corr. 1: 276 and n. 2.
60. Corr. 1: 291, n. 1. This aspect of the relationship between Montesquiou and Delafosse was to be the model in the Search for Charlus’s presentation of the violinist Morel, like Delafosse of humble origins, to high society.
61. The literal translation of the title of the second part of the Search, À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, is “In the shade of girls in bloom.” The translator chose as the title Within a Budding Grove.
62. Corr. 1: 278 and 285, n. 3.
63. Corr. 1: 282–83.
64. Corr. 1: 286.
65. Quoted in Elaine Brody, Paris: The Musical Kaleidoscope, 1870–1925, New York: George Braziller, 1987, 241.
66. Corr. 1: 288.
67. SL 1: 69.
1. For additional information about the early part of Reynaldo Hahn’s life, especially up until the time he met Proust, I have relied upon Bernard Gavoty’s biography Reynaldo Hahn: Le Musicien de la Belle Époque, Paris: Éditions Buchet/Chastel, 1976. Gavoty, who knew Hahn in the years following Proust’s death, had access to his diary and many of his letters. The published portion of Hahn’s memoirs, Journal d’un musicien (Paris: Plon, 1933), is rich in details about his taste in music, his travels, and anecdotes about society people and artists, but is silent on personal matters, and especially about his relationship with Proust.
2. Marcel Proust: Lettres à Reynaldo Hahn, edited by Philip Kolb with a preface by Emmanuel Berl, Paris: Gallimard, 1956, 13.
3. Gavoty, Hahn, 90.
4. Both letters were written in 1893. Quoted in Gavoty, Hahn, 91. Hahn’s emphasis on the word homosexuals—in French, pédérastes.
5. This quotation is from Proust’s account of the Lemaire salon, “Le Salon de Mme Madeleine Lemaire,” CSB 5: 463.
6. Corr. 1: 293, n. 4. Only Bernhardt merited having her full name printed.
7. Corr. 1: 300.
8. Corr. 1: 305.
9. See Corr. 1: 310, 311, n. 2.
10. Corr. 1: 311.
11. SL 1: 71.1 have modified the translation, which omitted the negative from “Let’s have no more jokes about articles” (“Plus de plaisanteries d’articles,” Corr. 1: 313), thus reversing the intention of Yturri’s request.
12. Corr. 1: 315–16.
13. SL 1: 77.
14. SL 1: 75. On May 7, 1894, the Opéra gave its one hundredth performance of Lohengrin, hailed as “a brilliant triumph.” See Corr. 1: 327, n. 7.
15. SL 1: 75–76.
16. Hahn’s description is from a letter to Marie Nordlinger, quoted in Gavoty, Hahn, 89.
17. See Corr. 1: 75.
18. This account of Proust at Réveillon is from Hahn’s posthumous tribute, “Promenade,” NRF Hommage, 39.
19. Hahn, “Promenade,” 39–40.
20. Recherche (NP), Esquisse 62, 1: 860. This passage was not retained for the novel. Before writing the Search, Proust developed earlier versions of this incident in Jean Santeuil, 264, and Contre Sainte-Beuve. See Prologue, STW, 23–24.
21. SL 1: 73–74.
22. SL 1: 74, n. 4.
23. SL 1: 75.
24. Corr. 4: 412, n. 5.
25. SL 1: 76–78. Loute was Mme Lemaire’s dog, whom she considered to be exceptionally intelligent.
26. Corr. 1: 330, n. 4. The castle sketch was not retained.
27. SL 1: 78–79
28. Corr. 1: 341.
29. SL 1: 79–80.
30. “Je vous aime, bien cher ami,” Corr. 1: 333.
31. The god in disguise appeared again at the end of another story, “Promenade,” PR, 119. In “La Mort de Baldassare Silvande,” written in late summer and fall of 1894, Proust used an epigraph for each of the five sections gleaned from his extensive readings and his favorite authors. In addition to the American essayist and poet Emerson, the other quotations come from Mallarmé, Mme de Sévigné, and two from Shakespeare—Macbeth’s famous speech about “sound and fury” and, from Hamlet, one of Proust’s favorite quotations, Horatio’s farewell to the dying hero. Proust grew fond of the name Horatio and later used it when he needed a pseudonym for the society pieces for Le Figaro.
32. Laget believes that Proust was inspired by reading an anthology of Tolstoy’s death scenes. Published in France in 1886, La Mort contained, in addition to “The Death of Ivan Ilich,” death scenes from Anna Karenina and War and Peace. See PJ, 68, n. 2. Laget’s contention that the story is a parody of Robert de Montesquiou and contains satirical elements is less convincing; see his introductory note to “Baldassare,” PJ, 304.
33. In PJ, Proust favored names with an exotic or outdated air. Those he chose seem to evoke especially Central Europe, the Balkans, Italy, or such enchanted realms as those used by Gérard de Nerval or Shakespeare. See PJ, 45, n. 2.
34. PR, 17.
35. SL 1: 81 Proust tends to use the ellipsis for suspension after expressing an emotion or alluding to one.
36. See PR, 31–47.1 have modified the translator’s title of “La Confession d’une jeune fille” from “A Young Girl’s Confession,” because jeune fille in French means “girl.” At the moment of her attempted suicide and subsequent death, the “girl” has become a young woman of twenty; she is hardly innocent and is engaged to be married. “Confession” was the story Marcel had intended to dedicate to Montesquiou, perhaps because he considered it the finest in the book. His own favorite seems to have been “La Fin de la Jalousie.” His dedication of “Baldassare” to Hahn can only indicate that Proust was pleased with that story also. “Confession” is Proust’s only first-person narrative other than the Search; its storyteller, like the future Narrator, has no name; PJ, 333.
37. [Marcel Proust par lui-même], CSB 5: 337.
38. This is the first instance in which Proust takes the good-night kiss drama from life and uses it in a story. He continued to develop the scene in the drafts of Jean Santeuil.
39. See Céleste Albaret, Monsieur Proust, edited by Georges Belmont and translated by Barbara Bray, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976, 196–98. In the Search, Proust created a similar scene, with comic overtones, for Charlus, who despairs of finding a genuine sadist to whip him.
40. See PR, 192–221. The behavior of the lovers and the invention of a special language was no doubt inspired in part by Proust’s and Hahn’s similar actions: “Giving themselves up without thinking to the inventive and fertile genius of their love, it had, little by little, provided them with a language, as nations are provided with arms, games and laws”; PR, 193. This last image is the cell from which much of the imagery used to represent love in the Search was to grow: the beloved as a country with its own flag and national anthem.
41. The story includes a scene in which jealousy triggers severe asthma.
42. Although Honoré dies as the result of an accident, he speaks of his jealous passion for Françoise as “this disease that was killing him.”
43. See “The End of Jealousy,” PR, 193–94.
44. “The End of Jealousy,” PR, 196.
45. SL 1: 83–84.
46. Proust relates his consultation with Mme de Thèbes (1865–1916), the celebrated palmist, in Jean Santeuil, 45–46.
47. Kolb observes that this is the conclusion regarding love and friendship found at the end of the Search; Corr. 1: 350, n. 5.
48. Corr. 1: 80, and 4: 370.
49. Quoted by Kolb in Corr. 1: 80.
50. Jean-Denis Bredin, The Affair: The Case of Alfred Dreyfus, translated by Jeffrey Mehlman, New York: George Braziller, 1986, 3. Dreyfus had been arrested on October 15, 1894. On November 1, La Libre Parole had identified the guilty party and said that he was a Jew. This was the beginning of the virulent anti-Semitic campaign in Paris newspapers. See Émile Zola, L’Affaire Dreyfus: La Vérité en marche, chronology and preface by Colette Becker, Paris: GF-Flammarion, 1969, 11.
51. Bredin, Dreyfus, 4–5.
52. Bredin, Dreyfus, 8.
53. SL 1: 87 and n. 1.
54. Corr. 1: 363 and n. 2.
55. SL 1: 88–89.
56. Corr. 1: 370.
57. The discreet young woman was Anna de Noailles, later a poet and Proust’s great friend. Then unmarried, she was known as the princesse de Brancovan; Corr. 1: 322, n. 2.
58. Montesquiou’s volume was published on June 7, 1895; “Sérée” bore the dedication “To M. Marcel Proust.” Corr. 1: 372 and n. 2.
59. Corr. 1: 375; Corr. 2: 162.
60. À la recherche du temps perdu, Sodome et Gomorrhe I et II, text established, edited, and annotated by Françoise Leriche, Paris: Librairie Générale Française (Livre de Poche), 1993, 367, n. 2.
61. Goncourt Journal, 3: 1104–5.
62. Corr. 1: 379.
63. SL 1: 90.
64. Goncourt Journal, 3: 821.
65. H. Montgomery Hyde, The Trials of Oscar Wilde, with an introduction by Sir Travers Humphreys, London, 1948, 99.
66. SL 1: 91–92.
67. SL 1: 93.
68. Search 5: 344.
69. SL 1: 92–93.
70. The artists to whom Proust paid homage were Aelbert Cuyp, Paul Potter, Anthony Van Dyck, and Antoine Watteau; the composers were Chopin, Gluck, Schumann, and Mozart.
71. See SL 1: 95–96.
72. Corr. 1: 393, n. 2
73. Philip Kolb, “Marcel Proust et les dames Lemaire, avec des lettres de Proust à Suzette Lemaire et quelques autres,” BMP 14 (1964): 131–32 and n. 1.
74. Corr. 1: 85.
75. See Corr. 1: 87.
76. Soupault, Médecine, 194, 195.
77. Corr. 1: 413.
78. Gavoty, Hahn, 103.
79. Corr. 1: 420–21.
80. Corr. 7: 333, n. 3.
81. Marcel Proust, 1871–1922: An Exhibition of Manuscripts, Books, Pictures, and Photographs, Manchester, England: Whitworth Art Gallery, 1956, exhibition, No. 86, 25.
82. In a July 1896 letter to Reynaldo, Proust wrote, “I am not, like the Lemaires, hostile to all places where we cannot be together.” See SL 1: 127, Search 1: 265–68.
83. Hahn’s Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano in F Major eventually became a symphonic suite entitled Illustration pour le Jardin de Bérénice, June 1895–January 1896. See Corr. 7: 331–32 and n. 4.
84. Corr. 2: 493.
85. SL 1: 101–2.
86. SL 1: 101 and n. 2. The line of poetry is from Alfred de Vigny’s La Maison du berger.
87. See Jean Santeuil, 363–64; and Corr. 1: 429–30, n. 2.
88. Kolb, “Historique,” 224. Harrison lived from 1853 to 1930. In my description of Proust’s stay at Beg-Meil and the origins of Jean Santeuil, I am particularly indebted to Philip Kolb’s article “Historique du premier roman de Proust.”
89. Kolb, “Historique,” 226.
90. Lettres à Reynaldo Hahn, 15.
91. Although Elstir bears vestiges of Harrison, he evolved to embody aspects of other painters such as Whistler, Monet, Manet, and Renoir.
92. Corr. 1: 430, n. 3.
93. SL 1: 349–50, and 351, n. 1. See Search 2: 592, where Elstir says of Carquethuit in Brittany: “I know nothing in France like it, it reminds me rather of certain aspects of Florida.” Harrison knew Florida, having spent some years there making topographic drawings. Harrison’s description of Penmarch may have inspired Proust’s description of Elstir’s masterpiece Le Port de Carquethuit.
94. See Jean Santeuil, 406–10. The title, “Impressions Regained,” is not Proust’s; he rarely provided titles for the drafts of Jean Santeuil.
95. Jean Santeuil, 409; I have modified the translation from “imprecision of feeling.”
96. Corr. 1: 419, n. 2.
97. Jean Santeuil, 69; JS 4: 234–35.
98. See Corr. 21: 562, n. 2.
99. SL 1: 350.
100. Corr. 1: 435.
1. Corr. 2: 51–52.
2. Corr. 1: 441 and 443, n. 3.
3. Corr. 1: 442. The ellipsis is Proust’s.
4. For the complete text of this long, thoughtful letter, see SL 1: 105–7. In the letter Proust numbers his grievances against the host and dinner guests.
5. Goncourt Journal, 3: 1193.
6. “Contre l’obscurité” appeared in the July 15, 1896, issue of the Revue blanche. The little study on Chardin was not published during Proust’s lifetime. See Corr. 1: 446.
7. Search 6: 333.
8. Corr. 1: 448 and n. 3.
9. Bredin, Dreyfus, 66–67.
10. Corr. 1: 449 and n. 1.
11. Lucien Daudet, Autour de soixante lettres de Marcel Proust, Les Cahiers Marcel Proust 5, Paris: Gallimard, 30.
12. SL 1: 108.
13. Corr. 2: 494 and n. 3.
14. Textes retrouvés, 82–83 and n. 2.
15. See Jean Santeuil, 660. On inscribing Jacques de Lacretelle’s copy of Swann’s Way, Proust identified Saint-Saëns’s composition as the source of Swann and Odette’s song. See [Dédicace], CSB 5: 565.
16. Corr. 2: 128; SL 1: 109.
17. Corr. 2: 50–51.
18. Corr. 2: 45 and n. 3.
19. SL 1: 118–19.
20. See Daudet, “L’Entre Deux-Guerres,” in Souvenirs et polémiques, 386.
21. Corr. 2: 59–60.
22. SL 1: 119–20.
23. SL 1: 120.
24. SL 1: 121.
25. Mayer, “Jardin,” 40.
26. Jean Santeuil, 723. In the Search, there is an echo of this text, and therefore of Auteuil, when the Narrator remembers his childhood and the scene of the good-night kiss: “Many years have passed since that night. The wall of the staircase up which I had watched the light of his [the father’s] candle gradually climb was long ago demolished.” Search 1: 49.
27. SL 1: 121.
28. Corr. 2: 68.
29. Corr. 2: 71 and n. 3.
30. In the first edition, France’s preface bore no title. See JS 4: 3, n. 1. For a translation of the preface, see PR, vii–ix.
31. Gregh, Amitié, 9–10.
32. Pouquet, Salon Caillavet, 109–11.
33. PJ, 350.
34. Jean-Jacques Brousson, Itinéraire de Paris à Buenos Aires, 1927; quoted in JS 4: 4, n. 2.
35. Tadié dismisses Brousson’s allegation as “anachronistic.” Marcel Proust, 303, n. 3.
36. SL 1: 123 and n. 1.
37. See PJ, 289–92.
38. PR, “Regrets, Reveries, Changing Skies,” 123.
39. See PJ, 292.
40. SL 1: 124 and n. 2.
41. See PJ, 292–93.
42. For a reprint of Lorrain’s article, see PJ, 294–95.
43. Jullian, Montesquiou, 162.
44. Quoted in the “Notice” to Les Plaisirs et les jours; see JS 4: 907.
45. Gregh, L’Âge d’or, 158.
46. Gregh, Amitié, 65.
47. Hahn, Journal, 139.
48. “Éros et Vénus,” CSB 5: 388.
49. SL 1: 129, n. 2.
50. SL 1: 129.
51. SL 1: 127.
52. Mayer, “Jardin,” 40–41.
53. SL 1: 130 and n. 3.
54. SL 1: 131.
55. Corr. 2: 94.
56. Certain of Brissaud’s traits were given to Dr. du Boulbon, who treats the Narrator’s grandmother in the Search; SL 1: 145, n. 5.
57. Michel, Proust, 29. Michel says that these manuals combined popular notions, unsubstantiated observations, Dr. Proust’s and Dr. Ballet’s own prejudices, and what little science was known. He also observes that, in spite of the impressive progress made in medicine since Adrien’s day, hygiene remains the number one weapon in the arsenal against worldwide epidemics: condoms against AIDS, mosquito nets against malaria, and bleach to combat a number of infectious diseases.
58. Michel, Proust, 28, 36–37.
59. Proust and Ballet, L’Hygiène du neurasthénique, 30–31.
60. SL 1: 205.
61. Proust and Ballet, L’Hygiène du neurasthénique, 32.
62. Proust and Ballet, L’Hygiène du neurasthénique, 78.
63. Proust and Ballet, L’Hygiène du neurasthénique, 94.
64. Proust and Ballet, L’Hygiène du neurasthénique, 75.
65. Search 6: 212.
66. Proust and Ballet, L’Hygiène du neurasthénique, 168–69.
67. SL 1: 132.
68. Corr. 2: 100–101.
69. SL 1: 136, n. 2.
70. See PJ, 293–94.
71. See Lettres à Reynaldo Hahn, 17. The Narrator later defines, in a similar way, his and Albertine’s love, seeing it clearly, like Marcel’s love for Reynaldo, only after he had destroyed it: “I was perhaps the person whom she distinguished least from herself.” Search 5: 81. There are fewer details about the relationship between Hahn and Proust in the years after Marcel’s annulment of the pact because nearly all the letters they exchanged between 1897 to 1903 are missing. Many of the letters he exchanged with Lucien Daudet and Bertrand de Fénelon are in the hands of private collectors. The unpublished portion of Reynaldo Hahn’s diary is deposited at the Bibliothèque nationale but is not available for consultation. See Tadié, Marcel Proust, 236, n. 2.
72. Marcel Proust, Mon cher petit: Lettres à Lucien Daudet, edited by Michel Bonduelle, Paris: Gallimard, 1991, 19–20.
73. Corr. 2: 122, n. 3.
74. Painter, Letters to His Mother, 60, 62.
75. Corr. 2: 125; Painter, Letters to His Mother, 64–65.
76. Painter, Letters to His Mother, 63.
77. Corr. 2: 131–32.
78. SL 1: 142–43.
79. SL 1: 277.
80. This passage is one of the rare ones to which Proust assigned a title in Jean Santeuil, perhaps indicating its importance. In the first draft, he set the scene at the Hôtel des Roches Noires in Trouville; later, he changed the scene and the title to “Jean at Beg-Meil: The telephone call to his mother.” See JS 4: 356, n. 1, and Jean Santeuil, 365–70.
81. SL 1: 143–44.
82. Quoted in Corr. 2: 134, n. 1.
83. See Léon Daudet, Rive droite, Souvenirs et polémiques, 988.
84. SL 1: 147–48.
85. Corr. 2: 145–46.
86. Painter, Letters to His Mother, 71–72.
87. Corr. 2: 150–51.
88. Corr. 2: 149, n. 1. See JS 4: 833–36.
89. Bredin, Dreyfus, 175.
90. SL 1: 153–54.
91. Corr. 2: 157, n. 4.
1. SL 1: 163.
2. SL 1: 153 and n. 1.
3. See Albaret, Monsieur Proust, 180–81.
4. Gloves eventually became one of Proust’s fetishes; he owned many pairs and insisted that they be in perfect condition. If not, new pairs were immediately purchased.
5. This information about the unpublished letter is from Tadié, Marcel Proust, 350.
6. Corr. 2: 164.
7. See SL 1: 154–55 and nn. 3, 5, and 156–57.
8. PJ, 295–96.
9. Corr. 20: 430, n. 2.
10. The Narrator refers to a number of duels he fought over the Dreyfus Affair. See Search 4: 11; 5: 387.
11. Bonduelle, Mon cher petit, 130.
12. Proust’s recollections on this point varied over the years. See SL 1: 158, n. 2, and Corr. 2: 174, n. 2; Corr. 20: 288.
13. Hahn, Journal, 54.
14. Dreyfus, Souvenirs, 152–53.
15. From a film interview in Roger Stéphane and Roland Darbois, Portrait-Souvenir: Marcel Proust, directed by Gérard Herzog, 1962.
16. Corr. 2: 174, n. 2.
17. SL 1: 158.
18. Except for the satirical portrait of the duc de Réveillon, we do not know for certain what he wrote in 1897. By mid-1897 Proust had written no more than one half of Jean Santeuil. See Kolb, “Historique,” 243–45.
19. This description of Bizet’s apartment and the satirical review is based on Dreyfus’s memoirs: Souvenirs, 116–25.
20. Larkin B. Price, Materials for a Critical Edition of Marcel Proust’s Les Plaisirs et les jours, Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1965, 81.
21. Proust-Halévy Corr., 70.
22. Corr. 2: 192.
23. Corr. 2: 184–85 and n. 5.
24. Munhall, Whistler and Montesquiou, 148–50.
25. Patrick Chaleyssin, Robert de Montesquiou: Mécène et dandy, Paris: Somogy, 1992, 78.
26. See Munhall, Whistler and Montesquiou, 46.
27. Philippe Jullian, Jean Lorrain ou le Satiricon 1900, Paris: Fayard, 1974, 259.
28. Rearick, Pleasures of the Belle Époque, 191–92.
29. Robert Dreyfus, quoted in Chantal Bischoff, Geneviève Straus: Trilogie d’une égérie, Paris: Éditions Balland, 1992, 147.
30. Jullian, Montesquiou, 169.
31. Corr. 2: 189, and n. 2. See Gregh, Amitié, 74–75.
32. For details about the dinner, see Corr. 2: 188 and nn. 2, 3.
33. Montesquiou, quoted by Munhall, Whistler and Montesquiou, 46.
34. Jullian, Montesquiou, 170.
35. Corr. 20: 615, n. 2, and 616, n. 2.
36. Corr. 2: 194.
37. Jullian, Montesquiou, 173
38. Jullian, Montesquiou, 173–74.
39. Corr. 2: 194.
40. Search 3: 765.
41. Munhall, Whistler and Montesquiou, 47.
42. SL 1: 163 and n. 1.
43. SL 1: 164.
44. Corr. 2: 216–17.
45. SL 165.
46. See “La personne d’Alphonse Daudet, ‘Œuvre d’art,’” CSB 5: 399–402.
47. SL 1: 167.
48. See SL 1: 169–70.
49. Dreyfus, Souvenirs, 125.
50. SL 1: 171.
51. Corr. 16: 393 and n. 2.
52. Corr. 2: 19.
53. See Zola, Affaire, 71.
54. Proust-Halévy Corr., 82.
55. Bredin, Dreyfus, 228.
56. Proust-Halévy Corr., 83.
57. Proust-Halévy Corr., 83, 86–87.
58. See Tadié, Marcel Proust, 349.
59. Proust-Halévy Corr., 83–84.
60. Proust-Halévy Corr., 214.
61. “Adieux,” CSB 5: 402–3.
62. Quotations about Zola and “J’accuse” are from Bredin, Dreyfus, 247–49.
63. Bredin, Dreyfus, 276. “The Dreyfus Affair . . . marked the first time that intellectuals acted as a self-conscious group in attempting to influence public events.” Susan Rubin Suleiman, “The Literary Significance of the Dreyfus Affair,” in The Dreyfus Affair: Art, Truth, and Justice, edited by Norman L. Kleeblat, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987, 121.
64. Corr. 2: 20. Yeatman’s name was misspelled as Jeatman.
65. Tadié, Marcel Proust, 368; Soupault, Médecine, 107.
66. Bredin, Dreyfus, 255.
67. Jean Santeuil, 320. In the Search, it is Bloch, the Narrator’s Jewish friend who seeks to hide his ethnic identity and become assimilated, who attends the Zola trial. Search 3: 315.
68. Jean Santeuil, 333; for the remark about Picquart as philosopher, see Jean Santeuil, 343.
69. In Jean Santeuil, there is an occasional mention of anti-Semitism but no real discussion or development of the effect of the scandal on society. For example, a young duchess tells Jean that she never receives any Jews. This remark is conveyed in one sentence in the text without any comment. See JS 4: 706.
70. Search 3: 252.
71. Odette must hide from her husband, Charles Swann, the only Jewish member of the Jockey Club, her shameless maneuverings to ally herself with women in league against Dreyfus. Swann had been so thoroughly assimilated that everyone, including himself, had forgotten he was a Jew. Because of the virulent, unmerited attacks on his people, Swann rediscovered his race and heritage, which he proudly acknowledged, taking care not to denigrate the army in which he had served with distinction and whose mission and ideals he still respected.
72. Search 4: 384.
73. Billy also remarks that Marcel’s health prevented him from taking an even more active role; Lettres et conversations, 126–27.
74. Tadié, Marcel Proust, 368–69.
75. Letter to Robert Dreyfus, May 29, 1905; SL 2: 188 and n. 4.
76. SL 1: 183.
77. Blanche, Modèles, 117.
78. My description and quotations for the breakup between the Halévys and Degas are taken from Linda Nochlin, “Degas and the Dreyfus Affair: A Portrait of the Artist as an Anti-Semite,” in Kleeblat, The Dreyfus Affair, 96–116.
79. Léon Daudet, Au temps de Judas, Souvenirs et polémiques, 572.
80. Corr. 2: 248.
81. Corr. 2: 253, n. 10.
82. “Un esprit et un génie innombrables: Léon Daudet,” CSB 5: 603, n. 4. In Jean Santeuil, Jean is stupefied to hear someone say that “if Dreyfus were innocent it would be the government’s painful but necessary duty to hide this fact and declare him guilty for the greater good.” JS 4: 485.
83. SL 2: 222.
84. “Le Destin,” signed and dated “Reynaldo Hahn, Octobre 1898, Dieppe, Chez Mme Lemaire.” See Corr. 3: 474, n. 2.
85. An allusion to Vigny’s poem La Maison du berger, Corr. 3: 474, n. 4.
86. See Corr. 2: 472–73.
1. Corr. 2: 260, n. 2. The dates of the Rembrandt exhibition in Amsterdam were September 7–October 31, 1898; see SL 1: 184, n. 1. See also Kolb, “Historique,” 262.
2. Borel, Voyager, 151.
3. Kolb, “Historique,” 261.
4. “Rembrandt,” STW, 338.
5. “Rembrandt,” STW, 339.
6. “Gustave Moreau,” STW, 355.
7. [“Notes sur le monde mystérieux de Gustave Moreau”], CSB 5: 969.
8. “Gustave Moreau,” STW 352.
9. In December, Picquart won a high court ruling that resulted in his case being transferred to a civilian court; Nochlin, “Degas,” x.
10. SL 1: 187, n. 2.
11. Proust presumably wrote to L’Aurore’s director Ernest Vaughan on November 26 or 27; SL 1: 187.
12. Corr. 2: 269, n. 3.
13. The unlucky Yeatman’s name had been misspelled again, as “Yestman.”
14. See SL 1: 188.
15. A similar, more tentative, exploration of this theme is found in the scene called “Beg-Meil in Holland,” presumably inspired by the 1898 trip. This passage contains an important element: such experiences give Jean the strength to “stop, to exert the energies of my mind on it (the involuntary memory experience) and this time setting me, indeed, to work.” See Jean Santeuil, 401–4. One recognizes in this single line the key episode at the conclusion of the Search, in which, after a series of involuntary memory experiences, the Narrator, his will restored and his enthusiasm boosted, is ready to create his great work.
16. It is possible, of course, that he wrote the scene first for Jean Santeuil.
17. Jean Santeuil, 464.
18. All artists hope to “seduce” their public. Proust always wanted to please everyone he met and certainly he wanted to enchant his readers. His intensely seductive voice is similar to Walt Whitman’s, whose sounds and words constantly seem to urge the reader to lie with him and exchange caresses. Both the Search and Whitman’s Leaves of Grass have famous, powerful opening lines in which each author offers an “I” the reader can immediately assume. Proust begins “For a long time I used to go to bed early,” Whitman “I celebrate myself / And what I assume you shall assume, / For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” Both writers are ones with whom, as Shelby Foote said of Proust, the reader can easily “hook atoms.” Conversations with Shelby Foote, edited by William C. Carter, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1989, 205.
19. The collection of poems was published by Fasquelle in the fall of 1898.
20. “To Marcel Proust, his friend, Anatole France,” Corr. 2: 276, n. 2.
21. SL 1: 190.
22. Corr. 2: 333–34.
23. William L. Shirer, The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969, 64.
24. David Levering Lewis, Prisoners of Honor: The Dreyfus Affair, New York: Holt, 1994, 263.
25. Bredin, Dreyfus, 372; Shirer, Collapse, 64.
26. SL 1: 193, n. 3. See Corr. 2: 280, n. 3, and Pouquet, Salon Caillavet, 193.
27. SL 1: 192.
28. Corr. 2: 283–84.
29. Corr. 2: 282, n. 4.
30. SL 1: 193–94.
31. Corr. 2: 287, n. 3.
32. Corr. 19: 538.
33. Proust remembered this image and used it as an analogy for Vinteuil’s music in Swann’s Way and The Captive.
34. SL 1: 194–95.
35. SL 1: 196.
36. See Corr. 2: 298–300.
37. Nadine Beauthéac, Les Promenades de Marcel Proust, with photographs by François-Xavier Bouchart, Paris: Éditions du Chêne, 1997, 53–54.
38. Beauthéac, Promenades, 58.
39. Corr. 2: 344. According to Painter, she played Chopin “beautifully, but reluctantly.” Painter, Proust 1: 136.
40. SL 1: 199.
41. Marie de Chevilly, “Marcel Proust en Savoie,” BMP 24 (1974): 1822.
42. The Brancovans’ garden and yacht are the models for those of Mme de Cambremer at her Brittany château in the Search 4: 226. See SL 1: 202, 203, and n. 2.
43. Marie de Chevilly, “Marcel Proust en Savoie,” BMP 23 (1973): 1591.
44. SL 1: 197.
45. SL 1: 201.
46. Not even the elevator boy was exempt. When the boy, who Marcel suspected was Jewish, came to tell him good-bye, the youth informed him that he “had to leave his post earlier than planned because his support of Dreyfus had made him too many enemies.” Corr. 2: 354.
47. SL 1: 199.
48. SL 1: 197.
49. Corr. 2: 307.
50. SL 1: 202, 204, n. 4. Eppler is the model for the tailor Jupien, whose shop is located in the courtyard of the Guermantes’s large town house, where the Narrator’s family takes an apartment. See Search 1: 25; 3: 14–18.
51. Chevilly, “Proust en Savoie,” 23: 1588, 1591.
52. SL 1: 199.
53. Corr. 2: 330.
54. Almost nothing is known about Poupetière, who was born in 1867; see Corr. 2: 325, n. 14.
55. Painter, Letters to His Mother, 95–96; Corr. 2: 332–33.
56. SL 1: 200. See Corr. 2: 336.
57. SL 1: 207.
58. Corr. 2: 326.
59. Chevilly, “Proust en Savoie,” 24: 1826.
60. SL 1: 202–3.
61. Corr. 2: 330.
62. [“Le déclin de l’inspiration”], CSB 5: 422–34.
63. Painter, Letters to His Mother, 96. Did the little wrist massage inspire a scene in Jean Santeuil? Jean, at midnight at the bedside of a female friend, tells her that his wrist hurts. This woman whom he had never desired, but whose affection he would have welcomed, takes his hand and massages it. This intimate act of kindness arouses him and he asks permission to kiss her. She stops his advances. JS 4: 837–42. This is an earlier version of the Narrator’s first attempt to kiss Albertine.
64. SL 1: 206.
65. Marcel had made one quick trip alone to Geneva, where, not feeling well, he did nothing but obtain the addresses of several cocottes for Abel Hermant; Corr. 2: 317.
66. For a study of modernity in the Search see William C. Carter, The Proustian Quest, New York: New York University Press, 1992.
67. SL 1: 205–6.
68. Corr. 2: 292–93.
69. SL 1: 207.
70. Search 4: 695.
71. Painter, Letters to His Mother, 116. Corr. 2: 359.
72. Corr. 2: 357.
73. Painter, Letters to His Mother, 116. Corr. 2: 358.
74. La Sizeranne’s book was published in Paris by Hachette, 1897; see Corr. 2: 348, and 350, n. 16.
75. Coco was already in Rome; Marcel considered joining him there. Corr. 2: 359.
76. Corr. 2: 352. Proust frequently borrowed money from his friends. In August 1898 he wrote to Yeatman about repaying him the “ridiculous sums” he owed. See Corr. 2: 241.
77. Corr. 2: 357. In 1901 Suzanne Thibault (1881–1918) married Captain Henri Mollin; Corr. 2: 358, n. 8.
78. Corr. 2: 357.
79. Corr. 2: 359–62; Painter, Letters to His Mother, 117–22.
80. Hubert Juin, Introduction to John Ruskin, La Bible d’Amiens, translated by Marcel Proust, edited by Juin, Paris: Union Générale d’Editions (10/18), 1986, x.
81. See Textes retrouvés, 24, n. 4, and JS 4: 556, n. 2.
82. Tadié, Marcel Proust, 429.
83. Corr. 2: 348.
84. Tadié, Marcel Proust, 429, n. 6.
85. Corr. 2: 366.
86. JS 4: 181.
87. “Notice” to JS 4: 983.
88. JS 4: 181. Jean Santeuil, 1.1 have modified the translation, which omitted most of this passage. The continuation of the quotation contains a jibe at society: views of nature, he says, “free him for an instant” from the brilliant but frozen “ice of high society.” In another passage, Jean makes a similar remark about society: “society seemed to him something brilliant and cold like one of the princesse de Durheim’s witticisms.” JS 4: 497.
89. SL 1: 57, 58.
90. Quoted in Diesbach, Proust, 184.
91. In one passage in which Jean is talking to Charlotte, whom he hopes to make his mistress though she is married, he attempts to persuade her to call him by his given name. She remarks, “It would be better if I called you Marcel and you called me Charlotte.” JS 4: 831. (In the English translation “Marcel” is changed to “Jean” for the sake of uniformity; Jean Santeuil, 682.) Such a slip indicates Proust’s identification with his hero, which became even more marked during the writing of the Search. A similar conversation occurs there between Albertine and the Narrator, who hints that his name might be Marcel. Still, in spite of Proust’s close identification with his protagonist, the Search is not an autobiography.
92. See Jean Santeuil, 701–2. Jean recognized snobbery, the “frivolity, eloquence, pride” that had made him want to shine in the salons, as “the true evil.” See Jean Santeuil, 702–3. If Jean had not yet discovered his vocation, he did feel that he had been sent on a mission by a deity that dwelled in him and that he must not allow to perish. This mission, the expression of his entire being through poetry, now forms, he said, “the center of his moral being.” Good was anything that favored his inspiration; evil, anything that paralyzed it.
93. Search 1: 243–44. See also Search 1: 244: “This lack of genius, this black cavity which gaped in my mind when I ransacked it for the theme of my future writings”; Search 1: 251: “How often . . . in the course of my walks along the Guermantes way, and with what an intensified melancholy, did I reflect on my lack of qualification for a literary career, and abandon all hope of ever becoming a famous author.”
94. The Narrator, in a moment similar to Proust’s abandonment of Jean Santeuil, concludes that he had “no aptitude for writing. And so, utterly despondent, I renounced literature for ever.” Search 1: 245.
95. Kolb believes that Jeanne proposed the project; “Historique,” 269.
96. SL 3: 4.
97. “What I need is to concentrate, to probe deeply within myself, to seek the truth, to express my entire soul, which is true, and not all these things that are, in short, frivolous.” JS 4: 440. Proust does not yet see how the frivolous things will form a marvelous counterpoint to the deeper currents of the Search by illustrating the errors of a number of his characters while amusing the reader with their follies.
98. SL 1: 210–11.
1. See A. D. Trottenberg’s introduction to Eugène Atget, a Vision of Paris, New York: Macmillan, 1963, 11–28.
2. See JS 4: 499, 739.
3. See JS 4: 63–64, “La Bénédiction du sanglier,” CSB 5: 202, and the Search 4: 290.
4. SL 1: 211.
5. Corr. 2: 381–82.
6. SL 1: 212.
7. The unidentified friend was probably Douglas Ainslie or Charles Newton Scott; Corr. 2: 385, n. 3.
8. SL 1: 212, n. 2.
9. SL 1: 212–13.
10. SL 1: 216 and n. 5.
11. Proust called his years spent studying and translating Ruskin a “voluntary servitude.” See his preface to The Bible of Amiens, On Reading Ruskin: Prefaces to La Bible d’Amiens and Sésame et les lys, translated and edited by Jean Autret, William Burford, and Phillip J. Wolfe, with an introduction by Richard Macksey, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987, 60.
12. SL 1: 213–14.
13. SL 1: 214, n. 1.
14. See SL 1: 215–16 and n. 2; the Hugo quotation is from Les Contemplations, book 1, chapter 8: “Car le mot qu’on le sache est un être vivant.” See Search 1: 118.
15. On Reading Ruskin, 9. Proust dedicated the piece to Léon Daudet, an odd choice, for Daudet despised Ruskin’s work. Daudet confided to his memoirs, published after Proust’s death, that Ruskin was “unbearable,” that “nothing seemed more removed from Venice than Ruskin and his Stones of Venice,” and that Proust’s work on Ruskin was “stupid.” See Léon Daudet, L’Entre-Deux-Guerres, 387, and Rive Droite, 984, in Souvenirs et polémiques.
16. On Reading Ruskin, 19.
17. On Reading Ruskin, 29.
18. This essay became the first section of part 3 of his preface to La Bible d’Amiens; see On Reading Ruskin, 29–38.
19. The situation is similar in the Search when the Narrator’s family seeks a more secluded neighborhood with purer air because of concerns about the grandmother’s health. Corr. 2: 395, n. 3; Search 3: 3.
20. In the translation of The Bible of Amiens, she became “the eminent artist.” Corr. 2: 396, n. 2.
21. Corr. 2: 395–96.
22. From “Huit lettres inédites à Maria de Madrazo,” presented by Marie Riefstahl-Nordlinger, in BMP 3 (1953): 36, n. 4.
23. Marcel Proust, Lettres à une amie, recueil de quarante et une lettres inédites adressées à Marie Nordlinger, 1899–1908, Manchester, England: Editions du Calame, 1942, ix.
24. Ruskin’s 1877 guidebook to Venice. Corr. 2: xiii; SL 2: 89 and n. 5.
25. On Reading Ruskin, 59.
26. Nordlinger, Lettres à une amie, ix.
27. Search 5: 853.
28. On Reading Ruskin, 77–78. Ruskin had gone to Venice to study Carpaccio from September 1876 to May 1877.
29. Preface to La Bible d’Amiens in On Reading Ruskin, 91, 92.
30. Nordlinger, Lettres à une amie, ix.
31. Corr. 2: 30.
32. Search 5: 874–75.
33. Search 5: 845–47.
34. Search 5: 876.
35. Corr. 7: 174, n. 5. The year before, Proust had read Ruskin’s Flor’s Clavigera, which made him eager to see the magnificent Giottos in the Scrovengi Chapel in Padua.
36. Search 1: 460.
37. SL 2: 289 and n. 2.
38. Search 5: 848, 868.
39. Wilde’s remains were moved to Père-Lachaise Cemetery in 1909, when the famous funerary monument by Epstein was placed there. See Ellmann, Wilde, 588–89.
40. Proust’s review appeared in the January 5 issue of La Chronique des arts et de la curiosité. See “Pays des aromates,” CSB 5: 444–45. The details about the exhibition are from Jullian, Montesquiou, 205.
41. “Notre Amour,” La Revue de Paris, February 1, 1899; SL 1: 221, n. 5.
42. Tadié, Marcel Proust, 453.
43. SL 1: 221.
44. SL 1: 223–24. In a late-summer letter to her cousin Antoine Bibesco, Marcel again declared his love for the princesse de Caraman-Chimay; Corr. 2: 440.
45. SL 1: 223–24.
46. As noted in both Le Gaulois and Le Figaro; see Corr. 2: 430, nn. 5 and 6.
47. Corr. 2: 431.
48. This description of the dinner party and the quotations are from Daudet’s memoirs; see Salons et Journaux, Souvenirs et polémiques, 505. Proust gave a series of dinner parties in fairly rapid succession. He hosted another on June 21; on July 1 Proust gave a more intimate dinner for Montesquiou and Yturri. See Corr. 2: 32 and 435, n. 3.
49. SL 1: 217.
50. SL 1: 218.
51. “Le salon de la comtesse d’Haussonville,” CSB 5: 486 and n. 2.
52. SL 1: 223.
53. SL 1: 228, nn. 2, 3.
54. See SL 1: 228, n. 4. Details of the prince’s grand funeral later inspired in part Saint-Loup’s funeral in the Search.
55. Antoine’s mother was born Hélène Costaki Epureano. SL 1: 271, n. 2.
56. SL 1: 225, n. 1.
57. In 1903 Proust’s friend the princesse de Polignac, writing under her maiden name W. Singer, published her translation of Walden. Corr. 209, 210, n. 8.
58. Billy had been particularly impressed by Emmanuel’s knowledge and wrote that the prince “had studied Gothic architecture in depth.” Billy, Lettres et conversations, 121.
59. SL 1: 226.
60. George de Lauris, quoted in Maurois, Genius, 91.
61. Tadié, Marcel Proust, 461.
62. Corr. 4: xiv. Proust wrote in the first notebook for the Search: “Bertrand lover of Louisa’s sister.” Louisa de Morand’s sister, Suzanne Montaud, was a minor actress who performed under the name Jane Moriane. See Marcel Proust, Le Carnet de 1908, edited by Philip Kolb, Cahiers Marcel Proust, n.s., 8, Paris: Gallimard, 1971, 49 and n. 15. (This little notebook, hereafter cited as Carnet 1908, contains the first notes Proust made that eventually led to the Search.) Whether Fénelon was the lover of either or both sisters is not well established. Apparently, Proust believed that he was. The sources of the information about Fénelon’s bisexuality are rather vague. Among those closely associated with Marcel, it was Paul Morand who recorded, without giving details or the date, Proust’s discovery of this aspect of Fénelon’s private life. We do not know how Proust reacted to this revelation. See Morand’s memoirs about Proust, Le Visiteur du soir, suivi de quarante-cinq lettres inédites de Marcel Proust, Geneva: La Palatine, 1949, 26.
63. Corr. 2 449–52.
64. The full title of Mâle’s important 1898 study is L’Art religieux du treizième siècle en France: Étude sur l’iconographie du moyen âge et sur ses sources d’inspiration.
65. Corr. 4: 423.
66. SL 230, n. 5; Corr. 2: 465, n. 6.
67. Corr. 2: 464.
68. Corr. 2: 470. There are times when Proust uses moschant in its usual meaning of méchant, bad, wicked, or mean.
69. Corr. 2: 470.
70. SL 1: 234–35.
71. Proust’s admiration for the great actress, especially as Phèdre, is found in the Search’s actress La Berma, Bernhardt’s fictional counterpart. Although La Berma has more than one real-life model, as Phèdre she is clearly the Divine Sarah.
72. SL 1: 234–35.
73. SL 1: 232–33.
1. SL 1: 242.
2. Corr. 3: 129, 132, 135. This nickname for Fénelon may have been an allusion to Thomas Hardy’s novel A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873); Corr. 3: 129, n. 5. Tadié provides a more likely choice, Henry Bernstein’s play Ses Yeux bleus; Tadié, Marcel Proust, 461 and n.9.
3. Corr. 3: 64–65. Proust’s future characters who are consumed by jealousy—Swann, the Narrator, and Charlus—ask friends to spy on the men and women who become objects of their obsessions.
4. SL 1: 244–46.
5. SL 1: 243–44.
6. See SL 1: 248–49.
7. These are believed to be the last additions to the Jean Santeuil manuscript. In the scene from Jean Santeuil depicting the race across the restaurant to bring Jean a coat, the beau geste is made by Jean’s friend Bertrand de Réveillon, whose name echoes that of his real-life counterpart.
8. Kolb dates this incident in May or June 1902. See Corr. 3: 8, and Kolb, “Historique,” 264.
9. In the Search, Fénelon was a model not only for Saint-Loup but for Albertine in the scene in which the Narrator admires her beautiful legs pumping the pianola. This vision of the athletic girl inspired thoughts identical to those when Proust admired Fénelon running toward him with the coat. See Search 5: 515.
10. Corr. 3: 84.
11. SL 1: 251–54.
12. See Albaret, Monsieur Proust, 44, 176.
13. Corr. 3: 92.
14. SL 1: 258–60.
15. Corr. 3: 128.
16. SL 1: 265.
17. Corr. 3: 131.
18. Léon Daudet, Salons et Journaux, Souvenirs et polémiques, 505.
19. Corr. 3: 248.
20. SL 1: 263–64.
21. Corr. 3: 137.
22. See SL 1: 266 and nn. 1, 2. The periodical had the same name as the publishing house; the title of the journal will be italicized as the Mercure de France or simply Mercure, while the name of the publishing house will appear in roman type.
23. See Corr. 3: 160–62, and 21: 615. During his Ruskin years, Proust often sketched churches and religious scenes depicted on portals or in stained-glass windows. Reynaldo was usually the recipient of these drawings, some of which were humorous and contained captions in their private language. Many of the sketches were quite detailed, like the one he did of the cathedral of Amiens. Many of these drawings can be seen in Lettres à Reynaldo Hahn.
24. See SL 1: 267.
25. This incident, about which nothing more is known, is mentioned in the letter to his mother of October 17; see SL 1: 268.
26. See SL 1: 268.
27. Corr. 21: 614.
28. SL 1: 268–69.
29. It is possible Proust first glimpsed Vermeer’s painting on his 1898 trip to Holland. Corr. 20: 226. In the Search, Proust uses the painting as a touchstone of artistic achievement.
30. SL 1: 271–72.
31. SL 1: 274–75.
32. SL 1: 276 and n. 3.
33. SL 1: 277, n. 5.
34. See Marie Nordlinger, “Proust and Ruskin,” Whitworth exhibition catalogue, 9–10. Marie says that her visits were to boulevard Malesherbes, apparently having forgotten that the Prousts moved to the rue de Courcelles in 1900. She also forgot the servant’s name.
35. SL 1: 280–82. This letter reveals how Mme Proust struggled to force Marcel to adopt healthier habits. Proust’s Narrator demolishes Charlus’s top hat as revenge for an insult. Search 3: 766.
36. SL 1: 282–84.
1. Corr. 3: 205.
2. SL 1: 320, n. 3; the article appeared in the December 5, 1902, issue. Marcel, who saw the notice of Montesquiou’s return from New York in Le Figaro on April 10, 1903, wrote a welcome-home note in which he told the count of his joy on learning that “the waves have at last brought back to us the vessel bearing Virgil.” SL 1: 319.
3. Corr. 3: 206–8. Constantin’s review published thirty-one pages of La Bible d’Amiens in its February 15 issue and twenty-three pages in the March 15 issue; Corr. 3: 208, n. 5.
4. Corr. 3: 209.
5. See “Le Salon de la comtesse Aimery de La Rochefoucauld,” Textes retrouvés, 38–40, and CSB 5: 436–39.
6. Not only did this salon description not appear, it disappeared and has remained lost. See Corr. 3: 290, n. 2.
7. SL 1: 288–89.
8. SL 1: 289–91.
9. SL 1: 291, n. 3.
10. SL 1: 291.
11. SL 1: 291–93.
12. Corr. 3: 225.
13. SL 1: 295.
14. SL 1: 294. I have modified the translation from “Everyone is bored with me.”
15. SL 1: 294.
16. SL 1: 296.
17. Valentine Thomson, “My Cousin Marcel Proust,” in Harper’s Magazine 164 (May 1932): 717.
18. Corr. 3: 231, n. 6.
19. Corr. 3: 235.
20. Corr. 3: 249.
21. SL 1: 306.
22. SL 1: 297–99.
23. SL 1: 305.
24. SL 1: 308. Proust used the Pascal quote again in July when he wrote to Robert de Billy to congratulate him on his being awarded the Légion d’honneur; Corr. 3: 341–42 and n. 1.
25. SL 1: 309.
26. Search 2: 157–58.
27. Corr. 3: 261.
28. Jules Caradon, known as Cardane.
29. SL 1: 309–12.
30. SL 1: 312, n. 1.
31. Search 4: 567–68.
32. SL 1: 311.
33. SL 1: 323.
34. See Corr. 3: 20 and 279, n. 2.
35. On February 19, André Beaunier had praised Proust’s “fine translation.” See SL 1: 313, n. 4.
36. Corr. 3: 292.
37. SL 1: 317, 318, n. 4.
38. There are various accounts of the Good Friday trip. Billy’s and Lauris’s accounts have Bertrand de Fénelon present, but other evidence places Fénelon in Constantinople at the time. For this reason some, like George Painter, believe that the trip took place in 1902. Lauris, like Billy, writing many years after the event, recalled that the group was at Coucy on Good Friday. According to Lauris, Fénelon, worried that Marcel’s lungs would not allow him to make the dizzying ascent, held him by the arm while intoning “The Good Friday Spell” from Wagner’s Parsifal. See Georges de Lauris, “Quelques années avant Swann,” NRF Hommage, p. 47. According to Kolb’s chronology, the first trip occurred on Good Friday (April 10), but Kolb believed that the trip to Coucy took place on April 21. See Corr. 3: 20, 21. Tadié suggests that there may have been more than two trips in 1903. See Tadié, Marcel Proust, 481, n. 5. There seems to be no way to resolve the disparities. I have adopted Kolb’s chronology.
39. Lauris, “Quelques années avant Swann,” 45.
40. Beauthéac, Promenades, 86.
41. The internal quotation has not been identified.
42. SL 2: 167–68.
43. Marcel consumed beer with meals because he thought it was good for his condition. See Corr. 3: 377.
44. Corr. 3: 299.
45. Maxime Dethomas (1867–1929) was an artist to whose studies of Venice Proust gives the highest praise in his Séjour à Venise (Search 5: 848). An exhibition of Dethomas’s drawings was held at the Durand-Ruel Gallery, April 15–29, 1903. SL 1: 323, n. 1.
46. No. 29 in the catalogue of the exhibition: View of the Grand Canal in Venice. SL 1: 323, n. 2.
47. See “Le Salon de Mme Madeleine Lemaire,” CSB 5: 457–64.
48. See SL 1: 325, n. 1.
49. Corr. 3: 313–14 and n. 2.
50. Corr. 3: 22.
51. Kolb thinks that Marcel made this inquiry in 1903; see Corr. 7: 334.
52. Corr. 4: P183.
53. In 1928, when Louisa de Mornand published Proust’s letters to her, she said, in an interview: “We had a loving relationship which was neither an idle flirtation nor an exclusive liaison, but, on Proust’s side, a keen passion balanced between affection and desire, and on mine a deeply felt attachment which was more than friendship.” “Mon amitié avec Marcel Proust,” Candide, November 1, 1928, quoted in Michel-Thiriet, Book, 207. Painter states that Proust and Louisa did have intercourse: “Proust made love to her, first pla-tonically, then physically.” See Painter, Letters to His Mother, 42.
54. Corr. 3: 321 and 322, n. 3.
55. See Corr. 3: 323, and 324, n. 3.
56. See Corr. 3: 325 and n. 2, 327.
57. See SL 1: 337–38.