In Search of a Time Lost: A Selection of Proust’s Letters Translated by Lydia Davis

As we read these letters, it is helpful to picture the room in which Proust wrote them, and him in the room. Although one would imagine that the room would be preserved as a museum, even furnished with Proust’s own furniture (which is extant), that is not the case.

Proud though the French are of one of their premier authors, the apartment at 102, Boulevard Haussmann in which he lived for nearly twelve years and in which he wrote most of In Search of Lost Time is now part of the premises of a bank. Some years ago—I don’t know if this is still the case—it was, at least, possible to visit the room during the summer by appointment on Thursday afternoons. One was shown around by a bank employee, with interruptions when she had to go off and answer a banking question.

Proust’s bedroom was unpopulated for much of the day, unless it was being used for a meeting with a client or among bank officials. A portrait of Proust hung on the wall, but the talk in the room would have been about financial matters, and though financial matters interested the generous, extravagant, impulsive Proust—see the passage in Letter nine in which he tells Mme Williams that he was (several months before the start of W WI ) “more or less completely ruined”—his spirit would probably not be present.

It might drift in for a moment if those taking part in the meeting paused to recall him and his life and work. And French bankers and their clients would conceivably have a strong interest in and respect for Proust.

The room gave the impression of being rather small, perhaps because of its very high ceiling, which Proust’s housekeeper estimated to be some fourteen feet high. Yet Proust described it as “vast” when he made the difficult decision to rent the apartment, and in fact the room measured nine-and-a half paces by six, as a visitor without measuring tape might estimate it, which translates to roughly twenty-one feet by fifteen, or over three hundred square feet.

Maybe it seemed small because it was so relatively empty, containing only a sideboard, a bookcase, a small table in the center, and four small chairs.

According to the bank employee cum guide, certain structural parts of the room were the same as they had been in Proust’s time: the two tall windows; two of the four doors; the moldings around the tops of the walls; the parquet floor; and the fireplace with its thick white marble mantel.

There were few outward signs that this room had anything to do with Proust: in addition to the portrait on the wall, there was a short row of volumes of the Proust Society’s quarterly journal occupying part of one shelf in the otherwise empty glass-fronted bookcase, one that had not belonged to Proust; and, on the top of the sideboard, which also had not belonged to Proust, a small sign announcing “Proust’s bedroom” alongside a stack of brochures about the actual Proust Museum, which was elsewhere—in the house of “Tante Léonie” out in Illiers-Combray, one-and-a-half hours from the city.

When Proust lived in it, when he rested, slept, ate, wrote, read, inhaled his smoking Legras powders, drank his coffee and entertained visitors there, it was crowded with furniture. We learn from a description by his housekeeper and faithful companion Céleste that there was, for instance, a large wardrobe between the two windows, and, in front of the wardrobe, so close that its doors could not be opened, a grand piano. Between the grand piano and the bed, an armchair as well as the three small tables which Proust used for three different purposes.

Other pieces of furniture—a bookcase, a work table that had belonged to Proust’s mother, a different sideboard—stood at various spots against the walls. Céleste had to squeeze her way in and out.

My guide pointed out the corner in which Proust’s bed had been placed, along the wall opposite the windows, and where he wrote a great deal of the novel. Standing between the head of the bed and the wall, an Oriental screen protected him from drafts and helped buffer him from the noise that came from the adjoining building, on the other side of the wall.

Noise from construction within the building or from next door was a continuing menace and plague for Proust during his years here, as we can see from the letters in the present collection. It was the neighbor on the entresol below, one Dr. Gagey, who was having work done on his apartment when Proust first moved in, in the last days of 1906, as we know from the complaints, sometimes humorous, in his other, voluminous letters.

Just as the work on Dr. Gagey’s apartment was ending and relief for Proust was in sight, work began in the building next door, where one Mme Katz was installing a new bathroom just a few feet from his head. (Kafka, at about this time, was recording the same sorts of complaints in his diaries, though he liked to turn them into small stories about what fantastic things these neighbors might be doing.)

After the death of his mother, Proust had made the decision not to continue living in the too-large, memory-haunted family apartment. This apartment at 102, Boulevard Haussmann was just one possible choice of residence among many which Proust had investigated by proxy, with the help of a host of friends and without moving from his temporary rooms in a hotel at Versailles. It is therefore surprising to realize that he was in fact a quarter-owner of the building at the time, his brother owning another quarter and his aunt the other half.

When he moved in, he considered the apartment to be no more than a transitional residence. It was the first he had ever lived in on his own, but it was a familiar part of his past: his mother had known it well, and his uncle had lived and died here—Proust had in fact visited him on his deathbed, in the same room that became his bedroom.

He later, through inattention, and without fully realizing the consequences, allowed his aunt to buy his own share and his brother’s, and thus had no say in the matter when she in turn decided, in 1919, to sell the building to a banker, who intended to convert the premises into a bank, obliging him to move, against his will, and in fact twice more. This was only three years before his death, and in Céleste’s opinion hastened his decline.

–Lydia Davis

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17
[summer 1915?]

Madame,

I had ordered these flowers for you and I am in despair that they are coming on a day when against all expectation I feel so ill that I would like to ask you for silence tomorrow Saturday. Yet as this request is in no way conjoined with the flowers, causing them to lose all their fragrance as disinterested mark of respect and to bristle with nasty thorns, I would like even more not to ask you for this silence.

If you are remaining as I am in Paris and if one evening I were not suffering too much, I would like since the Doctor and your son I believe have left and perhaps you are feeling a little lonely to come up sometime in the next few weeks to keep you company. But actually doing this encounters so many obstacles.

I have three times in the evening and with what difficulty hired rather leisurely cars to go see Clary, who Madame Rehbinder said was asking to see me. The 1st time I went with Madame de la Béraudière to the rue du Colisée where we were told he no longer lived and was at 32 rue Gali Colisée lée. At 32 rue Galilée the concierge got out of bed to tell us that he…did not know Clary. Madame Rehbinder corrected the mistake and told me that he lived at 33.

I went off again another evening when I rang at number 33 a fantastic house with no Clary. Finally on the 3rd attempt I got it right with number 37. But then, I mistook the floor the elevator went up to the top causing me to do the opposite of what the Doctor’s clients do each day ringing at my door. And when I went back down I felt [word missing: that] the concierge would not let me go up again, swearing to me that Clary had gone to bed.

Your very respectful and devoted
Marcel Proust

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18
[ July or August 1915]

Madame, I hope that you will not find me too indiscreet. I have had a great deal of noise these past few days and as I am not well, I am more sensitive to it. I have learned that the Doctor is leaving Paris the day after tomorrow and can imagine all that this implies for tomorrow concerning the “nailing” of crates. Would it be possible either to nail the crates this evening, or else not to nail them tomorrow until starting at 4 or 5 o’clock in the afternoon (if my attack ends earlier I would hasten to let you know).

Or else if it is indispensable to nail them in the morning, to nail them in the part of your apartment that is above my kitchen, and not that which is above my bedroom. I call above my bedroom that which is also above the adjoining rooms, and even on the 4th since a noise so discontinuous, so “noticeable” as blows being struck, is heard even in the areas where it is slightly diminished.

I confess that it bothers me very much to speak to you of such things and I am more embarrassed by it than I can say. My excuse for doing so today is perhaps first that I haven’t done it at all this year; then that the circulars of the Minister of War follow one another so rapidly and so contradictorily that my military situation, already settled three times it seemed is once again called into question.

I await my visit from the Major announced ten days ago and which has not yet occurred, something that gives me only too many reasons to live “keeping an ear out,” interferes with my fumigations which might bother him (since I don’t know the day or the hour of his coming) and thus leaving me more defenceless in the face of my ailments. Following upon your trip, this situation has prevented me from repeating a visit that had left upon me such a charming impression.

And your son is no longer here which saddens me also, for he at least could perhaps have “come down” if I cannot “go up” and I have with respect to him numerous debts which cry out to me about promises not kept. I don’t know if you have seen Clary at the Hôtel d’Albe. I have not been able to visit him yet and dread at the same time as I desire the emotion of such a moment.

Please accept Madame my very respectful greetings.
Marcel Proust

[P.S.] Don’t tire yourself out answering me!

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19
[9 or 10 August 1915]

Madame,

Since you have been so good as to ask me, you permit me to tell you very frankly. Yesterday at about 7:30 am, today at about 8, 8:15 I was a little bothered and you will understand why. Having had yesterday (at last) the visit from the Major who deferred me for a few months, I had promised myself to change my hours in order to be able to experience a little daylight.

And to start with, not having slept for several days, I had granted myself four hours of sleep to quiet an attack. And at 10 o’clock in the morning I was supposed to get up. But at 8 o’clock, the light little knocks on the floorboards above me were so precise, that the veronal was useless and I woke, only too early for my attack to have been quieted.

[Insertion of this little phrase below “woke”] This could have started before, I was asleep, I’m not saying that the loudest was at 8:15.

I had to give up my fine plans to change my hours, (which I will perhaps resume, but that does not depend on my will but on my health), take once again (since my attack is raging) medications upon medications, too much, which has made everything worse.— .

I tell you this since you ask me because I know that you understand this, the regret for a reform of myself will wait for such a long time, prevented by such little noises (to which in a few days the reform had it been successful would no doubt have made me indifferent). What bothers me is never continuous noise, even loud noise, if it is not struck, on the floorboards, (it is less often no doubt in the bedroom itself, than at the bend of the hallway). And everything that is dragged over the floor, that falls on it, runs across it.— .

It has been four days now that I have wanted to send you the vegetal reply to your Roses. The wait for the Major prevented me from sending it. At last I will be able to.— .

But I am disappointed: you had promised me you would ask me for some books, some illustrated ones, some Ruskin? It is perhaps heavy on your bed….

How I would like to know Madame how you are. I think of you all the time. Please be so kind as to accept my respectful gratitude

Marcel Proust

[Above the word “Madame,” on the first page] What I do not express to you because I am suffering so today that I can’t write, is my emotion, my gratitude for those letters you have written me, truly admirable and touching in mind and heart.

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From Letters to His Neighbor, translated by Lydia Davis. Used with permission of the publisher, New Directions. Translation copyright © 2017 by Lydia Davis.