de Charlus had had relations with only one woman, and it was precisely Odette.21 – It pains me to think that you are ill and cloistered, I would so much like nephritis and neuritis to be no more than a bad memory that would not prevent you in any way from leading a pleasant life. But I think that your company is worth more than that of others, which is for you a reason (quite personal) for appreciating solitude. Please accept Madame my very respectful greetings.
MARCEL PROUST
[autumn 1914]
Madame,
Forgive me for not having yet thanked you: it is I who have received marvellous roses described by you with ‘fragrance imperishable’22 but various which, in the evocations of the true poet that you are, cause the aroma, at every hour of the day, by turns, now to infiltrate the agatized chiaroscuro of the ‘Interiors’23 or now to expand within the fluent and diluted atmosphere of the gardens.
Only … I have been so ill these days (in my bed which I have not left and without having noisily opened or closed the carriage entrance as I have it seems been accused of doing) that I have not been able to write. Physically, it was impossible for me. Keep the Revues as long as you like. —. By an astonishing chance Gide, of whom we were speaking, and whom I have not seen for 20 years, came to see me while we were speaking of him in our letters. But I was not in a condition to receive him. Thank you again Madame for the marvellous pages flushed with a smell of roses. Your very respectful
MARCEL PROUST
The successor to the valet de chambre makes noise and that doesn’t matter. But later he knocks with little tiny raps. And that is worse.
[autumn 1914?]
Madame,
I am quite unwell as I write but I thank you deeply for the letter that has brought me I assure you a vision more enduring than a bouquet and as colourful. One after another lovely verses written in all periods to the glory of autumn roses the autumn rose of d’Aubigné ‘more exquisite than any other’ (an autumn rose is more exquisite than any other), Verlaine’s: ‘Ah! When will the roses of September bloom again,’ Gérard de Nerval’s ‘Rose with violet heart flower of Ste Gudule’ next to his trellis ‘where vine with rose unites’,24 not to mention the innumerable ‘mature roses’ of two poetesses my great friends whom I no longer see alas now that I no longer get up Mme de Noailles and Mme de Régnier, I have assembled in my memory a bouquet of all the written roses. Now yours seemed to me worthy of being added to them, and your prose of residing as neighbour with their verse. Upon your roses at dusk I would place this epigraph by Pelléas:
‘I am a Rose in the shadows.’25
Deign to accept Madame, this hasty and suffering expression of my respectful gratitude.
MARCEL PROUST
[end of 1914?]
Madame,
May my book have given you as much pleasure as I have had in reading your letter. Perhaps certain painful parts of it concerning the dawn, and also certain worldly scenes, are fairly accurate.26 But the descriptions in it hardly satisfy me.—I am not familiar with any of the regions you mention to me. But I have so often dreamed of them; and you, with your pictorial and sunlit words, have brought colour and light into my closed room. Your health has improved you tell me, and your life become more beautiful. I feel great joy over this. I cannot say the same for myself. My solitude has become even more profound, and I know nothing of the sun but what your letter tells me. It has thus been a blessed messenger, and contrary to the proverb, this single swallow has made for me an entire spring. Allow me to thank you for it, Madame, with all my heart, and asking you to remember me to the Doctor, to lay at your feet my most respectful regards.
MARCEL PROUST
[March 1915]
Madame,
Yesterday I was grieving most profoundly. After so many family and friends killed in the war, the dearest perhaps after M. Hahn (who is in Argonne but doing well) a person rare and delightful Bertrand de Fénelon has been killed.27 I did not believe that God could add to my pain, when I was informed of yours. And I have so much fallen into the habit, without knowing you, of sympathizing with your sorrows and your joys, through the wall where I sense you invisible and present, that this news of the death of Monsieur your brother has acutely saddened me.28 I always think of you a great deal, I will think of you even more since you are grieving. Alas I know that this sympathy is a small thing. When we are suffering, the only words that touch us are the words of those who have known the person we loved and who can recall him to us. I myself have only an experience of sadness that is already very old and almost uninterrupted. Please be so good as to remember me to the Doctor, would you also thank your son (whom I have never seen either!) and who it appears asks so kindly for news of me from my servant.
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