Letters to the Lady Upstairs. Lydia Davis
in a second reversal: Odette is the only woman with whom Charlus will have slept (a feature that in fact will not be retained in the final text of the novel and that was perhaps inspired in Proust by the brief and dramatic affair between Montesquiou and Sarah Bernhardt). One has to grasp the overall design of the book, says Proust, which is not possible unless one knows the content of the two following volumes (actually, The Guermantes Way and Time Found Again: at this stage of the composition, Proust believed he would be able to confine himself to a novel in three volumes).
And what of the husband – the absent figure in this comedy? The terzo incomodo? The dentist, who moved his practice to Deauville during the summer months, makes an appearance in In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, described in this way by Albertine: ‘That little old fellow with the dyed hair and yellow gloves, well, he’s nicely turned out, not bad looking, he’s the Balbec dentist, a good guy.’ It is extraordinary to see how Proust allows nothing of his own life to be wasted. One might well suppose, then, that one could put a real name to each character, a real event to each event in his fiction.
Another figure often neglected by Proust’s biographers appears here, and that is Clary, an old friend of his and a descendant of a family linked to Napoleon. He was also a friend of Mme Williams. He was ill, and went blind (Proust was to use this feature for Charlus as an old man), and found solace in his religious faith, a fact emphasized by Proust in terms we don’t find elsewhere: ‘I have learned through some friends very dear to him one thing which I tell you in confidence for it is a very delicate subject but one which makes me very happy because I believe that this may be for him a great consolation: I mean an awakening of a profoundly religious life, an ardent and profound faith.’
The tone of the letters is that of friendship, of ever growing intimacy, between two solitary people. Proust expresses the wish to go upstairs to the upper floor to listen to music, and he did go up at least once,3 took an interest in the Williamses’ young son (born in 1904; Proust watched him grow up, took pleasure in his visits, wanted to give him presents), and in Mme Williams’s health, and he lavished little comforts on her.
Lovely metaphors, and emotion, and irony, and rhythm: these are the letters of a great writer. We are induced to change our mind about Proust’s correspondence. When the first edition of the Correspondance générale [General correspondence] was published in six small volumes, edited first by Robert Proust and Paul Brach, and then, for volume 6, by Suzy Mante-Proust (with the assistance of Philip Kolb), between 1930 and 1936, there were cries of sycophancy, frivolous attachment to materiality, snobbery, and, finally, tedium. Some critics even imagined that it would be enough to read a selection. The truth is that, to an unimaginable degree, Proust puts himself in the place of the person whom he is addressing, pushing divination to the point of total fusion. He experiences the feelings of the other before the latter himself has become entirely aware of them; he imagines and feels better than does his interlocutor. He interrupts him to speak in his place.
We do not have the last letters sent to Mme Williams by Proust. Might they have contained touching farewells? Will they resurface one day like so many others, after having slumbered in unknown collections? The dentist left Boulevard Haussmann at the same time as Proust. Constrained to leave by the sale of the building, he moved on May 31, 1919. Proust did not talk to anyone about Mme Williams. As for her, she met a sad end: after divorcing the dentist, she married the great pianist Alexander Brailowsky, thus fulfilling a love of music that the dentist could hardly satisfy except with the sound of his drill. Then, in 1931, in a last and tragic piece of drama, she committed suicide. It had been a long time since Proust was there to make her laugh and comfort her.
As it stands, this dialogue, of which we can hear only one voice, being obliged to reconstruct the other from its reflection, its echo, has the beauty of those damaged statues on the Reims Cathedral as they were described by Proust, when he was sent their photograph by his neighbour.
JEAN-YVES TADIÉ
The notes can be found at the end of the book, beginning here.
These letters were placed in the collection of the Musée des Lettres et Manuscrits [Museum of Letters and Manuscripts] by the grandson of Mme Williams several years before its doors were closed in late 2014.
Like most of Proust’s letters, they are not dated. We have therefore chosen to order them in the way that seemed the most logical, being guided to a certain extent by the development of the friendship and allusions to the work being done in the building, the sending of flowers, the war, Joachim Clary, and Proust’s publications. These have allowed us to propose hypothetical dates.
We have respected Proust’s orthography, with the exception of his abbreviations. Words underlined by him are printed in italics, as are the titles of works.
A note on the English-language edition
In the light of some new information that became available during the preparation of this translation, the dating and order of some of the letters have been changed from what they were in the French edition, as have, consequently, the order and numbering of the endnotes. The English-language edition will therefore not match the French edition at every point, for those who may have both and want to compare.
[end of 1908?]
Madame,
Your letters are ‘Parthian Letters’. You give me so great a desire, and almost your permission, to see you: and then at the very moment that I receive the letter, you have left! My most ardent hope is that the coming year may bring the softening, I won’t say the forgetting since memory is the proud treasure of wounded hearts, of the trials which the year that is ending has brought you. In this hope I include with you the Doctor, whom I do not know, but whose praises I hear sung by Madame Straus, by everyone.4 And very particularly your son who had promised to express his desires to me so that I could satisfy them and whose discretion, please tell him, is not at all friendly. Please accept Madame my gratitude for your kind concern for my rest, my most respectful greetings.
MARCEL PROUST
[end of 1908 – beginning of 1909?]
1 a.m.
Madame,
I thank you with all my heart for your beautiful and good letter and come to ask you on the contrary to allow all possible noise to be made starting now. I had in fact not anticipated a shortness of breath so severe that it prevents me from trying to sleep. Noise will therefore not bother me in the least (and will be all the more relief for me on a day on which I could rest).5 It saddens me very much to learn that you are ill. If bed does not bore you too much I believe that in itself it exerts a very sedative effect on the kidneys. But perhaps you are bored (though it seems to me [word skipped: difficult?] to be bored with you). Couldn’t I send you some books. Tell me what would distract you, I would be so pleased. Don’t speak of annoying neighbours, but of neighbours so charming (an association of words contradictory in principle since Montesquiou claims that most horrible of all are 1st neighbours 2nd the smell of post offices) that they leave the constant tantalizing regret that one cannot take advantage of their neighbourliness.6
Be so good Madame as to recall me to the Doctor and accept my respectful and grateful greetings.
MARCEL PROUST
Despite