diminution to humanity that will be consummated on the day when the arches that are already half burnt away collapse forever on those angels who without troubling themselves about the danger still gather marvellous fruits from the lush stylized foliage of the forest of stones.’ Worse than the destruction of stones is the death of men, and in witness to this is a very beautiful letter of condolence to Mme Williams in which Proust mentions the death of Bertrand de Fénelon, of which he speaks in all his letters of this period and which will be represented in the novel by the death of Robert de Saint-Loup, before he speaks to her of the death of her brother: ‘I myself have only an experience of sadness that is already very old and almost uninterrupted.’
Mme Williams took an interest in Proust’s writing. He was therefore careful to explain to her that it was not enough to have read Swann’s Way and the excerpts of the next volume published in La Nouvelle Revue Française in 1914 if she were to understand his novel. ‘But will these detached pages give you an idea of the 2nd volume? And the 2nd volume itself doesn’t mean much; it’s the 3rd that casts the light and illuminates the designs of the rest. But when one writes a work in 3 volumes in an age when publishers want only to publish one at a time, one must resign oneself to not being understood, since the ring of keys is not in the same part of the building as the locked doors.’ He also wanted her to know that the characters appeared very different from what they would be in the next volume, very different from what they were in reality. And he takes up, again, the example of Baron de Charlus, whom one believes to be Odette’s lover, whereas Swann is right to entrust him with his mistress (since Charlus is not attracted to women). And yet, he is also wrong, Proust declares, 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
