CP 02993/en
Lionel Hauser to Marcel Proust 28 August 1915
(Click on the link above to see this letter and its notes in the Corr-Proust digital edition, including all relevant hyperlinks.)
28 August 1915
My dear Marcel,
I have just received your long letter which I just read again with great interest even though that ruffles you.
I’m really sorry to hear about all the trips your domestic servants have been making backwards and forwards with the sole purpose of demonstrating your gratitude to me before I even had time to doubt it.
As regards your zealous messenger[1] to whom you have entrusted the pains of discovering my address, I don’t know who he asked, but if he came to rue de la Victoire he must surely not have come up to my office because none of us has seen him here for quite some time.
This will explain the allusion you make to my absences from the office, when I have not missed a single day since April.
If your messenger asked the concierge, he has only got himself to blame, I hope in any case that he doesn’t do it again.
My new address is 18, avenue de l’Observatoire where I hope to have the pleasure one day or another of a visit from you, in spite of the five floors and the absence of a lift.
That said, I grant you in the future a minimum of forty eight hours to express your gratitude so you do not need to fall over yourself for that, but between you and me let it be said that the act of answering you immediately, having nothing else to do, and with all the sincerity due to our close and ancient friendship bestows to me a fresh claim to your gratitude, being the occasion for a new manifestation of appreciation.
Passing on now to the part of my letter[2] which almost made you doubt the purity of my feelings towards you, you must understand that it is very difficult for me to have a clear idea of your exact physical state. Which is why, after a major in the French army has examined you and declared you fit for military service, I am required, until proven otherwise, to bow to his diagnosis. I hoped therefore that it was he who was correct and you who were wrong, but your new communication disabuses me of all hope in that regard. It remains for me then to hope that following the example of your erstwhile confrère, Voltaire, you succeed in spite of your wavering health, to outlive all of your generation.
In reply to the P.S. to your aforesaid remarks, I hasten to say that I don’t possess your book: Les Plaisirs et les Jours, and if you are happy to send it to me I will be more glad still to receive it. I shall not confine myself to merely looking at the pictures but I shall even take the trouble to read carefully what your natural modesty prevents you from recommending the reading of.
I send you my sincere thanks in advance and beg you to believe, my dear Marcel,
I am your most devoted
Notes
- ↑ Kolb supposes that this means Céleste Albaret, Proust not having any other known servants at this period. [PK,FP]
- ↑ In his letter of 24 August 1915 (CP 02991; Kolb, XIV, no. 103), Hauser jokes about the news that a major had found Proust "fit for the armed forces", with a six month adjournment (as Proust had told him in his letter of 23 August, CP 02990; Kolb, XIV, no. 102). Proust announced the same news to Lucien Daudet in a letter of [8 August 1915] (CP 02989; Kolb, XIV, no. 101). [FP]
- ↑ Translation notes: Hauser refers to the zealous messenger (le messager zélé) as "he" because the noun "le messager" is masculine. Kolb assumes that the messenger was actually Céleste, but I have retained the masculine pronoun used by Hauser. (Yorktaylors).
- ↑ Contributors: Yorktaylors