CP 03007/en

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Marcel Proust to Nicolas Cottin 22 October 1915

(Click on the link above to see this letter and its notes in the Corr-Proust digital edition, including all relevant hyperlinks.)

22 October 1915

My dear Nicolas

I am very late with my reply to you[1]. So late that I was worried that my note would no longer reach you at Belley[2]. But Céline[3] told me to risk it all the same. If I am so late it isn’t my fault. Griefs and cares have never ceased. I have spoken to you about my young Meyer cousins who have been at the front since the beginning. The youngest one has been killed[4] and I had to try to be at the service of their poor mother who is expecting the same fate for the others. And secondly, what nobody had foreseen, the liquidation of the Bourse, which we thought would be restored after the war, when shares had risen again slightly, happened at the end of September[5] . We have ten months to pay[6]. But to pay a hundred and fifty thousand francs it will still be necessary to find fifteen thousand francs every month and as the old saying goes money doesn’t grow on trees. Fortunately with regard to my advance on securities, the liquidation doesn’t affect it, and the moratorium delays the repayment. But the moratorium itself could soon come to an end! I’m sure that even beyond the consequences for you and our allies, you sympathize with the untold sufferings of the Serbs[7]. The massacres in Belgium were child’s play next to what is taking place in Serbia. It is not only the soldiers, but civilians too, all of them being wiped out. Clearly, when not a single Serb is left in Serbia, the Bulgarians will have all the cards in their hands to claim that there are only Bulgarian populations in Serbia, which they will then be obliged to annex. It makes one shudder to think that human beings can behave towards other human beings with such ferocity.

I hope you are fully recovered[8] and that I will soon have the pleasure of shaking your hand. Your devoted

Marcel Proust

[9] [10]

Notes

  1. ↑ The letter from Nicolas Cottin has not been found. Indeed not a single letter from Nicolas Cottin to Marcel Proust has ever turned up. Only two letters from Proust to Nicolas have been published to this day (CP 02123; Kolb, X, no. 66, and this one). On the other hand Philip Kolb found four letters from Proust to Céline Cottin (CP 01854, CP 01923, CP 01996 and CP 02972; Kolb, VIII, no. 110 and 179; IX, no. 71; XIV, no. 83). Nicolas Cottin was born in Brouillat, commune of Marizy (Saône et Loire), 30 January 1873 (register of births no. 6, Marizy, 5 E 279/11, online, image 3). First of all he was the Proust family valet, subsequently Marcel's valet, who then sometimes employed him as secretary (see his portrait by Paul Nadar in 1914). As a matter of fact, despite Cottin's poor spelling, Proust dictated at least one letter to him (CP 02277; Kolb, XI, no. 13) and numerous pages of drafts for his novel (see Anthony Pugh, "Sur le copiste de la première dactylographie", BIP, no. 31, 2000, p. 23-30 ; see also L'Agenda 1906, Introduction, note 19). Céline, as Céleste Albaret would be, was interviewed later about her recollections. In 1954 she recalled Nicolas's participation in Proust's writing in these words: "His pages were scattered everywhere. My husband collected them together for him using a little stapler. Sometimes Nicolas would even make corrections to what he wrote. [...] Monsieur would dictate phrases to Nicolas that he had forgotten." (Paul Guth, "À l'ombre des Marcel Proust", Le Figaro littéraire, 25 September 1954, p. 4.) It seems that Nicolas had just as little appreciation of his master as he had for his writing, because he told Céline: "It's annoying, but you'll see, he's going to be somebody" and, after the publication of Du côté de chez Swann he said: "His words are just as annoying as he is. But you wait and see, after he's dead he'll be a success..." (Céline quotes her husband in two interviews. See Paul Guth, op. cit.; et S. Ch.-M., "À la recherche de Combray. Céline – gouvernante de Marcel Proust – nous décrit la vie intime de son maître", La Tribune de Lausanne, 11 September 1960, p. 13). For an example of Nicolas Cottin's handwriting, see the added manuscript pages in the typescript of Du côté de chez Swann (NAF 16730, f. 5-6 r.). Also it seems that Nicolas's father, Lazare Cottin, gave Proust the idea for the character of Bloch's father, as revealed by two explanatory notes in Cahier 57: on a paperole in f. 47 r. and on f. 64 r., in an addition in the left margin (see RTP, t. IV, Esquisse LXVII, p. 971). For details in the civil registry about Lazare Cottin, born 13 March 1846, in Brouillat, see his registry of birth (no. 8, 14 March 1846, Marizy, 5 E 279/6, online, image 30), and his marriage to Anne Marie Magnin-Curt (14 January 1872, no. 1, Marizy, 5 E 279/9, online, image 1). We also learn that at that time Nicolas's father was a wheelwright and his mother a domestic servant and she was also an orphan (cf. birth certificate no. 4068, 7 October 1851, Lyon, 2E452, online, image 236). [FP, PW]
  2. ↑ Cottin had been mobilized mid-April 1914. In December 1914, Proust wrote to his mother's former chambermaid, Eugénie Lémel: "Nicolas is in the East, I'm not sure exactly where" (CP 05416; Reiner Speck collection, BPRS no. 59, cf. Cher Ami...Votre Marcel Proust. Marcel Proust im Spiegel seiner Korrespondenz / Marcel Proust et sa correspondance. Briefe und Autographen aus der / Lettres et autographes de la Bibliotheca Proustiana Reiner Speck, Cologne, Snoeck, 2009, p. 104 et 350). Then, in Carnet 4 (f. 38 r.), Proust notes down the exact address where Cottin had been since July 1915: "Nicolas Auxiliary Military Hospital no. 16 Belley Ain". The town of Belley (Ain) is where the 133e régiment d'Infanterie were stationed (Almanach Hachette 1915, p. 201). [PK, FP, PW]
  3. ↑ Marie Céline Augustine Pagnon was born 6 September 1879 (registry of birth, no. 1114, 7 September 1879, Paris Ie, V4E 2555, online, image 3). She married Nicolas Cottin on 26 September 1901 (registry of marriage no. 1741, Paris XVIIe, V4E 10244, online, image 3). At that date he was "employed" and she was a "cook", both living in the same street in the XVII arrondissement of Paris. They had one son, Antoine André Nicolas Cottin (1909-1966). At the time of his birth they were both resident at Marcel Proust's apartment, 102 boulevard Haussmann (cf. registry of birth no. 1269, 13 July 1909, Paris VIIIe, 8N 154, online, image 15). In 1918, two years after the death of his father, Antoine Cottin was "adopted by the Nation" (see the additional note in the margin of his birth certificate). [PW]
  4. ↑ Benjamin Jacques Daniel Mayer was killed at Artois 25 September 1915 ("Obituaries", Le Figaro, 6 October 1915, p. 4, col. 6). See also his military service record and his registry of birth no. 1590, 10 November 1886, Paris VIIIe, V4E 6074, online, image 4). He was the third son of Daniel Meyer, first cousin of Jeanne Proust. Proust made a visit of condolence to Daniel Meyer on 5 October (Kolb, XIV, "1915 Chronology", p. 19). See also the letter of [10 October 1915] to Madame Catusse (CP 03005). [PK, FP, PW]
  5. ↑ See Proust's letter to Lionel Hauser [mid-September 1915] (CP 03000; Kolb, XIV, no. 112). A decree had been announced on 16 September 1915 "with a view to assuring in the stock exchanges the values of fixed-term bonds held in suspension since the end of July 1914" ("The Liquidation of the Stock Exchange", Le Temps, 17 July 1915, p.3). [PK, FP]
  6. ↑ "Interests accrued during the moratorium [...] will be liable to be exacted from 4 October next [...] 10% on the day of settlement of said liquidations, and 10% on the day of settlements of liquidations from the end of October 1915 to the end of June 1916." ("The Liquidation of the Stock Exchange", Le Temps, 17 July 1915, p.3). See also the details provided in "The Financial Week", Le Temps, 20 September 1915 (p. 3). According to Céline Cottin's recollections, Proust loved to discuss stock exchange matters with Nicolas: "When they failed to agree, Monsieur would say: 'We are not of the same opinion!' And that would be an end of it." (interview with Paul Guth, op. cit., p. 4, col. 3.) [PK, FP, PW]
  7. ↑ Proust must have read the accounts about "The heroic Serbian resistance" in Le Temps, 19 October 1915 ("We draw attention to the unimaginable atrocities carried out by enemy troops on the civilian population on all fronts", p.4, col. 1), and about "Serbian heroism" in Le Figaro, 22 October ("the Serbian campaign takes on an ever more terrible aspect: even women and children have taken up arms against the invaders. Not a single Serb was taken prisoner by the Austro-Germans", p. 1, col. 5). [PK, FP]
  8. ↑ Nicolas Cottin was suffering from pleurisy contracted at the front. In March 1915, in a letter to Eugénie Lémel, former chambermaid of the family, Proust had passed on good news about Nicolas (CP 02924). And in July, he had been reassured that Nicoilas was in hospital, hence "safe", even writing to Céline: "Nicolas will soon be recovered" (CP 02972). But Cottin died on 4 July 1916 at Saint-Antoine hospital in Paris (see his military service record; and Proust's letter to Lionel Hauser of 4 July 1916, CP 03152; Kolb,XV, no. 88). See the letter from the War Ministry to Céline Cottin, 1 October 1916, on the subject of her war widow's pension (Sale of the collection of Marie Claude Mante, Sotheby's Paris, 24 May 2018, lot 167). Nicolas Cottin was buried at Champignol-lez-Mondeville (Aube) where his name is included on two war memorials, erected in 1924, one in the vilage and the other in the cemetery. After her husband's death Céline went back to live in her mother's vilage, to which Proust makes a humorous reference in an autograph dedication to Nicolas in a copy of Les Plaisirs et les Jours, making a play on words on the name of the village, where Céline had gone to visit her family, and the name of a play by Feydeau, Champignol malgré lui (CP 02123, Kolb, X, no. 66 ; and Paul Guth, op. cit., p. 4, col. 5). The son of Nicolas and Céline Cottin, Antoine Cottin, initially went to live in Champignol with his maternal great-uncle, Henri Privé, at least from 1921 (census for Champignol-lez-Mandeville, no. 176, image 7), then with his mother when she went back to join him (Céline Cottin appears in the censuses for Champignol-lez-Mondeville: in 1926, no. 153, with her son, no. 154, image 7; and in 1931, no. 148, image 6). Céline remarried in this parish, on 11 February 1933, with Edmond Ferdinand Antoine (born 27 August 1882. Registry of birth no. 10, Champignol-lez-Mondeville, 4E07613, online, image 237) who was a wine-grower, like Céline's brother. She died fifty two years after Nicolas Cottin, on 19 January 1968, in a neighbouring parish, at Bar-sur-Aube (see the marginal note on her registry of birth, see note 3). On the subject of Céline and Nicolas Cottin at Champignol, see Carole Legris, "Un couple de Champignol-lez-Mondeville au service de Marcel Proust", L'Est éclair, 27 August 2018. [FP, PW]
  9. ↑ Translation notes:
  10. ↑ Contributors: Yorktaylors
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