CP 02902/en
Marcel Proust to Lucien Daudet [30 or 31 January 1915]
(Click on the link above to see this letter and its notes in the Corr-Proust digital edition, including all relevant hyperlinks.)
My dear little one,
I was very sorry to learn that you are still unwell. Have you had a high fever? Have you stayed in bed[2] ? I was also sorry to not have been able to write to you. The day before I received word from you[3], I was out for the first time in an extremely long time, (close to two and a half months[4]) and I had gone on a whim, around midnight (after having let her know) to Madame Edward’s[5]; an evening about which there is too much to say for the constraints of one letter[6], but which had left me shattered. In the following days, it was Céleste (now my only housemaid) who was tired, so that I couldn’t send her to visit you. Moreover, since I’ve been more unwell (which doubtless you didn’t know), my hours have once again become later, and at the time when I know that I would be able to have guests, I wouldn’t dare send you a message, and I’m sure in any case that you wouldn’t have been able to come without advance warning. My dear little one, these details are frightfully boring, but it's so that you know that I like nothing more than to see you, and if it weren’t impossible I would’ve seen you. I consoled myself by reading your brother's dazzling book, to whom I have not yet written[7]. But we are in less of a hurry for the things we admire than for polite words. I believe that you received a letter from me in Tours a month ago[8]. In the end, the businesslike formality of responding with “I have received your letter of the” is comfortably reassuring.
My dear little one, I stay silent due to a plethora of things to say, and moreover we don’t maintain “a correspondence,” so it’s too difficult to start. Tell me when you can come, and let me embrace you tenderly.
Your
Marcel
Notes
- ↑ This letter dates from around the end of January 1915: it alludes to the recipient’s illness (see note 2), and to “your brother’s dazzling book” (note 7). As she proceeds from two or three days with the following letter to Lucien Daudet, and it was sent within the same envelope (see CP 02905; Kolb, XIV, no. 16), it must be dated from 30 or 31 of January 1915. [PK, FL]
- ↑ Madame Daudet notes in her Journal de famille et de guerre 1914-1919 (Paris, Fasquelle, 1920, p. 84), on the date of Sunday 31 [January 1915]: “The following day of Odile’s baptism, Lucien returned to me with severe bronchitis, overwhelming fatigue”, and she “dreads the moment that he will leave”. Given that Odile Chauvelot’s baptism took place on Friday 15 January 1915, Lucien therefore had returned to Paris sick on Saturday 16 January, and on Sunday 31st, he had not yet left to go back to Tours. [PK, FL]
- ↑ Letter not found. This “word” from Lucien Daudet asking if he could come and visit Proust must date from the weekend of 9-10 January 1915. In fact, returning to Paris with bronchitis, he wouldn’t have proposed visiting Proust on Saturday the 16th, nor during the fortnight when he remained ill. This letter could not be dated to more than a few days before Saturday or Sunday, 30 or 31 January: Proust speaks about his outing which clashed with Daudet’s visit in the pluperfect, as an event largely anterior to the moment of writing the present letter, and he underlines the fact that Céleste Albaret had been tired "several days" afterwards, the reason why he had not been able to send a messenger. - For the date of his exceptional outing that had tired him too much to be able receive Lucien Daudet as a visitor the next day, see note 5 below. [FL]
- ↑ Note 4
- ↑ Note 5
- ↑ Note 6
- ↑ Note 7
- ↑ Note 8
- ↑ Translation notes:
- ↑ Contributors: Cbunning, IAndrews