CP 02992/en
Marcel Proust to Lionel Hauser Friday [27 August 1915]
Friday[1]
My dear Lionel
I actually wrote to you straight away to express my deep gratitude but my letter has been unlucky. Taken straight to Boulevard Flandrin[2] because it was too late for the rue de la Victoire[3], they said you no longer lived there. So the next day I sent it to the rue de la Victoire, you weren’t there[4]. Today (which makes it forty eight hours without you having any means of knowing that I am not ungrateful, which makes me feel ill) I sent back to the rue de la Victoire to ask for your new address (which should have been done in the first place) and they refused to give it out[5]. So I am going to send this note back again to rue de la Victoire in the hope that one day or another you will know of my gratitude.
You are very kind (and I fear a little mocking), when you say you read my letter with interest; because there is nothing more boring, except on the part of the questioner, than these requests for advice. But you can easily understand that in my case I read your reply with great interest, because in it you deal with general questions, such as the exchange rate, which I read as if it were an article in the Revue de Paris, only better written. In the meantime the director of the Agence du Crédit Industriel has come back from three months’ leave and sent me a detailed table of gains and losses. I should just say losses because nothing has gone up. On taking a closer look at the Rothschild account (I wanted to send you it but I was afraid of boring you to death) I see that the Jutland and the Dutch have too little presence to be of any use. On the other hand might large groups of Bank of Spain, Rio, La Plata, Santa Fé, Chilean 5%, Russia, perhaps benefit from the point of view of exchange rates? Don’t trouble yourself writing back to me. I’ll ask the Crédit Industriel and shudder that he might tell me that I need to sell. Because then I will have to confront Monsieur Neuburger. As for the shares that are not giving any interest, such as the Doubowaïa Balka, I would naturally prefer to sell them. But the capital has fallen too low. As for the Gold Mines, I don’t know if the war will profit them. But then they provide a good income.
I didn’t understand what you told me about my broker, but as I am not obliged to raise the securities[6], it is all the same to me. Moreover those shares are lower than in June. Nevertheless I’m going to write to him that he can put a stop to the gamble[7], if he wishes. You have been of course kind, clever, delightful, in all of your advice and giving it to me so quickly and in so much detail. But it seems to me (and I say this very affectionately), that you have been a little less so when you said you were happy that I had been assigned into the armed services because you know very well that in my current state of health it would be the death of me in forty eight hours. To be sure there is nothing pleasant about the life I lead and even knowing that I can be of no use whatsoever to the army, I am making myself useful by allowing myself to be excluded. But I very much want to finish the book I have started and put into it the truths that I know will give many people sustenance and which otherwise will perish along with me. But anyway (and this is my primary reason for my delay in thanking you) just after I received your letter I was unexpectedly informed of the visit of some new military doctors, to my great astonishment because I had been deferred for six months (no doubt due to the Dalbiez act[8]). The consequence was that on the contrary I am being put forward for Discharge. I hope I am not causing you any distress by telling you this.
Ne prends toute cette dernière partie de ma lettre que comme elle est écrite, c'est-à-dire « cum grano salis » et en revanche que ce soit dans la plénitude de son sens que tu veuilles bien croire à ma reconnaissante affection.
Marcel Proust
Ne dis à personne ce que je t'ai dit de mon frère[9] car il n'en a parlé à personne, je ne l'ai su qu'indirectement, cela n'a jamais interrompu ses travaux et j'espère qu'il en triomphera.
P. S. Maintenant que j'ai été revisité, je tâcherai de faire une ou deux tentatives de sortie. La première sera pour aller te remercier si je peux te joindre. Et je te demanderai si tu possèdes mon livre illustré par Madeleine Lemaire (les Plaisirs et les Jours). Sinon je serai heureux de te l'envoyer, il est assez joli à regarder pour que même sans prendre la peine de le lire, tu puisses trouver du plaisir à en examiner les dessins. peut-être je te l'ai donné autrefois. Je ne me souviens plus.
J'ai trouvé (je saute au premier sujet) que les Obligations d'Égypte, les Chemins fédéraux suisses, les Tunisiennes, la Rente, le Suez ont bien baissé pour les vendre. Je me suis arrêté provisoirement à l'Azote et à la Compagnie des Eaux.