CP 03007/en
Marcel Proust tp Nicolas Cottin 22 October 1915
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 payr[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
Notes
- ↑ 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 n° 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 later, 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."
- ↑ Note 2
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- ↑ Translation notes:
- ↑ Contributors: