Translations:CP 03007/30/en
- ↑ 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."