Letters to the Lady Upstairs

MARCEL PROUST

Excuse this letter written at the moment of getting into the train.

6

[autumn 1909?]

Dear Monsieur,

I am sending you my little (and very old!) Portraits of Painters.8 You have them already in my illustrated volume Pleasures and Days (I think you have received it, not through the post like the Ruskin, it must have been conveyed to you by hand) but the music is very difficult to read in the book, and is much better engraved in these little pieces into which, if Madame Williams, whose admirable talent I know, is curious to cast a glance, she will not be unpleasantly bothered as in the book, by the rather fuzzy look of the fac simile [sic]. Today’s fog is provoking in me such attacks that I scarcely have the strength to trace these words, so that I’m afraid I will be even more illegible than the musical fac-similes [sic]. It is this that is preventing me, exhausted by suffering and having wanted all the same before trying to rest a little in the evening to send up to you the pieces which I have received only just now, so late, from expressing to you the thanks which I owe you for a charming letter already a little old to which I would have liked to respond in a manner a little more detailed, but I am enduring at the moment such bad days that I am a very bad correspondent. Always prepared however to respond to you with exactness if you had something to ask me.

Please be so kind as to accept Monsieur the expression of my very devoted feelings.

MARCEL PROUST

7

[autumn 1909?]

102 Boulevard Haussmann

Monsieur,

As I so often expose you to the effects of my troubles by asking you when my asthma attacks are too intense to procure me a little silence, – I think it is only fair that when I have something agreeable I ask you to share it with me. I hope that you will be willing to accept these four pheasants with as much simplicity as I put into offering them to you as neighbour. I will also permit myself to send you a few of my works. Unfortunately my articles from the Figaro are not yet collected in books and it is perhaps this that would most have interested you.9 But I will be able meanwhile to present you with the rest. I implore your help for Monday the 19th the day after tomorrow. I must make the great effort to try to go out in the evening and as I have attacks of asthma all night long, if in the morning there is hammering above me it’s all over for the whole day for resting, my attack will not stop and my evening out is impossible.

Please accept, Monsieur, the expression of my highest regards.

MARCEL PROUST

8

[December 17, 1909]

Friday

Marcel Proust begs Madame Williams to be so kind as to accept his respectful and enchanted thanks, for the beautiful and artistic letter which she has had the grace and has done him the honour of writing to him. He would be most grateful to her if she would be his spokeswoman with the Doctor to request that there not be too much noise tomorrow Saturday, since he has to go out for a while in the evening. He will not fail as soon as his friend Mr Hahn is back from Aix la Chapelle where he has gone to conduct Prométhée to communicate to him the gracious praise.10

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