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CONAN BELLEVILLE Hôtel d’Ainay

629 - 1 - Marcel PROUST (1871–1922).
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Estimate €1,500 - €2,000
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Description
Marcel PROUST (1871–1922). Autograph letter signed ‘Marcel’ [to Maurice Levaillant (1884–1961), poet and writer], 6 pp., in-8. [Paris] “44 rue Hamelin”, undated [March or April 1921]. Unbound (small holes in the margins) A moving letter from Proust, physically greatly weakened by illness, discussing the publication of *The Guermantes Way*. He mentions three of his close friends (Robert de Monterquiou, Robert de Flers and Madeleine Lemaire). “I am finding it very difficult to write to you as I have been struck by asthma attacks of unprecedented severity; for the first time in my life, I am being given morphine injections, but this does not ease them, and merely leaves me feeling quite dazed. I cannot regret my suffering, for it is likely due to having gone out ‘in the open’ last week to secure a grant of 12,000 francs for a writer who is deserving in every respect. I tell you that I am writing to you—no, I am replying to you—for I have not been able to make out a single word of your letter. You and I have replaced writing with drawing; mine is dreadful, yours delightful, but no more legible. If you see Montesquiou, please be so kind as to tell him of my pitiful state so that he may excuse me. I suppose it is to [Henri] Vonoven that I owe the note in *Le Figaro*. I would have been delighted if it had been reported that, whilst I was being made a Knight, my brother, Professor Proust—chief surgeon of the 10th Army during the war—was promoted to the rank of officer. It is no doubt too late now. Perhaps the publication of *The Guermantes Way*, which I shall send you in the next few days (as soon as it is published), will allow for this mention. But perhaps you have been following Flers in *Le Gaulois*. In that case, it would be much easier. Dear friend, if you recall that I ‘picked you up’ last summer (fatigue is suddenly preventing me from finishing my letter). In short, I’m desperate for you to come and have dinner by my bedside—or at the Ritz—once this dreadful asthma attack has passed, and then for things to carry on from there. With affection, Marcel. One isn’t allowed to be dying. Montesquiou wrote to me saying that it wasn’t my health that had prevented me from seeing him for the past 15 years. And Maître Lemaire writes to me that if I do not maintain a regular correspondence with her, it is because I am an established author. I am not an established author, but a man at the end of his life, who is comforted if he sees you a few times.” Marcel Proust, Correspondence, text edited, introduced and annotated by Philip Kolb, Paris, Plon, vol. XX, 1921, 1992, 713 pp.
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About the sale A SCHOLAR-COLLECTOR’S LIBRARY Part 2: 19th- and 20th-century literature
Auction location
Auction time 10/14/2026 at 2:30 PM
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