Marcel Proust_ A Life - Edmund White [45]
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PROUST’S WAR YEARS were devoted to his work. He would fearlessly travel across the city in search of a detail and would think nothing of waking up a family after midnight in order to quiz the members about an ancient anecdote or to visit the headwaiter at the Ritz in order to go over a piece of time-honored gossip. He wrote literally thousands of letters, many of them to obtain precise information about a certain dress worn in the 1890s or a famous witticism uttered during the Belle Epoque.
But he was not entirely immersed in the happier past. He kept careful track of the war as it unfolded all around him. His principal worry was that despite his terrible health he might be called up for military service, and he was not declared unfit until well into the war. He was also stunned by the deaths of his friends, especially that of Bertrand de Fénelon, who was killed in battle on December 17, 1914. In 1917 Emmanuel Bibesco, afflicted with a terminal disease, committed suicide. Many other friends died in the war.
His home life has been unforgettably rendered by his maid, Céleste Albaret, in her book of “as told to” memoirs, Monsieur Proust. She recounts how after her husband went off to war, she was Proust’s sole servant, and how she adapted herself to Proust’s schedule. She would mother Proust all night long, bringing him things to drink or eat, filling his hot-water bottles, sometimes preparing him for his rare midnight sorties, since he was afraid to go out any earlier, before the day’s dust had settled. If he did go out, he would give Céleste a full report on what the ladies wore, who was cheating on whom, how they were related to the people he’d known in his youth, and so on. He never asked her to sit but kept her standing for hours as he excitedly recited his impressions from his bed. She would then retire around eight or nine in the morning and awaken around two in the afternoon.
Céleste’s great anxiety was Proust’s morning (or afternoon) coffee. It had to be ready the moment he rang for it, but the preparation took at least half an hour, since he liked the water to be dripped, drop by drop, through the grounds, in order to produce the thickest, strongest possible “essence” of coffee. Nor could he bear for it to be reheated, which he could detect right away by the burned taste; if Proust did not ring soon after the coffee was ready, she would have to pour it out and start the whole process all over again. Only in her bedroom and in the kitchen were the curtains ever opened. Daylight never penetrated into the other rooms. Nor could the windows be opened to air the apartment until the master went out, which was never before ten at night. At the same time she was at last allowed to do the housework and make up the master’s bed.
When she complained to Proust that he never let her go to mass on Sunday, he replied very sweetly, “Céleste, do you know that you are doing something far more noble and far greater than going to mass? You’re giving your time to care for a sick man. That’s infinitely finer.” And yet he cared for her genuinely, too, showering her with gifts, taking her education in hand, and chiding her when she did embroidery instead of reading. Only his mother and Céleste ever gave him the unconditional love that he expected. At Cabourg Proust would knock on the wall between their rooms to summon Céleste, just as the Narrator knocks to call his feeble, adoring grandmother. Céleste stayed with Proust