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By Root 578 0

for a last time by worldly pleasure, once more went out frequently, mainly to the Ritz, where he would dine alone, very late, or with an amusing, nonstop raconteur—the society priest Abbé Mugnier, or Walter Berry, Edith Wharton’s American lover, or the prince de Polignac (whose wife was the American sewing-machine heiress Winnaretta Singer). He went out so often because he had found in the Ritz a populous, luxurious, congenial salon, a place where he was cosseted by the waiters and could dine even after midnight. The headwaiter, Olivier Dabescat, knew everyone in high society and supplied Proust with dozens of anecdotes for his book. Proust was also bewitched by a young couple, the princesse Soutzo and her lover, the talented writer Paul Morand; their physical beauty and exquisite polish excited him, and he joined them frequently at the Ritz for dinner or a chamber music recital. In 1918 Proust was giving as many as three dinner parties a week at the Ritz.

In order to find the energy for these sorties—and for his marathon sessions of writing and correcting proofs—Proust abused stimulants such as adrenaline and caffeine, which of course led to the necessity of taking calming substances such as opium at bedtime. His already fragile health was further weakened through these excesses, and he began to suffer from dizzy spells that caused him to fall down, even several times in a day, and to undergo passing attacks of aphasia—when he was unable to recall a word, or if he knew it, to pronounce it.

Despite his deteriorating health and arduous work schedule, Proust was now forced to find new lodgings. His aunt, who owned his building, sold it to a bank and ousted her nephew; he found temporary refuge in the noisy, dusty house of the famous actress Réjane (one of the originals for Proust’s character the actress Berma) on the rue Laurent-Pichat before taking a permanent place at 44 rue Hamelin. Even in the midst of these wrenching dislocations, Proust kept his sense of humor. For instance, he wrote his best friend, Madame Straus, that his aunt had just sent him “a masterpiece” of a letter in which she said she preferred the “sweet name of aunt to that of owner” and that now that she had sold the building out from under her sick nephew they would be able to discuss “literature and not domestic matters.”

At the end of June 1919, now that the war was over, Gallimard was at last able to bring out three of Proust’s books: a reissue of Swann’s Way, the first-ever publication of Within a Budding Grove, and a collection of Proust’s pastiches and other short pieces, many of them written fifteen or even twenty years earlier. By the end of the year Proust had received France’s most prestigious literary award, the Goncourt Prize, for Within a Budding Grove, although not without actively courting the judges with expensive presents and fine meals. And not without controversy. The vote was just six to four in Proust’s favor; a noisy faction of the public and press denounced the decision, which they saw as the coronation of an invalid who lived in the past (“a talent from beyond the tomb,” as one journalist put it) and had never fought in the war. Proust was considered far less deserving than Roland Dorgelès, who had written a stirring, patriotic war epic, The Wooden Crosses (later made into a successful French film in the 1930s).

On the Right, a spokesman for the war veterans denounced Proust’s election with fire and scorn. Leftists pointed out that Proust had garnered the vote of Léon Daudet, an old friend (as the older brother of Lucien) and a co-founder, along with the writer Charles Maurras, of the anti-Semitic, jingoistic political party Action Française. No matter that Proust himself had been a Dreyfusard at a time when Léon was vigorously anti-Dreyfusard. No matter that Proust had quite recently taken a stand against a chauvinist manifesto signed by Maurras (among others) calling for an “intellectual federation” under the aegis of France, the “guardian of all civilization,” a concept that Proust dismissed as sloppy thinking, since he believed