Proust's Overcoat - Lorenza Foschini [18]
Next to this painting, scattered about on the pavement, Guérin saw what he realized must have been items from Marcel Proust’s toiletry set, identifying them by their engraved initials. Guérin was well aware that anyone would consider these brushes virtually worthless without the knowledge of whose hair they had combed, but knowing to whom these brushes belonged made them virtually priceless.
Guérin spotted two gilded wooden candelabra that had once pompously crowned the rosewood bookcases in the Proust family’s living room on rue de Courcelles. (They can be seen in a photograph of Mme. Proust absorbed in her reading.) Underneath these, Guérin identified the rug that had once covered Proust’s bedroom floor. He poked about in a box and came upon some fragile objects thrown together: a piece of jade that had been a gift from Anne de Noailles; an elegant leather case from Cartier containing a coral tie pin; and, unbelievably, the Legion of Honor medal which had once made Proust so proud. (“It’s not the gift itself that so charms me, Céleste; it’s the delicacy of the gesture and the thought.”) Taking this small object in his hands, Guérin recalled a note from Cocteau from among the letters in the hatbox Werner had brought him, congratulating Proust for this honor: “On you the red ribbon makes sense, and I embrace you.”
Guérin also spotted an elaborate pigskin cane, a gift to Proust from the Marquis d’Albufera, embellished with a gold tip on which the initials M.P. were engraved. Proust was clutching this cane in a photograph that was to become famous, one that Guérin felt was incorrectly referred to as Proust Leaving the Jeu de Paume. It was Guérin’s belief that the photograph had been taken long before that visit to the Jeu de Paume, when Proust had experienced a distressing dizziness, which in his novel he came to attribute to Bergotte.
Guérin was overwhelmed, but also insatiable. Not satisfied with these astonishing finds, he scowled at Werner. He said he wanted to see more.
The young dealer didn’t respond. Instead, he turned and went inside the shed and climbed down a stairway into the basement. Guérin followed close behind. For a collector, the latent mystery embodied in other people’s belongings can ignite a covetous desire—part longing, part fulfillment—of unquantifiable value. In this particular instance, more was at stake than simple egotistical voraciousness. The thrill driving Guérin was no longer merely that of a collector, but of a savior.
Guérin followed Werner to the back of the underground space, pulled as if by a magnetic force toward some unknown revelation. What he found there, blackened and oxidized, still draped in its worn blue satin fabric, was Proust’s brass bed, covered in dust. It had been his from the age of sixteen. Throughout the many years, throughout the endless nights of insomnia, Proust lay on this very bed composing his magnum opus. It was on this bed that Proust died on November 18, 1922. Walter Benjamin described this humble bed as the place where Proust “found himself torn apart by nostalgia for a changed world.” In Benjamin’s mind, there were only two moments in history when such a “scaffolding” was rigged up. The first was “when Michelangelo, lying prone, his head thrown back, painted the creation of the world on the Sistine ceiling.” Then came “the bed on which the ailing Proust lay, pen in his raised hand, covering innumerable pages in writing consecrated to the creation of his own microcosmic world.”
Guérin was so moved that tears began to well up and roll down his face. He felt that fate had rewarded him handsomely for his diligence in searching out and seeking to preserve these earthly remains of a literary deity.
The deal was quickly made. He had Werner move everything to his house on rue Berton. Guérin set aside a whole room of his house to re-create Proust’s rue Hamelin bedroom, where his bed, his bookcase, his desk, and various smaller personal effects