Proust's Overcoat - Lorenza Foschini [20]
Covering me in fur like a mink
His eyes not having spilled their black ink
Like a sylph on the ceiling, or on the snow a ski
Jean jumped on the table as if Nijinsky.
In The Captive, at a reception given by Mme Verdurin in honor of the violinist Morel, Baron Charlus gallantly offers to go look for the Narrator’s coat, but M. Brichot responds more quickly. Brichot returns, mistakenly having retrieved the Baron’s coat instead of the Narrator’s. The Baron is indignant: “But what’s this? That’s my coat he’s carrying. I would have been better off going myself.” Turning to the Narrator, he affectionately says: “Here, put this on your shoulders.” Then, “Do you realize this puts you in a very compromising position, mon cher? It’s as if we were both drinking out of the same glass; I’ll be able to read your thoughts.”
From the time he was a child, Proust dressed with extreme care, but in a very peculiar fashion. According to Léon Pierre-Quint, an early biographer, young Proust “looked like a cross between a refined dandy and an untidy medieval philosopher. He wore poorly knotted cravats under a turned-down collar, or large silk shirtfronts from Charvet in a creamy pink whose exact tint he spent a long time tracking down. He was slender enough to indulge in a double-breasted waistcoat, and sported a rose or an orchid in the buttonhole of his frock coat. He wore very light-colored gloves with black points, which were often soiled and crumpled; these he bought at Trois Quartiers because Robert de Montesquiou bought his there. A flat-brimmed top hat and a cane completed the elegant look of this slightly disheveled Beau Brummell. Even on the hottest days of summer he had on a heavy fur-lined coat, which became legendary among those who knew him.”
From the age of twenty, Proust dressed in this fashion. He never changed his look, which gave people the impression that time had stood still for him. It was as if he had been embalmed in his youth. For those who saw him for the first time, the effect was like coming upon an apparition. In his memoir, The Night Visitor, Proust’s friend Paul Morand described him as “a very pale man, encased in an old fur-lined coat; thick black hair cut at the nape of his neck, in the style of 1905, sticking out from under his gray bowler hat; his hands in slate-colored kid gloves holding on to a cane: a soft shadow of blue across the bottom of his dull ivory cheeks; his teeth were large and shiny; his mustache accentuated his heavy eyebrows; a velvety, deep regard emanated from darkened eyelids, which veiled his magnetism.”
Thus Proust sauntered among the sumptuous rooms of the Ritz. He would travel down the long corridor of the renowned hotel on place Vendôme, making his way to the restaurant, walking with a sort of unsteady slowness. As he entered, always perfectly aware of the stares focused on him, he was gawked at by the other diners. In a letter, Sir Philip Sassoon, the grandson of Baron Gustave de Rothschild, told an anecdote about Proust with characteristic sarcasm: “One of your most illustrious compatriots pleased me by saying, ‘The biggest thrill my wife and I brought home with us from Paris was seeing Monsieur Proust.’ I was very impressed, until he added, ‘He was the first man we’ve ever seen eating in a fur coat.’ ”
As the critic Edmond Jaloux remembered, Proust didn’t walk, he just “appeared.” And at the height of spring,