Proust's Overcoat - Lorenza Foschini [24]
The eloquence of the gesture he made while speaking revealed more than any words could have. Guérin, a man who relished hidden things, was totally dumbstruck by this revelation of passions long concealed.
GUÉRIN LIBRARY SALE CATALOG.
In later years, when he would tell the story of the overcoat to his friends, Guérin would wryly add that he had told them Werner had worn many hats.
Jacques Guérin was ninety-eight when he died in August 2000. He had amassed one of the most important personal libraries of his time. He had been slavishly attached to his hard-won trophies, the papers he guarded tenaciously, the delicate objects he cherished (as Genet noted) to the point of fetishism, the mementos of both well-known and unknown personalities he loved with an almost maniacal obsession. He was proud of the souvenirs that came to him as a result of his willingness to get involved, as in the case of Proust, with friends and family, in the hopes of acquiring one more keepsake, one more palpable testimony.
Guérin lived like a Renaissance prince in his castle packed with treasures. In vain, the president of the French Republic, François Mitterrand, twice paid him a visit in the hopes of acquiring the priceless collection for the Bibliothèque Nationale. According to Carlo Jansiti, who was present, Guérin treated Mitterrand much as he did everyone else: with great courtesy, warmth, and wonderful conversation. He put on a splendid breakfast for his honorable guest. But the script was always the same. When guests hinted at the real purpose of their visit, Guérin would politely interrupt and pretend surprise: “What a shame! We talked so much and it’s getting to be evening. So it’s too late now to show you . . . or discuss. . . . Maybe another time.” Invariably they were bitterly disappointed; many were annoyed. One after another they would be accompanied quietly to their cars by Guérin, who then returned to his revered solitude.
For more than fifty years he had kept his secret cache tucked away. Turning ninety, he decided the time had come to sell his extraordinary collection, to separate himself from his things. In so doing, he came to acknowledge that everything passes, everything disappears. He had sought out his treasures passionately, had loved them, but he had never exhibited them, preferring instead to preserve them exclusively for his own pleasure. “When a man loves a woman, he doesn’t share her with others,” he confided to the poet Franco Marcoaldi in an interview. “I was like that with my treasures. Like Bluebeard with his women, I kept them in my closet.”
At three o’clock one May afternoon in 1992, at the Hôtel George V in Paris, a public auction of Guérin’s prized collection of manuscripts and first editions was held. Included were books and papers by writers and artists such as Apollinaire, Baudelaire, Cocteau, Genet, Hugo, Picasso, Rimbaud, and of course Proust. Letters, drafts, and photographs, some of which had come out of the enchanted hatbox in the house on rue Berton, were sold for staggering amounts of money.
To those, like me, who had not known him, Jacques Guérin was an indecipherable spirit. On the threshold of a new century, all passion spent, he was finally able to serenely separate himself from his beloved holdings. He confided to Marcoaldi, “My collection is like an air balloon. The years pass and I rise up heavenward.”
MUSÉE CARNAVALET.
Conclusion
Unknown to us are the names of the buyers who paid exorbitant sums at auction for Proust’s letters, drafts, sketches, and notebooks from Guérin’s collection. These collectors undoubtedly guard the treasures now in their possession with jealousy and fervor equal to Guérin’s.
But if you happen to be in Paris and feel like taking a stroll through the Musée Carnavalet, be sure to climb what long ago was Mme de Sévigné’s magnificent stairway. One floor up, you’ll find rooms devoted to Paris at the dawn of the twentieth century; having made your