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Correspondence with Monsieur Émile Straus

Friday [29 October 1915.]

 

Dear Sir,

 

 

   A thousand thanks for having taken the trouble to write me such a nice letter. It gave me much pleasure by providing me with some good news about Madame Straus, but it tears me apart in my deepest most fundamental feelings by saying that she has been so ill for two months. I think that the war, even climacterically, by the simultaneous overthrow of the physical and moral climate, has been detestable for all sensitive people. But I think that their troubles, as painful as they are for them and so cruel for those around them, are not lasting, at least not as much as acute and serious troubles. And luckily I think that with Mme Straus the only troubles there are nervous and functional ones. However you are well aware of how ill she has been over the last ten years. I don't want to annoy you with telephone calls since she is relatively well at the moment, or at least I won't have you called other than when I am feeling sad about having no news about her, when I feel like an exile in a very distant country. In any case I no longer have a telephone since my ruin, I send my housekeeper to telephone you from a café or from the post-office. You fully understand that in my grief over Hervieu's death1 I thought of you immediately. But I didn't know whether you had told Mme Straus about it; I was sure that she would know, even if only through the papers. But I preferred to remain prudent and not risk delivering her a blow which could be so dangerous to such a delicate sensibility which would feel the pain of it for so long, because she is unfortunately not one of those people for whom the poem which she loves was written: "The dead no not endure long". But I commiserate with both of you so much over the loss of a friend like Hervieu; I have no words to express the incessant and infinite compassion which Mme de Pierrebourg inspires in me. Please share with Mme Straus my great respect and grateful affection.

 

Marcel Proust.

 

 

1. Paul Hervieu died on Monday 25 October 1915.

 

 

 

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Dear Sir,

 

   You would be doing me an enormous favour if you could tell me whether, in your opinion, this contract legally prevents me (with the risk of lawsuits etc.) from publishing my second volume with another publisher. In actual fact it concerns the second and third volumes because in the meantime we have settled with Grasset that the work will be in three volumes rather than two, but we haven't mentioned this in the contract which was already drawn up and I don't want to take advantage of this modification. Since then I have had some very good offers from other publishers for my second and third volumes but I haven't even considered them, not wishing to leave Grasset purely out of self interest. Only, since then, on one hand I get the impression that it would be behaving badly on my part, but on the other hand André Gide and his friends are making urgent efforts to publish my second and third volumes at the same time as some things by Claudel etc., which from a literary point of view would please me very much. I have refused their offer of paying the costs of publication and even of offering money to Grasset, in order to demonstrate clearly that I am not leaving Grasset, and wanting to do the right thing on the contrary I wish to cover the expense of publication by Gide's people (despite his protestations). Quite simply, do I have the right? (the right to leave Grasset). I ask you this (and in total confidence since I still haven't spoken to Grasset about it). Don't take the trouble of writing to me. Simply tell one of your servants to telephone me in the next few days: "M. Proust has the right" or else "M. Proust risks having to pay damages". And if that is too much trouble don't reply at all. Would you thank Mme Straus for her delightful letter? I hope to go to see her any day now. And that we will have to exchange "views" about Mme Estradère's appearance on the scene. There are names from our past which have ended up by becoming magnetic. They draw after them like iron filings a thousand inseparable and attractive memories. I saw Roye Danguillécourt again, poor Mme Lipmann. Goodbye my dear sir and please accept my grateful respect and my closely bound attachment.

 

 

 

Marcel Proust.