Beschreibung:

PROUST, Marcel. Two unpublished autograph letters signed to Lucien Daudet ('Mon cher petit'), both n.p. [Paris], n.d ., the first [ 1902 ? ] referring to a message left with Lucien's concierge, not knowing if he is in Paris; he himself is unwell 'Figurez-vous qu'en arrivant à Paris j'ai pris ce que Papa croyait d'abord un gros rhume qui aurait reveillé mon asthme'; this makes it difficult to reply about Pray. He would have dined with him at the Gare de Lyon but his father would have been annoyed and suspected him of malingering; with a postscript about [Albert] Flament who is not, as his library said, in England but in Italy, and a further one [scribbled at the head], 'Je vois avec horreur que j'ai oublié la lettre sur mon bureau!', 4 pages, 8vo ; the second (signed 'Votre Marcel Proust') opening, 'Je n'ai pu dans le froid parfumé d'essences végétales de votre boulevard et déjà étouffant ... insister comme je l'aurais voulu pour que vous veniez me prendre mardi à 10h ¼ au plus tard pour aller ensemble chez Mme Lemaire'; regretting that Lucien did not get in touch with him and recalling his earlier disappearances, '"Les moeurs de cet animal sont fort curieuses et l'humanité pourrait lui envier quelques unes" est la phrase de Buffon qui me revient ... en pensant à vous', 4 pages, 135 x 110 mm (part of a larger leaf folded into a bifolium; together 8 pages ). Proust explains in the first letter that he had been too unwell to join his father's guests and had he gone to dine with Lucien 'il aurait cru que j'étais malade ou bien à volonté, quand les choses me plaisaient, bien pour vous, malade pour lui'. The 'Bibliothèque de Flament' where, he recalls, he once worked, was the Bibliothèque Mazarine. Proust worked there for a brief period in 1895 and the administrator (Alfred Franklin) recalled him as nice but useless. (2)