Part I: Quest for the Lost Proust
JUPIEN'S BATH
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The now vanished Bain du Ballon d'Alsace, in the Rue Sainte-Lazare, to which I had been sent on this strange errand, should have been preserved as a real historical monument. For many years, it was owned and operated by Albert Lecuziat, known as Jupien to all readers of Proust. A few Proust scholars who had visited it in the course of their literary research have been puzzled, however, because the "Temple of Immodesty" which Proust describes in Time Recaptured as the setting of the ageing Baron de Charlus' exquisite self-imposed martyrdom is a hotel, not a bath-house. Few of them knew that Albert, before owning the bath-house in the Rue Sainte-Lazare, had already managed a small hotel on the same principles and for the same patrons |
in a quiet street behind the church of La Madeleine. According to legend, Proust supplied some of the capital for these two ventures, much as Charlus, according to Jupien in the novel, had financed the establishment of the "Temple of Immodesty."
Proust appears indeed to have been a frequent customer, if not also a lavish patron, of at least two such establishments. When I visited Albert in the Rue Saint-Lazare in 1935, he was still proud to be able to show to visiting Proust-scholars his private sanctum on the first floor, an elegant Nineteenth-Century mahogany book-case, given to him by Proust. Inherited from Proust’s aunt in Illiers, who was the real-life model for the novel’s Tante Léonie of Combrey, this book-case becomes, in the novel, the sofa which the hero inherits from his aunt and presents to the brothel where he met used to meet Rachel-quand-du-Seigneur. Most of the rest of the furniture of this small room, I was proudly told, came from the former home of Proust’s own parents.
In this book-case that had seen more respectable if less glorious days, Albert kept at first only a small library of books on genealogies and heraldry, subjects that he enjoyed discussing in great detail with some of his aristocratic patrons. Marcel Proust, in particular, advised and guided him in the pursuit of this harmless hobby, which Albert shared in those days with many other former flunkey or retired governess who could bask, in such readings, in the reflected glory of great and ancient families in those whose homes they had served. To this basic library, Albert then gradually added a growing collection of works by Proust and Proust 's friends and commentators. In the same room, in a desk-drawer that he all too often neglected to lock, Albert also kept an impressive collection of manuscript letters addressed to him by Proust.
But this collection, as the letters increased in value, began slowly to decrease in importance and interest. To writers who consulted him before publishing their commentaries on Proust, Albert generously presented, to express his appreciation of the honor of their thus being consulted, some manuscript missive of minor importance, such as a hurried two-line note, brought to him by hand and summoning him to come and see Proust immediately. Other and more important letters were some times stolen out of Albert's unlocked desk-drawer by some of the boys whom he employed, and may thus have reached the hands of dealers and collectors of autographs who instigated these acts of larceny.
Most of the letters that Albert allowed me to copy discussed only Proust's stock-market operations. Proust appears to have had great confidence in Albert 's integrity as a courrier [sic] and to have employed him often to take orders from his sickroom to his Paris brokers, or to collect money from his bank after the his sales of stocks. The letters that I saw revealed that Albert was kept particularly busy in this capacity when Proust was again and again in urgent need of ready cash to face the extravagant demands of Agostinelli, the chauffeur and lover immortalized in his novel as Albertine. In other letters to Albert, Proust gave instructions of a very different nature, revealing that he also relied on his services as a procurer.
Proust generally gave Albert exact specifications concerning the desired appearance and behavior of the young men whom he hoped to meet. As I read and copied these letters in Albert's office, I felt that the boys whom he procured for Proust had to be carefully rehearsed, as if to play a part in a preconceived drama in which nothing was left to chance or to their own spontaneity, or for a ritualistic performance of an allegory that repeated again and again some secret trauma or frustrated desire of Proust's own past life. It was thus in the yard of Albert's hotel, near the church of La Madeleine, that Proust once staged and witnessed the now legendary rat-hunt in which the boys of the establishment had to chase and beat to death rats which were allowed to escape in to the yard when one of the boys was sent to open the door of the toilet where, on Proust’s own instructions, they had previously been concealed for that purpose.
Proust appears indeed to have been a frequent customer, if not also a lavish patron, of at least two such establishments. When I visited Albert in the Rue Saint-Lazare in 1935, he was still proud to be able to show to visiting Proust-scholars his private sanctum on the first floor, an elegant Nineteenth-Century mahogany book-case, given to him by Proust. Inherited from Proust’s aunt in Illiers, who was the real-life model for the novel’s Tante Léonie of Combrey, this book-case becomes, in the novel, the sofa which the hero inherits from his aunt and presents to the brothel where he met used to meet Rachel-quand-du-Seigneur. Most of the rest of the furniture of this small room, I was proudly told, came from the former home of Proust’s own parents.
In this book-case that had seen more respectable if less glorious days, Albert kept at first only a small library of books on genealogies and heraldry, subjects that he enjoyed discussing in great detail with some of his aristocratic patrons. Marcel Proust, in particular, advised and guided him in the pursuit of this harmless hobby, which Albert shared in those days with many other former flunkey or retired governess who could bask, in such readings, in the reflected glory of great and ancient families in those whose homes they had served. To this basic library, Albert then gradually added a growing collection of works by Proust and Proust 's friends and commentators. In the same room, in a desk-drawer that he all too often neglected to lock, Albert also kept an impressive collection of manuscript letters addressed to him by Proust.
But this collection, as the letters increased in value, began slowly to decrease in importance and interest. To writers who consulted him before publishing their commentaries on Proust, Albert generously presented, to express his appreciation of the honor of their thus being consulted, some manuscript missive of minor importance, such as a hurried two-line note, brought to him by hand and summoning him to come and see Proust immediately. Other and more important letters were some times stolen out of Albert's unlocked desk-drawer by some of the boys whom he employed, and may thus have reached the hands of dealers and collectors of autographs who instigated these acts of larceny.
Most of the letters that Albert allowed me to copy discussed only Proust's stock-market operations. Proust appears to have had great confidence in Albert 's integrity as a courrier [sic] and to have employed him often to take orders from his sickroom to his Paris brokers, or to collect money from his bank after the his sales of stocks. The letters that I saw revealed that Albert was kept particularly busy in this capacity when Proust was again and again in urgent need of ready cash to face the extravagant demands of Agostinelli, the chauffeur and lover immortalized in his novel as Albertine. In other letters to Albert, Proust gave instructions of a very different nature, revealing that he also relied on his services as a procurer.
Proust generally gave Albert exact specifications concerning the desired appearance and behavior of the young men whom he hoped to meet. As I read and copied these letters in Albert's office, I felt that the boys whom he procured for Proust had to be carefully rehearsed, as if to play a part in a preconceived drama in which nothing was left to chance or to their own spontaneity, or for a ritualistic performance of an allegory that repeated again and again some secret trauma or frustrated desire of Proust's own past life. It was thus in the yard of Albert's hotel, near the church of La Madeleine, that Proust once staged and witnessed the now legendary rat-hunt in which the boys of the establishment had to chase and beat to death rats which were allowed to escape in to the yard when one of the boys was sent to open the door of the toilet where, on Proust’s own instructions, they had previously been concealed for that purpose.
