Marcel PROUST - Autograph letter signed following Goncourt award

Marcel PROUST (1871-1922), French writer
Signed autographed letter to Susan Lawrence.
Paris 44 rue Hamelin (December 1919);
3 pages in-8th, center fold
Letter written following the Goncourt award.
Proust, invited to the wedding of the daughter of Madame Laurent, plunges into his memories at the sight of General de Brantes among the guests:

"I have not been able for a long time, because of my health and my life poorly organized, to go to a wedding. This is not new. Reading the names of the people who are attending your daughter's, I
remember that I did not attend that of General de Brantes and yet what a filial affection I had for dear Madame de Brantes, her mother, who keeps in my memory and in my heart a particularly dear and
venerated place. But I know how to associate myself from afar with the feelings of those who, even when they have not approached them, have shown kindness or inspired sympathy. This is to tell you
that I have been with all my heart in unison with your joy of living and offers you a good way to testify by sending you the work in 2 volumes of the Young girls in bloom and which is a little less
massive and cumbersome than the other ... "

Louise de Brantes (1842 - 1914) is a central person in the life and work of Marcel Proust, she inspired him the character of the Duchess of Guermantes in "Swann's Way", and adds Laure de Chevigné and
the Countess de Greffulhe. She is also the aunt of Robert de Montesquiou, dandy, whom Proust took inspiration for concerning the character of Baron Charlus. With his son Reynaldo Hahn, famous
conductor and composer, he attended the salon of Madame de Brantes in 1895. Proust dedicates to her his first novel published by Grasset editions in 1914, she died in April shortly thereafter.


"The shadow of young girls in bloom" is the second volume of "In Search of Lost Time" which earned him the Goncourt Prize in 1919 thanks to the support of his friend Léon Daudet.