PROUST, Marcel. Two autograph letters signed to Lucien Daudet, both n.p. [Paris], the first n.d. [3 April 1917], explaining that the previous evening he tried in vain to have him telephoned, having decided to invite [Paul] Morand, Princess Murat and Princess Soutzo to dine with him at the Ritz; there was no reply and Céleste could not persist as she had to prepare his jacket. All this is so that Daudet may know he would not have arranged the dinner without him had he known he was in Paris, 4 pages, 8vo; the second n.d. [2 or 3 August 1917], saying how happy he would have been to see him but he is too tired to get up, and inviting him to call instead, 'Si cela ne t'ennuie pas de ''passer les ponts quand il faisait du vent'' tu me trouveras ce soir chez moi'; otherwise he asks him to say where he may send him word the next day, 2 pages, 8vo (together 6 pages, 8vo).

PROUST, Marcel. Two autograph letters signed to Lucien Daudet, both n.p. [Paris], the first n.d. [3 April 1917], explaining that the previous evening he tried in vain to have him telephoned, having decided to invite [Paul] Morand, Princess Murat and Princess Soutzo to dine with him at the Ritz; there was no reply and Céleste could not persist as she had to prepare his jacket. All this is so that Daudet may know he would not have arranged the dinner without him had he known he was in Paris, 4 pages, 8vo; the second n.d. [2 or 3 August 1917], saying how happy he would have been to see him but he is too tired to get up, and inviting him to call instead, 'Si cela ne t'ennuie pas de "passer les ponts quand il faisait du vent" tu me trouveras ce soir chez moi'; otherwise he asks him to say where he may send him word the next day, 2 pages, 8vo (together 6 pages, 8vo).

Proust was shortly to forsake Larue and the Café Weber for the restaurant of the Ritz Hotel, and already dined there often. Princess Soutzo, he writes, talked of a Monsieur Citroën [André Gustave Citroën, the car manufacturer], making a joke about his name. In an unpublished passage Proust is reminded of an incident in the past, 'comme nous allions [?] dans la Semaine Sainte à tes Roses de Pâques de la Fourmilière que je n'eusse jamais trouvées'. The reference is not further explained but Daudet took La Fourmilière as the title of his novel of contemporary manners, published in 1909 and much admired in the circle of the Empress Eugénie, and Proust referred to his painting of 'Roses de Pâques' in the inscription in the copy of Du Côté de chez Swann which he presented to Daudet.

In the second letter Proust also sends his thanks to his correspondent's hosts for permitting him to ask for Daudet at their house. Daudet, whose mother was away, was staying at the house of the Comte de Hinnisdael, where Proust called on the following day (4 August 1917). In 1922 Mlle. Thérèse d'Hinnisdael, one of the Count's daughters, invited Proust, whom she had met several times, to lunch, an invitation which her father obliged her to withdraw, regarding writers as socially too far beneath him. The quotation in the letter is a variant of a line from Alfred de Musset's Namouna. Kolb, XVI, 94 and 201; Cahiers, V (XLIV and L). (2)