PROUST MARCEL: (1871-1922) French Novelist and Essayist. Best known for his major novel A ...

PROUST MARCEL: (1871-1922) French Novelist and Essayist. Best known for his major novel A la Recherche du Temps Perdu (`In search of Lost Time´). A rare and very good A.L.S., `Marcel Proust´, three pages, 8vo, 102 Boulevard Haussmann, Paris, 29th December [1915], to Baroness Aimery Harty de Pierrebourg, in French. Proust, in a letter of the highest literary quality and full of poetic symbolism, remembers and honors the memory of Paul Hervieu, stating in part `En ces jours de renouvellement où les blessures font plus mal, je pense à vous que cette année finissante a si cruellement meurtrie... j´ai connu l´incomparable ami qui avait reçu ce privilège unique, aussi anormal dans le règne des esprits que dans le monde végétal, ayant porté tant de fruits amers et doux et nourriciers, de garder la grâce, la fraîcheur, les pétales rosés d´une fleur. Si bien qu´on peut dire malgré les vergers combles de sa fructification arrivée à la maturation la plus pleine, qu c´est en fleurs encore, qu´une mystérieuse nuit de guerre, et silencieusement comme une fleur, il a été fauché.´ (Translation: "In these days of renewal when wounds hurt more, I think of you whom this ending year has so cruelly bruised... I knew the incomparable friend who had received this unique privilege, as abnormal in the kingdom of spirits as in the plant world, having given so many bitter and sweet and nourishing fruits, to keep the grace, the freshness, the pink petals of a flower. So much so that we can say, despite the orchards full of its fruiting, having reached the fullest maturity, that it is still in flower, that one mysterious night of war, and silently like a flower, he was broke") Proust continues with a verse from Agrippa d´Aubigné `Une rose d´automne est plus qu´une autre exquise´ ("An autumn rose is more than another exquisite one") and referring to Hervieu as a summer rose, states in part before concluding `Celle-là était d´été encore. Rose humaine hélas et sur laquelle pleurent bien des larmes...´ (Translation: "This one was still a summer one. Human rose alas and on which many tears cry...") VG

Claude Ferval (1856-1943) was the pen name of baroness Marguerite Aimery Harty de Pierrebourg, born Thomas-Galline. French Novelist and Poet. After divorcing her husband, she had a long time relationship with Paul Hervieu.

Paul Hervieu (1857-1915) French Novelist and Playwright.