Padua
See "Proust in the News" (théâtrophone and Pelléas et Mélisande)
Paradise
A luxury hotel built around 1907 at 19, avenue Kléber in the 16th arrondissement. According to Baedeker 1914, the hotel had 400 rooms, 300 of which, had bathrooms. (Le Temps retrouvé 4: 312, n. 3.) During the war, the Verdurins transfer their salon to this hotel.
...the Verdurin "salon," if it continued to exist in spirit and in all essentials, had been temporarily transferred to one of the largest hotels in Paris, the lack of coal and light making it too difficult for the Verdurins to entertain in the former mansion of the Venetian ambassadors, which was extremely damp. But the new drawing-room was not altogether disagreeable. Just as in Venice, the restrictions that water imposes upon a site dictate the shape of a palace, and in Paris a scrap of garden is more ravishing than a whole park in the country, so the narrow dining-room that Mme Verdurin had in the hotel, with the dazzling white walls of its irregular quadrilateral, made a sort of screen upon which figured every Wednesday, indeed almost every day of the week, all the most interesting men of every kind, all the smartest women in Paris, only too delighted to avail themselves of the luxury of the Verdurins, which went on increasing, with their wealth, at a time when other very rich people were economising, because part of their income was frozen. In their altered form the receptions had not ceased to enchant Brichot, who, as the circle of the Verdurins' acquaintance grew wider and wider, found in their parties ever new pleasures, packed tight together in a tiny space like surprises in a Christmas stocking. On some day the guests were so numerous that the dining-room of the private suite was too small and the dinner was given in the huge dining-room downstairs, where the faithful, if they feigned a hypocritical regret for the intimacy of upstairs, were at heart delighted—while keeping themselves to themselves, as in the old days on the little train—to be a spectacle and an object of envy for neighbouring tables. Doubtless, under normal peacetime conditions, a "society" note surreptitiously sent to Le Figaro or Le Gaulois would have informed a larger public than could be contained in the dining-room of the Majectic that Brichot had dined with the Duchesse de Duras. But since the war, the social reporters having suppressed this type of news (they made up for it, however, in funerals, "mentions in dispatches" and Franco-American banquets), publicity could only be obtained through a more embryonic, a more restricted medium, worthy of primitive ages and anterior to the discovery of Gutenberg: one had actually to be seen at Mme Verdurin's table. After dinner the guests went upstairs to the Mistress's reception rooms, and then the telephoning began. But many large hotels were at this period peopled with spies, who duly noted the news announced over the telephone by Bontemps with an indiscretion which might have had serious consequences but for a fortunate lack of accuracy in his reports, which were invariably contradicted by events.
Timed Regained 6: 62-63
...le «salon» Verdurin, s'il continuait en esprit et en vérité, s'était transporté momentanément dans un des plus grands hôtels de Paris, le manque de charbon et de lumière rendant plus difficiles les réceptions des Verdurin dans l'ancien logis, fort humide, des ambassadeurs de Venise. Le nouveau salon ne manquait pas, du reste, d'agrément. Comme à Venise la place, comptée à cause de l'eau, commande la forme des palais, comme un bout de jardin dans Paris ravit plus qu'un parc en province, l'étroite salle à manger qu'avait Mme Verdurin à l'hôtel faisait d'une sorte de losange aux murs éclatants de blancheur comme un écran sur lequel se détachaient à chaque mercredi, et presque tous les jours, tous les gens les plus intéressants, les plus variés, les femmes les plus élégantes de Paris, ravis de profiter du luxe des Verdurin, qui avec leur fortune allait croissant à une époque à une époque où les plus riches se restreignaient faute de toucher leurs revenus. La forme donnée aux réceptions se trouvait modifiée sans qu'elles cessassent d'enchanter Brichot, qui au fur et à mesure que les relations des Verdurin allaient s'étendant y trouvait des plaisirs nouveaux et accumulés dans un petit espace comme des surprises dans un chausson de Noël. Enfin certains jours les dîneurs étaient si nombreux que la salle à manger de l'appartement privé était trop petit, on donnait le dîner dans la salle à manger immense d'en bas, où les fidèles, tout en feignant hypocritement de déplorer l'intimité d'en haut, comme jadis la nécessité d'inviter les Cambremer faisait dire à Mme Verdurin qu'on serait trop serré, étaient ravis au fond—tout en faisant bande à part, comme jadis dans le petit chemin de fer—d'être un objet de spectacle et d'envie pour les tables voisines. Sans doute, dans les temps habituels de la paix, une note mondaine subrepticement envoyée au Figaro ou au Gaulois aurait fait savoir à plus de monde que n'en pouvait tenir la salle à manger du Majestic que Brichot avait dîné avec la duchesse de Duras. Mais depuis la guerre, les courriéristes mondains ayant supprimé ce genre d'informations (s'ils se rattrapaient sur les enterrements, les citations et les banquets franco-américains), la publicité ne pouvait plus exister que par ce moyen enfantin et restreint, digne des premiers âges, et antérieur à la découverte de Gutenberg: être vu à la table de Mme Verdurin. Après le dîner on montait dans les salons de la Patronne, puis les téléphonages commençaient. Mais beaucoup de grands hôtels étaient à cette époque peuplés d'espions qui notaient les nouvelles téléphonées par Bontemps avec une indiscrétion que corrigeait seulement, par bonheur, le manque de sûreté de ses informations, toujours démenties par l'événement.
Le Temps retrouvé 4: 311-12
Paris
Flood of 1910
On January 21, 1910, Paris suffered its worst flood in modern times as the Seine overflowed its banks and kept rising. The Figaro reported that the Gare Saint-Lazare, which was not far from Proust's home, was inundated by water from a broken drain as well as from the flooding river. By January 29 the water, still rising by a centimeter an hour, overflowed the lake that had formed on the west side of the train station and turned boulevard Haussmann into a rushing river. Marcel, writing to Simone de Caillavet, said he would answer her mother's letter, although he would "probably have drowned in the meantime."(Selected Letters 3: 2.) Encore serais-je sans doute noyé. Much of central Paris remained closed to traffic until February 2, when the waters receded. Clocks and elevators that depended on forced air stopped working, as did the pneumatic mail service. Many buildings were without gas and electricity. At the Comédie-Française, the curtain remained up and actors performed on a stage lit by acetylene. On Sunday, February 13, Proust must have felt an even closer kinship with Noah when he emerged from his apartment to attend the gala dress rehearsal at the Opéra of Reynaldo's new ballet La Fête chez Thérèse. The performance was being given as a benefit for flood victims. Proust described Hahn's ballet to Lauris as a "delicious thing," predicting that, if the other performances matched the première—during which spectators had frequently shouted "Bravo!"—the ballet would enjoy a grand success. See Correspondance 10: 38 (For the kinship with Noah, see Proust: A Self-Portrait) The flood did have serious consequences for Proust, as he explained in a letter to Georges de Lauris in mid-February, when his basement was still soaked. Although he dared not complain, given the great misfortunes suffered by all, the methods used to dry out and disinfect the building provoked unremitting asthma attacks. And of course there was a substantial amount of renovating to be done in the basement, where workmen had already begun ripping out the sodden floorboards. Later the boards would be replaced, as would those in the nearby shops, the elevator, and so on. Proust wrote to Robert de Montesquiou that the hammer blows and all the extraordinary noise caused by the endless renovations required him to take daily doses of "Veronal and opium, etc., and since I have some albumin that brings on a thousand ills."
Here are the quotes from the letters:
A Georges de Lauris
[Le mardi 15 février 1910]
Je ne peux pas vous dire tous les ennuis que j'ai eus. Vous savez que l'eau a été devant ma porte et est encore dans mes caves et je n'ose pas devant les grands malheurs de tous parler de moi. Mais les procédés qu'on emploie pour sécher et désinfecter me donnent des crises auxquelles rien n'apporte de soulagement. Quand elles se calment, le repos n'est pas possible parce qu'on arrache les parquets pourris des sous-sols. Bientôt on les refera et ceux des boutiques ainsi que l'ascenseur immobilisé depuis longtemps et à refaire.
Correspondance 10: 49
A Robert de Montesquiou
[20 à 21 février 1910]
C'est presque un hasard que je sois si mal, l'inondation a amené des travaux incessants, réfection des caves, tout-à-l'égout et demain lundi maintenant que c'est asséché commencent les plus grands. Ces coups de marteau représentent la nécessité quotidienne de véronal, d'opium etc. et comme j'ai de l'albumine cela a amené mille maux.
Correspondance 10: 51
Panthère de Batignolles
A Parisian club active during the 1880s. It was an anarchist group which sometimes met on the rue de Levis in the quarter of Paris called "les Batignolles."
A Proust Dictionary by Maxine Arnold Vogely, 519
See Deligny Baths
See Eiffel Tower
See Monceau
See Morris Column
Photography
"In the light of photography a new Proust has been revealed to me as a sort of mental photographer who used his own body as an ultrasensitive plate, managing thereby to capture and register in his youth thousands of impressions, and who, starting from the search for lost time, dedicated his own time to developing and printing them, thereby making visible the latent image of his entire life in that gigantic photograph constituted by In Search of Lost Time."
Brassai, Proust in the Power of Photography, translated by Richard Howard
Pianola
See Beethoven.
Pleasure
See Quotable Proust: P.
Poverty and Desire
See Quotable Proust: P.
Pretty Women
See Quotable Proust: P.
Psychology
See Quotable Proust: P.