By At Musée Carnavalet, the museum of the City of Paris, you find almost side by side, the bedrooms of two of the most famous French writers of the twentieth century – Marcel Proust and Anna de Noailles.
Marcel Proust’s father was an eminent doctor and his mother was from a wealthy family and Proust lead a cosseted life.
After his first asthma attack aged nine, his mother was very protective. He was well educated and even spent a year as an army volunteer but never managed to settle to a career. (His younger brother became a doctor like their father). He lived with his parents who funded his preferred lifestyle, which mainly involved writing and frequenting the society salons.
When they died he went to live in an apartment owned by his aunt on Boulevard Haussmann in 1906, taking his furniture with him. He was paranoid about dust and pollen and stayed in his bedroom with the windows and curtains shut. He had arguments with the neighbours about the noise (the neighbour was a dentist) and solved the problem by copying his friend Anna de Noailles and covering all the walls with cork panels.
The state of his health was not improved by his efforts to self medicate, with all the latest drugs to help him sleep and then adrenalin to help him work. He slept most of the day and wrote most of the night. When his aunt sold the apartment in 1919, it was a terrible shock. For a few months he moved in with his friend’s mother, the famous actress Gabrielle Réjane. He then took what he considered temporary accommodation in a small apartment in rue Hamelin (the 16th arrondissement).
His health had deteriorated even further and he was by then confined to his bed, following his usual pattern of sleeping all day and writing all night.
He died in this bed in 1922, aged 51. His most famous work was “A la recherche du temps perdu”, inspiring the John Malkovich movie “Time Regained”.
