Elizabeth Tevlin
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Mysteries for nerds 

I have a classic book that’s autographed by a fictional character.

Well, close. Here’s something that happened in the early 1990s. 

One summer, I bought a few 25-cent books at a garage sale, including an old copy of Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust. That’s the first volume of seven in Proust’s classic novel, In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past, depending on the translation. 

It’s the one that features the guy eating madeleines, and remembering…

This is the book.

Swann’s Way sat on my table for a few weeks, and when I finally flipped it open, I found this inscription in the back:

“For my mother … He drew from her (in part at least) the character of Gilberte Swann … and as for me, in his book I am Gilberte’s daughter Mademoiselle de Saint Loup.”

Simone de Caillavet, Mrs Maurois

I remember…P. 161

So… page 161 must remind this woman of herself somehow.  

A few weeks later, in the Introduction, lines 7 and 8.

Proust “was…a familiar also of the salons of …Mme. Arman de Caillavet (born Léontine Lippmann), and other great ladies…”

Whoa! Have I seen that name before?

😮

This was a mystery. And because it was the early 90s, before computers were everywhere, it was a library mystery. 

That’s where I found, in the library’s stacks and STACKS of Marcel Proust biographies, that it was true.

🤯

The great lady, Léontine Lippmann, Madame Arman de Caillavet, hosted cultural and literary elites: intellectuals, politicians and artists, including Marcel Proust, at her Paris home on Sundays and Wednesdays. She, herself, was a lover and muse of author Anatole France. She was Simone de Caillavet’s grandmère. 

Mme de Caillavet’s son was the playwright Gaston Arman de Caillavet, who married actress Jeanne Pouquet. Jeanne and Gaston were Simone’s parents. 

True to Simone’s inscription, Jeanne Pouquet WAS one of the primary models for Gilberte Swann in Swann’s Way. And Marcel Proust was in love with Jeanne. 

“Proust was immediately drawn to this girl who seemed ‘as clear as Spring,’ as he later wrote.” *

And Simone de Caillavet, Jeanne’s daughter, WAS a muse for Marcel Proust. 

“…Simone became the model for Mademoiselle de St Loup: ‘Formed of the very years I had lost, she seemed like my Youth.’” wrote Proust. * 

Clearly, this family was in the “muse” business.

And what about page 161? 

Page 161 could be Simone’s own bite of madeleine, transporting her in gauzy realism back to a certain day she was involved in, or a character she knew, or simply: a time.

Maybe it holds a wink or a warning to the idea that we can never really know the soul of another, being victims of hallucinations when it comes to our perceptions. Only silence and shadow will heal wounded hearts. Are our memories like that moonlight, breathing through the flute of silence?

Kinda fitting for a book about memories. She documenting her part in this book, and me finding her there. 

We’re here partly to witness each other’s lives, to note events that happened, to remember, and give those memories wings. This book could have been found by someone who saw the treasure right away…or, for the price of a quarter, it could have gone to another bookshelf, with Simone’s memories forever locked between the pages of a 1940s Swann’s Way. 

This edition hasn’t finished changing hands. The question is whether to leave the mystery for the next steward to discover themselves, or show them the jewel they’re holding. 

*Michel-Thiriet, Phillippe. The Book of Proust. 1989.