Volume 50, Number 20 · December 18, 2003
Proust's Sister Soul
By André Aciman
In April of 1984 both The New York Times and Le Monde ran obituaries announcing the death of Céleste Albaret. News of the death of the ninety-two-year-old Frenchwoman who had attained world fame in her early eighties for her memoir Monsieur Proust[*] brought woeful reminders to literary communities on both sides of the Atlantic that an era had indeed come to an end. Céleste Albaret was not only one of the very few remaining individuals who had actually known Marcel Proust, but, in her capacity as his housekeeper from 1913 to his very dying day in 1922, she had become the writer's most trusted conduit to the world beyond his reclusive, cork-lined bedroom. From the tireless and sprightly gal Friday and Jeeves-of-all-trades—she was his errand girl, cook, seamstress, secretary, nurse, chambermaid, and cut-and-paste genius whose handiwork is the focal point of any exhibit devoted to Proust manuscripts—she had become his staunchest confidante. 'It will be your beautiful little hands that close my eyes,' he would say to her. Elsewhere she scolds him, '[There's] no reason for always talking about dying.... You'll live longer than I will.'
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