Marcel Proust: A Biography

6 MARCEL PROUST
arm protectively round his brother's neck; and Robert, in a frilly
white skirt, nestles against Marcel with a self-confident expression.
Witnesses have recorded that Marcel kept his protective attitude
towards Robert until the end of his life: 'it made one realise the
full force of the term "brotherly love",' wrote Lucien Daudet.
Marcel had no good reason for jealousy; his mother, though no
doubt she loved them both equally, knew that he needed her love
more than the easy-going Robert; Marcel was always her 'little
wolf', mon petit loup, and Robert was only mon autre loup. But
the shock of his brother's birth may have helped to make Marcel's
love for his mother so tyrannical and exorbitant; and he managed
to draw her into a kind of amiable conspiracy against his rival. In
the letters between Marcel and his mother Robert is a kind of
private joke: he has nicknames, such as Dick, or His Majesty, and
needs to be saved from the consequences of his rashness or sloth.
If anyone was jealous, Marcel decided, it must be Robert. In an
early draft of his novel he introduced Robert in his high chair,
complaining, with a piercing scream, that "Marcel has had more
chocolate blancmange than me 1"1 In A la Recherche, although no
doubt his reasons were mainly aesthetic, he preferred to abolish
Robert entirely.
The other three incidents may seem trivial, but are somehow
characteristic, and two were thought sufficiently important by
Proust to be introduced into Jean Santeuil. One New Year's Day
Marcel and Robert were enlisted to help in the distribution of New
Year gifts-a ceremony held particularly sacred in the Proust
family, and often alluded to in A la Recherche.^2 Mme Proust gave
Marcel a five-franc piece to take to her cousin's cook, but on the
way he saw a little boothlack, scarcely older than himself, looking
so cold and unhappy that he could not resist giving him the five-
franc piece. Mme Proust was furious, and punished him: he still
remembered the incident vividly forty years later, when he told
it to his housekeeper Celeste. All through his life he was to invite
the anger of his parents-even after they were dead-by the
extravagance of his generosity, and to purchase with pity and
money the love of the poor and unhappy. Then again, there was a
period in his early childhood when he was fascinated by the moon,
and begged to be given books on astronomy for his presents. One
winter afternoon, when Mme Proust was entertaining her friends
1 Contre Sainte-Beuve, 2.96 2 E.g. I, 52, 77, 48G