Italian journalist Lorenza Foschini investigates the story of a man obsessed with Marcel Proust, his work and his belongings.

Jacques Guerin, a young perfume magnate in Paris, led a secret life as a bibliophile. During the week he was a perfumer; the weekends were given over to hunting for rare books, precious manuscripts and artists' papers. This was in the 1920s and 1930s in Paris, and he seemed casually acquainted with writers and artists like Jean Genet and Picasso. Eric Satie once inscribed a note to him which said: ‘To my good friend Jacques Guerin, the charming bibliophile'. President Francoise Mitterand visited him twice in the hope of persuading him to sell his collection to the Bibliotheque Nationale, but Guerin politely shooed him away. He was obsessed with collecting one thing more than anything else: everything Marcel Proust owned.

He began with manuscripts, notebooks, first editions and moved on to furniture from Proust's house: the bed, the bookshelves, desk and finally the overcoat the writer had “swaddled himself while out on various adventures and escapades, the coat that doubled as a blanket when he wrote in bed at night.” Guerin would track down anyone connected with Proust, family and friends, attending their funerals to see if he could uncover from their possession more things the writer once owned or had used, and buy them for a handsome price. Why had he, in particular, become so obsessed with collecting Proust?

Serendipitous meeting

That's the story Italian journalist Lorenza Foschini investigates and uncovers for us in Proust's Overcoat. Originally published in Italy as Il Cappotto di Proust, it has just been translated (by Eric Karpeles) and republished by Ecco. When Guerin was a young man something strange happened, something lucky: he had appendicitis and a rather eminent surgeon was on call to perform the operation: Robert Proust, Marcel's brother. When the patient recovered, he could hardly believe that the brother of his literary deity had attended to him. And when, some months later, he visited the good doctor, he was shown a shelf full of notebooks in Proust's own hand. This had a profound effect on the young perfumer: what would happen, he began to wonder, to all these Proustian things?

What if they went uncared for or were destroyed or just lost to time? Then one day, many, many years later, he stepped into an antiquarian bookstore to pass a few hours pleasantly, hoping to comb through stacks of fusty old books. The bookseller informed him that just 10 minutes ago he had acquired, quite unexpectedly, some proofs corrected in the hands of Marcel Proust. Would he be interested? There was more: the man who had sold him these things was going to return in just a short while, and he had more things to sell; stuff the bookseller wasn't interested in, like Proust's desk and bookshelf. Guerin was very interested but how could he contact the seller. Actually, the seller would drop by any moment now to pick up of his cheque; would Monsieur Guerin wait?

Guerin remained astonished. Could these objects be the very things Dr.Proust had shown him once? A “three sectioned black bookcase and an imposing desk with brass inlaid drawers…the doctor pointed to the tall stacks of manuscript notebooks…these were the complete works of Marcel Proust, written in his own hand…Guerin scrutinised hungrily… Proust's downward-slanting script was exceedingly angular, entangled, hastily scrawled. As described by his housekeeper Celeste, Proust would write in bed, a notebook in one hand stretched in the air, his pen in the other hand. Pages would scatter upon the bed and fall on the rug. Celeste would tenderly gather them up with loving care and attention.”

Shocking news

For the second time in his life, Guerin found himself on the way to Robert Proust's house, and the young salesman who accompanied him had shocking news to tell him on the way: the doctor had died and his widow was selling everything. What of the manuscripts? She had burned most of the papers. And the editions of his printed books that he had signed in, the widow had torn out those very pages. Guerin was horrified; inconsolable. And the notebooks?! She had kept them because the doctor had been personally attached to them. When Guerin arrives and searches the many rooms of the apartment he makes a discovery: the widow had missed the editions Proust had inscribed in to friends and fellow writers.

Also spared were boxes that held letters and photographs. Guerin carted them away to the safety of his house. Examining the boxes, he was astonished to see they contained several letters Proust had written but not posted to Andre Gide, Jean Cocteau and other writer-friends and artists.

Several childhood photographs dated circa 1883 (which the book includes), and the sweetest of things: a tattered first edition of Swann's Way (Grasset, 1913) with this inscription to Robert: “To my little brother, a souvenir of lost time, regained for a moment whenever we see one another.”

Lorenza Foschini uses Guerin's obsession to dig deeper into a tale of family intrigue: ashamed, embarrassed and offended by his life, Marcel Proust's family were bent on destroying everything that had come from his hand. Once Guerin realised this, he knew he had to rescue everything, including Proust's brass bed (where he wrote all the time, spending endless nights of insomnia) and overcoat. “The thrill driving Guerin was no longer merely that of a collector, but that of a savior” writes Foschini. The 10 notebooks Guerin rescued made it possible for definitive editions of Proust's work to be published later.

Foschini alternates the secret bibliophile's exciting pursuit of these notebooks, and ultimately, the priceless overcoat, with rich and carefully chosen details about Proust working on In Search of Lost Time. Jacques Guerin was 98 when he died in 2000. Confiding in a friend once, he said: “My collection is like an air balloon. The years pass and I rise up heavenward.”

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