Ernest Forssgren, Proust's Swedish valet

William C. Carter, ed., The Memoirs of Ernest A. Forssgren, Proust's Swedish Valet. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. $50.

This story constitutes a small part from the life of a sad, embittered old man who wasted his life, who lives ONLY by virtue of a still vigorous sense of HUMOR.

Ernest A. Forssgren, in the epilogue to his memoir

It has been a strange pleasure to read this bit of Proustiana. Ernest Forssgren was with Marcel Proust briefly in 1914 and 1915, before leaving France for the United States. His memoir, "The Mysterious Visit," ninety-three double-spaced typed pages, written in English in 1965, draws its title from a failed attempt to arrange a last meeting with Proust in 1922.

Forssgren does nothing to reveal Proust's character or working habits, but he does reveal his own character — curmudgeonly, misanthropic, obsessive, resentful, and a bit cracked, a combination of Henry Darger and Charles Kinbote. Running through the memoir is Forssgren's hatred of England, its people, its language, and that language's spelling. These matters form the stuff of purported conversations between the author and just about anyone he meets, including, yes, Proust. Here is an excerpt from a conversation between Proust and Forssgren:

"That charming little story you wrote about you and your sister getting lost in the woods, picking berries, the thunderstorm that frightened you, and you saving your sister from drowning — it is such a charming little story I would like to have it published. When you wrote it did you have to consult the La Rousse [Larousse] (dictionary) for the spelling? I noticed that it was perfect."

"No, I did not. That is the great advantage of the Latin languages; after you have learned all the rules thoroughly, you need never consult a dictionary, like you constantly have to do with the idiotic English spelling. Once you have learned the orthography of a Latin language and its grammatical rules you have no need of a dictionary. As for the English language, it reflects the character and nature of its people. Like the French reflects a refined, cultured and artistic people. It is said that language reflects a nation's psyche, its soul and character. English reflects a conservative nation reluctant of change, and though the language like all languages has gone through changes, the English have been slow in following up with reform in spelling. As an example, the obsolete GH was the Saxon's equivalent of the German CH, but was eventually slurred over and dropped, but the spelling retained. The Scotch humorous, 'it is a brah bright moonlight night tonight' is an example of the correct spelling and the original punctuation."

"Where did you learn all that"? MP asked.

"At Prince Orloff's I came across a volume dealing with the origin of language. I looked it over rather superficially. I am not too well versed, but I shall take it up again in connection with my further studies."

Carter's reality-based corrections and notes form an amusing counterpoint to Forssgren's errors and fanciful tales. Here, for instance, Carter corrects "La Rousse," points out Forssgren's habit of misspelling French words, notes the absence of any evidence that Proust took an interest in Forssgren's writing, and comments on Proust's use of French dictionaries and his translations of John Ruskin. "A conversation about English versus French with Proust would have been quite different from the one Forssgren relates," says Carter, dryly.

Elsewhere, Forssgren undertakes an extraordinary digression to present his proposal for spelling reform, "THE AMERICAN STANDARD PHONETIC ALPHABET," "a purfekt soluuqun ty xu speling problem." Sae wut?

This memoir though has a less comic aspect. Troubled by the presentation of Proust's sexuality in George Painter's two-volume biography, Forssgren, himself homosexual, evidently feared outing by association. Painter's biography doesn't mention Forssgren, and according to Carter, Painter didn't even know about Proust's Swedish valet. Still, Forssgren wrote to set his story straight, as it were, denying any knowledge of Proust's sexuality, claiming never to have read Proust's work, and presenting scenes in which private moments with his employer are consistently interrupted when housekeeper Céleste Albaret barges in. "See? Nothing could have happened," Forssgren seems to be saying.

But Albaret says in her memoir Monsieur Proust that she never went into Proust's bedroom unbidden: that was an absolute rule of the household. And there's reason (in the form of a letter from Proust to Reynaldo Hahn) to think that something did happen between Proust and his valet. As Carter asks, "Was Proust falling in love with Forssgren or did he simply desire him?" That question adds a genuinely mysterious and poignant overtone to this curious memoir.

Yes, it's an expensive book. Thank you, ILL (interlibrary loan).

Related reading
All Proust posts (Pinboard)

And then there were four

"There are only four outdoor phone booths left in Manhattan — and they're all on West End Avenue. That's it: four."

(via Daring Fireball)

Charles Dickens on print and printers

A note in Edgar Rosenberg's Norton Critical Edition of Great Expectations led me to look up Charles Dickens's address to an anniversary meeting of the Printers' Pension Society, April 6, 1864. Dickens begins:

I do not know whether my feelings are exceptional, but I have a distinct recollection (in my early days at school, when under the dominion of an old lady, who to my mind ruled the world with the birch) of feeling an intense disgust with printers and printing. I thought the letters were printed and sent there to plague me, and I looked upon the printer as my enemy. When I was taught to say my prayers I was told to pray for my enemies, and I distinctly remember praying especially for the printer as my greatest enemy. I never now see a row of large, black, fat, staring Roman capitals, but this reminiscence rises up before me. . . .

But this feeling of dislike to the printer altogether disappeared from the time I saw my own name in print. I now feel gratified at looking at the jolly letter O, the crooked S, with its full benevolent turns, the curious G, and the Q with its comical tail, that first awoke in me a sense of the humourous. The printer and myself are, and have been for some time, inseparable companions.

Dickens closes by paying tribute to the printer's role in "press[ing] the tyrants and humbugs off the face of the earth":

The printer is the friend of intelligence, of thought; he is the friend of liberty, of freedom, of law; indeed, the printer is the friend of every man who is the friend of order; the friend of every man who can read. Of all inventions, of all the discoveries in science or art, of all the great results in the wonderful progress of mechanical energy and skill, the printer is the only product of civilization necessary to the existence of free man.

The Speeches of Charles Dickens, ed. K.J. Fielding (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960), 323–324, 325, 325.

Founded in 1827, the Printers' Pension Society was supporting seventy-six pensioners in 1864. Dickens earlier addressed the Society in 1843.

Awful Library Books

Because "'Books-that-should-be-reconsidered-under-interpretation-of-current-collection-development-policies-and-retired' is not a fun name": Awful Library Books.

(Thanks, Rachel!)

Proust model reader

In today's New York Times, a photograph of a lovely model reading Proust.

Early Beach Boys Hit Song Topics

Early Beach Boys Hit Song Topics, #5 In A Series Of Pop-Cultural Charts (via Submitted for Your Perusal)

Robert McNamara's lessons

The Wikipedia article on Errol Morris' documentary The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (2003) has capable summaries:

Eleven life lessons from The Fog of War
Eleven lessons from the Vietnam War
Ten additional lessons

The Fog of War is perhaps the most compelling documentary I've seen. And yes, history repeated itself, with Donald Rumsfeld starring as Robert S. McNamara.

Ex-Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara Dies at 93 (New York Times)

Fineline erasers

[If you’re visiting from the Carnival of Pen, Pencil, and Paper, welcome! Please feel free to look around. You can find all stationery-related posts via Pinboard.]



[1 11/16" x 7/16".]

This tiny metal vessel for Sheaffer erasers is a delight to the eye. Or my eye (or eyes). The design — from the 1940s? 1950s? — seems to prefigure the bold and cheery goofiness of the best Pop Art. I like the tipsy cursive and the bumpy ride that one must take to take in the main idea: "3 Fineline ERASERS." I like the idea of three erasers selling for nineteen cents. I like the inscrutable "T," which sits like a mystery planet at the edge of the Fineline solar system. And I like thinking of the "3" as residing on a dark distant planet whose form is indistinguishable from deep blue space.

I found this item (holding two not three erasers) some years ago in a now-defunct stationery store. I made up the rest.

[This post is the fifth in an occasional series, "From the Museum of Supplies." The museum is imaginary. The supplies are real. Supplies is my word, and has become my family's word, for all manner of stationery items.]

Also from the Museum of Supplies
Dennison's Gummed Labels No. 27
A Mad Men sort of man, sort of
Mongol No. 2 3/8
Real Thin Leads
Rite-Rite Long Leads

Webster's Third New International

"Permissive," "subversive," "a very great calamity": the 1961 publication of Webster's Third New International (Unabridged) caused a stir. Read all about it:

David Skinner, Ain't That the Truth: Webster's Third: The Most Controversial Dictionary in the English Language (Humanities)

I've had a Webster's Third since 1986 (thank you, Elaine). A fourth edition is now underway.

"No idea what to do"

A 1993 high-school graduate:

"I was told, growing up, that I could do whatever I wanted, and I fully believed I could. And therefore I had no idea what to do."

Chris Colin, What Really Happened to the Class of '93: Start-ups, Dropouts, and Other Navigations Through an Untidy Decade (New York: Broadway Books, 2004), 56, quoted in Jean M. Twenge, Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled — and More Miserable Than Ever Before (New York: Free Press, 2006), 226.