Writer and essayist, Thierry Laget publishes the correspondence between Marcel Proust and his influential banker friend Horace Finaly. We discover the character of Henri Rochat, a Vaudois and former waiter at the Ritz, who will live for three years at the expense of Marcel Proust.
It is an unknown anecdote from the life of Marcel Proust that resurfaces. For a long time, the writer hosted a cumbersome Swiss guest, Henri Rochat, whom he managed to send to Brazil with the help of a former classmate who had become a financier. “Letters to Horace Finaly”, published by Gallimard, is a collection of twenty unpublished letters from the famous author of the novel “In Search of Lost Time”.
“Horace Finaly is the scion of a dynasty of Jewish financiers from Central Europe, reports the French writer Thierry Laget, interviewed in the program Vertigo. Following his father, he became the biggest banker in the world. era for France, for Europe perhaps, at a time when one could, as the director of a bank, do personal business. He amassed a very large fortune.
A youthful friendship
Wealthy and skilled in business, Horace Finaly is also very cultured. “He knew, it is said, ‘Dante’s Divine Comedy’ by heart, he read Homer in the text and he collected the original editions and manuscripts of the Divine Comedy”, details the Proust specialist.
Marcel Proust received the Prix Goncourt in 1919 for “In the shadow of young girls in flower”, the second volume of his series “In Search of Lost Time”. [leemage – AFP]Horace Finaly and Marcel Proust met during their schooling at the prestigious Lycée Condorcet in Paris. Very young, they founded a review, “Le Banquet”, in which they published poems and short stories, notably the first ones written by Marcel Proust. The two companions also go on vacation together in Ostend, play in the casino, listen to concerts. And even make an express round trip to England, when it was thought until then that Proust had never been to this country.
Henri Rochat, this unwanted guest
Interrupted during the war, their correspondence resumed in 1920 with the appearance of the character of Henri Rochat. In Proust’s letters, he is presented as a former waiter at the Ritz, who became the writer’s secretary and friend.
“We don’t know much about his origins. We know that he is Swiss and it is assumed that he comes from the Vallée de Joux. He probably received a good education, he plays the piano and he paints”, explains Thierry Laget.
At that time, the Swiss were highly prized by the great Parisian hotels because the hotel school in Lausanne trained them perfectly in the hospitality professions. Henri Rochat is therefore recruited at the Ritz and is very quickly noticed by Proust who frequented this establishment and liked to chat with the waiters. When war broke out and Rochat lost his job, the writer welcomed him into his home by offering him a job as secretary. He takes it badly: Rochat turns out to be a poor writer and this stay, which was to last only a few months, lasts three years in the end. “Henri Rochat will have cost a lot of money to Proust. He was a very spendthrift”, analyzes Thierry Laget.
Not only does Henri Rochat not do the work he is paid to do, but he buys fancy suits when Proust himself lives in pajamas.
The little escapes
Regularly, Henri Rochat fled. “This is where we can think that he inspired part of the character of Albertine in ‘La recherche du temps perdu’, Albertine who is this being on the run about whom the narrator of the novel speaks”, book Thierry Laget .
“Being bored at my house, he has, on two or three occasions, made little ‘runaways’ where he unfortunately lost not only the fatness he had gained at home, but also all the money that I gave him. had given, which today would make a small fortune (almost equivalent to mine), and which he generously distributed to ‘chickens'”, laments the novelist in his letters, bewildered by his bills at the tailor.
Far away in Brazil
Tired, Proust contacted his friend Finaly to send Henri Rochat to one of his bank’s subsidiaries, if possible in China, to be sure not to see him again anytime soon. Henri Rochat ends up being sent to Recife, Brazil, where his behavior will be far from exemplary.
While he was believed to be dead for a long time in Argentina, it was recently discovered that it was near Parnaiba (north-eastern Brazil) that he disappeared in 1923. Rochat had taken specimens as far as this tropical region. autographed novels by Proust, who died in 1922.
The correspondence continued after the death of the writer between Horace Finaly and Marcel’s brother, the surgeon Robert Proust. Very affected, Horace Finaly will decisively contribute to keeping the memory of Marcel Proust alive.
Interview by Anne Laure Gannac
Web adaptation: Melissa Härtel with agencies
Marcel Proust, “Letters to Horace Finaly”, edition by Thierry Laget, Blanche collection, Gallimard
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