23/07/2025
Almost 20 years ago now (after almost a decade of false starts) I finally progressed further than Swann’s Way and managed to complete ‘In Search of Lost Time.’ As summer hit and we travelled through France via TGV that year I quickly found myself in Balbec (the seaside resort that features most in the second volume). I think the majesty of Proust is that it’s so rich with detail and so intertwined with memory that, looking back now all those years later, my first memories of Balbec are little different in intensity to those of Mandelieu-la-Napoule where we physically holidayed.
For that reason I return to Proust often (Balbec often in Summer). If I want to return to Mandelieu as easily, I read Hemingway’s ‘Garden of Eden’ which is set locally and in which I can recognise the beaches and coastline mentioned that me and my wife came to know well that year and others that followed.
On the face of it, Proust and Hemingway seem so vastly different as writers—and indeed men—and yet I think there’s always easy connections to be found. I’ve always loved the fact too that Proust was a beer drinker, which itself seems unexpected. When you picture Proust, I think you much rather expect him to drink fine wine, Cognac or even Grand Marnier. In that however we find another obvious Hemingway connection. The legend suggests that the name Grand Marnier was coined by Cesar Ritz for his friend and business partner Marnier-Lapostolle who provided financial backing for the Ritz Paris. Visit the Ritz now from the Vendome side and on your way to the Bar Hemingway, you’ll pass the Salon Proust—such is both writers close affiliation with the Ritz itself. In 2012, Hemingway biographer, A.E. Hotchner wrote, in a piece for Vanity Fair, that on his death bed Marcel Proust requested that his chauffeur, Odilon, go to the Ritz Paris to procure him a chilled bottle of his favourite beer. Hotchner went so far to say that Proust uttered—after a last satisfying sip—the final words of his life: “Thank you, my dear Odilon, for getting me the Ritz beer.” — Now that is the most uncharacteristic Proust sentence ever.
