Jeanne Clémence Weil

Jeanne Weil was a sensitive, exceptionally intelligent, and well-educated young woman who had a profound appreciation of music and literature. Her schooling had been primarily classical. Because girls could not attend the lycées that functioned as preparatory schools for higher education, Jeanne studied at home, and probably also with private tutors. In addition to Latin and Greek, she learned to read and speak English and some German. She was a passionate admirer of the great French masters of the seventeenth century whose works formed the central element of her education: the plays of Molière, Racine, and Corneille, as well as the letters of Mme de Sévigné. From these and other beloved books that Jeanne read and reread, she used to copy out in a notebook, writing in a fine, slanted hand, her favorite passages, committing many of them to memory. As befitted her modesty, she did so in secret. Her letters contain many literary allusions, and she quotes at ease not only from French classical writers and William Shakespeare but also from such modern novelists as Honoré de Balzac and Pierre Loti. An accomplished pianist like her mother, she often played the works of Mozart and Beethoven for her family and friends. Those who knew her well delighted in her company, enjoying her subtle sense of humor fed by a strong sense of the ridiculous. With all her accomplishments and her fine mind, Jeanne was reserved, preferring simplicity to ostentation, natural dignity to any display of vanity.

Links

Marcel Proust a Life by William C. Carter