Visiting Illiers-Combray, in the footsteps of Marcel Proust

After my bookbinding, I went to visit Illiers-Combray. I could have visited it when I was in Chartres earlier this year, but at that time, I wasn’t reading Proust and Illiers-Combray didn’t exist for me. Illiers-Combray is the only commune to be renamed after a fictional place from a novel.

Right now, the house of “Aunt Léonie” is under renovation (until April 2024).

It was in this house, which belonged to his uncle Jules Amiot, that young Marcel Proust spent several of his Easter holidays as a child, between 1877 and 1880. Thanks to the support of its members and patrons, the SAMP opens this house to the public, transformed into Marcel Proust Museum – Aunt Léonie’s House, where temporary exhibitions are organized (for example, in co-production with Éditions Gallimard and the Eure-et-Loir department, “Marcel Proust, Prix Goncourt 1919”).
Society of Friends of Marcel Proust

We had to visit another house of Marcel Proust’s close family. All the furniture from Aunt Léonie’s house has been moved into this temporary museum, and we can see little Marcel’s room (with the magic lantern) and Aunt Léonie’s room (with her Vichy bottle, a teacup, and a madeleine).

I expected more to see than that; I feel the museum in Cabourg is more comprehensive. Anyway, admission is only €5, and there are a few elements that touch me particularly.

I know Proust used to paste long galleys to correct proofs, but they are illegible (I saw a copy with 2 such galleys at the Rare Books Fair), whereas the little notes he makes in the margins seem more readable and understandable to me. When I recognized a passage I had liked and memorized, I was very happy to think: “this passage wasn’t in the first version, he did well to add it”.

Seeing his handwritten script moved me deeply; a shiver ran through me when I managed to decipher it. I don’t know, maybe because it’s proof that this man really existed, and that he worked so hard to create his masterpiece for us.

The visit to the temporary museum is quick enough that I treat myself to a long moment at the tea room/restaurant “La Madeleine d’Illiers”.

On the menu: a gourmet madeleine (€9) with several desserts, including a delicious madeleine. Of course, I ordered a cup of tea. Eating a madeleine doesn’t bring back childhood memories, but another Proustian event: my tea-time at the Ritz, Proust’s “canteen”.

And so I spent a long time sitting in front of the church of Illiers-Combray, which illustrator Stéphane Heuet perfectly immortalized in the graphic novel adaptation of À la recherche du temps perdu.

Next to the church stands the statue of little Marcel.

The church is spacious, and the ceiling is beautifully decorated.

The real house of Aunt Léonie is at 4 rue du Docteur Proust (Marcel’s father). Unfortunately, you can’t see anything from the street, not even the garden. I’ll have to come back 😀

In the meantime, I take a stroll and head to Marcel Proust Park, before discovering the Pré-Catlan (created by Adrien Proust), smaller than in my imagination.

What’s interesting is that the path leading to the Pré-Catlan seems to match the hawthorn lane.

On the other side, it’s Swann’s Park, without swans but with plenty of ducks.

Since the Loir runs through the town, there are several washhouses, still visible but, of course, no longer used.

The bell tower of Combray heavily inspired the bell tower of Saint-Hilaire in the novel. It’s omnipresent; I always have it in sight while walking around town.