Mick Hartley

From Richard Davenport-Hines’ “A Night at the Majestic“:

Proust’s investment policy seems partly to have reflected his state of boredom, and partly his susceptibility to the euphonius and the exotic. The ‘aesthetic pleasure’ of the soft place-names of France – the reverberating sounds and historical associations of Montfort-L’Amaury, Cossé-le-Vivien, Nanteuil-le-Haudoin, Cricquetot-L’Esneval and La Ferté-Vidame – ‘ravished Proust,’ his protégé Marcel Plantevignes recalled. Proust’s susceptibility to what Plantevignes called ‘artistic geography’ proved expensive, though. His holdings in the United States Steel Corporation or New York City bonds might be lucrative but sounded prosaic: he was more attracted by mellifluously titled companies such as Pins des Landes, Malacca Rubber Plantations, Banco Espanol del Rio de la Plata, Oriental Carpet, Doubowaia Balka and North Caucasian Oilfields. Foreign railways, too, interested the house-bound asthmatic: Mexico Tramways, United Railways of Havana, the Tanganyika Railway, or (much to be savoured) S. A. Chemin de Fer de Rosario à Puerto Belgrano. Overall, Proust was too credulous and remote to make a successful speculator: Hauser begged not to be involved in some of his investments.