Few authors have been as obsessively studied as France's Marcel Proust, but it turns out there are still surprises to uncover, including the real-life inspiration for one of his central characters. 

The name Willie Heath is well-known to Proustian scholars. 

It is, indeed, the first to appear in any of his writings, in the dedication to his earliest novel, Pleasures and Days: "To my friend Willie Heath / Died in Paris on 3 October 1893."

No one had previously connected that name to Charles Swann, a central character in Proust's masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time, whose first volume is titled Swann's Way and tracks the narrator's fascination with an elegant Parisian socialite.

A detail of a photo of Willie Heath by famous French photographer Nadar. Photo: Pinterest.com

But in tracing Heath's background, two experts – Thierry Laget and Pyra Wise – independently stumbled on a link when they unearthed Heath's birth certificate and found his mother to be one Elisabeth Bond Swan.

"Swan, as in Swann... Pyra and I both hit the ceiling when we saw that," said Laget, author of a 2019 book on Proust, based in Montreal. 

Some thought Heath an invention by Proust, made up for the sake of a moving dedication, which becomes a sort of introduction to the novel with the line: "From the lap of God in which you rest... reveal to me those truths which conquer death.”

Many more, following the lead of another Proust friend Pierre Lavallee, said he was a young English dandy. 

But this, too, was wrong: Heath was born in Queens, New York in 1869, two years before Proust. He died of enteritis at 24 and is buried in Brooklyn. 

He lived near the Champs-Elysees in Paris after his tycoon father fled a financial fraud scandal back home. 

"I was astonished that we knew so little about Willie Heath compared with other friends of Proust, since he struck me as such an important figure," said Wise, who specialises in the great madeleine-sniffer at the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Paris. 

Lovers? 

Laget was first to reveal his findings, in online magazine Proustonomics earlier this month. That was where Wise saw that someone else had formed the same conclusion as her, and the article was this week updated to add her name. 

"The characters in Time Lost come from multiple sources and always contain a bit of Marcel himself," Wise told AFP. 

"This biographical element doesn't revolutionise our understanding of the work, but it adds some knowledge, some ambiance," she added. 

A first galley proof of ‘In Search of Lost Time: Swann’s Way’ with Proust's handwritten corrections. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

A mystery remains: were Heath and Proust lovers?

"Willie Heath was in the same circle as Proust, that of wealthy art-lovers, the sort that went to the Louvre every day. They were young friends brought together by culture, and maybe more than that, but we will never know for sure," said Laget. 

But he added: "I think he was more than that, otherwise Proust wouldn't have dedicated his first book to him with such tender words. We also know that he kept his photo very close. These are signs of a long fidelity to, dare we say it, young love."