Japanese Dwarf Trees

"Japanese Dwarf Trees" from Marcel Proust's writings

"In 1893 Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust met Robert de Montesquiou [French Symbolist poet and art collector -- and all around snob] at the house of the hostess-painter Madeleine Lemarie... Montesquiou, a monster of egotism who needed constant praise as exaggerated as that which Nero had required, and who could be as sadistic as the Roman emperor if it was not forthcoming -- was thirty-seven when Proust, just twenty-two years old, met him... In his high-pitched, grating voice Montesquiou was constantly recited [sic] his own poetry... or presiding over literary and musical soirees. No praise was too extravagant, and Proust knew how to lay it on thick. 'You are the sovereign not only of transitory, but of eternal things,' Proust wrote him... But Proust was also the master of the nuanced compliments; after Montesquiou showed him his celebrated Japanese dwarf trees, Proust had the nerve to write him that his soul was 'a garden as rare and fastiduous as the one in which you allowed me to walk the other day ...' And Montesquiou heard that Proust kept his friends in stitches imitating his way of speaking, of lauging[sic], and of stamping his foot. Most daring of all, Proust proposed to write an essay to be titled 'The Simplicity of Monsieur Montesquiou,' who had never been previously accused of such a quality."

http://www.phoenixbonsai.com/1900Refs/Proust.html