Proust on the Investment Market

At first blush, one thinks of Remembrance of Things Past as an “inward” novel: about the spirit, or the subconscious, or the life of the mind. It is all of that, but it is also a great novel of social change, chronicling—not exactly the rise of a new class but certainly decline of an old aristocracy, and some of the attendant social turmoil (indeed hardly anything in the book is any better than Proust’s handling of the infamous Dreyfus case, and its reverberations).

One who navigates with remarkable skill through these turbulent currents is M. de Norpois, diplomat and man-about-town, with a sideline in the offering of investment advice:

My aunt Léonie [the narrator recounts] had bequeathed to me … almost all her liquid assets … . My father, who was trustee of this estate until I came of age, now consulted M. de Norpois with regard to a number of investments. He recommended certain stocks bearing a low rate of interest, which he considered particularly sound, notably English consols and Russian four per cents. “With absolutely first-class securities such as those,” said M. de Norpois, “even if your income from them is nothing very great, you may be certain of never losing any of your capital.” My father then gave him a rough indication of what else he had bought. M. de Norpois gave a just perceptible smile of congratulation; like all capitalists, he regarded wealth ass an enviable thing, but thought it more delicate to compliment people on their possessions only by an inconspicuous sign of intelligent sympathy; at the same time, as he was himself regarded as colossally rich, he thought it in good taste to seem to regard as considerable the inferior incomes of his friends, with, however, a happy and comforting reference to the superiority of his own. On the other hand, he did not hesitate to congratulate my father on the “composition” of his portfolio, selected “with so sure, so delicate, so fine a taste.” It was as though he attributed to the relative values of shares, and even to shares themselves, something akin to aesthetic merit.

Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past I 488-9
(Vintage Books ed. 1982)

These days, he could just buy an index fund.