Combray: November 16, 2009:

VOLUME ONE: ‘SWANN’S WAY’: Part One.

 

For a long time I’d go to bed early. But no sooner was I asleep, than I’d dream I was awake - or maybe the other way around. Rather odd that

 

Bad night last night, tossed & turned but could not get to sleep; could barely remember where I was, whose bed I was in or even who I was

 

Last night I dreamed I was in the bedroom of the Marquise de Saint-Loup. The Marquise de Saint-Loup? Who? I don't even know who she is!

 

My sole consolation when I went upstairs for the night was that Mama would come in and kiss me after I was in bed.

 

Hearing the rustle of her dress approach my room is, for me, a moment of the utmost pain for I know that, after the kiss, she will be gone.

 

Swann came to dinner last night. As usual they all sat outside eating and drinking till it was too late for Mama’s goodnight kiss in bed

 

The peal of the garden gate’s bell, whose sound will haunt my dreams for the rest of days, means the arrival of Swann and the loss of Mama

 

I don’t care if Swann is a friend of the Prince of Wales and smartest member of Smart Society – for me he is merely an impediment to a kiss

 

Last night I used all my skills of tears and guilt upon my mother and, reader: - she spent the night with me. A night I shall never forget!

 

Mama read me a book by Georges Sand (a female writer with a man’s name) about the incestuous love of a mother and son. No wonder I’m odd!

 

I ought to have been happy; I was not. My mother had made the first concession & painful abdication from the ideal she had formed for me.

 

I felt I had, with an impious & secret finger, traced a first wrinkle upon her soul and brought out a first white hair upon her head.

 

Feeling rather depressed recently; not going anywhere or achieving anything. Mama suggested a cup of tea & cake might make me feel better

 

Had some tea and madeleines yesterday, very tasty, cheered me up immensely. Brought back all sorts of childhood memories with Aunt Leonie

 

The taste on my palette of those plump little madeleines sent a shudder thru my whole body and an exquisite pleasure invaded my senses.

 

The vicissitudes of life became indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory – I no longer cared – but why?

 

The taste of the crumbs of madeleine in the tea had recalled my childhood visits to aunt Leonie’s house in Combray when she shared her tea.

 

With the taste of madeleine; M. Swann’s park, the water-lilies on the Vivonne and all the good folk of Combray, sprang from my cup of tea

 

Every Easter, my family would leave Paris by train and visit my mother’s family in Combray. We’d stay in the house of my aunt Leonie

 

Since her husband's death, my aunt had gradually declined to leave, first Combray, then her house, then her bedroom, and finally her bed.

 

She never 'came down' now, but lay perpetually in a condition of grief, physical exhaustion, illness, obsessions, & religious observances

 

Woke to hear Aunt Leonie this morning, talking in a low voice as she’s got something floating lose in her head & does not want to disturb it

 

Poor aunt Leonie can never sleep as she must stay awake talking quietly to circulate the blood in her throat which would otherwise choke her

 

At Combray, a person or even a strange animal, whom one 'didn't know from Adam’, was as incredible a being as any mythological deity.

 

Saw a strange dog out in the street today, no idea who it belongs to. Françoise suggested that it’s Mme Sazerat’s but I don’t think so

 

Françoise likes the dog "He's as clever as a Christian, always good tempered, always friendly and well behaved. He's a regular little gent!”

 

“The end is come at last” my aunt would say, & 20 times Françoise would reply “Knowing your illness as you do you will live to be a hundred”

 

“I do not ask to live to a hundred,” my aunt would say, for she preferred to have no definite limit fixed to the number of her days.

 

Saw the soldiers march past the house. “Poor boys, to be mown down like grass in a meadow” Françoise said. “It’s just shocking to think of.”

 

Asparagus for lunch again today. Françoise must have found a really good source in the market. Poor scullery maid has still got bad sniffles

 

Swann says the scullery maid reminds him of Giotto’s painting ‘Charity’. But there’s little charity from Françoise who loathes and hates her

 

Françoise blames the scullery maid for getting herself pregnant: “Fall in love with a dog’s bum, and you’ll soon think it pretty as a plum”

 

I discovered later that the poor scullery maid is allergic to asparagus. That’s why Françoise makes her clean & cook it every day for lunch.

 

Albert Bloch, a friend from school who speaks only in Homeric cadences, lent me a book by a new author – Bergotte – “a most subtle scribe”

 

“Read you then this lyrical prose” Bloch told me “That you may taste the ambrosial joys of Olympus” (Seriously - that’s how he always talks)

 

Bloch drives my family crazy, the way he talks. Grandma thinks that he’s mad. Papa thinks he’s rude & Grandpa says it’s because he’s a Jew

 

When asked if it’s raining, he replied “I live so far apart from physical contingencies, my senses no longer inform me if I’m wet or not”

 

Bloch was right about Bergotte. I’ve got hold of all his books and spend my days sitting in the garden, reading them one after the other.

 

Swann saw me reading in the garden this afternoon. “Bergotte eh?” Swann said “He’s a good friend and comes to lunch at least once a week”

 

Swann told me that my hero, Bergotte, is a close friend with his daughter Gilberte & they discuss books & go visiting old churches together

 

What a magical life Swann’s daughter must lead! To be on such intimate terms with a great writer like Bergotte; to discuss books!

 

I can’t stop dreaming of becoming friends with Swann’s daughter & meeting her friend Bergotte. But such dreams are unfortunately impossible.

 

Charles Swann’s father was an old friend of my grandfather which is why he continues to visit us. My grandfather however disapproves of him

 

Middle-class people in those days took what was almost a Hindu view of society, which they held to consist of sharply defined castes

 

Unlike Swann, Grandfather believes that everyone at birth found himself called to that station in life which his parents already occupied

 

Swann’s father was a broker, like my grandfather, so he the son should have remained a broker instead of hob-nobbing with aristocrats

 

My family knew that Swann moved in high society, but they had no idea just how high. He often dines with the President or Prince of Wales

 

Swann is also well known & respected as an art connoisseur & collector which is why he compares everybody to famous paintings

 

Just before I was born, Swann made what is referred to as an unfortunate marriage which is why he never brings his wife. She’d been a hooker

 

Mama always wants to ask Swann about his daughter who’s about the same age as me but Papa won’t let her. “Impossible to acknowledge” he says

 

That Swann ended-up with an illegitimate child as well as marrying a hooker reinforced our belief that one should stay within one’s caste.

 

Visited Uncle Adolphe yesterday and met his Lady in Pink having a cup of tea. Trés charment! I’m afraid I told Papa and Grandpa about it

 

Papa and Grandpa were so angry with uncle Adolphe when they heard I had met his Lady in Pink, that words of a violent order were exchanged

 

Saw Uncle Adolphe in the street today; wanted to apologize and let him know how much I loved him, and so thought to raise my hat in greeting

 

On reflection I decided that raising my hat would be an inadequate gesture and consequently at the last moment I chose to ignore him instead

 

My uncle thought I was obeying my parents; he never forgave them. Though he didn’t die till many years later, none of us ever saw him again.

 

We met old M. Vinteuil when we were walking with Swann today. “I keep meaning to ask him something” Swann said “But I can’t remember what.”

 

M. Vinteuil is the village organist & piano teacher. A prudish man, he’s aware of the village gossip concerning his daughter’s Sapphic taste

 

Shamed by his daughter’s reputation, M. Vinteuil spent his final days alone, sitting sadly beside his wife’s grave, yearning to join her

 

Walking past old M. Vinteuil’s house this evening, I noticed the windows were open and saw his daughter and her friend. They didn’t see me.

 

Hidden, breathlessly among the bushes, I watch through the window as the two women chase, taunt and tempt each other with increasing abandon

 

Mlle Vinteuil & her friend frolic shamelessly beneath her dead father’s photograph & kiss wantonly within the low ‘V’s of their bodices

 

Though I did not fully understand what I was seeing, memories of their shameful encounter would continue to haunt the rest of my life

 

I sense that within the butch body of the rough and swaggering trooper Mlle Vinteuil presents to the world, a young maiden yearns to be free

 

After a long family walk today, Papa asked Mama “Where are we?” then showed her we were home. “You really are wonderful” she said admiringly

 

The weather was fine yesterday so we walked along the Guermantes Way which is longer than Swann’s so we were late back. Too late for kisses.

 

Saw the Duchesse de Guermantes today at church for a wedding. She looked just like an ordinary person, not at all like a stained glass image

 

Legrandin was also at church yesterday, he was bowing so obsequiously to some very grand lady that his backside quivered quite obscenely

 

With his gentle, ironical, disillusioned, rather absent-minded smile, Legrandin said that all he lacked in Paris was an open patch of sky

 

While boasting that his sister had married a posh Marquise in Balbec, Legrandin complained that the aristocracy had not all been guillotined

 

Papa asked Legrandin for any contacts he might have in Balbec, but Legrandin avoided the question by describing lonely trees and a cruel sky

 

Transfixing my father with a penetrating stare, Legrandin seemed to be lost in his own thoughts. “Well” my father said “Do you know anyone?”

 

“In Balbec” Legrandin continued “I know everyone and I know no one. The places I know well, the people very slightly” And then he slid away.

 

Hawthorns are in bloom again, offering their charms in inexhaustible profusion but keeping their secret like a melody one can’t quite grasp.

 

Went for a walk past Swann’s park with Papa and Grandpa. Saw a pretty girl with red hair looking at me. She must be Bergotte’s friend

 

My first sight of the little red-headed girl & the heady scent of that rich profusion of hawthorn blossoms will haunt my memory for all time

 

I looked at her, as though my eyes were windows, from which my soul & all my senses leaned & implored her to know me & become my friend

 

She turned away with an indifferent and disdainful air and then, with a half-hidden smile, she made a most suggestively indelicate gesture.

 

I’m in love!

 

Bloch arrived late, covered in mud and soaked from the rain. “I am more familiar with opium pipes than clocks or umbrellas” he explained

 

Bloch reminds Swann of Bellini’s portrait of Mohammed II. How can Swann even remember all these paintings! I mean, who’s Mohammed II anyway?

 

Actually Swann eventually explained to me that he felt a very cordial sympathy with Mohammed who’d fallen in love with one of his own wives

 

Finding that he’d fallen madly in love with one of his wives, Swann told me, Mohammed stabbed her in order to recover his spiritual freedom

 

Swann’s Way: its lilacs, hawthorns, cornflowers, poppies & apple-trees Guermantes Way: its river full of tadpoles, water-lilies & buttercups

 

It’s the memory of Swann’s Way that makes me stand alone in ecstasy, inhaling through the rain, the lingering scent of invisible lilacs

 

Not a footstep is to be heard on any of the paths. Somewhere in one of the tall trees, making a stage in its height, an invisible bird sings

 

Desperately attempting to make the day seem shorter, a bird explores with a long, continuous note the solitude that presses it on every side

 

With the painstaking exactitude of a person who has nothing better to do, the bell of the village church relieves the day of its superfluity

 

When the hour sounds from the church steeple it lets fall the few golden, indolent drops & presses upon the distended surface of the silence

 

While riding today with Dr. Percepied in his carriage, I noticed how the church steeples at Martinville danced with the steeple at Vieuxvicq

 

At a bend in the road I experienced that special pleasure, unlike any other, when I caught sight of the twin steeples of Martinville.

 

The movement of the carriage and the windings of the road seemed to keep the twin steeples continually changing their positions

 

Re-reading my tweet about the three steeples makes me feel like a hen that has just laid an egg and I want to sing at the top of my voice.

 

VOLUME ONE: ‘SWANN’S WAY’: PART TWO: ‘sWANN IN LOVE’

(This section is narrated by Charles Swann, unlike the rest of the novel which is narrated by Marcel.)

 

Charlus introduced me to a rather voluptuous friend of his at the theatre last night. Not really my type but she might amuse me for a while

 

“And won’t you” Odette asked me, “come just once and have tea with me? You can bring your friend Vermeer too if he’d like. I’m always free.”

 

Odette de Crecy visited me again. Her profile is too sharp for my taste and her eyes too large, but her looks remind me of some rare beauty.

 

It’s Botticelli’s famous painting of Zipporah, Moses’ wife, Odette reminds me of. So it’s Botticelli I possess when I hold her in my arms.

 

Odette lives out on the western edge of Paris, rue La Pérouse - some vulgar new development near the Arc de Triomphe. Not St Germain at all.

 

Odette has invited me to her charming house on rue La Pérouse on several occasions between 5 & 7PM, & always offers an excellent cup of tea

 

How nice it would be to have a little woman like that in whose house one could always be certain of finding a really good cup of tea.

 

Left my cigarette case at Odette’s house "If only" she wrote "you had also forgotten your heart! I should never have let you have that back"

 

Paid a surprise call on Odette last night and drove to her house on rue La Pérouse, unfortunately knocked on the wrong bedroom window!

 

Odette invited me to meet her friends, the Verdurins. Seem like nice people; very affable and not at all stuffy. An interesting little clan.

 

Mme Verdurin refers to her friends as ‘the Faithful’. A rather raffish crowd of socially insecure guests whom she entertains every Wednesday

 

The hostess, Mme Verdurin, perched on her high stool, exudes good fellowship, gossip and scandal, laughs heartily and sobs with affability

 

Mme Verdurin is like a cage-bird whose biscuit has been steeped in mulled wine as she exudes smiles of benign good-fellowship from her perch

 

“No stuffy formalities her” Mme Verdurin insists. “We’re all good pals having a good time & a good laugh. God save us all from ‘the Bores’!”

 

Mme Verdurin is so fond of laughter she once dislocated her jaw. Dr Cottard had to use considerable strength to force it back in its socket

 

Terrified of further dislocations, Mme Verdurin no longer laughs but, as though avoiding some indecent sight, buries her face in her hands

 

Face buried in hands, Mme Verdurin struggles to suppress & annihilate any expression of joviality which might otherwise leave her inanimate

 

What Mme Verdurin cannot stand are ‘the Bores’. Stuffy people from high society (like the Guermantes) whose very name brings on her migraine

 

Spent Wednesday evening, as always, with Odette chez the Verdurins. That chap Forcheville was hanging around again; can’t say I like him

 

Heard a piece of music at the Verdurin’s last night; strangely familiar, like a woman you’ve glimpsed in the street but with no way to meet

 

Odette played that piece of music for me on the piano. Apparently it’s a sonata by a chap called Vinteuil. Name seems strangely familiar

 

That little phrase by Vinteuil keeps haunting me; like a world of inexpressible delights & new, strange exotic desires. Odette likes it too

 

Vinteuil’s little phrase expands my soul as the fragrance of certain roses on the moist evening air has the power to dilate one’s nostrils.

 

Vinteuil’s sonata recalls the delicate fragrance of roses, the slow swelling of a wave or the stillness of a Dutch interior by Ptr de Hooch

 

In the airy grace of Vinteuil’s little phrase, I now sense an air of philosophic detachment which follows an outburst of vain regret.

 

Odette, rather charmingly I feel, calls Vinteuil’s little phrase “The National Anthem” of our love.

 

Unusual name ‘Vinteuil’. That Combray piano teacher with the butch daughter is called Vinteuil. Wonder if they’re related? Must ask him.

 

Charlus says that Vinteuil’s ‘little phrase’ always reminds him of what a pederast might hum when raping a choirboy.

 

Most charming ride in the carriage last night. Odette’s corsage slipped out of place and she allowed me to re-adjust her cattleya for her

 

Miserable evening. Missed Odette at the Verdurin’s & then again at each of the restaurants & cafes where I searched desperately for her

 

My coachman Rémi (who always reminds me of Rizzo’s bust of Doge Loredan) was also unable to locate her in any cafés on the Champs Elysees

 

“I think we should go home sir” Rémi said “The lady can’t be found.” “Certainly not” I replied “She will be most vexed if we don’t find her”

 

Delightful evening yesterday. A wonderful cinq-a-sept with my Botticelli maiden: English tea followed by the rearrangement of her cattleyas.

 

I’m finding the Verdurins increasingly unfriendly and even Odette is becoming more distant. That oaf Forcheville is always hanging around

 

I fear that the excessive display of my own passion may have fully and finally dispensed Odette from the obligation to reciprocate my love

 

Wednesday chez Verdurins, always the same crowd of faithful: Dr. Cottard & little wife, Brichot, Biche & as always that awful de Forcheville

 

Verdurin’s friend Dr. Cottard is so ill at ease & unsure if people are joking or not that he maintains a half-smile so he can go either way

 

Cottard watches with open-mouthed admiration as Mme Verdurin skips from one stepping-stone to another of her stock of ready-made clichés

 

Have decided that Cottard with his bad puns & gaffes is a complete oaf. He’s only respected professionally because he’s rude to his patients

 

Don’t know if I can trust Odette anymore. Been hearing nasty rumors about her sexual proclivities. Can’t seem to get a straight answer

 

Nasty anonymous note suggesting Odette does it with women as well as men. Who could’ve written it? Charlus? The Prince des Laumes? D’Orsan?

 

Finally asked Odette if she’d ever had sex with Mme Verdurin or any other woman. “No!” she said angrily. “Well perhaps 2 or 3 times.”

 

“There was a procuress outside my house today” Odette said. “Told me ‘the ambassador will kill himself if he can’t ravish her’ - meaning me”

 

After treating Odette with indifference for so long I am now obsessed. After pursuing me for so long, she can now either take me or leave me

 

Odette’s away on a trip with the Verdurins & their friends & so find myself at a loose end in Paris. Who needs them? Time to go party!

 

I need to make contact with my old friends, with the Guermantes & the Fbg. St-Germain again. None of my friends approve of Odette. Obviously

 

People, not being in love themselves, feel that a clever man should only be in love with a person whom they consider “worth his while”

 

That’s like being astonished that anyone should die of cholera at the bidding of so insignificant a creature as the comma bacillus.

 

Attended a party at Mme de Saint-Euverte. Nice change of scenery, especially that young Mme Cambremer. Good to get away from the little-clan

 

Saw Gen. Froberville at the party & mentioned the explorer La Pérouse “Had a street named after him” the general said. “Delightfully gloomy”

 

Odette lives on rue La Pérouse which is why I cannot stop myself from bringing it up in conversation. I even have lunch at Café Lapérouse

 

Saw Oriane too – always good for a laugh! Enjoyed a good ‘ca-ca’ and merde joke at poor Mme Cambremer’s expense. Must try to make up to her

 

Oriane said that Mme Cambremer must be a country cousin, hired just like the musicians, the food and the chairs for Mme St. Euverte’s party

 

Heard Vinteuil’s sonata at St.Euverte’s & ignoring my present desolation, it sang maddeningly in my ears, the forgotten strains of happiness

 

Mme de St. Euverte’s musicians playing Vinteuil’s little phrase caught me completely by surprise. I must not listen! I must not listen!

 

Vinteuil’s sonata reminded me of the days when I had thought Odette to be in love with me; a foolish memory I had buried deep inside myself

 

I remember now, those times on my way to visit Odette, how I thought I was in love. How foolish I was to think I could posses another person

 

Is it my jealousy or Odette’s vices which have driven me to my ruin? Is it my weakness or Odette’s which exacerbates the torment in my soul?

 

Like an evil deity, my jealousy is inspiring me & thrusting me on towards destruction. It is not I, but the Devil who drives the wild horses

 

Is this all that love really is? An endless cycle of hopeless pursuit & mutual torture that can end only in disappointment and/ or marriage?

 

Time to forget about Odette. To think that I’ve wasted years of my life; made myself ill, chasing after a woman who was not even my type

 

 

VOLUME ONE: ‘SWANN’S WAY’: Part three ‘PLACE NAMES – THE NAME’

(Like the rest of the novel, this section is once more narrated by Marcel)

 

The holiday in Combray is over; we are back home in our Paris apartment in ugly, boring, bourgeois Faubourg Saint-Honoré near the Madeleine.

 

Mama and Papa made me go to the park again today. Said it’s for my health. Françoise made me walk all the way.

 

I don’t like walking to the stupid Paris park. I prefer the walks we took in Combray – I liked walking along Swann’s Way the best.

 

It’s the memory of Swann’s Way that makes me stand alone in ecstasy, inhaling through the rain, the lingering scent of invisible lilacs

 

I hate the public gardens of the Champs-Elysées & never want to go there again! It’s not fair!  Stupid park! It’s of no interest. I hate it!

 

If Bergotte had described the park in one of his books, then I might have been curious to explore it but, as it is, I find in unendurable.

 

Saw that pretty girl with red hair playing in the park today. It must be Swann’s daughter, the friend of Bergotte. She did not notice me

 

I made Françoise take me to the park early today so I would be there before the pretty red-headed girl arrived and then she might notice me.

 

She didn’t notice me.

 

She didn’t notice me again, today.

 

I heard one of her friends call her name. It’s Gilberte. Gilberte Swann.

 

Gilberte’s governess has a smart blue feather in her hat. François is not smart alas, has no blue feather and sounds common when she speaks.

 

Gilberte noticed me! She asked me to join her friends in a game of prisoner’s base. Now I can play with her every day.

 

I’m in love!

 

This day which I had so dreaded was, as it happened, one of the few on which I was not unduly wretched.

 

When I asked Mama to buy François a hat with a blue feather as I blushed to be seen with her, she said I’m unjust & that she is a fine woman

 

Cloudy this morning. Françoise says it might rain. Maybe Gilberte won’t be allowed out to play. Maybe I can’t go to the park either

 

“Look sunshine” mother said. “I think you might perhaps try walking to the park after all.” Oh how my heart is overwhelmed with sudden joy!

 

Now I simply live to play with Gilberte at the park each day. I dream of being greeted by her two fiery eyes above plump and rosy cheeks

 

When one begins to love, one spends one’s time, not in getting to know who one’s love really is, but in arranging for the next rendez-vous

 

Gilberte did not come to the park to play yesterday. She said she went shopping with her mother instead. I feel as if my heart might break.

 

I worry about Grandma. If she was knocked down in the street and died, I’d have to wear mourning & not be able to play in the park for ages

 

When one is in love one has no love left over for anyone else.

 

Gilberte brought me a book today. A book by her friend Bergotte, in a parcel tied in a mauve ribbon and sealed with white wax

 

She said I may call her Gilberte & that she would call me by my first name. When she spoke my name I felt like I was in her mouth, naked

 

Her lips, when they articulated my name, had the air of stripping me; of divesting me like the skin from a fruit before swallowing its flesh

 

I’m waiting for the mailman as I’m expecting a letter from Gilberte saying that she’s never ceased to love me but she’s had to conceal it

 

I must stop imagining the letters that I might receive from Gilberte; by imagining her words, I make it impossible for her to write them

 

I want to be like M. Swann. I keep rubbing my eyes and pulling my nose so I look like him. Oh, how I wish I was bald, like M. Swann

 

The name Swann is magical to me & I murmur it to myself all day and manipulate the conversation so my parents also are forced to say “Swann”

 

The warm pleasure I get from the sound of “Swann” seems so sinful that I imagine others can read my thoughts & so avoid even saying the word

 

“By the way” my mother said at the dinner table. “You’ll never guess whom I saw buying an umbrella today” “Who?” I asked. “Swann” she said

 

“Why do you never invite Swann to our house?” I asked my mother. “He has far better things to do” she said. “Besides, I don’t know his wife”

 

“Swann told me you play with his daughter in the park” my mother said. I was dazzled: to think that Swann had noticed me and knew my name!

 

My parents could have no idea how much pleasure was associated with the word “Swann” or “Gilberte”. Only love could reveal that pleasure.

 

Just as infra-red reveals what is usually hidden so, in the world of emotions, the ability to see what is normally unseen, is called love

 

Few people understand how the phenomenon we call love creates a supplementary person, distinct from the one the world knows by the same name

 

I told Gilberte how much I enjoy looking forward to seeing her tomorrow in the park but she smilingly said she might not be back before Xmas

 

I knew Gilberte wouldn’t be at the park today so I made Françoise walk me to the Allée des Acacias to watch Mme. Swann on her promenade

 

Mme Swann promenades in the Bois every day, wearing the latest fashions and carrying a small parasol. She charms everyone with her grace

 

In the Bois, Mme Swann trails behind her the long train of her lilac skirt & greets men in ‘toppers’ with her lazy smile of warm complicity.

 

Sometimes she strolls in the Allée de la Reine where women go who want to be alone, or appear to want to be alone, where she meets ‘friends’

 

“Mme Swann? You mean Odette de Crecy. I remember having sex with her when the President resigned. The newsboys were outside our bedroom”

 

Those great sad eyes you mean? I wouldn’t remind her of your sexcapades though, she’s married now, to a member of the Jockey Club. Very posh

 

I should have liked to spend the rest of the day with a woman such as Mme Swann, over a cup of tea, in an apartment with dark painted walls

 

In such a room, women might come and go, talking of Michelangelo; or like Swann lingering here, discussing Vermeer.

 

It’s almost winter now in the Bois, and I too am in the autumn of my years, remembering the past splendors of Mme Swann in all her elegance

 

Of course nobody dresses like Mme Swann anymore. These days the streets are filled with motor cars & women no longer have any sense of style

 

Mme Swann no longer appears in the Bois. Those golden days are lost and gone. Houses, roads, avenues are as fugitive, alas, as the years.

 

 

VOLUME TWO: ‘WITHIN A BUDDING GROVE’.

PART ONE: ‘MADAME SWANN AT HOME’.

 

Before his marriage Swann, who visited the exiled French Pretender & Prince of Wales in London, remained modestly discreet of his friendship

 

Since his marriage Swann has become embarrassingly boastful if even the Assistant Under-Secretary for Something had returned his wife’s call

 

Papa says that while an eminent doctor like Cottard would make a suitable dinner guest with M. de Norpois, Swan is too vulgar & pestilent.

 

Ambassador Norpois is Papa’s best friend & mentor at the Ministry - and is also a pompous, clichéd, endlessly equivocating stuffed-shirt.

 

Norpois addressed me kindly but with the air of benevolence & self-importance of a man who’s conscious of the vastness of his own experience

 

Norpois has replaced “He who sows the wind shall reap the whirlwind” in his conversation with “The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on”

 

Norpois’ taste in literature runs not to the novels of Bergotte but to a treatise on the “Repeating Rifle in the Bulgarian Army”

 

M. de Norpois has his good points, he approved of the idea of my becoming a writer & he encouraged my father to let me attend the opera

 

The Opera was a disappointment. Berma did not act enough & her Phèadre was more like a real woman than a great actress. Norpois disagreed.

 

Norpois often dines at the Swann’s house and gives us all the latest gossip, even explaining how Odette had blackmailed Swann into marriage

 

M. de Norpois agrees that Gilberte Swann, like her mother, is most charming and he promises me that he’ll tell them both that I think so too

 

As I was asking M. de Norpois for an introduction to Mme. Swann, I knew instantly that he might see her daily but never ever mention my name

 

I’ve been going to the park every day, even while Gilberte was away with her family, but now she’s returned & with her all my anguished love

 

I told Gilberte how much I admire her parents, M. and Mme Swann. “You know they can’t stand you!” she told me, bursting into laughter.

 

I sometimes wonder if Gilberte even loves me.

 

It’s not as though she has ever actually said anything. Those who love and those who enjoy are not always the same.

 

She said her parents see me as a person of low moral qualities who’ll mock them behind their backs while taking advantage of their daughter

 

I wrote a 16 page letter explaining my true feelings, for Gilberte to deliver to Swann. She said he’d dismissed as meaningless & returned it

 

When we are in love, our love is too big a thing for us to contain within ourselves. It radiates towards the loved one, then bounces back

 

The repercussion of our own love which we call the other’s love, charms us because we do not recognize it as having originated in ourselves.

 

Sometimes Gilberte and I go behind the laurel buses & sometimes we even wrestle each other on the grass, much to my physical satisfaction

 

My physical satisfaction was so intense it came between us. “You know” Gilberte said, “If you like, we might go on wrestling a bit longer.”

 

I continued to wrestle on the grass with Gilberte in case she should suspect I had achieved my physical objective & now just wished to rest

 

François took me to the park’s public restroom where the attendant is her friend & offered me a free stall: “I shan’t charge you anything!”

 

I don’t know if it was wrestling with Gilberte, or the musty smell in the restroom, but I don’t feel well. I cannot play in the park anymore

 

I have been confined to my bed for days now, feverish, ever since my physical exertions with Gilbert on the grass in the Champs Elysees     

 

While Dr. Cottard treated me, Bloch told him that Mme Swann is very fond of me. Bloch was lying, in order to boast that he knows Mme Swann

 

Thinking that Mme Swan already knows & likes me, Cottard therefore always sings my praises to her; thinking to benefit himself, not me

 

Norpois, knowing I needed the introduction, never mentioned me to Mme Swann; Cottard, thinking I didn’t need it, never ceased to mention me

 

So, thanks to Bloch’s boasting, Dr. Cottard unwittingly organized my introduction to Mme Swann, and finally I could visit the Swann’s home

 

I received a letter from Gilberte saying she misses our games in the park, she’s sorry I’ve been ill and she invites me to tea at her house!

 

Swann, who had once moved in the most aristocratic of circles, since his marriage to Odette now moves in the world of the minor functionary

 

It’s because they entail a sacrifice of social prominence in return for private happiness, that ignominious marriages are the most estimable

 

As M. de Norpois had forewarned my parents with such salacious relish; “Mme Swann’s house is especially attractive to gentlemen.” Wink-wink!

 

Mme Swann still invites Mme Cottard to her ‘at homes’, so she can inform Odette’s previous friends of all her socially-prominent new friends

 

Just as a bee will visit all the flowers in a garden, spreading the pollen, so Mme Cottard spreads news of Odette’s growing social successes

 

Invited to lunch at the Swanns’ I’m finally introduced to Bergotte. I was disappointed to see he has a red nose curled like a snail shell

 

“Swann is married to an ex-whore” Bergotte told me later. “His female friends refuse to meet her and their husbands have all slept with her”

 

Of course you should never judge a book by its cover as the English are always so fond of saying, but nor should you judge it by its author.

 

A book is the product of a different self from the one we display in our habits in society, in our vices. Bergotte was the man, not the book

 

There is an illusory magical power in literature that teaches us to set a higher value on life, a value of which only books make us realize

 

The talent of a great writer resembles the instinctive life of the people more than the dead verbiage and fluctuating standards of academics

 

Bergotte lived quietly and alone believing that books should be the offspring not of daylight and casual talk, but of darkness and silence.

 

The reason why a work of genius is not immediately recognized is that the person who created it is extraordinary & few others resemble him

 

Perhaps, art is in this respect like science; each new writer seems to me to have advanced beyond the stage of his immediate predecessor.

 

A writer’s work is seldom understood & successful before work of another writer, still obscure, is being read by a few more exigent spirits

 

This is yet another way that original writers, indeed all true artists, differ from mere academic critics with all their dull, dry theories

 

True art has no use for so many proclamations & is produced in silence. A work of art should emerge quietly, with no self-important theories

 

A book in which there are theories is like an article from which the price tag has not been removed; indeed that shows it’s reduced in value

 

Theories and schools, like microbes and corpuscles, devour one another and by their warfare ensure the continuity of life.

 

Great events have no influence on our mental powers; so that a mediocre writer living in an epic period will remain just as mediocre.

 

Likewise, a life of social frivolity will no more make a good writer mediocre than a heroic war could make a bad poet sublime

 

Literary critics of each generation simply maintain the direct opposite of truths admitted by their predecessors, but add nothing original

 

Or as Brichot might have said “This reminds one of Hegel's theory of a dialectic, of thesis followed by antithesis followed by synthesis.”

 

Bloch took me to my first brothel last night. The Madam kept trying to set me up with Rachel – said she’d be good at it because she’s Jewish

 

Didn’t fancy the Jewish girl, ‘Rachel when from the Lord’ because, quite frankly she’d do it with anyone, anytime, anywhere - for anything.

 

If prostitutes attract us so little, it is not because they are less beautiful than other women; it is because they are ready and willing.

 

The very object that we are seeking to attain, prostitutes offer us already; it is because they are not conquests, they are so little valued

 

Regret donating Aunt Leonie’s sofa to the brothel, now that I see some of the imaginative uses to which the girls are capable of putting it

 

I no longer frequent that brothel with Rachel, the Jewess. The spirits of Combray are imprisoned & undergoing torture in my poor aunt’s sofa

 

Indeed, the very sight of that same sofa has brought back memories of the first time I tasted the delights of love, with one of my cousins.

 

When I am not frequenting brothels with Bloch, I am ingratiating myself into the Swann household; charming the mother if not the daughter.

 

Her parents are increasingly persuaded of my excellent influence over Gilberte. Thanks to them my love is in no danger as they’re on my side

 

Unless of course, what I had regarded as the protection of my happiness is in fact the secret reason that my happiness cannot last

 

Perhaps because her parents now approve of me, Gilberte grows cold and seems to shun my company, unless her mother makes her stay with me.

 

There is in love a permanent strain of suffering which happiness neutralizes, for a while, but which may at any moment become excruciating

 

The possession of just a little more of the woman we love would still only make more necessary to us the part that we do not already possess

 

There can be no peace of mind in love, since the advantage one has secured is never anything but a fresh starting-point for further desires

 

Last night we quarreled and I went home wretched, wanting to crawl back but knowing she would only triumph anew over my subservient docility

 

Gilberte’s becoming increasingly distant to me; either cold or not-home when I visit. Perhaps I should dump her to prove how much I love her

 

I’ll say “My mind’s made up. This is my final attempt. I’m seeing you now for the last time. Soon I’ll love you no longer” But why bother?

 

“I know you’re madly in love with me” Gilberte said, laughing, “But that leaves me neither hot nor cold, for I don’t give a rap about you.”

 

Gilberte confines her conversation with me to the inclemency of the weather, the increasing violence of the rain & the fastness of the clock

 

“I thought the other day, that the clock was slow, if anything” I ventured. Gilberte replied “How tiresome you are being.” And so love fades

 

When two people part it is the one who is not in love who makes the tender speeches.

 

I got a good price for Aunt Leonie’s vase; enough to smother Gilberte in roses and lilacs every day for a year. That ought to win her back!

 

Went to call on Gilberte but saw her strolling arm in arm along the street in close conversation with a young man whom I did not recognize.

 

Instead of using the money from the sale of the vase to buy roses and lilacs for Gilberte every day, I’ve decided to squander it on hookers

 

Eventually there will come a time when I will genuinely no longer love Gilberte – and then I shall go see her and flaunt my indifference

 

Mme Bontemps and Mme Cottard are among the ladies who attend Mme Swann’s ‘at-homes’ where they drink tea and gossip with vicious refinement.

 

Mme Verdurin attended one of Mme Swann’s ‘at-homes’ yesterday. She worried there might be rats – “living so far out in the wilds as you do.”

 

“Dear Mme Verdurin is not always very kind about other people’s flowers” said Odette sweetly after the mistress criticized her arrangements

 

Mme Swann no longer entertains her friends dressed in a Japanese kimono, but rather in the billowing silk of a flowering Watteau housecoat

 

Decked in all her finery, Mme Swann continues to promenade in the Bois every day receiving the salutations of great noblemen on their horses

 

The Prince de Sagen bowed gallantly to Mme. Swann, in respect to Womanhood, even though she could not be introduced to his mother or sister

 

“Alors! C’est fini n’est pas between you and Gilberte?” her mother said. “But at least you continue to join me on my promenades in the Bois”

 

And indeed, when the noon hour’s recorded upon a sundial in the month of May, Mme Swann & I would go wandering & talking thus thru the Bois

 

I’ll never forget strolling with Mme Swann along the Ave des Bois beneath her parasol as though in the colored shade of a wisteria bower

 

 

VOLUME 2: ‘WITHIN A BUDDING GROVE’. PART TWO ‘PLACE-NAMES: THE PLACE’.

 

Mama abandoned me at St-Lazare where only some terrible & solemn act could take place, like a departure by train or the errection of a cross

 

For the first time I began to feel that my mother might lead another kind of life, without me, otherwise than for me; alone with my father.

 

Mama abandoned me on the station platform, left alone except for Grandma and François – to go to a remote destination where I’ll know nobody

 

Took the 1:22 train from Paris to Balbec. Grandma, as always, buried her face in ‘Mme de Sévigné’ while I got amusingly tipsy at the bar

 

I flung myself on Grandma and smothered her in kisses, after that I went and once again drank a great deal too much in the bar of the train

 

The Grand Hotel at Balbec was most impressive, unlike the manager to whom Grandma said “What are your charges? Oh far too high for poor me!”

 

Feeling lonely, I sat on a bench in the main hall of The Grand Hotel and counted the acne scars on the pot-bellied manager’s snooty face

 

The torture-chamber, which a new place of residence is, could appear to some people, a “delightful abode”: to quote the hotel prospectus.

 

I hate my new bedroom at the hotel. I miss my own room at home in Paris or even my old room at Combray. At least Grandma is in the next room

 

Last night I gave three nervous taps on my bedroom wall and Grandma immediately tapped back and, a few moments later, she came to my bedroom

 

“How could Granny mistake my little mouse?” she said. “Especially such a poor miserable little mouse as mine is, trying to make up its mind”

 

When we first arrived at the hotel Françoise kept ordering hotel services, day or night, with the justification “Well, we pay enough for it”

 

Now that she’s made friends with all the hotel employees, Françoise won’t let us order anything – not even hot water for washing ourselves.

 

Françoise has made friends with the person who heats the hotel water for guests’ baths and worries our requests will interrupt her mealtime.

 

It’s a whole new world at Balbec, and all the best Society, judges, barristers, notaries & their wives, spend the Season at the Grand Hotel.

 

Aimé, the head waiter at the Grand, knows all the regulars and they all know him; calling him loudly by name – to prove they are regulars.

 

Aimé himself encourages this; he looks after his regulars, he enjoys being ‘the man’ & he’s always happy to provide a bit of extra ‘service’

 

Aimé always knows what’s going on; who’s who, who’s doing whom & who needs a bit of doing, if you know what I mean, nudge, nudge, wink, wink

 

As far as Aimé’s concerned “It’s just business” & whether it’s male or female - guests’ requirements are just a void that needs to be filled

 

Though the Marquis de Cambremer’s family are regarded as provincial nobodies in Paris, in Balbec they’re the local nobility - ne plus ultra

 

Legrandin’s snobbish sister from Combray married the Marquis & hosts weekend house-parties for Balbec’s bourgeois big-wigs during the season

 

Those not invited to the Cambremer’s weekend house party always order a carriage so they can pretend they were elsewhere & could not attend

 

Balbec’s social life revolves around The Grand Hotel whose summer guests dream & scheme for a visit to or from the Marquise de Cambremer

 

When Swann & the Duchesse de Guermantes had seen Mme Cambremer in Paris they’d joked that her name “means ‘shit’ whatever way you say it”

 

Because she’s provincial & socially his inferior, Swann had been attracted to the Marquise de Cambremer & hoped she’d help him forget Odette

 

We lost our table in the dining room to Mlle Stermaria. She has not noticed me, even though I keep watching her. She is irresistibly aloof!

 

Mlle Stermaria displays the glacial, preoccupied, distant, stiff, punctilious & ill-intentioned air we assume with strangers in small rooms

 

I know that beneath her cold and haughty exterior, Mlle Stermaria’s heart is a roiling cauldron of wanton lust and insatiable sexual desires

 

A long line of ancestors has given Mlle Stermaria an inadequacy of human sympathies which cannot conceal a taste for cruel sensual pleasures

 

One day she will abandon her husband for a taste of those pleasures - warm, pink and sensual which will tinge and flush those pallid cheeks

 

I’m in love with Mlle Stermaria and one day she will be in love with me, shamelessly. I’ll take her to an island and have my way with her.

 

If Mlle Stermaria won’t notice me for my own qualities, perhaps she will be impressed by my acquaintance with the Marquise de Villeparisis

 

Mme de Villeparisis is an old school-friend of Grandma. She travels with a household of servants and confuses all the other Hotel guests.

 

The Marquise de Villeparisis comes from one of the oldest families in France but the hotel guests judge her only by her shabby black dress

 

A hotel guest said proudly “I always begin by believing the worst. I’ll never admit a woman’s married till I’ve seen a wedding certificate.”

 

“Are you the son of the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry?” Mme de Villeparisis asked me. “Indeed! I’m told he is a most charming man.”

 

Marquise de Villeparisis took us for a ride in her carriage today to visit old churches but I had eyes only for the profusion of young girls

 

There were girls everywhere like wild flowers; farm girls with their cows, shop-keeper’s daughters, young ladies out riding in their landaus

 

Like flowers, each girl we passed in the carriage, created a surge of desire, like the mysterious response of pollen, ready for the pistils.

 

As an orphan, restricted to bread and water, might dream of fresh fruit, I now looked at the cheeks & lips of these girls with such yearning

 

It was Bloch who first explained that all the girls one met, whether villagers or ‘young ladies’ were willing to give heed to such yearnings

 

Knowing that such yearnings were possible to be satisfied, even if not by me, nonetheless made the world seem infinitely more interesting

 

Had I been able to approach one of the girls, I might have been disillusioned by some blemish on the skin I’d not noticed from the carriage.

 

I’ve never in real life met any girls so desirable as on days when I was with some solemn person from whom I was unable to tear myself away

 

There’s a fisher girl sitting on the bridge, serious and aloof & it’s not only her lips and her body I want to penetrate, but her – inside.

 

I was so desperate for the fisher girl to notice & love me, I said: “See that carriage there? I’m riding with the Marquise de Villeparisis”

 

Having told the fisher girl how important I was, I felt I had touched her person with invisible lips & at once my desire for her evaporated

 

Riding past a sunken road I saw 3 trees, reaching out to me, yet concealing something profound my mind could barely grasp when stretched out

 

The 3 trees seemed to say “What you fail to learn from us today, you will never know. If you allow us to drop & vanish, you will lose us.”

 

When the carriage moved-on and the trees disappeared, I felt wretched as tho’ I’d lost a friend, broken faith with the dead or denied my God

 

I was introduced to Mme de Villeparisis’ nephew today, Robert de Saint-Loup. I have a feeling we are going to become the closest of friends.

 

I sensed the inherited litheness of the mighty hunters who had been for generations the ancestors of this young aristocrat; my friend Robert

 

A scholar and a soldier, Robert’s rugged good looks remind me of an ancient gothic fortress whose halls have been converted to libraries.

 

I had an unsettling encounter today; found myself being observed by a tall, stout, sinister person with a black mustache. Possibly a lunatic

 

The strange man turns out to be Robert’s famous uncle, the Baron de Charlus. Apparently he is an incorrigible ladies’ man & serial womanizer

 

Charlus & three of his good-looking friends once thrashed a stranger within an inch of his life for being effeminate. “Can’t stand queers!”

 

Robert’s uncle has many aristocratic titles including Prince de Laumes, but he thinks them vulgar and prefers the simple ‘Baron de Charlus’

 

“These days” Charlus said “Everybody’s a prince: one really must have something that’ll distinguish one; I use it only to travel incognito”

 

Dressed always in sober dark suits, I noticed a thread of dark green in the stripe of Charlus’ sock, like a liberty one dare not acknowledge

 

Noticing that the embroidered handkerchief he had in his pocket was exhibiting its colored border; Charlus thrust it sharply out of sight

 

Charlus hid a bright hankie with the scandalized air of a prudish but far from innocent lady concealing attractions she regards as indecent

 

Charlus’ contralto voice seems to contain male and female &, at certain times, a choir of young ladies; arch, shrill and filled with malice.

 

Grandma has been enjoying the Letters of Mme de Sévigné with Charlus. She says that he has a delicacy and sensibility that is quite feminine

 

Charlus came to my room last night to lend me a book by Bergotte but this morning asked for it back, and then made fun of my bathing costume

 

There is definitely something strange about Charlus; the shrill voice, the shifty looks, the mood swings. Rather rum, most odd, jolly queer!

 

Poor Robert, he has such problems with his girlfriend. She’s a famous and talented actress and he worries that he’s not worthy of her charms

 

Robert persuaded his aunt, the Duchesse de Guermantes, to hold a reception in GF’s honor but she was so awful they’d laughed her out of town

 

Robert’s girl-friend is a member of the avant-garde, a friend of cubist painters and such. Her performance was in the latest symbolist style

 

The Duchess & her guests understand cubist paintings no better than they understand symbolist poetry. They therefore jeered at her recital.

 

His girlfriend blamed Robert. “They were just old philistines and uneducated bitches, there wasn’t one didn’t try to get my knickers off!”

 

Robert’s mistress was so furious that she’d banned him from Paris which is why he’s here in Balbec, visiting his aunt, Mme de Villeparisis.

 

Though he himself is the Marquis de Saint-Loup-en-Bray, Robert has only contempt for the aristocracy because they’ve rejected his girlfriend

 

“Whore’s are OK and do their job” his aristocratic family said “But Robert’s girlfriend is going to be his ruin & we’ll never forgive her”

 

Mme Villeparisis introduced me to the Princesse de Luxembourg. “She’s one of my cousins” Robert said. “An old trout like the rest of them”

 

Bloch and his awful family are also visiting Balbec and though he is ill-bred, neurotic and snobbish himself, he accused me of being a snob!

 

Bloch says I’m a snob because of my close friendship with Robert de Saint-Loup. I told him “If I were a snob, I wouldn’t hang-out with you”

 

Robert and I had dinner with Bloch and his vulgar family last night. My Goodness! It was almost enough to convert one towards anti-Semitism!

 

Bloch’s uncle M. Nissam Bernard, combines his love of ostentation with a predilection for mendacity & his lies embarrass even his own family

 

Not content with having his newspapers delivered in the hotel’s dining room to show people he has a valet, he also pretends to be a Senator

 

Even though M. Nissam Bernard knows that pretending to be a senator will lead to public ridicule, at the last moment, he simply can’t resist

 

“Of course whenever there’s a chance of saying something pompous & stupid one can be quite certain that you will not miss the opportunity”

 

As the wealthy M. Bernard’s heir, Bloch’s father was often rude to him like this, in order to demonstrate that money does not influence him

 

Bloch snr. boasts in a most vulgar manner; the sisters are no more than common sluts & Bloch was most insulting about Robert’s uncle Charlus

 

If Bloch’s characteristic feature is coarseness his father’s is cheapness. Even the inferior wine that he served was disguised in a decanter

 

Bloch claims he had anonymous but energetic sex with Mme Swann on a train recently. “Did it 3 times running between Paris and Point-du-Jour”

 

Bloch wants me to put him in touch with Mme Swann again so that she will “unbutton her zone for me, to taste the delights of Eros yet again”

 

Bloch certainly puts a strain upon old friendships. He’s long antagonized my family; he insults my friends & now tells lies about Mme Swann!

 

Robert spends most of his time sending letters & telegrams to his G/F in Paris, begging forgiveness. The rest of the time we spend drinking.

 

Grandma’s been surprisingly happy to let me spend my evenings with my new friend Robert, even though we drink in low places with loose women

 

Most splendid sight today at the far end of the esplanade when 5 or 6 young girls appeared, like a flock of birds parading upon the sand

 

Like a flight of gulls, performing with measured tread upon the sands, the girls’ mysterious purpose was as obscure as it was unforgettable

 

Pushing bikes and carrying golf clubs the girls exuded a collective and mobile beauty and an air of rude health and vitality which I envied

 

The girls moved with a determined suppleness which expressed perfect control of their own bodies & sincere contempt for the rest of humanity

 

Although each girl was of a type absolutely different from the others, they all had a beauty which captivated and enchanted me, hopelessly.

 

The girls displayed an abundance of fine bodies, fine legs, fine hips, wholesome, serene faces with an air of agility and feminine guile.

 

This band of girls, strolling along the esplanade, was outlined against the sea, like statues exposed to the sunlight of a Grecian shore

 

An elderly banker sitting in his deckchair, facing the sea, proved an irresistible challenge to one of the girls, who leaped right over him.

 

I noticed one girl with brilliant laughing eyes & plump, matt cheeks, a black polo-cap, pushing a bike with an uninhibited swing of the hips

 

A dark ray emanating from her eyes fell on me. From the depths of what universe did she discern me & what could I possibly represent to her?

 

It was because we had, these girls and I, not one thing in common that I felt an insatiable thirst (as a parched land burns) to possess them

 

In becoming a friend of the girls, I should penetrate mysteries like a cultivated pagan or a meticulous Christian going among barbarians

 

Never among actresses or peasants or convent girls have I seen anything so beautiful, impregnated with so much that’s unknown & inaccessible

 

It’s not possible to imagine rarer specimens than these young flowers breaking the line of the sea before my very eyes like a bower of roses

 

I think I’m in love

 

I’d fondly imagined that the girls were debauched mistresses of racing cyclists & was sad to discover they came from respectable families

 

I’ve learned that one of the girls is named ‘Simonet’. Apparently her family’s very keen to spell their name with a single ‘n’ not two ‘ns’

 

Presumably the branch of the Simonnet family with two ‘n’s in the spelling of their name did something disgraceful in business or even worse

 

I think the Simonet girl must be the prettiest in the group, the one with a polo cap and matt cheeks whose gaze lingered on me like a caress

 

Robert expresses no interest in these girls of mine, displaying a superstitious belief that his girlfriend’s fidelity depends upon his own

 

Before dinner I watched the sun set over the horizon, like a band of aspic over meat; the sea grey like mullet & the sky pink like salmon

 

Robert and I go to a restaurant in Rivebelle each evening for dinner. The food is good, the wine fine, the music wild and the women wilder!

 

Robert and I entered the noisy, busy restaurant with a happy glow which we concealed with a grave and frozen mien and a languid casual gait.

 

A dose of beer, a flute or 2 of champagne & a few drops of port put me in such a delightful mood that I sat, just captivated by the waiters.

 

This restaurant assembled at one & the same moment, more women to tempt me with beckoning vistas of happiness, than a year of country walks!

 

The restaurant was not frequented solely by women of easy virtue, but also by people of the very best society, else we would never have gone

 

The candle-lit guests resembled a fisherman’s net in which his glittering catch coruscates before one’s eyes in an ever changing iridescence

 

A lady diner greeted me across the room, her words so faint & sweet, as if in the dim branches of the trees, a nightingale had begun to sing

 

The music played in the restaurant seduced me; each tune ogled me, came up to me with lewd provocative movements, accosted me & caressed me.

 

It seemed to me that my love was no longer something unattractive at which people might smile but had all the beauty of this seductive music

 

We are all of us obliged, if we are to make reality endurable, to nurse a few little follies in ourselves.

 

The girls all knew Robert & whispered to each other: “It’s young St-Loup. Seems he’s still stuck on that hooker of his. Must be true love!”

 

“Can’t imagine what he sees in her” another says. “She’s got feet like boats & her undies are filthy. You’d not catch me near her knickers!”

 

“A little shop girl would be ashamed to be seen in her undies” said one girl. “Just look at his eyes: you’d go to Hell for a man like that”

 

Between these women and Robert I caught a glance of mutual understanding & yearned for an introduction that I too might make an assignation

 

Beneath his feigned indifference, I knew Robert had memories of disheveled locks, a swooning mouth, half-closed eyes and rumpled bed sheets.

 

Although their faces remained closed to mine, it was enough to know these women could indeed be screwed, for them to be more precious to me

 

While Robert continued on to the Casino after dinner with some friends, I took a cab home to Balbec & staggered to my room, blissfully drunk

 

So finally I fell asleep, plunged into that deep slumber in which vistas are opened to us of forgotten feelings & a return to childhood.

 

One can’t describe human life unless one bathes it in the sleep into which it lunges night after night & which sweeps round it like the sea

 

The world in which we sleep is so different, that people who have difficulty in sleeping, seek first of all to escape from the waking world.

 

Robert returns to his regiment during the day & so I’ve been spending my time wandering along the sea-front hoping to see those girls again

 

Robert asked the hotel manager the fastest transport to rejoin his regiment. “Carriage or train, it’s more or less equivocal” was his answer

 

I was going through one of those phases of youth, devoid of any particular love, in which everywhere - we desire, we seek & we see Beauty

 

Just the glimpse of a woman is enough to persuade us we have found Beauty, provided she has vanished, otherwise we soon realize our mistake

 

Perhaps everything that formed a distinctive feature of our first love comes to attach itself to all those that follow; repeating endlessly.

 

If I were soon to die, I should have liked to know beforehand what the prettiest girls Life had to offer, looked like at close quarters

 

It is possible that I might never see these girls again, that they might sail to America or return to Paris, & that is what inflames my love

 

One can feel attraction to a particular person but, to release the agonies which prepare the way for love, needs that risk of impossibility

 

The band of girls I had seen advancing upon the sands beyond the Grand Hotel, had stolen my soul & filled my heart with a hopeless yearning

 

It was to these girls my thoughts agreeably clung when I supposed myself to be thinking of something else entirely - or of nothing at all.

 

Whenever I thought of those girls they were for me the mountainous blue undulations of the sea, an outline of their procession upon the sand

 

Normally when people do not reappear we soon forget details of their features, but the merged faces of those girls haunt me and linger still

 

I haunt the seafront, hoping to catch again a glimpse of that little band of girls, advancing towards me with measured tread upon the sands.

 

Had dinner at Rivebelle last night with Robert de Saint-Loup. We were introduced to Elstir, the famous painter, also in the same restaurant

 

Knowing of me through Swann, Elstir invited me to visit his studio where he works in solitude - which some called madness & others pride

 

An artist, if he is to be absolutely true to the life of the spirit, must be alone, and not squander his ego, even upon disciples.

 

I’d planned to visit Elstir’s studio to inspect his paintings but, out walking with Grandma, was distracted by the sight of one of the girls

 

Eyes sparkling beneath her polo cap, I see her still; silhouetted against the screen which the sky-blue sea spreads behind her. It is she!

 

And yet… it was perhaps another, the one with geranium cheeks and green eyes, who excited most my desires and stirred my hapless longings

 

With Gilberte in the Champs-Elysées I’d learned that when we are in love with a woman we simply project on to her a state of our own soul 

 

I loved none of the girls, loving them all, & yet the possibility of meeting them was, in my daily life, the sole element of delight & hope

 

In truth, I loved them all and yearned to penetrate their group where thoughtlessness, health, sensual pleasure, cruelty & joy held sway

 

It adds great charm to life in a place like Balbec, if the sight of a pretty girl is the sole object of a leisurely day spent upon the beach

 

My day has been spent anticipating the delight of seeing, on a feminine face, the colors displayed as purely as upon a flower

 

The emotions which a perfectly ordinary girl arouses in us, can bring to the surface of consciousness the innermost parts of our being

 

These girls have eclipsed even my Grandma in my affections. The most exclusive love for a person is always a love for something else

 

Dressed in a smart new suit every day, I now haunt the seafront hoping to see them again; even Grandma has noticed the elegance of my attire

 

Grandma, disapproving of my sudden interest in golf, bikes & girls, has strongly encouraged me to visit Elstir’s studio to ‘improve myself’

 

Visited Elstir’s studio today. He’s like a God, creating a new universe on his canvas & he’s changed my whole way of observing the world

 

If God the Father had created things by naming them, it was by taking away their names or giving them others that Elstir created them anew.

 

The world around us was not created once and for all, but is created afresh whenever an original artist is born & is ever changing with time

 

The particulars of life do not matter to the artist; they merely provide him with the opportunity to lay bare his genius.

 

Elstir portrays things, not as he knows them to be, but according to the optical illusions of which our first sight of them is composed.

 

Elstir taught me to appreciate the unexpected beauty of everyday objects, the poetry of ordinary things and the profundities of “still life”

 

Even an uncleared table has beauty: the broken gesture of abandoned knives, the swollen convexity of discarded napkins; the half-empty glass

 

One feels unmistakably, when seeing side by side ten portraits of different people painted by Elstir, that they are first & foremost Elstirs

 

Capturing the fleeting impression, Elstir’s paintings removed me from my cocoon of habit &, by looking afresh, showed me the truth of things

 

Standing before his canvas, face to face with reality, Elstir strips himself of every intellectual notion, naked in his honesty of purpose

 

Elstir knows he created his masterpieces out of effects of attenuated light, out of the action of remorse upon consciousness of guilt

 

I saw a painting of Odette before she married Swann, dressed immodestly and provocatively as a transvestite. Elstir hid it from his wife

 

“Quick, give it to me” he said taking the portrait. “Though the young lady in the painting means nothing to me, my wife might misunderstand”

 

Elstir happily confessed to a misspent youth. “It is only through our own foolish actions & mistakes” he said “that we ever learn wisdom”

 

“We’re not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us”

 

Looking out the window of Elstir’s studio I saw the girl with the polo cap and gay eyes, ride a bicycle past the house. She waved a greeting

 

It turns out Elstir knows all the girls; not a day passes they don’t visit him. The Simonet girl, with the plump cheeks is called Albertine.

 

Elstir knew the names of each individual girl as I described her, knew their families too; shrewd, old burghers from whose loins they sprang

 

Elstir was obviously the authority on all the girls & it was here I should have come instead of avoiding his studio & seeking them elsewhere

 

We do not know the whereabouts of what we seek and often avoid the very place where others, for other reasons, have told us we should go

 

Grandma had told me several times to visit Elstir in his studio to improve my mind, but I had preferred to waste my time along the seashore

 

I was plunged into despair. If I had only come to Elstir’s studio when Grandma first suggested, I might already be intimate with the girls

 

The Simonet girl with one ‘n’, the polo cap & plump cheeks or the tall one who jumped over the old man on the front: I could’ve had them all

 

What a fool I have been! What a numbskull.

 

Elstir’s studio was stacked with canvases. Many were paintings of the seashore & the cliffs where the little band of girls would often play

 

I pretended I wanted to visit the scenes along the seashore Elstir had painted, to study his inspiration; but really hoping to see the girls

 

The girls had ceased merely to be silhouetted against a horizon where I should never see them reappear; now I knew Elstir could introduce us

 

What stratagems I employed today to make Elstir stand at the spot on the seafront where I had first seen the band of girls magically appear

 

“I should like to look at those cliffs with you from a little closer” I said, having once noticed one of the girls walking in that direction

 

I persuaded Elstir to join me on my walks along the seafront so he might introduce me to the girls but when they at last arrived, I blew it!

 

Dusk was falling as I accompanied Elstir homeward, when suddenly – like Mephistopheles appearing before Faust – the band of girls approached

 

Expecting Elstir to greet the approaching girls & then to introduce me I turned my back, seemingly bored & studied the window of an old shop

 

In order to make myself more interesting to the girls, instead of being introduced by Elstir, I stupidly pretended that I was not interested

 

Whilst Elstir spoke with the girls, I gazed into a shop window, waiting to be called over & arrogantly pretending to be otherwise absorbed

 

The moment I finally chose to turn my head, I saw Elstir standing a few feet away with the girls, bidding them farewell. Then they were gone

 

When the girl closest to him caught my eye, her passing glance clouded briefly; as the moon passes behind a cloud which veils its brightness

 

Elstir had already left the girls without introducing me and they soon disappeared down a side street. My whole plan was wrecked.

 

“I did so much want to meet them” I said as I rejoined Elstir. “Then why did you stand a mile away?” he asked. My wretchedness had no answer

 

I’ve persuaded Elstir to organize a small party where I can be introduced to Albertine. I set-off for the party sporting my smartest outfit.

 

Being smartly dressed just to meet a girl is rather a waste I’ve decided. Now I’m assured beyond all doubts of meeting her, I’m simply bored

 

As long as the prospect of ever being introduced to Albertine seemed impossible; the pleasures & joys of ever knowing her seemed infinite

 

Now I know I will shortly be introduced to Albertine, I place the long anticipated pleasure at a lower value – simply because it is assured.

 

I sauntered casually into the party, with a red rose in my buttonhole; apparently bored, but graciously willing to be entertained.

 

It was an eventful party. I gave a rose to an old gentleman & I ate & enjoyed a chocolate éclair. Oh yes, Elstir introduced me to Albertine

 

The full pleasure of the introduction, like all pleasures, only came later in my hotel room when, alone, I could savor and develop it slowly

 

Having dreamed so long of meeting the mysterious damsel of the sea front, I was disappointed to discover she was quite ordinary, just human

 

She spoke of two acquaintances “She’s perfectly mad, but nice all the same” and of the other “He’s perfectly common & perfectly boring”.

 

Sadly, I decided her use of the word ‘perfectly’ was too civilized for the bacchante of the bicycle or the orgiastic muse of the golf course

 

The girl I’d met is the real one; the girl on the seashore merely my fabrication. Can I transfer my love for the imagined, to the real girl?

 

Communicating with Albertine is challenging; tho’ not as arduous as breaking-in a horse, it’s as absorbing as keeping bees or growing roses

 

For our second meeting I’d planned all the bold things I would say to her, but face to face I wavered, like a schoolboy reciting Greek prose

 

I had talked to her without being any more conscious of where my words were falling than if I were dropping pebbles into a bottomless pit.

 

We imagine always when we speak that it is our own ears and our own mind that are listening. But now even I don’t understand what I’m saying

 

There is nothing like desire – or lust - for preventing the things one says from bearing any resemblance to what one has in one’s mind.

 

“You don’t play golf” Albertine told me “We never see you at the Casino, or dancing. You don’t ride. What on earth do you do with yourself?”

 

The girl I’d first seen, pushing her bicycle along the front with her polo cap and sparkling eyes, had an energy that I hungered to possess

 

Even if Albertine wasn’t the exotic person I had 1st fantasized she could at least introduce me to all her possibly more interesting friends

 

Whilst walking, the little band of girls, with their shapely limbs & supple figures advanced towards us, but Albertine wouldn’t introduce me

 

“Your friends will be disappointed if you don’t go with them” I hinted, hoping that then we might all stroll along together.

 

I was in love with none of them and all of them at once. I wanted to possess them and penetrate them and lose my poor self deep within them.

 

The only friend of Albertine’s I’ve met was an immensely rich & handsome young man who carried a bag of golf-clubs. “I’m a wash-out” he said

 

Albertine’s friend Octave took prizes in all the dance competitions at the Casino, the tango & such, thus proving himself most marriageable

 

Octave displayed a profound knowledge of everything pertaining to clothes & how to wear them, English drinks, cigars, golf, cards & horses

 

Octave lit a cigar with a “D’you mind?” to Albertine, as one who asks permission to finish an urgent piece of work while going on talking

 

Octave was one of those people who can never be “doing nothing,” although there was nothing, in fact, that he could ever be said to do

 

Albertine’s friend, Octave, was excellent at golf, dancing & cards but his meditative brow concealed a total absence of any mental activity

 

“I’m a wash-out” Octave said, referring to his golf-game, but he could have also been referring to his steadfast intellectual nullity

 

I asked to be introduced to Octave – (followed by an introduction to the girl friends) “He has nothing to say” she said “He’s not your sort”

 

I have decided that Albertine does not want to introduce me to her enchanting girl-friends, but one by one I have forced the introductions

 

Albertine did not like it when I met Gisèlle. “You stared at her long enough” she said “As though you wanted to paint her portrait!”

 

When Gisèlle was introduced, her hair was golden, her cheeks were pink, her eyes blue like the roseate morning sky sparkling gold everywhere

 

Instantly aroused, I decided that Gisèlle was like a child who, when in love, grows shy, and it was for my sake that she had joined our walk

 

Doubtless Gisèlle had first noticed me on the beach when I did not yet know her, and had been thinking of me and longing for me ever since.

 

I decided Gisèlle must have been waiting for an opportunity to see me alone, without Albertine, so she might organize a rendezvous with me

 

Albertine does not like Gisèlle. “I’ve put up with her long enough” she said. “Her appalling duplicity, her baseness & all her dirty tricks”

 

I gazed at Albertine’s flushed cheeks as she spoke harshly of Gisèlle and imagined them cool and smooth with a waxy gloss like certain roses

 

Watching Albertine’s cheeks I asked myself what might be the perfume, the taste of them & felt a passionate longing for them as for a flower

 

Secretly I was planning to meet Gisèlle on the Paris train, & while her governess dozed, I would lead her to a dark corner in the corridor.

 

But then I started meeting more of Albertine’s friends and anyway I missed the train & so, to be perfectly frank, I forgot all about Gisèlle

 

The 1st of her friends that I met simply turned-up & Albertine was obliged to introduce us. Her name’s Andrée & at once I knew I was in love

 

Although the little band of girls was a homogenous group, Andrée stood out as the oldest & tallest and she could even defeat Octave at golf!

 

Andrée, is a energetic girl with brilliant eyes. The daughter of a wealthy banker, it was she who leaped over the poor old man on the beach

 

Of all the girls in the little band, Andrée is Albertine’s best friend. They have a close & intimate friendship that I so want to penetrate.

 

But even though Andrée joined me & Albertine on our walk, she never uttered a single word to me. I find her indifference quite irresistible.

 

I met Andrée walking along the sea front by herself today & we talked for some time. I said I’d like to meet again. “Impossible” she said

 

I’m not really sure if I’d be wise to fall in love with Andrée; she is too intellectual, too neurotic, too sickly, too much like myself.

 

Andrée resembles me. As a general rule, we detest what resembles ourselves, & our own faults, when observed in another person, infuriate us

 

Andrée’s white cheeks contrast with her black hair; like comparing a geranium growing beside a sunlit sea & a camellia blooming in the night

 

Andrée has extraordinarily bright eyes, like the greenish reflection of the glittering sea as glimpsed through the open door of a dark house

 

Eyes, like a glimpse thru an open door in a dark house, of a room into which the sun shines with a greenish reflection from a glittering sea

 

In the past few days I have come to know all the girls, each one introducing me to another, as horticulturists use one rose to breed another

 

Each girl I meet is like a new variety of rose which gardeners get by using first a rose of another species; so each girl leads to the next

 

I pass from petal to stamen to pistil along this chain of flowers, this little band of girls, my pleasures combining gratitude with desire

 

From the undefined homogenous band of girls I had first spied walking along the beach, individual features now emerge - and I love each one!

 

I now spend all my time with the little band. I think I’m in love with them all: but especially with Albertine, with Andrée and with Gisèlle

 

Albertine’s restless energy, Andrée’s green eyes & the delicate tracery of Giselle’s hair like a strange & fascinating plant across her brow

 

Mme Villeparisis invited me for a carriage ride but I declined. I have abandoned Robert & ignore Elstir. Albertine’s friends are everything!

 

I’m so in love! 

 

As well as the girls, I also see old ladies, like faded flowers - those shriveled seed-pods & flabby tubers - my new friends will one day be

 

The faces of these young girls were still blurred with that misty effulgence of a dawn from which their final features might still emerge

 

In this little band of girls (among whom I am at last an accepted friend) as in the freshest flower one can discern the autumnal seed of age

 

In the youngest flower it’s possible to discern those just perceptible signs of the desiccation & fructification of the flesh today in bloom

 

As one sees upon a tree in summer, a leaf already brown, so too around a still young face, one can perceive the hair already thin or graying

 

I know that deep beneath the rosy inflorescence of Albertine, Rosemonde, Andrée & Giselle, the signs of age & heritage lie waiting to appear

 

It is so short that radiant morning time; that it’s only the very youngest girls in whom the flesh, like a precious leaven, is still at work

 

Albertine’s friends & I spend our days playing on the seafront & I have never been so sublimely happy since Gilberte & I played in that park

 

I have abandoned everything to be with my new friends: my Grandma, Robert St-Loup and Elstir are all of no account. The girls are my life!

 

Lying in the grass among these girls, the plenitude of what I feel infinitely outweighs the paucity & infrequency of our speech. Pure bliss!

 

Bathed in sunshine, lying in the grass surrounded by the girls: waves of happiness rippled-up to die at the feet of these young roses. Love!

 

Now & then a pretty attention from one unattainable girl would stir in me vibrations which dissipated for a time my desire for the rest.

 

Albertine’s pale matt cheeks, visibly pink beneath the skin, make one long to kiss them, to reach that different tint which is so elusive

 

Albertine’s a girl with whom even a handshake affords such physical pleasure that one’s grateful that Society permits it between the sexes

 

If Society had arranged some other, arbitrary expression of good manners, I should have gazed at Albertine’s hands with insatiable curiosity

 

In the meadows above the cliffs we played innocent games in which I vainly attempted to touch Albertine and she succeeded in putting me down

 

“With your hair let loose you remind me of Eleanor of Guyenne, so beloved of Chateaubriand” I murmured. “You’re perfectly useless” she said

 

Andrée rescued me from Albertine’s humiliation & together we walked to where the hawthorns no longer bloomed. Perhaps it was Andrée I loved?

 

Loving helps us to discriminate. The bird-lover in a wood distinguishes the songs of the different species, which to others sound the same.

 

But it was Albertine I worshiped, though I could never declare it; for love is a subjective pleasure to be hidden from the object of desire

 

A charming law of nature, which manifests itself in the heart of all complex societies, says we live in perfect ignorance of those we love

 

For as long as she was unaware that she was the object of my passion, Albertine would do all she could to sustain my passionate pleasures.

 

In order to make Albertine love me, I pretended it was Andrée that I loved, and to Andrée I expressed my complete indifference for Albertine

 

Andrée pretends she believes my indifference for Albertine & tries to bring us together, but she neither believes the 1st or desires the 2nd

 

My room in the Hotel, no longer the hostile room of my 1st night, has now become my refuge where I can conjure images of Albertine & Andrée

 

Octave said that “Golf gives one a taste for solitary pleasures” But this (not golf) was something for which I had already developed a taste

 

Albertine’s spending the night at the Hotel & invited me to her room. She says I can watch her eat & then we might play at anything I choose

 

Approaching Albertine’s room, already anticipating what scenes of passion might already have been performed, I thrust past all objections

 

The few steps from the landing to Albertine’s door, I took with rapture, as though in moving, I was displacing a liquid stream of happiness

 

I pranced for joy & nearly knocked over François who was standing in my way, as I ran, with sparkling eyes, towards my beloved’s room

 

Albertine was already in bed and, when I saw the pink, exposed flesh of her throat, I could no longer control my desires & bent to kiss her

 

Death might have struck me down at that moment & would have seemed to me a trivial thing, for the swelling of life was not outside but in me

 

“Stop it or I’ll ring the bell” Albertine cried as, inflamed by the swelling of the pink & rounded flesh; I flung myself upon her for a kiss

 

As my lips reached for her, Albertine pulled the alarm cord & a sound, abrupt, prolonged & shrill, immediately deflated my passionate ardor.

 

I had supposed that my love for Albertine was not based only on the hope of carnal possession; but her rejection of my kiss proved otherwise.

 

My interest in her childhood memories or her intellectual life vanished as soon as I realized that I might not kiss her whenever I so chose.

 

My dreams abandoned her as soon as they ceased to be nourished by hopes of sexual possession, of which I had supposed them to be independent

 

Albertine’s rejection of my kiss at least left me free to pursue her friends and, one by one, I imagined caressing them all with my longings

 

Despite all my desires, they remained the same pitiless & sensual virgins whom I had seen, as in a fresco, file past between me and the sea.

 

To whichever of the girls I loved best, I attached the sum total of the melancholy longings which had been floating vaguely among them all.

 

Albertine’s returned to Paris, abruptly. “She said neither why nor wherefore, and with that she left” muttered François who doesn’t like her

 

The concerts have ended, the Casino’s closed, the little train’s stopped running, the bad weather’s begun & the visitors are leaving Balbec

 

The hotel manager is particularly annoyed about the closure of the railway. “What is lacking here” he said “is the means of commotion”

 

The manager offered to reserve better rooms for us next season but I declined. I absolutely love my room at the hotel. I don’t want to leave

 

My last morning in my hotel-bed & François draws the curtains to disclose the final dying day of summer, embalmed in its vesture of gold.

 

The season’s drawn to a close & my friends are leaving Balbec, not all at once like swallows, but in the same week. Time to return to Paris

VOLUME THREE ‘THE GUERMANTES WAY’

 

THE TWITTERING OF THE BIRDS AT DAYBREAK sounded insipid to Françoise. Every word uttered by the maids upstairs made her jump. We had moved!

 

Françoise doesn’t like our new home in Paris & misses Combray. “I’ll not see it again till I’m dead & they drop me like a stone in a hole”

 

In Combray you always know what time it is by the old church bell & you say “My brother is coming in from the fields” as the daylight fades.

 

In Paris it’s daytime & it’s nighttime, and you go to bed, and you can’t say any more than the dumb beasts what you’ve been about all day.

 

After my Aunt Leonie died in Combray, my parents inherited her cook, François, who came to live with us in Paris, while I inherited her sofa

 

Françoise was especially exasperated by my father’s taste for thin slices of toast at breakfast “It’s just to give himself airs” she sniffed

 

“I can tell you frankly,” the young footman said “that I never saw the like” As if he had seen it all & never, anywhere had ever found toast

 

A clerihew for Proust would doubtless use “toast” which the young footman found incredible, if not in his considered opinion, quite inedible

 

Should my father in anyway annoy Françoise, she’d present him for the rest of the day with a face subtly expressing all her many grievances

 

My mother rang the bell for service but the servants downstairs treated it like the sound of the orchestra, tuning-up prior to the next act.

 

While my family waits for lunch to be served, the butler having taken note-paper from my bedroom catches up with his private correspondence

 

Before resuming her duties & finally serving lunch, Françoise would first tidy her room while grumbling that “they’ve got the jumps today!”

 

Françoise misses the good old days chez Aunt Leonie in Combray, when a body had time to eat, unlike here where there’s no time to even sit

 

Françoise, like those plants that live symbiotically with an animal for the survival of both, had now become an essential part of our family

 

François’s proud to be working for a wealthy family. She doesn’t equate wealth with virtue, but she just can’t imagine virtue without wealth

 

My family has recently moved apartments in Paris for my grandmother’s health, and we now live next door to the Duc & Duchesse de Guermantes.

 

In the house in which we now live, the great lady at the end of the courtyard is a duchess, elegant & still young – as if from a fairy tale.

 

The Hotel Guermantes is just their Paris town-house. Their family chateau is near Combray – and no doubt they have other chateaux elsewhere.

 

The Hotel de Guermantes is a kind of palace in the heart of Paris, surrounded by its own domains and feudal privileges, of which we are part

 

Our home’s so close to the Guermantes that Mama noticed their door-mat is dirty. But I’m less likely to ever cross that mat than the equator

 

Just to see that door mat was like a sailor from the open sea, glimpsing a distant palm tree or minaret & imagining the exotic life on shore

 

Since I was a small child, the name ‘Guermantes’ has been a mystical force from the mists of time evoking the very roots of ancient France

 

Her name, Duchesse de Guermantes; so medieval, redolent of stained glass windows, tapestries & ancient forests: & she, the Lady of the Lake

 

And now the Lady of The Lake lives next door; the smartest woman in all of Paris & the leading fashionista of the Faubourg Saint-Germain

 

The Faubourg Saint-Germain is where the aristocrats built their palaces on the left bank, after Louis XIV removed Paris’s defensive walls

 

The Faubourg Saint-Honoré, on the right bank, is where Napoleon’s carpet baggers & 2nd Empire nouveau-riches built their vulgar mansions

 

While the Faubourg Saint-Honoré is just a geographic location, Faubourg Saint-Germain is more a state of mind - a sign of social supremacy

 

They say the Duchess maintains the best house in the whole of the Fbg. Saint-Germain, even though her residence is in the Fbg. Saint-Honoré.

 

The proud race of Guermantes, like a crenellated tower, has dominated France long before Notre Dame de Paris or Chartres pierced the skyline

 

Before Charlemagne even, the lords of Guermantes - the purest blood & deepest roots of France had power of life & death over their subjects

 

The Duke and Duchess entertain the smartest people in Europe; Diplomats, Generals, Royalty & such like. François keeps us informed of it all

 

Not that François gossips. As she says, “So long as I know what’s boiling in my pot, I don’t bother my head about what’s in other people’s.”

 

When she learned the younger son of the Duc de Guermantes traditionally takes the title, Prince des Laumes, Françoise said “That’s nice.”

 

When she hears the sound of music at night, François says “The Duke & Duchess are having company down below; gay doings, I’ll be bound”

 

With little of interest in her own poor life, it’s the goings-on and gay doings of the rich & famous that brings color to Françoise’s world

 

The very thought of ‘gay doings’ releases a smile from her younger days and sets Françoise’s features in motion, as though ready for a dance

 

From Françoise’s symmetrical face, beneath her snow-white hair, a smile from her younger days, sprightly but proper, hints at lost memories

 

François has made friends with all the Guermantes’ servants including Jupien who has a shop in the courtyard. She says he’s very well spoken

 

The Guermantes’ footman told François the Duchess is invited to a party at La Princesse de Parme but is going instead to the Duc d’Aumale’s

 

The Duchess is always going to smart balls & to the Opera. I peep out the window & see her setting off in her carriage, beautiful as a dream

 

The Duchess emerges from her house in a gown of flesh colored satin above which her face is of the same shade, delicate as a cloud at sunset

 

From her carriage she dispenses smiles & waves, with a disdainful affability and egalitarian arrogance, to the indistinguishable proletariat

 

The Duke treats the whole Quartier like his private estate. Puffing a huge cigar, he races his new horses, noisily, up & down the streets.

 

The Duke stands on the pavement, erect, gigantic, enormous in his vivid clothes, a cigar between his teeth, his head in the air; quizzical

 

After selecting a new horse to his liking, the Duke gallops off to the Bois de Boulogne where he selects a new mistress, also to his liking.

 

My father, who’s a Republican & holds an important position at the Ministry, regards the Duc de Guermantes as a useless lout & an utter boor

 

One of Dad’s friends gave him a spare ticket for the Opera which Granny persuaded him to give to me. I’m off to see Berma perform in Phèadre

 

While seated among the vulgar people in the stalls, I can observe all the Beautiful People in their boxes; as if in their own drawing rooms.

 

Princes & Dukes, Lords & Ladies in all their finery, lounge & gossip at their ease in private boxes oblivious of us down below in the stalls

 

Like Goddesses separated from us mere mortals by some liquid & transparent world, the half naked bodies of Society ladies tantalize our eyes

 

Like a glimpse of the deities beneath the waves, the languid naiads & water goddesses reveal pale breasts behind the feathers of their fans

 

In the stalls we watch transfixed, as the vaguely human denizens of the private boxes emerge to the chiaroscuro surface of our ravenous gaze

 

The most splendid gathering - a vision of the Gods on Mt. Olympus, is in the Princesse de Guermantes’ box, filled with a glittering glamour

 

The Opera finally starts & the Princess moves away from her friends to the front of her box, where her beauty is revealed for all to enjoy.

 

Watching Berma onstage, I realize that the playwright’s work is irrelevant, just raw material for the interpretation of a great actress.

 

As a true painter can use for his masterpiece a humble house or vast cathedral so too a great actress can use any play to express her genius

 

As the curtain rises on the second act, the Duchesse de Guermantes makes her grand entrance in the Princess’s box, & below, all heads turn

 

With the triumphant assurance & grandeur of the goddess that she is, the Duchess feigns an embarrassed & apologetic smile for arriving late

 

The Duchess extends her hand graciously to all the guests in her cousin’s box and blesses each one with the azure brilliance of her eyes

 

Could I have captured the brilliance of her gaze & used a prism to analyze its crystallization, I’d have a glimpse into the Duchess’s soul

 

Exotic plumes, fine silks, bare breasts & sumptuous satin; brilliant jewels & eyes like a ray of sunlight in the dazzling crystal of the sea

 

Compared to the Duchess the Princess was ‘over dressed’ in a net of pearls & a downy plumage, from the crown of her head to her naked throat

 

The Duchess’s neck & shoulders emerged from a drift of snow white chiffon below which her bodice molded her figure with brilliant precision

 

Now the Duchess & the Princess sit side by side; the two best-dressed & beautiful women in Paris, gazing at each other in mutual admiration

 

The snobbish Mme de Cambremer gazes upwards. Her sole goal in life is to make the visiting lists of the Duchess & the Princess de Guermantes

 

Mme Cambremer agrees with Swann that “The Duchess is one of the noblest souls in Paris, the cream of the most refined, the choicest society”

 

Mme Cambremer suffers from a fatal illness and has only 5 years left to live. Her only fear is dying before meeting the Duchess and Princess

 

I too gaze up at the Duchess & Princess, impossibly remote in their box, from which they look down, disinterested, upon us anonymous masses

 

Looking up at the box, it’s as though I’d seen, thru a rent in the clouds, the assembly of the Gods, contemplating the spectacle of mankind

 

Seeing our social betters relaxed in their world of infinite grace & comfort, fills mere mortals in the stalls with a sense of wondrous awe

 

I gazed upon this momentary apotheosis with a perturbation which was partly soothed by the feeling that I was unknown to the Immortals above

 

Looking down from her box into the stalls, the Duchess recognizes me and showers upon me the sparkling and celestial torrent of her smile!

 

I can scarcely believe it. She recognized me!

 

She smiled!

 

I’m in love!

 

I’m in love with the Duchesse de Guermantes!

 

I am in love with the Duchess. I pray to God that he will bring upon her every possible calamity: so she will lose all - and so, come to me

 

I pray that every misfortune may fall upon my beloved; that she will lose her name, reputation & her fortune & become wholly dependent on me

 

Now every morning, long before the hour at which the Duchess leaves her house I post myself on a street corner past which I know she’ll walk

 

I follow her on her daily walks and now I know her routes, where she stops and where she lingers. I am hungry for another taste of her smile

 

It’s the memory of that scintillating smile of the Duchess and the warm feeling it engendered which compels me to haunt the morning streets

 

Françoise and Mama keep accusing me of stalking the Duchess and of following her on her morning strolls. Her servants complain I’m obsessed.

 

When I ask for my outdoor things as I prepare for my early morning walk, Françoise’s face becomes stiff with coldness, disapproval & pity

 

I know which way she walks each morning & now I rise early and deviously place myself on a street corner so that I can ‘accidently’ meet her

 

Each morning now I see her approach; her tall figure, her face with its bright eyes and crown of silken hair. Oh, how I yearn for her smile.

 

She advances toward me, her piercing blue eyes beneath a violet hood & I affect an indifference, turning away my gaze with an abstracted air

 

I stroll toward her while seeming to be absorbed in something else. I look the other way till I’m close; raise my eyes, surprised to see her

 

It’s not only the Duchesse that I see on my morning walks; the streets are filled with young girls, each of whom arouse voluptuous longings

 

The world appears to me a more pleasant place to live and life more interesting to pursue now that I know the streets are filled with girls

 

But it is the Duchesse for whom I most yearn. I can never forget the tenderness promised me by the azure radiance of her smile at the Opera

 

Sadly, the Duchess de Guermantes no longer smiles at me, in fact she glares icily whenever we happen to ‘accidentally’ meet in the street

 

I might never have realized that the Duchess was irritated to meet me in the street day after day, had I not been so informed by Françoise

 

Françoise, being kind & compassionate while also being harsh, disdainful, shrewd & narrow minded has a way of feeling & understanding things

 

Often a day will pass when I do not even see the Duchess on her walk, and don’t even get a brusque nod or icy glare. Can she be avoiding me?

 

Sometimes after failing to find my beloved in the street, I’d see a fashionable woman buying petits suisses in a shop & realize “it is her!”

 

I knew I displeased the Duchess by crossing her path every morning; but even if I had the heart to do so, I was unable to restrain myself.

 

I tried not stalking her for a couple of days, but she might not have noticed or thought it an accident, not knowing what a sacrifice it was

 

Stalking the Duchess daily isn’t working. I’ve made no progress. I need to find someone close to her who will praise & perhaps introduce me

 

My friend Comte Robert de Saint-Loup, again invited me to visit his regiment at Doncières. He might speak well of me to his aunt the Duchess

 

I’ve decided to spend some time with Robert at his regiment in Doncières. He says he has a photograph of his aunt, the Duchess, in his room

 

I’ll spend the first night in Robert’s room at the barracks but after that I must stay alone in a hotel; in a cold unknown bedroom by myself

 

Poets claim we recapture for a moment the self that we were long ago, when we enter a house or room where we once lived. Not a hotel bedroom

 

I studied the Duchess’s photo in Robert’s room; that rounded cheek, the arched neck, the nose like a falcon’s beak: a voluptuous discovery!

 

Robert refused to give me the photograph of his aunt, the Duchesse de Guermantes, but he promised to introduce me when we’re next in Paris

 

Truthfully it’s not our friendship which caused me to visit Robert, nor any interest in the army. It’s my passion for his aunt, the Duchess

 

I try to be casual when I discuss the Duchess with her nephew. I should not like Robert to know I’m deliriously, madly in love with his aunt

 

The winter streets of Doncières are like a scene from Breughel with merry, junketing frost bound peasants, chickens on spits & roasting pigs

 

The dining room’s medieval air with fish, chicken, grouse, woodcock, pigeons brought in dressed & garnished piping hot by breathless waiters

 

Robert spends much of his day on regimental duties and much of the evening in the officer’s mess. It’s certainly a man’s world in the army!

 

Robert presented me to his friends & I caught sight of myself from outside; like reading my name in the paper or seeing myself in a mirror.

 

I spend a lot of time with Robert’s fellow officers in the mess. We discuss the Dreyfus Affair & how we’re going to beat the German bastards

 

Now that I've met Robert’s army colleagues, I share that instinctive friendship between men which, when it is not physical, is so mysterious

 

Robert’s captain in the regiment is the Prince de Borodino. A Napoleonic title referred to by Robert’s snooty family as a “touched-up Count”

 

While Robert’s family titles reach back before the days of Charlemagne, Borodino’s title reaches back no further than Napoleon’s bed-sheets

 

Opposed on all other matters, the aristocrats of the Ancién Regime and Napoleon’s ‘touched-up counts’ are united in their hatred of Dreyfus

 

Dreyfus is a Jewish officer who’s been charged with treason & sent to Devil’s Island. All of France argues about whether he’s guilty or not.

 

The Monarchists, the Catholic Church and the military all say Dreyfus is guilty. The Jews & the Socialist say he’s been framed - & I agree.

 

Zola has publicly accused the government of a conspiracy to cover-up the framing of Dreyfus. The country’s divided between red & blue states

 

Robert’s support of Dreyfus is very unusual for an aristocrat - especially a soldier. Usually it’s just Jews & Socialists who’d defend him

 

Everyone else in the regiment hates Dreyfus & supports his punishment. If Robert wasn’t so popular, he’d be shot for his pro-Dreyfus stance

 

I later discovered that Robert’s pro-Dreyfus position was dictated by his mistress who’s an actress with avant-garde & left-wing friends

 

Just when Robert was beginning to get over his girlfriend’s long silence, she wrote to say she forgave him. So there he was, ensnared again!

 

Meantime, I received news from home, via the magical, new-fangled telephone, that Grandma is very ill and I must return to Paris at once

 

Grandma’s illness has changed her. I found a red-faced, heavy, vulgar, sick, vacant, dejected & slightly crazed old woman whom I do not know

 

Resuming my morning walks I continue to meet the Duchess in the street but pretend to ignore her, thus appearing insolent & ill bred besides

 

With the arrival of Spring, the Duchess is wearing lighter and brighter clothes with low-cut necks. Sometimes she greets me with a faint bow

 

Robert briefly visited Paris but had no time to introduce me to his aunt. I have much better cousins for you, he said, younger and prettier

 

Despite Robert’s criticism of his aunt the Duchess, and Françoise’s gossip of her meanness, she still represents all that I love and worship

 

Françoise says the Duchess is mean to her servants & stops her footman from meeting his sweetheart, because she is jealous of his happiness

 

I met Legrandin in the street & he criticized my frivolous-minded life in the nauseating, unbreathable atmosphere of the aristocratic salons

 

Legrandin hates Robert and all aristocrats. He regrets that during the Terror all their heads were not cut off. “They’re disreputable scum!”

 

Legrandin also hates Bergotte & all his books which he describes as “Deliquescent, gamy stuff for the jaded palates of refined voluptuaries”

 

“Farewell” Legrandin said “While you’re at some smart Paris party I shall be in a humble suburb watching the pink moon rise in a violet sky”

 

Robert invited me to finally meet his girlfriend. What a shock: she’s ‘Rachel when from the Lord’ – the Jewish girl from the brothel!

 

Rachel’s a girl who would remove her clothes & stand naked in front of a stranger unless of course he preferred to do it while still dressed

 

In the brothel, I’d heard Rachel often say to the Madam “If you want me for someone, anyone, anytime, you’ll send round for me, won’t you?”

 

When ‘they’ sent round for her and she was alone with the ‘someone’ she’d lock the door, quickly strip naked and then await her instructions

 

This was the same girl who had tortured Robert for months, mocked and scolded him, banished him from Paris, all to protect her ‘reputation’

 

For 20 francs, Rachel would perform any physical act, however obscene; but in return for a fortune, Robert was scarcely given a chaste kiss

 

Robert has defied his family, risked his inheritance and squandered a fortune on this girl who had been offered to me for just 20 francs

 

Robert & I both see the same face, the same eyes & mouth; but what for him is a mysterious goal worth everything, was for me, not worth $20

 

The whole purpose and goal of all Robert’s yearning & strivings is to possess what had once been offered to me, and which I had tossed away

 

For 20 francs Rachel would perform whatever act I demanded in the brothel, but in return for his millions, Robert gets scarcely a civil word

 

Because I had known her most intimate secrets from the moment she was offered to me in the brothel, there was no mystery to her, no interest

 

Because, for whatever reason, Robert was denied immediate gratification, she became mysterious to him and the object of his growing desires

 

A man pursues a woman; she drives him crazy, till a mere smile is bought for 1,000 times the price of what should have been the final favor

 

As most normal couples end by resembling each other, at times even by an exchange of qualities, so Robert & Rachel share their jealousies

 

Robert’s just as bad as Rachel. Whenever they’re out in public, he glares all around, looking for imagined rivals & accusing her of flirting

 

Robert’s so aware of each rival’s possible attractions that he draws attention to them, & Rachel then finds that she shares his good taste

 

While Robert jealously imagines every man of trying to seduce his mistress, Rachel fans the flames by flirting with the waiters – even Aimé

 

Aimé works the Balbec Grand Hotel during the Season, & in the off-season he works his charms in this Paris restaurant where we go for lunch

 

As soon as we entered the restaurant and saw Aimé, I knew there’d be trouble. With his fine hair & Grecian nose, Aimé inspires crude romance

 

Aimé was known to discreetly service lonely guests in the otherwise pellucid, monotonous & profound void of their provincial existence

 

A passing visitor might raise her eyes to his & ask him to serve her in her room before departing; her short-lived secret whim safe with him

 

Men or women, it was all the same to Aimé “their needs are no different” he said. “A lonely void that needs filling. It’s just business”

 

Sensing perhaps the fellowship of hidden vices, Rachel fastened her eyes upon Aimé with an insistence that made Robert blush with jealousy

 

“Look what dark eyes he has” Rachel says, still gazing at Aimé “I should love to know what goes on behind them & know what he really thinks”

 

“I think he’s charming” Rachel continued. “He’s got the most adorable eyes & a way of looking at women – you can tell he really loves them”

 

Robert angrily accused Rachel of being in love with Aimé whom he dismissed as “the biggest scoundrel who ever walked the face of the earth.”

 

“If we were expected to love all the people we find attractive, life would be pretty ghastly, wouldn’t it?” Rachel said to me with a laugh

 

Rachel’s clumsy with her hands when eating. Her dexterity is reserved for making love; with the skill certain women have with the male body

 

Rachel left the table soon after that to join Robert in a private room for make-up sex following their public argument at the luncheon table

 

A bit later, Rachel offers me a glass of champagne, a Turkish cigarette & a rose still warm from her bodice. So the day’s not a total waste

 

Tonight at the theatre we watch Rachel perform on-stage. From a distance she’s quite attractive; - assuming you’ve never seen her close up!

 

Perhaps that’s the difference between Robert & I. He had 1st seen Rachel at a distance onstage, while I’d 1st seen her close-up in a brothel

 

Backstage, after the performance, Rachel flirts so outrageously with a dancer, that Robert turns and beats the crap out of a drama critic!

 

Robert has invited me to a party at his great-aunt, Mme de Villeparisis’ house. With luck I might even get to meet the Duchess de Guermantes

 

Due to youthful indiscretions of a no-doubt sexual nature, his great-aunt’s soirees are attended only by family or those who know no better

 

The dissolute conduct of Mme Villeparisis when young, has excluded her from polite society, so she relies upon her family to provide guests

 

When I objected that dissolute conduct isn’t always a barrier to social success, I was assured her conduct went way beyond any forgiveness

 

Her parties are attended only by 3rd rate folk from the middle-classes or minor nobility, either provincial or otherwise tainted in some way

 

As if to prove that only 3rd rate folk attend, I see Bloch, Legrandin & Mme Swann have all contrived to get themselves invited to the party

 

Legrandin’s fervent obsequiousness & shameless social-climbing must have made him forget his plan to watch a pink moon rise in a violet sky

 

Bent obscenely low over his hostess’ hand, the oily Legrandin was assuring her of his “monumental rapidity & immortal instantaneousness”

 

Legrandin tried to hide from me the stream of flattery which, with a remarkable preciosity of expression, he poured-out to Mme Villeparisis

 

When the Duchesse de Guermantes enters the room, Mme de Villeparisis barely even acknowledges her, while I can scarcely keep my eyes off her

 

Mme de Villeparisis is a Guermantes & descended from the Tour d’Auverne dynasty, so her smart family is thus obliged to attend her parties

 

Villeparisis’ parties combine the cream of society who, thru ties of blood, have no choice & the nobodies who, thru ignorance, have no idea

 

Apparently it is now the fashion among hip young men to place their top hat upon the floor rather than to leave it in the entrance hall.

 

This party at Mme Villeparisis is my first venture into society, even if it is not so smart, so learning the latest fashions is important

 

When I first saw the young men lay their top hats upon the floor, I mistook them for peasants entering the mayor’s office & being confused

 

“I too was confused” said Mme Villeparisis “when I 1st saw them place their hats upon the floor. But apparently it’s quite the thing to do”

 

Mme de Villeparisis mocks Robert for leaving his top hat in the hallway like a humble clockmaker “Are you come to wind my clocks?” she asks

 

Bloch of course knows no better and on arrival instead of placing it upon the floor like a man of fashion, demands “Take care of my top hat”

 

Bloch compounds his error by criticizing a M. Mole for a “pretty perniciously philistine habit of carrying one’s hat in one’s own house”

 

To pretend he hasn’t spent all day in his hostess’ bedroom, Norpois will pick-up a hat in the hall, as though he’s just come in from outside

 

Unfortunately it was my hat that Norpois had picked-up in the hallway which told me that he had just emerged from Mme Villeparisis’ bedroom.

 

I took my hat from Norpois' hand & placed it on the floor among all the others but then spent the rest of my time at the party, watching it.

 

Among the top hats upon the floor I noticed one with a ducal coronet and a ‘G’ within the brim. Whose hat could that possibly be? I wondered

 

The mysterious hat with a ducal ‘G’ could not belong to the Duc de Guermantes as I’d seen him place his carefully upon the floor beside him

 

When Charlus picked up the hat with a ‘G’, I said “Take care Monsieur. You have the wrong hat” But that, as we shall see, is another story!

 

Apart from the business with the hats, it was a good party; lots of talk about Dreyfus and the wily Norpois ran rings around poor Bloch

 

As a diplomat & member of the government, Norpois’ views on the Dreyfus Affair could reveal official “thinking” – (if such a thing exists).

 

While Bloch tried to discover if Norpois was ‘for’ or ‘against’ Dreyfus, Norpois with a practiced air of earnest sincerity, conveyed nothing

 

One minute Norpois seemed to be in favor of Dreyfus while his subsequent remarks appeared opposed, till poor Bloch was completely mystified

 

Being a diplomat with a governmental mind, Ambassador Norpois could say less in 3 long paragraphs than another could say in 1 short sentence

 

Norpois has replaced: “He who sows the wind shall reap the whirlwind,” in his conversation with: “The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.”

 

“It goes without saying” Norpois declares importantly “that should any fresh evidence come to light, the government will order a new trial.”

 

“It’s as plain as a pikestaff” he continues with his meaningless clichés. “When that day comes, The Government will speak-out loud & clear”

 

“But once the machinery of Government has been set in motion” Norpois asks rhetorically “who will not have ears for the voice of authority?”

 

Totally bewildered, Bloch has no idea what Norpois is talking about and has certainly no idea of where he stands on the subject of Dreyfus.

 

Thus, with his mastery of meaningless clichés & self-serving pomp, Norpois ascends the bureaucracy to become “a man of no little importance”

 

Norpois has mastered the art of making other people feel grateful & indebted to him, when in fact he is only serving his own self-interest.

 

Norpois describes the art of making his own selfish actions appear to be doing other people a favor, as “killing several birds with 1 stone”

 

Norpois is expert at speaking from both sides of his mouth, agreeing with everyone & double-crossing all his bridges when he reaches them

 

Charlus stands in a corner while his shifty eyes carefully survey the party like a street-corner hustler watching-out for the cops to appear

 

The Duchess looks embarrassed when she sees the Duke enter the room. It’s not considered smart to appear together; like a new-married couple

 

The Duke crosses the room with a permanent smile, suggesting a slightly tipsy monarch, with a half-open hand like a shark’s fin by his side.

 

The density of the Duke’s vast wealth seems apparent in all his limbs as though they’d been smelted in a crucible into a single human ingot

 

The Duke combines the vanity of the nobleman with the power of the plutocrat. The breeding of the former tempering the smugness of the later

 

Despite an initial impression of commonness, the Duke manages to display, behind his vulgar arrogance, some glimpses of an ancient grandeur.

 

It is not just the Duke’s enormous fortune and his ancient title which account for his success with women, he is also extremely handsome

 

Despite his advancing years the Duke pursues the life of a gay bachelor, distressing the Duchess with an endless succession of mistresses

 

The Duke believes it’s more reasonable to devote one’s life to women than to postage stamps or old snuff-boxes, even to pictures or statues

 

But the example of other valuable collections has proved a warning for him to diversify, to have not just one woman only but several.

 

Placing his top hat carefully beside him on the floor, the Duke reclines upon a sofa & surveys the room for whatever tickles his taste buds

 

Somebody mentioned a new expression to the Duke, saying “it’s quite the latest thing, the ‘ne plus ultra’ & nobody will know what you mean!”

 

The Duke writes down the new expression in his notebook. He likes to consult his notebook before dinner parties & trot-out hip new words

 

The Duke once heard that a writer was “talentuous” and wrote it down in his little book. “Damned if I know what it means though” he grumbles

 

The Duke spoke with feigned humility but with a vanity so intense that his lips could not restrain from a smile nor his eyes from sparkling

 

“According to tavern gossip Dreyfus was screwing the War minister’s wife” said the Duke who liked, what he imagined to be, hip expressions

 

The Duke’s odd vocabulary enables society people to declare he is no fool & literary people to describe him as a complete & utter nut-job!

 

While the others talk, I hover near the edge, discreetly watching the Duchess and listening to & savoring every word that she lets fall

 

With the sound of her name the Duchess brings the shadowy, sun-splashed coolness of the woods of Guermantes into this Parisian drawing room

 

Her eyes capture the blue sky of a French country afternoon and her voice, almost hoarse, recalls the rich and lazy gold of a country sun

 

The Duchess is bored with talk of Dreyfus “I don’t know any Jews myself” she says “and I intend to stay in that state of blissful ignorance”

 

“Just because people hate Jews is no reason to accept them in society. One is forced to meet the most awful people just for hating Dreyfus”

 

“I agree” said the Duke “I remember when being anti-Semitic was simply normal behavior. Now it’s regarded as some sort of special virtue”

 

“Even if Dreyfus is innocent of treason” the Duchess said “he should still be punished, just for being such a bad writer. No sense of style”

 

“How can Dreyfus be guilty of treason?” Charlus said. “He can’t be French as he’s a Jew & thus guilty only of breaching laws of hospitality”

 

“The Prince de Guermantes allowed his castle to burn to the ground rather than ask his neighbor Rothschild for help just because he’s a Jew”

 

“Rothschild’s castle had a moat full of water” said the Duke “But my cousin is too proud to ask a Jew for assistance. So his chateau burned”

 

“My cousin, the Prince, is an awful snob” the Duke continued “Not at all like me. Why, I’d walk around with a negro: if I knew one, that is”

 

The only thing that all the guests appear to agree on is the sheer awfulness of Robert’s mistress: “A perfect horror & grotesquely ugly”

 

“Not only is she an ugly whore who’s squandering all his money, but she’s totally turned his head and even persuaded him to support Dreyfus”

 

“I didn’t know she was a hooker. I thought she was an actress” someone said. “Same thing” replied the Duchess “In any event she can’t act!”

 

“I assure you, if you saw Robert’s young lady” the Duchess said “you would simply die laughing; clutching her lilacs, she’s so ridiculous”

 

“She’s a perfect horror” continued the Duchess “she can’t act, she’s quite without any vestige of talent, & besides, she’s grotesquely ugly”

 

“Well Swann fell in love & married a hooker too” somebody said. “Yes” said the Duchess “But at least she used to be pretty and dressed well”

 

“I admit it was a surprise when Swann married his hooker” the Duchess said “because although she was a looker, she’s also a bit of an idiot”

 

“A fine wine of a great vintage” objected M. d’Argencourt “may lie hidden in a dusty old bottle with a faded label, yet still taste divine.”

 

“Who cares about the bottle so long as one gets drunk? The Duchess quoted “And Robert certainly got drunk, but from such a hideous bottle!”

 

“Well Robert may have got drunk all right” the Duchess repeated “but he certainly hasn’t shown much taste in his choice of a bottle!”

 

“I understand him wanting a bit of fun” agreed the Duke, who was partial to a bit of fun himself “but why the devil would he fall in love?”

 

“That’s the mysterious thing about love” his wife replied sadly “One never really does know what makes one person fall in love with another”

 

“After all one never knows anything, does one?” concluded the Duchess, smiling “So we should never discuss other people’s choices in love”

 

“Well as Robert’s mother” said the Marquise de Marsantes “I think I have a right to discuss and to deplore my son’s foolish choices in love”

 

While the Duchesse de Guermantes was known for her sharp wit, her cousin (and sister-in-law) Robert’s mother, was known for her good works.”

 

Robert’s mother, Mme de Marsantes, enjoyed a reputation for charity & simplicity. Virtues which require a not inconsiderable annual income.

 

Being a great lady means playing at being the great lady, that is to say playing at simplicity - a pastime which costs a great deal of money

 

As usual, Bloch made an utter fool of himself, shattering a valuable vase filled with flowers. “Don’t worry” was all he said “I’m not wet!”

 

Bloch was also rude to an elderly guest not knowing she was a rich & famous Rothschild. “Oh bugger me!” he said on discovering who she was.

 

There is little point to the story about Bloch except to prove that sometimes, sudden stress can cause people to say what they actually mean

 

Hearing that men of quality are resigning from the Royale Club because it is now admitting riff-raff, Bloch decided to apply for membership

 

Mme. De Villeparisis was so annoyed with Bloch that she could not even say goodbye when he left &, snoring, pretended to have fallen asleep.

 

I hover on the edge of the group; so close to the Duchess, yet so far. I watch her & listen but can’t speak till we are formally introduced

 

Nobody at the party knows how I yearn to meet the Duchess; that she might know my name, and share again the celestial torrent of her smile!

 

Robert de Saint-Loup is the only person who knows of my desire to be presented to his aunt but sadly he is not at the party to do the honors

 

Robert is not expected to attend the party. His mother told the Duchess she fears he’s been seduced away by his unspeakable mistress, Rachel

 

Robert’s mother, a saintly woman of simple mien, worries her son is being corrupted by his awful g/f. “He’s already caught the Dreyfus bug”

 

In the circle within which Robert’s family move, being a Dreyfusard is a socially communicable disease; politically even worse than syphilis

 

So when Robert de Saint-Loup arrives, his mother & his aunt are both delighted. “Well speak of the Saint!” the Duchess says with a gay laugh

 

“Surely it’s ‘Speak of the …’ Oh. I see” said M. d’Argencourt “Speak of ‘Saint’-Loup. Your wit, my dear Duchess is quite the ne plus ultra!”

 

My heart is beating furiously. Finally, Robert and his aunt are together in the same room as me. I am going to be introduced to the Duchess!

 

The great moment which I have so desperately longed for finally arrived & I was presented by Robert to his aunt, the Duchesse de Guermantes

 

“Good evening how are you” she said, briefly leaning forward and showering upon me the light of her azure gaze before quickly springing back

 

Robert introduced me as one of her admirers. “How nice” said the Duchess, as though I’d just brought over her coat “I’m most flattered”

 

“I see you sometimes in the morning” she said, as though unaware I had been obsessively stalking her. “It’s so good for one, a walk.”

 

The sublime sense of anti-climax upon meeting the Duchess was matched only by the transcendent banality of our conversational exchange

 

I was also introduced to Robert’s mother, the Comtesse de Marsantes; she's a saintly sister to both Baron de Charlus & the Duc de Guermantes

 

The Duke de Guermantes, Baron de Charlus and the Comtesse de Marsantes are brothers & sister; the Duchess (the Duke’s wife) is their cousin

 

The Duc & Duchesse de Guermantes, being first cousins share the same grandparents. Even both sets of their parents were brothers & sisters

 

The incestuous union of the Duc & Duchesse was to protect the purity of the Guermantes bloodline but, being childless, has merely ended it

 

My friend Robert de Saint-Loup thus calls both the Duke de Guerrmantes & Baron de Charlus ‘uncle’, and the Duchesse de Guermantes ‘aunt’.

 

I was quite amazed that someone as pure & saintly as Robert’s mother could have such brutal, debauched & vile brothers as Charlus & the Duke

 

Having being born a Guermantes & then marrying the Comte de Marsantes (rich President of the Jockey Club) Robert’s mother was certainly posh

 

Despite her great wealth and her noble blood the Comtesse de Marsantes was always modest and simple in her demeanor: as only the rich can be

 

Robert’s mother dressed & behaved with the greatest simplicity; a simplicity which is possible only if you have a great deal of money

 

Simplicity’s not a virtue that’s cheap to acquire & is effective in impressing people only if they know that you are in fact fabulously rich

 

The Comtesse de Marsantes never shrank from embracing a poor woman in trouble, or even from inviting her to the castle for a bundle of wood

 

As a wealthy widow with a most respectable and Christian reputation, Robert’s mother was appalled that his mistress was a penniless whore

 

Robert’s mother was described as a selfless Christian and she was selflessly determined to find an immensely wealthy wife for her only son

 

Robert’s mother considered Rachel an impossible choice as a wife, not because she was ugly or reputed to be a whore but because she was poor

 

While I was being introduced to the Duchesse de Guermantes and her cousin, Robert’s saintly mother, the gay repartee of the party continued.

 

“The German Prime Minister’s a very decent chap” someone said “Very unusual quality in a foreigner; besides he’s anti-Semitism personified!”

 

Being anti-Semitic has become the latest mark of respectability, sufficient to overcome the disgrace of being an ex-hooker, or a foreigner.

 

When Legrandin kissed his hostess, Norpois smiled with a slight quiver of the eyelid as tho’ to say such concupiscence were entirely natural

 

The hostess warned the Duchess that, because of her public anti-Dreyfus activity, Mme Swann had been invited to the party, & they might meet

 

When assured that Mme Swann is “quite nice”. The Duchess replied “I am sure she is, but I feel no need to reassure myself of it in person.”

 

Recognizing me as somebody in the room that she knew (from my friendship with Gilberte) Mme Swann cornered me for a “gossip about old times.”

 

“Don’t trust M. de Norpois” Mme Swann confided. “He mentioned you last night at dinner. He said you are a ‘hysterical little flatterer’.”

 

It’s always gratifying to learn that one’s name is being mentioned at smart Parisian dinner tables. However, I’m not sure about “hysterical”

 

Robert left the party to avoid being introduced to Mme Swann. “She’s an ex-hooker” he said “and she’s married to a Jew.”

 

I did not like to tell Robert that the love of his life, Rachel, for whom he was sacrificing everything is also Jewish and also an ex-hooker

 

The most successful hookers are those who, while pocketing a $50,000 ‘gift’, can persuade their victim he’s screwed her for free – for love!

 

With a brief “Farewell” Robert hurried from the party, rushing to the jewelry shop to buy his mistress a $50,000 diamond necklace as a gift

 

After Robert had left the party I remained beside his mother, my presence reassuring her that, unlike her son I was not out banging hookers

 

“My only regret” his mother said “is that I told Robert I was displeased with him. I fear my unkind words might spoil his fun this evening”

 

I wanted to comfort his mother but was unwilling to explain that her ‘unkind’ words would soon be forgotten between the legs of Robert’s g/f

 

Mme de Marsantes, Robert’s mother, spoke as though my conversation had been one of the keenest pleasures she had experienced in her life.

 

With a practiced & humble air, Robert’s mother, fastened on me a look of ecstatic gratitude “Our little talk has made me so glad, so happy”

 

“Are you leaving already?” my hostess asked me sadly. “Oh no. I’m waiting for M. de Charlus” I replied “He asked me to walk home with him.”

 

Mme de Villeparisis looked anxious when I said that Charlus wanted to walk me home “I don’t think that’s a good idea” she said. I wonder why

 

“Quick. Go now” Mme de Villeparisis said, pointing at Charlus “While his back is turned. If you slip out now, he won’t see you”. How odd!

 

People really are odd, I’ve decided. Why on earth would Mme de Villeparisis be anxious about Baron de Charlus offering to accompany me home?

 

Charlus joined me in the street after I left the party. As always his conversation was confusing and even wicked. He is a strange man

 

His anti-Semitism is so virulent, he refers to my friend Bloch as a non-European slave that he’d like watch abuse his own mother for sport

 

“You need a mentor” Charlus said, slipping his arm in mine. “Someone to guide you in Society. You need somebody like me to look after you.”

 

“No longer interested in my own place in society, I care only to share my knowledge with a young soul, still a virgin and fired by virtue”

 

“In teaching you the great secrets of society and diplomacy” Charlus said “I will of course need to see you often, very often, every day”

 

“And in return for my estimable friendship” Charlus continued “I must insist that you have no other friend & reserve yourself for me alone.”

 

“Of course Robert is OK. At least he’s not one of those effeminate types who look like little rent-boys who could bring you to the gallows”

 

People guilty of certain vices sometimes casually mention them, to display their innocence. But their detailed expertise often betrays them.

 

Charlus kept rejecting various cabs till finding one with a handsome young driver. “Which way sir?” “Yours” Charlus replied, jumping in

 

Grandma fell ill in the park yesterday & I took her to the park’s public lavatory. While waiting, the attendant offered me a stall for free.

 

I declined the generous offer of a free toilet stall, distracted as I was by the sounds of my poor Grandmother suffering a massive stroke.

 

The lavatory attendant quite understood: “You’re welcome to it but not having to pay for a thing won’t make you do it if you don’t need to”

 

This was the same park in which I used to play with Gilberte & I used to worry that if Granny died, I would not be allowed back out to play.

 

I took Grandma to the doctor but he was more interested in his social plans than her condition. “There is not the slightest hope” he told us

 

After saying that Granny would soon be dead, the doctor complained that he was running late for dinner “Life is not a bed of roses” he said.

 

The doctor was having dinner later with the Minister and wanted to look his best. He complained his maid was too slow in preparing his suit

 

Ensuring that his maid correctly displayed all his decorations on the lapel of his dress-suit was a matter of life and death for the doctor.

 

Examining my grandmother and pronouncing her “beyond all hope” had delayed the doctor’s social plans. We apologized for the inconvenience

 

Following the death sentence we stood outside the surgery awaiting the elevator while inside, the doctor abused his poor maid for being slow

 

Outside the doctors’ office I looked at my Grandma “for whom there was not the slightest hope”. Each of us is indeed alone. We went home.

 

I took Grandma home from the doctor and Mama met us on the stairs. One look was all her daughter needed to understand that the end was near.

 

We each carry our own death within us, and we feel when it is there - as we recognize it also in the faces of those whom we love

 

Raised as a peasant, Françoise was more at ease pulling wings off dragonflies or wringing the necks of chickens than tending to the sick-bed

 

Despite her sympathy for my grandma, Françoise’s peasant soul can't conceal a fascination she feels for the sight & sound of suffering flesh

 

Though she objects to staying in bed, Granny can’t hide the anguish in her eyes, the sweat on her brow or the convulsions of her poor limbs

 

“I’m not in pain” Granny said “I’m complaining because I’m not lying comfortably, I feel my hair is untidy and I want to be up and about.”

 

Not knowing what else to do, & trusting friends’ suggestions, we called Dr X- who knew no more than we did but cheerfully charged us for it.

 

We continue to burn candles in churches and to consult doctors. What else can we do?

 

Illness is the most heeded of doctors: to kindness and wisdom we make promises only; pain we obey.

 

The impediment in her speech makes Granny hard to understand & she must repeat everything. Finally she’s given-up trying to communicate

 

I bent over to kiss her beloved forehead & she looked up at me with a puzzled, distrustful, shocked expression; she does not recognize me

 

Earlier today when she’d been left alone for a moment, we found her out of bed, trying to open the window, preparing to throw herself out

 

Granny really is ill now and confined to her bed where she is no longer the woman I once knew. She’s been replaced by some beastly creature.

 

Grandma’s death was so drawn-out and so painful that she changed into a hideous and unrecognizable monster that I no longer even know.

 

The look in her eyes changed completely; often uneasy, plaintive, haggard, no longer the look we knew: the sullen expression of senility …

 

Crouched among her rumpled bedclothes, she lies panting & groaning. A trapped beast, making the blankets heave with her agonized convulsions

 

Her eyelids though closed do not shut properly & disclose a chink of eyeball, blurred & rheumy, dimly reflecting some hidden, internal pain

 

If it is some strange beast sitting there, gesturing desperately at us whom she neither sees nor recognizes, where then is my Grandmother?

 

Her hand keeps thrusting the blankets aside with a gesture which formerly would have meant they’re oppressing her, but now signifies nothing

 

We may imagine the death of a loved one, but actual physical death is entirely different from the logical abstraction of its possibility

 

And then last night, my mother gently woke me. “My poor child” she said “You have only your Papa and Mama to look after you now.”

 

The house was constantly filled with idiotic, useless doctors & pompous people during the days of my grandmother’s slow and painful death.

 

After mistaking it for a “Diplomatic illness” with his infuriating smile all Dr. Cottard could do was prescribe her milk which made it worse

 

Pompous, ignorant useless doctors with their blood-sucking leeches, their ineffective cures and their ‘learned’ stupidity filled the house

 

“Wine? In moderation it can do you no harm” doctors advise. “Sexual enjoyment? After all it’s a natural function. But don’t over do it!”

 

None of the other doctors called to cure my grandmother were any help, compounding her suffering with leeches & their own pompous ignorance

 

Dr. Dieulafoy was one of many doctors to attend my grandmother. As all his patients were known to die, his presence was always significant

 

The distinguished doctor’s exaggerated good looks were tempered by a melancholy decorum suited to the distressing circumstances of death

 

Displaying melancholy, the doctor entered the room, uttering not a word of condolence but by the dignity of his presence, confirming The End

 

With his usual tact, the eminent doctor made a perfect exit from the death chamber, discreetly slipping the sealed envelope into his pocket

 

My grandma’s illness gave occasion to various people to manifest an excess or deficiency of sympathy which surprised us, one way or another.

 

Dr Cottard’s wife assured us that he was as upset as if it were his own wife who was ill. From such an unfaithful spouse, this means little.

 

Bergotte visits every day because he is all too aware of his own mortality. Norpois called briefly between 2 very important & busy meetings.

 

My father said “Norpois’ gave up a most important committee meeting to come today. You must thank him” My mother meekly lowered her sad eyes

 

Françoise was frustrated that she could not comb my granny’s hair without causing pain. She worried too she’d nothing to wear to the funeral

 

For Françoise, as for most women, everything in Life finally resolves into the single overriding problem of ‘having nothing to wear’.

 

In the lives of most women, everything, even the greatest sorrow, resolves itself into a question of “finding something to wear.”

 

Françoise was surprised that Granny was not given more drugs. She had a wealthy cousin who’d bankrupted himself on medication for his wife

 

Although the drugs failed & the wife had died Françoise & her cousin derived a certain pride in the colorful drama of the lavish expenditure

 

François and her cousin would boast of his lavish efforts to save his wife, as if she had been an opera star for whom he had ruined himself.

 

For Françoise, such a wealth of scenic drama was sadly lacking in the, for her, rather humiliating and ordinary death of my poor grandmother

 

And so they came for their various reasons, to comfort or torment the family in its grief as the living & the dying struggle in sad intimacy

 

Robert paid his respects from a sense of noblesse oblige. He was in fact furious - suspecting me of conducting an illicit affair with Rachel

 

The Duke came to offer his condolences but obviously regarded his presence in our house a sufficient honor to assuage any grief for our loss

 

The Duke is like a visitor who arrives just as you are about leave on a journey. He insists on being introduced & then offering condolences.

 

After loudly parading around the house of mourning, the Duke was delighted to see Robert on the stairs. “Must be my lucky day!” he shouted

 

It wasn’t that the Duc de Guermantes was bad-mannered, far from it. But he was simply incapable of putting himself in the place of others.

 

Granny’s two sisters were unable to leave Combray to attend her funeral. “There’s a Beethoven concert we don’t want to miss” they explained

 

“My poor wife was so fond of her sisters” Grandfather said. “Still we can’t blame them. They’re both stark, raving mad as I’ve always said”

 

A somber cousin, who visited every day, was known in the family as “No flowers by request” due to his obsessive presence at every funeral

 

The cousin’s knowledge of funeral arrangements meant he’d “attended to everything” & earned the formula of “We don’t know how to thank you.”

 

“Yes. Don’t worry about that; it’s already been attended to” my cousin would say, dimpling with the satisfaction of “having thought of it.”

 

After Granny’s death, all Françoise could say was “I feel quite upset”; the same words in the same tone as when she’d eaten too much cabbage

 

Not weeping but drenched in tears, my mother stands silently with the unheeding desolation of a tree lashed by the rain & shaken by the wind

 

Finally Françoise is able to comb Granny’s hair without causing her pain. Her face has grown young again; chaste in death & without wrinkles

 

Life, in withdrawing from her had taken with it all its disillusionments & sadness, & a final smile seemed to hover on my grandmother’s lips

 

On that funeral couch, Death, like a sculptor of the Middle Ages, had laid her down to sleep in the form of a young maiden.

 

Apparently Robert has finally broken with Rachel, so has recovered from his jealousy & we can be friends again. He’s also given-up Dreyfus

 

Got a letter from Robert yesterday. He’d run into Mlle Stermaria. Apparently she’s divorced her husband and now she’s “hot & ready for it”.

 

Mlle Stermaria is the beautiful and coldly aloof aristocrat who had ignored my very existence when we stayed at the Grand Hotel in Balbec

 

Since our brief encounter (I can’t even say meeting – since she determinedly ignored me) – she has remained an object of my unsatisfied lust

 

Mlle Stermaria has all the qualities I find irresistible in a woman; she’s beautiful, aristocratic, unattainable and shows no interest in me

 

One desires more the woman who has yet to give herself to us; hope anticipates possession; regret is but an amplifier of desire

 

It’s her exterior coldness that excites me. That glacial contempt can only serve to conceal an inner, boiling cauldron of insatiable desires

 

I invited Mlle Stermaria to join me for dinner on an island in the Bois de Boulogne. She wrote back & accepted! I’ve booked a private room

 

Albertine’s come to Paris for a visit & appears to be more open and friendly. Françoise even caught us fooling around in bed, tickling

 

“If we carry on like this” I said “I may not be able to resist the temptation to kiss you.” “That would be a most happy misfortune” she said

 

Albertine’s way of pronouncing words was so carnal and so seductive that merely in speaking to you she seemed to be caressing you intimately

 

And indeed she did caress me, as I also fondled her, & she soon procured in me the physical satisfaction which she could not fail to notice

 

From our semi-recumbent position on the bed & the close proximity of our bodies it would be hard for her not to notice my moment of pleasure

 

“May I see you again?” she asked, ignoring that what had just happened between us is usually the consummation, not the prelude to friendship

 

François was, of course, hovering outside the door and burst in on us at an inopportune moment but we managed to cover-up our sins, I think.

 

But I don’t have time for Albertine. All I can think of is Mlle Stermaria & penetrating the hot, roiling volcano of her smoldering passions

 

Fooling around in bed with Albertine though satisfying, made me late to Mme Villeparisis’ soiree where I had my 2nd meeting with the Duchess

 

Because the good-offices of the procuress are part of the duties of a perfect hostess, Mme Villeparisis brought the Duchess to speak with me

 

Because I no longer spent my mornings stalking the Duchess on her walks, my new indifference to her excited her own curiosity towards me

 

Intrigued by my cool, the Duchess invited me to dinner next Wednesday. That’s when I’m dining in the Bois with Mlle Stermaria. So I declined

 

Mme de Villeparisis invited me to dinner on Saturday but my parents were expected to return from a trip that night so once again I declined

 

“But you’re so hard to invite” the Duchess persisted, intrigued. “Next Friday. Just a small exclusive dinner party. Please say you’ll come.”

 

Can’t think of anything but my dinner with Mlle Stermaria. I’m so excited. I’ve got everything planned; each course, each word, each move!

 

Taking possession of Mlle Stermaria in that private room in the Bois has become an obsession. Nowhere else will do - even a bed at the Ritz

 

Even before my ‘date’ with Mlle Stermaria, that island in the Bois has always seemed to me, designed for pleasures of the sort she promises

 

I visit the island obsessively, to check the menu and reserve the private room. I’m determined everything will be perfect & go as planned

 

Since I first saw her at Balbec, impossibly cold and remote I’ve dreamed of possessing and penetrating, on an island, her aristocratic flesh

 

The evening has arrived. The lady will soon be mine. I am freshly washed, smartly dressed & completely rested. She’ll be putty in my hands

 

I should have reserved Albertine as a physical back-up plan in case things don't work-out. But why worry? The night, like the girl, is mine!

 

Last minute letter from Mlle Stermaria. “I am so sorry – but am unfortunately prevented from dining with you this evening. Kindest regrets.”

 

The human mind hovers perpetually between the two worlds of actual real life experience and that of the imagination, dreams and yearning

 

Likewise we seek to understand the life of people we actually know, but also to meet & know people of whom we dream. Like the Guermantes

 

Had dinner last night with the Duke and Duchess when at last I finally crossed that mysterious, equator-like door mat & entered their world.

 

The world of the Guermantes is a brave new world of wealth, sophistication, breeding, women with expensive Fortuny gowns & near-naked bosoms

 

Mother’s prim universe is different from the world of the Duchess where women with uncovered charms caress me with their eyes as if to kiss

 

Many of the women I met are highly respectable from a moral viewpoint but do not share my mother’s revulsion for those of an easier virtue

 

One politely pretends not to know the body of a Society lady is at the disposal of all comers, provided that her visiting card shows no gaps

 

This unfamiliar sight of female beauty brings desire so rapidly to the point of enjoyment that beauty in itself appears to imply consent

 

I was introduced to Mme Leroi, a celebrated beauty. I asked for her views on love and she said “I make it often, but I never talk about it.”

 

La Princesse de Parme seemed quite honored to meet me, even though she owns more Suez Canal stock & Royal Dutch shares than the Rothschilds.

 

It is precisely because of my lowly social status, that I am treated by the Princess with such flattering consideration: noblesse oblige!

 

Since a young age, the Princess has been trained to treat those who share neither her wealth nor her breeding with a gracious benevolence

 

The Princess has no need to explain that she’s better born than most or that all her investments are guilt-edged, since everybody knows this

 

The Princess was raised to be kind & generous to those less fortunate than herself (almost everyone) but never to invite them to her soirées

 

The Princess might offer money to the poor, firewood to the cold & comfort to the sick – but never would she invite them to her soirées

 

Inviting the poor to your soirée would do them no good &, by diminishing your prestige, would only reduce the efficacy of your generous acts

 

I learned that aristocratic affability sheds a balm upon the sense of inferiority in those non-aristocratic persons to whom it’s directed

 

Aristocratic affability is designed to soothe but not dispel that sense of inferiority however, for otherwise there would be no point to it

 

“You are our equal, if not our superior” aristocrats seem by all their words and actions to be saying, but without expecting to be believed.

 

To understand the fictitious nature of this affability is to be considered well-bred; to suppose it genuine is just a sign of ill-breeding.

 

 

I made a faux-pas when asking to see the Duke’s collection of Elstir’s paintings. Apparently, paintings are for owning, not for looking at

 

Elstir once painted a portrait of the Duchess which she described to me as “ghastly” and which portrayed her as “bereft of all allurements.”

 

The Duchess looked at once melancholy, modest & winning; a look no doubt best calculated to counter the impression made by Elstir’s portrait

 

The Duke’s incensed that Elstir’s famous ‘Still Life with Asparagus’ had cost him $20,000. “They’re only $2 a bunch at the market” he roared

 

Finally! I’m sitting at the table of the Duchess de Guermantes, listening to the aristocracy. But they’re as false & boring as all the rest

 

The Prince asked why the Duke referred to the Duc d’Aumale as ‘uncle’ “Because his mother’s brother married a 2nd cousin of the Duc d’Yquem”

 

This obsession with dynastic complexities and pedigrees; with blood-lines, titles & families, reminds me of dog breeders discussing bitches.

 

Listening to the aristocratic talk inspired a commonplace dullness; as a visit to modern Elsinore might bore a passionate admirer of Hamlet

 

The Prince d’Agrigente asked me to name my favorite author. “Flaubert” I replied. “Paul Bert?” said the Prince. “Never heard of the fellow!”

 

When the Duke tired of his mistresses, he’d invite them to dinner so that his wife had to entertain them. “Now they bore me instead of him!”

 

While a smile of disillusionment puckered her sorrowful lips with a graceful sinuosity, the Duchess gazed at her husband’s latest discard

 

I could see imprisoned in the perpetual afternoon of the Duchess’s eyes, the sky of the Ile de France spread itself; grey, blue and oblique.

 

One of the guests claimed to loath Society & told each of his hostesses in turn, he came only for their wit & beauty. They all believed him.

 

“My aunt Villeparisis has a reputation for wit” said the Duchess “But there is no more middle-class, drab, solemn commonplace mind in Paris”

 

“Although” the Duchess conceded generously “We can never believe in the wit or genius of a person with whom we went to the Opera last night”

 

“So sad to hear the Empress has died” the Duchess continued “Nice enough woman, but she could never get a pair of false teeth to fit her.”

 

“People often do for the dead what they never do for the living” the Princess said “It’s true” agreed the Duchess “We go to their funerals”

 

“So glad you like my orchids” she said “the only problem with them is, like certain pretty people, they’ve a hideous name & a horrid smell”

 

“Orchids are the kind of plant where the ladies & gentlemen don’t grow on the same stalk. I’m going to have to find a husband for my flower”

 

“How very strange” marveled the Princess. “Do you mean to say that in nature - ?” “Yes” interrupted the Duchess “My flower’s still a virgin”

 

“More disgusting things are done between flowers in broad daylight” the Duchess continued, “than between consenting humans at midnight.”

 

The Princess nodded her head in eager agreement but her blank eyes couldn’t disguise the fact she didn’t understand anything being told her

 

“I’m so sorry Charlus could not be here” the Duchess said “He is so fond of orchids. He has a delicacy & warmth you don’t often find in men”

 

“Don’t be absurd!” said the Duke defensively. “Nothing queer about my brother. That’s ridiculous! Charlus is a manly man - not a girly man!”

 

The Duchess returned to the Empress’s false teeth “They always came loose in court & she had to stop talking or she’d have swallowed them!”

 

“They say she was a beauty” said the Prince de Foix. “Not at all” said the Duchess “As ugly as Robert’s g/f. Thank God they’ve broken-up”

 

Really?” said the Prince de Foix “I caught her the other day in Robert’s bedroom and they did not look at all like people who had broken-up”

 

A woman to whom I’d barely spoke, caressed me with her eyes and said, adjusting the curve of her bosom, what an intense pleasure it had been

 

And so the glittering aristocratic gathering that I had so long wished to join, dragged-on interminably & boringly to its banal conclusion

 

We are bored at the dinner-table because our imagination is absent, and, because it is keeping us company, we are interested in a book.

 

Was it really for the sake of dinners such as this that all these people dressed themselves up and gave themselves airs of exclusivity?

 

Finally, after much needless formality, empty words and hollow gestures I was able to depart. I am now officially launched in smart society!

 

I took a cab from the Duchess to visit Charlus. Feeling so happily warm & exhilarated after the dinner, I wanted to embrace the cab driver

 

My feelings of warmth and affection for the cab driver were similar to those one feels for a waiter after he has delivered one’s third glass

 

Charlus had asked that I visit him after the Duchess’s dinner party, but after being made to wait I found him in a foul mood; extremely rude

 

Charlus was lounging languidly in a silk dressing-gown and did not rise when I finally entered but regarded me with a cold, implacable fury

 

“Sir” he finally said “the interview which I have condescended to grant you will mark the final point in our relations. You are not worthy”

 

Surprised, I stammered my apologies “I am sorry if I have done anything to upset you” I said “If I have done so it was entirely inadvertent”

 

“Upset me?” he cried shrilly. “Do you have any idea to whom you speak? Do you think it within your power to upset a personage such as I?”

 

His shrill voice, of a force which made people turn in the street, rose higher, from a musical forte to fortissimo; piano to full orchestra!

 

“Do you think?” he screamed, “that the envenomed spittle of 100 little men like you, could slobber even the tips of my august toes?”

 

He grimaced with a vomit of disgust at his obscure blasphemers & his cruel words at last touched my own pride & evinced in me a cold fury

 

I was so insulted that I grabbed Charlus’ silk top hat, threw it on the floor, trampled it & then pulling off the rim, tore the crown in two

 

After his furious discharge, Charlus calmed down & one of his footmen brought him a new silk top hat to replace the other. He seemed spent.

 

I must at this point in my story observe that an evening spent with Baron Charlus could never be characterized as conventional or even dull!

 

Charlus insisted on driving me home in his carriage. Taking my chin between his fingers he said how nice I was – or how nice I “could be.”

 

Charlus put his arm around my shoulder in a fatherly fashion and said “How nice it would be to ride through the Bois with someone like you”

 

“Originally I must confess that I found you quite insignificant” Charlus said “but really you’re quite nice. You could be nicer than anyone”

 

I must confess that I find Baron de Charlus’ behavior quite odd, most unusual, rather disquieting and jolly queer. What can he mean?

 

“Now you’ve had dinner with my cousin the Duchess” Charlus said, “you must not flatter yourself you’ve arrived at the social pinnacle yet.”

 

“The Duchess is not nearly as exclusive as my other cousins, the Prince & Princess de Guermantes. Now they’re posh. The real bees’ knees!”

 

Charlus explains that while the Duchesse de Guermantes is posh, his other cousin, the Princesse de Guermantes is even posher: “dead posh.”

 

“An invite to visit the Duchess is one thing” Charlus told me “But an invitation to the Prince & Princess is quite another kettle of fish”

 

“An invitation to the Prince & Princess de Guermantes is the highest & most exclusive honor that Paris, nay France, can possibly bestow”

 

“People from the highest rungs of society, dream of one day receiving an invitation from the Prince & Princess de Guermantes. But never do.”

 

“Can nobody visit them?” I asked. “No” Charlus replied “They never invite anyone. Unless, of course, I should intercede on someone’s behalf”

 

“Nobody” Charlus continued “And I mean, NOBODY, gets invited to my cousin the Prince de Guermantes’ house without my own express approval”

 

This morning I received an invitation to a reception at the Prince and Princesse de Guermantes. It can’t be true. It must be a joke. Why me?

 

I can only imagine that this invitation to the Prince’s palace is a forgery. Somebody wishes me to turn-up uninvited & make a fool of myself

 

My only choice is to ask the Duke & Duchess to enquire of their cousin, the Prince, whether my invitation to visit their palace is genuine.

 

No sooner had I asked the Duke about the validity of my invite to his cousin’s than he made some complex excuse for doing nothing to assist

 

If it was a joke, the Duke wanted no part of it. On the other hand he did not want to be seen pleading my case. There’d be no profit for him

 

Swann was also visiting the Guermantes when I was there, & discussed with the Duke & Duchess where they ought to hang a new Elstir painting

 

The Duchess suggested hanging the painting in her bedroom “Good idea” said the Duke who did not like Elstir “since I never ever go in there”

 

Leaving Swann and me in the library, the Duke and Duchess went upstairs to get changed for their evening out; though not in the same bedroom

 

Swann looked older now and not in good health. I’d not seen him for a long time, not since the days, long since, when I’d loved his daughter

 

Swann told me I should visit Gilberte. I’d dreamed of flaunting my indifference when I loved her. But now I no longer do, there is no point

 

Swann is also going to the Prince’s party but he’s worried the Prince wants to argue about Dreyfus. “He’s a terrible anti-Semite you know”

 

“I know, he let his castle burn to the ground” I said “Rather than take water from his neighbor’s moat as his neighbor, Rothschild’s, a Jew”

 

“That’s nothing” Swann said “he suffered agony in the military & lost all his teeth, rather than visit the regimental dentist who was a Jew”

 

Joining me & Swann downstairs the Duchess said “What a bore it is, having to go out when one would prefer just to stay-in with old friends”

 

“Sometimes, one would sooner die than dine out” she continued “though dying might perhaps also be a bore since we don’t know what it’s like”

 

The Duke & Duchess have a busy evening ahead. Dinner at Mme St-Euverte’s, the reception at the Prince followed by a masked ball at mid-night

 

The Duke is especially excited by the masked ball. Not only will he be dressed as Louis XI, but he’s arranged to meet his new mistress there

 

The only possible threat to a perfect evening is the Duke’s cousin Amanien, who’s on his death-bed. If he dies, the Duke will have to cancel

 

The Duke is therefore in a hurry to leave the house. He’s worried his cousin will die and that he will be obliged to stay at home and mourn

 

A footman reports that Amanien is still alive. “Excellent!” said the Duke delighted “What more could one want? I envy him his constitution!”

 

“We must stop enquiring after him, it only tires him out. We do too much enquiring, too much fussing. Invalids demand far too much fussing”

 

The Duke has no sympathy for invalids. “I had some mutton for lunch which was far too rich” he grumbled. “But nobody comes fussing after me”

 

“There’s too much fussing after invalids” he continues giving his servants the night-off so they can’t find him if his cousin selfishly dies

--------------

Swann looks much older and not at all in good health. The Duchess asked if he would be well enough to accompany them to Italy next month

 

“Unfortunately my dear Oriane, I can’t come with you as I will be dead” Swann told the Duchess “My doctor has only given me a month to live”

 

The Duke pretended not to hear that Swann was dying. He was desperate to leave for dinner and did not want to waste time offering sympathy.

 

The Duke told the Duchess to stop chattering. “We’re late for dinner” he said. “No time for idle gossip with Swann. Our hostess won’t wait”

 

The Duchess could not decide what was worse. News of her friend’s imminent death or being late for dinner. Being late for dinner she decided

 

Despite the Duke’s words & her own sense of social obligation, the Duchess sensed dinner meant less to Swann than the idea of his own death.

 

“No time to talk to Swann, we’re late,” the Duke repeated. “No. Go change your shoes; you can’t possibly wear black shoes with a red dress”

 

“Don’t worry about dinner” the Duke said. “They’ll wait for us. But wearing a pair of black shoes & a red dress is a fate worse than death”

 

While the Duchess changed her shoes the Duke said we should leave “Otherwise she’ll keep chatting with you & then she’ll be dying of hunger”

 

Despite constant allusions to death & dying in their conversation, the Duke & Duchess simply ignored the fact that Swann actually was dying.

 

The Duke had no compunction in discussing his ailments with a dying man since they were his own ailments & thus seemed of greater importance

 

“Don’t listen to the doctors” roared the Duke as we were descending his steps. “You’re sound as a bell Swann. You’ll live to bury us all!”

VOLUME FOUR: THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN

 

I happened to look out of the window when Charlus & Jupien first met. They stood eyeing each other across the courtyard, seductively posing

 

Rooted to the spot, Baron de Charlus, implanted like a tree in the courtyard, gazed with half-closed eyes upon Jupien, posed in his doorway

 

Charlus’ pose having altered; Jupien as though in obedience to some occult laws, brought himself to mirror it in his own provocative stance.

 

Plants and insects, orchids and bumble bees, stamens and pistils; posing, pollinating & penetrating in the endlessly seductive dance of life

 

While Charlus assumed a smug & nonchalant air, Jupien threw back his head & tilting his body, stuck out his bottom, with his hand on his hip

 

I remember the laws of the vegetable kingdom by which the stamens of one flower brush an insect - & the styles & pistil of another devour it

 

In perfect symmetry with the Baron, Jupien was posing with grotesque effrontery and the coquetry that an orchid might use to attract a bee

 

There is an eternal dance in the animal, as in the vegetable, kingdom by which the seed of life is teased & transported from one to another

 

Incredible seed and stamen & all unnamed lives that live; turn your quivering nerves in my direction, feel the energy projection of my cells

 

Shedding his assumed indifference, Jupien’s certainty of having conquered the Baron, to getting himself pursued and desired, was but a step

 

Charlus coyly approached Jupien like a bumble-bee circling an orchid while Jupien, placing his hand upon his hip & blushing, smiled demurely

 

“May I trouble you for a light?” Charlus asked “Come inside my house” Jupien replied coquettishly “and I will offer you a taste of my cigar”

 

Curious about the pollinating process of the bumble bee with the orchid, I entered the house next-door & pressed my ear against the wall.

 

The sounds of passion that I was able to overhear were so violent that it could have been one person trying to slit another’s throat

 

After emerging from their tryst, Charlus asked Jupien if he knew any of the young workmen in the neighborhood. “My preference is for butch”

 

Charlus described a predilection for tram conductors and street vendors, “big dark fellows and regular thugs; of brutish mien & well hung.”

 

While Charlus described his preference for rough, young men Jupien, showing a lack of refinement, responded with “What a big bum you’ve got”

 

Referring to the young men he fancied as ‘she’ and ‘her’ Charlus described following them in the street and even pursuing them on tram cars!

 

“I discovered a delightful little liftboy in a hotel. I later discovered that all my love notes were intercepted by a jealous night porter”

 

“I should really like to make friends with a bus conductor” Charlus said longingly “Or a sleeping car attendant: – now that would be ideal.”

 

“Young gentlemen of my own class” he continued “don’t touch me the same way. No sooner do they respond, than I’m assuaged. Rather odd that!”

 

Charlus continued to ask about ‘rough trade’ till Jupien, like a courtesan who has been betrayed, said “I can see you’re thoroughly fickle!”

 

Realizing his questions concerning other young men offended Jupien, Charlus whispered something that flattered & restored his offended pride

 

“Why” Charlus exclaimed to Jupien “the mere thought of such activities arouses my lubricity again. I feel that all is by no means over!”

 

I couldn’t hear what Charlus said but it must have been intimate for with an “All right. Come on you big baby” Jupien lead him back indoors

 

Again, the inarticulate sounds of violence, with one voice being taken up, an octave higher, by the other in a parallel plaint of passion

 

Their honor precarious, their liberty provisional, lasting only until the discovery of their crime; “Gai-Paris” is not toujors-gai for gays.

 

Now I finally understand Charlus’ strange behavior: haunted looks, shifts of mood & violent ejaculation of verbal abuse. A closeted queen

 

No one knows at first if he is an invert, or a poet, or a snob, or a scoundrel. These tendencies just emerge as we enter the world of others

 

A snob is not a man who loves snobs; He is simply a man who cannot set eyes on a duchess without finding her utterly charming

 

A homosexual is not a man who loves homosexuals but a man who, upon seeing a soldier in uniform, immediately wants to have him for a friend.

 

Poor Charlus is really a woman, trapped in the body of a corpulent man; his female sensitivities desperate to escape & find true expression

 

I attended the party at the Prince de Guermantes last night. My goodness, what a splendidly gay affair! The Princess greeted me sweetly.

 

Seated between two unattractive royals & an ambassador, the Princess greets her guests regally; her eyes ablaze with their own incandescence

 

Utterly charmed by the banality of her conversation & beauty of her admirable onyx eyes, I had no need to speak, but just to gaze longingly

 

The Duc de Châtellerault’s horrified to see that the Princess’s butler is a man he’d enjoyed anonymous sex with in the park the previous day

 

The Princess’s butler on learning the name of his anonymous partner, glowed with an inner pride to think he’d been buggered by true nobility

 

The butler announced his secret lover “Son Altesse le Duc de Châtellerault” with professional vehemence softened with intimate tenderness

 

The diplomat M. de Vaugoubert kept eying all the handsome young male guests at the party & asking Charlus if he thought they are ‘one of us’

 

M. de Vaugoubert had only married his butch wife because a diplomat needs a wife & her masculine appearance reminded him of a market porter

 

As a respected diplomat & barely repressed gay queen M. de Vaugoubert lived in constant terror of public exposure; but the idea thrilled him

 

Diplomatic, even when playing tennis, M. Vaugoubert always asked his partner permission before hitting the ball, thus always losing the game

 

Charlus spent the evening courting Mme Sturgis-le-Duc. She was accompanied by her two handsome sons who both looked to him like Greek gods

 

Playing up his reputation as a ‘lady’s man’, Charlus pretended to be seducing Mme Sturgis-le-Duc by paying attention to her handsome sons

 

“And who is your favorite writer?” Charlus asked. “Oh, y’know, golf, tennis, football, running & polo” one of the sons replied with a lisp

 

Charlus exhibited a reluctance common to all aristocrats to bring anything to an end, thus keeping them plunged in a sort of anxious inertia

 

A stream of water from the fountain accidently drenched Mme d’Arpajon’s low-cut dress & revealed the treasures she’d reserved for the Duke.

 

Swann could not resist fastening upon the lady’s bosom the lingering, dilated, concupiscent gaze of the true connoisseur, savoring the view.

 

“Will I see you tomorrow at Mme de St. Euverte’s party?” someone asked “Certainly not” replied the Duchess. “Too common. All Paris is there”

 

“These parties are such a bore” she said. “At least when we’re dead we won’t need to wear low-cut dresses and speak with fools – just worms”

 

“A party at Mme de St. Euverte’s is like an open sewer” Charlus added “I’d not consider attending unless I had a serious attack of diarrhea”

 

“Just standing close to Mme de St. Euverte” Charlus continued loudly “makes me think that somebody must have broken the lid of a cesspool”

 

Mme de St. Euverte overheard Charlus compare her party to an open sewer, but was so in awe of his social stature that she meekly apologized.

 

“Even if I was suffering from diarrhea” Charlus continued cruelly “I’d choose somewhere more comfortable to relieve myself than Euverte’s”

 

Whether due to indifference to the opinion of others or an inability to hide his lust, Swann greeted Mme Sturgis by hovering over her bosom

 

Swann had even put up his monocle, as though for a better view of the lady’s charms, & had it fallen between them could have scooped it out.

 

Swann quite entranced by the lady’s bosom, seeing it now at close range & from above, plunged an attentive gaze to the depths of her corsage

 

Swann’s nostrils, drugged by the perfume of her breasts, quivered like the wings of a butterfly, about to alight upon a half-glimpsed flower

 

Abruptly Swann shook-off the lustful intoxication which had seized him, & she too stifled a sigh; so contagious can desire prove at times

 

The Duchess, wrapped in her Tiepolo cloak & clasp of rubies, was devoured by the eyes of men & women alike, seeking the secret of her beauty

 

Mme G- does not like the Duchess: “She’s as nasty as can be, has shocking manners & once her looks go, she’ll have nothing to fall back on”

 

I saw the Princess d’Orvillers arrive, her exquisite bosom throbbing & heaving with exhaustion beneath a harness of diamonds & sapphires

 

Tossing her head like a King’s horse, embarrassed by its halter of pearls, of an incalculable value but an inconvenient weight, she sighed

 

“So sorry to arrive so late” she sighed. “It was a physical impossibility” & her milky white breasts glittered & heaved with her sad regrets

 

She spoke with a resigned sigh as if alluding to complications of Life too elaborate to recount & not just all the parties she had to attend

 

I was finally introduced to the Prince. He barely smiled - & addressed me gravely as “Sir” before leaving me abruptly to go talk with Swann.

 

Swann’s illness is obviously advanced & he’s at that stage when a sick man’s body becomes a mere retort in which to study chemical reactions

 

Swann and the Prince de Guermantes have vanished from view and people are whispering the Prince is throwing him out because he’s Jewish

 

Suddenly nobody wanted to know Swann. If he was in disgrace for supporting Dreyfus & the Prince was expelling him then nobody was his friend

 

Despite her 25 years of warm friendship, even the Duchess abandoned Swann when his political views differed from the anti-Dreyfusard norm

 

“I’m distressed to learn” the Duchess told me “That Swann wishes to introduce me to his wife and daughter before he dies. How simply awful.”

 

“Of course I love Charles” the Duchess said of Swann “But if the Prince brands him as a Dreyfusard and then he dies – well then where am I?”

 

“If I consent to meet Swann’s impossible wife and daughter before he dies” the Duchess explained “Then I’d be stuck with them after he dies”

 

“Death is no basis for social contacts” she said “There would be no more entertaining if one was obliged to make friends with all the dying”

 

If the Prince de Guermantes really was throwing Swann out of the party for being a Jewish Dreyfusard, the Duchess would have to drop him too

 

In fact, as Swann told me later, The Prince took him aside to tell him that after serious research, he too was convinced of D’s innocence.

 

Despite being famously anti-Semitic, the Prince was not only able to admit he was wrong about Dreyfus, but also able to confess it to a Jew!

 

The Princess de Guermantes also believed in Dreyfus’ innocence – to the extent, despite his Jewish religion, of offering him a Catholic mass

 

The Princess actually harbored a secret passion for M de Charlus and, when his name was mentioned in conversation, she became animated

 

The Princess responded to the name ‘Charlus’ as a listless invalid only becomes alert when the subject of conversation turns to his illness

 

The Duke was reminiscing with his brother Charlus about their boyhood “Even at an early age your tastes were different from others” he said.

 

Immediately regretting the turn of phrase he’d used, the Duke worries that people might think he’s suggesting his brother’s a flaming faggot

 

The Duke blushed at his mistake, determined to ignore & deny his brother’s sexual preferences: preferring to pretend he’s a fellow womanizer

 

Charlus, as if to demonstrate that he’d not noticed his brother’s faux pas, said “Yes – my tastes like my ideas have always been unorthodox”

 

The Duke was oddly pleased that Charlus had been paying court all evening to the Duke’s mistress. In fact it was her 2 sons he’d been after.

 

Robert was also at the party, he’s finally split with Rachel. He spoke of visiting a brothel and enjoying the pleasure of Mme Putbus’ maid

 

Robert described his visits to a brothel, apparently far superior to the one where Bloch and I had originally met Robert’s mistress Rachel.

 

Had Robert only accompanied me & Bloch to our low-class brothel years before, he could’ve saved a fortune & enjoyed Rachel without the pain!

 

Robert described a brothel where the girls were either high-class themselves or classy servants ‘with attitude’ like Mme Putbus’s maid

 

According to a recently revitalized Robert, Paris’s pleasure emporiums promise a pleasing plenitude of pulchritude. “Oh what joys await us!”

 

“The girls are all top-drawer” Robert explained. “Salacious celebrity sluts seeking sublime sexual sensations. I think you’ll be satisfied.”

 

“Oh that big fair girl” Robert continued. “Mme Putbus’ maid. She’s wildly Giorgionesque – a gorgeous creature who does it with women too.”

 

“She does it with women too!” Such images of lascivious wantonness overwhelm me. I feel quite giddy just picturing the possible positions.

 

After hearing Robert’s description of Mme Putbus’ passionate maid I can’t get her out of my mind. How she does it with women? Can I watch?

 

I must discover more about Mme Putbus. Who is she? What salons does she frequent? Is she always accompanied by her maid? How can I meet her?

 

Apparently Mme Putbus is not part of the smart Faubourg St-Germain & only frequents the fringes of society: The Verdurins, Cambremers & such

 

Afterwards in the carriage the Duchess asked me who else I would like to meet in Society. She seemed rather surprised when I said Mme Putbus

 

The Duchess was obviously surprised & disappointed that the height of my social ambition was Mme Putbus. But she doesn’t know about the maid

 

When we returned to the house they told the Duke his cousin had died while he was out. “Nonsense!” he roared “Not dead - he’s exaggerating!”

 

The Duke was more concerned to get ready for the costumed ball than with a death in the family. “Where are my pointed shoes?” he shouted

 

“Hurry-up Oriane!” he shouted to the Duchess (worried his new mistress would be waiting) “It’s nearly midnight & the ball will have started!”

 

I left the Duke & Duchess getting dressed for their ball. I needed to see Albertine; thoughts of Mme Putbus’ maid had got me hot & bothered!

--------------

Paris is filled these days with competing salons. In addition to the traditional salons of Fbg. St-Germain we now have upstarts in St-Honoré

 

Now that Odette de Crecy has achieved respectability as Mme Swann, her salon’s become more fashionable; Bergotte & Norpois attend regularly

 

Mme Verdurin’s salon has also become more fashionable since the days when Swann & Odette attended. An artistic crowd as well as the faithful

 

It is at these lower levels of Paris society, beyond the exclusive circle of the Guermantes’ world, that I shall find Mme Putbus & her maid.

 

In search of Mme Putbus & her maid I have spent weeks visiting all the new salons; Mme Verdurin’s, Mme Swann’s - talking to their concierges

 

The concierge, her eyes always red with grief or neurasthenia, a headache or a cold, never answered a question but with a vague wave & sniff

 

I learned that Mme Putbus will be visiting the Verdurins at their vacation home in Balbec. I’ve asked Robert to write & get me an invitation

 

Mme Putbus may also visit the Marquise de Cambremer. Though scorned in Paris, Cambremers are the local big-wigs in the Balbec neighborhood

 

Robert’ll write to both Cambremers & Verdurins, & Mme Putbus’ maid will be so impressed by my connections she’ll be on me like a wet chemise

 

Have persuaded Mama to take me to Balbec for the summer. Told her it’s for my health but really I am planning to enjoy Mme Putbus’ maid

 

The maid will share with me all her tricks. She’ll show me how she does it with women too, & might even agree to treat me as a young maiden

 

I anticipate a long libidinous summer season on the coast at Balbec; filled with sensual longings and languid lechery with the Putbus maid.

 

I am back in Balbec, back in the Grand Hotel where I stayed with Granny, but this time with Mama. I am so pleased; I have my old room again.

 

Once more I have found myself seized by the indolent charm of seaside existence. Just waiting for Mme Putbus’ maid. It is good to be back.

 

Removing my boots, alone in my room, I remember how Granny used to help me. “Hold still my love” she would say, “Granny is here to help you”

 

Alone in my Balbec hotel bedroom I’m reminded of Grandma in the room next door. I might tap on the wall but she would never come again, ever

 

“Don’t fuss my little mouse” I still remember her saying “I’d recognize your little taps among a thousand. Don’t fret your Granny is coming”

 

But she won’t be coming. And finally I understand. She won’t be coming however hard I tap. She’ll not come see me ever again for she is dead

 

I ask nothing more of God than to be able to tap upon that wall, & stay with her throughout eternity, which is not too long for the 2 of us

 

Asleep, I dreamed my grandmother had responded to my taps on the wall and comforted me. But when I woke I had to learn the lack of her again

 

At some point I must have slept. When the daylight came, the room felt so empty. It was empty even of me. (Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel).

 

The heart can only accept so much. At the time of her death I was still warm with memories of her living. It is later when the cold sets in.

 

Finally I’ve experienced the intermittencies of the heart. I’ve become again the small boy who had sought a refuge in his grandmother's arms

 

Memories of my grandmother overwhelm me, and at last I comprehend, with an awful finality, that she is dead - & I will see her again, never.

 

For days I locked myself away in my room. The realty of Granny’s death finally overwhelming me. She was my grandmother & I was her grandson.

 

I play over and over in my mind memories of her final days and all the things I wish I’d said, the things I didn’t say, and now I never will

 

So finally I understand and finally I accept. She’ll come no more. Never, never, never, never, never!

 

Locked in my room I can’t bear to see anyone, even Albertine. When I told François to send her away she said “Why - are you feeling queer?”

 

As well as Albertine, the Cambremers wish to visit me but even the idea of Mme Putbus & her sexy maid cannot stir me from my solitary grief.

 

Then, this morning I woke to the myriad cries of children on the beach, the sound of waves breaking on the sand & the scent of apple blossom

 

The apple trees of Normandy stretch as far as the eye can reach, in full bloom, unbelievably luxuriant, like rich colorful ball dresses.

 

Like ball gowns decorated with marvelous pink satin, the apple trees glitter in the sunlight, against the distant horizon of the blue sea.

 

Blue-tits perch upon the branches & flutter among the indulgent flowers. The clumps of trees remind me of peasants on the highroads of France

 

The trees continue to hold aloft their pink & blossoming beauty despite the wind and drenching rain: it is a day in spring and I’m alive!

 

It’s a beautiful spring day that would have filled my grandmother with joy & brought her alive. I’m leaving my room & calling for Albertine!

 

I took the little train along the coast to Mainville which boasts, in addition to casinos, the first brothel for quality people in Normandy.

 

Hurrying past this glittering house of pleasure (which we’ll return to anon) I enjoyed the scents of the hawthorn bushes & of apple blossom

 

Back at the Hotel while waiting for Albertine I noticed the Princesse de Parma tipping Aimé in the dining room with her typical extravagance

 

The Princesse had been raised from an early age to treat the lower orders with exaggerated courtesy to compensate them for their inferiority

 

In addition to her quite inappropriate financial largesse, she also showers her inferiors with a torrent of extravagant gratitude & praise.

 

Not only is the hotel perfectly managed she told Aimé but Normandy’s a garden of roses & she prefers France above all countries in the world

 

The Princesse de Parma, through generations of breeding, makes the most humble peasant feel grateful & honored for the chance to serve her

 

She also tipped the wine waiter & the lift boy, praising them all with words of gracious extravagance to prove she was just a simple person.

 

Much of the time the liftboy does not regard himself or his colleagues as part of the serving classes, unless of course tips are being given

 

François doesn’t trust the lift boy “One day you’d think butter won’t melt in his mouth but next day he’s friendly as a prison gate.”

 

I need to contact Mme Verdurin and see when Mme Putbus & her maid are expected to visit her, for such time as when I’m bored with Albertine

 

Albertine had foolishly given me the names and addresses of all her girlfriends so that I might easily find her if she were out visiting.

 

There were probably a dozen of these girls who conferred on me their ephemeral favors & shared, however briefly, some moments of pleasure

 

Our desires for different women vary in intensity. One day we’re filled with lust for one who for the next month fills us with indifference

 

Legrandin’s snobbish sister, the Marquise de Cambremer and her mother-in-law, the dowager Marquise, paid me a surprise visit at the hotel.

 

Everyone was very impressed. Although scorned as country-cousins in Paris, the Cambremers are regarded as top-drawer by local Balbec society

 

Swann & the Duchess had joked about the Cambremer name years before. “It begins badly” she said, meaning the ‘Ca’ – referring to ca-ca.

 

“It ends just time” Swann had replied, meaning ‘mer’ instead of ‘merde’. Ca-ca or ‘merde’ it means ‘shit’ whatever way you look at it.

 

Whether due to ignorance or simply from a predilection for soft cheeses, the lift-boy always referred to the Cambremers as the Camemberts.

 

The Cambremers have learned I am a close friend of Robert St. Loup who had written to them on my behalf (in my pursuit of Mme Putbus’ maid).

 

Robert is nephew of the Princesse & Duchesse de Guermantes and Mme Cambremer’s sole ambition in life is to meet the Guermantes. I’m her door

 

Had I been introduced to Mme Cambremer by her brother, Legrandin, as an old friend from Combray, my reception would have been curt & glacial

 

But when introduced as “a close friend of the Guermantes,” Legrandin’s sister clasps my hand & does not have smiles enough to shower on me.

 

Her mother-in-law, the dowager Marquise, had a most unfortunate habit due both to her exalted passion for the Arts, and to her lack of teeth

 

When discussing the Arts, her salivary glands – like those of certain animals in rut –cause to trickle from her mouth, a long strand of spit

 

From a corner of her faintly mustachioed lips & edentate mouth the strand of saliva would hang trembling till she sucked it back with a sigh

 

Mme Cambremer, nee Legrandin, openly despises her mother-in-law whom she regards like the rest of the Cambremer clan as uncouth & uncultured

 

Changing the conversation, Mme Cambremer started to talk about Monet’s latest painting of water lilies. “They’re so divine” agreed Albertine

 

“Ah! I see the young lady loves the Arts” cried the old Mme Cambremer and, drawing a deep breath, recaptured a dangling sliver of spittle

 

“Monet, Degas, Manet” enthused Mme Cambremer “those are real painters. Not like that talentless hack Poussin whom I find the deadliest bore”

 

Living outside Paris, Mme Cambremer could not yet know Poussin is back in fashion. “M. Degas greatly admires the Chantilly Poussins” I said

 

“Oh the Poussins at Chantilly?” she replied, not wishing to differ from Degas. “I only know the ones in the Louvre – which I find hideous”

 

“M. Degas admires the Poussins in the Louvre immensely” I said “He says he knows of nothing more beautiful” Mme Cambremer was suddenly quiet

 

“I must look at them again” Mme Cambremer said knowing in advance the favorable impression she would form of Poussin now that Degas approved

 

Mme Cambremer’s mother-in-law displays a passion for music, especially for Chopin the very thought of whom makes her salivate uncontrollably

 

I asked the Dowager Marquise if she could play some Chopin for us. “Chopin is so old fashioned” her daughter-in-law said “I prefer Debussy.”

 

“Debussy believes that Chopin’s a genius” I said. “He is being played in all the smartest drawing rooms. Mme Guermantes is most fond of him”

 

Mme Cambremer was silent but her mother-in-law was so excited by my praise of Chopin that her salivary hyper-secretions reached to her bosom

 

Plunged into an artistic delirium she finally needed a napkin to wipe away the tidemark of saliva which Chopin had left on her mustache

 

“So the Duchesse de Guermantes is fond of Chopin” Mme Cambremer said, clutching my hand dreamily “and you are a close friend of the Duchess”

 

Surrounded by her husband’s ignorant provincial family who knew nobody and nothing, Mme Cambremer yearned for the Guermantes’ sophistication

 

When I mentioned that I knew her brother, Legrandin, from Combray, she chose to ignore me as she ignored all memories of her own background.

 

Mother and daughter-in-law, finally depart, expressing their delight in having made the acquaintance of a close friend of Robert de St. Loup

 

“Do come for lunch & I shall play some Chopin” she said as they departed, wiping from the stubble of her upper lip a deglutition of saliva.

 

I’ve been seeing a lot of Albertine recently, she is being very affectionate but I’m increasingly worried about her interest in other women

 

Dr. Cottard explained that because women enjoy pleasuring each other with their breasts, dancing together provides an opportunity to do this

 

“It’s not sufficiently known that women derive most excitement through their nipples” he said “& those two appear to be completely aroused.”

 

Cottard was pointing to Albertine & Andrée as he said this & I noticed that as they waltzed, the contact between their breasts was constant

 

Andrée whispered something & Albertine laughed as though to a secret voluptuous thrill like the sound of a party to which one is not invited

 

Bloch’s sister & her girl friend play with each other shamelessly in the public rooms of the hotel, just as though they were in bed together

 

Andrée watched Bloch’s sister and her amorous friend & said “I’m like Albertine. There’s nothing we loathe so much as that sort of thing”

 

Albertine too, assures me nothing revolts her more than women with cropped hair who behave like men. “Andrée & I loathe that sort of thing”

 

But a thing said by a woman we love does not long retain its purity; it cankers, it putrefies. My suspicions and my jealousy increase daily.

 

Even though Albertine and Andrée pretend otherwise, they’re fascinated by Bloch’s sister & her friends playing with Lea, a notorious actress

 

Lea is an actress who is often to be seen dressed as a man & always surrounded by the most attractive girls. I sense something odd about her

 

Lea & Bloch’s sister, no longer content with secret relations, have chosen to flaunt their dangerous embraces in public for added perversity