In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (14 page)

When Mme. Swann had returned to her visitors, we could still hear her
talking and laughing, for even with only two people in the room, and
as though she had to cope with all the 'good friends' at once, she
would raise her voice, ejaculate her words, as she had so often in the
'little clan' heard its 'Mistress' do, at the moments when she 'led
the conversation.' The expressions which we have borrowed from other
people being those which, for a time at least, we are fondest of
using, Mme. Swann used to select at one time those which she had
learned from distinguished people whom her husband had not managed to
prevent her from getting to know (it was from them that she derived
the mannerism which consists in suppressing the article or
demonstrative pronoun, in French, before an adjective qualifying a
person's name), at another time others more plebeian (such as "It's a
mere nothing!" the favourite expression of one of her friends), and
used to make room for them in all the stories which, by a habit formed
among the 'little clan,' she loved to tell about people. She would
follow these up automatically with, "I do love that story!" or "Do
admit, it's a very
good story
!" which came to her, through her
husband, from the Guermantes, whom she did not know.

Mme. Swann had left the dining–room, but her husband, who had just
returned home, made his appearance among us in turn.' "Do you know if
your mother is alone, Gilberte?" "No, Papa, she has still some
people." "What, still? At seven o'clock! It's appalling! The poor
woman must be absolutely dead. It's odious." (At home I had always
heard the first syllable of this word pronounced with a long 'o,' like
'ode,' but M. and Mme. Swann made it short, as in 'odd.') "Just think
of it; ever since two o'clock this afternoon!" he went on, turning to
me. "And Camille tells me that between four and five he let in at
least a dozen people. Did I say a dozen? I believe he told me
fourteen. No, a dozen; I don't remember. When I came home I had quite
forgotten it was her 'day,' and when I saw all those carriages outside
the door I thought there must be a wedding in the house. And just now,
while I've been in the library for a minute, the bell has never
stopped ringing; upon my word, it's given me quite a headache. And
are there a lot of them in there still?" "No; only two." "Who are
they, do you know?" "Mme. Cottard and Mme. Bontemps." "Oh!
the wife of the Chief Secretary to the Minister of Posts." "I know her
husband's a clerk in some Ministry or other, but I don't know what he
does." Gilberte assumed a babyish manner.

"What's that? You silly child, you talk as if you were two years old.
What do you mean; 'a clerk in some Ministry or other' indeed! He is
nothing less than Chief Secretary, chief of the whole show, and what's
more—what on earth am I thinking of? Upon my word, I'm getting as
stupid as yourself; he is not the Chief Secretary, he's the Permanent
Secretary."

"I don't know, I'm sure; does that mean a lot, being Permanent
Secretary?" answered Gilberte, who never let slip an opportunity of
displaying her own indifference to anything that gave her parents
cause for vanity. (She may, of course, have considered that she only
enhanced the brilliance of such an acquaintance by not seeming to
attach any undue importance to it.)

"I should think it did 'mean a lot'!" exclaimed Swann, who preferred to
this modesty, which might have left me in doubt, a more explicit mode
of speech. "Why it means simply that he's the first man after the
Minister. In fact, he's more important than the Minister, because it
is he that does all the work. Besides, it appears that he has immense
capacity, a man quite of the first rank, a most distinguished
individual. He's an Officer of the Legion of Honour. A delightful man,
he is, and very good–looking too."

(This man's wife, incidentally, had married him against everyone's
wishes and advice because he was a 'charming creature.' He had, what
may be sufficient to constitute a rare and delicate whole, a fair,
silky beard, good features, a nasal voice, powerful lungs and a glass
eye.)

"I may tell you," he added, turning again to me, "that I am greatly
amused to see that lot serving in the present Government, because they
are Bontemps of the Bontemps–Chenut family, typical old–fashioned
middle–class people, reactionary, clerical, tremendously strait–laced.
Your grandfather knew quite well—at least by name and by sight he
must have known old Chenut, the father, who never tipped the cabmen
more than a ha'penny, though he was a rich enough man for those days,
and the Baron Bréau–Chenut. All their money went in the Union Générale
smash—you're too young to remember that, of course—and, gad! they've
had to get it back as best they could."

"He's the uncle of a little girl who used to come to my lessons, in a
class a long way below mine, the famous 'Albertine.' She's certain to
be dreadfully 'fast' when she's older, but just now she's the
quaintest spectacle."

"She is amazing, this daughter of mine. She knows everyone."

"I don't know her. I only used to see her going about, and hear them
calling 'Albertine' here, and 'Albertine' there. But I do know Mme.
Bontemps, and I don't like her much either."

"You are quite wrong; she is charming, pretty, intelligent. In fact,
she's quite clever. I shall go in and say how d'e do to her, and ask
her if her husband thinks we're going to have war, and whether we can
rely on King Theodosius. He's bound to know, don't you think, since
he's in the counsels of the gods."

It was not thus that Swann used to talk in days gone by; but which of
us cannot call to mind some royal princess of limited intelligence who
let herself be carried off by a footman, and then, ten years later,
tried to get back into society, and found that people were not very
willing to call upon her; have we not found her spontaneously adopting
the language of all the old bores, and, when we referred to some
duchess who was at the height of fashion, heard her say: "She came to
see me only yesterday," or "I live a very quiet life." So that it is
superfluous to make a study of manners, since we can deduce them all
from psychological laws.

The Swanns shared this eccentricity of people who have not many
friends; a visit, an invitation, a mere friendly word from some one
ever so little prominent were for them events to which they aspired to
give full publicity. If bad luck would have it that the Verdurins were
in London when Odette gave a rather smart dinner–party, arrangements
were made by which some common friend was to 'cable' a report to them
across the Channel. Even the complimentary letters and telegrams
received by Odette the Swanns were incapable of keeping to themselves.
They spoke of them to their friends, passed them from hand to hand.
Thus the Swanns' drawing–room reminded one of a seaside hotel where
telegrams containing the latest news are posted up on a board.

Still, people who had known the old Swann not merely outside society,
as I had known him, but in society, in that Guermantes set which, with
certain concessions to Highnesses and Duchesses, was almost infinitely
exacting in the matter of wit and charm, from which banishment was
sternly decreed for men of real eminence whom its members found boring
or vulgar,—such people might have been astonished to observe that
their old Swann had ceased to be not only discreet when he spoke of
his acquaintance, but difficult when he was called upon to enlarge it.
How was it that Mme. Bontemps, so common, so ill–natured, failed to
exasperate him? How could he possibly describe her as attractive? The
memory of the Guermantes set must, one would suppose, have prevented
him; as a matter of fact it encouraged him. There was certainly among
the Guermantes, as compared with the great majority of groups in
society, taste, indeed a refined taste, but also a snobbishness from
which there arose the possibility of a momentary interruption in the
exercise of that taste. If it were a question of some one who was not
indispensable to their circle, of a Minister for Foreign Affairs, a
Republican and inclined to be pompous, or of an Academician who talked
too much, their taste would be brought to bear heavily against him,
Swann would condole with Mme. de Guermantes on having had to sit next
to such people at dinner at one of the Embassies, and they would a
thousand times rather have a man of fashion, that is to say a man of
the Guermantes kind, good for nothing, but endowed with the wit of the
Guermantes, some one who was 'of the same chapel' as themselves. Only,
a Grand Duchess, a Princess of the Blood, should she dine often with
Mme. de Guermantes, would soon find herself enrolled in that chapel
also, without having any right to be there, without being at all so
endowed. But with the simplicity of people in society, from the moment
they had her in their houses they went out of their way to find her
attractive, since they were unable to say that it was because she was
attractive that they invited her. Swann, coming to the rescue of Mme.
de Guermantes, would say to her after the Highness had gone: "After
all, she's not such a bad woman; really, she has quite a sense of the
comic. I don't suppose for a moment that she has mastered the
Critique of Pure Reason
; still, she is not unattractive." "Oh, I do
so entirely agree with you!" the Duchess would respond. "Besides, she
was a little frightened of us all; you will see that she can be
charming." "She is certainly a great deal less devastating than Mme.
X——" (the wife of the talkative Academician, and herself a
remarkable woman) "who quotes twenty volumes at you." "Oh, but there
isn't any comparison between them." The faculty of saying such things
as these, and of saying them sincerely, Swann had acquired from the
Duchess, and had never lost. He made use of it now with reference to
the people who came to his house. He forced himself to distinguish,
and to admire in them the qualities that every human being will
display if we examine him with a prejudice in his favour, and not with
the distaste of the nice–minded; he extolled the merits of Mme.
Bontemps, as he had once extolled those of the Princesse de Parme,
who must have been excluded from the Guermantes set if there had not
been privileged terms of admission for certain Highnesses, and if,
when they presented themselves for election, no consideration had
indeed been paid except to wit and charm. We have seen already,
moreover, that Swann had always an inclination (which he was now
putting into practice, only in a more lasting fashion) to exchange his
social position for another which, in certain circumstances, might
suit him better. It is only people incapable of analysing, in their
perception, what at first sight appears indivisible who believe that
one's position is consolidated with one's person. One and the same
man, taken at successive points in his life, will be found to breathe,
at different stages on the social ladder, in atmospheres that do not
of necessity become more and more refined; whenever, in any period of
our existence, we form or re–form associations with a certain
environment, and feel that we can move at ease in it and are made
comfortable, we begin quite naturally to make ourselves fast to it by
putting out roots and tendrils.

In so far as Mme. Bontemps was concerned, I believe also that Swann,
in speaking of her with so much emphasis, was not sorry to think that
my parents would hear that she had been to see his wife. To tell the
truth, in our house the names of the people whom Mme. Swann was
gradually getting to know pricked our curiosity more than they aroused
our admiration. At the name of Mme. Trombert, my mother exclaimed:
"Ah! That's a new recruit, and one who will bring in others." And as
though she found a similarity between the somewhat summary, rapid and
violent manner in which Mme. Swann acquired her friends, as it were by
conquest, and a Colonial expedition, Mamma went on to observe: "Now
that the Tromberts have surrendered, the neighbouring tribes will not
be long in coming in." If she had passed Mme. Swann in the street, she
would tell us when she came home: "I saw Mme. Swann in all her
war–paint; she must have been embarking on some triumphant offensive
against the Massachutoes, or the Cingalese, or the Tromberts." And so
with all the new people whom I told her that I had seen in that
somewhat composite and artificial society, to which they had often
been brought with great difficulty and from widely different
surroundings, Mamma would at once divine their origin, and, speaking
of them as of trophies dearly bought, would say: "Brought back from an
Expedition against the so–and–so!"

As for Mme. Cottard, my father was astonished that Mme. Swann could
find anything to be gained by getting so utterly undistinguished a
woman to come to her house, and said: "In spite of the Professor's
position, I must say that I cannot understand it." Mamma, on the other
hand, understood quite well; she knew that a great deal of the
pleasure which a woman finds in entering a class of society different
from that in which she has previously lived would be lacking if she
had no means of keeping her old associates informed of those others,
relatively more brilliant, with whom she has replaced them. Therefore,
she requires an eye–witness who may be allowed to penetrate this new,
delicious world (as a buzzing, browsing insect bores its way into a
flower) and will then, as the course of her visits may carry her,
spread abroad, or so at least one hopes, with the tidings, a latent
germ of envy and of wonder. Mme. Cottard, who might have been created
on purpose to fill this part, belonged to that special category in a
visiting list which Mamma (who inherited certain facets of her
father's turn of mind) used to call the 'Tell Sparta' people.
Besides—apart from another reason which did not come to our knowledge
until many years later—Mme. Swann, in inviting this good–natured,
reserved and modest friend, had no need to fear lest she might be
introducing into her drawing–room, on her brilliant 'days,' a traitor
or a rival. She knew what a vast number of homely blossoms that busy
worker, armed with her plume and card–case, could visit in a single
afternoon. She knew the creature's power of dissemination, and, basing
her calculations upon the law of probability, was led to believe that
almost certainly some intimate of the Verdurins would be bound to
hear, within two or three days, how the Governor of Paris had left
cards upon her, or that M. Verdurin himself would be told how M. Le
Hault de Pressagny, the President of the Horse Show, had taken them,
Swann and herself, to the King Theodosius gala; she imagined the
Verdurins as informed of these two events, both so flattering to
herself and of these alone, because the particular materialisations in
which we embody and pursue fame are but few in number, by the default
of our own minds which are incapable of imagining at one time all the
forms which, none the less, we hope—in a general way—that fame will
not fail simultaneously to assume for our benefit.