_Valse des Roses_, Swann made no effort to induce her to play the things
that he himself preferred, nor, in literature any more than in music, to
correct the manifold errors of her taste. He fully realised that she was
not intelligent. When she said how much she would like him to tell her
about the great poets, she had imagined that she would suddenly get
to know whole pages of romantic and heroic verse, in the style of the
Vicomte de Borelli, only even more moving. As for Vermeer of Delft, she
asked whether he had been made to suffer by a woman, if it was a woman
that had inspired him, and once Swann had told her that no one knew, she
had lost all interest in that painter. She would often say: "I'm sure,
poetry; well, of course, there'd be nothing like it if it was all true,
if the poets really believed the things they said. But as often as not
you'll find there's no one so mean and calculating as those fellows. I
know something about poetry. I had a friend, once, who was in love with
a poet of sorts. In his verses he never spoke of anything but love, and
heaven, and the stars. Oh! she was properly taken in! He had more than
three hundred thousand francs out of her before he'd finished." If,
then, Swann tried to shew her in what artistic beauty consisted, how one
ought to appreciate poetry or painting, after a minute or two she would
cease to listen, saying: "Yes... I never thought it would be like that."
And he felt that her disappointment was so great that he preferred to
lie to her, assuring her that what he had said was nothing, that he
had only touched the surface, that he had not time to go into it all
properly, that there was more in it than that. Then she would interrupt
with a brisk, "More in it? What?... Do tell me!", but he did not tell
her, for he realised how petty it would appear to her, and how different
from what she had expected, less sensational and less touching; he was
afraid, too, lest, disillusioned in the matter of art, she might at the
same time be disillusioned in the greater matter of love.
With the result that she found Swann inferior, intellectually, to what
she had supposed. "You're always so reserved; I can't make you out." She
marvelled increasingly at his indifference to money, at his courtesy
to everyone alike, at the delicacy of his mind. And indeed it happens,
often enough, to a greater man than Swann ever was, to a scientist or
artist, when he is not wholly misunderstood by the people among whom
he lives, that the feeling in them which proves that they have been
convinced of the superiority of his intellect is created not by any
admiration for his ideas--for those are entirely beyond them--but by
their respect for what they term his good qualities. There was also the
respect with which Odette was inspired by the thought of Swann's social
position, although she had no desire that he should attempt to secure
invitations for herself. Perhaps she felt that such attempts would be
bound to fail; perhaps, indeed, she feared lest, merely by speaking of
her to his friends, he should provoke disclosures of an unwelcome kind.
The fact remains that she had consistently held him to his promise never
to mention her name. Her reason for not wishing to go into society was,
she had told him, a quarrel which she had had, long ago, with another
girl, who had avenged herself by saying nasty things about her. "But,"
Swann objected, "surely, people don't all know your friend." "Yes,
don't you see, it's like a spot of oil; people are so horrid." Swann was
unable, frankly, to appreciate this point; on the other hand, he knew
that such generalisations as "People are so horrid," and "A word of
scandal spreads like a spot of oil," were generally accepted as true;
there must, therefore, be cases to which they were literally applicable.
Could Odette's case be one of these? He teased himself with the
question, though not for long, for he too was subject to that mental
oppression which had so weighed upon his father, whenever he was faced
by a difficult problem. In any event, that world of society which
concealed such terrors for Odette inspired her, probably, with no very
great longing to enter it, since it was too far removed from the world
which she already knew for her to be able to form any clear conception
of it. At the same time, while in certain respects she had retained a
genuine simplicity (she had, for instance, kept up a friendship with a
little dressmaker, now retired from business, up whose steep and dark
and fetid staircase she clambered almost every day), she still thirsted
to be in the fashion, though her idea of it was not altogether that held
by fashionable people. For the latter, fashion is a thing that emanates
from a comparatively small number of leaders, who project it to a
considerable distance--with more or less strength according as one
is nearer to or farther from their intimate centre--over the widening
circle of their friends and the friends of their friends, whose names
form a sort of tabulated index. People 'in society' know this index by
heart, they are gifted in such matters with an erudition from which they
have extracted a sort of taste, of tact, so automatic in its operation
that Swann, for example, without needing to draw upon his knowledge of
the world, if he read in a newspaper the names of the people who had
been guests at a dinner, could tell at once how fashionable the dinner
had been, just as a man of letters, merely by reading a phrase, can
estimate exactly the literary merit of its author. But Odette was one
of those persons (an extremely numerous class, whatever the fashionable
world may think, and to be found in every section of society) who do
not share this knowledge, but imagine fashion to be something of quite
another kind, which assumes different aspects according to the circle to
which they themselves belong, but has the special characteristic--common
alike to the fashion of which Odette used to dream and to that before
which Mme. Cottard bowed--of being directly accessible to all. The other
kind, the fashion of 'fashionable people,' is, it must be admitted,
accessible also; but there are inevitable delays. Odette would say of
some one: "He never goes to any place that isn't really smart."
And if Swann were to ask her what she meant by that, she would answer,
with a touch of contempt, "Smart places! Why, good heavens, just fancy,
at your age, having to be told what the smart places are in Paris! What
do you expect me to say? Well, on Sunday mornings there's the Avenue de
l'Impératrice, and round the lake at five o'clock, and on Thursdays
the Eden-Théâtre, and the Hippodrome on Fridays; then there are the
balls..."
"What balls?"
"Why, silly, the balls people give in Paris; the smart ones, I mean.
Wait now, Herbinger, you know who I mean, the fellow who's in one of
the jobbers' offices; yes, of course, you must know him, he's one of the
best-known men in Paris, that great big fair-haired boy who wears
such swagger clothes; he always has a flower in his buttonhole and a
light-coloured overcoat with a fold down the back; he goes about with
that old image, takes her to all the first-nights. Very well! He gave
a ball the other night, and all the smart people in Paris were there.
I should have loved to go! but you had to shew your invitation at the
door, and I couldn't get one anywhere. After all, I'm just as glad,
now, that I didn't go; I should have been killed in the crush, and seen
nothing. Still, just to be able to say one had been to Herbinger's ball.
You know how vain I am! However, you may be quite certain that half the
people who tell you they were there are telling stories.... But I am
surprised that you weren't there, a regular 'tip-topper' like you."
Swann made no attempt, however, to modify this conception of fashion;
feeling that his own came no nearer to the truth, was just as fatuous,
devoid of all importance, he saw no advantage to be gained by imparting
it to his mistress, with the result that, after a few months, she ceased
to take any interest in the people to whose houses he went, except
when they were the means of his obtaining tickets for the paddock at
race-meetings or first-nights at the theatre. She hoped that he would
continue to cultivate such profitable acquaintances, but she had come to
regard them as less smart since the day when she had passed the Marquise
de Villeparisis in the street, wearing a black serge dress and a bonnet
with strings.
"But she looks like a pew-opener, like an old charwoman, darling! That a
marquise! Goodness knows I'm not a marquise, but you'd have to pay me
a lot of money before you'd get me to go about Paris rigged out like
that!"
Nor could she understand Swann's continuing to live in his house on the
Quai d'Orléans, which, though she dared not tell him so, she considered
unworthy of him.
It was true that she claimed to be fond of 'antiques,' and used to
assume a rapturous and knowing air when she confessed how she loved
to spend the whole day 'rummaging' in second-hand shops, hunting for
'bric-à-brac,' and things of the 'right date.' Although it was a point
of honour, to which she obstinately clung, as though obeying some old
family custom, that she should never answer any questions, never give
any account of what she did during the daytime, she spoke to Swann once
about a friend to whose house she had been invited, and had found that
everything in it was 'of the period.' Swann could not get her to tell
him what 'period' it was. Only after thinking the matter over she
replied that it was 'mediaeval'; by which she meant that the walls were
panelled. Some time later she spoke to him again of her friend, and
added, in the hesitating but confident tone in which one refers to a
person whom one has met somewhere, at dinner, the night before, of whom
one had never heard until then, but whom one's hosts seemed to regard as
some one so celebrated and important that one hopes that one's listener
will know quite well who is meant, and will be duly impressed: "Her
dining-room... is... eighteenth century!" Incidentally, she had thought
it hideous, all bare, as though the house were still unfinished; women
looked frightful in it, and it would never become the fashion. She
mentioned it again, a third time, when she shewed Swann a card with the
name and address of the man who had designed the dining-room, and whom
she wanted to send for, when she had enough money, to see whether he
could not do one for her too; not one like that, of course, but one
of the sort she used to dream of, one which, unfortunately, her little
house would not be large enough to contain, with tall sideboards,
Renaissance furniture and fireplaces like the Château at Blois. It was
on this occasion that she let out to Swann what she really thought of
his abode on the Quai d'Orléans; he having ventured the criticism that
her friend had indulged, not in the Louis XVI style, for, he went on,
although that was not, of course, done, still it might be made charming,
but in the 'Sham-Antique.'
"You wouldn't have her live, like you, among a lot of broken-down chairs
and threadbare carpets!" she exclaimed, the innate respectability of
the middle-class housewife rising impulsively to the surface through the
acquired dilettantism of the 'light woman.'
People who enjoyed 'picking-up' things, who admired poetry, despised
sordid calculations of profit and loss, and nourished ideals of honour
and love, she placed in a class by themselves, superior to the rest of
humanity. There was no need actually to have those tastes, provided
one talked enough about them; when a man had told her at dinner that he
loved to wander about and get his hands all covered with dust in the
old furniture shops, that he would never be really appreciated in
this commercial age, since he was not concerned about the things that
interested it, and that he belonged to another generation altogether,
she would come home saying: "Why, he's an adorable creature; so
sensitive! I had no idea," and she would conceive for him a strong and
sudden friendship. But, on the other hand, men who, like Swann, had
these tastes but did not speak of them, left her cold. She was obliged,
of course, to admit that Swann was most generous with his money, but she
would add, pouting: "It's not the same thing, you see, with him,"
and, as a matter of fact, what appealed to her imagination was not the
practice of disinterestedness, but its vocabulary.
Feeling that, often, he could not give her in reality the pleasures of
which she dreamed, he tried at least to ensure that she should be happy
in his company, tried not to contradict those vulgar ideas, that bad
taste which she displayed on every possible occasion, which all the same
he loved, as he could not help loving everything that came from her,
which even fascinated him, for were they not so many more of those
characteristic features, by virtue of which the essential qualities
of the woman emerged, and were made visible? And so, when she was in a
happy mood because she was going to see the _Reine Topaze_, or when her
eyes grew serious, troubled, petulant, if she was afraid of missing the
flower-show, or merely of not being in time for tea, with muffins and
toast, at the Rue Royale tea-rooms, where she believed that regular
attendance was indispensable, and set the seal upon a woman's
certificate of 'smartness,' Swann, enraptured, as all of us are, at
times, by the natural behaviour of a child, or by the likeness of a
portrait, which appears to be on the point of speaking, would feel so
distinctly the soul of his mistress rising to fill the outlines of her
face that he could not refrain from going across and welcoming it
with his lips. "Oh, then, so little Odette wants us to take her to the
flower-show, does she? she wants to be admired, does she? very well, we
will take her there, we can but obey her wishes." As Swann's sight was
beginning to fail, he had to resign himself to a pair of spectacles,
which he wore at home, when working, while to face the world he adopted
a single eyeglass, as being less disfiguring. The first time that she
saw it in his eye, she could not contain herself for joy: "I really do
think--for a man, that is to say--it is tremendously smart! How nice you
look with it! Every inch a gentleman. All you want now is a title!" she
concluded, with a tinge of regret in her voice. He liked Odette to say
these things, just as, if he had been in love with a Breton girl, he
would have enjoyed seeing her in her coif and hearing her say that she
believed in ghosts. Always until then, as is common among men whose
taste for the fine arts develops independently of their sensuality, a
grotesque disparity had existed between the satisfactions which he would
accord to either taste simultaneously; yielding to the seduction of
works of art which grew more and more subtle as the women in whose
company he enjoyed them grew more illiterate and common, he would take a
little servant-girl to a screened box in a theatre where there was some
decadent piece which he had wished to see performed, or to an exhibition
of impressionist painting, with the conviction, moreover, that an
educated, 'society' woman would have understood them no better, but
would not have managed to keep quiet about them so prettily. But, now
that he was in love with Odette, all this was changed; to share her
sympathies, to strive to be one with her in spirit was a task so
attractive that he tried to find satisfaction in the things that she
liked, and did find a pleasure, not only in copying her habits but in
adopting her opinions, which was all the deeper because, as those habits
and opinions sprang from no roots in her intelligence, they suggested
to him nothing except that love, for the sake of which he had preferred
them to his own. If he went again to _Serge Panine_, if he looked out
for opportunities of going to watch Olivier Métra conducting, it was for
the pleasure of being initiated into every one of the ideas in Odette's
mind, of feeling that he had an equal share in all her tastes. This
charm of drawing him closer to her, which her favourite plays and
pictures and places possessed, struck him as being more mysterious than
the intrinsic charm of more beautiful things and places, which appealed
to him by their beauty, but without recalling her. Besides, having
allowed the intellectual beliefs of his youth to grow faint, until his
scepticism, as a finished 'man of the world,' had gradually penetrated
them unawares, he held (or at least he had held for so long that he had
fallen into the habit of saying) that the objects which we admire have
no absolute value in themselves, that the whole thing is a matter of
dates and castes, and consists in a series of fashions, the most vulgar
of which are worth just as much as those which are regarded as the most
refined. And as he had decided that the importance which Odette attached
to receiving cards for a private view was not in itself any more
ridiculous than the pleasure which he himself had at one time felt in
going to luncheon with the Prince of Wales, so he did not think that the
admiration which she professed for Monte-Carlo or for the Righi was any
more unreasonable than his own liking for Holland (which she imagined
as ugly) and for Versailles (which bored her to tears). And so he denied
himself the pleasure of visiting those places, consoling himself with
the reflection that it was for her sake that he wished to feel, to like
nothing that was not equally felt and liked by her.
Like everything else that formed part of Odette's environment, and was
no more, in a sense, than the means whereby he might see and talk to her
more often, he enjoyed the society of the Verdurins. With them, since,
at the heart of all their entertainments, dinners, musical evenings,
games, suppers in fancy dress, excursions to the country, theatre
parties, even the infrequent 'big evenings' when they entertained
'bores,' there were the presence of Odette, the sight of Odette,
conversation with Odette, an inestimable boon which the Verdurins, by
inviting him to their house, bestowed on Swann, he was happier in the
little 'nucleus' than anywhere else, and tried to find some genuine
merit in each of its members, imagining that his tastes would lead him
to frequent their society for the rest of his life. Never daring to
whisper to himself, lest he should doubt the truth of the suggestion,
that he would always be in love with Odette, at least when he tried to
suppose that he would always go to the Verdurins' (a proposition
which, a priori, raised fewer fundamental objections on the part of his
intelligence), he saw himself for the future continuing to meet Odette
every evening; that did not, perhaps, come quite to the same thing as
his being permanently in love with her, but for the moment while he was
in love with her, to feel that he would not, one day, cease to see her
was all that he could ask. "What a charming atmosphere!" he said to
himself. "How entirely genuine life is to these people! They are far
more intelligent, far more artistic, surely, than the people one knows.
Mme. Verdurin, in spite of a few trifling exaggerations which are rather
absurd, has a sincere love of painting and music! What a passion for
works of art, what anxiety to give pleasure to artists! Her ideas about
some of the people one knows are not quite right, but then their ideas
about artistic circles are altogether wrong! Possibly I make no great
intellectual demands upon conversation, but I am perfectly happy talking
to Cottard, although he does trot out those idiotic puns. And as for
the painter, if he is rather unpleasantly affected when he tries to be
paradoxical, still he has one of the finest brains that I have ever come
across. Besides, what is most important, one feels quite free there, one
does what one likes without constraint or fuss. What a flow of humour
there is every day in that drawing-room! Certainly, with a few rare
exceptions, I never want to go anywhere else again. It will become more
and more of a habit, and I shall spend the rest of my life among them."
And as the qualities which he supposed to be an intrinsic part of
the Verdurin character were no more, really, than their superficial
reflection of the pleasure which had been enjoyed in their society by
his love for Odette, those qualities became more serious, more profound,
more vital, as that pleasure increased. Since Mme. Verdurin gave Swann,
now and then, what alone could constitute his happiness; since, on an
evening when he felt anxious because Odette had talked rather more to
one of the party than to another, and, in a spasm of irritation, would
not take the initiative by asking her whether she was coming home, Mme.
Verdurin brought peace and joy to his troubled spirit by the spontaneous
exclamation: "Odette! You'll see M. Swann home, won't you?"; since,
when the summer holidays came, and after he had asked himself uneasily
whether Odette might not leave Paris without him, whether he would still
be able to see her every day, Mme. Verdurin was going to invite them
both to spend the summer with her in the country; Swann, unconsciously
allowing gratitude and self-interest to filter into his intelligence and
to influence his ideas, went so far as to proclaim that Mme. Verdurin
was "a great and noble soul." Should any of his old fellow-pupils in the
Louvre school of painting speak to him of some rare or eminent artist,
"I'd a hundred times rather," he would reply, "have the Verdurins." And,
with a solemnity of diction which was new in him: "They are magnanimous
creatures, and magnanimity is, after all, the one thing that matters,
the one thing that gives us distinction here on earth. Look you, there
are only two classes of men, the magnanimous, and the rest; and I have
reached an age when one has to take sides, to decide once and for all
whom one is going to like and dislike, to stick to the people one likes,
and, to make up for the time one has wasted with the others, never to
leave them again as long as one lives. Very well!" he went on, with the
slight emotion which a man feels when, even without being fully aware of
what he is doing, he says something, not because it is true but because
he enjoys saying it, and listens to his own voice uttering the words
as though they came from some one else, "The die is now cast; I have
elected to love none but magnanimous souls, and to live only in an
atmosphere of magnanimity. You ask me whether Mme. Verdurin is really
intelligent. I can assure you that she has given me proofs of a nobility
of heart, of a loftiness of soul, to which no one could possibly
attain--how could they?--without a corresponding loftiness of mind.
Without question, she has a profound understanding of art. But it is
not, perhaps, in that that she is most admirable; every little action,
ingeniously, exquisitely kind, which she has performed for my sake,
every friendly attention, simple little things, quite domestic and yet
quite sublime, reveal a more profound comprehension of existence than
all your textbooks of philosophy."
* * *
He might have reminded himself, all the same, that there were various
old friends of his family who were just as simple as the Verdurins,
companions of his early days who were just as fond of art, that he knew
other 'great-hearted creatures,' and that, nevertheless, since he had
cast his vote in favour of simplicity, the arts, and magnanimity, he had
entirely ceased to see them. But these people did not know Odette, and,
if they had known her, would never have thought of introducing her to
him.
And so there was probably not, in the whole of the Verdurin circle, a
single one of the 'faithful' who loved them, or believed that he loved
them, as dearly as did Swann. And yet, when M. Verdurin said that he was
not satisfied with Swann, he had not only expressed his own sentiments,
he had unwittingly discovered his wife's. Doubtless Swann had too
particular an affection for Odette, as to which he had failed to take
Mme. Verdurin daily into his confidence; doubtless the very discretion
with which he availed himself of the Verdurins' hospitality, refraining,
often, from coming to dine with them for a reason which they never
suspected, and in place of which they saw only an anxiety on his part
not to have to decline an invitation to the house of some 'bore' or
other; doubtless, also, and despite all the precautions which he had
taken to keep it from them, the gradual discovery which they were
making of his brilliant position in society--doubtless all these things
contributed to their general annoyance with Swann. But the real, the
fundamental reason was quite different. What had happened was that they
had at once discovered in him a locked door, a reserved, impenetrable
chamber in which he still professed silently to himself that the
Princesse de Sagan was not grotesque, and that Cottard's jokes were
not amusing; in a word (and for all that he never once abandoned his
friendly attitude towards them all, or revolted from their dogmas), they
had discovered an impossibility of imposing those dogmas upon him, of
entirely converting him to their faith, the like of which they had never
come across in anyone before. They would have forgiven his going to the
houses of 'bores' (to whom, as it happened, in his heart of hearts he
infinitely preferred the Verdurins and all their little 'nucleus') had
he consented to set a good example by openly renouncing those 'bores'
in the presence of the 'faithful.' But that was an abjuration which, as
they well knew, they were powerless to extort.