Swann's Way, page 43
On the far side of the hanging tapestries, when the sight of the servants was replaced by the sight of the guests, Swann instantly recovered his sense of male ugliness. Indeed, even the ugliness of faces with which he was well acquainted struck him as something new, now that their features were reduced to bare autonomous outlines and stood in purely aesthetic relationships to one another, instead of having the practical usefulness of helping him identify a certain person whose appearance had hitherto meant a set of pleasures to be welcomed, boredom and nuisance to be avoided, or polite motions to be gone through. Standing among the great press of men, it seemed to Swann that even the monocles worn by many of them (which once upon a time would have signified to Swann’s eye purely and simply that they were wearing monocles), having lost their previous association with a fashion followed by all of them, had now acquired a certain individuality. Perhaps because he now saw General de Froberville and the Marquis de Bréauté, who were chatting just inside the doorway, as a pair of figures in a picture, instead of the helpful friends of long standing who had put him up for the Jockey Club and acted for him in duels, the General’s monocle, held between his eyelids like a splinter of shrapnel disfiguring his scarred, vulgar, triumphant face, looked to Swann, stuck as it was cyclopswise right between his brows, like a monstrous wound that might amount to evidence of valour but which certainly constituted indecent exposure; whereas the monocle that the Marquis had added, as a festive touch, to his pearl-grey gloves, crush hat and white tie, substituting it (like Swann himself) for the common-or-garden glasses when going to a social gathering, had its underside smeared with what resembled a biological specimen prepared on a slide for the microscope—his diminutive eye, which teemed with goodwill towards all men and beamed unblinking at the height of the ceilings, the sumptuous preparations, the fascination of the entertainments and the quality of the refreshments.
“Gad, Swann! Where have you come from?” exclaimed the General. “Haven’t set eyes on you for ages.” Then, noticing how drawn Swann looked and thinking his absence from society might have been caused by some serious illness, he added, “Fit as a fiddle you look, d’you know that?” Meanwhile the Marquis de Bréauté was saying to a writer of fashionable romances, “I say, old fellow, what on earth are you doing in a place like this?” To which the writing gentleman, equipping his eye with his sole organ of psychological enquiry and ruthless analysis, to wit, a monocle, answered with his air of self-important mystery and strongly rolled “r,” “I am here to observe.”
The monocle worn by the Marquis de Forestelle, being minute and rimless, obliged his eye to remain set in a permanent painful contraction, appeared to be grafted into his face like a piece of extra cartilage, of inexplicable function but exquisite material, gave to the Marquis an expression of infinite wistfulness and made women think he must be capable of breaking his heart in the grand manner. On the other hand, the one sported by M. de Saint-Candé, which was surrounded like Saturn by an immense ring, acted as the centre of gravity of his whole face, which was for ever arranging and disposing itself with sole reference to it, the ruddy quivering nose and the sarcastic fat-lipped mouth grimacing with the effort of equalling the non-stop barrage of dazzling wit emitted by the glass disc, and was preferred to many another handsomer eye by snobbish and perverted young women, to whom it suggested concealed artificial charms and novel refinements in sensual expertise; while M. de Palancy with his monocle, his large carp-like face and round eyes, opening and closing his mandibles every so often and progressing slowly among the guests as though wondering where he was going, looked as though he was transporting with him an accidental and possibly purely symbolic fragment of the glass wall of his aquarium, a part meant to represent a whole, which reminded Swann, great admirer as he was of the Vices and Virtues of Giotto in Padua, of Injustice with his leafy branch beside him to suggest the forests in which he lurks.
At the urging of Mme de Saint-Euverte, Swann had moved farther into the room and, with the aim of listening to a flautist’s rendition of one of the arias from Orfeo, had ensconced himself in a corner. This proved, however, to be an unfortunate position, as his field of vision was entirely occupied by two mature ladies, sitting side by side, the Marquise de Cambremer and the Vicomtesse de Franquetot who, because they were cousins, would spend their time at functions searching for one another as though in a railway-station, carrying their handbags and preceding their daughters, and would not rest until they had reserved with a fan or a handkerchief two adjoining seats—Mme de Cambremer being connected with hardly anyone and therefore especially grateful for the companionship of Mme de Franquetot, and the latter, for her part, being much sought after and therefore thinking there was something smart and admirable in showing to all her fashionable acquaintances that she preferred to them the company of this insignificant person with whom she had in common certain shared memories of younger days. Savouring a mood of ironic melancholy, Swann watched these ladies as they sat listening to a piano interlude (Liszt’s legend Saint Francis of Assisi preaching to the Birds, which had come after the piece for flute) and following the virtuoso’s staggering technical feats, Mme de Franquetot with eyes that not only showed desperate anxiety, as though the keys on which this nimble display was being given were a series of trapezes from which the performer ran the risk of a two-hundred-foot fall, but also glanced occasional astonishment or even outraged disbelief at her companion, as much as to say, “Well, I never! You wouldn’t believe a man could do a thing like that!”; and Mme de Cambremer, as befitted a woman with a proper musical upbringing, keeping time with her head, a metronome pendulum which swung so far and fast from side to side (and with the sort of distracted abandon in her eyes that suggested a level of pain that had gone beyond the bearable, could no longer be controlled and cried aloud, “I can’t help it! I can’t help it!”) that she was for ever snagging the diamond pendants of her ear-rings on the shoulder-straps of her dress and having to rearrange the bunch of black grapes she wore in her hair, while maintaining the rhythm of her wild oscillations. On Mme de Franquetot’s other side, and sitting a little farther forward, was the Marquise de Gallardon, her mind full of its favourite preoccupation—the fact that she was related by marriage to the Guermantes—which was, in her own eyes as well as, she supposed, in the eyes of the world, a source of great glory, but also some shame, since the most prominent of the Guermantes did not want to have much to do with her, perhaps because she was a notorious bore, or because she had a malicious streak in her, or because she belonged to an inferior branch of the family, or perhaps even for no particular reason. Whenever she happened to be in the company of an unknown person, such as Mme de Franquetot at that moment, she would be mortified by the fact that her own acute awareness of her kinship with the Guermantes was not visible to the naked eye and could not take on some external shape, after the manner of those characters and symbols which stand in vertical columns beside the saintly personages in Byzantine church mosaics and represent the words they are supposed to be uttering. At this moment she was reflecting that, in the six years since her cousin the Princesse des Laumes had been married, the young lady in question had never once graced her with an invitation or a visit. This knowledge filled her with fury and pride; for, having so often told people who expressed surprise at not meeting her at Mme des Laumes’s house that her reason for not going there was to avoid meeting Princesse Mathilde and that her true-blue Royalist family would never have forgiven her for deigning to know the descendant of the usurping Corsican upstart, she herself had come to believe in this tale as the true reason why she never visited her young cousin. She could remember having several times asked Mme des Laumes whether there was some way in which they could meet; but the memory she had of this was invariably vague and in any case she would cancel the humiliating thought of it by muttering, “Well I mean, it’s not for me to make the overtures, is it? I’m twenty years her senior!” Invigorated by the virtue of this secret speech, she would thrust back proud shoulders that looked quite dislocated from her torso and supported a head laid almost horizontally on top of them, reminding one of the severed head of a roast pheasant stuck back on to the bird for its ceremonial serving in full regalia of feathers. Stunted, dumpy and mannishly thick-set as she was by nature, she had been straightened up by snubs and insults, like one of those trees which have taken root in a dire position on the brink of a precipice and are forced to grow backwards so as to keep their balance. The obsessive obligation to keep on reminding herself, by way of consolation for not being quite the equal of the other Guermantes, that her real ground for having so little to do with them was the staunch unflinching pride she took in sticking to a principle, had over the years moulded the very shape of her body, giving her a regal bearing which, to the eyes of middle-class women, looked like a sign of good breeding and had even been known to kindle in the jaded eyes of club-men a flicker of desire. If Mme de Gallardon’s conversation had been analysed according to those stylo-statistical methods which, by computing the relative frequencies of certain symbols, can work out the key to a secret code, it would have been apparent that, even allowing for the most everyday turns of phrase, it contained no more frequently recurring elements of speech than: “my cousins the Guermantes, you know,” or “at the house of my Aunt Guermantes,” or “the health of Elzéar de Guermantes,” or “my cousin Guermantes’s box at the theatre.” Whenever the name of any illustrious personage was mentioned to her, she would greet it with the statement that though she was personally unacquainted with the gentleman in question she had often seen him at the house of her Aunt Guermantes; but these words would be delivered in such a bleak and toneless voice that it was obvious her lack of personal acquaintance with the gentleman in question could only be put down to that set of stubborn and ineradicable principles which she could feel behind her squared shoulders, as rigid as the bars of those ladders on which physical training instructors stretch you out so as to improve your chest expansion.
It so happened that the Princesse des Laumes, whom one would not have expected to see at Mme de Saint-Euverte’s, had just that minute come into the room. So as to make it plain that it was not her intention to show off the superiority of her own social status in a salon which she was visiting out of pure condescension, she had sidled in meekly, even though at that point there was no press of people to push through or to stand aside for, and she then kept towards the back of the room, looking as though that was where she belonged, the way a monarch may queue up like anyone else at a theatre booking-office so long as the authorities are unaware of his presence; and there she stayed, making sure to let her eyes stray no farther than a pattern in the carpet at her feet or the folds of her own skirt, so as not to appear to be attracting attention to herself or expecting favoured treatment, occupying the spot which had struck her as the most unassuming, right behind Mme de Cambremer who was a stranger to her, and knowing full well that she would not have to stand there any longer than it took for Mme de Saint-Euverte to catch sight of her and raise her voice in joyous cries. She stood watching Mme de Cambremer’s pantomime of musical appreciation, but refrained from imitating it. The Princesse des Laumes was in no way averse to creating the most agreeable impression possible of herself, if it meant that the favour she was doing her hostess by dropping in for a few minutes might thereby redound doubly to her own credit. But she had a natural abhorrence of what she called “overdoing it,” and she would make it plain that it was not for her to indulge in any sort of “goings on” which were out of keeping with the spirit of her usual circle; for all that, she could not help being impressed by such “goings on,” under the influence of that urge towards imitation of others, which is akin to timidity and can be set off in the most self-confident individuals by contact with a new social environment, even one they recognise as inferior to their own. She was beginning to wonder whether Mme de Cambremer’s antics were not a necessary response to the piece being performed (which might for all she knew be a new-fangled departure from any music she had ever heard before) and whether, by refraining from similar antics herself, she might not be displaying an inability to understand the music as well as bad manners towards her hostess. So, by way of a compromise between incompatible urges, sometimes she merely straightened her shoulder-straps or put a hand to her fair hair to steady the little berries of coral or pinkish enamel, frosted with diamonds, which formed her simple and charming head-dress, while eyeing her ecstatic neighbour with a kind of cold-blooded inquisitiveness; and at other times, with her folded fan, she would momentarily keep time to the music, but, so as not to surrender her independence, on the wrong beat.
The pianist had finished the piece by Liszt and began one of the preludes of Chopin, at which Mme de Cambremer turned to Mme de Franquetot with a fond smile, her eyes brimming with fulsome suggestions of auld lang syne and the self-satisfaction of the connoisseur. For as a girl she had learned how to caress Chopin’s phrases, which with the inordinate sinuous length of their graceful necks are so fluent, flexible and tactile, which seem to be meandering off-course, far away from their original direction, in an aimless tentative search for their proper place, straying anywhere but towards the destination where one might have expected to feel their final touch, but which are only feigning these fanciful detours so as to return more purposefully, more accurately, more knowingly, and, as though ringing cut-glass echoes that make one want to cry aloud, strike home into one’s unsuspecting heart. Brought up in a provincial family which had few contacts with anyone, she had hardly ever been to a ball; but on a forlorn piano, in her antique manor-house, she had been in raptures at all those imaginary waltzing couples whom you could slow down, then hasten on round the floor or scatter gently about the room like the petals from a full-blown rose, then she would turn away for a moment from the dancing and lend an ear to wind sighing through pine-trees down by the lake, where all at once one might catch sight of a slim young man wearing white gloves, with an undreamt-of grace that no earthly lover could match and a voice that had an uncanny tuneless lilt to it. These days, however, the quaint beauty of this music seemed more than a little faded. In recent years, it had fallen in the esteem of the discriminating public, losing its place of honour and its special charm, and even the pleasure derived from it by people of poor taste was furtive and stale. Mme de Cambremer ventured a cautious glance about the room. She was well aware that her young daughter-in-law (whose great respect for her new family did not extend to things of the mind, on which, endowed as she was with a smattering of harmonic theory and Greek, she was the authority) had nothing but scorn for Chopin and actually suffered physical pain if she happened to be present when any of his music was being performed. Mme de Cambremer, delivered from the vigilance of this Valkyrie, who was sitting across the room among a group of people of her own Wagnerian generation, relished a moment of sheer delight. And the Princesse des Laumes shared this delight. Although she had no natural gift for music, fifteen years previously she had studied with a piano teacher of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, a woman of genius who, having fallen on hard times late in life, had once more turned to giving music lessons at the age of seventy to the daughters and grand-daughters of former pupils. The good woman was now dead, but her methods and the beauty of her playing lived on whenever one of her pupils, even one of those who might have grown into mediocrities in other respects, given up music and rarely bothered even to lift the lid of a piano, sat down to play. So the nod of appreciation with which Mme des Laumes greeted the pianist’s interpretation of the prelude, which she knew by heart, was that of the expert. As the pianist played a new phrase, the end of it came spontaneously to her lips and she murmured, “As charming as ever,” doubling the initial ch, a sign of refinement which she felt shape her lips into a lovely flower and give such a romantic pout to them that she instinctively put on a look to match them, filling her eyes with a dreamy sentimentality. Mme de Gallardon, meanwhile, was thinking how annoying it was that she so seldom had an opportunity of meeting the Princesse des Laumes, and how satisfying it would be to teach her a lesson, next time they met, by snubbing her. She was unaware that her cousin was, in fact, in the room. But as Mme de Franquetot moved her head, the Princesse des Laumes became visible. Mme de Gallardon immediately rushed over to her, disturbing everybody; then, wishing to maintain a frigid formality of manner and thus remind all and sundry of her reluctance to be on speaking terms with a person at whose house one might find oneself confronted at any minute by that Princesse Mathilde, and the fact that it was not up to her to make the first overtures, since she belonged to “a different generation,” while at the same time trying to counteract her prim stand-offish bearing with a speech which could give a semblance of justification to her approach and force her cousin into a conversation, she thrust at her a hand that brooked no evasion, glared and asked, in a tone of concern that suggested the Prince might be critically ill, “And how’s your husband?” The Princess burst into a peal of her own unique and unmistakable mirth, a style of laughing which was calculated not only to make it plain she was deriding somebody but also to make herself look prettier by focussing her entire expression on to her animated mouth and shining eyes, and answered, “Why, he’s as right as rain!” Then she laughed even more.
