The Guermantes Way

by Marcel Proust

  With certain of them (though these, it must be admitted, were the exception), if the Guermantes drawing-room had been the stumbling-block in their careers, it had been against their will. Thus a doctor, a painter and a diplomat of great promise had failed to achieve success in the careers for which they were nevertheless more brilliantly endowed than most because their friendship with the Guermantes had resulted in the first two being regarded as men of fashion and the third as a reactionary, and this had prevented all three from winning the recognition of their peers. The mediaeval gown and red cap which are still donned by the electoral colleges of the Faculties are (or were, at least, not so long since) something more than a purely outward survival from a narrow-minded past, from a rigid sectarianism. Under the cap with its golden tassels, like the high priests in the conical mitre of the Jews, the “professors” were still, in the years that preceded the Dreyfus case, fast rooted in rigorously pharisaical ideas. Du Boulbon was at heart an artist, but was safe because he did not care for society. Cottard was always at the Verdurins’, but Mme Verdurin was a patient, he was moreover protected by his vulgarity, and at his own house he entertained no one outside the Faculty, at banquets over which there floated an aroma of carbolic acid. But in strongly corporate bodies, where moreover the rigidity of their prejudices is but the price that must be paid for the noblest integrity, the most lofty conceptions of morality, which wither in more tolerant, more liberal, ultimately more corrupt atmospheres, a professor in his gown of scarlet satin faced with ermine, like that of a Doge (which is to say a Duke) of Venice shut away in the ducal palace, was as virtuous, as deeply attached to noble principles, but as pitiless towards any alien element as that other admirable but fearsome duke, M. de Saint-Simon. The alien, here, was the worldly doctor, with other manners, other social relations. To make good, the unfortunate of whom we are now speaking, so as not to be accused by his colleagues of looking down on them (who but a man of fashion would think of such an idea!) if he concealed the Duchesse de Guermantes from them, hoped to disarm them by giving mixed dinner-parties in which the medical element was merged in the fashionable. He was unaware that in so doing he signed his own death-warrant, or rather he discovered this when the Council of Ten (a little larger in number) had to fill a vacant chair, and it was invariably the name of another doctor, more normal if more mediocre, that emerged from the fatal urn, and the “Veto” thundered round the ancient Faculty, as solemn, as absurd and as terrible as the “Juro” that spelt the death of Molière. So too with the painter permanently labelled man of fashion, when fashionable people who dabbled in art had succeeded in getting themselves labelled artists; so with the diplomat who had too many reactionary associations.

  But these cases were rare. The prototype of the distinguished men who formed the main substance of the Guermantes salon was someone who had voluntarily (or at least they supposed) renounced all else, everything that was incompatible with the wit of the Guermantes, with the courtesy of the Guermantes, with that indefinable charm odious to any “body” that is at all “corporate.”

  And the people who were aware that one of the habitués of the Duchess’s drawing-room had once been awarded the gold medal of the Salon, that another, Secretary to the Bar Council, had made a brilliant début in the Chamber, that a third had ably served France as chargé d’affaires, might have been led to regard as “failures” people who had now done nothing for twenty years. But there were few who were thus “in the know,” and the persons concerned would themselves have been the last to remind one, finding these old distinctions valueless, precisely by virtue of the Guermantes wit: for did this not encourage them to denounce on the one hand as a bore and a pedant, on the other as a counter-jumper, a pair of eminent ministers, one a trifle solemn, the other addicted to puns, whose praises the newspapers were constantly singing but in whose company Mme de Guermantes would begin to yawn and show signs of impatience if a hostess had rashly placed either of them next to her at the dinner-table? Since being a statesman of the first rank was in no sense a recommendation in the eyes of the Duchess, those of her friends who had abandoned the “Career” or the “Service,” who had never stood for parliament, felt, as they came day after day to have lunch and talk with their great friend, or when they met her in the houses of royal personages—incidentally held in low esteem by them (or so they said)—that they had chosen the better part, albeit their melancholy air, even in the midst of the gaiety, seemed somehow to impugn the validity of this judgment.

  And it must be acknowledged that the refinement of social life, the sparkle of the conversation at the Guermantes’, did have something real about it, however exiguous it may have been. No official title was worth more than the personal charm of certain of Mme de Guermantes’s favourites whom the most powerful ministers would have been unable to attract to their houses. If in this drawing-room so many intellectual ambitions and even noble efforts had been for ever buried, still at least from their dust the rarest flowering of civilised society had sprung to life. Certainly men of wit, such as Swann for instance, regarded themselves as superior to men of merit, whom they despised, but that was because what the Duchess valued above everything else was not intelligence but—a superior form of intelligence, according to her, rarer, more exquisite, raising it up to a verbal variety of talent—wit. And long ago at the Verdurins’, when Swann denounced Brichot and Elstir, one as a pedant and the other as an oaf, despite all the learning of the one and the genius of the other, it was the infiltration of the Guermantes spirit that had led him to classify them thus. Never would he have dared to introduce either of them to the Duchess, conscious instinctively of the air with which she would have listened to Brichot’s perorations and Elstir’s “balderdash,” the Guermantes spirit consigning pretentious and prolix speech, whether in a serious or a farcical vein, to the category of the most intolerable imbecility.

  As for the Guermantes of the true flesh and blood, if the Guermantes spirit had not infected them as completely as we see occur in, for example, those literary coteries in which everyone has the same way of pronouncing, enunciating and consequently thinking, it was certainly not because originality is stronger in social circles and inhibits imitation therein. But imitation requires not only the absence of any unconquerable originality but also a relative fineness of ear which enables one first of all to discern what one is afterwards to imitate. And there were several Guermantes in whom this musical sense was as entirely lacking as in the Courvoisiers.

  To take as an instance what is called, in another sense of the word imitation, “giving imitations” (or among the Guermantes was called “taking off”), for all that Mme de Guermantes could bring these off to perfection, the Courvoisiers were as incapable of appreciating it as if they had been a tribe of rabbits instead of men and women, because they had never managed to observe the particular defect or accent that the Duchess was endeavouring to mimic. When she “imitated” the Duc de Limoges, the Courvoisiers would protest: “Oh, no, he doesn’t really speak like that. I dined with him again at Bebeth’s last night; he talked to me all evening and he didn’t speak like that at all!” whereas any Guermantes who was at all cultivated would exclaim: “Goodness, how droll Oriane is! The amazing thing is that when she’s mimicking him she looks exactly like him! I feel I’m listening to him. Oriane, do give us a little more Limoges!” Now these Guermantes (without even including those absolutely remarkable members of the clan who, when the Duchess imitated the Duc de Limoges, would say admiringly: “Oh, you really have got him,” or “You do hit him off!”) might be devoid of wit according to Mme de Guermantes (in this respect she was right), but by dint of hearing and repeating her sayings they had come to imitate more or less her way of expressing herself, of criticising people, of what Swann, like the Duchess herself, would have called her way of “phrasing” things, so that they presented in their conversation something which to the Courvoisiers appeared appallingly similar to Oriane’s wit and was treated by them collectively as the Guerm
antes wit. As these Guermantes were to her not merely kinsfolk but admirers, Oriane (who kept the rest of the family rigorously at arm’s-length and now avenged by her disdain the spitefulness they had shown her in her girlhood) went to call on them now and then, generally in the company of the Duke, when she drove out with him in the summer months. These visits were an event. The Princesse d’Epinay’s heart would begin to beat more rapidly, as she entertained in her big drawing-room on the ground floor, when she saw from a distance, like the first glow of an innocuous fire, or the scouting party of an unexpected invasion, making her way slowly across the courtyard in a diagonal course, the Duchess wearing a ravishing hat and holding atilt a sunshade redolent with a summer fragrance. “Why, here comes Oriane,” she would say, like an “On guard!” intended to convey a prudent warning to her visitors, so that they should have time to beat an orderly retreat, to evacuate the rooms without panic. Half of those present dared not remain, and rose at once to go. “But no, why? Sit down again, I insist on keeping you a little longer,” the Princess would say in an airy, off-hand manner (to show herself the great lady) but in a voice that suddenly rang false. “But you may want to talk to each other.” “Really, you’re in a hurry? Oh, very well, I shall come and see you,” the lady of the house would reply to those whom she would just as soon see leave. The Duke and Duchess would give a very civil greeting to people whom they had seen there regularly for years though without coming to know them any better, while these in return barely said good-day to them, from discretion. Scarcely had they left the room before the Duke would begin asking good-naturedly who they were, so as to appear to be taking an interest in the intrinsic quality of people whom he never saw in his own house owing to the malevolence of fate or the state of Oriane’s nerves which the company of women was bad for:

  “Tell me, who was that little woman in the pink hat?”

  “Why, my dear cousin, you’ve seen her hundreds of times, she’s the Vicomtesse de Tours, who was a Lamarzelle.”

  “But, do you know, she’s very pretty, and she has a witty look. If it weren’t for a little flaw in her upper lip she’d be a regular charmer. If there’s a Vicomte de Tours, he can’t have any too bad a time. Oriane, do you know who her eyebrows and the way her hair grows reminded me of? Your cousin Hedwige de Ligne.”

  The Duchesse de Guermantes, who languished whenever people spoke of the beauty of any woman other than herself, let the subject drop. She had reckoned without the weakness of her husband for letting it be seen that he knew all about the people who did not come to his house, whereby he believed that he showed himself to be more “serious” than his wife.

  “But,” he would suddenly resume with emphasis, “you mentioned the name Lamarzelle. I remember, when I was in the Chamber, hearing a really remarkable speech made . . .”

  “That was the uncle of the young woman you saw just now.”

  “Indeed! What talent! No, my dear girl,” he assured the Vicomtesse d’Egremont, whom Mme de Guermantes could not endure but who, refusing to stir from the Princesse d’Epinay’s drawing-room where she willingly stooped to the role of parlour-maid (though it did not prevent her from slapping her own on returning home), stayed there, tearful and abashed, but nevertheless stayed, when the ducal couple were there, taking their cloaks, trying to make herself useful, discreetly offering to withdraw into the next room, “you’re not to make tea for us, let’s just sit and talk quietly, we’re simple, homely souls. Besides,” he went on, turning to the Princesse d’Epinay (leaving the Egremont lady blushing, humble, ambitious and full of zeal), “we can only spare you a quarter of an hour.”

  This quarter of an hour would be entirely taken up with a sort of exhibition of the witty things which the Duchess had said during the previous week, and to which she herself would certainly have refrained from alluding had not her husband, with great adroitness, by appearing to be rebuking her with reference to the incidents that had provoked them, obliged her as though against her will to repeat them.

  The Princesse d’Epinay, who was fond of her cousin and knew that she had a weakness for compliments, would go into ecstasies over her hat, her sunshade, her wit. “Talk to her as much as you like about her clothes,” the Duke would say in the surly tone which he had adopted and now tempered with a mocking smile so that his displeasure should not be taken seriously, “but for heaven’s sake don’t speak of her wit. I could do without having such a witty wife. You’re probably alluding to the shocking pun she made about my brother Palamède,” he went on, knowing quite well that the Princess and the rest of the family had not yet heard this pun, and delighted to have an opportunity of showing off his wife. “In the first place I consider it unworthy of a person who has occasionally, I must admit, said some quite good things, to make bad puns, but especially about my brother, who is very touchy, and if it’s going to lead to bad blood between us, that would really be too much of a good thing.”

  “But we’ve no idea! One of Oriane’s puns? It’s sure to be delicious. Oh, do tell us!”

  “No, no,” the Duke went on, still surly though with a broader smile, “I’m delighted you haven’t heard it. Seriously, I’m very fond of my brother.”

  “Look here, Basin,” the Duchess would break in, the moment having come for her to take up her husband’s cue, “I can’t think why you should say that it might annoy Palamède, you know quite well it would do nothing of the sort. He’s far too intelligent to be offended by a stupid joke which has nothing offensive about it. You’ll make them think I said something nasty; I simply made a remark which wasn’t in the least funny, it’s you who make it seem important by getting so indignant. I don’t understand you.”

  “You’re being horribly tantalising. What’s it all about?”

  “Oh, obviously nothing serious!” cried M. de Guermantes. “You may have heard that my brother offered to give Brézé, the place he got from his wife, to his sister Marsantes.”

  “Yes, but we were told she didn’t want it, that she didn’t care for that part of the country, that the climate didn’t suit her.”

  “Precisely. Well, someone was telling my wife all that and saying that if my brother was giving this place to our sister it wasn’t so much to please her as to tease her. ‘He’s such a teaser, Charlus,’ was what they actually said. Well, you know Brézé is really impressive, I should say it’s worth millions, it used to be part of the crown lands, it includes one of the finest forests in France. There are plenty of people who would be only too delighted to be teased to that tune. And so when she heard the words ‘teaser’ applied to Charlus because he was giving away such a magnificent property, Oriane couldn’t help exclaiming, quite involuntarily, I must admit, without the slightest suggestion of malice, for it came out like a flash of lightning: ‘Teaser, teaser? Then he must be Teaser Augustus!’ You understand,” he went on, resuming his surly tone, having first cast a sweeping glance round the room in order to judge the effect of his wife’s witticism—and in some doubt as to the extent of Mme d’Epinay’s acquaintance with ancient history, “you understand, it’s an allusion to Augustus Caesar, the Roman Emperor. It’s too stupid, a bad play on words, quite unworthy of Oriane. And then, you see, I’m more circumspect than my wife. Even if I haven’t her wit, I think of the consequences. If anyone should be so ill-advised as to repeat the remark to my brother there’ll be the devil to pay. All the more so,” he went on, “because as you know Palamède is very high and mighty, and also very captious, given to tittle-tattle, so that quite apart from the question of his giving away Brézé you must admit that ‘Teaser Augustus’ suits him down to the ground. That’s what justifies my wife’s quips; even when she stoops to feeble puns, she’s always witty and does really describe people rather well.”

  And so, thanks on one occasion to “Teaser Augustus,” on another to something else, the visits paid by the Duke and Duchess to their kinsfolk replenished the stock of anecdotes, and the excitement they had caused lasted long after the departure of the sparkli
ng lady and her impresario. The hostess would begin by going over again with the privileged persons who had been at the entertainment (those who had remained) the clever things that Oriane had said. “You hadn’t heard ‘Teaser Augustus’?” the Princesse d’Epinay would ask. “Yes,” the Marquise de Baveno would reply, blushing as she spoke, “the Princesse de Sarsina-La Rochefoucauld mentioned it to me, not quite in the same terms. But of course it was far more interesting to hear it repeated like that with my cousin in the room,” she went on, as though speaking of a song that had been accompanied by the composer himself. “We were speaking of Oriane’s latest—she was here just now,” her hostess would greet a visitor who was very disconsolate at not having arrived an hour earlier.

  “What! has Oriane been here?”