Swann's Way
end, to describe as pleasures, for want of any better, those mediocre
distractions, that just not intolerable tedium which is enclosed there
with them; Swann would endeavour not to find charm and beauty in the
women with whom he must pass time, but to pass his time among women whom
he had already found to be beautiful and charming. And these were, as
often as not, women whose beauty was of a distinctly 'common' type, for
the physical qualities which attracted him instinctively, and without
reason, were the direct opposite of those that he admired in the women
painted or sculptured by his favourite masters. Depth of character, or
a melancholy expression on a woman's face would freeze his senses, which
would, however, immediately melt at the sight of healthy, abundant, rosy
human flesh.
If on his travels he met a family whom it would have been more correct
for him to make no attempt to know, but among whom a woman caught his
eye, adorned with a special charm that was new to him, to remain on his
'high horse' and to cheat the desire that she had kindled in him, to
substitute a pleasure different from that which he might have tasted in
her company by writing to invite one of his former mistresses to come
and join him, would have seemed to him as cowardly an abdication in the
face of life, as stupid a renunciation of a new form of happiness as if,
instead of visiting the country where he was, he had shut himself up in
his own rooms and looked at 'views' of Paris. He did not immure himself
in the solid structure of his social relations, but had made of them, so
as to be able to set it up afresh upon new foundations wherever a woman
might take his fancy, one of those collapsible tents which explorers
carry about with them. Any part of it which was not portable or could
not be adapted to some fresh pleasure he would discard as valueless,
however enviable it might appear to others. How often had his credit
with a duchess, built up of the yearly accumulation of her desire to
do him some favour for which she had never found an opportunity, been
squandered in a moment by his calling upon her, in an indiscreetly
worded message, for a recommendation by telegraph which would put him
in touch at once with one of her agents whose daughter he had noticed in
the country, just as a starving man might barter a diamond for a crust
of bread. Indeed, when it was too late, he would laugh at himself for
it, for there was in his nature, redeemed by many rare refinements, an
element of clownishness. Then he belonged to that class of intelligent
men who have led a life of idleness, and who seek consolation and,
perhaps, an excuse in the idea, which their idleness offers to their
intelligence, of objects as worthy of their interest as any that could
be attained by art or learning, the idea that 'Life' contains situations
more interesting and more romantic than all the romances ever written.
So, at least, he would assure and had no difficulty in persuading the
more subtle among his friends in the fashionable world, notably the
Baron de Charlus, whom he liked to amuse with stories of the startling
adventures that had befallen him, such as when he had met a woman in the
train, and had taken her home with him, before discovering that she was
the sister of a reigning monarch, in whose hands were gathered, at that
moment, all the threads of European politics, of which he found himself
kept informed in the most delightful fashion, or when, in the complexity
of circumstances, it depended upon the choice which the Conclave
was about to make whether he might or might not become the lover of
somebody's cook.
It was not only the brilliant phalanx of virtuous dowagers, generals
and academicians, to whom he was bound by such close ties, that Swann
compelled with so much cynicism to serve him as panders. All his friends
were accustomed to receive, from time to time, letters which called on
them for a word of recommendation or introduction, with a diplomatic
adroitness which, persisting throughout all his successive 'affairs'
and using different pretexts, revealed more glaringly than the clumsiest
indiscretion, a permanent trait in his character and an unvarying quest.
I used often to recall to myself when, many years later, I began to
take an interest in his character because of the similarities which, in
wholly different respects, it offered to my own, how, when he used to
write to my grandfather (though not at the time we are now considering,
for it was about the date of my own birth that Swann's great 'affair'
began, and made a long interruption in his amatory practices) the
latter, recognising his friend's handwriting on the envelope, would
exclaim: "Here is Swann asking for something; on guard!" And, either
from distrust or from the unconscious spirit of devilry which urges us
to offer a thing only to those who do not want it, my grandparents would
meet with an obstinate refusal the most easily satisfied of his prayers,
as when he begged them for an introduction to a girl who dined with us
every Sunday, and whom they were obliged, whenever Swann mentioned her,
to pretend that they no longer saw, although they would be wondering,
all through the week, whom they could invite to meet her, and often
failed, in the end, to find anyone, sooner than make a sign to him who
would so gladly have accepted.
Occasionally a couple of my grandparents' acquaintance, who had been
complaining for some time that they never saw Swann now, would announce
with satisfaction, and perhaps with a slight inclination to make my
grandparents envious of them, that he had suddenly become as charming as
he could possibly be, and was never out of their house. My grandfather
would not care to shatter their pleasant illusion, but would look at my
grandmother, as he hummed the air of:
What is this mystery?
I cannot understand it;
or of:
Vision fugitive...;
In matters such as this
'Tis best to close one's eyes.
A few months later, if my grandfather asked Swann's new friend "What
about Swann? Do you still see as much of him as ever?" the other's face
would lengthen: "Never mention his name to me again!"
"But I thought that you were such friends..."
He had been intimate in this way for several months with some cousins
of my grandmother, dining almost every evening at their house. Suddenly,
and without any warning, he ceased to appear. They supposed him to be
ill, and the lady of the house was going to send to inquire for him
when, in her kitchen, she found a letter in his hand, which her cook had
left by accident in the housekeeping book. In this he announced that he
was leaving Paris and would not be able to come to the house again. The
cook had been his mistress, and at the moment of breaking off relations
she was the only one of the household whom he had thought it necessary
to inform.
But when his mistress for the time being was a woman in society, or at
least one whose birth was not so lowly, nor her position so irregular
that he was unable to arrange for her reception in 'society,' then for
her sake he would return to it, but only to the particular orbit in
which she moved or into which he had drawn her. "No good depending on
Swann for this evening," people would say; "don't you remember, it's his
American's night at the Opera?" He would secure invitations for her to
the most exclusive drawing-rooms, to those houses where he himself
went regularly, for weekly dinners or for poker; every evening, after
a slight 'wave' imparted to his stiffly brushed red locks had tempered
with a certain softness the ardour of his bold green eyes, he would
select a flower for his buttonhole and set out to meet his mistress at
the house of one or other of the women of his circle; and then, thinking
of the affection and admiration which the fashionable folk, whom he
always treated exactly as he pleased, would, when he met them there,
lavish upon him in the presence of the woman whom he loved, he would
find a fresh charm in that worldly existence of which he had grown
weary, but whose substance, pervaded and warmly coloured by the
flickering light which he had slipped into its midst, seemed to him
beautiful and rare, now that he had incorporated in it a fresh love.
But while each of these attachments, each of these flirtations had been
the realisation, more or less complete, of a dream born of the sight of
a face or a form which Swann had spontaneously, and without effort on
his part, found charming, it was quite another matter when, one day at
the theatre, he was introduced to Odette de Crécy by an old friend of
his own, who had spoken of her to him as a ravishing creature with whom
he might very possibly come to an understanding; but had made her out
to be harder of conquest than she actually was, so as to appear to be
conferring a special favour by the introduction. She had struck Swann
not, certainly, as being devoid of beauty, but as endowed with a style
of beauty which left him indifferent, which aroused in him no desire,
which gave him, indeed, a sort of physical repulsion; as one of those
women of whom every man can name some, and each will name different
examples, who are the converse of the type which our senses demand. To
give him any pleasure her profile was too sharp, her skin too delicate,
her cheek-bones too prominent, her features too tightly drawn. Her eyes
were fine, but so large that they seemed to be bending beneath their own
weight, strained the rest of her face and always made her appear unwell
or in an ill humour. Some time after this introduction at the theatre
she had written to ask Swann whether she might see his collections,
which would interest her so much, she, "an ignorant woman with a taste
for beautiful things," saying that she would know him better when
once she had seen him in his 'home,' where she imagined him to be "so
comfortable with his tea and his books"; although she had not concealed
her surprise at his being in that part of the town, which must be so
depressing, and was "not nearly smart enough for such a very smart man."
And when he allowed her to come she had said to him as she left how
sorry she was to have stayed so short a time in a house into which she
was so glad to have found her way at last, speaking of him as though he
had meant something more to her than the rest of the people she knew,
and appearing to unite their two selves with a kind of romantic bond
which had made him smile. But at the time of life, tinged already with
disenchantment, which Swann was approaching, when a man can content
himself with being in love for the pleasure of loving without expecting
too much in return, this linking of hearts, if it is no longer, as in
early youth, the goal towards which love, of necessity, tends, still
is bound to love by so strong an association of ideas that it may well
become the cause of love if it presents itself first. In his younger
days a man dreams of possessing the heart of the woman whom he loves;
later, the feeling that he possesses the heart of a woman may be enough
to make him fall in love with her. And so, at an age when it would
appear--since one seeks in love before everything else a subjective
pleasure--that the taste for feminine beauty must play the larger part
in its procreation, love may come into being, love of the most physical
order, without any foundation in desire. At this time of life a man has
already been wounded more than once by the darts of love; it no longer
evolves by itself, obeying its own incomprehensible and fatal laws,
before his passive and astonished heart. We come to its aid; we falsify
it by memory and by suggestion; recognising one of its symptoms we
recall and recreate the rest. Since we possess its hymn, engraved on