Swann's Way
intelligence, declared that they could not conceive what pleasure their
brother-in-law could find in talking about such trifles. They were
ladies of lofty ambition, who for that reason were incapable of taking
the least interest in what might be called the 'pinchbeck' things of
life, even when they had an historic value, or, generally speaking, in
anything that was not directly associated with some object aesthetically
precious. So complete was their negation of interest in anything which
seemed directly or indirectly a part of our everyday life that their
sense of hearing--which had gradually come to understand its own
futility when the tone of the conversation, at the dinner-table, became
frivolous or merely mundane, without the two old ladies' being able to
guide it back to the topic dear to themselves--would leave its receptive
channels unemployed, so effectively that they were actually becoming
atrophied. So that if my grandfather wished to attract the attention of
the two sisters, he would have to make use of some such alarm signals
as mad-doctors adopt in dealing with their distracted patients; as by
beating several times on a glass with the blade of a knife, fixing them
at the same time with a sharp word and a compelling glance, violent
methods which the said doctors are apt to bring with them into their
everyday life among the sane, either from force of professional habit or
because they think the whole world a trifle mad.
Their interest grew, however, when, the day before Swann was to dine
with us, and when he had made them a special present of a case of Asti,
my great-aunt, who had in her hand a copy of the _Figaro_ in which to
the name of a picture then on view in a Corot exhibition were added the
words, "from the collection of M. Charles Swann," asked: "Did you see
that Swann is 'mentioned' in the _Figaro_?"
"But I have always told you," said my grandmother, "that he had plenty
of taste."
"You would, of course," retorted my great-aunt, "say anything just to
seem different from _us_." For, knowing that my grandmother never agreed
with her, and not being quite confident that it was her own opinion
which the rest of us invariably endorsed, she wished to extort from us
a wholesale condemnation of my grandmother's views, against which she
hoped to force us into solidarity with her own.
But we sat silent. My grandmother's sisters having expressed a desire
to mention to Swann this reference to him in the _Figaro_, my great-aunt
dissuaded them. Whenever she saw in others an advantage, however
trivial, which she herself lacked, she would persuade herself that it
was no advantage at all, but a drawback, and would pity so as not to
have to envy them.
"I don't think that would please him at all; I know very well, I should
hate to see my name printed like that, as large as life, in the paper,
and I shouldn't feel at all flattered if anyone spoke to me about it."
She did not, however, put any very great pressure upon my grandmother's
sisters, for they, in their horror of vulgarity, had brought to such a
fine art the concealment of a personal allusion in a wealth of ingenious
circumlocution, that it would often pass unnoticed even by the person
to whom it was addressed. As for my mother, her only thought was of
managing to induce my father to consent to speak to Swann, not of his
wife, but of his daughter, whom he worshipped, and for whose sake it was
understood that he had ultimately made his unfortunate marriage.
"You need only say a word; just ask him how she is. It must be so very
hard for him."
My father, however, was annoyed: "No, no; you have the most absurd
ideas. It would be utterly ridiculous."
But the only one of us in whom the prospect of Swann's arrival gave
rise to an unhappy foreboding was myself. And that was because on the
evenings when there were visitors, or just M. Swann in the house, Mamma
did not come up to my room. I did not, at that time, have dinner with
the family: I came out to the garden after dinner, and at nine I said
good night and went to bed. But on these evenings I used to dine earlier
than the others, and to come in afterwards and sit at table until eight
o'clock, when it was understood that I must go upstairs; that frail and
precious kiss which Mamma used always to leave upon my lips when I
was in bed and just going to sleep I had to take with me from the
dining-room to my own, and to keep inviolate all the time that it
took me to undress, without letting its sweet charm be broken, without
letting its volatile essence diffuse itself and evaporate; and just on
those very evenings when I must needs take most pains to receive it with
due formality, I had to snatch it, to seize it instantly and in public,
without even having the time or being properly free to apply to what I
was doing the punctiliousness which madmen use who compel themselves to
exclude all other thoughts from their minds while they are shutting a
door, so that when the sickness of uncertainty sweeps over them again
they can triumphantly face and overcome it with the recollection of the
precise moment in which the door was shut.
We were all in the garden when the double peal of the gate-bell sounded
shyly. Everyone knew that it must be Swann, and yet they looked at one
another inquiringly and sent my grandmother scouting.
"See that you thank him intelligibly for the wine," my grandfather
warned his two sisters-in-law; "you know how good it is, and it is a
huge case."
"Now, don't start whispering!" said my great-aunt. "How would you like
to come into a house and find everyone muttering to themselves?"
"Ah! There's M. Swann," cried my father. "Let's ask him if he thinks it
will be fine to-morrow."
My mother fancied that a word from her would wipe out all the
unpleasantness which my family had contrived to make Swann feel since
his marriage. She found an opportunity to draw him aside for a moment.
But I followed her: I could not bring myself to let her go out of reach
of me while I felt that in a few minutes I should have to leave her in
the dining-room and go up to my bed without the consoling thought, as on
ordinary evenings, that she would come up, later, to kiss me.
"Now, M. Swann," she said, "do tell me about your daughter; I am sure
she shews a taste already for nice things, like her papa."
"Come along and sit down here with us all on the verandah," said my
grandfather, coming up to him. My mother had to abandon the quest, but
managed to extract from the restriction itself a further refinement of
thought, as great poets do when the tyranny of rhyme forces them into
the discovery of their finest lines.
"We can talk about her again when we are by ourselves," she said, or
rather whispered to Swann. "It is only a mother who can understand. I am
sure that hers would agree with me."
And so we all sat down round the iron table. I should have liked not
to think of the hours of anguish which I should have to spend, that
evening, alone in my room, without the possibility of going to sleep: I
tried to convince myself that they were of no importance, really,
since I should have forgotten them next morning, and to fix my mind on
thoughts of the future which would carry me, as on a bridge, across the
terrifying abyss that yawned at my feet. But my mind, strained by this
foreboding, distended like the look which I shot at my mother, would not
allow any other impression to enter. Thoughts did, indeed, enter it,
but only on the condition that they left behind them every element of
beauty, or even of quaintness, by which I might have been distracted or
beguiled. As a surgical patient, by means of a local anaesthetic, can
look on with a clear consciousness while an operation is being performed
upon him and yet feel nothing, I could repeat to myself some favourite
lines, or watch my grandfather attempting to talk to Swann about the Duc
d'Audriffet-Pasquier, without being able to kindle any emotion from one
or amusement from the other. Hardly had my grandfather begun to question
Swann about that orator when one of my grandmother's sisters, in whose
ears the question echoed like a solemn but untimely silence which her
natural politeness bade her interrupt, addressed the other with:
"Just fancy, Flora, I met a young Swedish governess to-day who told
me some most interesting things about the co-operative movement in
Scandinavia. We really must have her to dine here one evening."
"To be sure!" said her sister Flora, "but I haven't wasted my time
either. I met such a clever old gentleman at M. Vinteuil's who knows
Maubant quite well, and Maubant has told him every little thing about
how he gets up his parts. It is the most interesting thing I ever heard.
He is a neighbour of M. Vinteuil's, and I never knew; and he is so nice
besides."
"M. Vinteuil is not the only one who has nice neighbours," cried my aunt
Céline in a voice which seemed loud because she was so timid, and seemed
forced because she had been planning the little speech for so long;
darting, as she spoke, what she called a 'significant glance' at Swann.
And my aunt Flora, who realised that this veiled utterance was Céline's
way of thanking Swann intelligibly for the Asti, looked at him with a
blend of congratulation and irony, either just, because she wished to
underline her sister's little epigram, or because she envied Swann
his having inspired it, or merely because she imagined that he was
embarrassed, and could not help having a little fun at his expense.
"I think it would be worth while," Flora went on, "to have this old
gentleman to dinner. When you get him upon Maubant or Mme. Materna he
will talk for hours on end."
"That must be delightful," sighed my grandfather, in whose mind nature
had unfortunately forgotten to include any capacity whatsoever for
becoming passionately interested in the co-operative movement among the
ladies of Sweden or in the methods employed by Maubant to get up his
parts, just as it had forgotten to endow my grandmother's two sisters
with a grain of that precious salt which one has oneself to 'add to
taste' in order to extract any savour from a narrative of the private
life of Mole or of the Comte de Paris.
"I say!" exclaimed Swann to my grandfather, "what I was going to tell
you has more to do than you might think with what you were asking me
just now, for in some respects there has been very little change. I came
across a passage in Saint-Simon this morning which would have amused
you. It is in the volume which covers his mission to Spain; not one
of the best, little more in fact than a journal, but at least it is a
journal wonderfully well written, which fairly distinguishes it from
the devastating journalism that we feel bound to read in these days,
morning, noon and night."
"I do not agree with you: there are some days when I find reading the
papers very pleasant indeed!" my aunt Flora broke in, to show Swann that
she had read the note about his Corot in the _Figaro_.
"Yes," aunt Céline went one better. "When they write about things or
people in whom we are interested."
"I don't deny it," answered Swann in some bewilderment. "The fault I
find with our journalism is that it forces us to take an interest in
some fresh triviality or other every day, whereas only three or four
books in a lifetime give us anything that is of real importance. Suppose
that, every morning, when we tore the wrapper off our paper with fevered
hands, a transmutation were to take place, and we were to find inside
it--oh! I don't know; shall we say Pascal's _Pensées_?" He articulated
the title with an ironic emphasis so as not to appear pedantic. "And
then, in the gilt and tooled volumes which we open once in ten years,"
he went on, shewing that contempt for the things of this world which