Swann's Way
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.
What a difference was there in a 'newcomer' whom Odette had asked them
to invite, although she herself had met him only a few times, and on
whom they were building great hopes--the Comte de Forcheville! (It
turned out that he was nothing more nor less than the brother-in-law of
Saniette, a discovery which filled all the 'faithful' with amazement:
the manners of the old palaeographer were so humble that they had always
supposed him to be of a class inferior, socially, to their own, and
had never expected to learn that he came of a rich and relatively
aristocratic family.) Of course, Forcheville was enormously the 'swell,'
which Swann was not or had quite ceased to be; of course, he would never
dream of placing, as Swann now placed, the Verdurin circle above any