Swann's Way
other. But he lacked that natural refinement which prevented Swann from
associating himself with the criticisms (too obviously false to be worth
his notice) that Mme. Verdurin levelled at people whom he knew. As for
the vulgar and affected tirades in which the painter sometimes indulged,
the bag-man's pleasantries which Cottard used to hazard,--whereas
Swann, who liked both men sincerely, could easily find excuses for these
without having either the courage or the hypocrisy to applaud them,
Forcheville, on the other hand, was on an intellectual level which
permitted him to be stupified, amazed by the invective (without in the
least understanding what it all was about), and to be frankly delighted
by the wit. And the very first dinner at the Verdurins' at which
Forcheville was present threw a glaring light upon all the differences
between them, made his qualities start into prominence and precipitated
the disgrace of Swann.
There was, at this dinner, besides the usual party, a professor from
the Sorbonne, one Brichot, who had met M. and Mme. Verdurin at a
watering-place somewhere, and, if his duties at the university and his
other works of scholarship had not left him with very little time
to spare, would gladly have come to them more often. For he had that
curiosity, that superstitious outlook on life, which, combined with a
certain amount of scepticism with regard to the object of their studies,
earn for men of intelligence, whatever their profession, for doctors
who do not believe in medicine, for schoolmasters who do not believe in
Latin exercises, the reputation of having broad, brilliant, and indeed
superior minds. He affected, when at Mme. Verdurin's, to choose his
illustrations from among the most topical subjects of the day, when he
spoke of philosophy or history, principally because he regarded those
sciences as no more, really, than a preparation for life itself, and
imagined that he was seeing put into practice by the 'little clan'
what hitherto he had known only from books; and also, perhaps,
because, having had drilled into him as a boy, and having unconsciously
preserved, a feeling of reverence for certain subjects, he thought that
he was casting aside the scholar's gown when he ventured to treat those
subjects with a conversational licence, which seemed so to him only
because the folds of the gown still clung.
Early in the course of the dinner, when M. de Forcheville, seated on the
right of Mme. Verdurin, who, in the 'newcomer's' honour, had taken great
pains with her toilet, observed to her: "Quite original, that white
dress," the Doctor, who had never taken his eyes off him, so curious was
he to learn the nature and attributes of what he called a "de," and was
on the look-out for an opportunity of attracting his attention, so as
to come into closer contact with him, caught in its flight the adjective
'_blanche_' and, his eyes still glued to his plate, snapped out,
"_Blanche_? Blanche of Castile?" then, without moving his head, shot
a furtive glance to right and left of him, doubtful, but happy on the
whole. While Swann, by the painful and futile effort which he made to
smile, testified that he thought the pun absurd, Forcheville had shewn
at once that he could appreciate its subtlety, and that he was a man of
the world, by keeping within its proper limits a mirth the spontaneity
of which had charmed Mme. Verdurin.
"What are you to say of a scientist like that?" she asked Forcheville.
"You can't talk seriously to him for two minutes on end. Is that the
sort of thing you tell them at your hospital?" she went on, turning to
the Doctor. "They must have some pretty lively times there, if that's
the case. I can see that I shall have to get taken in as a patient!"
"I think I heard the Doctor speak of that wicked old humbug, Blanche of
Castile, if I may so express myself. Am I not right, Madame?" Brichot
appealed to Mme. Verdurin, who, swooning with merriment, her eyes
tightly closed, had buried her face in her two hands, from between
which, now and then, escaped a muffled scream.
"Good gracious, Madame, I would not dream of shocking the
reverent-minded, if there are any such around this table, _sub rosa_...
I recognise, moreover, that our ineffable and Athenian--oh, how
infinitely Athenian--Republic is capable of honouring, in the person of
that obscurantist old she-Capet, the first of our chiefs of police. Yes,
indeed, my dear host, yes, indeed!" he repeated in his ringing voice,
which sounded a separate note for each syllable, in reply to a protest
by M. Verdurin. "The Chronicle of Saint Denis, and the authenticity of
its information is beyond question, leaves us no room for doubt on that
point. No one could be more fitly chosen as Patron by a secularising
proletariat than that mother of a Saint, who let him see some pretty
fishy saints besides, as Suger says, and other great St. Bernards of the
sort; for with her it was a case of taking just what you pleased."
"Who is that gentleman?" Forcheville asked Mme. Verdurin. "He seems to
speak with great authority."
"What! Do you mean to say you don't know the famous Brichot? Why, he's
celebrated all over Europe."
"Oh, that's Bréchot, is it?" exclaimed Forcheville, who had not quite
caught the name. "You must tell me all about him"; he went on, fastening
a pair of goggle eyes on the celebrity. "It's always interesting to
meet well-known people at dinner. But, I say, you ask us to very select
parties here. No dull evenings in this house, I'm sure."
"Well, you know what it is really," said Mme. Verdurin modestly.
"They feel safe here. They can talk about whatever they like, and the
conversation goes off like fireworks. Now Brichot, this evening, is
nothing. I've seen him, don't you know, when he's been with me, simply
dazzling; you'd want to go on your knees to him. Well, with anyone else
he's not the same man, he's not in the least witty, you have to drag the
words out of him, he's even boring."
"That's strange," remarked Forcheville with fitting astonishment.
A sort of wit like Brichot's would have been regarded as out-and-out
stupidity by the people among whom Swann had spent his early life,
for all that it is quite compatible with real intelligence. And the
intelligence of the Professor's vigorous and well-nourished brain might
easily have been envied by many of the people in society who seemed
witty enough to Swann. But these last had so thoroughly inculcated into
him their likes and dislikes, at least in everything that pertained
to their ordinary social existence, including that annex to social
existence which belongs, strictly speaking, to the domain of
intelligence, namely, conversation, that Swann could not see anything
in Brichot's pleasantries; to him they were merely pedantic, vulgar,
and disgustingly coarse. He was shocked, too, being accustomed to
good manners, by the rude, almost barrack-room tone which this
student-in-arms adopted, no matter to whom he was speaking. Finally,
perhaps, he had lost all patience that evening as he watched Mme.
Verdurin welcoming, with such unnecessary warmth, this Forcheville
fellow, whom it had been Odette's unaccountable idea to bring to the
house. Feeling a little awkward, with Swann there also, she had asked
him on her arrival: "What do you think of my guest?"
And he, suddenly realising for the first time that Forcheville, whom
he had known for years, could actually attract a woman, and was quite a
good specimen of a man, had retorted: "Beastly!" He had, certainly,
no idea of being jealous of Odette, but did not feel quite so happy as
usual, and when Brichot, having begun to tell them the story of Blanche
of Castile's mother, who, according to him, "had been with Henry
Plantagenet for years before they were married," tried to prompt Swann
to beg him to continue the story, by interjecting "Isn't that so, M.
Swann?" in the martial accents which one uses in order to get down to
the level of an unintelligent rustic or to put the 'fear of God' into
a trooper, Swann cut his story short, to the intense fury of their
hostess, by begging to be excused for taking so little interest in
Blanche of Castile, as he had something that he wished to ask the
painter. He, it appeared, had been that afternoon to an exhibition of
the work of another artist, also a friend of Mme. Verdurin, who had
recently died, and Swann wished to find out from him (for he valued
his discrimination) whether there had really been anything more in this
later work than the virtuosity which had struck people so forcibly in
his earlier exhibitions.
"From that point of view it was extraordinary, but it did not seem to me
to be a form of art which you could call 'elevated,'" said Swann with a
smile.
"Elevated... to the height of an Institute!" interrupted Cottard,
raising his arms with mock solemnity. The whole table burst out
laughing.
"What did I tell you?" said Mme. Verdurin to Forcheville. "It's simply
impossible to be serious with him. When you least expect it, out he
comes with a joke."
But she observed that Swann, and Swann alone, had not unbent. For one
thing he was none too well pleased with Cottard for having secured a
laugh at his expense in front of Forcheville. But the painter, instead
of replying in a way that might have interested Swann, as he would
probably have done had they been alone together, preferred to win the
easy admiration of the rest by exercising his wit upon the talent of
their dead friend.
"I went up to one of them," he began, "just to see how it was done; I
stuck my nose into it. Yes, I don't think! Impossible to say whether
it was done with glue, with soap, with sealing-wax, with sunshine, with
leaven, with excrem..."
"And one make twelve!" shouted the Doctor, wittily, but just too late,
for no one saw the point of his interruption.
"It looks as though it were done with nothing at all," resumed the
painter. "No more chance of discovering the trick than there is in the
'Night Watch,' or the 'Regents,' and it's even bigger work than either
Rembrandt or Hals ever did. It's all there,--and yet, no, I'll take my
oath it isn't."
Then, just as singers who have reached the highest note in their
compass, proceed to hum the rest of the air in falsetto, he had to be
satisfied with murmuring, smiling the while, as if, after all, there had
been something irresistibly amusing in the sheer beauty of the painting:
"It smells all right; it makes your head go round; it catches your
breath; you feel ticklish all over--and not the faintest clue to how
it's done. The man's a sorcerer; the thing's a conjuring-trick, it's
a miracle," bursting outright into laughter, "it's dishonest!" Then
stopping, solemnly raising his head, pitching his voice on a double-bass
note which he struggled to bring into harmony, he concluded, "And it's
so loyal!"
Except at the moment when he had called it "bigger than the 'Night
Watch,'" a blasphemy which had called forth an instant protest from Mme.
Verdurin, who regarded the 'Night Watch' as the supreme masterpiece of
the universe (conjointly with the 'Ninth' and the 'Samothrace'), and at
the word "excrement," which had made Forcheville throw a sweeping glance
round the table to see whether it was 'all right,' before he allowed his
lips to curve in a prudish and conciliatory smile, all the party
(save Swann) had kept their fascinated and adoring eyes fixed upon the
painter.
"I do so love him when he goes up in the air like that!" cried
Mme. Verdurin, the moment that he had finished, enraptured that the
table-talk should have proved so entertaining on the very night that
Forcheville was dining with them for the first time. "Hallo, you!" she
turned to her husband, "what's the matter with you, sitting there gaping