In always making sure, before I went to Mme Swann’s, that Gilberte would be away, I may have been responding not just to my determination to have fallen out with her, but as much to that hope for a reconciliation which overlaid my wish to forgo happiness (few of such wishes are absolute, at least not continuously so, one of the laws of human make-up being intermittence, which is further affected by the unpredictable recurrence of different memories) and masked from me some of its worst pain. I knew perfectly well how illusive that hope was. I was like a poor man who will wet his dry crusts with fewer tears if he imagines that a stranger is about to leave him a fortune. If we are to make reality endurable, we must all nourish a fancy or two. My hope was more unqualified, while at the same time my severance from Gilberte was more effectively achieved, if we did not meet. If I had happened to see her while visiting her mother, we might have said something irreparable, which would have made our estrangement definitive and annihilated all hope, while setting off new anguish in me, reawakening my love and making my resignation harder to bear.
Mme Swann had been saying to me for ages, since long before this falling out with Gilberte, ‘It’s very nice of you to come to see her, you know. But I’d love it if you would come to see me for a change. I don’t mean at my afternoon jamborees – there’s always too much of a multitude, and you wouldn’t like it one bit – but on any other day. I’m always here, you know, towards the end of the day.’ So when I went to her house, it appeared as though I was just belatedly complying with a request of long standing. It was in the late afternoon, sometimes after dark, at a time when my parents would soon be dining, that I set off for the Swanns’ house, where I was sure of never seeing Gilberte, but where I would think of nothing but her. In those days, in that part of Paris, which was seen as rather remote (indeed the whole city was darker then than nowadays, none of the streets, even in the centre of town, being lit by electricity, and very few of the houses), lamps glowing inside a drawing-room on a ground floor or a mezzanine, which was where Mme Swann’s receiving-rooms were, could light up the street and draw the glance of passers-by, who saw in these illuminations a manifest but veiled relation to the handsome horses and carriages waiting outside the front doors. The passer-by, seeing one of these carriages move off, might think, not without a certain thrill, that there had been a change in this mysterious relation; but it would only be because a coachman, fearing his horses might catch a chill, was taking them for a turn round the block, their hooves striking sharp and clear against the background of silence laid down by the rubber-rimmed wheels.
The ‘winter garden’, which the passer-by would also generally glimpse, whichever street the house was in, and as long as the rooms were not situated too high above the pavement, can be seen now only in the photogravure illustrations of P.-J. Stahl’s giftbooks; because of the profusion of indoor plants that people had then, and the total lack of stylishness in their arrangement, such a winter garden gives the impression, in contrast to the sparse floral ornamentation of today’s Louis XVI drawing-rooms (a single rose or Japanese iris in a long-necked crystal vase which could not contain one more flower), of having been the expression of some headlong and delectable passion among ladies for botany, rather than a frigid fixation with still life. In the large houses of that time, it brought to mind, on a much larger scale, the tiny portable greenhouses sitting in the lamplight on the morning of the 1st of January (the children having been too impatient to wait for daybreak) among the other New Year’s Day presents, the loveliest of them all because the thought of the plants you were going to able to grow in them consoled you for the bareness of the winter-time; or rather, instead of resembling these actual diminutive greenhouses, the winter garden looked more like the one you could see right beside them in a lovely book, another of the New Year’s Day presents, and which despite not being for the children but for Mademoiselle Lili, the heroine of the story,59 delighted them so much that, though they are now almost in their old age, they wonder whether in those dear days winter was not the best of seasons. The passer-by who stood on tip-toe might well see in the depths of this winter garden, through the branching foliage of the various species, which made the lamplit windows look like the panes of children’s glass-houses, real or drawn, a gentleman in a frock-coat, with a gardenia or a carnation in his buttonhole, standing in front of a lady who was sitting, neither of them very clear, as though intaglioed in topaz, amid the drawing-room atmosphere hazily ambered by the fumes from the samovar, a recent importation of that period, fumes which may still be given off nowadays but which, because of habit, nobody ever sees. Mme Swann was very attached to this tea-time of hers; she thought she was showing originality and charm when she said to a man: ‘I’m always in towards the end of the day. Do come and take tea with me,’ words to which she gave a gentle, subtle smile and a brief touch of English accent, and which her listener duly noted as he gave her his most sober bow, as though they were an important and singular message, demanding deference and attentiveness. In addition to those mentioned above, there was another reason why flowers were not mere ornaments in Mme Swann’s drawing-room, a reason that had nothing to do with the period but in part with the life which, as Odette de Crécy, she had once lived. The life of a high-class courtesan, such as she had been, being much taken up by her lovers, is largely spent at home; and this can lead such a woman to live for herself. Things one may see on or about a faithful wife, which may well have some importance for the faithful wife, are the very things which have the most importance for the courtesan. The climax of her day is not the moment when she dresses for society, but when she undresses for a man. She has to be as elegant in a house-coat or a night-gown as in a walking-out dress. Other women show off their jewels; she shares her private life with her pearls. It is a type of life which demands, and eventually gives a taste for, the enjoyment of secret luxury, that is, a life which is almost one of disinterest. This taste Mme Swann extended to flowers. Near her armchair there always stood an immense crystal bowl filled to the brim with Parma violets or the plucked petals of marguerites in water, which to the eyes of someone arriving in the room made it seem as though she had been disturbed in a favourite pastime, such as quietly enjoying the private pleasure of a cup of tea; but the spread flowers made it seem a more private pastime even than that, a mysterious one, and seemed to hint that one should apologize for an indiscretion, as one might on inadvertently glimpsing the title of a book lying open and divulging the secret of what she had just read, or perhaps even the thought in her mind at that very moment. But the flowers were more alive than a book: so notable and enigmatic was their presence that one felt embarrassed, if one came to visit Mme Swann, to find she was not alone, or if one came home with her, to find the drawing-room already occupied. They suggested long hours of her life that one knew nothing of, not seeming to have been set out in expectation of visitors, but looking as though just left there by her, after sharing intimate moments with her which would come again soon, secret moments which one was loth to disturb, but which one yearned to be privy to, as one gazed at the wanton mauves, moist and faded, of her Parma violets. By the end of October, Odette would come home as regularly as possible to take tea – a ceremony which was still known in those days by the English expression ‘five o’clock tea’ – because she had once heard it said, and enjoyed repeating, that the real origin of Mme Verdurin’s salon had been the knowledge in people’s minds that their hostess could always be found at home at the same time each day. She now prided herself on having built up a salon of her own, similar in design but freer in spirit, or as she liked to put it, senza rigore. She saw herself as a latter-day Julie de Lespinasse60 whose rival salon had succeeded in attracting away from the little set’s Mme du Deffand her most desirable men, especially Swann, who, according to a legend which Odette had understandably sown as truth in the minds of new-comers who knew nothing of her past, but not quite in her own mind, had supported her secession and been a companion to her in her retreat. But we play ce
rtain favourite parts so often for the eyes of others, and we rehearse them so much in our hearts, that we come to rely more readily on the fictions of their evidence than on a reality which we have all but forgotten. On days when she had not been out, one found oneself in the presence of a Mme Swann sitting in a tea-gown of crêpe de Chine, as white as newly fallen snow, with which she sometimes wore one of those long garments in fluted chiffon, which made her look as though she was wearing nothing but a sprinkle of pink or white petals and which people nowadays would think, wrongly, was quite inappropriate for the winter. In the drawing-rooms of that period, draped with door-curtains and over-heated, for which the fashionable novelists of the time could find no smarter epithet than ‘cosily upholstered’, these flimsy clothes in their soft shades made women look as though they must feel as cold as the roses that stood beside them, braving the winter in their flesh-tinted nakedness, as though it was already spring. As the carpets muffled all sounds and as she often sat secluded in an alcove, one’s hostess, not having been told of one’s arrival as she would be these days, might be still deep in her book as one stood before her; and this enhanced the impression of a romantic moment, the charm of having uncovered a secret, brought back to us nowadays by the memory of those dresses which, though already out of date then, were still worn by Mme Swann alone, perhaps, and which to our minds suggest that their wearer must be the heroine of a novel, since most of us have only ever glimpsed them in the romances of Henry Gréville.61 In those days, in the early winter, Odette’s drawing-room would harbour chrysanthemums, which were enormous and in a range of colours that Swann could never have seen in earlier times. No doubt my liking for them – during those sad visits I made to her, when my sorrow had given her back all the mysterious poetry of being the mother of Gilberte, to whom she would say after I had left, ‘Your young man’s been to see me’ – came from the fact that their pale pink matched the Louis XV silk of her armchairs, their snowy white her crêpe de Chine tea-gown, their burnished red her samovar, and that the decoration of the drawing-room was enhanced by this extra colour scheme, which was quite as rich in its range, just as refined, gifted with life, though lasting only a few days. But, short-lived as they were, I was touched by something more durable in these shades than their pinkish and coppery counterparts which the afterglow of the sunset spreads so gorgeously across misty late afternoons in November, when I arrived at Mme Swann’s, and which, as they faded from the sky, were taken up again and transposed into the blushing palette of the blooms. As though a master of colour had snatched their fleeting incandescence from the sunlit evening air so as to brighten a human place, these chrysanthemums at tea-time invited me, despite all my woe, to savour the short joys of November, which glowed beside me in their strange, secret splendour. Such splendour, however, was sadly lacking in the conversations going on about me. Even with Mme Cottard, and though time was getting on, Mme Swann would put on her most cajoling voice: ‘No, no, it’s not late! You mustn’t pay any attention to that clock, that’s not the right time, it’s stopped. You can’t be in that much of a hurry, surely?’ And she urged the Professor’s wife, who still held her card-case in her hand, to have another little tart.
‘Really,’ Mme Bontemps would say to Mme Swann, ‘this is a very difficult house to get out of!’ at which Mme Cottard exclaimed, in her surprise at hearing someone else say exactly what she was thinking, ‘Yes! That’s exactly what I always say to myself! Me with my little brain! In my own mind, you know …’ And all the gentlemen of the Jockey Club nodded their approval of her, much as their eager bowing and scraping had earlier given the impression that Mme Swann had done them a signal honour by introducing them to this charmless woman of no social distinction, who when faced with Odette’s fine friends was always reserved, or as she put it herself, being inclined to use inflated language to speak of the simplest things, ‘adopted a defensive posture’. ‘Well, it certainly doesn’t look like it,’ Mme Swann said in answer to Mme Cottard. ‘This is the first Wednesday for three weeks that you’ve actually come to see me!’ ‘Oh, I know, Odette, I do know! I haven’t seen you for ages – centuries in fact! I plead guilty to the charge, but I must tell you’ (and here Mme Cottard’s manner became vague and prudish, for though a doctor’s wife, she could not have brought herself to speak bluntly about rheumatism or renal colic) ‘I’ve had quite a lot of little distempers. We each have our own ones, don’t we? And as well, I’ve had a crisis in my male household staff. I’m no more of a martinet than the next woman, but I’ve just had to make an example and let the butler go. I do believe he was actually looking elsewhere for a more lucrative situation. But his departure very nearly precipitated the resignation en masse of the whole Cabinet! My maid was all set to leave too! We’ve had titanic struggles. However, I stood alone on the burning deck and, believe you me, it has taught me a thing or two which I shan’t forget in a hurry! I’m sorry to go on like this about below-stairs business, but you know how provoking it is to be obliged to undertake a thoroughgoing recasting of one’s dramatis personae. So, are we not to see that delightful daughter of yours? – No, the delightful daughter is dining at a friend’s house tonight,’ Mme Swann said; then she added as she turned towards me, ‘I understand she has written asking you to come and see her tomorrow.’ Then ‘And how are your babies?’ she asked of Mme Cottard. I breathed deeply. Mme Swann’s words, proving that I could see Gilberte whenever I felt like it, were exactly the soothing balm I had hoped to receive from her, and which made it necessary for me to keep on visiting her at that time. ‘Well no, actually,’ I said. ‘I’m going to write her a note this evening. In any case, Gilberte and I can’t see each other any more.’ I said this in a tone that suggested an air of mystery in our estrangement; and this in turn fostered in me an illusory feeling of love, which was further abetted by the affectionate manner in which Gilberte and I went on referring to each other. ‘You know she’s very fond of you, Mme Swann said. Are you sure tomorrow’s not possible?’ A sudden surge of joy went through me and I thought: ‘Well, why not? I mean it’s her mother who’s asking me!’ But my dejection returned at once. I was afraid Gilberte might deduce from my presence that my recent indifference towards her had been only for show, and I decided that the separation should continue. During this exchange, Mme Bontemps was lamenting the fact that she was afflicted by the wives of so many politicians, for she professed to think that everybody was insufferably absurd, and that her husband’s job made life very difficult for her. ‘So you don’t actually mind being exposed to fifty doctors’ wives one after the other?’ she said to Mme Cottard, who was full of good-will towards all and respect for the notion of duty. ‘Well, I must say that is heroic of you! Of course, at the Ministry, as you can appreciate, one does have certain duties. But you know, after a time, mixing with all those wives of civil servants, I can’t help it, I feel like sticking out my tongue at them! My niece Albertine is just the same! You’ve no idea how cheeky she is! Just last week the wife of the Under-Secretary of State at the Treasury was at my at-home and she was saying how useless she was at anything to do with cooking. Well, my niece gave her the sweetest smile and said, “But surely, Madame, with a father who was a scullery-boy, you if anyone should know all about it.” – Now, isn’t that a lovely story? Mme Swann exclaimed. I just love that story! But surely, Mme Cottard, on your husband’s consulting days you should make sure of having a little den of your own, with your flowers and your books and all the things you like.’ ‘Ho, ho! Albertine doesn’t mince words, I can tell you! Straight out! Just like that! And not a word to me beforehand! She’s as fly as a bunch of monkeys. You’re lucky, you know how to restrain yourself. I do envy people who can hide their thoughts. – Yes, but I don’t need to, you see, Mme Cottard replied in her mild way. I’m not hard to please. Unlike you, my position doesn’t require it,’ she added in the more emphatic voice which she used for stressing the clever little compliments she liked to slip into the conversation, the sprinkling of flattery which her h
usband admired so much and which contributed to the advancement of his career. ‘And also I enjoy doing anything which may be of use to the Professor.
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower Page 22