So our departure from Paris was to be quite simple, by that 1.22 train on which, perusing the railway time-tables, drawing from it each time the excitement and almost the blissful illusion of setting off, I had doted so often that I fancied I had already taken it. As our imagination, in fixing the definitive features of a future happiness, is more influenced by the unchangingness of our desire for that fulfilment than by any accuracy in the information which we may have about it, I was sure I had a close acquaintance with this one; and I had no doubt I would feel a special pleasure in our compartment as the warmth of the day began to wane, that as we drew into this or that station I would recognize a particular feature; for this train, having always given me glimpses of the same towns, which I saw tinged by the light of the afternoon hours through which it runs, seemed different from all other trains; and, as we often do with somebody we have never seen but whose friendship we like to fancy we already enjoy, I had come to picture it as a fair artistic wayfarer, to whom I had even given a particular and constant expression, who let me accompany him on his journey and whom, having bade him farewell outside the cathedral of Saint-Lô, I would then watch as he disappeared towards the setting sun.
As my grandmother could not resign herself to ‘just’ going to Balbec, she had decided to spend a day along the way visiting a friend; but I was to travel on alone that same evening, so as ‘not to be a nuisance’ and so as to be able to make a visit the following day to the Balbec church, which we had recently learned was some distance away from Balbec-Plage,3 a fact which might make it difficult for me to go and see it once my course of sea-bathing had begun. It was perhaps less painful for me to know the grand object of my journey was now to precede the unhappy first night to be spent in the strange room which I was going to have to accept as my new home. But first it had been necessary to leave the old one. My mother had arranged to move into the house at Saint-Cloud that very day; and she had made, or had pretended to make, all necessary preparations that would enable her to go straight there after seeing us off at the Gare Saint-Lazare, without having to go back to our own house, in case I should take it into my head to go home with her, rather than set off for Balbec. She had even decided, alleging that there was too much to do in too short a time at the newly rented house, but really so as to spare me the sorrow of a last-minute leave-taking, not to stay with us until the departure of the train, that moment when the coming separation, which has lain concealed and possibly not inevitable among the preliminary bustle and haste, suddenly becomes unbearable and looms before us, impossible to elude now, concentrated into a stark and flagrant instant of impotent awareness.
I was beginning to realize for the first time that it was possible for my mother to live without me, to live for reasons unrelated to me, to lead a life of her own. She was going to live for herself, with my father, who she may have thought deserved a simpler and more enjoyable life than my ill-health and nervous disposition allowed him. This separation from her saddened me even more, as I told myself that she very likely saw it as a welcome pause in the succession of disappointments I had brought upon her, which she had never spoken of but which must have made her see the prospect of spending the holidays with me as irksome; very likely she even saw it as a first experimental step towards the future life to which she would have to resign herself, as she and my father advanced in years, in which I would see less of her, in which – and this I had never glimpsed in my worst nightmares – she would become something of a stranger to me, a lady to be seen going home alone to a house where I did not live and where she would ask the concierge whether there was not a letter from me.
I was barely able to speak to the porter who offered to carry my suitcase. My mother tried to comfort me in ways which seemed appropriate to her. Instead of pretending not to see how unhappy I was, which she knew was pointless, she bantered:
‘Dear me, whatever would the church of Balbec say if it knew we were getting ready to come and see it with such a long face? Can this be the delighted traveller that Mr Ruskin writes about? Anyway, I’ll know whether you’ve managed to keep a stiff upper lip. Even though I’ll be miles and miles away, I’ll still be with my little chap – and he’ll have a letter from his loving Mama tomorrow.
– My dear, said my grandmother, I can see you’ll be just like Mme de Sévigné, following our every movement on the map!’
My mother then tried to distract me by asking what I was going to order for dinner, admiring Françoise, complimenting her on her hat and coat, which she had not recognized as ones which, when new and worn by my great-aunt, had once filled her with dismay, the hat because it had a huge bird perched on top of it and the coat because it was overloaded with jet and ghastly designs. But my great-aunt having cast off the coat, Françoise had had it turned and its inside now showed as a fine cloth in a handsome self-colour. The bird had long since been broken and thrown out. And, just as it is sometimes strange to notice refinements which the most deliberate artist might have to strive for, in a popular song or in a single white or yellow rose blooming at exactly the right spot on a peasant’s house, so with her sound and simple taste Françoise had placed on the hat, which was now a pleasure to behold, the velvet bow and the cluster of ribbon that would have delighted one in a portrait by Chardin or Whistler.
Or to go further back in time, the nobility often given to the face of our old servant by modesty and honesty had spread to the clothes which, like the retiring person she was, a woman quite devoid of base instincts but ‘knowing her place’, she had chosen for this journey, so as to be worthy of being seen with us while not appearing to be attracting attention to herself; and Françoise, in the faded cerise material of her overcoat and the uniform pile of her fur collar, called to mind one of those depictions of Anne of Brittany painted by an old master in a book of hours,4 in which everything is so aptly matched, the feeling of the whole so evenly shared among all the parts, that the rich quaintness of the costume expresses the same pious solemnity as the eyes, the lips and the hands.
To speak of thought in connection with Françoise would have been inappropriate. She knew nothing, in the most complete meaning of ‘knowing nothing’, which is understanding nothing, except those rare truths to which the heart has direct access. The vast world of ideas had no existence for her. But to see the clear look from her eyes, the fine lines of her nose and lips, all those indications so often lacking from the faces of cultured people, in whom they would have denoted the supreme distinction or high-minded disinterest of a superlative soul, was to be touched as though by the intelligent and kind eyes of a dog, though one well knows all human conceptions are foreign to it; and one might wonder whether among our humbler brethren, the peasants, there might not be individuals who are as it were the outstanding men and women of the simple-minded world, or rather who, though condemned by an unjust fate to dwell for ever in the outer darkness of the simple-minded, though more naturally and more essentially related to higher natures than most educated people, resemble the dispersed members of the holy family, lost and mindless, close relations of the finest minds, yet who have never grown up, who, as one can see in the unmistakable light shining from their eyes on to nothing, would have required only one thing to be talented, and that single thing was knowledge.
My mother, seeing that I was on the verge of tears, said, ‘Regulus was accustomed, at moments of great consequence …5 And it’s not very nice for his dear Mama either. We’d better take a leaf out of your grandma’s book and quote from Mme de Sévigné: “I’ll have to draw on all the courage which you lack.” ’6 Then, knowing that affection for others can divert one from grief for self, she tried to amuse me by saying that she thought her trip out to Saint-Cloud would be enjoyable, that she was very pleased with the hansom she had booked, that the driver was polite and his cab comfortable. Nodding with apparent acquiescence and satisfaction, I did my best to smile at these details. But all they did was help me to imagine more graphically Mama’s departure; and I stared at her, sick at
heart, as though she was already separated from me, in her round straw hat, bought for the stay in the country, and the light frock, put on because of the long trip by cab on such a hot day, which changed her into someone else, made her belong already to the Villa de Montretout, where I would never see her.
To avoid the fits of breathlessness that the journey might bring on, the doctor had suggested that just before the train left I should drink a little too much beer or brandy, so as to be in the state he called ‘euphoria’, in which the nervous system is briefly less susceptible. I was still not sure whether I was going to comply; but I did want my grandmother to admit that, should I decide to do so, it would be in accordance with both authority and good sense. So when I mentioned it, I made it sound as though my only hesitation concerned the place where this alcohol would be drunk, the station buffet or the dining-carriage. But my grandmother’s face showed an expression of such disapproval, as though she was dismissing the idea out of hand, that I instantly resolved to have a drink, an act which had become necessary to demonstrate my freedom, since the merest hinting at it had been met with protest, and exclaimed, ‘What? You know how unwell I am! You know what the doctor’s orders are! And yet you’re trying to put me off!’
Once I had explained how unwell I felt, my grandmother said, ‘Well, go on then, quickly! Go and get a beer or a liqueur, if it’s supposed to be good for you,’ with an expression of such sorrowing kindness that I fell into her arms and kissed her again and again. The only reason why I then drank too much in the bar on the train was that I felt I might have a very severe attack, which would be even more upsetting for her. When I got back into our compartment at the first stop, I told her how happy I was to be going to Balbec, that I was sure everything would come out right in the end, that I would pretty soon get used to living apart from my mother, that this was a pretty nice train, that the barman and the other railway people were such good chaps that I would not mind travelling this way often so as to be able to enjoy their company again. All this good news did not appear to give my grandmother the same joy as it gave me. Not looking at me, she said, ‘I think it might be a good idea for you to have a little nap,’ then sat looking out of the window. Though we had lowered the curtain, it did not make an exact fit with the whole of the window-frame; and so, as a slant of sunshine slid over the polished oak of the door and the cloth of the seat (like a much more evocative advertisement for a life amid nature than those the Company had affixed to the walls of the compartment, too high up for me to read the names of the landscapes they showed), it brought in the same warm soothing glow which drowsed outside among the quiet clearings.
Now and then, when my grandmother thought my eyes were closed, I could see her glance towards me, through her veil with its thick spots, then look away, before glancing at me again in the same way, like someone attempting to practise a slight movement despite the pain it causes.
I spoke to her; but she did not appear to enjoy this. To me, however, there was a pleasure in the sound of my voice, as there was in the imperceptible internal motions made by my body. So I tried to draw them out, letting each inflection of my voice dwell at length on each word, enjoying my eyes’ way of resting on whatever it was they were looking at and gazing at it for longer than usual. ‘Look, I do think you should have a little rest,’ my grandmother said. ‘If you can’t sleep, at least read a book or something.’ She handed me a volume of Mme de Sévigné’s letters, which I opened; and then she settled down to her own book, the Mémoires of Mme de Beausergent.7 These two ladies were her favourite writers; and a volume of each of them would invariably accompany her whenever she travelled. I sat facing the blue blind drawn down on the window, holding the volume of Mme de Sévigné but not looking at it, as I was full of reluctance to move my head at such a moment and full of a vivid pleasure at remaining in any position my body happened to have adopted. To sit gazing at the blue holland seemed to me a wonderful experience; and if anyone had tried to divert my attention from it, I would not have bothered answering. In the colour of the cloth, it was not so much its beauty as the sheer intensity of its blueness which seemed to outshine all other colours which had ever met my eye between my birth and the moment when my drink had begun to have its effect, leaving them as drab and dull as they would have been for someone, once blind from birth, who remembers the darkness in which his days were spent before the operation which at last enabled him late in life to see colour. An old ticket-collector came along to check our tickets. I was fascinated by the silvery sheen of the metal buttons on his tunic. I was about to ask him to take a seat beside us. But he went on to the next carriage, leaving me full of a yearning wonder about the life of the railwaymen who, by spending their whole time on trains, must have daily opportunities to see the old ticket-collector. The pleasure I felt in gazing at the blue blind and in being aware that my mouth was hanging open began to lessen. I felt more mobile and made a couple of movements; I leafed through the book which my grandmother had passed me and was able to attend to a page or two here and there. As I read, I could feel my admiration for Mme de Sévigné grow.
It is easy to be misled by purely formal features of Mme de Sévigné’s style, which, though only the mark of her period or of life in its salons, are taken to be the real Sévigné voice by some who write things like ‘I await these news, my good woman,’ or ‘The said Count seemed to me to have much wit,’ or ‘Hay-making is quite the jolliest thing to do.’ Even Mme de Simiane fancies she takes after her grandmother.8 When she writes: ‘Monsieur, I shall have you to know that M. de la Boulie excels in health and that he is quite ready to hear tell of his own decease,’ or ‘Oh, my dear Marquis, your letter affords such pleasure! One can not desist from answering it!’ or ‘It appears to me, Monsieur, that you owe me a reply and that I owe you some bergamot-peel snuff-boxes. Here are eight of them; there will be more; never has there been such a crop! It is evidently for your pleasure,’ or when she writes in similar tone her letter about being bled, or the one about the lemons, she clearly believes these are Mme de Sévigné-like letters. But my grandmother, having come to Mme de Sévigné from the inside, as it were, through her love for her own family and her love of nature, had taught me to see the true beauty of her manner, which lies in very different things. This was soon to be brought home to me even more, as Mme de Sévigné is a great artist of the same family as a painter I was to meet at Balbec, Elstir, who was to have a profound influence on my way of seeing things. I realized at Balbec that her way of depicting things is the same as his, that is, she presents them in the order in which we perceive them, instead of explaining them by their causes. But even on that first afternoon, in the train, rereading her letter about the moonlight – ‘I could not resist the temptation, so I put on all my cloaks and coifs, which were unnecessary, and went out to the mall where the air was as fine as that in my bedroom, and where I came upon figments and fantasms, black and white monks, several grey and white nuns, raiment tossed hither and thither, men buried upright against trees, etc.’ –, I was delighted by what I would have called not much later the Dostoevsky side (for does she not sketch background as he does character?) of the Letters of Mme de Sévigné.9
That evening, having seen my grandmother to her friend’s house, where I stopped for a few hours, I once more took the train, alone this time, but at least not looking forward to an unpleasant night. For I was not going to have to spend it imprisoned in a bedroom in which I would be kept awake by the sleeping of all things round about; I was surrounded by the reposeful activity of all the train’s various movements, which kept me company, engaged me in a dialogue if I could not manage to sleep, soothed me with their noises which, as I used to do with the church-bells of Combray, I linked together sometimes in one particular rhythm, sometimes in another (fancying first that I could hear four equal semiquavers, then a single semiquaver banging violently against a crochet); and these noises neutralized the centrifugal force of my insomnia by pitting against it counter-pressures which kept me
in a state of equilibrium, and on which my motionless and soon unconscious form felt itself supported with the same impression of release and relief as I would have drawn from sleep entrusted to the wild and wakeful forces of living nature, if I could have briefly turned into a fish asleep in the ocean swell, steered by the unknowing tides, or an eagle hanging on the wings of a high wind.
Sunrises are a feature of long train-journeys, like hard-boiled eggs, illustrated papers, packs of cards, rivers with boats straining forward but making no progress. As I sifted the thoughts which had been in my mind just a minute before, to see whether or not I had slept (my uncertainty about the matter already inclining me to the affirmative), I glimpsed in the window-pane, above a little black copse, serrated clouds of downy softness in a shade of immutable pink, dead and as seemingly indelible now as the pink inseparable from feathers in a wing or a pastel dyed by the fancy of the painter. But in this shade I sensed neither inertia nor fancy, but necessity and life. Soon great reserves of light built up behind it. They brightened further, spreading a blush across the sky; and I stared at it through the glass, straining to see it better, as the colour of it seemed to be privy to the profoundest secrets of nature. Then the train turned away from it, the railway line having changed direction, the dawn scene framed in the window turned into a village by night, its roofs blue with moonlight, the wash-house smeared with the opal glow of darkness, under a sky still bristling with stars, and I was saddened by the loss of my strip of pink sky, when I caught sight of it again, now reddening, in the window on the other side, from which it disappeared at another bend in the line. And I dodged from one window to the other, trying to reassemble the offset intermittent fragments of my lovely, changeable red morning, so as to see it for once as a single lasting picture.
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower Page 29