For the sake of variety, once we had become used to this old back road, we would make a point of driving home by another route (unless we had taken it on our way out) which took us through the woods of Chantereine and Canteloup. The invisibility of the countless birds very close at hand calling to each other among the trees gave the same restful impression as one can have by closing one’s eyes. Bound to my little folding-seat, like Prometheus to his rock, I listened to my Oceanides. And if I chanced to see one of these birds, slipping from one leaf to the shelter of another, there was so little apparent link between it and the songs that I could barely believe they were produced by that restless little body, full of surprise and lack of expression.
This road was similar to many another French road of the same kind, first a steep climb, then a long gentle downward slope. At the time, it did not impress me as having any great charm; I was just glad to be on the way home. But in later years, it did come to be a source of other joys, by staying in my memory as a starting-point giving immediate access to all similar roads which I would travel in the future, on a short outing or a longer journey, and which because of it were able to take a short-cut to my heart. For as soon as the later carriage or motor turned into one of those roads which resembled a stretch of the one I had driven along in Mme de Villeparisis’s carriage, what adjoined my then consciousness, as contiguously as though it was my most recent past, abolishing all the intervening years, was the impressions in my mind on those late afternoons, after the horses’ heads had been set towards Balbec, when we drove through the lovely smell of leaves into the rising mists and could see the sunset, beyond the next village, through the trees, looking just like one of the next wooded localities along that road, but rather too distant for us to reach it before nightfall. These impressions, mingling with the ones I would be experiencing in that other place, on that similar road, and surrounded by all the accessory feelings which were common to both states, and only by them – the sensation of breathing freely, curiosity, the enjoyment of being lazy, a good appetite, cheerfulness – would grow in volume, take on the consistency of a particular type of pleasure, almost of a way of existence, one which I seldom had occasion to revisit but within which reawakened memories blended a physically perceived reality with enough remembered, fancied, ungraspable reality for these places I was passing through to give me, not just an aesthetic experience, but a heady desire, however fleeting, to live there for ever. How often the mere breath of trees in full leaf has made me see the act of sitting on a bracket-seat opposite Mme de Villeparisis, as she acknowledges the greeting of the Princess of Luxembourg passing by in her carriage, then driving home to dinner at the Grand-Hôtel, as among those inexpressible joys of life which neither the present nor the future can ever bring back, which can be tasted once and once only!
Daylight had often completely faded by the time we reached Balbec. I would venture to quote to Mme de Villeparisis, indicating the risen moon, a fine line from Chateaubriand, Vigny or Victor Hugo: ‘The moon revealing her old secret of melancholy’ or ‘Weeping like Diana by her fountains’ or ‘The shades were nuptial, august and solemn’.31
‘You like that, do you? she would say. You think it’s “brilliant”, as you say. Let me tell you, I am for ever being surprised to see that people nowadays treat very seriously things which the friends of these writing gentlemen, whose merits they were well aware of, took plenty of pleasure in bantering them for. Words like “brilliant” and “genius” were not bandied about then as they are these days – credit a writer with mere “talent” and he thinks you’re insulting him! I can assure you I have good reason to resist the blandishments of your M. de Chateaubriand – and his moonshine. He was a gentleman who was often in my father’s house. Very pleasant to be with when there was no other company, quite unaffected, an amusing man. But no sooner would other guests come on the scene than he started his ridiculous posturing and showing off – he actually stated that he had tossed his resignation in the King’s face and directed the whole Conclave of Cardinals, forgetting that in fact he had got my father to beg the King to take him back, and that my father had overheard him make the most wildly inaccurate forecasts about the election of the Pope! No, the man to hear on the subject of that Conclave was M. de Blacas, who was more than a cut above your M. de Chateaubriand. And as for his fine phrases on the moonlight, they were one of our family jokes. Why, on nights when there was a full moon, we would take the newest guest aside and suggest he take a turn in the park after dinner with M. de Chateaubriand. Then when they came back in, my father would make a point of murmuring to the new chap, “And was M. de Chateaubriand in fine voice tonight? – Ah, yes! – And did he allude to the moonlight? – Indeed he did, but how did you know? – And did he not say the moon was revealing her old secret of melancholy? – Yes he did! But how on earth –? – And did he not also refer to the moonlight in the Roman countryside? – You’ve got second sight!” Now, of course, my father did not have any such thing, but M. de Chateaubriand was always happy to trot out the same well-rehearsed speech.’
At the mention of Vigny, she burst out laughing.
‘He was the chap that used to say, “I am the Comte Alfred de Vigny.” There are plenty of people who are counts, and plenty who aren’t – as if it mattered, for goodness sake!’
However, she may have thought it did matter a little, for she added:
‘For one thing, I’m not sure he was a count. And even if he was, he was of pretty low extraction. Just think – mentioning his “escutcheons of a noble” in his poetry! How tasteful! How intriguing for the reader! Musset was another one: a mere Parisian, if you please, yet he went on about “The golden hawk I bear upon my helmet” – no genuine noble would ever say any such thing. Mind you, at least Musset had some talent as a poet. But anything by your M. de Vigny, apart from Cinq-Mars, bores me to death – the man’s unreadable. M. Molé, who had so much of the wit and tact that M. de Vigny had so little of, gave him what he deserved, in his speech of welcome at the Académie française. D’you mean you haven’t read it? It is a masterpiece of mischievous impertinence!’
In her astonishment at seeing Balzac revered by her nephews and nieces, Mme de Villeparisis complained that he had professed to describe a stratum of society about which, ‘since it was not open to him’, he had written a tissue of implausibilities. As for Victor Hugo, she said that her father, M. de Bouillon, had friends among the young Romantics, who had managed to get him into the opening night of Hernani,32 but that he could not bear to stay till the end of the play, with its ridiculous lines turned out by a writer who was gifted but given to bombast, and who only came to be deemed a great poet as the result of a deal, as a reward for the sedulous self-interest with which he promoted the dangerous haverings of the socialists.
The hotel was now within sight, its lights, which had been so unfriendly on the evening of our arrival, now glowing with the gentle reassurance and promise of a homecoming. As our carriage neared the door, the doorman, the pageboys and the ‘lift’, standing in a body on the front steps, looking out for us, eager and ingenuous, slightly worried by our lateness, now that they too had become familiar to us, were examples of those in whom, though they change so often during our lifetime, as we ourselves change, we are soothed to see, for as long as they serve as our temporary mirrors, the faithful and friendly reflection of our habits. We prefer them to friends whom we have not set eyes on for ages, for they contain more of what we are at the moment. So as to be spared the rigours of the evening air, the outside page, having been exposed to the sunlight all day long, had been taken inside and wrapped in woollens, which among all the glass of the vestibule, along with the forlorn orangey foliage of his hair and the peculiar rose-pink of his cheeks, made one think of a hothouse plant being protected from the cold. We would get out of the carriage, assisted by many more retainers than necessary; but they had sensed the significance of the scene, and felt it incumbent upon them to play a part in it. As I was usually famished, r
ather than postpone the start of dinner, I chose not to go up to my room (which had so genuinely become mine that to stand among its long violet curtains and low book-cases was to be alone with that self which saw its own image in furnishings, as in people); and so all three of us stayed in the vestibule, waiting for the head waiter to come and tell us that dinner was served. This gave us another opportunity to attend to Mme de Villeparisis.
‘We’re imposing on you, my grandmother said.
– Not at all, I’m delighted. I find it quite charming,’ her old friend replied, with a winning smile, and descanting on a mellifluous note which contrasted with her customary plainness of speech.
The fact was that, at such moments, her manner was not natural; it was her unforgotten upbringing which spoke, with its aristocratic ways, which a great lady must display so as to impress upon commoners that she is happy to be among them, that she does not look down on them. The only deficiency in Mme de Villeparisis’s politeness was the excess of it, for it could be seen as the professional mannerism of a lady of the Faubourg Saint-Germain who, accustomed as she is to seeing in certain middle-class people the malcontents whom she is bound to make of them sooner or later, takes full advantage while she can of any opportunities to have the account-ledger of her friendly relations with them record in advance a credit balance, so that when she is debited with not inviting them to her next dinner party or reception, it shall be without qualm. So, with a keen and irresistible earnestness, and as though there were little time left for her to show how considerate she was, the spirit of the caste to which Mme de Villeparisis belonged, having long since indelibly affected her, and in its ignorance of the fact that the circumstances were now different, the people not the same and that, once back in Paris, she would be glad of our frequent presence in her house, kept prompting her into lavishing upon us, for as long as our stay in Balbec lasted, bouquets of roses, melons, loans of books, outings in her carriage and many honeyed words. In this way, not only the dazzling beauty of the beach, the bedrooms with their many-hued radiance and suboceanic glints, and the riding lessons which turned the sons of shopkeepers into godlike Alexanders of Macedonia, but also each day’s friendly overtures from Mme de Villeparisis, and even the brief, summery ease with which my grandmother accepted them, all these survive in my memory as the typical redolences of a holiday by the sea.
‘Hand over your coats, so that they can be taken up for you.’
My grandmother handed them to the manager; and because he was in the habit of being pleasant to me, I was dismayed by this inconsiderateness, which seemed to be hurtful to him.
‘I do believe that gentleman is put out, Mme de Villeparisis said. He probably thinks he’s too grand to be laden with people’s things. I remember the Duc de Nemours,33 when I was just a slip of a girl, coming to see my father – he lived on the top floor of the Hôtel Bouillon – with a big bundle of newspapers and letters under his arm. I can see the Prince as though it was yesterday, in his blue tail-coat, standing under the lintel of our front door, which had such pretty workings in the wood – by Bagard,34 I think – you know those delicate beadings, so soft that the woodworker could shape them into little bows and flowers, like ribbons tied round a posy. “Here you are, Cyrus,” he said, “here’s what your concierge gave me to bring up to you. ‘If you’re going up,’ he said, ‘there’s no point in me climbing the stairs too – but mind you don’t spoil my string.’ ” Well, now that you’ve got rid of your things, do sit down – look, have this one,’ she said, taking my grandmother by the hand, to usher her towards an armchair.
– Oh, really, if you don’t mind, not that one! It’s rather small for two people, but far too big for me. It would make me feel uneasy.
– That reminds me of an armchair, exactly like this one, which I had for a long time, but which I eventually had to be rid of, because it had been given to my mother by the ill-fated Duchesse de Praslin.35 You see, my mother, though she was quite the most unpretending person imaginable, had rather retained certain ways of seeing things which belonged to another period, and which even then I was beginning to find rather difficult to understand, and to begin with she had declined to be presented to Mme de Praslin, who was only Mlle Sebastiani-that-was, whereas Mme de Praslin, who was a duchess, took the view that it was not for her to be presented. And of course,’ added Mme de Villeparisis, forgetting that she found such social niceties rather difficult to understand, ‘had she been Mme de Choiseul proper, rather than just Mme de Choiseul-Praslin, her view might well have been able to prevail, since than the Choiseuls there are none greater – being descended from a sister of King Louis the Large, they were once true sovereigns in their ancient fiefdom of Bassigny. I must confess that we Bouillons take precedence, through our marriages and illustrious achievements, but in point of ancientness there is little difference in rank. So, that matter of protocol had given rise to certain comical incidents, such as a luncheon which was an hour late in starting, because one of these two ladies required to be persuaded that she should agree to be the one presented to the other. Despite all that, they had become firm friends, and she gave my mother an armchair of this very sort, in which, just like you, everyone was reluctant to sit. One day my mother heard a carriage arriving in the courtyard and asked of a servant lad who it was. “It’s Her Ladyship the Duchesse de La Rochefoucauld, Your Ladyship. – Fine, show her in.” A quarter of an hour later, there was still no sign of her. “So where’s Her Ladyship the Duchesse de La Rochefoucauld? – She’s comin’ upstairs, Your Ladyship. Stopped for a breather, see,” replied the servant lad, who had only recently come up from the country, it being my mother’s sound practice to acquire them there. Many a time she had known them from birth. That’s how one gets good people. And good people are the first luxury in life. So, there was the Duchesse de La Rochefoucauld painfully ascending, she being gigantic, so gigantic indeed that when she came in, my mother had a moment’s bother, as she wondered where she might seat her. That was when the armchair from Mme de Praslin caught her eye; so she moved it forward and said, “Do be so kind as to take a seat.” The Duchesse de La Rochefoucauld filled it to overflowing. Despite being, shall I say, so imposing, she was still a perfectly agreeable person. One of our family friends used to say of her, “She still makes quite an effect when she arrives,” to which my mother would reply, “She makes an even greater one when she leaves.” My mother was freer in speech than would be thought proper nowadays. But even at her own house, no one felt inhibited about chaffing Mme de La Rochefoucauld on her inordinate proportions, and she laughed as readily as anyone. Once, when my mother went to visit her, having been welcomed at the door by the husband, she said to him, not having seen the Duchesse, who was sitting in an alcove, towards the back of the room, “Oh, are you all alone? Isn’t Mme de La Rochefoucauld at home? I don’t see her. – How kind you are!” the Duc replied, he being the man with the faultiest judgment I have ever known, but one who could rise to wit on occasion.’
After dinner, when my grandmother and I had gone upstairs, I said that the qualities in Mme de Villeparisis which we found charming – tactfulness, delicacy and discretion, unselfishness – were perhaps not worth all that much, since the people who were best known for embodying them were relatively uneminent men, like Molé or Loménie, and that, though the absence of such qualities may make for some unpleasantness in everyday relations, the lack of them had been no drawback for the Chateaubriands, the Balzacs, the Vignys and Hugos of the world, men full of vanity and lacking in judgment, men whom the likes of Bloch could scoff at … My grandmother protested at the mention of Bloch, preferring to sing the praises of Mme de Villeparisis. Just as it is supposed to be a concern for the species that influences choices in love, steering fat men towards thin women and thin men towards fat women, so that the make-up of the future child may be as well balanced as possible, so it was my grandmother’s inkling of the requirements of my happiness, under constant threat from my inclination to nerves and my unwholesome te
ndency towards melancholy and aloneness, which made her stress qualities such as steadiness and judgment, peculiar not only to Mme de Villeparisis but to a social milieu which might afford me distraction and solace, a milieu reminiscent of those which, in earlier days, fostered the flowering of a spirit shared by people like Doudan or M. de Rémusat, to say nothing of a Mme de Beausergent, a Joubert36 or a Mme de Sévigné, a spirit bringing more happiness and dignity to life than were ever afforded by cultivation of the opposite tastes, which led the Baudelaires, the Edgar Allen Poes, the Verlaines and Rimbauds into sufferings and low esteem, the like of which my grandmother wished to spare me. I interrupted her with a kiss and asked whether she had noticed something said by Mme de Villeparisis which was the mark of the woman who set more store by birth than she liked to admit. In these evening conversations, I compared impressions with my grandmother, never knowing how much I should admire any person until she pronounced. I submitted to her the sketches I had done during the day of all these other people who, because they were not her, were non-existent for me. On one of these occasions I said, ‘I couldn’t live without you. – That’s not the way to be, you know, she said in an unsteady voice. We’ve got to toughen up a bit. I mean, what would you do if I went away on a journey? I would hope you’d be a good boy and have a happy time. – Well, I might be if you went away for a few days. But I’d be counting the hours till you came back. – But what if I was away for months … (the thought of it chilled my heart) for years perhaps … or even …’
A silence lengthened between us; we dared not catch each other’s eye. I was affected more by her distress than by my own. I stepped over to the window and, looking away from her, said quite clearly:
‘You know I’m a creature of habit. When I’m away from the people I’m fond of, I’m unhappy for the first few days. But then, though I still go on being fond of them, I get used to it, life goes on, undisturbed, and I could put up with being parted from them for months, or years, or …’
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower Page 38