Moncrieff: 311-323; Clark: 215-222
by Dennis Abrams
Mme Verdurin is worried that personages that Charlus might think of as “negligible” might not be such for herself. “Mme Verdurin was beginning to feel that she had already on more than one occasion missed the bus, not to mention the enormous setback that the social error of the Dreyfus case had inflicted upon her– though it had not been an unmixed bane.” Politics and salons. “Society people who refuse to allow politics into their world are as far-sighted as soldiers who refuse to allow politics to permeate the army…but political passions are like all the rest, they no not last.” From each political crisis, with every change,”Mme Verdurin had picked up one by one, like a bird building its nest, the several scraps, temporarily unusable, of what would one day be her salon. The Dreyfus case had passed, Anatole France remained.” Mme Verdurin, the Ballets Russes, and an improvement in her social standing. After performances of Sheherazade or the dances from Prince Igor, they would go to Mme Verdurin’s, under the auspices of Princess Yourbeletieff, where “an exquisite supper brought together every night the dancers themselves, who had abstained from dinner in order to remain more elastic, their director, their designers, the great composers Igor Stravinsky and Richard Strauss, a permanent little nucleus around which…the greatest ladies in Paris and foreign royalty were not too proud to gather.” Mme Bontemps, and Mme Verdurin’s hopes for greater social status. Mme Verdurin’s lack of feeling for the death of Princess Sherbatoff: “You know, I’m bound to confess that I feel no regret at all. It’s no use feigning emotions one doesn’t feel…” Mme Verdurin earns points for her obvious “sincerity,” and her originality in admitting her lack of feeling. The Verdurins turn on the dead princess: “‘Of course, I don’t mean to say I wouldn’t rather she were still alive, she wasn’t a bad person.’ Yes, she was,’ put in M. Verdurin…’but I’ve never heard a thing against her,’ protested Saniette.” The faithful listen attentively to Mme Verdurin’s words. Mme Verdurin and her use of nose drops to keep getting bronchitis from weeping too much while listening to Vinteuil’s music. Cottard’s death is mentioned in passing. Marcel learns that Mlle Vinteuil and her friend will not be attending that evening. Morel is polite to Marcel. M. de Charlus and the old manners of France.
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The Verdurins are certainly the busy social climbers aren’t they? From Cottard and Odette to Anatole France and Mme Zola to Richard Strauss and Igor Stravinsky. Most impressive indeed.
But obviously, as we have seen, one can never turn your back on them for a second. (Dying too is obviously a betrayal.) I was taken by this:
“And the faithful listened to Mme Verdurin’s words with the mixture of admiration and uneasiness which certain cruelly realistic and painfully observant plays used to cause, and while they marvelled to see their beloved Mistress display her rectitude and independence in a new form, more than one of them, although he assured himself that it would not be the same thing, thought of his own death, and wondered whether, on the day it occurred, they would drop a tear or give a party at the Quai Conti.”
Well, we’ve seen how they reacted to the death of the pianist Dechambre, we saw today how they reacted to the death of the Princess Sherbatoff, “Why, earlier this evening he offered to put off the rehearsal, and I insisted upon having it because I should have thought it a farce to show a grief which I don’t feel,” as well as that of Cottard, “Ah, yes, there we are, he died, as everyone has to. He’d killed enough people for it to be his turn to have a bit of his own medicine.”
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And a reminder from The Guermantes Way on how the Verdurins felt about the princess, before she betrayed them by dying and missing their party. (Or, perhaps, because the princess had outlived her usefulness.)
“Since, for the last three years, as soon as she came away from the Grand Duchess, Mme Sherbatoff would go to Mme Verdurin, who had just woken up, and stick to her for the rest of the day, one might saythat the Princess’s loyalty surpassed even that of Brichot…Her want of friends had enabled Princess Sherbatoff for some years past to display towards the Verdurins a fidelity which made her more than an ordinary member of the ‘faithful,’ the classic example of the breed, the ideal which Mme Verdurin had long thought unattainable and which now, in her later years, she at length found incarnate in this new feminine recruit.”
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And finally, this from The Magic Lantern of Marcel Proust by Howard Moss:
“Two rival salons develop out of the Dreyfus case. Mme Verdurin, a Dreyfusard, is temporarily out of the running, but surrounded by her faithful ‘clan,’ she reaps an ultimate social benefit from the case:
‘Mme Verdurin, by the bond of Dreyfusism, had attracted to her house certain writers of distinction who for the moment were of no advantage to her socially, because they were Dreyfusards. But political passions are like the rest…they do not last…it was thus that, at each political crisis, at each artistic revival, Mme Verdurin had collected one by one, like a bird building its next, the several items, useless for the moment, of what would one day be her Salon. The Dreyfus case had passed, Anatole France remained.’
Odette, vaguely ‘Nationalistic’, was felt to hold ‘sound opinions’. Married to a Jew — Swann’s conversion mattered little in the Dreyfus case — she got credit for patriotism and disinterestedness:
‘Mme Swann had won by this attitude the privilege of membership in several of the women’s leagues that were beginning to be formed in anti-semetic society, and had succeeded in making friends with various members of the aristocracy.’
On opposite sides of the fence, Odette and Mme Verdurin are still two sides of the same coin. Mme Verdurin, for all her ‘liberalism’, is a firm member of her social group: ‘[Odette] was only following the example of Mme Verdurin, in whom a middle-class anti-semitism, latent hitherto, had awakened and grown to a positive fury.’
The scales are balanced: a temporary social mistake in strategy, the result of stupidity on the part of Mme Verdurin, and a social success, fired in the crucible of a convenient political tragedy on the part of Odette.”
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Wednesday’s Reading:
Moncrieff: “M. de Charlus took Morel aside…” through “…and formed a curl on his forehead.” Pages 323-335; Kindle locations: 4202-9/4346-52
Clark: “He walked away with Morel…” through “…and now formed a curl on his forehead.” Pages 223-230; Kindle locations: 4282-89/4424-27
Enjoy.
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