This same ambition to be smart, this longing for social prestige, for life, had on the day of the Princesse de Guermantes’s reception acted in the manner of a suction-pump, drawing to the latter’s house with the irresistible force of some such machine even Berma’s loyalest friends, so that at the actress’s party there was, in contrast and in consequence, an absolute and deathlike void. One solitary young man had come, thinking that possibly Berma’s party might be just as fashionable as the other. When Berma saw the hour pass for which she had issued the invitations and realised that everybody had deserted her, she ordered tea to be served and the four people in the room sat down at the table as though it had been spread for a funeral feast. Nothing now in her face recalled the countenance of which the photograph, one distant New Year’s Day, had so disturbed me. Death, as the saying goes, was written all over her face, and she resembled nothing so much as one of the marble figures in the Erechtheum. Her hardened arteries were already almost petrified, so that what appeared to be long sculptural ribbons ran across her cheeks, with the rigidity of a mineral substance. The dying eyes were still relatively alive, by contrast at least with the terrible ossified mask, and glowed feebly like a snake asleep in the midst of a pile of stones. But already the young man, who had sat down only because it would have been rude to do anything else, was incessantly looking at his watch, for he too felt the attraction of the brilliant party in the Guermantes mansion. Berma uttered not a word in reproach of the friends who had deserted her and who were foolish enough to hope that she would not discover that they had been to the Guermantes’. She murmured only: “A Rachel giving a party in the Princesse de Guermantes’s house—that is something that could only happen in Paris.” And silently and with a solemn slowness she continued to eat the cakes which the doctor had forbidden her, still with the air of playing her part in a funerary rite. The gloom of the tea-party was made more intense by the vile temper of the son-in-law, who was furious that Rachel, whom he and his wife knew very well, had not invited them. To crown his indignation the young man who had come told him that he knew Rachel so well that, if he went off to the Guermantes party straight away, he could even at this eleventh hour ask her to invite the frivolous couple. But Berma’s daughter was too well aware of the low level at which her mother placed Rachel, she knew that she would die of despair at the thought of her daughter begging for an invitation from the former prostitute. So she told the young man and her husband that what he suggested was impossible. But she took her revenge as she sat at the tea-table by a series of little grimaces expressive of the desire for pleasure and the annoyance of being deprived of it by her killjoy mother. The latter pretended not to see her daughter’s cross looks and from time to time, in a dying voice, addressed an amiable remark to the solitary guest. But soon the rush of air which was sweeping everything towards the Guermantes mansion, and had swept me thither myself, was too much for him; he got up and said good-bye, leaving Phèdre or death—one scarcely knew which of the two it was—to finish, with her daughter and her son-in-law, devouring the funeral cakes.
My conversation with Gilberte was interrupted by the voice of the actress which now made itself heard. Her style of recitation was intelligent, for it presupposed the existence of the poem whose words she was speaking as a whole which had been in being before she opened her mouth, a whole of which we were hearing merely a fragment, as though for a few moments, as the actress passed along a road, she had happened to be within earshot of us.
The announcement that she was to recite poems with which nearly everybody was familiar had been well received. But when the actress, before beginning to speak, was seen to shoot searching and bewildered glances in every direction, to lift her hands with an air of supplication and then to utter each word as though it were a groan, the general reaction was to feel embarrassed, almost shocked by this display of sentiment. Nobody had said to himself that a recital of poetry could be anything like this. Gradually, however, each member of an audience grows accustomed to what is taking place before him, he forgets his first sensation of discomfort, he picks out what is good in a performance, he mentally compares different ways of reciting and passes judgment: “this is excellent, this is not so good.” But for the first few moments, just as when, in a trivial case in a law-court, we see a barrister advance, raise a toga’d arm in the air and start to speak in a threatening tone, we hardly dare look at our neighbours. For our immediate reaction is that this is grotesque—but we cannot be sure that it is not in fact magnificent, so for the present we suspend judgment.
Nevertheless the audience was amazed to see this woman, before she had emitted a single sound, bend her knees, stretch out her arms to cradle an invisible body and then, to recite some very well-known lines of poetry, start to speak in a voice of entreaty. People looked at one another, not knowing what expression to put on their faces: a few bad-mannered young things giggled audibly; everyone glanced at his neighbour with that stealthy glance which at a smart dinner-party, when you find beside your plate an unfamiliar implement, a lobster-fork or sugar-grinder perhaps, of which you know neither what it is for nor how to use it, you cast at some more authoritative guest in the hope that he will pick it up before you and so give you a chance to imitate him—or with which, when someone quotes a line of poetry which you do not know but of which you do not wish to appear ignorant, you turn towards a man better read than yourself and relinquish to him, as though it were a favour, as though you were courteously letting him pass through a door before you, the pleasure of naming the author. With just this same glance, as they listened to the actress, each member of the audience waited, his head lowered but his eyes furtively prying, for others to take the initiative and decide whether to laugh or to criticise, to weep or to applaud. Mme de Forcheville, who had come back specially for the occasion from Guermantes, whence, as we shall see, the Duchess had been almost expelled, had assumed an expression that was attentive, concentrated, almost bad-tempered, either in order to show that she was a connoisseur of the drama and had not come merely for social reasons, or to present a hostile front to people who were less versed in literature and might have talked to her about other things, or from the intensity with which with all her faculties she strove to discover whether she “liked” or “did not like” the performance, or perhaps because, while she found it “interesting,” she nevertheless “did not like” the manner in which certain lines were recited. This attitude might, one would have thought, have been more appropriate to the Princesse de Guermantes. But as the recitation was taking place in her house and as, having become as avaricious as she was rich, she had decided that her payment to Rachel would consist of five roses, she chose rather to act as claque and gave the signal for a forced display of enthusiasm by a series of exclamations of delight. And here alone could her Verdurin past be recognised, for she had the air of listening to the poems for her own private enjoyment, of having felt a desire for someone to come and recite them to her alone, so that it seemed to be mere chance that there were in the room five hundred people, her friends, whom she had permitted to come unobtrusively and share in her pleasure.
Meanwhile I observed—without any satisfaction to my vanity, for she was old and ugly—that the actress, in a somewhat restrained fashion, was giving me the glad eye. All the time that she was reciting she allowed to flutter in and out of her eyes a smile that was both repressed and penetrating and that seemed to be the first hint of an acquiescence which she would have liked to see come from me. Certain elderly ladies meanwhile, little accustomed to the recitation of poetry, were saying to their neighbours: “Did you see?,” a question which had reference to the solemn, tragic miming of the actress, which they had no words to describe. The Duchesse de Guermantes sensed the slight wavering of opinion and turned the scale of victory with a cry of “Admirable!,” ejaculated at a pause in the middle of the poem which perhaps she mistook for the end. More than one guest thought it incumbent upon him to underline this exclamation with a look of approval an
d an inclination of the head, less perhaps to display his comprehension of the reciter’s art than his friendly relations with the Duchess. When the poem was finished, I heard the actress thank Mme de Guermantes, who was standing near her, as I was myself, and at the same time, taking advantage of my presence beside the Duchess, she turned to me and greeted me with charming civility. At this point I realised that she was somebody whom I ought to have known and that, whereas long ago I had mistaken the passionate glances of M. de Vaugoubert for the salutation of someone who was confused as to my identity, today on the contrary what I had taken in the actress to be a look of desire was no more than a decorous attempt to make me recognise and greet her. I responded with a smile and a gesture. “I am sure he does not recognise me,” said the reciter to the Duchess. “Of course I do,” I said confidently, “I recognise you perfectly.” “Well then, who am I?” I had not the slightest idea and my position was becoming awkward. But fortunately, if throughout one of La Fontaine’s finest poems this woman who was reciting it with such conviction had, whether from good nature or stupidity or embarrassment, thought of nothing but the difficulty of saying good-afternoon to me, throughout this same beautiful poem Bloch had been wondering only how to manoeuvre himself so as to be ready, the moment the poem ended, to leap from his seat like a beleaguered army making a sally and, trampling if not upon the bodies at least upon the feet of his neighbours, arrive and congratulate the reciter, perhaps from an erroneous conception of duty, perhaps merely from a desire to make people look at him. “How curious it is to see Rachel here!” he whispered in my ear. At once the magic name broke the enchantment which had given to the mistress of Saint-Loup the unknown form of this horrible old woman.10 And once I knew who she was, I did indeed recognise her perfectly. “You were wonderful,” Bloch said to Rachel, and having said these simple words, having satisfied his desire, he started on his return journey—but encountered so many obstacles and made so much noise in reaching his place that Rachel had to wait more than five minutes before beginning her second poem. This was Les Deux Pigeons, and at the end of it Mme de Morienval came up to Mme de Saint-Loup, whom she knew to be very well read without remembering that she had inherited the oblique and sarcastic wit of her father. “That is La Fontaine’s fable, isn’t it?” she asked, thinking that she had recognised it but not being absolutely certain, since she did not know the fables of La Fontaine at all well and in any case supposed them to be childish things which no one would recite at a fashionable gathering. To have such a success the entertainer had no doubt produced a pastiche of La Fontaine, thought the good lady. Unintentionally Gilberte confirmed her in this idea, for, disliking Rachel and wanting to say that with her style of diction there was nothing left of the fables, she said it in that over-subtle manner which had been her father’s and which left simple people in doubt as to the speaker’s meaning: “One quarter is the invention of the actress, a second is lunacy, a third is meaningless and the rest is La Fontaine,” a remark which encouraged Mme de Morienval to maintain that the poem which had just been recited was not La Fontaine’s Les Deux Pigeons, but an arrangement of which at most a quarter was by La Fontaine himself. Given the extraordinary ignorance of all these people, this assertion caused no surprise whatever.
Meanwhile, one of his friends having arrived after the recital was over, Bloch had the satisfaction of asking him whether he had ever heard Rachel and of painting for his benefit an extraordinary picture of her art, exaggerating, indeed suddenly discovering, as he described and revealed this modernistic diction to another person, a strange pleasure of which he had felt nothing as he listened to it. Then, with exaggerated emotion, he again congratulated Rachel in a high-pitched voice which proclaimed his sense of her genius and introduced his friend, who declared that his admiration for her was unbounded. To this, Rachel, who was now acquainted with ladies of the best society and unwittingly copied them, replied: “Oh! I am most flattered, most honoured by your appreciation.” Bloch’s friend asked her what she thought of Berma. “Poor woman, it seems that she is living in the most abject poverty. She was once, I won’t say not without talent, for what she possessed was not true talent—her taste was appalling—still, one must admit she had merit of a kind: she was more alive on the stage than most actresses, and then she had nice qualities, she was generous, she ruined herself for others. And as it is years now since she has earned a penny, because the public these days loathes the sort of thing she does … But of course,” she added with a laugh, “I must admit that someone of my generation, naturally, only heard her right at the end of her career, and even then I was really too young to form an opinion.” “She didn’t recite poetry very well, did she?” hazarded Bloch’s friend, to flatter Rachel. “Poetry!” she replied, “she had no idea how to recite a single line. It might have been prose, or Chinese, or Volapuk—anything, rather than poetry.”
In spite of Rachel’s words I was thinking myself that time, as it passes, does not necessarily bring progress in the arts. And just as some author of the seventeenth century, who knew nothing of the French Revolution, or the discoveries of science, or the war, may be superior to some writer of today, just as perhaps Fagon was as great a doctor as du Boulbon (a superiority in genius compensating in this case for an inferiority in knowledge), so Berma was, as the phrase goes, head and shoulders above Rachel, and Time, when simultaneously it turned Rachel into a star and Elstir into a famous painter, had inflated the reputation of a mediocrity as well as consecrated a genius.
It was scarcely surprising that Saint-Loup’s former mistress should speak maliciously about Berma. She would have done this when she was young, and even if she would not have done it then, she was bound to now. When a society woman becomes an actress, a woman even of the highest intelligence and the greatest goodness of heart, and in this unfamiliar occupation displays great talent and encounters nothing but success, one will be surprised, meeting her years later, to hear on her lips not her own individual language but that which is common to the theatrical profession, the special brand of obloquy that actresses have for their colleagues, those special qualities which are added to a member of the human race by the passage over him of “thirty years on the stage.” These qualities Rachel inevitably had and her origin, as we know, was not in good society.
“You can say what you like, it was a wonderful performance, it had line, it had character, it was intelligent, one has never heard anyone recite poetry like that before,” said the Duchess, for fear that Gilberte should make disparaging remarks. Gilberte wandered off towards another group, to avoid an argument with her aunt, whose comments upon Rachel were indeed of the most commonplace kind. But then, since even the best writers cease often, at the approach of old age or after producing too much, to have any talent, society women may well be excused if sooner or later they cease to have any wit. Swann already in the sharp-edged wit of the Duchesse de Guermantes found it difficult to recognise the gentle raillery of the young Princesse des Laumes. And now late in life, wearied by the least effort, Mme de Guermantes said a prodigious number of stupid things. It was true that at any moment, as happened more than once in the course of this party, she could re-become the woman whom I had known in the past and talk wittily on social topics. But alongside these moments there were others, and they were no less frequent, when beneath her beautiful eyes the sparkling conversation which for so many years, from its throne of wit, had held sway over the most distinguished men in Paris, shone, in so far as it still shone at all, in a meaningless way. When the moment came to make a joke, she would check herself for the same number of seconds as in the past, she would appear to hesitate, to have something within her that was struggling to emerge, but the joke, when at last it arrived, was pitifully feeble. But how few of her listeners noticed this! Because the procedure was the same they believed that the wit too had survived intact, like those people who, superstitiously attached to some particular make of confectionery, continue to order their petits four from a certain shop without notic
ing that they have become almost uneatable. Already during the war the Duchess had shown signs of this decay. If someone pronounced the word “culture,” she would stop him, smile, kindle a light in her beautiful eyes and ejaculate: “Kkkkultur,” which raised a laugh among her friends, who saw in this remark the latest manifestation of the Guermantes wit. And certainly the mould was the same, and the intonation and the smile, the same that had once enchanted Bergotte, who for his part too had preserved the individual rhythm of his phrases, his interjections, his aposiopeses, his epithets, but with all this rhetorical apparatus no longer had anything to say. But newcomers, who did not know her, were surprised and said sometimes, unless they had chanced to encounter her on a day when she was amusing and “at her best”: “What a stupid woman this is!”
As her life drew to its close, Mme de Guermantes had felt the quickening within her of new curiosities. Society no longer had anything to teach her. The idea that she occupied the first place in it was as evident to her as the altitude of the blue sky above the earth, and she saw no need to strengthen a position which she deemed to be unshakeable. On the other hand she read and she went to the theatre, and enjoying these activities she would have been glad to prolong them; just as in the past, in the little narrow garden where she sipped orangeade with her friends, all that was most choice in the world of grand society would come familiarly, among the scented breezes of the evening and the gusts of pollen, to sustain in her the pleasure that this grand world gave her and her appetite for it, so now a different appetite caused her to want to know the reasons behind this or that literary controversy, to want to meet the authors whose books she had read, to make friends with the actresses whom she had seen on the stage. Her tired mind required a new form of food, and in order to get to know theatrical and literary people she now made herself pleasant to women with whom formerly she would have refused to exchange cards but who, in the hope of getting the Duchess to come to their parties, could boast to her of their great friendship with the editor of some review. The first actress to be invited to her house thought that she was the only one of her kind in an exotic milieu, which however appeared more commonplace to the second when she saw that she had a predecessor. The Duchess, because on certain evenings she received reigning monarchs, thought that there was no change in her social position. But the truth was that she who alone could boast of a blood that was absolutely without taint, she who had been born a Guermantes and who when she did not sign herself “La Duchesse de Guermantes” had the right to put “Guermantes-Guermantes,” she who even to her husband’s sisters seemed to be something more precious than they were themselves, like a Moses saved from the waters or Christ escaped into Egypt or Louis XVII rescued from his prison in the Temple, she the purest of the pure had now, sacrificing no doubt to that hereditary need for spiritual nourishment which had brought about the social decline of Mme de Villeparisis, herself become a Mme de Villeparisis, in whose house snobbish women were afraid of meeting this or that undesirable and of whom the younger generation, observing the fait accompli and not knowing what had gone before it, supposed that she was a Guermantes from an inferior cask or of a less good vintage, a Guermantes déclassée.