366. Within A Budding Grove - Madame Swann At Home

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Within A Budding Grove by Marcel Proust

Madame Swann At Home

I almost left this next bit out, but then realized I couldn’t, for a reason that has nothing to do with Proust.

P380 As my choking had persisted long after any congestion remained that could account for them, my parents asked for a consultation with Professor Cottard. It is not enough that a physician who is called in to treat cases of this sort should be learned. Brought face to face with symptoms which may or may not be those of three or four different complaints, it is in the long run his instinct, his eye that must decide with which... he has to deal. This mysterious gift does not imply any superiority in the other departments of the intellect, and a creature of the utmost vulgarity... in whose mind there is nothing out of the common, may perfectly well possess it... [At first his family decides to ignore Cottard’s instructions.] Then, as my health became worse, they decided to make me follow Cottard’s prescriptions to the letter; in three days my ‘rattle’ and cough had ceased, I could breath freely. Whereupon we realized that Cottard, while finding, as he told us later on, that I was distinctly asthmatic, and still more inclined to ‘imagine things,’ had seen that what was really the matter with me at the moment was intoxication, and that by loosening my liver and washing out my kidneys he would get rid of the congestion of my bronchial tubes and thus give me back my breath, my sleep and my strength. And we realized that this imbecile was a clinical genius....

Why, obviously, I can’t let this go by without comment is that it is a concise restatement of what Clausewitz writes about the instinct for command in war. And we need to remember that Proust’s father, in fact, was a doctor, so Proust is doubly interested in this subject, first as a patient but also as the son of a doctor.

Even the “fog of war” works for medicine. Unless there’s a knife sticking into someone, we rarely know all we need to know to make an accurate diagnosis. And a too analytical doctor can get lost in test results when a decision needs to be made now. Clausewitz, too, concludes that what you want in a commander is an imbecile like Cottard with good instincts. The difference is that for war you also need a good, analytical chief of staff to implement the commander’s instincts. To trot out my hobby horse again (and rarely has that phrase from Tristram Shandy been used so aptly) it isn’t enough to have Napoleon... you need Berthier as well.

And it may be that I’m not riding my hobby-horse that far off Proust’s road after all. I just noticed this,

P332 ...With Cottard... honors, offices and titles come with the passing of years; moreover, a man may be illiterate, and make stupid puns, and yet have a special gift, which no amount of general culture can replace -- such as the gift of a great strategist or physician....

P348 My Aunt Leonie had bequeathed to me, together with all sorts of other things and much of her furniture, with which it was difficult to know what to do, almost all her unsettled estate...

So this dilemma of the middle class is not so new. We shall see that young Marcel comes up with a novel solution to the furniture problem, but in my family today there is an over abundance of old furniture which none of the younger generations have any interest in. Perhaps some clever woodworker will devise a scheme to turn old furniture into caskets so that we can at least be buried in some of it. Or maybe we could go just a little further and load a boat with furniture and belongings that no one else wants, with the corpse on top, and send it, blazing, downstream.

There is a sort of reverie about the marriage of Swann and Odette inserted into the section about entertaining M. de Norpois -- the great success of which is Francois’ cooking.

P 360 ...it might be said that if Swann married Odette it was in order to present her and Gilberte, without anyone’s else being present, without, if need be, anyone’s else ever coming to know about it, to the Duchesse de Guermantes. We shall see how this sole social ambition that he had entertained for his wife and daughter was precisely that one the realization of which proved to be forbidden him by a veto so absolute that Swann died in the belief that the Duchess would never possibly come to know them. We shall see also that, on the contrary, the Duchesse de Guermantes did associate with Odette and Gilberte after the death of Swann... The laborious process of causation which sooner or later will bring about every possible effect, including (consequently) those which one had believed to be most nearly impossible, naturally slow at times, is rendered slower still by out impatience (which in seeking to accelerate only obstructs it) and by our very existence, and comes to fruition only when we have ceased to desire it -- have ceased, possibly, to live...

This “laborious process of causation” sounds almost like he’s describing quantum waveforms, for example in the weak force.

And we get something more of use from M. de Norpois. Marcel asks if he saw Gilberte while dining with the Swanns,

P365 M. de Norpois appeared to be trying for a moment to remember; then: “Yes, you mean a young person of fourteen or fifteen?...”

This is very helpful as I have a hard time judging Marcel’s age. In so many ways he seems like a child... a younger child by maybe five years. This makes a bit more sense.

P384 ...And so it fell out that, whereas M. de Norpois, on learning that I did not know but would very much like to know Mme. Swann, had taken great care to avoid speaking to her about me, Cottard, who was her doctor also, having gathered from what he had heard Bloch say that she knew me quite well... concluded that to remark, when next he saw her, that I was a charming young fellow and a great friend of his could not be of the smallest use to me and would be of advantage to himself, two reasons which made him decide to speak of me to Odette whenever an opportunity arose,

And now we are at the point where Marcel finally gains access to the Swann home. Having finally made it into their home, he is now keen to have, if not an actual “fragment” of one of Gilberte’s plaits, perhaps a photograph of them.

P385 ...To acquire one of these, I stooped -- with friends of the Swanns, and even with photographers -- to servilities which did not procure for me what I wanted, but tied me for life to a number of extremely tiresome people.

P387 [Young Marcel enjoys a tea-party with Gilberte.] ...Gilberte did not consider only her own hunger: she inquired also after mine, while she extracted for me from the crumbling monument [an architectural chocolate cake] a whole glazed slab jeweled with scarlet fruits, in the oriental style. She asked me even at what o-clock my parents were dining, as if I still knew, as if the disturbance that governed me had allowed to persist the sensation of satiety or of hunger, the notion of dinner or the picture of my family in my empty memory and paralyzed stomach. Alas, its paralysis was but momentary. The cakes that I took without noticing them, a time would come when I should have to digest them. But that time was still remote. Meanwhile Gilberte was making ‘my’ tea. I went on drinking it indefinitely, whereas a single cup would keep me awake for twenty-four hours. Which explains why my mother used always to say: “What a nuisance it is; he can never go to the Swanns’ without coming home ill.” But was I aware even, when I was at the Swanns’, that it was tea that I was drinking? Had I known I would have taken it just the same... My imagination was incapable of reaching to the distant time in which I might have the idea of going to bed, and the need to sleep.

[Odette makes an appearance at the tea-party.] p388 ...I had not at first understood of whom Mme. Swann was speaking when I heard her sing the praises of our old ‘nurse.’ I did not know any English; I gathered, however, as she went on that the word was intended to denote Francoise. I who, in the Champs-Elysees, had been so terrified of the bad impression that she must make, I now learned from Mme. Swann that it was of the things that Gilberte had told them about my ‘nurse’ that had attracted her husband and her to me. “One feels that she is so devoted to you; she must be nice!” (At once my opinion of Francoise was diametrically changed. By the same token, to have a governess equipped with a waterproof and a feather in her hat no longer appeared quite so essential.)...

If I had now begun to explore... the fairy domain... this was still only in my capacity as a friend of Gilberte. The kingdom into which I was received was itself contained within another, more mysterious still, in which Swann and his wife led their supernatural existence... But soon I was to penetrate also to the heart of the Sanctuary. For instance, Gilberte might be out when I called, but M. or Mme. Swann was at home. They would ask who had rung, and on being told it was myself would send out to ask me to come in for a moment and talk to them, desiring me to use in one way or another, and with this or that object in view, my influence over their daughter... My new position as the friend of Gilberte, endowed with an excellent influence over her, entitling me now to enjoy the same favors... the right of informal entry into the palace... Swann, with an infinite benevolence... would make me go into his library and there let me for an hour on end respond in stammered monosyllables, timid silences broken by brief and incoherent bursts of courage, to utterances of which my emotion prevented me from understanding a single word; would shew me works of art and books which he thought likely to interest me... 

P391 [Swann and Gilberte are talking about Mme. Bontemps who is married to the Chief Secretary to the Minister of Posts.] “He’s the uncle of a little girl who used to come to my lessons, in a class a long way below mine, the famous ‘Albertine.’ She’s certain to be dreadfully ‘fast’ when she’s older, but just now she’s the quaintest spectacle.”
...
“I don’t know her. I only used to see her going about, and hear them calling ‘Albertine’ here, and ‘Albertine’ there. But I do know Mme. Bontemps, and I don’t like her much either.”

[I couldn’t leave this out, but it is a very strange thing to say.]

P394 Mme. Swann had... met with no [social] success outside what was called the ‘official world.’ Smart women did not go to her house... In the days of my early childhood, conservative society was to the last degree worldly, and no ‘good’ house would ever have opened its doors to a Republican. The people who lived in such an atmosphere imagine that the impossibility of ever inviting an ‘opportunist’ -- still more, a ‘horrid radical’ -- to their parties was something that would endure for ever, like oil-lamps and horse-drawn omnibuses. But, like a kaleidoscope which is every now and then given a turn, society arranges successively in different orders elements which one would have supposed to be immovable, and composes a fresh pattern...

P397 ...I conceived a suspicion that we had, at Combray, replaced one error, that of regarding Swann as a mere stockbroker, who did not go into society, by another, when we supposed him to be one of the smartest men in Paris. To be a friend of the Comte de Paris meant nothing at all... Princes know themselves to be princes, and are not snobs; besides, they believe themselves to be so far above everything that is not of their blood royal that great nobles and ‘business men’ appear, in the depths beneath them, to be practically on a level.


100 days of Pandemic

I’m surviving pretty well. If I could only spend a couple hours a week in a cafe working at a table that wasn’t in my little apartment, I would be completely content. But that seems as far away as ever. My local restaurants have thrown tables and chairs out on the sidewalk, so I could eat out if I wanted to, but that would involve an additional risk while having to endure cold winds or hot sun or the usual roving lunatics. I prefer to continue picking up four to six meals at a time and eating at home.

There’s a plan for opening things up even more, but so far people seem to be acting like idiots and the infection rate is going back up, so I think things are about to get worse rather than better. Internationally we continue to be Number One in cases and deaths -- over 120,000 deaths now -- but Brazil and Mexico are now hard on our heels. Brazil happens to have a leader who is even dumber than ours, so I think they have real potential to displace us as the world's basket case. I have always had a low opinion of people but even I am amazed at the general level of stupidity. This is becoming less a medical problem and more a case of the Darwin Awards Gone Wild.

Some examples of what I’m talking about: Some professional men’s tennis stars got together in the Balkans and promptly all got infected due to socializing off the court. And before you could blame it all on testosterone a women’s soccer team, getting ready to start competing in Florida, went out to a bar and the same thing happened  to them. That Trump organized an indoor election rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma doesn’t really count, because Trump. And Trump supporters.

But back to ME. I continue to do virtually all my marketing at two corner markets: The small one on my alley and a much larger one four blocks away. Though I’m about ready to hit the closest supermarket again for some staples and items I can’t find anywhere else. My pharmacy has reopened after the looting spell, so that’s nice. And my bank’s closest branch has also reopened, so I don’t have to walk as far when I do need to do banking.

Realistically, I’m probably a third of the way through this ordeal. And that’s if we are lucky. The next 100 days should be easier. I have my routine down now and everything is going relatively well. I will get increasingly bored and will need to come up with new goals, but time is tending to fly by. We are approaching a Magic Mountain sense of time. I’ve visited my closest taqueria once so far and will probably do that again if the taco truck doesn’t appear here soon. I could really use a bakery but that’s something the neighborhood lacks.

As for what’s not happening: The usual time for the Sikh Rally has come and gone. We didn’t work Juneteenth even though it was more celebrated this year than normal. Looking at my records, I see that the time for the Sumerthing concert has also past. This hasn’t been held by the sponsoring radio station for several years now, but it was one of my favorite little concerts in Golden Gate Park. The next big event, one I’ve worked every year for at least ten years, is the 4th of July Festival and Firework Display in Berkeley. 


While I like working that event, getting home at the end is not fun. First I have to walk several miles from the Marina to the street where I can catch a bus. Then there’s a long bus ride through a firework war zone to the train that will take me to another bus that will take me four blocks down the hill from where I live. It all takes forever, and at the end of eight hours of hard work. I would work it if I could, but I won’t really mind skipping this event once.

365. Some Do Not... - Part Two cont.

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Part Two

III. 

This may be my favorite section of the book, where we meet Mark and Mark, for all intents and purposes, meets Christopher.

I had forgotten one of the more brilliant instances of Christopher’s doomed luck. If his becoming the “mascot” of the Wannop family started rumors all over his world, you would have thought it would at least would have gained him credit with his father... wrong. Not only was his father put out at no longer being called on for help and advice, but we also learn, thanks to the omniscient narrator, that his father had thought of marrying Valentine himself.

P202 [Mark] “You had a cheque dishonored at the club this morning?”

Christopher said:
“Yes.”
Mark waited for explanations. Christopher was pleased at the speed with which the news had traveled: it confirmed what he had said to Port Scatho...

Mark was troubled. Used as he had been for thirty years to the vociferous south he had forgotten that there were taciturnities still... he had got into the habit of considering himself almost the only laconic being in the world. He suddenly remembered with discomfort -- but also with satisfaction -- that his brother was his brother.
...

P214 Christopher said [to Mark]:
“I doubt if liar is the right word. He [Ruggles] picked up things that were said against me. No doubt he reported them faithfully enough. Things are said against me, I don’t know why.”

“Because,” Mark said with emphasis, “you treat these south country swine with the contempt that they deserve. They’re incapable of understanding the motives of a gentleman. If you live among dogs they’ll think you have the motives of a dog. What other motives can they give you?” He added: “I thought you’d been buried so long under their muck that you were as mucky as they!”

P215 Tietjens looked at his brother with the respect one has to give to a man ignorant but shrewd. It was a discovery that his brother was shrewd. [Presumably this “Tietjens” is Christopher]

P216 ... Mark said. “You’ve got Groby to all intents and purposes...”

Christopher said:
“Thanks. I don’t want it.”
“Got your knife into me?” Mark asked.
“Yes. I’ve got my knife into you,” Christopher answered. “Into the whole bloody lot of you, and Ruggles’ and ffolliott’s and our father!”

Mark said: “Ah!”
“You don’t suppose I wouldn’t have?” Christopher asked.

“Oh, I don’t suppose you wouldn’t have,” Mark answered. “I thought you were a soft sort of bloke. I see you aren’t.”

“I’m as North Riding as yourself!” Christopher answered.
...

P220 “No. I’m coming in,” Mark said. “I want to speak with Hogarth... About the transport wagon parks in Regent park. I manage all those beastly things and a lot more.”

“They say you do it damn well,” Christopher said. “They say you’re indispensable.” He was aware that his brother desired to stay with him as long as possible. He desired it himself.
...

[They meet Valentine]
P221 ... He added: “This is my brother Mark.”

...she said to Mark:
“I didn’t know Mr Tietjens had a brother. Or hardly. I’ve never heard him speak of you.”

Mark grinned feebly, exhibiting to the lady the brilliant lining of his hat.

“I don’t suppose anyone has ever heard me speak of him,” he said, “but he’s my brother all right!”

[Valentine asks Christopher if he’s “Mrs Macmasters that is’s” lover because Sylvia told her this. Christopher sets her straight]

P223 Christopher said:
“Come along. I’ve been answering tomfool questions all day. I’ve got another tomfool to see here, then I’m through.”

She said:
“I can’t come with you, crying like this.”
He answered:
“Oh, yes you can. This is the place where women cry.” [Where casualties are posted.] He added: “Besides there’s Mark. He’s a comforting ass.”
He delivered her over to Mark.
“Here look after Miss Wannop,” he said. “You want to talk to her anyhow, don’t you?” and he hurried ahead of them....

IV

This is such a Ford Madox Ford section. There are about three pages of Mark talking with Valentine and telling her his father “wanted your mother to be comfortable... He wants you to be comfortable too. . . .” and so solving their pressing financial situation that has been causing Valentine so much stress. Then we are in Valentine’s head for thirty-two pages recalling everything from the start of the war to her recent break with Mrs Macmaster.

V

And we are still in Valentine’s head. We are now brought up to the present including the phone conversation between Sylvia and Valentine at the beginning of this Part that we didn’t quite hear. The one where Sylvia tells Valentine, “Young woman! You’d better keep off the grass.  Mrs Duchemin is already my husband’s mistress. You keep off.” It is interesting that everyone believes all the rumors about Christopher. When he is in their presence people seem to believe he’s pure as the driven snow but he’s instantly pure as the driven slush when there’s gossip.

From page 229 to page 277 it's all in Valentine's head before we finally return to where Valentine is still sitting with Mark waiting for Christopher. And now for the love scene. Ready?

P 279 ...He had led her past swans -- or possibly huts; she never remembered which -- to a seat that had over it, or near it, a weeping willow. He had said, gasping, too, like a fish:

“Will you be my mistress to-night? I am going out to-morrow at 8.30 from Waterloo.”

P280 She had answered:
“Yes! Be at such and such a studio just before twelve. . . . I have to see my brother home. . . . He will be drunk. . . .” She meant to say: “Oh my darling, I have wanted you so much. . . .”
She said instead:
“I have arranged the cushions. . . .”


90 days of pandemic social distancing

The bees have gotten about all they’re going to get out of the flowering bush outside my window. That pretty much signals the start of summer for me. The next change I see will be when the maple tree turns color in the fall. I don’t expect all that much will have changed by then. I will still be social distancing and sheltering in place for the most part. It’s going to be the strangest year of my life.

Excepting errands around the building, like doing my laundry, watering the plants, sweeping and the like, I usually only leave my apartment once a day for exercise or twice if I have to go to the market or a restaurant for takeaway. Next week I’ll be venturing all the way to the bank, which I seem to need to hit once a month.

What I miss most, (not including food) and what I fantasize about attempting if it does reopen this year, is the bank cafe. I have still not had a drop of iced tea (or alcohol) this whole time. I would so like to grab my usual iced tea -- even if it has to be in a disposable cup -- and find an isolated spot to work on some project for several hours. It is a big place with good HVAC, so this doesn’t seem impossible to me.

I can’t imagine returning to the gym. Some of my usual restaurants/cafes I probably could try again, but the calculus of risk might not be worth it. We are probably weeks away from this even being an option and if the cases and deaths continue to rise, as is likely, I may not even be able to consider this by then. 

I do keep thinking of The Magic Mountain -- which should surprise no one who has read any of my blogs. The quality of time under lockdown. The importance of food and exercise and routine and the variation of that routine. All these things from the book are now daily considerations for me. Hans had the advantage in every way. He was really only restricted to his little Alpine valley. I’m limited to my hill, but even on my hill and in my building my actions are limited. And Hans only had to wear a mask for Fasching. I have a variety of masks for different activities outside my apartment, and have been attempting -- still without any luck -- to obtain better masks for several months now.

What I most envy Hans Castorp: His five prepared meals a day. His terrace with a view of the valley. His social life, including dueling mentors. On-site health professionals. If this goes on for over a year I may need to change the order of some of these items.

VI

And another prime example of how Ford chooses to tell a story. For the tale of how Christopher spent his last evening in London before returning to France and the Great War, we start... with him returning home at half-past three in the morning and falling into a chair in the dark,

P280 ...He imagined that no man had ever been so tired and that no man had ever been so alone!...

Their night of passion has come to this,

P281 “...Our hands didn’t meet. . . . I don’t believe I’ve shaken hands. . . . I don’t believe I’ve touched the girl . . . in my life. . . . Never once!... English, you know . . . But yes, she put her arm over my shoulders. . . . On the bank! . . . On such short acquaintance! I said to myself then . . . Well, we’ve made up for it since then. Or no! Not made up! . . . Atoned. . . . As Sylvia so aptly put it; at that moment mother was dying. . . .”

When they finally get her drunk brother home he passes out on the sofa -- where she had arranged the cushions.

P283 ...He had exclaimed:
“It’s perhaps too . . . untidy . . .”
She had said:
“Yes! Yes . . . Ugly . . . Too . . . oh . . . private!”
...

...he had added: “We’re the sort that . . . do not!”
She had answered, quickly too:
“Yes -- that’s it. We’re that sort!”...

And then they are off to talk about the party at Macmaster’s that Valentine didn’t attend as she has broken with Mrs Macmaster. Where Christopher learns that Macmaster has gotten a knighthood for a bit of statistics work Christopher had done as a joke showing that the French had suffered hardly at all if you just counted the bricks destroyed and not the output of the farms, mines, and factories occupied since the war began. This marks the end of his relationship with Macmaster as they can not really stand having him around as they can’t pay back all the money Christopher loaned Macmaster to get him established. That and the fact that Mrs Duchemin that was has always hated him.

And with that whimper, we end the first volume of Parade’s End.

364. Some Do Not... - Part Two

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Part Two

P166 [Sylvia] She looked at Tietjens now with a sort of gloating curiosity. How was it possible that the most honorable man she knew should be so overwhelmed by foul and baseless rumors? It made you suspect that honor had, in itself, a quality of the evil eye. . . . 

So this brings up another aspect of this story that I intend to keep an eye on, the Stoic perspective. Christopher is for all intents and purposes the Stoic Job. Entirely honorable and yet everyone suspects him of every kind of dishonor. And he responds in good Stoic fashion by simply keeping on keeping on.

P173 [Sylvia to Christopher] “...But, oh, Christopher Tietjens, have you ever considered how foully you’ve used me!”

Tietjens looked at her attentively, as if with magpie anguish. [??]

“If,” Sylvia went on with her denunciation, “you had once in our lives said to me: ‘You whore! You bitch! You killed my mother. May you rot in hell for it. . . .’ If you’d only once said something like it . . . about the child! About Perowne! . . . you might have done something to bring us together. . . .”

Tietjens said:
“That’s, of course, true!”

“I know,” Sylvia said, “you can’t help it. . . . But when, in your famous country family pride -- though a youngest son! -- you say to yourself: And I daresay if . . . Of, Christ! . . . you’re shot in the trenches you’ll say it . . . oh, between the saddle and the ground! That you never did a dishonourable action. . . . And, mind you, I believe that no other man save one [Christ, presumably] ever had more right to say it than you. . . .”

Tietjens said:
“You believe that!”

P173 “As I hope to stand before my Redeemer,” Sylvia said, “I believe it. . . . But, in the name of the Almighty, how could any woman live beside you . . . and be for ever forgiven? Or no: not forgiven; ignored! . . . Well, be proud when you die because of your honor. But, God, you be humble about . . . your errors in judgement. You know what it is to ride a horse miles with too tight a curb-chain and it’s tongue cut almost in half. . . . You remember the groom your father had who had the trick of turning the hunters out like that. . . . And you horse-whipped him, and you’ve told me you’ve almost cried ever so often afterwards for thinking of that mare’s mouth. . . Well! Think of this mare’s mouth sometimes! You’ve ridden me like that for seven years. . . .”
...

“Don’t you know, Christopher Tietjens, that there is only one man from whom a woman could take ‘Neither I condemn thee’ and not hate him more than she hates the fiend! . . .”

So this is where I got the horse idea. I should have known if was from Ford.

Next Sylvia is talking about how Christopher should “sleep with the Wannop girl to-night; you’re going out to be killed to-morrow.”

“...I’ve been a wicked woman. I have ruined you. I am not going to listen to you.”

He said:
P174 “I daresay you have ruined me. That’s nothing to me. I am completely indifferent.”
...

“I don’t care. I can’t help it. Those are -- those should be -- the conditions of life amongst decent people...”
...

Now we come to the bit about the Groby curse and the heir of Groby which I must include.

P175 Sylvia said:
“You mean that I may bring the child up as a Catholic.”

Tietjens said:
“A Roman Catholic. . . . You’ll teach him, please, to use that term before myself if I ever see him again. . . .”

Sylvia said:
“Oh, I thank God that he has softened your heart. This will take the curse off this house.”

Tietjens shook his head:
“I think not,” he said, “off  you, perhaps. Off Groby very likely. It was, perhaps, time that there should be a Papist owner of Groby again...”
...

P176 “...I fought your influence because it was Papist, while I was a whole man. But I’m not a whole man any more, and the evil eye that is on me might transfer itself to him.”

He stopped and said:
“For I must to the greenwood go. Alone a banished man. . . . But have him well protected against the evil eye. . . .”
...

178 [Sylvia] “...Your father died of a broken heart,” she said, “because your brother’s best friend, Ruggles, told him you were a squit who lived on women’s money and had got the daughter of his oldest friend with child. . . .”

Tietjens said:
“Oh! Ah! Yes! . . . I suspected that. I knew it, really. I suppose the poor dear knows better now. Or perhaps he doesn’t. . . . It doesn’t matter.”

II

This is one of the sections that are slowly built up to where everything finally happens. Strangely though, there’s nothing I feel I need to quote.

But I did have an irresistible thought while reading this again. Keep in mind that I now have both the book and the Tom Stoppard miniseries starring Benedict Cumberbatch in my head as I read. At the climax of this scene after Christopher has been ruined by Brownie, a banker in love with Sylvia, he goes from being overdrawn for a matter of hours the previous day to having Sylvia being thwarted at depositing a thousand pounds into his account, his brother Mark offering him a thousand pounds a year, and finally Lord Port Scatho, Brownie’s uncle and the head of the bank, saying Christopher can draw on his personal account. 

So it seems to me that they could have done one take of this scene in which Cumberbatch reacts to all this by yelling “I’m rich!” and running out of the room. Then one take of the subsequent scene with Mark and Valentine could be shot with Cumberbatch holding bags of candy and with chocolate smeared on his face. If nothing else it would be the hit of the blooper reel.

363. Some Do Not... Part One cont.

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Some Do Not... 

V

We get Mrs Duchemin and Valentine in conversation before the “breakfast.”

P 81 Miss Wannop said:
“Wait a minute. I haven’t finished. I want to say this: I never talk about that stage of my career [when she was in service after her father died] because I’m ashamed of it. I’m ashamed of it because I think I did the wrong thing, not for any other reason. I did it on impulse and I stuck to it out of obstinacy. I mean it would probably have been more sensible to go round with the hat to benevolent people, for the keep of mother and to complete my education. But if I’ve inherited the Wannop ill-luck, we’ve inherited the Wannop pride. And I couldn’t do it...”

Couldn’t this be said of Christopher as well? About the pride?

P83 “...I could harangue the whole crowd when I got them together. But speak to one man in cold blood I couldn’t. . . . Of course I did speak to a fat golfing idiot with bulging eyes, to get him to save Gertie. But that was different.”

Great way to have the love interest describe her future mate.

...

“Oh, the right man!”Miss Wannop said. “Thanks for tactfully changing the subject. The right man for me, when he comes along, will be a married man. That’s the Wannop luck!”

Christopher, upon first properly seeing Valentine at breakfast, and after having learned the evening before that half the world thinks her his mistress.

P88 “By Jove . . .” he said to himself: “It’s true! What a jolly little mistress she’d make!”
...

...He looked back at Miss Wannop [after dismissing Mrs Duchemin], and considered that she would make a good wife for Macmaster; Macmaster liked bouncing girls and this girl was quite lady enough.

What’s funny about this is that Macmaster, when first meeting Mrs Duchemin, was pairing her with Christopher. 

I don’t quite understand Mrs Duchemin’s instant antipathy towards Christopher. It’s important for the plot of the story, but you’d think a person would tend to make allowances for the best friend of the person they’re falling in love with.

VI

This is the part I’ve been waiting for.

P109 [Mrs Wannop to Christopher] “My dear boy!” she said, “My dear boy; it’s such a satisfaction to have you under my roof!” [They are in fact on the road to her house.]

The black horse reared on end, the patriarch [I have no idea. A type of bit?] sawing at its mouth. Mrs. Wannop said unconcernedly: “Stephen Joel! I haven’t done talking.”

Tietjens was gazing enraged at the lower part of the horse’s sweat-smeared stomach.

“You soon will have,” he said, “with the girth in that state. Your neck will be broken soon.”
..

P110 Tietjens addressed the driver with some ferocity:

“Here; get down, you,” he said. He held himself the head of the horse whose nostrils were wide with emotion; it rubbed its forehead almost immediately against his chest. He said: “Yes! Yes! There! There!” It’s limbs lost their tauntness. The aged driver scrambled down from the high seat... Tietjens fired indignant orders at him:

“Lead the horse into the shade of the tree. Don’t touch his bit: his mouth’s sore... blast you, don’t you see you’ve got a thirteen hands pony’s harness for a sixteen and a half hands horse. Let the bit out three holes: it’s cutting the animal’s tongue in half...”

“Loosen that bit, confound you,” he said to the driver. “Ah! You’re afraid.”

He loosened the bit himself, covering his fingers with greasy harness polish which he hated...

... He stood back and looked at the horse: it had dropped its head and lifted its near hind foot, resting the toe on the ground: an attitude of relaxation.

“He’ll stand now!” he said. He undid the girth, bending down uncomfortably, perspiring and greasy; the girth strap parted in his hand.
...

P112 ...This fellow hasn’t been swindling you. He’s got you deuced good value for money, but he doesn’t know what’s suited for ladies; a white pony and a basket-work chaise is what you want.”
“Oh, I like a bit of spirit,” Mrs Wannop said.
“Of course you do,” Tietjens answered: “but this turn-out’s too much.”
...

[To the driver] ...”You did damn well. Only you’re not what you were, are you, at thirty? And the horse looked to be a devil and the cart so high you couldn’t get out once you were in. And you kept it in the sun for two hours waiting for your mistress.”

“There wer’ a bit o’ lewth ‘longside stable wall,” the driver muttered.

“Well! He didn’t like waiting,”...

P112 Tietjens addressed Miss Wannop:
“What hands your mother’s got.” he said, “it isn’t often one sees a woman with hands like that of a horse’s mouth...”

“I suppose you think that’s a mighty fine performance,” she said. 

“I didn’t make a very good job of the girth,” he said. “Let’s get off this road.”

“Setting poor, weak women in their places,” Miss Wannop continued. “Soothing the horse like a man with a charm. I suppose you soothe women like that too. I pity your wife. . . . The English country male! And making a devoted vassal at sight of the handy-man, The feudal system all complete. . .”
...

...”I’m sorry I was rude to you. But it is irritating to have to stand like a stuffed rabbit while a man is acting like a regular Admirable Crichton, and cool and collected, with the English country gentleman air and all.”

Tietjens winced, The young woman had come a little too near the knuckle of his wife’s frequent denunciations of himself. And she exclaimed:

“No! That’s not fair!I’m an ungrateful pig! You didn’t show a bit more side really than a capable workman must who’s doing his job in the midst of a crowd of duffers...”

So. There will be more, much more, but here we have Christopher and horses vs Christopher and women. He sees horses and knows how to care for them. And his line about this being too much horse for their needs applies to Sylvia and himself. What he needs is what he says Mrs Wannop needs, a “white pony.” In other words Valentine.

So we are at the point in this story where in Pride and Prejudice we first see that Darcy and Elizabeth are made for each other. Or maybe we are at the point where Darcy realizes this but is so struggling with his pride that he can only offend Elizabeth. Alas, I don’t think Valentine ever does see Groby.

VII

P124 Jumping down from the high step of the dog-cart the girl completely disappeared into the silver... she was gone more completely than if she had dropped into deep water, into snow... Here there had been nothing.

The constation interested him...  


P125 He would have asked: “Are you all right?” but to express more concern than the “look out.” which he had expended already, would have detracted from his stolidity. He was Yorkshire and stolid; she south country and soft, emotional, given to such ejaculations as “I hope you’re not hurt,” when the Yorkshireman only grunts...

He returned to his constations of the concealing effect of water vapour...

P142 [Christopher to Campion after Campion’s car has injured the horse in the fog] “Go away,” he said, “say what you like. Do what you like! But as you go through Rye send up the horse-ambulance from the vet.’s. Don’t forget that. I’m going to save this horse. . . .”

“You know Chris,” the General said, “you’re the most wonderful hand with a horse . . . There isn’t another man in England . . .”

“I know it,” Tietjens said. “Go away. And send up that ambulance...”


Day 83 of the pandemic 

I haven’t written for a while. Chaotic times. Now the pandemic has been pushed aside by another Black Lives Matter moment. It does surprise me that Minneapolis is so often behind these episodes. It could be anywhere, given the racism in America, so I guess Minnesota is as good a trigger point as any. I have friends in the neighborhood where Mr Floyd was murdered so I've been following events as well as I can at this remove.

At any rate, the protests are still going on here and around the country, though the looting seems to have stopped locally. The shopping district below me was hard hit and I lost my drugstore. But here on the hill the only change has been more windows boarded up, just as the plywood was starting to come down for the pandemic. We have been stuck at 43 deaths from COVID-19 for quite some time now -- which is good. But the expectation is that the numbers may start going up as a result of the crowding at protests. We shall see. 

I’ve now made two attempts to buy better face masks online and have nothing to show for it. One online vendor’s system died even before we got to the credit card information. The other seemed to work, but I canceled the purchase after a couple weeks passed with no goods and no response to my inquiries. This isn’t a problem now but it may become a problem when things start to open up again, possibly later this month.

In other pandemic news, the big three when it comes to daily deaths are now the USA, Brasil, and Mexico. The published numbers for several countries are rather suspicious. Mexico has a surprisingly low number of cases for the death rate, no doubt because they aren’t doing much testing. Russia has a huge number of cases but few deaths, I imagine a comparison of year to year deaths will tell a different tale. The USA is up to 111,000 confirmed COVID-19 deaths and still going strong at around a thousand a day. 250,000 before the election still looks like a reasonable number.

362. Some Do Not. . . - Introduction, Part One

Link to Table of Contents

Parade’s End

by Ford Madox Ford, 1924-1928

Introduction by Robie Macauley

I had to go to Wiki to learn who Robie Macauley was. 


An interesting life. He was responsible for the great writing I enjoyed in Playboy back in the ‘60s and then went to Houghton Mifflin when I was in the retail book business. But as much as I would like to praise him here, I can’t really say much for his introduction. I’m sure it is fine and probably contains insights I’m overlooking, but he doesn’t help me understand the political or religious aspects of the work. Like what Ford means by “Tory” and to what extent Chrisopher is a Protestant Christ figure. And Macauley may be a generation too late to grasp the significance of horses in the work, especially with regard to Sylvia and Valentine. This reading, we will see if that insight really holds up.

Interesting to note that the last volume of In Search of Lost Time was published before the last volume of Parade's End. I wouldn't have guessed that.

Some Do Not. . .

by Ford Madox Ford


Part One

P10 The hansom ran through nearly empty streets, it being very early for the public official quarters. The hoofs of the horse clattered precipitately. Tietjens preferred a hansom, horses being made for gentlefolk...
...

P11 When he paid the cabman, in front of a grey cement portal with a gabled arch, reaching up, he said:

‘You’ve been giving the mare less licorice in her mash. I told you she’d go better.’

P12 “The cabman, sith a scarlet, varnished face, a shiny hat, a drab box-cloth coat and a gardenia in his buttonhole, said:
‘Ah! Trust you to remember , sir.’

P14 ...he [Macmaster] hadn’t got over that morning. He had looked up from his coffee cup -- over the rim -- and had taken in a blue-grey sheet of notepaper in Tietjen’s fingers [the letter from Sylvia asking to be taken back], shaking, inscribed in the large broad-nibbed writing of that detestable harridan. And Tietjens had been staring -- staring with the intentness of a maddened horse -- at his, Macmaster’s, face...

P15 He could still feel the blow, physical, in the pit of his stomach! He had thought Tietjens was going mad: that he was mad. It had passed. Tietjens had assumed the mask of his indolent, insolent self...

II

Here we are introduced to Sylvia’s mother, Mrs Satterthwaite, and Father Consett and we first meet Sylvia. Sylvia is presented as utterly hateful but not all that different from her mother when it comes to men. But there’s nothing here about horses so I’m not going to bother quoting... but this would be a good section to reread after finishing the work as there is a huge amount of foreshadowing.

III

Had forgotten that Christopher and I share a dislike for the game of golf.

IV


This is where we learn that everyone already believes Christopher is cheating on Sylvia with Valentine, even though they hadn’t yet met. Since I read that Ford was a fan of Jane Austen, I now see in this the seeming inevitability in many of Austen’s novels. The couples are usually obvious, the question is how will it come about. (I was only able to finish Mansfield Park because I couldn’t see how it was going to end, not realizing how different attitudes were back then towards first cousins marrying.) The difference here is the problem is entirely Christopher's. Or Christopher. It could all be resolved in a chapter or two if Christopher weren’t so much who he is. It’s really a wonder that Valentine doesn’t end up hating him as much as Sylvia does.

361. Swann's Way - Place-names: The Name

Link to Table of Contents

Place-names: The Name

And now we return to our narrator, Marcel, who is keen on visiting either the storm tossed shore at Balbec or else the cities of northern Italy. 

P298 “...even from the point of view of mere quantity, in our life the days are not equal. To reach the end of a day, natures that are slightly nervous, as mine was, make use, like motor-cars, of different ‘speeds.’ There are mountainous, uncomfortable days, up which one takes an infinite time to pass, and days downward sloping, through which one can go full tilt singing as one goes. During this month -- in which I went laboriously over, as though over a tune... these visions of Florence, Venice, Pisa, from which the desire that they excited in me drew and kept something as profoundly personal as if it had been love, love for another person -- I never ceased to believe that they corresponded to a reality independent of myself, and they made me conscious of as glorious a hope as could have been cherished by a Christian in the primitive age of faith, on the eve of his entry into Paradise. Moreover, without my paying any heed to the contradiction that there was in my wishing to look at and to touch with my organs of sense what had been elaborated by the spell of my dreams and not perceived by my senses at all...”

Young Marcel then gets so worked up at the realization that he is actually going to Italy that,

P299 “I could feel at work within me a miraculous disincarnation; it was at once accompanied by that vague desire to vomit which one feels when one has a very sore throat; and they had to put me to bed with a fever so persistent that the doctor not only assured my parents that a visit, that spring, to Florence and Venice was absolutely out o the question, but warned them that, even when I should have completely recovered, I must, for at least a year, give up all idea of travelling, and be kept from anything that was liable to excite me.

P300 “And, alas, he forbade also, most categorically, my being allowed to go to the theater, to hear Berma... My parents had to be content with sending me, every day, to the Champs-Elysees, in the custody of a person who would see that I did not tire myself; this person was none other than Francoise, who had entered our service after the death of my aunt Leonie. Going to the Champs-Elysees I found unendurable. If only Bergotte had described the place in one of his books, I should, no doubt, have longed to see and to know it... but in this public garden there was nothing that attached itself to my dreams.”


Before we get to Gilberte, I went to Google Map to see where the Champs-Élysées is and found some things of interest for this section about names. A few things Proust would not have remembered: Avenue du General Eisenhower, Avenue Winston Churchill, Voie Georges Pompidou, Avenue FDR, and running through the middle of the formal gardens, Allee Marcel Proust. There are also statues of Clemenceau and of de Gaul.

When I visited Paris I recall spending a fair amount of time in the Tuileries Garden but I don’t know that I ever made it across Place de la Concorde to these gardens. I don’t think I had read Proust at that point.

While this is hardly a surprise, it is still shocking to scroll around Paris in Google Map and see “Temporarily closed” next to almost everything.

I had forgotten that we immediately go to Marcel singing Swann’s tune in his own, much younger voice. Marcel runs into Gilberte while both are playing in the Champs-Élysées and soon his life revolves around her.

P305 “...although I no longer thought, now, of anything save not to let a single day pass without seeing Gilberte (so much so that once, when my grandmother had not come home by dinner-time, I could not resist the instinctive reflection that, if she had been run over in the street and killed, I should not for some time be allowed to play in the Champs-Élysées; when one is in love one has not love left for anyone), yet those moments which I spent in her company, for which I had waited with so much impatience all night and morning, for which I had quivered with excitement, to which I would have sacrificed everything else in the world, were by no means happy moments... I could not discover in them one atom of pleasure. All the time that I was away from Gilberte, I wanted to see her... But at the period when I was in love with Gilberte, I still believed that Love did really exist, apart from ourselves...
...

“Another time, being still obsessed by the desire to hear Berma in classic drama, I had asked her whether she had not a copy of a pamphlet in which Bergotte spoke of Racine, and which was now out of print...that evening I had sent her a little telegram, writing on its envelope the name, Gilberte Swann, which I had so often traced in my exercise-books. Next day she brought me in a parcel tied with pink bows and sealed with white wax, the pamphlet, a copy of which she had managed to find... But in the address on the pneumatic message -- which, only yesterday, was nothing, was merely a ‘little blue’ that I had written, and, after a messenger had delivered it to Gilberte’s porter and a servant had taken it to her in her room, had become a thing without value or distinction, one of the ‘little blues’ that she had received in the course of the day -- I had difficulty in recognizing the futile, straggling lines of my own handwriting beneath the circles stamped on it at the post-office, the inscriptions added in pencil by a postman, signs of effectual realization, seals of the external world, violet bands symbolical of life itself, which for the first time came to espouse, to maintain, to raise, to rejoice my dream. ”

Doing a little research on ‘little blues’ I found THIS.

Young Marcel is now torn between his need to declare his love for Gilberte and to hear her say she loves him. I’m guessing they are about nine. I would laugh, but if I were to have a “Madeleine” moment, what I wouldn’t want would be for it to take me back to Valentine’s Day when I was in elementary school. I don’t recall the details now, but there was always some girl or other I had a crush on and I struggled with how much to say. This was especially fraught as this was likely the only day of the year she might be aware of my existence. And nothing ever came of it. Every few years some little girl would feel the need to kiss me, but they were never the girls I was interested in. I did eventually learn to kiss in this manner, but it never led to romance.

We are now at the point where M. Swann is reintroduced to the story after a long interval, measured primarily by the age of Gilberte.

P 310 “He [Swann] responded politely to the salutations of Gilberte’s companions, even to mine, for all that he was no longer on good terms with my family, but without appearing to know who I was. (This reminded me that he had constantly seen me in the country; a memory which I had retained, but kept out of sight, because, since I had seen Gilberte again, Swann had become pre-eminently her father, and no longer the Combray Swann; as the ideas which, nowadays, I made his name connote were different from the ideas in the system of which it was formerly comprised, which I utilized not at all now when I had occasion to think of him, he had become a new, another person; still I attached him by an artificial thread, secondary and transversal, to our former guest...)

“On one of these sunny days which had not realized my hopes, I had not the courage to conceal my disappointment from Gilberte.

“‘I had ever so many things to ask you,’ I said to her; ‘I thought that today was going to mean so much in our friendship. And no sooner have you come than you go away! Try to come early to-morrow, so that I can talk to you.’

“Her face lighted up and she jumped for joy as she answered: ‘To-morrow you may make up your mind, my dear friend, I sha’n’t come! First of all I’ve a big luncheon-party; then in the afternoon I am going to a friend’s house to see King Theodosious arrive from her windows; won’t that be splendid? -- and then, next day, I’m going to Michel Strogoff, and after that it will soon be Christmas, and the New Year holidays! Perhaps they’ll take me south, to the Riviera; won’t that be nice?... if I do stay in Paris, I sha’n’t be coming here, because I shall be out paying calls with Mamma. Good-bye -- there’s Papa calling me.’”
...

P312 “Every evening I would beguile myself into imagining this letter [from Gilberte explaining her seeming indifference and how she actually loved him], believing that I was actually reading it, reciting each of its sentences in turn. Suddenly I would stop, in alarm. I had realized that, if I were to receive a letter from Gilberte, it could not, in any case, be this letter, since it was I myself who had just composed it... I would strive to keep my thoughts clear of the words which I should have liked her to write to me, from fear lest, by first selecting them myself, I should be excluding just these identical words... from the field of possible events...
...


“As for Bergotte, that infinitely wise, almost divine old man, because of whom I had first, before I had even seen her, loved Gilberte, now it was for Gilberte’s sake, chiefly, that I still loved him...”

P316 [His mother reports on running into Swann while shopping] “‘...He asked after you; he told me you had been playing with his daughter --’ my mother went on, amazing me with the portentous revelation of my existence in Swann’s mind...”
...

P318 “But most of all, on days when I was not to see Gilberte, as I had heard that Mme. Swann walked almost every day along the Allee des Acacias, round the big lake, and in the Allee de la Reine Marguerite, I would guide Francoise in the direction of the Bois de Boulogne.”

The book ends with much more about Mme. Swann cruising the Bois and with the narrator’s return many years later when the coaches have been replaced by motor-cars and the women’s hats have grown ridiculous. Even the residential neighborhood has gone to pot. Change is never agreeable to the people who came of age in a different era. Of course what older people of today mean by “the good old days” followed this sad decline by at least a generation. We do love to complain.


And now, on to Some Do Not.

360. Swann In Love - part 4

Link to Table of Contents

The Last of Swann In Love

Well, I spoke a little too soon. We are still deep in Swann's affair with Odette. There’s an Odette passage here I can’t ignore. This is while Swann is giving Odette an ultimatum about not going to the theater with the Verdurins and staying with him instead.

P223 “Meanwhile, Odette had shewn signs of increasing emotion and uncertainty. Although the meaning of his tirade was beyond her, she grasped that it was to be included among the scenes of reproach or supplication, scenes which her familiarity with the ways of men enabled her, without paying any heed to the words that were uttered, to conclude that men would not make unless they were in love; that, from the moment when they were in love, it was superfluous to obey them, since they would only be more in love later on. And so, she would have heard Swann out with the utmost tranquility had she not noticed that it was growing late, and that if he went on speaking for any length of time she would ‘never’ as she had told him with a fond smile... ‘get there in time for the Overture.’”


Day 65 of Pandemic Shelter in Place. By my count. Every day there seem to be even more bees in the bush out my kitchen window. The bush overhangs our deck and I’ve wanted to trim it back for months, but I remembered how the bees love it, so I’m waiting until it stops flowering. The problem is that when the tiny flowers have done their job they fall apart and the debris falls on the deck where it doesn’t do anyone any good.

We’ve been having some May rain. Unusual but it does happen. It’s good in that it pushes our fire season back a few weeks, but otherwise doesn’t amount to much.

Now that we’re past mid-May and the COVID-19 curve is flattened and the numbers in some cases are coming down, people are starting to open up the economy again. I think this is inevitable. Already the damage done to San Francisco alone is almost unfathomable. I will have to be more careful as the city around me gets less careful, but taking a year off from business would just be too costly. San Francisco is stuck at 36 known COVID-19 related fatalities, which is about as good as we could have hoped for back in March. I’ve already decided that once things start to open up a bit, I will give in and join Amazon Prime so I can shop Whole Foods online and have it delivered. It’s been interesting eating what I can eat at my local markets, and I like supporting them, but I’m not eating as well, and I think shopping at places like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s will soon be more dangerous than it is now. Now I just need to find a supply of better face mask/respirators.


Day 68 - As I walked my steep hike today I was doing a little corporate archaeology. Most of the telephone utility covers in the sidewalks were branded Pacific Bell, but I also found a more recent AT&T and a single SBC. The remaining covers were the even older Bell System survivors.


P236 “...his love extended a long way beyond the province of physical desire. Odette’s person, indeed, no longer held any great place in it... And this malady, which was Swann’s love, had so far multiplied, was so closely interwoven with all his habits, with all his actions, with his thoughts, his health, his sleep, his life, even with what he hoped for after death, was so entirely one with him that it would have been impossible to wrest it away without almost entirely destroying him; as surgeons say, his case was past operation.”

Love is a malady to Swann and Marcel. You can’t really envy them the success they have in love as it seems to take them over like a cancer. And since we are graced with an omniscient narrator here and get Odette’s perspective as well as Swann’s, The object of Swann’s affection is not really all that impressed with his love. It is certainly good for business, but, this reading, I’m finding it hard to disagree with Swann’s middle class neighbors back in Cambray. It is indeed an unfortunate marriage, or will be.


P237 “...Once when, because it was the birthday of the Princesse de Parme... he had decided to send her a basket of fruit, and was not quite sure where or how to order it, he had entrusted the task to a cousin of his mother who, delighted to be doing a commission for him, had written to him laying stress on the fact that she had not chosen all the fruit at the same place, but the grapes from Crapote, whose specialty they were, the strawberries from Jauret, the pears from Chevet, who always had the best, and soon, ‘every fruit visited and examined, one by one, by myself.’ And in the sequel, by the cordiality with which the Princess thanked him, he was able to judge of the flavor of the strawberries and of the ripeness of the pears. But, most of all, that ‘every fruit visited and examined, one by one, by myself’ had brought balm to his sufferings by carrying his mind off to a region which he rarely visited, although it was his by right, as the heir of a rich and respectable middle-class family in which had been handed down from generation to generation the knowledge of the ‘right places’ and the art of ordering things from shops.”


Day 69 - I managed to get one of the things I most crave during Shelter In Place, a good San Francisco burrito. Weeks ago I rejected the idea of walking down into the Tenderloin to my usual favorite taqueria, but today there was a taqueria food truck parked a block away so I jumped at the opportunity. This has the potential to be a protracted Good luck, Bad luck, Who knows? Series, but it is at least starting off well.

The plumber, who I had reservations about calling for a very minor problem, was running late so I decided to take my walk at an unusual time, the Noon hour. While walking I noticed the food truck parked in front of a large apartment building a block away from me. I had to go home to get money, but I returned and ordered my burrito. It was good and big. Not as good as Cancun, but it answered my craving. 

Of course if I get sick in around a week, I will have to wonder if this is the reason why. But then again, catching COVID-19 could itself be either a good or bad thing. Worst case I die in a very San Francisco way. Recently I’ve been rating San Francisco deaths and 1. Is being hit by cable car; 2. Is dying as a result of climbing a hill -- as the Emperor Norton died; and 3. Could be as a result of eating a classic SF burrito. Dying in an earthquake may trump all of these, but that’s not something that can happen very often.

We’ve finally made it to the “evening” at the Marquise de Saint-Euverte’s, when we are first introduced to Paris society. If I started quoting here it would be hard to stop, so I’m going to skip even our introduction to Oriane, at this point still the Princesse des Laumes -- not counting that mention of her earlier in the section -- and go to where the evening returns to Swann’s story.

P264 “...Swann saw that he could now not go before the end of the new number. He suffered greatly from being shut up among all these people whose stupidity and absurdities wounded him all the more cruelly since, being ignorant of his love... they made it appear to him in the aspect of a subjective state which existed for himself alone...

“But suddenly it was as though she had entered, and this apparition tore him with such an anguish that his hand rose impulsively to his heart. What had happened was that the violin had risen to a series of high notes, on which it rested as though expecting something, an expectancy which it prolonged without ceasing to hold on to the notes, in the exaltation with which it already saw the expected object approaching, and with a desperate effort it continued until its arrival, to welcome it before itself expired, to keep the way open for a moment longer, with all its remaining strength, that the stranger might enter in, as one holds a door open that would otherwise automatically close. And before Swann had time to understand what was happening, to think: ‘It is the little phrase from Vinteuil’s sonata. I mustn’t listen!’, all his memories of the days when Odette had been in love with him, which he had succeeded, up till that evening, in keeping invisible in the depths of his being, deceived by this sudden reflection of a season of love, whose sun, they supposed, had dawned again, but awakened from their slumber, had taken wing and risen to sing maddeningly in his ears, without pity for his present isolation, the forgotten strains of happiness.

P265 “In place of the abstract expressions ‘the time when I was happy,’ ‘the time when I was loved,’ which he had often used until then, and without much suffering, for his intelligence had not embodied in them anything of the past save fictitious extracts which preserved none of the reality, he now recovered everything that had fixed unalterably the peculiar, volatile essence of that lost happiness; he could see it all... At that time he had been satisfying a sensual curiosity to know what were the pleasures of those people who live for love alone. He had supposed that he could stop there, that he would not be obliged to learn their sorrows also...

P267 “He felt that he was no longer in exile and alone since she [the little phrase], who addressed herself to him, spoke to him in a whisper of Odette... in that distant time, he had divined an element of suffering in its smile, in its limpid and disillusioned intonation, to-night he found there rather the charm of a resignation that was almost gay. Of those sorrows, of which the little phrase had spoken to him then... it seemed to say to him... ‘What does all that matter; it is all nothing.’ And Swann’s thoughts were borne for the first time on a wave of pity and tenderness towards that Vinteuil, toward that unknown, exalted brother who also must have suffered so greatly; what could his life have been? From the depths of what well of sorrow could he have drawn that god-like strength, that unlimited power of creation?

“...But ever since, more than a year before, discovering to him many of the riches of his own soul, the love of music had been born, and for a time at least had dwelt in him, Swann had regarded musical motifs as actual ideas, of another world, of another order, ideas veiled in shadows, unknown, impenetrable by the human mind, which none the less were perfectly distinct one form another... Perhaps it is not-being that is the true state, and all our dreams of life is without existence; but, if so, we feel that it must be that phrases of music, these conceptions which exist in relation to our dream, are nothing either. We shall perish, but we have for our hostages these divine captives who shall follow and share our fate. And death in their company is something less bitter, less inglorious, perhaps even less certain.”
...

P270 “From that evening, Swann understood that the feeling which Odette had once had for him would never revive, that his hopes of happiness would not be realized now...”

P272 “Sometimes he hoped that she would die, painlessly, in some accident... And Swann felt a very cordial sympathy with that Mahomet II whose portrait by Bellini he admired, who, on finding that he had fallen madly in love with one of his wives, stabbed her, in order, as his Venetian biographer artlessly relates, to recover his spiritual freedom. Then he would be ashamed of thinking thus only of himself, and his own sufferings would seem to deserve no pity now that he himself was disposing so cheaply of Odette’s very life.”

I had forgotten about this. We shall learn in time that even her death wouldn’t really have helped much. And now we are at the end. Marked by Swann pursuing Mme. de Cambremer to Combray. But before we move on we get one last memorable line,

P292 “‘To think that I have wasted years of my life, that I have longed for death, that the greatest love that I have ever known has been for a woman who did not please me, who was not in my style!’”


I rather suspect that this is not at all unusual. My parting thought about Swann is, "What did he understand courtesans to do?" His naiveté about Odette is rather puzzling.


Day 71 - On my off-day hike today I was thinking about what has surprised me about this period in quarantine. I knew I would miss my favorite cafes, in the last week or so before we went into lockdown I tried to hit as many of them as I could. But what I wouldn’t have predicted is that I haven’t had a drop of either alcohol or iced tea for over 70 days. Also fewer cookies and sweets, though that is mostly because there isn’t much available to me where I’m shopping.

That makes it sounds like I’m eating better, but I don’t think that is true. Normally I eat a lot of salad and I’ve been reluctant to order salad these days. I think I’ve had a total of six salads where I would normally have three or so a week. I’ve been eating more frozen dinners -- but veggie and often organic ones. Not terrible but not the best thing to eat. And a lot more bread than I usually consume. And cheese.


This is also the Memorial Day weekend. There are never any greening events on Memorial Day, I think because so many people are usually out of town. Not this year. And the weather couldn’t be better. As luck would have it, we are just about to go over 100,000 COVID-19 related known deaths. It would be too perfect if we hit that milestone on Memorial Day. Though the numbers are almost certainly too low, so the reality is that we are already way over 100,000 deaths compared with the same period of 2019. If we continue at this rate, which seems reasonable to assume, then we could have another 150,000 deaths by the end of October. Sadly, what people seem to be more concerned with just now is a shortage of hamburger and bacon since slaughterhouses turn out to be good places for a virus to spread. Not one of my concerns.