Swann's Way: Combray Chapter 1 (3rd post)

We have already referred to Marcel's dread of bedtime at Combray as usually having started towards the end of the afternoon and lasted several hours before he actually went up to bed (p.9 Scott Moncrieff, p.9 Terence Kilmartin).

His sole consolation was that his mother would come to kiss him goodnight. However, in the same way as his anxiety starts before his bedtime, the sound of his mother coming up the stairs to bestow that kiss would usually be "a moment of the keenest sorrow" (p.14 SM, p.13 KM).
His anticipation extends the duration of his misery. And when the brief ceremony was over, he would long, but never dare, to call her back for another kiss.

Artist: Paul Helleu

But even those short visits were better than when she did not come at all because they had guests (mainly Swann) to dinner.

As a teenager, Proust had answered a questionnaire in which he revealed that his greatest misery would be to be separated from his mother. There is some confusion as to his age when he completed this particular version of the questionnaire (he was to revisit it and give different answers later): depending on the source, he was 13, 14, 15 or 16. Nevertheless, whatever his age, it indicates a preternaturally close relationship with his mother.

The narrative leaves off the subject of Marcel's recurring nighttime angst in order to describe his family and Swann, who is their dinner guest that night (see the previous post) and "the unconscious author of my sufferings" (p.56 SM, p.46 TK). Eventually his grandfather says: "The little man looks tired: he'd better go up to bed" (p.34 SM, p.29 TK). He isn't allowed to kiss his mother before departing to climb the "hateful staircase", its smell of varnish mingling with and heightening his sorrow. As soon as he is in his bedroom he writes a letter to his mother begging her to come up. He hands it to the cook, Françoise, who is suspicious. "She studied the envelope for five minutes as though an examination of the paper itself and the look of my handwriting could enlighten her as to the nature off the contents ... Then she went out with an air of resignation which seemed to imply: 'What a dreadful thing for parents to have a child like this!'" (p.37 SM, p.31 TK).

As he waits, Marcel's emotions rise and fall: when Françoise tells him that the letter could not be delivered as the meal was continuing; when she later tells him the letter was to be delivered; when she tells him there is no answer; and when he resolves, with intense joy, to wait until his mother comes to bed and then run out into the passage and embrace her, risking his parents' wrath.

But parental reaction is not always what we have anticipated. When Marcel throws himself on his mother, she stays quiet in the hope his father does not catch him. However, his father does see what has happened and, instead of chastising him, tells Marcel's mother to go and stay with her son to comfort him. Marcel is so overcome with relief and gratitude that he cannot stop crying. A passage follows which is moving for anyone still in touch with their childhood emotions:

"Certainly my mother’s beautiful face seemed to shine again with youth that evening, as she sat gently holding my hands and trying to check my tears; but this was just what I felt should not have been; her anger would have saddened me less than this new gentleness, unknown to my childhood experience; I felt that I had with an impious and secret finger traced a first wrinkle upon her soul and brought out a first white hair on her head. This thought redoubled my sobs, and then I saw that Mamma, who had never allowed herself to go to any length of tenderness with me, was suddenly overcome by my tears and had to struggle to keep back her own. Then, as she saw that I had noticed this, she said to me, with a smile: 'Why, my little buttercup, my little canary, he’s going to make Mamma as silly as himself if this goes on.'" (p.50 SM, p.42 TK).

She reads to him and his agony is soothed. "I let myself be borne upon the current of this gentle night on which I had my mother by my side." (p.55 SM, p.46 TK).

And so draws to an end Marcel's recollection as he lies awake (which had started on p.9 SM & TK) of his earlier years at Combray. We are not sure where he is lying awake and we have already seen that he is prone to extremes of confusion in his semi-conscious state. 

Incidentally, Proust himself seems to have been encompassed by the disorientation, for he names four different people as owner of the house at rue Saint-Jacques where Marcel had stayed at Combray: his grandfather (p.5 SM, p.6 TK); his grandparents (p.7 TK); his great-aunt (p.6 & p.9 SM, p.9 TK); and, of course, his aunt Léonie (p.64ff SM, p.53ff TK). No doubt some of this discrepancy is the result of Proust's revisions to his text, and the differences in the translations might reflect this. Scott Moncrieff, who used the original Nouvelle Revue Français edition, says first that the grandfather is the owner, but next states twice it is the great-aunt; and whilst Kilmartin and Enright, who used the later Pléiade edition, translate those two passages as the grandfather and then the grandparents, their third references to the owner are both to the great-aunt. Even the corrected Pléiade edition does not avoid these contradictions: "j’étais à la campagne chez mon grand-père"; "dans ma chambre à coucher de Combray, chez mes grands-parents"; "à Combray chez ma grand-tante"; and "Léonie ... puis à Combray sa maison".

A related puzzle is to why Marcel refers to his great-aunt and to his aunt Léonie in those familial terms. The former is the mother of the latter. But the great-aunt is only the cousin of Marcel's grandfather. We would not normally call our aunt someone who is the daughter of a sibling of our grandparents, let alone the daughter of their cousin. Indeed we would not normally call that cousin a great-aunt either. A further oddity is that Marcel's grandmother's sisters, Flora and Céline, (discussed in the previous post) who therefore really are his great-aunts are never referred to as such.

Another riddle is why Marcel's upper middle class family all live together in this one house, a situation which is more reminiscent of the Peggottys, even if the formers' is made of brick rather than an old boat.

The reality of Proust's own family does not help clarify matters: their Illiers house was owned by his paternal uncle and aunt, whereas we are told that Marcel's great-aunt and aunt Léonie were related to his grandfather and as the only grandfather we have met is the father of Marcel's mother, we can conclude that aunt Léonie was on the opposite side of the family to her real-life counterpart.

Perhaps someone can clear up these mysteries?