Within A Budding Grove: Seascape, with Frieze of Girls (17th post)

 Following his failure, due to feigned indifference, to be introduced by Elstir to the girls of the “little band”, Marcel finds pleasure afterwards in the realisation that he will nevertheless soon meet them. As he observes, many hours might pass between the event that gave us pleasure and the moment at which we are free to enjoy it (p.229 IV Scott Moncrieff, p.925 Kilmartin). When, having persuaded Elstir to give a small tea-party so that he can meet Albertine Simonet, his favourite of the girls, Marcel again experiences this deferred pleasure after he is introduced to her: “This is not to say that the introduction ... did not give me any pleasure, nor assume a definite importance in my eyes. But so far as the pleasure was concerned, I was not conscious* of it, naturally, until some time later, when, once more in the hotel, and in my room alone, I had become myself again. Pleasure in this respect is like photography. What we take, in the presence of the beloved object, is merely a negative film; we develop it later, when we are at home, and have once again found at our disposal that inner dark-room, the entrance to which is barred to us so long as we are with other people” (p.239 IV SM, p.932 TK).

Marie Finaly
(one of the models for Albertine)

The pleasure, however, had been tinged with disappointment, and for the usual reason: “As I drew closer to the girl, and began to know her better, my knowledge of her underwent a process of subtraction, all the factors of imagination and desire giving place to a notion which was worth infinitely less” (p.240 IV SM, p.933 TK). The Albertine he talks to at Elstir's appears to him to have been substituted for the Albertine by the sea, which he accepts was “a fabrication invented by myself” (p.243 IV SM, p.935 TK). There is, however, some consolation: “Whatever my disappointment in finding in Mlle Simonet a girl so little different from those that I knew already, just as my rude awakening when I saw Balbec church did not prevent me from wishing still to go to Quimperlé, Pont-Aven and Venice, I comforted myself with the thought that through Albertine at any rate, even if she herself was not all that I had hoped, I might make the acquaintance of her comrades of the little band” (pp.244-245 IV SM, p.936 TK). And so it is that when Marcel becomes acquainted with them he becomes attracted to Andrée (pp.258-259 IV SM, pp.946-947 TK); believes that Gisèle is in love with him and plans to try to see her again (pp.260-265 IV SM, pp.948-951 TK); and contemplates falling in love with Albertine or Rosemonde (p.264 IV SM, p.950 TK).

Marcel spends more time with the little band and displays a contentedness that has heretofore eluded him: “We talked so little. Whereas with Mme de Villeparisis or Saint-Loup I should have displayed by my words a great deal more pleasure than I should actually have felt, for I used always to be worn out when I parted from them; when, on the other hand, I was lying on the grass among all these girls, the plenitude of what I was feeling infinitely outweighed the paucity, the infrequency of our speech, and brimmed over from my immobility and silence in floods of happiness, the waves of which rippled up to die at the feet of these young roses” (pp.292-293 IV SM, pp.971-972 TK).

Despite his continuing intermittences of the heart, Marcel's attentions begin to focus on Albertine. “Now and then a pretty attention from one or another of them would stir in me vibrations which dissipated for a time my desire for the rest. Thus one day Albertine had suddenly asked: 'Who has a pencil?' Andrée had provided one, Rosemonde the paper; Albertine had warned them: 'Now, young ladies, you are not to look at what I write.' After carefully tracing each letter, supporting the paper on her knee, she had passed it to me with: 'Take care no one sees.' Whereupon I had unfolded it and read her message, which was: 'I love you.'" (pp.293-294 IV SM, p.972 TK). Albertine's note decides it for Marcel: “And an hour later, as I scrambled down the paths which led back, a little too vertically for my liking, to Balbec, I said to myself that it was with her that I would have my romance” (p.299 IV SM, p.976 TK). Nevertheless, he still basks in the little band's company and has “a profound astonishment every time that I found myself in their presence” (p.301 IV SM, p.977 TK). The astonishment has two causes: on each occasion the girls presented a new aspect of themselves; and on each occasion they also presented a face that was the same as before, which was recognisable despite the alterations wrought on it by memory.

One day in a wood on the cliff, Marcel and the little band, plus some additions, play the game of “ferret” (one player, the ferret, stands in the middle of a circle formed by the other players who hold a length of string behind their backs on which is threaded a ring that they pass to each other and if the ferret guesses who has the ring, they swap places). Marcel sees this as an opportunity to touch Albertine's hands but is stuck on the other side of the circle from her. He has never seen prettier hands: although Andrée hands are slender and more finely modelled, they had a life of their own and would “strain out before her like a leash of thoroughbred greyhounds”, whereas Albertine's hands were plumper and the act of pressing them had a “sensual sweetness which was in keeping somehow with the rosy, almost mauve colouring of her skin.” To end up next to Albertine, and thus within touching distance, Marcel deliberately allows himself to be caught with the ring so that he becomes the ferret and then waits until Albertine's neighbour has it, whereupon Marcel springs on him, seizes the ring and takes his place next to her. The game recommences but Marcel's thoughts are less on it and more on Albertine, with the result that he is immediately caught in possession of the ring and has to resume his role as the ferret. Albertine is annoyed with him and snaps: “'People can't play if they don't pay attention, and spoil the game for the others. He shan't be asked again when we're going to play, Andrée; if he is, I don't come.'" (pp.304-308 IV SM, pp.980-983 TK).

Andrée takes pity on Marcel and invites him to go for a walk with her. They pass a hawthorn bush, which is now flowerless as spring is over. Andrée goes on ahead, leaving Marcel to converse with the bush. He asks the leaves for news of the flowers. “'The young ladies have been gone from here for a long time now,' the leaves told me. And perhaps they thought that, for the great friend of those young ladies that I pretended to be, I seemed to have singularly little knowledge of their habits. A great friend, but one who had never been to see them again for all these years, despite his promises. And yet, as Gilberte had been my first love among girls, so these had been my first love among flowers. 'Yes, I know all that, they leave about the middle of June,' I answered, 'but I am so delighted to see the place where they stayed when they were here. They came to see me, too, at Combray, in my room; my mother brought them when I was ill in bed. And we used to meet on Saturday evenings, too, at the Month of Mary devotions. Can they get to them from here?' 'Oh, of course! Why, they make a special point of having our young ladies at Saint-Denis du Désert, the church near here.' 'Then, if I want to see them now?' 'Oh, not before May, next year.' 'But I can be sure that they will be here?' 'They come regularly every year.' 'Only I don't know whether it will be easy to find the place.' 'Oh, dear, yes! They are so gay, the young ladies, they stop laughing only to sing hymns together, so that you can't possibly miss them, you can tell by the scent from the other end of the path.'” (pp.309-310 IV SM, p.984 TK). What are we to make of this passage? A conversation with a shrub is probably unique in literature, and so maybe it is a stroke of genius, or perhaps it is overly sentimental?

Marcel starts to consider Andrée's character and suspects that beneath her “refinement of nice behaviour” her true self lacked “that generosity which she displayed at every moment out of moral distinction, or sensibility, or a noble desire to show herself a true friend”. For example, although she said charming things about Marcel and Albertine's possible affection for each other, he says to himself that she had made no effort to bring them together and might even be trying to keep them apart. He finds her the only member of the little band who possesses tact: she alone would never repeat to him anything offensive that a third-party might have said about him. He then observes that while those friends who would repeat such offensive remarks lack empathy, those who would not are dissimulating. He makes, however, this concession regarding the latter type of friends: “It does no harm if indeed they are incapable of thinking evil, and if what is said by other people only makes them suffer as it would make us. I supposed this to be the case with Andrée, without, however, being absolutely sure” (pp.310-313 IV SM, pp.984-986 TK).

As he walks back to the others with Andrée, Marcel reflects: “I knew now that I was in love with Albertine; but, alas! I had no thought of letting her know it.” And so very shortly he is, as usual, feigning indifference. But this time he has learned from his previous failures in employing that strategy: instead of using it with the aim of making Albertine conclude he is not interested in her, he deploys it to disguise his desire to get closer to her. He and the girls have found some two-seater horse-drawn traps to take them home. “The keenness, already intense, of my love for Albertine, had the following effect, first of all, that it was Rosemonde and Andrée in turn that I invited to be my companion, and never once Albertine, after which, in spite of my manifest preference for Andrée or Rosemonde, I led everybody, by secondary considerations of time and distance, cloaks and so forth, to decide, as though against my wishes, that the most practical policy was that I should take Albertine, to whose company I pretended to resign myself for good or ill.” However, he slips back into his old habit. “In the week that followed I scarcely attempted to see Albertine. I made a show of preferring Andrée.” And when he speaks to the latter of Albertine, “I affected a coldness”, which Andrée “made a show of believing” without really being convinced (pp.314-317 IV SM, pp.987-989 TK).

But then everything changes! Albertine is to stay at the Grand Hotel one night in order to catch an early train the following morning. She says to Marcel: “You can come and sit by my bed.” When he arrives at her room and finds her in bed, the sight of her bare throat and rosy cheeks so intoxicates him that he bends over her to kiss her. "'Stop that, or I'll ring the bell!' cried Albertine, seeing that I was flinging myself upon her to kiss her. But I reminded myself that it was not for no purpose that a girl made a young man come to her room in secret, arranging that her aunt should not know—that boldness, moreover, rewards those who know how to seize their opportunities; in the state of exaltation in which I was, the round face of Albertine, lighted by an inner flame, like the glass bowl of a lamp, started into such prominence that, copying the rotation of a burning sphere, it seemed to me to be turning, like those faces of Michael Angelo which are being swept past in the arrested headlong flight of a whirlwind. I was going to learn the fragrance, the flavour which this strange pink fruit concealed. I heard a sound, precipitous, prolonged, shrill. Albertine had pulled the bell with all her might” (pp.322-326 IV SM, pp.993-996 TK).

* To say that the introduction to Albertine gave Marcel pleasure, of which he was not conscious until later, makes no sense: just as with pain, there is no pleasure if we are not conscious of it. Proust wrote: “Pour le plaisir je ne le connus naturellement qu'un peu plus tard”. Perhaps a better translation would be “But I did not feel pleasure, naturally, until some time later, when, once more in the hotel, and in my room alone, I had become myself again”.