The narrator has been avoiding not only the racecourse but also the seashore. He has been looking at the sea with his fingers in front of his eyes, in order to blot out any modern ships that might pass by and spoil his attempt to view the sea in an immemorial state, or at least as it must have looked no later than the early centuries of Greece. Again, Elstir rescues him from his peculiar habit and draws his attention to the beauty of yachts. He points out their uniform surfaces, which are simple, gleaming, and grey, and which in the bluish haze reflecting off the sea take on a lovely creamy softness. He talks of the women on board, who dress attractively in white cotton or linen clothes, which in the sunlight, against the blue of the sea, take on the dazzling whiteness of a spread sail.
After this encounter with Elstir and his canvases, the narrator has a chance to update his images of seaside beauty by a vital few centuries, and thereby saves his holiday.
I realised that regattas, and race-meetings where well-dressed women could be seen bathed in the greenish light of a marine race-course, could be as interesting for a modern artist as the festivities which Veronese or Carpaccio so loved to depict
.
The incident emphasizes once more that beauty is something to be found, rather than passively encountered, that it requires us to pick up on certain details, to identify the whiteness of a cotton dress, the reflection of the sea on the hull of a yacht, or the contrast between the color of a jockey’s coat and his face. It also emphasizes how vulnerable we are to depression when the Elstirs of the world choose not to go on holiday and the pre-prepared images run out, when our knowledge of art does not stretch any later than Carpaccio (1450–1525) and Veronese (1528–1588), and we see a 200 horsepower Sunseeker accelerating out of the marina. It may genuinely be an unattractive example of aquatic transport; then again, our objection to the speedboat may stem from nothing other than a stubborn adherence to ancient images of beauty and a resistance to a process of active appreciation which even Veronese and Carpaccio would have undertaken had they been in our place.
The images with which we are surrounded are often not just out-of-date, they can also be unhelpfully ostentatious. When Proust urges us to evaluate the world properly, he repeatedly reminds us of the value of modest scenes. Chardin opens our eyes to the beauty of saltcellars and jugs; the madeleine delights the narrator by evoking memories of an ordinary bourgeois childhood; Elstir paints nothing grander than cotton dresses and harbors. In Proust’s view, such modesty is characteristic of beauty.
True beauty is indeed the one thing incapable of answering the expectations of an over-romantic imagination.… What disappointments has it not caused since it first appeared to the mass of mankind! A woman goes to see a masterpiece of art as excitedly as if she was finishing a serial-story, or consulting a fortune teller or waiting for her lover. But she sees a man sitting meditating by the window, in a room where there is not much light. She waits for a moment in case something more may appear, as in a boulevard transparency. And though hypocrisy may seal her
lips, she says in her heart of hearts: “What, is that all there is to Rembrandt’s Philosopher?”
A philosopher whose interest is of course understated, subtle, calm … It all amounts to an intimate, democratic, unsnobbish vision of the good life, one safely within reach of someone earning a bourgeois salary and devoid of anything luxurious, imposing, or aristocratic.
However touching, this does sit somewhat uneasily with evidence that Proust himself had rather a taste for ostentation, and frequently behaved in ways diametrically opposed to the spirit of Chardin or Rembrandt’s Philosopher. The accusations run something like this:
THAT HE HAD ELABORATE NAMES IN HIS ADDRESS BOOK: Though he grew up in a bourgeois family, Proust acquired as friends a more than coincidental range of aristocratic figures with names like the Duc de Clermont-Tonnerre, Comte Gabriel de La Rochefoucauld, Comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac, Prince Edmond de Polignac, Comte Bertrand de Salignac-Fénelon, Prince Constantin de Brancovan, and Princesse Caraman-Chimay.
THAT HE WENT TO THE RITZ ALL THE TIME: Though he was well catered to at home, and had a maid adept at preparing wholesome meals, and a dining room in which to give dinner parties, Proust repeatedly ate out and entertained at the Ritz in the Place Vendôme, where he would order sumptuous meals for friends, add a 200 percent service charge to the bill, and drink champagne from fluted glasses.
THAT HE WENT TO MANY PARTIES: In fact, so many that André Gide first turned down his novel at Gallimard, for the well-founded literary reason that he believed this to be the work of a manic socialite. As he later explained, “For me, you had remained the man who frequented the house of Mme X, Y, Z, the man who wrote for the Figaro. I thought of you as—shall I confess it?—… a snob, a dilettante, a socialite.”
Proust was ready with an honest answer. It was true, he had been attracted to the ostentatious life, he had sought to frequent the house of Madame X, Y, and Z and had tried to befriend any aristocrats who happened to be there (aristocrats whose extraordinary glamour in Proust’s day should be compared to the subsequent glamour of film stars, lest it be too easy to acquire a self-righteous sense of virtue on the basis of never having taken an interest in dukes).
However, the end of the story is important—namely, that Proust was disappointed by glamour when he found it. He went to Madame Y’s parties, sent flowers to Madame Z, ingratiated himself with the Prince Constantin de Brancovan, and then realized he had been sold a lie. The images of glamour that had instilled the desire to pursue aristocrats simply did not match the realities of aristocratic life. He recognized that he was better off staying at home, that he could be as happy talking to his maid as to the Princesse Caraman-Chimay.
Proust’s narrator experiences a similar trajectory of hope and disappointment. He begins by being drawn to the aura of the Duc and Duchesse de Guermantes, picturing them as belonging to a superior race infused with the poetry of their ancient name, dating back to the earliest, most noble families of France, and a time so distant that not even the cathedrals of Paris and Chartres were yet built. He imagines the Guermantes wrapped in the mystery of the Merovingian age; they make him think of forest hunting scenes in medieval tapestries, and seem to be made of a substance unlike that of other humans, existing like figures in a stained-glass window. He dreams of how exquisite it would be to spend the day with the Duchesse fishing for trout in her sumptuous ducal park, filled with flowers, rivulets, and fountains.
Then he has a chance to meet the Guermantes, and the image shatters. Far from being made of a substance different from that of other humans, the Guermantes are much like anyone else, only with less developed tastes and opinions. The Duc is a coarse, cruel, vulgar man; his wife is keener to be sharp and witty than sincere; and the guests at their table, whom he had previously imagined to be like the Apostles in the Sainte-Chapelle, are interested only in gossiping and exchanging trivialities.
Such disastrous encounters with aristocrats might encourage us to give up on our search for so-called eminent figures, who only turn out to be vulgar drones when we meet them. The snobbish longing to associate with those of superior rank should, it seems, be abandoned in favor of a gracious accommodation to our lot.