THE STUDENT IN SOCIETYmy dear boy, keep absolutely calm, Jacques doesn't mean a word
he's saying-just sip a glass of cold water and count up to a
hundred!" Proust showed his naive satisfaction with the painting
in Jean Santeuil, in the description of his hero's portrait by 'Le
Gandare': 'a radiant young man still posing before the whole of
Paris ••• with eyes like fresh almonds ... and features cool and
luminous as a spring morning, a beauty not so much thoughtful
as gently pensive'.l But the romantic and elegant young man-
about-town of the oil portrait is Proust's ephemeral vision of him-
self on the Guermantes Way, at the Princesse de Wagram's ball;
and Blanche showed keener divination in the pencil sketch of a
hunched, unkempt youth, with a glare of terrifying intensity, in
the hour before dinner at Les Fremonts. Proust saw a great deal
of Blanche during 1892 at the salons of the hostesses named above
and of Laure Hayman (Odette) and Mme Aubernon (Mme
Verdurin); and he was presented with a photograph of his ugly
companion inscribed: 'to his great friend Proust, '92'. Possibly
Elstir as 'Monsieur Tiche' at Mme Verdurin's represents Blanche
at Mme Baigneres's. Their estrangement in 1893 was caused
partly by Blanche's contempt for Proust's social ambitions, partly
by Montesquiou, who had put Blanche on his black Ii,t; and it was
prolonged some years later by their different views during the
Dreyfus Affair, in which Blanche took the anti-Dreyfusist side.^2
Towards the winter of 1891 Proust had already found a new
subject of interest, and was not displeased to notice that Jeanne
Pouquet was a little jealous, and that Gaston was jealous of her
jealousy. His old great-uncle Louis Weil was the lover of a famous
cocotte, to whom he had introduced his delighted great-nephew
three years before, in the autumn of his last year at school. Proust
now renewed the acquaintance, and turned from Gilberte to
Odette.
Laure Hayman was a descendant of the English painter Francis
Hayman (1708-76), who taught Gainsborough and was one of
the founders of the Royal Acad .my. She was born in 18i I on a
1 Jean Santeuil, vol. 3, 296-7. The rest of the passage corresponds
accurately to the Blanche portrait, except that Jean wears a rose in his
buttonhole, whereas Proust sported an orchid spray. In the name (Le Gandare'
Proust alludes to the society portraitist La Gandara.
2 It is significant that aU Blanche's published reminiscences of Proust
relate either to the years 1891-92 or to the period after their reconciliation
twenty years later, shortly before the war.