THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN 131he was, though of lesser calibre than the Baron de Charlus, an
eccentric in his own right, and by far the most remarkable and
original person in the empty milieu of the Faubourg Saint-
Germain; he was witty, and brilliantly though not profoundly
intelligent. But with some research it is possible to detect in him
moral qualities which mitigate, though they do not redeem, his
charlatartism. He was ltind and loyal to his friends, during the short
period before he quarrelled with them. He was brave and indomit-
able. But best of all was his selfless devotion to the artists and
writers whom he considered his equals or even superiors. They
included Mallarme, Leconte de Lisle, Heredia, Coppee, Goncourt,
Huysmans, Villiers de l'Isle Adam, Barbey d' Aurevilly, Verlaine,
Regnier, d'Annunzio, Banes, Gustave Moreau, Degas, Whistler
and F orain: though the list shows no insight in advance of his
time, it contains only one or two inferior names. He supported
them with tireless propaganda; he supplied them with patrons and
purchasers, and to the few who needed it he gave his own money.
In return they respected his talent, perhaps more than it deserved,
and defended him when taxed with their enjoyment of his
company. "He says such marvellous things," said Banes. "He's
so foonny ... and besides, he comes wallting with me in the Bois,
and there are so few people who can keep oop with me!" Whistler
(one of the many originals of Elstir) painted two portraits of the
count in 1891; and it is probable that Whistler was a decisive
model for the definitive mask which Montesquiou adopted in the
early' 90S, and for the publicity campaign of readings, lectures and
entertainments which had just opened at the time of his meeting
with Proust. He borrowed Whistler's coiffure for his waving black
hair, Whistler's moustache, his duellist's stance, his baying laugh
with head thrown back, his ferocity and his epigrams, his gentle
art of malting enemies.
Montesquiou showed rather less abnegation and critical taste
in his discoveries: they were mostly artists (he took good care
never to 'discover' a writer) of little or secondary merit, whom he
pushed with one eye on the credit they would do him. Among them
were Helleu, an etcher and painter of real talent, La Gandara,
who became a fashionable but execrable society-portraitist,Lobre,
the painter of Versailles, and Galle, the engraver of glass and the
creator of Montesquiou's hortensia bathroom. The only one of
his discoveries whose work still lives was Proust's friend, Jacques