Marcel Proust: A Biography

J3~ MARCEL PROUST
Emile Blanche, a post-impressionist of enduring charm and
originality, except for an unfortunate period during the
Edwardian era when he imitated Sargent. The story of their final
breach is instructive: it shows the pattern of a typical Montesquiou
execution, and it has several features in common with the quarrel-
scene of Charlus and the Narrator in Le CtJte de Guermantes.
For a time Montesquiou called Blanche "the Lord's anointed".
He commissioned a portrait of "a Beautiful Unknown-nobody
must hear about her" -but when Blanche arrived for the sitting,
shiver oflittle mossfronds, perfume of friendship, delicious fluting
where. Similarly he had told her that her portraitist was "an un-
known genius I've discovered". One morning, however, when
Blanche at Montesquiou's earnest request had asked him to lunch
to meet the composer Faure, the unlucky painter encountered the
Prince de Sagan, with his white gloves, white hair and white
carnation, walking in the Bois, and invited him to come too. The
prince and the count were deadly enemies: Montesquiou took one
look, turned green with rage, and left, Faure or no Faure. They
met once more, on the He des Cygnes at Passy, to return their
correspondence and hid everlasting farewell: Montesquiou gave
back Blanche's letters in a scented coffer of sandalwood, where-
upon Blanche hurled Montesquiou's into the Seine. It was the
opening day of the Universal Exhibition of 1889 and of its chief
attraction, the Eiffel Tower. "If you had understood the tutelary
importance of the man who hoped to reveal you to yourself," said
Montesquiou mournfully, "it would have helped you to avoid the
false steps in which you seem to take such pleasure. But as we
shall never meet again, I will consecrate one last hour to you. Let
us ascend to the first platform of the Eiffel Tower, and gaze upon
the panorama of this tentacular Paris, in which I should have liked
to show you the places to shun." And after the ascent Montes-
quiou saw Blanche home in a cab, as Charlus did the Narrator.
Henceforth he exerted all his power to exclude the painter from
society; he called him 'the Auteuil shaving-brush'; and when he
saw one of his paintings in a noble lady'S house he would say:
"Isn't it high time you put this piece of linoleum under your
bath-tub?"
All in all, Montesquiou was a hollow man. The terrifying,
impenetrable fa~de of his vanity, his insolence, his perversity,
covered nothing but the frightened small boy with whom he had