Marcel Proust: A Biography

14~ MARCEL PROUST
appeared only once more, in 1896-and in aggrieving Montes-
quiou, who was never the man to take good intentions for good
deeds. "Your conceptions invariably result in abortions," the
count acidly remarked. Perhaps he was still nettled by a request
which Proust had made in the course of the Revue Blancke
negotiations. By December 1893 Proust was receiving invitations
from the Princesse de Wagram and her sister the Duchesse de
Gramont: this was a distinct upward step, though still far from
the top, for both these ladies had only been Rothschilds before
their marriages, and it was felt that their husbands had been a
little declassed by marrying outside the nobility into non-Aryan
money. Relying on these invitations and the credit of his still
unrejected article, he begged Montesquiou with would-be tact
'to be so kind, if you are there too, as to point out to me a few
of the ladies in whose circles your name is most frequently
mentioned-Comtesse Greffulhe, or the Princesse de Leon, for
instance'. In this he made two errors, one of greed and one of
social ignorance. Mme Greifulhe, Montesquiou's beloved cousin,
was perhaps the most distinguished lady in the whole of Parisian
society, and an introduction to her could only be the reward of
far higher merit than dear Marcel had yet shown. As for the
'Princesse de Leon', he should have known that since the death
of her father-in-law on the previous 6 August her correct title
was the Duchesse de Rohan. Proust was duly snubbed, and bided
his time; but he did not fail to note this curious feature in the
natural histoty of titled persons. Several of the French ducal
families had a repertoire of princely titles available for their heirs,
pending their succession to the dukedom; and when the future
Duchesse de Guermantes first appears in the early years of her
marriage, she is known as the Princesse des Laumes.
Meanwhile Montesquiou was arranging his own publicity. On
the afternoon of 17 January 1894, at the Theatre de la Bodinii:re,
he gave a lecture on the poetry of Marceline Desbordes-Valmore,
whom he called 'the Christian Sappho'. He had read her poems
for the first time at twilight on a dusty road near Cannes, when
his adored Pauline de Montesquiou, his brother Gontran's wife,
was dying; and bursting into tears he had vowed to rescue the
poetess from undeserved neglect. '1 venture to assert,' he wrote
with some truth, 'that she owes her posthumous fame-the only
fame that really counts-to the incessant efforts that followed my