MARCEL PROUSTably the Marquis de Poitiers, the pianist soldier in Jean Santeui[l;
and as a letter of this summer to Pierre Lavallee suggests that
Proust visited Charttes to dine with Risler, it is probable that
Chartres is one of the many garrison-towns which compose
Doncieres in Le COte de Guermantes. Proust's poems, on Paul
Potter, Cuyp, Watteau and Van Dyck (this last with a hint of
Willie Heath, 'erect yet reposing' in the green shade of the Bois
de Boulogne) are almost worthless imitations of Montesquiou, with
a few would-be suggestions of Mallarme, and inferior to Habn's
delicate accompaniment. But at least they show the sincerity of
Proust's admiration for Montesquiou's work-an admiration
which came not from bad taste, but from an instinctive knowledge
that Count Robert possessed a secret of supreme aesthetic impor-
tance, if only he could discover what it was. He also copied
Montesquiou in a way which was less gratifying to that very
susceptible model. His imitations of the Count's monologues,
with the harsh voice rising to an e1dritch scream, the head flung
back and the final stamp of the foot, became a popular party-
piece; they were irresistibly comic, and at the same time hallucina-
torilyaccurate. Proust's pastiches ofMontesquiou are still audibh,
brought to the level of great art, in the speeches of the Baron de
Charlus. Of course the Count got wind of these performances:
Proust explained that he was merely quoting his marvellous
sayings to an admiring audience, and that quite involuntarily 'the
body was carried away by the soul, my voice and accent took on
the rhythm of the great thoughts I had for the moment borrowed
-if anyone has told you anything else, or mentioned the word
"caricature", I can only invoke your axiom, that words repeated at
second-hand are never true'.2 Montesquiou pretended to take-his
word for it, but: "I don't know why you should set yourself up as
the travelling -salesman of my wit," he persisted in complaining.
Proust spent one afternoon of this spring at the Jardin des
-Plantes with his schoolfriend Pierre Lavallee and Reynaldo, and
contemplated the colombes poignardees, the doves with a red spot
as of blood on their breasts, in a recurrence of the trance in which
1 Jean Santeuil, vol. 2., 293·7. Risler, as the pet pianist of Mme Lemaire's
salon, is also the pianist Dechambre at Mme Verdurin's. The Marquis de
Poitiers, forever cigarette-smoking as he plays, also resembles Reynaldo Hahn.- An axiom uttered by the Baron de Charlus during his quarrel-scene
with the Narrator (II, 560).