THE EARLY YEARS OF JEAN SANTEUIL 2.1)
Castellane (Boni's father) and Comte Louis de Turenne, original
ofBabal de Breaute. The willingness of these distinguished noble-
men to dine in Proust's bourgeois home proves two mutually
contradictory facts: that the Guermantes set were more human,
less exclusive in real life than in A la Recherche; and that Proust
did not exaggerate his own social position when he portrayed the
Narrator's. But the account in next morning's Le Gaulois suggests
a vague cloud behind the scenes: the Marquis de Castellane left as
early as possible for an engagement with his cousin, Boson Prince
de Sagan; Mme Proust, still in mourning for her parents, was not
to be seen; and 'the famous Dr Proust effaced himself, leaving
his son to do the honours of this brilliant dinner-party, during
which the most Parisian wit never ceased to sparkle'. Proust
thriftily passed on the floral decorations to Mme Straus next
morning.
It was about this time, and perhaps in consequence of the
trouble and expense of this dinner, that Proust had the quarrel
with his parents which in Part III, Chapter VII of Jean Santeuil
is transposed to his schooldays. Mme Proust, in the humiliating
presence of his father's valet Jean Blanc, reproached him for
extravagance and ingratitude; Dr Proust, so easy-going by
nature, but so violent when roused, joined in; and their son
marched furiously out of the dining-room, slamming the door
and smashing its panes of coloured glass to smithereens. In his
bedroom he was carried away by a further paroxysm of rage and
(as he wrote in Jean Santeuil and told his housekeeper Celeste
many years later) seized from the mantelpiece a vase of Venetian
glass given him by his mother and hurled it to the floor. 'We
needn't think or speak of it again,' wrote Mme Proust in a letter
of forgiveness, 'and we'll let the broken glass be what it is in the
synagogue, a symbol of indestructible union.' She alluded to the
Jewish ceremony of marriage, which includes the ritual breaking
of a glass from which the bridal couple have drunk; and if her
words were given their full, terrible meaning they would imply
a mystic union with her son more valid than her marriage, in an
alien faith, to his father. But their consequences need not be taken
toO seriously. Psycho-analysis had not yet been invented; and
moreover, the malady in Proust's heart fed not on his present
relationship with his mother but on the buried, unalterable
fixation of his childhood.