MARCEL PROUSTthe romanesque doorway and a portion of wall from the older
church, and has no Merovingian crypt, no golden cross presented
by King Dagobert, no tomb of Sigebert's little daughter. Most of
the interior, indeed, is of the nineteenth century, for it was
'restored' by Abbe Louis Carre and by his successor, the good
Canon Marquis, who was determined, despite his passion for
history and etymology, that his church should be absolutely
modern.l Proust did not libel him when he made him say to Aunt
Leonie: "I admit there are a few things in my church that are
well worth a visit, but there are others that are getting very 0Id."2
The glass is modern, there is no stonework to be seen except the
Canon's new altar, and the floor, once paved with the tombs of
abbots and marquises of Illiers, is now covered with marble tiles.
Nevertheless, this is not the vulgar, rootless nineteenth century
of English church restoration, but one in which old traditions of
magnificence and good taste were still alive. The panelling which
conceals the walls is painted a faded purplish brown, adorned with
golden lozenges, crosses and crowns; and though the purple is
sombre, the vivid colour of the rest is dazzling and sumptuous
to English Protestant eyes. In Proust's time some of the original
stained glass still remained; but all is gone now, blown to pieces,
along with the refugees from Belgium and the North herded in
the market-place, by the exuberant Italian air-raids ofJune I940;
and the windows are still glassless, covered with the canvas and
boarding so familiar in English churches since that year. Under
the tower is a side-chapel sacred not to Gilbert the Bad, but to the
Virgin. It is this chapel of the Virgin which was decorated with
pink and white hawthorn in the 'month of Mary', and in which
at Combray the Duchesse de Guermantes sat, 'in the intermittent,
hot sunshine of a windy and rainy day', at the wedding of Dr
Percepied's daughter.^3 The pews of the local nobility, the
Goussencourts of Saint-Eman (which is Guermantes), and the
squires of Tansonville, Eguilly-les-Brandieres and Beaurouvre,
were in fact in this chapel of the Virgin, and Marcel must often
have seen the chatelaine of Saint-Eman sitting there at Sunday
1 Abbe Carre (1850-72) provided the purple panelling and the F10rent
d'Illiers window in the choir. The further restoration was the work
of Canon Marquis, who proudly declared: Hin my opinion the correct
principle of restoration is to harmonise the furnishings with the original style
of the church"',
2 I, 103 a I, 174- 8