66 MARCEL PROUST
washing her hair." "Will this woman never finish washing her
hair?" complained Mme Arman, but in vain.
Like Mme Verdurin, she felt herself persecuted by les ennuyeux.
Strangely enough, however, these bores were not people whom
she despaired ofluring to her salon, but those she was anxious to
expel from it; just as, at the age of three, she had tried to throw
her baby brother out of the window, saying "He bores me." If
the nobility were never to be seen at her receptions, it was chiefly
because she didn't want them there, for her only ambition was to
attract writers and politicians. In Proust's novel the Baron de
Charlus visits Mme Verdurin partly as an act of enormous grace,
partly for ends of his own; but in real life Comte Robert de
Montesquiou, one of the chief originals of Charlus, was reduced
to pleading for Mme Arman's favour, and cadged her invitations
with little success. The letters in which he expresses his thwarted
admiration and injured feelings, all in vain, are positively heart-
rending. When he succeeded at last in enticing her and France to
his mansion to meet his cousin, Comtesse Greffulhe, on whom
Proust modelled several aspects of both the Duchesse and the
Princesse de Guermantes, it was the culmination of seventeen
years of hitherto fruitless intrigue. Mme Arman was perhaps an in-
tellectual snob, but she was not a social one. Montesquiou was both:
in wooing her it was France and her other pet lions he was after.
Her husband was noted for his sudden, alarming and often un-
timely appearances, and was therefore said to resemble a jack-in-
a-box. M. Arman had a wart on his nose, the trailing ends of his
cravat had been compared to the sails of a windmill, and his
manner was humorously truculent; 'but he was a very good
fellow,' writes F ernand Gregh, 'and there was more in him than
people said'. Whenever he saw a new face among his wife's
guests, he would pop up and say, "I am not Anatole France"; or
he would introduce himself with, "I am the Master-I mean, of
the house," and shout, "Monsieur France, here's another
admirer for you I" He wrote the yachting column in Le Figaro under
the preposterous pseudonym of Jip Topsail. He delighted in
teasing France, who once helped him in his column with a few
beauties of description which the editor carefully deleted. "Ha
ha 1" bellowed M. Arman, who had a strong southern accent, "you
may be a great writer and an academician, but they couldn't find
room for your blue skies and white clouds and sails like birds'