Marcel Proust: A Biography

THE DREYFUS CASE

of endless discoveries always round the next corner, of sun, air and

springtime. The bud contains the fruit, and Proust himself must

have felt pride as well as disappointment in what he had achieved.

Perhaps he also realised, however, that lean Santeuil is dis-

figured not only by technical lapses but by a moral fault which is

inseparable from the main theme. It is a novel of revenges, of

resentments felt and gratified, of self-adoration and self-pity. The

hero is an ill-used young man, thwarted by unfeeling and

philistine parents, insulted by wicked hostesses, self-satisfied

snobs and pseudo-artists; a benevolent Providence ensures that

he invariably scores off them all; and he is insufferably charming,

handsome, intelligent and magnanimous. It is possible to com-

miserate with Proust's injured susceptibility, but not to admire its

literary over-compensation in Jean Santeuil.

In no section of the novel is the flaw of hurt vanity so glaring

as in the deplorable Part VIII, which consists of a series of

incidents in which the hero is first socially outraged, and then has

his revenge by being publicly patronised by the social superiors

of his enemies. It is probable, however, that in their present form

these are merely alternative sketches for what would have been,

if Proust had revised his work, not more than two main episodes:

a scene in which Jean is insulted by Mme Marmet and befriended

by the Duchesse de Reveillon, and another in which he fights a

duel and is championed by the Duc de Reveillon. Chapter V

(' Le Salon de Mme de Reveillon') was written, as we have seen, at

Kreuznach in August 1897, and internal evidence suggests that

the remainder of Part VIII may have been written about the same

time.l The whole section is particularly rich in material later used

inA la Recherche. Mme Marmet is an early form ofMme Verdurin,2

1 Datable allusions in Part VIII include the death ofVerlaine (8 January

,896), vol. 3, p. )); the death of Nathe Weil (30 June ,896), p. 12); Proust's

. duel with Lorrain (6 February 1897) suggests clJapters X-XI!; Nicolas I!
first uses the word 'alliance' (August ,897), p. 40.
:I Mme Marmet has nothing in common with Proust's beloved, intelligent,
warm-hearted, unsnobbish Mme Straus, with whom she has been identified
merely because her son was Jean's schoolfellow, as Jacques Bizet was
Proust's. But Jacques Baigneres's mother Laure Baigneres would fit equally
well. In so far as she has a living original, Mme Marmet is probably Mme
Hochon with a little of Mme Lemaire. But in the main Proust has merely
borrowed her from the character of the same name in Anatole France's Le
Lys Roug'.