August Bank Holiday

I did offer the back seat of my tandem to anyone who wanted to join me, but no takers. I went off into Shropshire, and as usual forgot how grueling it is. A long uphill to Button Oak, and then Pound Green, but straight down to Arley after that - first stop. Then up the hills the other side of the river to Shatterford, and down through Trimpley. Last stop back in Bewdley with puppy who missed me while I was gone.

No fishing

Here's an interesting Saturday afternoon story. Walking south down river we found a small scrap of land, unused for years and covered in nettles, that is now surrounded by barb wire, complete with a big sign. Five young lads were nevertheless fishing - but look who's coming - the landowner, who chased them off. Isn't the river big enough for all of us?

The Baron and strange morals.

I keep thinking of this one, even though I've gone on to a new volume. The concept of normality:

At present the fondness—whether Platonic or not—that M. de Charlus felt for Morel merely led the Baron to say spontaneously in Morel’s absence that he thought him very good looking, supposing that this would be taken in all innocence, and thereby acting like a clever man who when summoned to make a statement before a Court of Law will not be afraid to enter into details which are apparently to his disadvantage but for that very reason are more natural and less vulgar than the conventional protestations of a stage culprit. With the same freedom, always between Saint-Martin du Châne and Doncières-Ouest—or conversely on the return journey—M. de Charlus would readily speak of men who had, it appeared, very strange morals, and would even add: “After all, I say strange, I don’t know why, for there’s nothing so very strange about that,” to prove to himself how thoroughly he was at his ease with his audience. And so indeed he was, provided that it was he who retained the initiative, and that he knew his gallery to be mute and smiling, disarmed by credulity or good manners.

Charlie gets a lesson in French families

The Baron de Charlus enlightens Morel in the matter of who's who:

“There are a certain number of outstanding families,” M. de Charlus had told him, “first and foremost the Guermantes, who claim fourteen alliances with the House of France, which is flattering to the House of France if anything, for it was to Aldonce de Guermantes and not to Louis the Fat, his consanguineous but younger brother, that the Throne of France should have passed. Under Louiv XIV, we ‘draped’ at the death of Monsieur, having the same grandmother as the king; a long way below the Guermantes, one may however mention the families of La Trémoïlle, descended from the Kings of Naples and the Counts of Poitiers; of d’Uzès, scarcely old as a family, but the premier peers; of Luynes, who are of entirely recent origin, but have distinguished themselves by good marriages; of Choiseul, Harcourt, La Rochefoucauld. Add to these the family of the Noailles (notwithstanding the Comte de Toulouse), Montesquieu and Castellane, and, I think I am right in saying, those are all. As for all the little people who call themselves Marquis de Cambremerde or de Vatefairefiche, there is no difference between them and the humblest private in your regiment. It doesn’t matter whether you go and p—-at Comtesse S—t’s or s—t at Baronne P—‘s, it’s exactly the same, you will have compromised yourself and have used a dirty rag instead of toilet paper. Which is not nice.”

Take 1

Take 1
Originally uploaded by coopfs

My boy, the one without the beard.

Take 1

Take 1
Originally uploaded by coopfs

My boy, the one without the beard.

Back to Balbec, and the stations on the little train.

The Baron de Charlus is berating Charlie Morel, having ascertained that he has him under obligation. In doing so the narrator gives some excellent words on the theme of jealousy:
"I know that in so doing,” he went on, in order not to let it appear how deeply certain scenes had humiliated him, “you are guilty merely of having let yourself be carried away by the jealousy of others. But how is it that at your age you are childish enough (and a child ill-bred enough) not to have seen at once that your election by myself and all the advantages that must result for you from it were bound to excite jealousies, that all your comrades while they egged you on to quarrel with me were plotting to take your place? I have not thought it necessary to tell you of the letters that I have received in that connexion from all the people in whom you place most confidence. I scorn the overtures of those flunkeys as I scorn their ineffective mockery. The only person for whom I care is yourself, since I am fond of you, but affection has its limits and you ought to have guessed as much.” Harsh as the word flunkey might sound in the ears of Morel, whose father had been one, but precisely because his father had been one, the explanation of all social misadventures by ‘jealousy,’ an explanation fatuous and absurd, but of inexhaustible value, which with a certain class never fails to ‘catch on’ as infallibly as the old tricks of the stage with a theatrical audience or the threat of the clerical peril in a parliament, found in him an adherence hardly less solid than in Françoise, or the servants of Mme. de Guermantes, for whom jealousy was the sole cause of the misfortunes that beset humanity. "