HEIRESS OF ALL THE AGES
the symmetrical and almost musical development of the con–
sequences arising from a carefully isolated situation-such art
involves the existence of a conventional milieu, where the
language is adorned with veils and provided with limits, where
seeming
commands
being
and where
being
is held in a noble
restraint which changes all of life into an opportunity to exercise
presence of mind.
(A Tribute)
247
This is, however, a peculiarly one-sided view of the Proustian
scene, as Valery allows himself to be carried away by the com–
parison between the old French literature of the Court and
A la
Recherche du Temps Perdu.
Proust balances his poetic appre–
ciation of the Guermantes way with a more than sufficient realism
in
portraying the rages of Charlus, the passions of Saint-Loup,
the schemes of Mme. Verdurin, Bloch, Morel, Jupien, etc.; nor
is he averse to showing the pathological condition of that "group
which calls itself Society"; he, too, is infected, after all, with
the modem taste for excess, for speaking out with inordinate
candor. The truth is that it is in James, rather than in Proust,
that we often find it difficult to make certain of the real contours
of
being
behind the smooth mask of
seeming.
It
is
his
language
which is "adorned with veils and provided with limits," and it
is the conversation of
his
characters which is so allusive that it
seems more to spare than to release the sense.
And Valery continues: "After a new power has gained rec–
ognition, no great time passes before its representatives appear
at the gatherings of society; and the movement of history is pretty
well summarized by the successive admissions of different social
types to the salons, hunts, marriages, and funerals of the supreme
tribe of a nation." What an apt description of the rise of the
heiress-of, say, Milly Theale entering a London drawing-room
and being greeted by Lord Mark as the first young woman of
her time, or of Maggie Verver gravely telling the prince to whom
she has just become engaged that he is an object of beauty, a
morceau du musee,
though of course she hasn't the least idea
what it would cost her father to acquire him, and that together
they shall possess the "world, the beautiful world!"
(This
ess~
is
part
of
a
chapter on Henry /ames in Mr. Rahv's forth–
coming
book: "The Figure in the Carpet".)
