THE DUCHESS' RED SHOES
73
It is needless to say that Mr. Aldridge and Mr. Trilling would
utterly and instinctively condemn the manners of the Duc de Guer–
mantes when he hears that Swann is dying, and condemn and be
disgusted by the equivalent behavior in actual life. And Mr. Aldridge
can certainly argue that Proust had
to
be a great snob and great
novelist of manners to pass beyond snobbery and see through the
noble lords and ladies. Moreover, Proust has accomplished precisely
what Mr. Trilling described as one of the prime virtues of the novel:
the penetration of the illusion that snobbery generates. But the pen–
etration becomes meaningless when anyone can write as Mr. Aldridge
does, compounding snobbery by making it a necessary condition of
serious literature. Mr. Aldridge makes me think of the critic who
said to me, speaking of certain American authors: "How can the
sons of tailors
know
enough to write well about human beings?"
"Shakespeare was the son of a butcher," I answered. In a way, we
were both wrong. But Mr. Aldridge cannot but be entirely wrong
if
Proust was right. For what Mr. Aldridge desires and praises
is
a social
milieu
and a literary situation which is, so to speak, prior
to Proust: doubtless, as a literary man, Mr. Aldridge wants the
social milieu for the sake of the literary situation; that, at any rate,
would be the kindest view of his statements. But to write and to
think
as Mr. Aldridge does is to cast away an important part of
one's inheritance as a human being: it is a forgetting or a rejection
of Proust, and of much else besides. Mr. Trilling's case is far more
complicated and cannot be examined with complete justice here,
for part of what Mr. Trilling is trying to do as a critic of literature
and society is to salvage some of the lost or hurt pride of the middle
class
in its human inheritance, and his sensitivity reminds one of
Swann. Nevertheless nothing that Mr. Trilling had to say prevented
Mr. Aldridge from arriving at his views, even if we waive the
question of whether Mr. Trilling has encouraged his views, or helped
to support them.
Mr. Aldridge'S tone, I think, is that of one who is trying to
convince himself more than anyone else. Perhaps he has not truly
made the choice which he declares with so much vigor. But the
choice is real and inescapable in life and in literature: Mr. Aldridge,
tike
all
of us, must choose between Swann and the Duchess' red
shoes.
