Mme Proust and the Kosher Kitchen (10 page)

It is not often I am still in Paris at this time of year, and I do not believe it is healthy. It has been stifling hot. One cannot think of anything one really wants to do, except lie still and, at best, read a book. Thank goodness Marcel has left. This weather would be sure to incapacitate him. Dick barely notices, and keeps studying in his room. I have told him he must take a break soon, but he insists that it is necessary to be well prepared for the autumn term.

Adrien made Marcel promise before he left for Saint-Moritz that he would give serious consideration to the issue of his career, and start studying to resit his law exams. It must be resolved by autumn. Marcel has suggested the Ecole des Chartes might be a possibility. His father is unsure, and does not think he has the patience and endurance required for museum work. I had to point out to Adrien that his position is not entirely consistent: one cannot urge the boy to apply himself more resolutely on the one hand, and then tell him he is unfit for careers that require such application on the other. Adrien still thinks Marcel should do law despite last term’s fiasco, but I feel a museum would perhaps be a good compromise, as it might answer some of Marcel’s artistic tendencies.

I have been trying to make my way through Monsieur Zola’s latest. It is supposed to be the last in the
Rougon-Macquart
series, a summary of all its themes. Marie-Marguerite was teasing me that I have chosen it as my summer reading only so that I do not have to bother with all the preceding volumes, which is true enough. I gave up on
Germinal
halfway through, and it seems to
me there have been several more since then. This new one is hardly edifying at all. I have just got to a bit where the Docteur Pascal has relations with his niece. I do find M. Zola’s insistence on such details unnecessary in the end.

There is good company at the hotel this year, less of the Semitic element that troubled us last summer, and amongst the people with whom we are already acquainted in Paris, we find the Hanotaux. Adrien had a long conversation with Monsieur yesterday from which he emerged quite buoyed. He had been tactfully discussing our concerns over Marcel’s future career and M. Hanotaux was very encouraging about the possibilities of combining a serious employment with some literary interests, which he always managed. The key is to get the career on track, and he said that in our place he would urge Marcel to take his licence in law, arguing it did not necessarily mean one would work as a lawyer, but was a good basis for public service. I told Adrien I would speak of the suggestion to Marcel in today’s letter.

Letter from Marcel today replying one cannot combine two things as Gabriel Hanotaux has done. Indeed, he was quite rude about it and said M. Hanotaux has not
successfully combined the two, for if his political career may be deemed fruitful, his histories are only boring. (Adrien said that was just spite, but silently I had to agree with Marcel. I have always found the books unreadable.)

I have started
La Rôtisserie de la Reine Pédauque
, and am quite captivated by the Abbé Coignard and all his troubles. Such a relief from Zola. I must tell Marcel to pass on my compliments to Monsieur France when next he meets him at Mme A. de C.’s.

I am always slightly amazed by that household. Marcel says M. A. de C. is quite open about the relationship between M. France and his wife, and makes bitter little jokes about it whenever he sticks his head in to see her guests. Once someone not quite in the current introduced himself, saying how happy he was to meet the master of the house, and Monsieur replied no, he was quite mistaken, that was the master over there, indicating M. France. I have always thought that if one is to tolerate these things—and after all, one tolerates them, what choice is there—it is best to do so with grace. But I suppose it is much different for the men.

No news from Dick, always such a negligent correspondent.

Adrien returns to Paris tomorrow and I fear the last days of his holiday have not been as restful as they should have been. He really needed a proper month—
two weeks is not a vacation. He and Marcel just upset each other with their exchange of letters, and yesterday we got a final response from Marcel that did not please him. Marcel said he would resit the law exams next month and has reapplied himself to his studies with that in view, which should have pleased his father. But I think what really angered Adrien was that he spoke of bowing to our wishes, as though they were not reasonable plans, and also repeated his affirmation that a career outside of philosophy or literature would just be so much lost time for him.

I only wish he would be more realistic about this. To make one’s bread from literature alone seems unlikely. I have nothing but admiration for M. France, for example, but if M. Hanotaux is rare in combining literature and politics, M. France is rarer still in making a good living from his pen alone. It is such an unstable and unpredictable career.

It is not, I suppose, that Marcel will need that much money. One does not like to speculate on these things, but in the fullness of time his share of his grandfather’s and his great-uncle’s fortunes will pass to him, of course. But inherited wealth should never be used as an excuse for frittering away one’s life or avoiding one’s duty. I am composing a stiff letter to Marcel, although Adrien’s last words on the subject were affectionate enough—“Tell the boy to cut back on cream cheese,” he advised me, because Marcel has been complaining of his digestion too.

Saw the doctor safely onto the train yesterday. I bumped into the Faures in the dining room at lunch. They had just arrived, late in the season, but some business had kept him in Paris and she was staying with her relations in the interim. Pleasant to see them again. Her devotion to her girls is quite touching to witness—she talks of nothing but her love for them. Lucie is a mother now, but Antoinette has yet to marry and we agreed she and Marcel must get reacquainted in Paris this autumn.

Sometimes, I really feel lucky I do not have daughters. Sons may need a bit of prodding, but imagine having to round up candidates for a daughter every season. It would be exhausting work. If the girl was not married by twenty-two, a mother might drop dead from the sheer effort of it!

Anyway, an introduction between Marcel and Antoinette must surely be arranged. How quickly they grow up—certainly the last time I saw her she was only a little girl. Her mother showed me her photograph: she now has the most lovely dark hair, rather like the little de Benardaky girl with whom Marcel was once so taken.

Marcel has arrived and retreated to his room, saying the journey had utterly exhausted him and that he can smell pollen in the air. I protested that we are several miles away from any fields, but he just smiled that patient and sorry smile he gives me sometimes and said,
“Really, Maman, I do apologize, but there is pollen in the air.” He was not best pleased either when I told him he must meet up with Antoinette Faure when we return to Paris, and just said, “Well, Maman, for the moment I’m not fit to meet anyone, let alone a young lady.” I had so looked forward to his arriving, but now that he is here we seem to have started off on the wrong foot.

Adrien writes in this morning’s letter that old Dr. Charcot has died. The lunatics will surely miss their guardian but his work lives on. Adrien says his Austrian follower, Dr. Fruden, is now pursuing his teacher’s research into hysteria, so that Dr. Charcot will not soon be forgotten. I feel guilty that we had not seen him nor Madame in several years, and must write her a little note of condolences.

Marcel is fearfully ill. The poor little boy was just recovering from his voyage yesterday, and had moved into the bathroom when the maid came in not realizing he was still in the room and, despite my strict instructions to the manager on the subject, opened the window to air the place. Marcel came in from the bathroom, horrified first that there was this young servant in his presence and he still in his pyjamas and then appalled at the sight of the open window. His breathing became instantly laboured, he got right back into bed and sent the maid off to find me. I hurried up from breakfast and there he was in the throes of a ferocious attack.
It is all so stupid. The sea air is supposed to do him good and here he is suffering from his asthma as badly as if we were in Auteuil. I had to go around the hotel with the manager, inspecting other rooms in the hopes of finding one that had not recently been aired, and did finally find an awfully small one up on the fourth floor that seemed all right.

I looked in on him just now and he was fast asleep, with that regular breathing, the sound of which floods me with relief after any attack, but which most of us take for granted every day. I wonder if there has been a month of that child’s life when I have not worried. It is a mother’s job in the end. I am not sure how I would fill my days if I did not have Marcel and Dick to care for.

It was Ruskin who told us: “Give a little love to a child and you get a great deal back.”

Marcel and his father have reprised their correspondence on the career question with a long letter from Adrien about the Cour des Comptes if Marcel does not wish to pursue law. I have told Marcel that his father and I wish him only to be happy and that there is no dishonour in keeping France’s account books for her, but I cannot help but secretly agree with him when he says such employment would not suit him. His father, however, is much taken with the idea and seems to have been seeking advice all over Paris.

I had a drive with M. and Mme Faure yesterday
afternoon, followed by tea on the veranda. She has recently discovered Dickens so we had a long talk about his books. Mme Faure says her favourite so far is
The Old Curiosity Shop
, which I always found a little sentimental but clearly reflects the lady’s tender sensibilities. She demanded I pronounce a favourite, and without really giving the matter much thought, I said
Great Expectations
, just because the idea of the jilted Miss Havesham still sitting in her wedding dress after so many years is such a wonderful image of lost love. Mme Faure said she would get to it next so we might discuss it too, but warned me it might be some time as all Dickens’s novels are so very long. She is right, although I never mind a long novel myself as long as the author has a strong moral.

Adrien seems to have abandoned the idea of the Cour des Comptes and I think it is best left forgotten. I will not ask why he has changed his mind, better just to let the whole thing drop. Instead, he and Marcel are now arguing about the law and the possibility of the Ecole des Chartes. Marcel had received a reply from Monsieur Grandjean about that—three years of study to become an archivist, but the Ecole du Louvre is only two years. He is very worried that a museum job really would leave him no time to write, which seems once again to be his foremost concern. I suggested he write again to M. Grandjean and discreetly inquire how many days a week the keepers are expected to attend the museum.

I really cannot bear the idea of the alternative, which will have to be diplomacy, but there may be nothing for it. I cannot tell Adrien how much I dread the idea, for he would criticize me for being too soft on the boy and I cannot tell Marcel for fear of discouraging him from any path that might be open to him. All I can do at the moment is advise him to give the Ecole du Louvre serious consideration. What a privilege it would be, after all, to dwell every day amongst the beauties of the museum.

I am reminded of a truthful phrase of George Eliot’s—there is something in
Middlemarch
about youth being the season of hope only because our elders are hopeful about us.

Marcel has written a final letter to his father saying he is ready to sit the exams on his return, and enter a law office as soon as he passes. We seem to have arrived at this decision simply so as to arrive at a decision. Marcel is resigned rather than relieved, but I hope that once past these technical hurdles he will warm to the work itself. He leaves on Monday, and I have suggested that he have lunch with his uncle Georges immediately. I shall return at the end of the week, and this morning gave the manager our notice.