In Search of Lost Time, Volume VI_ Time Regained - Marcel Proust [48]
In short, people in society had become disillusioned about M. de Charlus, not from having penetrated too far, but without having penetrated at all, his rare intellectual merit. The reason why he was found to be “pre-war,” old-fashioned, was that the people who are least capable of judging the worth of individuals are also the most inclined to adopt fashion as a principle by which to classify them; they have not exhausted, or even grazed the surface of, the talented men of one generation, when suddenly they are obliged to condemn them all en bloc, for here is a new generation with a new label which will be no better understood than its predecessor.
As for the second accusation, that of being pro-German, fashionable people because of their dislike of extreme views tended to reject it, but the charge had an unwearying and particularly cruel advocate in Morel, who, having managed to retain in the newspapers and even in society the position which M. de Charlus had first achieved for him and then tried equally hard, but without success, to undermine, pursued the Baron with a hatred that was all the more infamous since, whatever the precise relations between them had been, Morel had seen and known the side of him that he concealed from so many people: his profound kindness. M. de Charlus had shown such generosity, such delicacy towards the violinist, had been so scrupulous about fulfilling his promises to him that, when Charlie left him, the image of the Baron that remained in his mind was not at all that of a vicious man (at most he regarded the Baron’s vice as a disease) but of a man with loftier ideas than any other he had ever known, a man with extraordinary capacity for feeling, a kind of saint. So little disposed was he to deny this that even after the quarrel he would say in all sincerity to a young man’s parents: “You can trust your son to him, he can only have the most excellent influence on him.” And so when by his articles in the papers he tried to make him suffer, it was in his imagination not vice but virtue incarnate that he was scourging. Not long before the war there had begun to appear short “pieces,” transparent to the so-called initiated, in which M. de Charlus was most monstrously libelled. Of one, entitled The Misfortunes of a Dowager ending in-us or the Latter Days of the Baroness, Mme Verdurin had bought fifty copies in order to be able to lend it to her acquaintances and M. Verdurin, declaring that Voltaire himself did not write better, took to reading it aloud. Since the war the tone of these pieces had changed. Not only was the Baron’s inversion denounced, but also his alleged Germanic nationality: “Frau Bosch,” “Frau von den Bosch” were the names habitually used to designate M. de Charlus. A little composition of a poetic nature appeared with the title—borrowed from some of Beethoven’s dances—Une Allemande. Finally two short stories, The Uncle from America and the Aunt from Frankfurt and The Jolly Rear Admiral, read in proof in the little clan, had delighted even Brichot himself, who exclaimed: “So long as the most high and puissant Lady Censorship does not blue-pencil us!” The articles themselves were cleverer than their ridiculous titles. Their style derived from Bergotte but in a way which, for the reason that follows, perhaps no one but myself perceived. Bergotte’s writings had had not the slightest influence on Morel. The fertilisation had been effected in a most unusual way, which I record here only because of its rarity. I have described earlier the very special manner which Bergotte had, when he spoke, of choosing and pronouncing his words. Morel, who for a long time had