” aii a ee —_— = 4 a ~ a = THE COLLEGE NEWS Page Three EXCERPTS From EXILE A-la Recherche de Combray I think that the village of Combray is one-~of the simplest and purest of Proust’s literary amalgdmations.-Ad- mitting that he transpianted the viaduc, symbolic of the unknown re- gions -of exjle and distress which lay beyond his station, from Auteuil; that he fitted all of his favorite bits of Gothic architecture into the church, Combray still remains so faithful an adaptation of the little village of Illiers that.one can easily use Swann as a sort of Baedaker’ or Guide Bleu. Tea with. Madame Mante, who is the daughter of Proust’s younger brother, preluded my visit to Illiers and fixed all practical details. I had been invited to meet a man so deeply Proustian that he had been to Illiers three times, (The ardour of medi- aeval pilgrims seldom led them to Jerusalem more thfan twice.) I think he: was rather ‘surprised to meet me in the. pantry. The concierge, hér suspicions aroused when she saw that I was dona ferentes in the form of a bunch of jonquils, had ushered me into the service lift. I also was bearing a small notebook, in which I forgot to take) notes, so excited was I by the turn of the conversation, the charm of Madame Mante, who looks lfke pic- tures of Proust as a little boy, and the flavor of the orange marmalade. It makes one wonder why certain people say that the French are not hospitable to strangers. The next morning, I am proud to say, I arose a5.45 and caught a seven o’clock train fa Chartres, where one changes to a_ special transit ex- press, renowned for burning up the 15 miles between Chartres and Illiers in slightly less than three-quarters of and hour. But I began to notice the existence of Combray long before the train arrived at Hliers. It is -as if the whole plain of La Beauce were a succession of Combrays fitted one in- side the other like wooden Easter eggs. Chartres, seen at a distance, the di Thave erence | @ with two far-off spires. giving ex- pression to the town, is the big red Easter egg of Combray; the whole country of La Beauce, dotted with apple trees, luminous with a sort of hidden lighting, is a glorified cété de Méséglise, and the Eure, and édition de luxe of the Vivonne; Illiers is the middle, green Easter egg; and I -dis- covered .the touching, . microscopic little yellow Easter egg. (the: one that always gets lost first) in the village of Vieuxvice, a white-washed baby |Norman church in the middle of a poultry yard, with a gutter running down the road and a field stretching out behind. Recognizing the clecher of Saint- Hilaire when I saw the crows flying around the spire, I climbed out of my compartment with trembling knees, and walked to the Place. My first surprise was in the point of size. Of course I had realized that as Proust was_a child when he visited his aunt at Combray, everything must have seemed relatively larger in his eyes, so I had expected a small village, but I had not expected a toy town. In comparison with the church, the different-colored houses looked like the tiniest of chickens huddled closely to- gether. And the Vivonne, that mighty river that filled with pink in the sun- set, was hardly a rivulet, crossed by matchstick bridges. My second sur- images; phrases that I had thought poetic were rigorously realistic. The roofs of the houses did look “laineux et gris.” There were'-no other words for it. It was a rather Méséglisian day and I was afraid that it might rain at any bminute; so, in order to save time, I rented a bicycle, one franc 50 the hour, at the bicyclist’s by 6d on the Place, called Rousseau. e man in charge examined my carte d’identité minutely, asked me why I left New York to go to Tours, why I left Tours to come to Paris, and then told me not to go and “fourrer the nez” in places I shouldn’t. I found his well-meaning patronage reminiscent of the esprit de prise was in the exactitude of Proust’s ' Combray until it occurred to me that he was probably worried about the bicycle. I spent all morning tracing the walks that Proust describes. Méséglise, which, in the eyes of Proust, had as abstract, as ideal an existence as has the town ¢ Paoli for us, is indicated on all signboards as Méréglise. I was constantly under the impression that the authorities -were guilty of typographical errors, and also lost precious time searching for the name of Combray on a sign- board which pointed to Illiers. Then I wandered around the town, ex- periencing the curious sensation of being “une de ces apparitions stu- péfiantes ne connaissait point.” At 12.30 I went into the hotel on the Place and ordered an enormous lunch. Three commis-voyageurs were kind enough to ask me to sit with them (“La ’tite demoiselle va s’ennuyer toute seule);” but they wére rather unattractive so I remained aloof. I regretted this decision afterwards as they seemed to be having such a good time smacking their lipg and telling each other stories, but otr relations were by-no means stained and I re- ceived a great deal of information about what they did last’ mardi gras and also about “les amours d’une , chevre et d’un bouc,” during the course of the meal. The park of Tansonville in Swann is partly the Pré Catelan (not the restaurant in the Bois, but a tiny park on the edge of Illiers). A very sweet old lady with a large black moustache, showed. me the aubépines, not yet in flower, and told me that the daughter of the former schoolmistress .had married a man who lived so far away that it cost 60 francs “to get there. Like Frangoise, she mistrusted all that was foreign. But Tansonville is also a private property several kilo- meters outside of the town. It has recently been bought by some gens de Paris who are redecorating the-house and grounds.