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POWER DISTRIBUTION
SYSTEM RELIABILITY
Practical Methods
and Applications

Ali A. Chowdhury
Don O. Koval

IEEE Press
POWER DISTRIBUTION
SYSTEM RELIABILITY
BOOKS IN THE IEEE PRESS SERIES ON POWER ENGINEERING

Principles of Electric Machines with Power Electronic Applications, Second Edition

M. E. El-Hawary
Pulse Width Modulation for Power Converters: Principles and Practice
D. Grahame Holmes and Thomas Lipo
Analysis of Electric Machinery and Drive Systems, Second Edition
Paul C. Krause, Oleg Wasynczuk, and Scott D. Sudhoff
Risk Assessment for Power Systems: Models, Methods, and Applications
Wenyuan Li
Optimization Principles: Practical Applications to the Operations of Markets of the Electric
Power Industry
Narayan S. Rau
Electric Economics: Regulation and Deregulation
Geoffrey Rothwell and Tomas Gomez
Electric Power Systems: Analysis and Control
Fabio Saccomanno
Electrical Insulation for Rotating Machines: Design, Evaluation, Aging, Testing,
and Repair
Greg Stone, Edward A. Boulter, Ian Culbert, and Hussein Dhirani
Signal Processing of Power Quality Disturbances
Math H. J. Bollen and Irene Y. H. Gu
Instantaneous Power Theory and Applications to Power Conditioning
Hirofumi Akagi, Edson H. Watanabe and Mauricio Aredes
Maintaining Mission Critical Systems in a 24/7 Environment
Peter M. Curtis
Elements of Tidal-Electric Engineering
Robert H. Clark
Handbook of Large Turbo-Generator Operation and Maintenance, Second Edition
Geoff Klempner and Isidor Kerszenbaum
Introduction to Electrical Power Systems
Mohamed E. El-Hawary
Modeling and Control of Fuel Cells: Distributed Generation Applications
M. Hashem Nehrir and Caisheng Wang
Power Distribution System Reliability: Practical Methods and Applications
Ali A. Chowdhury and Don O. Koval
POWER DISTRIBUTION
SYSTEM RELIABILITY
Practical Methods
and Applications

Ali A. Chowdhury
Don O. Koval

IEEE Press
 IEEE Press
445 Hoes Lane
Piscataway, NJ 08854

IEEE Press Editorial Board

Lajos Hanzo, Editor in Chief

R. Abari T. Chen O. Malik

J. Anderson T. G. Croda S. Nahavandi
S. Basu S. Farshchi M. S. Newman
A. Chatterjee B. M. Hammerli W. Reeve

Kenneth Moore, Director of IEEE Book and Information Services (BIS)

Jeanne Audino, Project Editor

Technical Reviewers
Ward Jewell, Wichita State University
Fred Vaneldik, University of Alberta

Copyright  2009 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey. All rights reserved.
Published simultaneously in Canada

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted
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Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-0470-29228-0

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 To my wife Razia, daughter Fariha, late parents Hesamuddin Ahmed and
Mahfuza Khatun, late elder brother Ali Hyder, and late older sister Chemon
Ara Chowdhury

—Ali A. Chowdhury

To my wife Vivian, my mother Katherine, and late father Peter Koval

—Don. O. Koval
 CONTENTS

Preface xix

1 OUTLINE OF THE BOOK 1

1.1 Introduction 1
1.2 Reliability Assessment of Power Systems 2
1.2.1 Generation System Reliability Assessment 2
1.2.2 Transmission System Reliability Assessment 3
1.2.3 Distribution System Reliability Assessment 4
1.3 Organization of the Chapters 5
1.4 Conclusions 10
References 11

2 FUNDAMENTALS OF PROBABILITY AND STATISTICS 13

2.1 Concept of Frequency 13
2.1.1 Introduction 13
2.1.2 Concept of Class 15
2.1.3 Frequency Graphs 15
2.1.4 Cumulative Frequency Distribution Model 15
2.2 Important Parameters of Frequency Distribution 15
2.2.1 Mean 16
2.2.2 Median 16
2.2.3 Mode 16
2.2.4 Standard Deviation 16
2.2.5 Variance 17
2.3 Theory of Probability 17
2.3.1 Concept 17
2.3.2 Probability Laws and Theorems 18
2.4 Probability Distribution Model 19
2.4.1 Random Variable 19
2.4.2 Probability Density Function 20
viii CONTENTS

2.4.3 Parameters of Probability Distributions 21

2.4.4 The Binomial Distribution 22
2.4.5 The Poisson Distribution 25
2.4.6 The Exponential Distribution 26
2.4.7 The Normal Distribution 27
2.5 Sampling Theory 29
2.5.1 Concepts of Population and Sample 29
2.5.2 Random Sampling Model 29
2.5.3 Sampling Distributions 29
2.5.4 Concept of Confidence Limit 32
2.5.5 Estimation of Population Statistic 32
2.5.6 Computation of Sample Size 34
2.6 Statistical Decision Making 36
2.6.1 Procedure of Decision Making 37
2.6.2 Types of Error 37
2.6.3 Control of Errors 42
2.7 Conclusions 42
References 42

3 RELIABILITY PRINCIPLES 45
3.1 Failure Rate Model 45
3.1.1 Concept and Model 45
3.1.2 Concept of Bathtub Curve 46
3.2 Concept of Reliability of Population 47
3.2.1 Theory of First Principles 47
3.2.2 Reliability Model 50
3.2.3 The Poisson Probability Distribution 52
3.2.4 Reliability of Equal Time Steps 53
3.3 Mean Time to Failures 54
3.4 Reliability of Complex Systems 55
3.4.1 Series Systems 55
3.4.2 Parallel Systems 56
3.4.3 Partially Redundant Systems 58
3.4.4 Bayes’ Theorem 60
3.5 Standby System Modeling 62
3.5.1 Background 62
3.5.2 Spares for One Unit 62
3.5.3 Spares for Multiple Interchangeable Units 63
CONTENTS ix

3.6 Concepts of Availability and Dependability 65

3.6.1 Mean Time to Repair 65
3.6.2 Availability Model 66
3.6.3 Markov Model 66
3.6.4 Concept of Dependability 67
3.6.5 Design Considerations 68
3.7 Reliability Measurement 68
3.7.1 Concept 68
3.7.2 Accuracy of Observed Data 69
3.7.3 Confidence Limit of Failure Rate 69
3.7.4 Chi-Square Distribution 70
3.8 Conclusions 77
References 77

4 APPLICATIONS OF SIMPLE RELIABILITY MODELS 79

4.1 Equipment Failure Mechanism 79
4.1.1 Introduction 79
4.1.2 Utilization of Forced Outage Statistics 80
4.1.3 Failure Rate Computation 80
4.2 Availability of Equipment 81
4.2.1 Availability Considerations and Requirements 81
4.2.2 Availability Model 82
4.2.3 Long-Run Availability 83
4.3 Oil Circuit Recloser (OCR) Maintenance Issues 85
4.3.1 Introduction 85
4.3.2 Study Methods 85
4.4 Distribution Pole Maintenance Practices 86
4.5 Procedures for Ground Testing 87
4.5.1 Concept 87
4.5.2 Statistical Methods For Ground Testing 87
4.6 Insulators Maintenance 87
4.6.1 Background 87
4.6.2 Inspection Program for Insulators 87
4.6.3 Voltage Surges On Lines 88
4.6.4 Critical Flashover 89
4.6.5 Number of Insulators in a String 91
4.7 Customer Service Outages 93
4.7.1 Background 93
x CONTENTS

4.7.2 Popular Distribution Reliability Indices 93

4.7.3 Reliability Criteria 94
4.7.4 Cost of Interruption Concept 95
4.8 Conclusions 95
References 96

5 ENGINEERING ECONOMICS 97
5.1 Introduction 97
5.2 Concept of Interest and Equivalent 98
5.3 Common Terms 98
5.4 Formulas for Computing Interest 98
5.5 Annual Cost 101
5.5.1 Concept of Annual Cost 101
5.5.2 Alternatives with Different Life Times 102
5.6 Present Value (PV) Concept 103
5.7 Theory of Rate of Return 105
5.8 Cost–Benefit Analysis Approach 106
5.9 Financial Risk Assessment 107
5.9.1 Basic Concept 107
5.9.2 Principles 107
5.9.3 Concept of Risk Aversion 108
5.10 Conclusions 108
References 109

6 RELIABILITY ANALYSIS OF COMPLEX NETWORK

CONFIGURATIONS 111
6.1 Introduction 111
6.2 State Enumeration Methodologies 112
6.2.1 Basic Assumptions: Criteria for System Success—Power is
Delivered to All Loads 112
6.3 Network Reduction Methods 115
6.3.1 Path Enumeration Methods: Minimum Tie Set 116
6.3.2 Path Enumeration Methods: Minimum Cut Set 121
6.4 Bayes’ Theorem in Reliability 129
6.5 Construction of Fault Tree Diagram 139
6.5.1 Basic Rules for Combining the Probability of Independent
Input Failure Events to Evaluate the Probability
of a Single-Output Failure Event 140
CONTENTS xi

6.6 The Application of Conditional Probability Theory to System

Operating Configurations 146
6.7 Conclusions 151
References 151

7 DESIGNING RELIABILITY INTO INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL

POWER SYSTEMS 153
7.1 Introduction 153
7.2 Example 1: Simple Radial Distribution System 154
7.2.1 Description of a Simple Radial System 155
7.2.2 Results: Simple Radial System Example 1 155
7.2.3 Conclusions: Simple Radial System Example 1 155
7.3 Example 2: Reliability Analysis of a Primary Selective
System to the 13.8 kV Utility Supply 156
7.3.1 Description: Primary Selective System to the 13.8 kV
Utility Supply 157
7.3.2 Results: A Primary Selective System to the 13.8 kV
Utility Supply 158
7.3.3 Conclusions: Primary Selective System to 13.8 kV
Utility Supply 159
7.4 Example 3: A Primary Selective System to the Load Side of
a 13.8 kV Circuit Breaker 161
7.4.1 Description of a Primary Selective System to the Load
Side of a 13.8 kV Circuit Breaker 161
7.4.2 Results: Primary Selective System to Load Side of 13.8 kV
Circuit Breaker 162
7.4.3 Conclusions: A Primary Selective System to the Load Side
of a 13.8 kV Circuit Breaker 163
7.5 Example 4: Primary Selective System to the Primary
of the Transformer 163
7.5.1 Description of a Primary Selective System to the Primary
of the Transformer 163
7.5.2 Results: A Primary Selective System to the Primary
of the Transformer 164
7.5.3 Conclusions: Primary Selective system to Primary
of Transformer 164
7.6 Example 5: A Secondary Selective System 164
7.6.1 Description of a Secondary Selective System 164
7.6.2 Results: A Secondary Selective System 165
7.6.3 Conclusions: A Secondary Selective System 165
xii CONTENTS

7.7 Example 6: A Simple Radial System with Spares 166

7.7.1 Description of a Simple Radial System with Spares 166
7.7.2 Results: A Simple Radial System with Spares 167
7.7.3 Conclusions: Simple Radial System with Spares 167
7.8 Example 7: A Simple Radial System with Cogeneration 168
7.8.1 Description of a Simple Radial System with Cogeneration 168
7.8.2 Results: Simple Radial System with Cogeneration 168
7.8.3 Conclusions: A Simple Radial System with Cogeneration 169
7.9 Reliability Evaluation of Miscellaneous System Configurations 170
7.10 Conclusions 188
References 188

8 ZONE BRANCH RELIABILITY METHODOLOGY 191

8.1 Introduction 191
8.2 Zone Branch Concepts 192
8.3 Industrial System Study 196
8.4 Application of Zone Branch Methodology: Case Studies 201
8.4.1 Case 1: Design “A”—Simple Radial Substation Configuration 202
8.4.2 Case 2: Design “B”—Dual Supply Radial—Single Bus 208
8.4.3 Case 3: Design “C”—Dual Supply Radial with Tiebreaker 215
8.4.4 Case 4: Design “D”—Dual Supply Loop with Tiebreaker 219
8.4.5 Case 5: Design “E”—Dual Supply Primary Selective 225
8.4.6 Case 6: Design “F”—Double Bus/Double Breaker Radial 232
8.4.7 Case 7: Design “G”—Double Bus/Double Breaker Loop 235
8.4.8 Case 8: Design “H”—Double Bus/Breaker Primary Selective 242
8.5 Conclusions 251
References 252

9 EQUIPMENT OUTAGE STATISTICS 255

9.1 Introduction 255
9.2 Interruption Data Collection Scheme 256
9.3 Typical Distribution Equipment Outage Statistics 259
9.4 Conclusions 265
References 265

10 HISTORICAL ASSESSMENT 267

10.1 Introduction 267
10.2 Automatic Outage Management System 268
10.2.1 Definitions of Terms and Performance Indices 269
Discovering Diverse Content Through
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 It must be remarked, however, that in Mme. de Villeparisis’s
drawing-room the absence of Mme. Leroi, if it distressed the lady of
the house, passed unperceived by the majority of her guests. They
were entirely ignorant of the peculiar position which Mme. Leroi
occupied, a position known only to the fashionable world, and never
doubted that Mme. de Villeparisis’s receptions were, as the readers
of her Memoirs to-day are convinced that they must have been, the
most brilliant in Paris.
On the occasion of this first call which, after leaving Saint-Loup, I
went to pay on Mme. de Villeparisis, following the advice given by M.
de Norpois to my father, I found her in her drawing-room hung, with
yellow silk, against which the sofas and the admirable armchairs
upholstered in Beauvais tapestry stood out with the almost purple
redness of ripe raspberries. Side by side with the Guermantes and
Villeparisis portraits one saw those—gifts from the sitters themselves
—of Queen Marie-Amélie, the Queen of the Belgians, the Prince de
Joinville and the Empress of Austria. Mme. de Villeparisis herself,
capped with an old-fashioned bonnet of black lace (which she
preserved with the same instinctive sense of local or historical colour
as a Breton innkeeper who, however Parisian his customers may
have become, feels it more in keeping to make his maids dress in
coifs and wide sleeves), was seated at a little desk on which in front
of her, as well as her brushes, her palette and an unfinished flower-
piece in water-colours, were arranged in glasses, in saucers, in
cups, moss-roses, zinnias, maidenhair ferns, which on account of
the sudden influx of callers she had just left off painting, and which
had the effect of being piled on a florist’s counter in some
eighteenth-century mezzotint. In this drawing-room, which had been
slightly heated on purpose because the Marquise had caught cold on
the journey from her house in the country, there were already when I
arrived a librarian with whom Mme. de Villeparisis had spent the
morning in selecting the autograph letters to herself from various
historical personages which were to figure in facsimile as
documentary evidence in the Memoirs which she was preparing for
the press, and a historian, solemn and tongue-tied, who hearing that
she had inherited and still possessed a portrait of the Duchesse de
Montmorency, had come to ask her permission to reproduce it as a
plate in his work on the Fronde; a party strengthened presently by
the addition of my old friend Bloch, now a rising dramatist, upon
whom she counted to secure the gratuitous services of actors and
actresses at her next series of afternoon parties. It was true that the
social kaleidoscope was in the act of turning and that the Dreyfus
case was shortly to hurl the Jews down to the lowest rung of the
social ladder. But, for one thing, the anti-Dreyfus cyclone might rage
as it would, it is not in the first hour of a storm that the waves are
highest. In the second place, Mme. de Villeparisis, leaving a whole
section of her family to fulminate against the Jews, had hitherto kept
herself entirely aloof from the Case and never gave it a thought.
Lastly, a young man like Bloch, whom no one knew, might pass
unperceived, whereas leading Jews, representatives of their party,
were already threatened. He had his chin pointed now by a goat-
beard, wore double glasses and a long frock coat, and carried a
glove like a roll of papyrus in his hand. The Rumanians, the
Egyptians, the Turks may hate the Jews. But in a French drawing-
room the differences between those peoples are not so apparent,
and an Israelite making his entry as though he were emerging from
the heart of the desert, his body crouching like a hyaena’s, his neck
thrust obliquely forward, spreading himself in profound “salaams”,
completely satisfies a certain taste for the oriental. Only it is essential
that the Jew should not be actually “in” society, otherwise he will
readily assume the aspect of a lord and his manners become so
Gallicised that on his face a rebellious nose, growing like a
nasturtium in any but the right direction, will make one think rather of
Mascarille’s nose than of Solomon’s. But Bloch, not having been
rendered supple by the gymnastics of the Faubourg, nor ennobled
by a crossing with England or Spain, remained for a lover of the
exotic as strange and savoury a spectacle, in spite of his European
costume, as one of Decamps’s Jews. Marvellous racial power which
from the dawn of time thrusts to the surface, even in modern Paris,
on the stage of our theatres, behind the pigeonholes of our public
offices, at a funeral, in the street, a solid phalanx, setting their mark
upon our modern ways of hairdressing, absorbing, making us forget,
disciplining the frock coat which on them remains not at all unlike the
garment in which Assyrian scribes are depicted in ceremonial attire
on the frieze of a monument at Susa before the gates of the Palace
of Darius. (Later in the afternoon Bloch might have imagined that it
was out of anti-semitic malice that M. de Charlus inquired whether
his first name was Jewish, whereas it was simply from aesthetic
interest and love of local colour.) But, to revert for a moment, when
we speak of racial persistence we do not accurately convey the
impression we receive from Jews, Greeks, Persians, all those
peoples whom it is better to leave with their differences. We know
from classical paintings the faces of the ancient Greeks, we have
seen Assyrians on the walls of a palace at Susa. And so we feel, on
encountering in a Paris drawing-room Orientals belonging to one or
other group, that we are in the presence of creatures whom the
forces of necromancy must have called to life. We knew hitherto only
a superficial image; behold it has gained depth, it extends into three
dimensions, it moves. The young Greek lady, daughter of a rich
banker and the latest favourite of society, looks exactly like one of
those dancers who in the chorus of a ballet at once historical and
aesthetic symbolise in flesh and blood the art of Hellas; and yet in
the theatre the setting makes these images somehow trite; the
spectacle, on the other hand, to which the entry into a drawing-room
of a Turkish lady or a Jewish gentleman admits us, by animating
their features makes them appear stranger still, as if they really were
creatures evoked by the effort of a medium. It is the soul (or rather
the pigmy thing to which—up to the present, at any rate—the soul is
reduced in this sort of materialisation), it is the soul of which we have
caught glimpses hitherto in museums alone, the soul of the ancient
Greeks, of the ancient Hebrews, torn from a life at once insignificant
and transcendental, which seems to be enacting before our eyes this
disconcerting pantomime. In the young Greek lady who is leaving the
room what we seek in vain to embrace is the figure admired long ago
on the side of a vase. I felt that if I had in the light of Mme. de
Villeparisis’s drawing-room taken photographs of Bloch, they would
have furnished of Israel the same image—so disturbing because it
does not appear to emanate from humanity, so deceiving because all
the same it is so strangely like humanity—which we find in spirit
photographs. There is nothing, to speak more generally, not even the
insignificance of the remarks made by the people among whom we
spend our lives, that does not give us a sense of the supernatural, in
our every-day world where even a man of genius from whom we
expect, gathered as though around a turning table, to learn the
secret of the Infinite utters only these words—the same that had just
issued from the lips of Bloch: “Take care of my top hat.”
“Oh, Ministers, my dear sir,” Mme. de Villeparisis was saying,
addressing herself specially to my friend, and picking up the thread
of a conversation which had been broken by my arrival: “nobody
ever wanted to see them. I was only a child at the time, but I can
remember so well the King begging my grandfather to invite M.
Decazes to a rout at which my father was to dance with the
Duchesse de Berry. ‘It will give me pleasure, Florimond,’ said the
King. My grandfather, who was a little deaf, thought he had said M.
de Castries, which seemed a perfectly natural thing to ask. When he
understood that it was M. Decazes, he was furious at first, but he
gave in, and wrote a note the same evening to M. Decazes, begging
him to pay my grandfather the compliment and give him the honour
of his presence at the ball which he was giving the following week.
For we were polite, sir, in those days, and no hostess would have
dreamed of simply sending her card and writing on it ‘Tea’ or
‘Dancing’ or ‘Music‘. But if we understood politeness we were not
incapable of impertinence either. M. Decazes accepted, but the day
before the ball it was given out that my grandfather felt indisposed
and had cancelled his invitations. He had obeyed the King, but he
had not had M. Decazes at his ball.... Yes, sir, I remember M. Molé
very well, he was a clever man—he shewed that in his reception of
M. de Vigny at the Academy—but he was very pompous, and I can
see him now coming downstairs to dinner in his own house with his
tall hat in his hand.”
“Ah! that is typically suggestive of what must have been a pretty
perniciously philistine epoch, for it was no doubt a universal habit to
carry one’s hat in one’s hand in one’s own house,” observed Bloch,
anxious to make the most of so rare an opportunity of learning from
an eyewitness details of the aristocratic life of another day, while the
librarian, who was a sort of intermittent secretary to the Marquise,
gazed at her tenderly as though he were saying to the rest of us:
“There, you see what she’s like, she knows everything, she has met
everybody, you can ask her anything you like, she’s quite amazing.”
“Oh, dear, no,” replied Mme. de Villeparisis, drawing nearer to her
as she spoke the glass containing the maiden-hair which presently
she would begin again to paint, “it was a habit M. Molé had; that was
all. I never saw my father carry his hat in the house, except of course
when the King came, because the King being at home wherever he
is the master of the house is only a visitor then in his own drawing-
room.”
“Aristotle tells us in the second chapter of ...” ventured M. Pierre,
the historian of the Fronde, but so timidly that no one paid any
attention. Having been suffering for some weeks from a nervous
insomnia which resisted every attempt at treatment, he had given up
going to bed, and, half-dead with exhaustion, went out only
whenever his work made it imperative. Incapable of repeating at all
often these expeditions which, simple enough for other people, cost
him as much effort as if, to make them, he was obliged to come
down from the moon, he was surprised to be brought up so
frequently against the fact that other people’s lives were not
organised on a constant and permanent basis so as to furnish the
maximum utility to the sudden outbursts of his own. He sometimes
found the doors shut of a library which he had reached only after
setting himself artificially on his feet and in a frock coat like some
automaton in a story by Mr. Wells. Fortunately he had found Mme.
de Villeparisis at home and was going to be shewn the portrait.
Meanwhile he was cut short by Bloch. “Indeed,” the latter
remarked, referring to what Mme. de Villeparisis had said as to the
etiquette for royal visits. “Do you know, I never knew that,” as though
it were strange that he should not have known it always.
“Talking of that sort of visit, you heard the stupid joke my nephew
Basin played on me yesterday morning?” Mme. de Villeparisis asked
the librarian. “He told my people, instead of announcing him, to say
that it was the Queen of Sweden who had called to see me.”
“What! He made them tell you just like that! I say, he must have a
nerve,” exclaimed Bloch with a shout of laughter, while the historian
smiled with a stately timidity.
 “I was quite surprised, because I had only been back from the
country a few days; I had specially arranged, just to be left in peace
for a little, that no one was to be told that I was in Paris, and I asked
myself how the Queen of Sweden could have heard so soon,” went
on Mme. de Villeparisis, leaving her guests amazed to find that a
visit from the Queen of Sweden was in itself nothing out of the
common to their hostess.
Earlier in the day Mme. de Villeparisis might have been
collaborating with the librarian in arranging the illustrations to her
Memoirs; now she was, quite unconsciously, trying their effect on an
average public typical of that from which she would eventually have
to enlist her readers. Hers might be different in many ways from a
really fashionable drawing-room in which you would have been
struck by the absence of a number of middle class ladies to whom
Mme. de Villeparisis was “at home”, and would have noticed instead
such brilliant leaders of fashion as Mme. Leroi had in course of time
managed to secure, but this distinction is not perceptible in her
Memoirs, from which certain unimportant friendships of the author
have disappeared because there is never any occasion to refer to
them; while the absence of those who did not come to see her
leaves no gap because, in the necessarily restricted space at the
author’s disposal, only a few persons can appear, and if these
persons are royal personages, historic personalities, then the utmost
impression of distinction which any volume of memoirs can convey
to the public is achieved. In the opinion of Mme. Leroi, Mme. de
Villeparisis’s parties were third-rate; and Mme. de Villeparisis felt the
sting of Mme. Leroi’s opinion. But hardly anyone to-day remembers
who Mme. Leroi was, her opinions have vanished into thin air, and it
is the drawing-room of Mme. de Villeparisis, frequented as it was by
the Queen of Sweden, and as it had been by the Duc d’Aumale, the
Duc de Broglie, Thiers, Montalembert, Mgr. Dupanloup, which will be
looked upon as one of the most brilliant of the nineteenth century by
that posterity which has not changed since the days of Homer and
Pindar, and for which the enviable things are exalted birth, royal or
quasi-royal, and the friendship of kings, the leaders of the people
and other eminent men.
 Now of all this Mme. de Villeparisis had her share in the people
who still came to her house and in the memories—sometimes
slightly “touched up”—by means of which she extended her social
activity into the past. And then there was M. de Norpois who, while
unable to restore his friend to any substantial position in society, did
indeed bring to her house such foreign or French statesmen as
might have need of his services and knew that the only effective
method of securing them was to pay court to Mme. de Villeparisis.
Possibly Mme. Leroi also knew these European celebrities. But, as a
well-mannered woman who avoids anything that suggests the
bluestocking, she would as little have thought of mentioning the
Eastern question to her Prime Ministers as of discussing the nature
of love with her novelists and philosophers. “Love?” she had once
replied to a pushing lady who had asked her: “What are your views
on love?”—“Love? I make it, constantly, but I never talk about it.”
When she had any of these literary or political lions in her house she
contented herself, as did the Duchesse de Guermantes, with setting
them down to play poker. They often preferred this to the serious
conversations on general ideas in which Mme. de Villeparisis forced
them to engage. But these conversations, ridiculous as in the social
sense they may have been, have furnished the Memoirs of Mme. de
Villeparisis with those admirable passages, those dissertations on
politics which read so well in volumes of autobiography, as they do in
Corneille’s tragedies. Furthermore, the parties of the Villeparisis of
this world are alone destined to be handed down to posterity,
because the Lerois of this world cannot write, and, if they could,
would not have the time. And if the literary bent of the Villeparisis is
the cause of the Lerois‘ disdain, the disdain of the Lerois does, in its
turn, a singular service to the literary bent of the Villeparisis by
affording the bluestockings that leisure which the career of letters
requires. God, Whose Will it is that there should be a few books in
the world well written, breathes with that purpose such disdain into
the hearts of the Lerois, for He knows that if these should invite the
Villeparisis to dinner the latter would at once rise from their writing
tables and order their carriages to be round at eight.
Presently there came into the room, with slow and solemn step, an
old lady of tall stature who, beneath the raised brim of her straw hat,
revealed a monumental pile of snowy hair in the style of Marie-
Antoinette. I did not then know that she was one of three women
who were still to be seen in Parisian society and who, like Mme. de
Villeparisis, while all of the noblest birth, had been reduced, for
reasons which were now lost in the night of time and could have
been told us only by some old gallant of their period, to entertaining
only certain of the dregs of society who were not sought after
elsewhere. Each of these ladies had her own “Duchesse de
Guermantes”, the brilliant niece who came regularly to pay her
respects, but none of them could have succeeded in attracting to her
house the “Duchesse de Guermantes” of either of the others. Mme.
de Villeparisis was on the best of terms with these three ladies, but
she did not like them. Perhaps the similarity between their social
position and her own gave her an impression of them which was not
pleasing. Besides, soured bluestockings as they were, seeking by
the number and frequency of the drawing-room comedies which they
arranged in their houses to give themselves the illusion of a regular
salon, there had grown up among them a rivalry which the decay of
her fortune in the course of a somewhat tempestuous existence
reduced for each of them, when it was a question of securing the
kind assistance of a professional actor or actress, into a sort of
struggle for life. Furthermore, the lady with the Marie-Antoinette hair,
whenever she set eyes on Mme. de Villeparisis, could not help being
reminded of the fact that the Duchesse de Guermantes did not come
to her Fridays. Her consolation was that at these same Fridays she
could always count on having, blood being thicker than water, the
Princesse de Poix, who was her own personal Guermantes, and who
never went near Mme. de Villeparisis, albeit Mme. de Poix was an
intimate friend of the Duchess.
Nevertheless from the mansion on the Quai Malaquais to the
drawing-rooms of the Rue de Tournon, the Rue de la Chaise and the
Faubourg Saint-Honoré, a bond as compelling as it was hateful
united the three fallen goddesses, as to whom I would fain have
learned by searching in some dictionary of social mythology through
what gallant adventure, what sacrilegious presumption, they had
incurred their punishment. Their common brilliance of origin, the
common decay of their present state entered largely, no doubt, into
the necessity which compelled them, while hating one another, to
frequent one another’s society. Besides, each of them found in the
others a convenient way of being polite to her own guests. How
should these fail to suppose that they had scaled the most
inaccessible peak of the Faubourg when they were introduced to a
lady with a string of titles whose sister was married to a Duc de
Sagan or a Prince de Ligne? Especially as there was infinitely more
in the newspapers about these sham salons than about the genuine
ones. Indeed these old ladies’ “men about town” nephews—and
Saint-Loup the foremost of them—when asked by a friend to
introduce him to people, would answer at once “I will take you to see
my aunt Villeparisis,” (or whichever it was) “you meet interesting
people there.” They knew very well that this would mean less trouble
for themselves than trying to get the said friends invited by the smart
nieces or sisters-in-law of these ladies. Certain very old men, and
young women who had heard it from those men, told me that if these
ladies were no longer received in society it was because of the
extraordinary irregularity of their conduct, which, when I objected that
irregular conduct was not necessarily a barrier to social success,
was represented to me as having gone far beyond anything that we
know to-day. The misconduct of these solemn dames who held
themselves so erect assumed on the lips of those who hinted at it
something that I was incapable of imagining, proportionate to the
magnitude of prehistoric days, to the age of the mammoth. In a word,
these three Parcae with their white or blue or red locks had spun the
fatal threads of an incalculable number of gentlemen. I felt that the
people of to-day exaggerated the vices of those fabulous times, like
the Greeks who created Icarus, Theseus, Heracles out of men who
had been but little different from those who long afterwards deified
them. But one does not tabulate the sum of a person’s vices until he
has almost ceased to be in a fit state to practise them, when from the
magnitude of his social punishment, which is then nearing the
completion of its term and which alone one can estimate, one
measures, one imagines, one exaggerates that of the crime that has
been committed. In that gallery of symbolical figures which is
“society”, the really light women, the true Messalinas, invariably
present the solemn aspect of a lady of at least seventy, with an air of
lofty distinction, who entertains everyone she can but not everyone
she would like to have, to whose house women will never consent to
go whose own conduct falls in any way short of perfection, to whom
the Pope regularly sends his Golden Rose, and who as often as not
has written—on the early days of Lamartine—an essay that has
been crowned by the French Academy. “How d’ye do, Alix?” Mme.
de Villeparisis greeted the Marie-Antoinette lady, which lady cast a
searching glance round the assembly to see whether there was not
in this drawing-room any item that might be a valuable addition to
her own, in which case she would have to discover it for herself, for
Mme. de Villeparisis, she was sure, would be spiteful enough to try
to keep it from her. Thus Mme. de Villeparisis took good care not to
introduce Bloch to the old lady for fear of his being asked to produce
the same play that he was arranging for her in the drawing-room of
the Quai Malaquais. Besides it was only tit for tat. For, the evening
before, the old lady had had Mme. Ristori, who had recited, and had
taken care that Mme. de Villeparisis, from whom she had filched the
Italian artist, should not hear of this function until it was over. So that
she should not read it first in the newspapers and feel annoyed, the
old lady had come in person to tell her about it, shewing no sense of
guilt. Mme. de Villeparisis, considering that an introduction of myself
was not likely to have the same awkward results as that of Bloch,
made me known to the Marie-Antoinette of the Quai Malaquais. The
latter, who sought, by making the fewest possible movements, to
preserve in her old age those lines, as of a Coysevox goddess,
which had years ago charmed the young men of fashion and which
spurious poets still celebrated in rhymed charades—and had
acquired the habit of a lofty and compensating stiffness common to
all those whom a personal degradation obliges to be continually
making advances—just perceptibly lowered her head with a frigid
majesty, and, turning the other way, took no more notice of me than if
I had not existed. By this crafty attitude she seemed to be assuring
Mme. de Villeparisis: “You see, I’m nowhere near him; please
understand that I’m not interested—in any sense of the word, you old
cat—in little boys.” But when, twenty minutes later, she left the room,
taking advantage of the general conversation, she slipped into my
ear an invitation to come to her box the following Friday with another
of the three, whose high-sounding name—she had been born a
Choiseul, moreover—had a prodigious effect on me.
“I understand, sir, that you are thinkin’ of writin’ somethin’ about
Mme. la Duchesse de Montmorency,” said Mme. de Villeparisis to
the historian of the Fronde in that grudging tone which she allowed,
quite unconsciously, to spoil the effect of her great and genuine
kindness, a tone due to the shrivelling crossness, the sense of
grievance that is a physiological accompaniment of age, as well as
to the affectation of imitating the almost rustic speech of the old
nobility: “I’m goin’ to let you see her portrait, the original of the copy
they have in the Louvre.”
She rose, laying down her brushes beside the flowers, and the
little apron which then came into sight at her waist, and which she
wore so as not to stain her dress with paints, added still further to the
impression of an old peasant given by her bonnet and her big
spectacles, and offered a sharp contrast to the luxury of her
appointments, the butler who had brought in the tea and cakes, the
liveried footman for whom she now rang to light up the portrait of the
Duchesse de Montmorency, Abbess of one of the most famous
Chapters in the East of France. Everyone had risen. “What is rather
amusin’,” said our hostess, “is that in these Chapters where our
great-aunts were so often made Abbesses, the daughters of the King
of France would not have been admitted. They were very close
corporations.” “Not admit the King’s daughters,” cried Bloch in
amazement, “why ever not?” “Why, because the House of France
had not enough quarterin’s after that low marriage.” Bloch’s
bewilderment increased. “A low marriage? The House of France?
When was that?” “Why, when they married into the Medicis,” replied
Mme. de Villeparisis in the most natural manner. “It’s a fine picture,
ain’t it, and in a perfect state of preservation,” she added.
“My dear,” put in the Marie-Antoinette lady, “surely you remember
that when I brought Liszt to see you he said that it was this one that
was the copy.”
“I should bow to any opinion of Liszt on music, but not on painting.
Besides, he was quite off his head then, and I don’t remember his
ever saying anything of the sort. But it wasn’t you that brought him
here. I had met him any number of times at dinner at Princess Sayn-
Wittgenstein’s.”
Alix’s shot had missed fire; she stood silent, erect and motionless.
Plastered with layers of powder, her face had the appearance of a
face of stone. And, as the profile was noble, she seemed, on a
triangular and moss-grown pedestal hidden by her cape, the time-
worn stucco goddess of a park.
“Ah, I see another fine portrait,” began the historian.
The door opened and the Duchesse de Guermantes entered the
room.
“Well, how are you?” Mme. de Villeparisis greeted her without
moving her head, taking from her apron-pocket a hand which she
held out to the newcomer; and then ceasing at once to take any
notice of her niece, in order to return to the historian: “That is the
portrait of the Duchesse de La Rochefoucauld....”
A young servant with a bold manner and a charming face (but so
finely chiselled, to ensure its perfection, that the nose was a little red
and the rest of the skin slightly flushed as though they were still
smarting from the recent and sculptural incision) came in bearing a
card on a salver.
“It is that gentleman who has been several times to see Mme. la
Marquise.”
“Did you tell him I was at home?”
“He heard the voices.”
“Oh, very well then, shew him in. It’s a man who was introduced to
me,” she explained. “He told me he was very anxious to come to the
house. I certainly never said he might. But here he’s taken the
trouble to call five times now; it doesn’t do to hurt people’s feelings.
Sir,” she went on to me, “and you, Sir,” to the historian of the Fronde,
“let me introduce my niece, the Duchesse de Guermantes.”
The historian made a low bow, as I did also, and since he seemed
to suppose that some friendly remark ought to follow this salute, his
eyes brightened and he was preparing to open his mouth when he
was once more frozen by the sight of Mme. de Guermantes who had
taken advantage of the independence of her torso to throw it forward
with an exaggerated politeness and bring it neatly back to a position
of rest without letting face or eyes appear to have noticed that
anyone was standing before them; after breathing a gentle sigh she
contented herself with manifesting the nullity of the impression that
had been made on her by the sight of the historian and myself by
performing certain movements of her nostrils with a precision that
testified to the absolute inertia of her unoccupied attention.
The importunate visitor entered the room, making straight for
Mme. de Villeparisis with an ingenuous, fervent air: it was Legrandin.
“Thank you so very much for letting me come and see you,” he
began, laying stress on the word “very”. “It is a pleasure of a quality
altogether rare and subtle that you confer on an old solitary; I assure
you that its repercussion....” He stopped short on catching sight of
me.
“I was just shewing this gentleman a fine portrait of the Duchesse
de La Rochefoucauld, the wife of the author of the Maxims; it’s a
family picture.”
Mme. de Guermantes meanwhile had greeted Alix, with apologies
for not having been able, that year as in every previous year, to go
and see her. “I hear all about you from Madeleine,” she added.
“She was at luncheon with me to-day,” said the Marquise of the
Quai Malaquais, with the satisfying reflexion that Mme. de
Villeparisis could never say that.
Meanwhile I had been talking to Bloch, and fearing, from what I
had been told of his father’s change of attitude towards him, that he
might be envying my life, I said to him that his must be the happier of
the two. My remark was prompted solely by my desire to be friendly.
But such friendliness readily convinces those who cherish a high
opinion of themselves of their own good fortune, or gives them a
desire to convince other people. “Yes, I do lead a delightful
existence,” Bloch assured me with a beatified smile. “I have three
great friends; I do not wish for one more; an adorable mistress; I am
infinitely happy. Rare is the mortal to whom Father Zeus accords so
much felicity.” I fancy that he was anxious principally to extol himself
and to make me envious. Perhaps too there was some desire to
shew originality in his optimism. It was evident that he did not wish to
reply in the commonplace phraseology that everybody uses: “Oh, it
was nothing, really,” and so forth, when, to my question: “Was it a
good show?” put with regard to an afternoon dance at his house to
which I had been prevented from going, he replied in a level,
careless tone, as if the dance had been given by some one else:
“Why, yes, it was quite a good show, couldn’t have been better. It
was really charming!”
“What you have just told us interests me enormously,” said
Legrandin to Mme. de Villeparisis, “for I was saying to myself only
the other day that you shewed a marked likeness to him in the clear-
cut turn of your speech, in a quality which I will venture to describe
by two contradictory terms, monumental rapidity and immortal
instantaneousness. I should have liked this afternoon to take down
all the things you say; but I shall remember them. They are, in a
phrase which comes, I think, from Joubert, friends of the memory.
You have never read Joubert? Oh! he would have admired you so! I
will take the liberty this evening of sending you a set of him, it is a
privilege to make you a present of his mind. He had not your
strength. But he had a great deal of charm all the same.”
I would have gone up to Legrandin at once and spoken to him, but
he kept as far away from me as he could, no doubt in the hope that I
might not overhear the stream of flattery which, with a remarkable
felicity of expression, he kept pouring out, whatever the topic, to
Mme. de Villeparisis.
She shrugged her shoulders, smiling, as though he had been
trying to make fun of her, and turned to the historian.
“And this is the famous Marie de Rohan, Duchesse de Chevreuse,
who was married first of all to M. de Luynes.”
“My dear, speaking of Mme. de Luynes reminds me of Yolande;
she came to me yesterday evening, and if I had known that you
weren’t engaged I’ld have sent round to ask you to come. Mme.
Ristori turned up quite by chance, and recited some poems by
Queen Carmen Sylva in the author’s presence. It was too beautiful!”
“What treachery!” thought Mme. de Villeparisis. “Of course that
was what she was whispering about the other day to Mme. de
Beaulaincourt and Mme. de Chaponay. I had no engagement,” she
replied, “but I should not have come. I heard Ristori in her great
days, she’s a mere wreck now. Besides I detest Carmen Sylva’s
poetry. Ristori came here once, the Duchess of Aosta brought her, to
recite a canto of the Inferno, by Dante. In that sort of thing she’s
incomparable.”
Alix bore the blow without flinching. She remained marble. Her
gaze was piercing and blank, her nose proudly arched. But the
surface of one cheek was scaling. A faint, strange vegetation, green
and pink, was invading her chin. Perhaps another winter would level
her with the dust.
“Now, sir, if you are fond of painting, look at the portrait of Mme. de
Montmorency,” Mme. de Villeparisis said to Legrandin, to stop the
flow of compliments which was beginning again.
Seizing her opportunity, while his back was turned, Mme. de
Guermantes pointed to him, with an ironical, questioning look at her
aunt.
“It’s M. Legrandin,” murmured Mme. de Villeparisis, “he has a
sister called Mme. de Cambremer, not that that conveys any more to
you than it does to me.”
“What! Oh, but I know her quite well!” exclaimed Mme. de
Guermantes, and put her hand over her lips. “That is to say, I don’t
know her, but for some reason or other Basin, who meets the
husband heaven knows where, took it into his head to tell the
wretched woman she might call on me. And she did. I can’t tell you
what it was like. She informed me that she had been to London, and
gave me a complete catalogue of all the things in the British
Museum. And this very day, the moment I leave your house, I’m
going, just as you see me now, to drop a card on the monster. And
don’t for a moment suppose that it’s an easy thing to do. On the
pretence that she’s dying of some disease she’s always at home, it
doesn’t matter whether you arrive at seven at night or nine in the
morning, she’s ready for you with a dish of strawberry tarts.
“No, but seriously, you know, she is a monstrosity,” Mme. de
Guermantes replied to a questioning glance from her aunt. “She’s an
impossible person, she talks about ‘plumitives’ and things like that.”
“What does ‘plumitive’ mean?” asked Mme. de Villeparisis. “I haven’t
the slightest idea!” cried the Duchess in mock indignation. “I don’t
want to know. I don’t speak that sort of language.” And seeing that
her aunt really did not know what a plumitive was, to give herself the
satisfaction of shewing that she was a scholar as well as a purist,
and to make fun of her aunt, now, after making fun of Mme. de
Cambremer: “Why, of course,” she said, with a half-laugh which the
last traces of her pretended ill humour kept in check, “everybody
knows what it means; a plumitive is a writer, a person who holds a
pen. But it’s a dreadful word. It’s enough to make your wisdom teeth
drop out. Nothing will ever make me use words like that.
“And so that’s the brother, is it? I hadn’t realized that yet. But after
all it’s not inconceivable. She has the same doormat docility and the
same mass of information like a circulating library. She’s just as
much of a flatterer as he is, and just as boring. Yes, I’m beginning to
see the family likeness now quite plainly.”
“Sit down, we’re just going to take a dish of tea,” said Mme. de
Villeparisis to her niece. “Help yourself; you don’t want to look at the
pictures of your great-grandmothers, you know them as well as I do.”
Presently Mme. de Villeparisis sat down again at her desk and
went on with her painting. The rest of the party gathered round her,
and I took the opportunity to go up to Legrandin and, seeing no harm
myself in his presence in Mme. de Villeparisis’s drawing-room and
never dreaming how much my words would at once hurt him and
make him believe that I had deliberately intended to hurt him, say:
“Well, sir, I am almost excused for coming to a tea-party when I find
you here too.” M. Legrandin concluded from this speech (at least this
was the opinion which he expressed of me a few days later) that I
was a thoroughly spiteful little wretch who delighted only in doing
mischief.
“You might at least have the civility to begin by saying how d’ye do
to me,” he replied, without offering me his hand and in a coarse and
angry voice which I had never suspected him of possessing, a voice
which bearing no traceable relation to what he ordinarily said did
bear another more immediate and striking relation to something that
he was feeling at the moment. What happens is that since we are
determined always to keep our feelings to ourselves, we have never
given any thought to the manner in which we should express them.
And suddenly there is within us a strange and obscene animal
making its voice heard, the tones of which may inspire as much
terror in the listener who receives the involuntary elliptical irresistible
communication of our defect or vice as would the sudden avowal
indirectly and uncouthly proffered by a criminal who can no longer
refrain from confessing a murder of which one had never imagined
him to be guilty. I knew, of course, that idealism, even subjective
idealism did not prevent great philosophers from still having hearty
appetites or from presenting themselves with untiring perseverance
for election to the Academy. But really Legrandin had no occasion to
remind people so often that he belonged to another planet when all
his convulsive movements of anger or affability were governed by
the desire to occupy a good position on this.
“Naturally, when people pester me twenty times on end to go
anywhere,” he went on in lower tones, “although I am perfectly free
to do what I choose, still I can’t behave like an absolute boor.”
Mme. de Guermantes had sat down. Her name, accompanied as it
was by her title, added to her corporeal dimensions the duchy which
projected itself round about her and brought the shadowy, sun-
splashed coolness of the woods of Guermantes into this drawing-
room, to surround the tuffet on which she was sitting. I felt surprised
only that the likeness of those woods was not more discernible on
the face of the Duchess, about which there was nothing suggestive
of vegetation, and at the most the ruddy discolouration of her cheeks
—which ought rather, surely, to have been emblazoned with the
name Guermantes—was the effect, but did not furnish a picture of
long gallops in the open air. Later on, when she had ceased to
interest me, I came to know many of the Duchess’s peculiarities,
notably (to speak for the moment only of that one of which I already
at this time felt the charm though without yet being able to discover
what it was) her eyes, in which was held captive as in a picture the
blue sky of an afternoon in France, broadly expansive, bathed in light
even when no sun shone; and a voice which one would have
thought, from its first hoarse sounds, to be almost plebeian, through
which there trailed, as over the steps of the church at Combray or
the pastry-cook’s in the square, the rich and lazy gold of a country
sun. But on this first day I discerned nothing, the warmth of my
attention volatilised at once the little that I might otherwise have been
able to extract from her, in which I should have found some
indication of the name Guermantes. In any case, I told myself that it
was indeed she who was designated for all the world by the title
Duchesse de Guermantes: the inconceivable life which that name
signified, this body did indeed contain; it had just introduced that life
into a crowd of different creatures, in this room which enclosed it on
every side and on which it produced so violent a reaction that I
thought I could see, where the extent of that mysterious life ceased,
a fringe of effervescence outline its frontiers: round the
circumference of the circle traced on the carpet by the balloon of her
blue peking skirt, and in the bright eyes of the Duchess at the point
of intersection of the preoccupations, the memories, the
incomprehensible, scornful, amused and curious thoughts which
filled them from within and the outside images that were reflected on
their surface. Perhaps I should have been not quite so deeply stirred
had I met her at Mme. de Villeparisis’s at an evening party, instead of
seeing her thus on one of the Marquise’s “days”, at one of those tea-
parties which are for women no more than a brief halt in the course
of their afternoon’s outing, when, keeping on the hats in which they
have been driving through the streets, they waft into the close
atmosphere of a drawing-room the quality of the fresh air outside,
and give one a better view of Paris in the late afternoon than do the
tall, open windows through which one can hear the bowling wheels
of their victorias: Mme. de Guermantes wore a boating-hat trimmed
with cornflowers, and what they recalled to me was not, among the
tilled fields round Combray where I had so often gathered those
flowers, on the slope adjoining the Tansonville hedge, the suns of
bygone years, it was the scent and dust of twilight as they had been
an hour ago, when Mme. de Guermantes drove through them, in the
Rue de la Paix. With a smiling, disdainful, vague air, and a grimace
on her pursed lips, with the point of her sunshade, as with the
extreme tip of an antenna of her mysterious life, she was tracing
circles on the carpet; then, with that indifferent attention which
begins by eliminating every point of contact with what one is actually
studying, her gaze fastened upon each of us in turn; then inspected
the sofas and armchairs, but softened this time by that human
sympathy which is aroused by the presence, however insignificant,
of a thing one knows, a thing that is almost a person; these pieces of
furniture were not like us, they belonged vaguely to her world, they
were bound up with the life of her aunt; then from the Beauvais
furniture her gaze was carried back to the person sitting on it, and
resumed then the same air of perspicacity and that same
disapproval which the respect that Mme. de Guermantes felt for her
aunt would have prevented her from expressing in words, but which
she would obviously have felt had she discovered on the chairs,
instead of our presence, that of a spot of grease or a layer of dust.
That admirable writer G—— entered the room; he had come to
pay a call on Mme. de Villeparisis which he regarded as a tiresome
duty. The Duchess, although delighted to see him again, gave him
no sign of welcome, but instinctively he made straight for her, the
charm that she possessed, her tact, her simplicity making him look
upon her as a woman of exceptional intelligence. He was bound,
moreover, in common politeness to go and talk to her, for, since he
was a pleasant and a distinguished man, Mme. de Guermantes
frequently invited him to luncheon even when there were only her
husband and herself besides, or in the autumn to Guermantes,
making use of this intimacy to have him to dinner occasionally with
Royalties who were curious to meet him. For the Duchess liked to
entertain certain eminent men, on condition always that they were
bachelors, a condition which, even when married, they invariably
fulfilled for her, for, as their wives, who were bound to be more or
less common, would have been a blot on a drawing-room in which
there were never any but the most fashionable beauties in Paris, it
was always without them that their husbands were invited; and the
Duke, to avoid hurting any possible susceptibility, used to explain to
these involuntary widowers that the Duchess never had women in
the house, could not endure feminine society, almost as though this
had been under doctor’s orders, and as he might have said that she
could not stay in a room in which there were smells, or eat salt food,
or travel with her back to the engine, or wear stays. It was true that
these eminent men used to see at the Guermantes’ the Princesse de
Parme, the Princesse de Sagan (whom Françoise, hearing her
constantly mentioned, had taken to calling, in the belief that this
feminine ending was required by the laws of accidence, “the
Sagante”), and plenty more, but their presence was accounted for by
the explanation that they were relatives, or such very old friends that
it was impossible to exclude them. Whether or not they were
convinced by the explanations which the Duc de Guermantes had
given of the singular malady that made it impossible for the Duchess
to associate with other women, the great men duly transmitted them
to their wives. Some of these thought that this malady was only an
excuse to cloak her jealousy, because the Duchess wished to reign
alone over a court of worshippers. Others more simple still thought
that perhaps the Duchess had some peculiar habit, a scandalous
past it might be, that women did not care to go to her house and that
she gave the name of a whim to what was stern necessity. The
better among them, hearing their husbands expatiate on the
Duchess’s marvellous brain, assumed that she must be so far
superior to the rest of womankind that she found their society boring
since they could not talk intelligently about anything. And it was true
that the Duchess was bored by other women, if their princely rank
did not render them specially interesting. But the excluded wives
were mistaken when they imagined that she chose to entertain men
alone in order to be free to discuss with them literature, science and
philosophy. For she never referred to these, at least with the great
intellectuals. If, by virtue of a family tradition such as makes the
daughters of great soldiers preserve, in the midst of their most
frivolous distractions, a respect for military matters, she, the
granddaughter of women who had been on terms of friendship with
Thiers, Mérimée and Augier, felt that a place must always be kept in
her drawing-room for men of intellect, she had on the other hand
derived from the manner, at once condescending and intimate, in
which those famous men had been received at Guermantes the
foible of looking on men of talent as family friends whose talent does
not dazzle one, to whom one does not speak of their work, and who
would not be at all interested if one did. Moreover the type of mind
illustrated by Mérimée and Meilhac and Halévy, which was hers also,
led her by reaction from the verbal sentimentality of an earlier
generation to a style in conversation that rejects everything to do
with fine language and the expression of lofty thoughts, so that she
made it a sort of element of good breeding when she was with a poet
or a musician to talk only of the food that they were eating or the
game of cards to which they would afterwards sit down. This
abstention had, on a third person not conversant with her ways, a
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