The Captive V pp 47-64

p 47 | "...yellow dress with big black flowers...": Or maybe the black dress with the big yellow flowers...


p 47 | "... things from Callot's or Doucet's or Paquin's ...": This wonderful page from the Glamour Daze blog should make everything clear.


p 48 | Lady Warwick was Daisy Greville, Countess of Warwick, lover of King Edward VII of England. Not sure which Duchess of Marlborough Oriane is referring to; I like this one, so French!




p 52 | The Galeries Lafayette is an upmarket French department store, founded in 1912. Its flagship store is on Boulevard Haussmann in the 9th arrondissement of Paris.

p 52 | This is a little later than the period the book is in... There is some gay French history on the left side of this page.

p 53 | "Xerxes, son of Darius, ordering..." : After the battle of Salamis, the Persian fleet was destroyed by a storm in the Hellespont. Xerxes, the King of Persia, is said to have vented his feelings by having his servants beat the sea with rods.

p 54 | Social classes in 19th century Paris, with a chronology. A little earlier than the book's time setting. Nicely done.

p 54 | "... Jupien's niece had been, when scarcely more than a child, 'in trouble'..." : Consider these historical notes: 1832 - an age of consent is introduced on 28 April, fixed to 11 years for both sexes.
1863 - Age of consent is raised to 13 years.


p 57 | The House of Croy is an international family of European nobility which held a seat in the Imperial Diet from 1486, and was elevated to the rank of Princes of the Holy Roman Empire in 1594. In 1913 the family had branches in Belgium, France, Austria and Prussia. And the Princes Murat also.

p 59 | hand cramps in violinists -- a real thing!

p 60 | According to this site, before World War I, when France was firmly on the gold standard, a franc was worth about 19 cents, or 5.18 to the dollar. So, 5000 francs at that time would have been about $950. Earlier, it could have been more, so maybe about $1000.



p 63 | Violinist Jacques Thibaud (1880-1953) can be heard here.



p 64 | Syringa is lilac, pronounced like this. Well, seh-RING-gah.

The Captive V pp 27-46

p 30 | Elysium (or the Elysian Fields), in Greek mythology, the final resting places of the souls of the heroic and the virtuous. It was ruled by Cronus.

p 30 | My landlady, Mme de Guermantes:  Having originally lived in a different part of Paris, at the beginning of The Guermantes Way, the narrator's family moves to a flat in the Hotel de Guermantes, in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. The side ranges of the front courtyard of the old aristocratic town house are now divided into flats and rented to middle-class families, while the ground floor supports small workshops of various kinds. The furthest range is occupied as a single house by the owners, the Duc and Duchesse de Guermantes, whom by this point in the story the narrator has got to know. Many of the main characters in the story (the narrator, Albertine, the Guermantes, Jupien and his niece) are thus now living on the same site, and can plausibly watch and/or meet each other on the stairs & in the courtyard. Charlus, brother of the Duc de Guermantes, erstwhile sexual partner of Jupien & protector of his niece, visits them all at this address, which is very convenient for the novelist's purposes, and not implausible; such multiple uses of old aristocratic dwellings was common in Paris throughout the 19th century, and its traces can still be seen in the Marais district, until its recent renovation.

p 31 | Carrying an umbrella was, in the 19th & early 20th centuries, a symbol of bourgeois status. Aristocrats were supposed to ride in carriages, poor people to get wet. Louis-Philippe, the 'Citizen King', was often caricatured with an umbrella in his hand.

p 32 | See a selection of early 20th century women's dresses

p 34 | Fortuny's Delphos gown --> 

Delphos

p 35 | Maurice Maeterlinck, Belgian writer, 1862-1949;  Prosper Mérimée, French author, 1803-70.  Paul-Louis Courier, French scholar, 1772-1825)

p 38 | Pampile:  pen-name of Mme Leon Daudet, wife of Proust's friend and author of Les bons plats de France: cuisine régionale (1913).

p 41 | coup d'éclat=feat or great feat; coup de tête=whim; coup de force = a sudden, violent act; rapprochement=establishment or resumption of harmonious relations, reconciliation

p 42 } The Dreyfus affair was a political scandal that from its beginning in 1894 divided France until it was finally resolved in 1906. [So, we think it's 1908-ish here in the text.]

p 44 | In the Aeneid, Achates ("good, faithful Achates", fidus Achates as he was called) was a close friend of Aeneas; his name became a byword for an intimate companion.

p 45 | Mayer Alphonse James Rothschild (1827-1905)

p 46 | Jupiter Tonans = Thundering Jove:  the aspect of Jupiter (Jove) who is the god of sky & thunder and king of the gods in ancient Roman religion & mythology. Here, it refers back to Basin knitting his Jupiterian brows on p 44.

p 46 | Édouard Adolphe Drumont (1844–1917) was a French journalist and writer. He founded the Antisemitic League of France in 1889, and was the founder & editor of the newspaper La Libre Parole.

The Captive V pp 1-27

p 3 | Russian ballet=Ballets Russes

p 3 | "Les douleur sont des folles/Et qui les écoute est encore plus fou."  Albertine hums this refrain from Biniou, by Hippolyte Guérin, music by Emile Durand (1830-1903). 

p 4 | "Une chanson d'adieu sort des sources troublées..."  From Pensée d'automne by Armand Silvestre, music by Jules Massenet, French opera composer, 1842-1912.

p 13 | Assuerus = Ahasuerus, King of Persia, in the play Esther, by Racine., here Act I, Scene 3


p 15 | Parc des Buttes Chaumont: 5th largest park in Paris, opened in 1867. The park took its name from the bleak hill on the site, which, because of the soil's chemical composition, was almost bare of vegetation; it was called Chauve-mont, or bare hill.

p 16 | coalheaver = one who feeds coal into a furnace

p 20 | Gomorrah: Sodom and Gomorrah were cities named in the Bible, the Torah and other religious texts, destroyed by God in fire and brimstone because of their lack of hospitality & wickedness. Proust here seems to be using it to refer to the  rampant lesbianism he imagined at Balbec.

 p 27 |  Arquebus : an early muzzle-loaded firearm, sensitive to humidity.

Sodom and Gomorrah IV pp 692-

p 703 | 1889 Exhibition = The Exposition Universelle of 1889 was a world's fair held in Paris from 6 May to 31 October 1889.











Sapphism in 19th century France

Sodom and Gomorrah IV pp 662-691

Berthe de Clinchamp,

p 666 | Aldonce de Guermantes is an invention. Because Louis VI (known as le Gros, 1081-1137), had an illegitimate younger half-brother, called Philippe de Mantes, he had himself crowned quickly in 1108 to ensure his own succession.

p 666 | The La Trémoilles became heirs to the Kings of Naples in 1605; their descent from the Comtes de Poitiers is uncertain. Uzès did not become a duchy until 1572.

p 667 | The first Duc de Luynes was created in 1619. The Choiseuls, the Harcourts, the La Rochefoucaulds... are families who traced their origins back to the 10th century. ...the Noailles ... the Montesquious, the Castellanes can be traced back to the 11th century.

p 667 | Vatefairefiche = va-te-faire-fiche means "Scram!" (Gotoblazes). Turning Cambremer into Cambremerde is a vulgarization of the name.

p 668 | Scènes de la vie de province is one of the major sections of Balzac's Comédie Humaine. La Muse du département is part of the Scènes de la vie de province; its heroine, Mme de la Baudraye, writes literary essays and has an adulterous love affair. Mme de Bargeton is a character in Illusions perdues, a provincial wife who becomes the lover of the young hero, Lucien de Rubempré. Mme de Mortsauf was the heroine of Le Lys dans la vallée, who overcomes her passion for the young Félix de Vandenesse and dies a saintly death.
p 672 | Berthe de Clinchamp, companion of the Duchesse d'Aumale, came eventually to run the Duc's household, and in 1899 published a memoir of him: Le Duc d'Aumale, prince, soldat.p 673 | In media stat virtus = virtue lies in the middle.

p 674 | ... M. Moreau, Morille, Morue...: Moreau can mean a horse's nosebag; a morille is a morel (mushroom); morue is a codfish.

p 681 | Subaltern = an officer in the British army below the rank of captain, especially a second lieutenant. Saint-Cyr = military academy where French Army officers are trained.

p 688 | Pont-l'Éveque: Éveque is French for "bishop." Childhood of Christ is an oratorio written by Berlioz between 1850 and 1854; L'Enchantement du Vendredi Saint, or The Good Friday Music forms part of Act III of Wagner's opera Parsifal, but is sometimes performed separately, especially at Easter.

King Louis IX

p 689 | Rue de Blancs-Manteaux: literally, White Mantles or White Friars, a Carmelite order.

p 690 | Saint Louis = Louis IX, King of France 1226-70, canonized in 1287.
 
p 690 | Felix de Rochegude's 20-volume work Promenades dans toutes les rues de Paris (1910). The street Charlus can't remember was the rue des Rosiers & "du Rozier'' later will become the name Bloch takes to hide his Jewishness. Though not a Jew, Rembrandt lived in the Amsterdam's Jewish quarter & painted Jewish subjects. Legend about a 13th century Jew convicted of burning a consecrated Host, which was itself miraculously preserved.

p 690 | According to Rochegude, this Louis I d'Orléans (1372-1407) was murdered by Jean sans Peur on coming out from supper with Isabeau de Bavière, his sister-in-law & mistress. The Duc de Chartres (1840-1910) was the grandson of Louis-Philippe, Duc d'Orléans (also known as Philippe-Égalité, 1747-1793), and not obviously related to Charlus.

N.B. All entries based primarily based on Sturrock's notes.

Sodom and Gomorrah IV pp 639-662

p 638 | Tantus ab uno splendor = Such brilliance coming from one person. 

p 639 | Mort m'est vie = Death, to me, is life.

p 639 | In 1900, Sarah Bernhardt created the title role in Edmond Rostand's successful L'Aiglon. Jean-Sully Mounet (1841-1916), called Mounet-Sully, played Oedipus in the Roman arena at Orange (not Nîmes). 

p 640 | ...contre-de-quartes reminiscent of Molière: referring to the fencing lesson in Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, a contre-de-quarte is a circular parrying movement of the sword.
 
p 643 | Mazagran = coffee laced with rum; gloria = a mixture of sweet coffee & rum or eau-de-vie.  Eugène Marin Labiche, French dramatist, 1815-88.  Os homini sublime dedit coelumque tueri:  "He has given man a face turned toward the sky," a line from Ovid's Metamorphoses.



p 644-45 | ...Archangel Raphael ... Tobias: this story is in the book of Tobit, in the Apocrypha.

p 657 | Verjuice = the juice from unripe grapes.

p 659 | Constant Coquelin, known as Coquelin aîné, a well-known actor (1841-1909).

p 660 | The Société des Bibliophiles Français was founded in 1820 of mainly aristocrats; the Union Club was founded in 1828 and was the most exclusive Paris club during the Second Empire.

p 661 | The Montgomery & Pembroke families were associated, as were the Chandos family & the Buckinghams. A Capel became Count of Essex in 1661, and Proust knew Berthe Capel in Paris. The Duc de Berry (1844-1910) was a member of the Orléans family.   

p 661 | Émilienne d'Alençon (Émilienne Andrée) was a celebrated courtesan around 1900, who dabbled in music & poetry & appeared with performing rabbits at the Folies-Bergère.

>p 661 | Ne sçais l'heure = I don't know the hour (of my death). It's pronounced like the name Saylor.

p 662 | Jean-Alexis Périer (1869-1954) created the role of Pelléas in Debussy's opera in 1902.  The Théâtre du Gymnase specialized in comedy; La Châtelaine was a comedy by Alfred Capus (1858-1922), a dramatist & journalist who was elected to the Académie Française in 1914.  Simone Frévalles, actress in La Châtelaine , as well as the company at the Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin.  Marie Magnier (1848-1913) made her debut in 1867 and played in many Paris theaters; Louis Baron (1870-1939), known as Baron fils to distinguish him from his actor father, was a well-known comic actor at the turn of the century.

p 663 | Yvette Guilbert (1867-1944) began her celebrated career as a chanteuse around 1885. Ernest Cornaglia (1834-1912), an actor who joined the company at the Théâtre de l'Odéon in 1880; Émile Dehelly (1871-1969) debuted at the Comédie-Française in 1890.

N.B. All entries based primarily based on Sturrock's notes.

Sodom and Gomorrah IV pp 625-639

p 625 |  Conservatoire de Paris had been located at Rue Bergère (rue du Conservatoire)  since 1784.

In 1911 le Conservatoire moved to rue de Madrid. Some historic photos are here.

device of Charles V

p 629 |  Plus Ultra Car'lus: Earl Rosenthal, in The Palace of Charles V in Granada  (1985), says the motto is associated with the Pillars of Hercules, which, in Greek mythology, were built by Hercules near the Straits of Gibraltar to mark the edge of the then known world. According to mythology the pillars bore the warning Nec plus ultra (also Non plus ultra, meaning "nothing farther beyond"), to warn sailors & navigators to go no farther. It is believed that the young Charles V adopted Plus Oultre as his motto at his advisor's suggestion, as a way to encourage him to ignore the ancient warning & instead take risks, surpass himself and go "farther beyond."

p 631 | The Rules of Duels (Code Duello)

p 632 | "Some Sunday morning... "": opening words of a 1902 popular song "Viens, Poupoule" by Félix Mayol. Listen & read here.

p 634 | "Spes mea" ("My hope"); "Exspectata non eludet" ("He will not disappoint hopes"); "J'attendrai" ("I shall wait"); "Memes plaisirs du mestre" ("The same pleasures as the master");
"Sustentant lilia turns" ("The towers support the lilies"); "Manet ultima caelo" ("The end belongs to heaven"); "Non mortale quodopto" ("I have the ambition of an immortal"); "Atavis et armis" ("By ancestors and by arms")

p 638 | "C'est mon plaisir" ("It is my pleasure"); "Tantus ab uno splendor" ("So much brilliance coming from one person"); "Condescendre n'est pas descendre" ("To condescend is not to descend"); "Mart (mort) m'est vie" ("Death to me is life")

• See also comments from The Cork-Lined Room blog.
• See also comments from the GoodReads blog

Sodom and Gomorrah IV pp 611-625

p 612 | "Esther heureuse...": the titles of three of the four sections of Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes.

p 612 | Rocambole was the hero of more than 30 adventure novels written by Alexis Ponson du Terrail (1829-71), as well as later writers. The adjective rocambolesque usually means a fantastic adventure.

p 612 | "...moult sorbonagre, sorbonicole et sorboniforme...": a scathing Rabelaisian way of referring to a pedantic doctor from the Sorbonne, perhaps translatable as "Sorbonnified, Sorbonniculous, and Sorbonniform."

p 612 | "The quart d'heure de Rabelais...": popular phrase meaning "the moment of reckoning." An explanatory  anecdote  from a comic incident from the writer’s life. "One day he was in Lyon and wanted to travel to Paris. He had no money and so he marked several sachets of sugar “Poison for the King” and left them lying prominently around. He was arrested and taken to Paris, thus getting a free ride. King Francis I laughed so hard when he heard about it that he happily paid for the trip." Literally, "the quarter-hour of Rabelais," which is amusingly echoed in Andy Warhol's "15 minutes of fame."

p 613 | "Chateaubriand aux pommes": Sturrock says this is "Chateaubriand steak served with apple," but I think the dish is really served with potatoes (pommes frites, pommes de terres...).

p 613 |  gnōthi seauton : Greek for "Know thyself."

p 613 | Jean-Martin Charcot, 19th century French neurologist.

p 614 | "...holy terror Ovid..." Ovid wrote "Materiam superabat opus" (Metamorphoses II, 5), or "The workmanship surpassed the material" (form over content).

Hanska by Delmont

p 614 | "Meudon... ": Meudon, now part of Paris, was the parish of which Rabelais was the curé; Ferney was the Genevan home of Voltaire; the Vallée-aux-Loups, near Sceaux, was where Chateaubriand lived for several years; Les Jardies was the name of Balzac's house in Villa d'Avray; the "Polish woman" was Mme Hanska, whom Balzac married in 1850, shortly before his death and the inspiration for many of his characters. (Sturrock)

p 614 | Hippolyte Taine complained in a well-known essay on Balzac, that the Comedie humaine contained too much that was morbid or unnatural, and did not meet his literary concepts of   "race, milieu, et moment." See his Wiki page for an interesting explanation.

p 617 | Zénaïde, French form of Zenaida, a feminine form of "Zeus."

p 618 | Diane de Maufrigneuse, main character in Balzac's novel Les Secrets de la Princesse de Cadignan, part of the Comedie humaine. 

p 620 | "cut a dash" = (Br.) Be stylish or impressive in one’s dress or behavior, e.g. "The Foreign Secretary wanted to cut a dash in Brussels."

p 620 | Paul Thureau-Dangin (1837-1913) was a Catholic historian, member of the Académie française. Gaston Boissier (1823-1908) was a French classical scholar, and secretary of the Académie française.

p 620 | Boissier is a chocolatier, founded in 1827.

p 621 | ...40bis Boulevard Malesherbes...: For most of his life (until 1900) Proust lived at 9 boulevard Malesherbes, near the Madeleine church, where the family moved in 1873 after his brother Robert was born. Proust himself had lived with his parents at 9 Boulevard Malesherbes.  His maternal grandparents lived at 40bis rue du Faubourg-Poissonniere.

p 621 | Marc-Joseph-Edgar Bourdon Vatry (baron de, 1828-1891)

Sodom and Gomorrah IV pp 593-611

p 594 | tapette = a (feminine) noun with several meanings, often used informally to refer to someone as a homosexual.

p 596 | penates = Roman deities, household gods of the Romans & other Latin peoples. 

In proeliis non semper  means Not always in combat.
Non sine labore means Nothing is gained without effort  (motto of the Cardinal de Retz) (Sturrock)

p 596 | Hydrophobia, the historic name for rabies, especially a set of symptoms of its later stages, where the victim has difficulty swallowing, shows panic when presented with liquids to drink, and cannot quench its/their thirst.

p 604 | Parmi les hommes: means among men. Henry Roujon was an academic, essayist and novelist, elected member of the Académie française in 1911. The real title of the book was Au milieu des hommes (which also means among men or in the midst of men, and it was a collection of critical essays. (Storrock)

Roujon

p 606 | Joseph-Raymond, comte Fournier-Sarlovèze (1836-1916) was an adminstrator and art historian, who created a connoisseurs' club in 1904 called La Société artistiques des amateurs.

p 611 | "It's so beautiful...: the satanic Carlos Herrera, alias Vautrin, had "befriended," first Eugène de Rastignac (in Le Pere Goriot) and then Lucien de Rubempré, who is with him when they find themselves passing Rastignac; Tristesse d'Olympio is one of Victor Hugo's best-known and beautiful poems, in which he revisits the scenes where he first fell in love with his mistress, Juliette Drouet. (Sturrock)

Perhaps this will help: "Honoré de Balzac’s Gay Anti-Hero" (an essay by Robert W. Mack):

Nearly 200 years ago, the French novelist Honoré de Balzac created a remarkable character, Vautrin, a charming, hyper-masculine master criminal, and a man who loves men. In three of Balzac’s most popular novels an important part of the plot turns on Vautrin’s love for an exceptionally handsome, much younger man: 21-year-old Eugène de Rastignac in Père Goriot, twenty-year-old Lucien de Rubempré in the climactic scene of Lost Illusions and in A Harlot High and Low (Splendeurs et misères) and 27-year-old Théodore Calvi (nicknamed “Madeleine”), who doesn’t appear until the end of the last book, when Vautrin is around fifty, but who had also been involved with Vautrin a decade before, at the age of eighteen.

p 611 | The "man of taste" was Oscar Wilde, who in his essay "The Decay of Lying" wrote, "One of the greatest tragedies of my life is the death of Lucien de Rubempré in Splendeurs et misères."

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) was a French novelist and playwright. La Comédie humaine (The Human Comedy) is the title of his multi-volume collection of interlinked novels and stories depicting French society in the period of the Restoration and the July Monarchy (1815–1848). The Comédie humaine consists of 91 finished works (stories, novels or analytical essays) and 46 unfinished works (some of which exist only as titles).

Sodom and Gomorrah IV pp 563-593

p 564 | terzo incomodo: third wheel

p 567 | Charles de Sévigné (1648–1713) was a French aristocrat and  soldier; also the son of French literary icon (and Mamma's favorite) Madame de Sévigné.

p 578 | Benjamin Godard (1849-95), a writer of successful operas; Proust found his music facile. (Storrock)

p 583 | Martingale: a strap, or set of straps, attached to the noseband or reins of a horse and at the other end to the girth. It is used to prevent the horse from raising its head too high.

p 587 | "Work and you will achieve fame...." Chateaubriand cites these words as having been written to him in 1798 by the Marquis Louis de Fontanes (1757-1821), a writer with whom he had become friendly during his exile in England. A collection of Napoleon's letters to Josephine was published in 1913 under the title Tendresses imperiales, or Imperial Tendernesses. (Sturrock)

p 593 | A Cartier gold vanity case might look something like this: