My Year With Proust - Day 200

   "'So you'd rather stay with me and sleep here, would you, than go to the hotel by yourself?' Saint-Loup asked me, smiling.

   'Oh, Robert, it's cruel of you to be sarcastic about it,' I answered.  'You know it's not possible, and you know how wretched I shall be over there.'

   'Well, you flatter me!' he replied.  'Because it actually occurred to me that you'd rather stay here to-night.  And that is precisely what I went to ask the Captain.'

   'And he has given you leave?' I cried.

   'He hasn't the slightest objection.'

   'Oh! I adore him!'

   "No, that would be going too far.  But now, let me just get hold of my batman and tell him to see about our dinner,' he went on, while I turned away to hide my tears.

   We were several times interrupted by the entry of one or other of Saint-Loup's fellow-N.C.O.'s.  He drove them all out again.

   'Get out of here.  Buzz off!'

   I begged him to let them stay.

   'No, really, they would bore you stiff.  They're absolutely uncouth people who can talk of nothing but racing or stable shop.  Besides, I don't want them here either; they would spoil these precious moments I've been looking forward to. . .'"

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, p. 76

Proust has traveled to visit his friend Robert Saint-Loup at his barracks while he is on military service.  It's such a window into a different world, a time before World War I ended the concept of the military, at least for officers, as a sort of gentleman's club.  I wonder when the British got rid of the batman, the equivalent of an officer's servant?  I keep flashing back to the "Double Deuce" episode of Archer when Woodhouse loses his officer and attacks the German lines single-handedly.  Of course, the other thing that makes this particular passage interesting is the intimate nature of the relationship between Proust and Saint-Loup.  It's difficult to decide whether it is just blatantly homo-erotic or just indicative of a different age where men and women, especially of a certain class and certainly more true before marriage, lived very separate lives.  It reminds me of the time I spent in the UAE and the male and female students had their classes in separate wings of the university, and how that served as a metaphor for the entire societal experience.  The students had such close and intense, and in some ways almost claustrophobic friendships.  Now, I'm sure a Freudian would propose that it was sublimated sexual urges that had to go somewhere.  One wonders if we're seeing the same intense emotional expression here in a very different class divided by sex?  Or, it could just be that Proust, having grown up in frail health, is just a naturally lonely person and this is one way that it expresses itself.