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MANAGEMENT AND
ORGANISATIONAL
BEHAVIOUR
F01 Management and Organisational Behaviour 22381.indd 1 20/02/2023 13:49

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MANAGEMENT AND
ORGANISATIONAL
BEHAVIOUR
LAURIE J. MULLINS AND GARY REES
THIRTEENTH EDITION
Harlow, England • London • New York • Boston • San Francisco • Toronto • Sydney • Dubai • Singapore • Hong Kong
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First published in 1985 in Great Britain under the Pitman imprint (print)
Fifth edition published in 1999 by Financial Times Pitman Publishing (print)
Seventh edition published 2005 (print)
Eighth edition published 2007 (print)
Ninth edition published 2010 (print)
Tenth edition published 2013 (print and electronic)
Eleventh edition published 2016 (print and electronic)
Twelfth edition published 2019 (print and electronic)
Thirteenth edition published 2023 (print and electronic)
© Laurie J. Mullins 1985, 2010 (print)

© Laurie J. Mullins 2012, 2016, 2019 (print and electronic)
Chapters 4, 6 © Linda Carter and Laurie J. Mullins 1993, 2007
Chapter 5 © Linda Carter 1993, 2007
Chapter 12 © Peter Scott 2016
Chapter 13 © Peter Scott 2019
Chapter 15 © Peter Scott 2010, 2013
Chapter 16 © David Preece 1999, 2007
CTZ © Pearson 2019 (print and electronic)
© Laurie J. Mullins 2023 (print and electronic)
The rights of Laurie J. Mullins and Gary Rees to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs
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ISBN: 978-1-292-42238-1 (print)

978-1-292-42240-4 (PDF)
978-1-292-42239-8 (ePub)
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for the print edition is available from the British Library
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A catalog record for the print edition is available from the Library of Congress
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Front cover image: Shutterstock Editorial
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Print edition typeset in 9.5/12.5pt Frutiger Neue LT W1G by Straive

Print edition printed and bound in Slovakia by Neografia

From Laurie:
To Pamela and for our families.
From Gary:
To Mary, Lydia and George.

Contents in brief
In acknowledgement and appreciation xviii

About the authors xx
0 Your study of management and organisational behaviour 1
Part 1
Organisational behaviour
and work 21
1 The people–organisation relationship 22
2 The work environment 56
3 Organisational conflict and stress 90
Part 2
Focus on the individual 121
4 Personality and diversity 122
5 Learning and development 157
6 Perception and communication 190
7 Work motivation and satisfaction 227
Part 3
o us on grou s nd le dershi 269
8 Working in groups and teams 270
9 Leadership in work organisations 307
10 Managing people at work 343

viii Contents in brief
Part 4
Focus on the workplace 379
11 Organisational theory and structure 380
12 Patterns of structure and workplace
design 412
13 Organisational control and power 451
Part 5
Focus on organisational
environment 485
14 Organisational culture and change 486
15 Strategy, corporate responsibility and
ethics 522
16 Organisational performance and
effectiveness 558
Appendix Review of developing your personal skills and employability 593

Index 597
Publisher’s acknowledgements 618

Contents in detail
In acknowledgement and appreciation xviii

Integrating the individual and the
About the authors xx
organisation 24
Organisational analysis 26
0 Your study of management and
A multidisciplinary perspective 28
organisational behaviour 1
Positive organisational behaviour
Overview topic map: Chapter 0 – Your study of (POB) 29
organisational behaviour 2 Interrelated influences on behaviour 30
About this book: Management and organisational A framework of study 31
behaviour 3 Social exchange theory 32
What is organisational behaviour (OB)? 4 Organisational theory 33
Underlying features of your study 5 The organisation as an open system 35
Topics in OB are not entirely free-standing 6 Organisation and management systems 37
What is the relevance of theory? 7 Contribution of Human Resource
Organisational metaphors 8 Management (HRM) 39
The importance of organisational behaviour 10 The psychological contract 41
OB, personal skills and employability 10 Nature and extent of expectations 41
The ‘SCARF’ model 12 Globalisation and the international
People management and social skills 13 context 43
Making yourself more employable 15 The cultural environment 44
Personal skills and employability exercise 15 Is organisational behaviour
Structure of the book 17 culture-bound? 47
Notes and references 18 Summary – Chapter 1 ‘The people–
organisation relationship’ 50
Group discussion activities 50
Organisational behaviour in action case
study 52
Chapter 1 – Personal skills and employability
exercise 54
Notes and references 54
2 The work environment 56

Overview topic map: Chapter 2 – the work
Part 1 environment 57
Work as a central life issue 58
Organisational behaviour Orientations to work and work ethic 61
and work 21 Emotional labour 62
Work and the organisational setting 64
1 The people–organisation
Private and public sector organisations 66
relationship 22
Social enterprise organisations 68
Overview topic map: Chapter 1 – Common features of organisations 69
The people–organisation relationship 23

x Contents in detail
Formal and informal organisations 71

Friendships and relationships at work 73
Work/life balance 74
Changing nature of work
organisations 77
Different generations and age groups 79
The future of the workplace 81
Summary – Chapter 2 ‘The work
environment’ 84 Part 2
Focus on the individual 121
study 86
4 Personality and diversity 122
exercise 88 Overview topic map: Chapter 4 – Personality
and diversity 123
Recognition of individuality 124
3 Organisational conflict Understanding personality 125
and stress 90 Personality traits and types 127
Uniqueness and similarities 129
Overview topic map: Chapter 3 –
Sigmund Freud – a psychodynamic
organisational conflict and stress 91
perspective 130
Work, health and well-being 92
Nomothetic approaches 132
What is organisational conflict? 93
Idiographic approaches 135
Potential sources of conflict 95
Personality and stress at work 138
Broader interpretations of conflict 98
The Big Five personality factors 139
The management of conflict 100
Personality ‘tests’ and assessments 141
Conflict resolution in the
Applications in the workplace 141
workplace 101
Emotional intelligence (EI) 143
What is organisational stress? 103
Recognition of diversity 145
Potential causes of work stress 105
Diversity in the workplace 146
Is stress necessarily to be avoided? 106
Diversity and stereotyping 150
Coping with stress 108
Criticisms and limitations 151
HSE Management Standards 111
Summary – Chapter 4 ‘Personality and
Bullying and harassment 112
diversity’ 152
Frustration-induced behaviour 114
Summary – Chapter 3 ‘Organisational conflict
and stress’ 115
exercise 154
Organisational behaviour in action
case study 116
5 Learning and development 157
Chapter 3 – Personal skills and
employability exercise 117 Overview topic map: Chapter 5 – Learning and
Notes and references 118 development 158
The nature and importance of learning 159

Contents in detail xi
Behaviourist and cognitive views of learning 162 Group discussion activities 222
Behaviourist theories of learning 163 Organisational behaviour in action case
Cognitive perspective of learning 166 study 224
Socialisation 167 Chapter 6 – Personal skills and employability
How do we learn? 168 exercise 225
Action learning 171 Notes and references 226
Learning preferences 173
7 Work motivation and
E-learning 174
Knowledge management 175
satisfaction 227
Creativity 178 Overview topic map: Chapter 7 – ‘work
Mentoring and coaching 180 motivation and satisfaction’ 228
Applications of learning theory 184 The significance of motivation 229
Summary – Chapter 5 ‘Learning and Needs and expectations at work 230
development’ 185 Money as a motivator 231
Group discussion activities 186 Extrinsic and intrinsic motivation 232
Organisational behaviour in action case Three-fold classification for review of
study 187 motivation 234
Chapter 5 – Personal skills and employability Competing theories of motivation 236
exercise 187 Content theories of motivation 237
Notes and references 188 Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory 237
Alderfer’s modified need hierarchy
6 Perception and model 241
communication 190 Nohria’s four drives model of motivation 242
Overview topic map: Chapter 6 – perception Herzberg’s two-factor theory 242
and communication 191 McClelland’s achievement motivation
theory 244
The importance of the study of perception 192
Process theories of motivation 245
The perceptual process 193
Vroom’s expectancy theory 247
Internal characteristics 197
Implications of expectancy theory 248
External influences 198
Equity theory of motivation 249
Perceptual illusions 203
Goal theory 251
Making judgements about other people 204
Relevance today of motivation
Difficulties in perceiving other people 206
theories 254
Perceptual distortions and errors 209
Organisational behaviour modification 255
Attribution theory 212
Motivation of knowledge workers 256
The importance of language and
Job satisfaction 258
communication 214
Comprehensive model of job enrichment 260
Non-verbal communication and body
language 215 Summary – Chapter 7 ‘Work motivation and
satisfaction’ 262
Impression management 219
Perception and interpersonal
communications 220 Organisational behaviour in action case
study 264
Understanding the organisational process 221
Summary – Chapter 6 ‘Perception and
exercise 264
communication’ 222

xii Contents in detail
9 Leadership in work
organisations 307
Overview topic map: Chapter 9 – Leadership in
work organisations 308
The significance of leadership 309
Approaches to the study of leadership 311
Qualities or traits approach 311
Functional (or group) approach 314
Part 3 Styles of leadership 315
Focus on groups Continuum of leadership behaviour 316
nd le dershi 269 Contingency theories of leadership 318
Fiedler’s contingency model 319
8 Working in groups and Vroom and Yetton contingency model 320
teams 270 Path–goal theory 321
Overview topic map: Chapter 8 – ‘working in Readiness of the followers or group 322
groups and teams’ 271 Transformational leadership 324
Importance and significance of Inspirational or visionary leadership 325
groups 272 Servant leadership 327
Formal and informal groups 274 Alternative views of leadership 328
Group values and norms 276 The leadership relationship 331
Expectations and benefits of group Culture: A contingent factor? 331
membership 278 Leadership effectiveness 332
Group cohesiveness and performance 279 Leadership development 336
Membership 280 Summary – Chapter 9 ‘Leadership in
Work environment 280 organisations’ 338
Organisational 281 Group discussion activities 338
Group development and maturity 281 Organisational behaviour in action case
Social identity theory 283 study 339
Characteristics of effective work Chapter 9 – Personal skills and employability
groups 285 exercise 340
Virtual teams 287 Notes and references 341
Interactions among group members 289
Analysis of individual behaviour 291
10 Managing people at work 343
Individual and group performance 294 Overview topic map: Chapter 10 – Managing
Building successful teams 297 people at work 344
Autonomous working groups 300 The management of people 345
Summary – Chapter 8 ‘Working in groups and What is management? 347
teams’ 302 Management in public sector
Group discussion activities 303 organisations 350
Organisational behaviour in action case Responsibility for the work of other
study 304 people 351
Chapter 8 – Personal skills and employability Managing with and through people 352
exercise 304 A looser approach to managing 355
Notes and references 305 Importance of managerial style 356
Theory X and Theory Y management 357

Contents in detail xiii
The Managerial/Leadership grid® 359

Human resource management 361
Partnership with line managers 363
Investors in People 366
Performance management (PM) 368
Managerial effectiveness 370
Measures of effectiveness 371
Summary – Chapter 10 ‘Managing people at
work’ 375 Part 4
Group discussion activities 375 Focus on the workplace 379
study 376 11 Organisational theory and
Chapter 10 – Personal skills and employability structure 380
exercise 376
Overview topic map: Chapter 11 – Organisation
theory and structure 381
Developments in organisational
behaviour 382
The classical approach 384
Administrative theory 385
Scientific management 386
Bureaucracy 389
Evaluation of bureaucracy 391
Human relations approach 393
Evaluation 395
Socio-technical approach 397
Contingency approach 398
Other approaches to the study of
organisations 400
Decision theory 400
Social action 401
Action theory 402
Postmodernism (Post bureaucratic) 403
Relevance to study of organisational
behaviour 404
Summary – Chapter 11 ‘Organisational theory
and structure’ 407
study 409

xiv Contents in detail
12 Patterns of structure and 13 Organisational control and

workplace design 412 power 451
Overview topic map: Chapter 12 – Patterns of Overview topic map: Chapter 13 –
structure and workplace design 413 Organisational control and power 452
Purpose and importance of structure 414 The essence of control 453
Levels of organisation 415 Improvement in performance 454
Underlying dimensions of structure 417 Elements of organisational control 456
Task and element functions 418 Other forms of control 457
Division of work and grouping of people 418 Strategies of control in organisations 458
Centralisation and decentralisation 421 Power and management control 461
Design principles of organisation 423 Power and leadership influence 464
Formal organisational relationships 426 Pluralistic approaches to power 465
Project teams and matrix organisation 427 Financial and accounting systems of
Role structure of the organisation 430 control 468
Role conflict 432 Behavioural factors of organisational
Boundaryless organisation 434 control 469
Organisation charts 435 The concept of empowerment and
Contingency approach 435 delegation 472
Technology and structure 437 The manager–subordinate relationship 473
Woodward – structure and production Systematic approach to delegation 476
technology 437 Control versus autonomy 479
Perrow – major dimensions of Summary – Chapter 13 ‘Organisational control
technology 438 and power’ 479
Uncertain external environment 439 Group discussion activities 479
Burns and Stalker – mechanistic and organic Organisational behaviour in action case
structures 440 study 481
Lawrence and Lorsch – differentiation and Chapter 13 – Personal skills and employability
integration 441 exercise 482
Organisation structure and culture 442 Notes and references 483
Changing face of the workplace 443
Outsourcing 444
Demand for flexibility 444
Structure and organisational
behaviour 445
Summary – Chapter 12 ‘Patterns of structure
and workplace design’ 446
Organisational behaviour in action
case study 447
exercise 448

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result of some initial confusion, for from that time onwards she
never failed to hold out her hand to me whenever she saw me. And
as, after all, the world in which I moved was precisely that in which
Mme. de Chaussegros moved my modesty had neither rhyme nor
reason. To say that I was intimate with the Chaussegros was,
literally, a mistake, but from the social point of view was to state an
equivalent of my position, if one can speak of the social position of
so young a man as I then was. It therefore mattered not in the least
that this friend of the Guermantes should tell me only things that
were false about myself, he neither lowered nor exalted me (from
the worldly point of view) in the idea which he continued to hold of
me. And when all is said, for those of us who are not professional
actors the tedium of living always in the same character is removed
for a moment, as if we were to go on the boards, when another
person forms a false idea of us, imagines that we are friends with a
lady whom we do not know and are reported to have met in the
course of a delightful tour of a foreign country which we have never
made. Errors that multiply themselves and are harmless when they
have not the inflexible rigidity of this one which had been
committed, and continued for the rest of her life to be committed, in
spite of my denials, by the imbecile lady in waiting to Mme. de
Parme, rooted for all time in the belief that I was related to the
tiresome Admiral Jurien de la Gravière. “She is not very strong in her
head,” the Duke confided to me, “and besides, she ought not to
indulge in too many libations. I fancy, she’s slightly under the
influence of Bacchus.” As a matter of fact Mme. de Varambon had
drunk nothing but water, but the Duke liked to find scope for his
favourite figures of speech. “But Zola is not a realist, Ma’am, he’s a
poet!” said Mme. de Guermantes, drawing inspiration from the
critical essays which she had read in recent years and adapting them
to her own personal genius. Agreeably buffeted hitherto, in the
course of this bath of wit, a bath stirred for herself, which she was
taking this evening and which, she considered, must be particularly
good for her health, letting herself be swept away by the waves of
paradox which curled and broke one after another, before this, the
most enormous of them all, the Princesse de Parme jumped for fear
of being knocked over. And it was in a choking voice, as though she
were quite out of breath, that she now gasped: “Zola a poet!” “Why,
yes,” answered the Duchess with a laugh, entranced by this display
of suffocation. “Your Highness must have remarked how he
magnifies everything he touches. You will tell me that he touches
just what—perish the thought! But he makes it into something
colossal. His is the epic dungheap. He is the Homer of the sewers!
He has not enough capitals to print Cambronne’s word.” Despite the
extreme exhaustion which she was beginning to feel, the Princess
was enchanted; never had she felt better. She would not have
exchanged for an invitation to Schönbrunn, albeit that was the one
thing that really flattered her, these divine dinner-parties at Mme. de
Guermantes’s, made invigorating by so liberal a dose of attic salt.
“He writes it with a big ‘C’,” cried Mme. d’Arpajon. “Surely with a big
‘M’, I think, my dear,” replied Mme. de Guermantes, exchanging first
with her husband a merry glance which implied: “Did you ever hear
such an idiot?” “Wait a minute, now,” Mme. de Guermantes turned
to me, fixing on me a tender, smiling gaze, because, as an
accomplished hostess, she was anxious to display her own
knowledge of the artist who interested me specially, to give me, if I
required it, an opportunity for exhibiting mine. “Wait,” she urged me,
gently waving her feather fan, so conscious was she at this moment
that she was performing in full the duties of hospitality, and, that she
might be found wanting in none of them, making a sign also to the
servants to help me to more of the asparagus and mousseline sauce:
“wait, now, I do believe that Zola has actually written an essay on
Elstir, the painter whose things you were looking at just now—the
only ones of his, really, that I care for,” she concluded. As a matter
of fact she hated Elstir’s work, but found a unique quality in anything
that was in her own house. I asked M. de Guermantes if he knew
the name of the gentleman in the tall hat who figured in the picture
of the crowd and whom I recognised as the same person whose
portrait the Guermantes also had and had hung beside the other,
both dating more or less from the same early period in which Elstir’s
personality was not yet completely established and he derived a
certain inspiration from Manet. “Good Lord, yes,” he replied, “I know
it’s a fellow who is quite well-known and no fool either, in his own
line, but I have no head for names. I have it on the tip of my
tongue, Monsieur ... Monsieur ... oh, well, it doesn’t matter, I can’t
remember it. Swann would be able to tell you, it was he who made
Mme. de Guermantes buy all that stuff; she is always too good-
natured, afraid of hurting people’s feelings if she refuses to do
things; between ourselves, I believe he’s landed us with a lot of
rubbish. What I can tell you is that the gentleman you mean has
been a sort of Maecenas to M. Elstir, he started him and has often
helped him out of tight places by ordering pictures from him. As a
compliment to this man—if you can call that sort of thing a
compliment—he has painted him standing about among that crowd,
where with his Sunday-go-to-meeting look he creates a distinctly
odd effect. He may be a big gun in his own way but he is evidently
not aware of the proper time and place for a top hat. With that thing
on his head, among all those bare-headed girls, he looks like a little
country lawyer on the razzle-dazzle. But tell me, you seem quite
gone on his pictures. If I had only known, I should have got up the
subject properly. Not that there’s any need to rack one’s brains over
the meaning of M. Elstir’s work, as one would for Ingres’s Source or
the Princes in the Tower by Paul Delaroche. What one appreciates in
his work is that it’s shrewdly observed, amusing, Parisian, and then
one passes on to the next thing. One doesn’t need to be an expert
to look at that sort of thing. I know of course that they’re merely
sketches, still, I don’t feel myself that he puts enough work into
them. Swann was determined that we should buy a Bundle of
Asparagus. In fact it was in the house for several days. There was
nothing else in the picture, a bundle of asparagus exactly like what
you’re eating now. But I must say I declined to swallow M. Elstir’s
asparagus. He asked three hundred francs for them. Three hundred
francs for a bundle of asparagus. A louis, that’s as much as they’re
worth, even if they are out of season. I thought it a bit stiff. When
he puts real people into his pictures as well, there’s something rather
caddish, something detrimental about him which does not appeal to
me. I am surprised to see a delicate mind, a superior brain like yours
admire that sort of thing.” “I don’t know why you should say that,
Basin,” interrupted the Duchess, who did not like to hear people run
down anything that her rooms contained. “I am by no means
prepared to admit that there’s nothing distinguished in Elstir’s
pictures. You have to take it or leave it. But it’s not always lacking in
talent. And you must admit that the ones I bought are singularly
beautiful.” “Well, Oriane, in that style of thing I’ld a thousand times
rather have the little study by M. Vibert we saw at the water-colour
exhibition. There’s nothing much in it, if you like, you could take it in
the palm of your hand, but you can see the man’s clever through
and through: that unwashed scarecrow of a missionary standing
before the sleek prelate who is making his little dog do tricks, it’s a
perfect little poem of subtlety, and in fact goes really deep.” “I
believe you know M. Elstir,” the Duchess went on to me, “as a man,
he’s quite pleasant.” “He is intelligent,” said the Duke; “one is
surprised, when one talks to him, that his painting should be so
vulgar.” “He is more than intelligent, he is really quite clever,” said
the Duchess in the confidently critical tone of a person who knew
what she was talking about. “Didn’t he once start a portrait of you,
Oriane?” asked the Princesse de Parme. “Yes, in shrimp pink,” replied
Mme. de Guermantes, “but that’s not going to hand his name down
to posterity. It’s a ghastly thing; Basin wanted to have it destroyed.”
This last statement was one which Mme. de Guermantes often
made. But at other times her appreciation of the picture was
different: “I do not care for his painting, but he did once do a good
portrait of me.” The former of these judgments was addressed as a
rule to people who spoke to the Duchess of her portrait, the other to
those who did not refer to it and whom therefore she was anxious to
inform of its existence. The former was inspired in her by coquetry,
the latter by vanity. “Make a portrait of you look ghastly. Why, then it
can’t be a portrait, it’s a falsehood; I don’t know one end of a brush
from the other, but I’m sure if I were to paint you, merely putting
you down as I see you, I should produce a masterpiece,” said the
Princesse de Parme ingenuously. “He sees me probably as I see
myself, without any allurements,” said the Duchesse de Guermantes,
with the look, melancholy, modest and coaxing, which seemed to her
best calculated to make her appear different from what Elstir had
portrayed. “That portrait ought to appeal to Mme. de Gallardon,”
said the Duke. “Because she knows nothing about pictures?” asked
the Princesse de Parme, who knew that Mme. de Guermantes had
an infinite contempt for her cousin. “But she’s a very good woman,
isn’t she?” The Duke assumed an air of profound astonishment.
“Why, Basin, don’t you see the Princess is making fun of you?” (The
Princess had never dreamed of doing such a thing.) “She knows as
well as you do that Gallardonette is an old poison,” went on Mme. de
Guermantes, whose vocabulary, limited as a rule to all these old
expressions, was as savoury as those dishes which it is possible to
come across in the delicious books of Pampille, but which have in
real life become so rare, dishes where the jellies, the butter, the
gravy, the quails are all genuine, permit of no alloy, where even the
salt is brought specially from the salt-marshes of Brittany; from her
accent, her choice of words, one felt that the basis of the Duchess’s
conversation came directly from Guermantes. In this way the
Duchess differed profoundly from her nephew Saint-Loup, the prey
of so many new ideas and expressions; it is difficult, when one’s
mind is troubled by the ideas of Kant and the longings of Baudelaire,
to write the exquisite French of Henri IV, which meant that the very
purity of the Duchess’s language was a sign of limitation, and that,
in her, both her intelligence and her sensibility had remained proof
against all innovation. Here again, Mme. de Guermantes’s mind
attracted me just because of what it excluded (which was exactly
the content of my own thoughts) and by everything which, by virtue
of that exclusion, it had been able to preserve, that seductive vigour
of the supple bodies which no exhausting necessity to think, no
moral anxiety or nervous trouble has deformed. Her mind, of a
formation so anterior to my own, was for me the equivalent of what
had been offered me by the procession of the girls of the little band
along the seashore. Mme. de Guermantes offered me, domesticated
and held in subjection by her natural courtesy, by the respect due to
another person’s intellectual worth, all the energy and charm of a
cruel little girl of one of the noble families round Combray who from
her childhood had been brought up in the saddle, tortured cats,
gouged out the eyes of rabbits, and, albeit she had remained a pillar
of virtue, might equally well have been, a good few years ago now,
the most brilliant mistress of the Prince de Sagan. Only she was
incapable of realising what I had sought for in her, the charm of her
historic name, and the tiny quantity of it that I had found in her, a
rustic survival from Guermantes. Were our relations founded upon a
misunderstanding which could not fail to become manifest as soon
as my homage, instead of being addressed to the relatively superior
woman that she believed herself to be, should be diverted to some
other woman of equal mediocrity and breathing the same
unconscious charm? A misunderstanding so entirely natural, and one
that will always exist between a young dreamer like myself and a
woman of the world, one however that profoundly disturbs him, so
long as he has not yet discovered the nature of his imaginative
faculties and has not acquired his share of the inevitable
disappointments which he is destined to find in people, as in the
theatre, in his travels and indeed in love. M. de Guermantes having
declared (following upon Elstir’s asparagus and those that were
brought round after the financière chicken) that green asparagus
grown in the open air, which, as has been so quaintly said by the
charming writer who signs himself E. de Clermont-Tonnerre, “have
not the impressive rigidity of their sisters,” ought to be eaten with
eggs: “One man’s meat is another man’s poison, as they say,” replied
M. de Bréauté. “In the province of Canton, in China, the greatest
delicacy that can be set before one is a dish of ortolan’s eggs
completely rotten.” M. de Bréauté, the author of an essay on the
Mormons which had appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes,
moved in none but the most aristocratic circles, but among these
visited only such as had a certain reputation for intellect, with the
result that from his presence, were it at all regular, in a woman’s
house one could tell that she had a “salon”. He pretended to a
loathing of society, and assured each of his duchesses in turn that it
was for the sake of her wit and beauty that he came to see her.
They all believed him. Whenever, with death in his heart, he
resigned himself to attending a big party at the Princesse de
Parme’s, he summoned them all to accompany him, to keep up his
courage, and thus appeared only to be moving in the midst of an
intimate group. So that his reputation as an intellectual might
survive his worldly success, applying certain maxims of the
Guermantes spirit, he would set out with ladies of fashion on long
scientific expeditions at the height of the dancing season, and when
a woman who was a snob, and consequently still without any
definite position, began to go everywhere, he would put a savage
obstinacy into his refusal to know her, to allow himself to be
introduced to her. His hatred of snobs was a derivative of his
snobbishness, but made the simpletons (in other words, everyone)
believe that he was immune from snobbishness. “Babal always
knows everything,” exclaimed the Duchesse de Guermantes.“ I think
it must be charming, a country where you can be quite sure that
your dairyman will supply you with really rotten eggs, eggs of the
year of the comet. I can see myself dipping my bread and butter in
them. I must say, you get the same thing at aunt Madeleine’s”
(Mme. de Villeparisis’s) “where everything’s served in a state of
putrefaction, eggs included.” Then, as Mme. d’Arpajon protested,
“But my dear Phili, you know it as well as I do. You can see the
chicken in the egg. What I can’t understand is how they manage not
to fall out. It’s not an omelette you get there, it’s a poultry-yard. You
were so wise not to come to dinner there yesterday, there was a brill
cooked in carbolic! I assure you, it wasn’t a dinner-table, it was far
more like an operating-table. Really, Norpois carries loyalty to the
pitch of heroism. He actually asked for more!” “I believe I saw you at
dinner there the time she made that attack on M. Bloch” (M. de
Guermantes, perhaps to give to an Israelite name a more foreign
sound, pronounced the ‘ch’ in Bloch not like a ‘k’ but as in the
German “hoch”) “when he said about some poit” (poet) “or other
that he was sublime. Châtellerault did his best to break M. Bloch’s
shins, the fellow didn’t understand in the least and thought my
nephew’s kick was aimed at a young woman sitting opposite him.”
(At this point, M. de Guermantes coloured slightly.) “He did not
realise that he was annoying our aunt by his ‘sublimes’ chucked
about all over the place like that. In short, aunt Madeleine, who
doesn’t keep her tongue in her pocket, turned on him with: ‘Indeed,
sir, and what epithet do you keep for M. de Bossuet?’” (M. de
Guermantes thought that, when one mentioned a famous name, the
use of “Monsieur” and a particle was eminently “old school”.) “That
put him in his place, all right.” “And what answer did this M. Bloch
make?” came in a careless tone from Mme. de Guermantes, who,
running short for the moment of original ideas, felt that she must
copy her husband’s teutonic pronunciation. “Ah! I can assure, M.
Bloch did not wait for any more, he’s still running.” “Yes, I remember
quite well seeing you there that evening,” said Mme. de Guermantes
with emphasis as though, coming from her, there must be something
in this reminiscence highly flattering to myself. “It is always so
interesting at my aunt’s. At the last party she gave, which was, of
course, when I met you, I meant to ask you whether that old
gentleman who went past where we were sitting wasn’t François
Coppée. You must know who everyone is,” she went on, sincerely
envious of my relations with poets and poetry, and also out of
“consideration” for myself, the wish to establish in a better position
in the eyes of her other guests a young man so well versed in
literature. I assured the Duchess that I had not observed any
celebrities at Mme. de Villeparisis’s party. “What!” she replied with a
bewilderment which revealed that her respect for men of letters and
her contempt for society were more superficial than she said,
perhaps even than she thought, “What! There were no famous
authors there! You astonish me! Why, I saw all sorts of quite
impossible people!” I remembered the evening in question distinctly
owing to an entirely trivial incident that had occurred at the party.
Mme. de Villeparisis had introduced Bloch to Mme. Alphonse de
Rothschild, but my friend had not caught the name and, thinking he
was talking to an old English lady who was a trifle mad, had replied
only in monosyllables to the garrulous conversation of the historic
beauty, when Mme. de Villeparisis in making her known to some one
else uttered, quite distinctly this time: “The Baronne Alphonse de
Rothschild.” Thereupon there had coursed suddenly and
simultaneously through Bloch’s arteries so many ideas of millions
and of social importance, which it would have been more prudent to
subdivide and separate, that he had undergone, so to speak, a
momentary failure of heart and brain alike, and cried aloud in the
dear old lady’s presence: “If I’d only known!” an exclamation the
silliness of which kept him from sleeping for at least a week
afterwards. His remark was of no great interest, but I remembered it
as a proof that sometimes in this life, under the stress of an
exceptional emotion, people do say what is in their minds. “I fancy
Mme. de Villeparisis is not absolutely ... moral,” said the Princesse de
Parme, who knew that the best people did not visit the Duchess’s
aunt, and from what the Duchess herself had just been saying that
one might speak freely about her. But, Mme. de Guermantes not
seeming to approve of this criticism, she hastened to add: “Though,
of course, intellect carried to that degree excuses everything.” “But
you take the same view of my aunt that everyone else does,” replied
the Duchess, “which is, really, quite mistaken. It’s just what Mémé
was saying to me only yesterday.” She blushed; a reminiscence
unknown to me filmed her eyes. I formed the supposition that M. de
Charlus had asked her to cancel my invitation, as he had sent Robert
to ask me not to go to her house. I had the impression that the
blush—equally incomprehensible to me—which had tinged the
Duke’s cheek when he made some reference to his brother could not
be attributed to the same cause. “My poor aunt—she will always
have the reputation of being a lady of the old school, of sparkling wit
and uncontrolled passions. And really there’s no more middle-class,
serious, commonplace mind in Paris. She will go down as a patron of
the arts, which means to say that she was once the mistress of a
great painter, though he was never able to make her understand
what a picture was; and as for her private life, so far from being a
depraved woman, she was so much made for marriage, so conjugal
from her cradle that, not having succeeded in keeping a husband,
who incidentally was a cad, she has never had a love-affair which
she hasn’t taken just as seriously as if it were holy matrimony, with
the same susceptibilities, the same quarrels, the same fidelity. By
which token, those relations are often the most sincere; you’ll find,
in fact, more inconsolable lovers than husbands.” “Yet, Oriane, if you
take the case of your brother-in-law Palamède you were speaking
about just now; no mistress in the world could ever dream of being
mourned as that poor Mme. de Charlus has been.” “Ah!” replied the
Duchess, “Your Highness must permit me to be not altogether of her
opinion. People don’t all like to be mourned in the same way, each of
us has his preferences.” “Still, he did make a regular cult of her after
her death. It is true that people sometimes do for the dead what
they would not have done for the living.” “For one thing,” retorted
Mme. de Guermantes in a dreamy tone which belied her teasing
purpose, “we go to their funerals, which we never do for the living!”
M. de Guermantes gave a sly glance at M. de Bréauté as though to
provoke him into laughter at the Duchess’s wit. “At the same time I
frankly admit,” went on Mme. de Guermantes, “that the manner in
which I should like to be mourned by a man I loved would not be
that adopted by my brother-in-law.” The Duke’s face darkened. He
did not like to hear his wife utter rash judgments, especially about
M. de Charlus. “You are very particular. His grief set an example to
everyone,” he reproved her stiffly. But the Duchess had in dealing
with her husband that sort of boldness which animal tamers shew,
or people who live with a madman and are not afraid of making him
angry: “Oh, very well, just as you like—he does set an example, I
never said he didn’t, he goes every day to the cemetery to tell her
how many people he has had to luncheon, he misses her
enormously, but—as he’ld mourn for a cousin, a grandmother, a
sister. It is not the grief of a husband. It is true that they were a pair
of saints, which makes it all rather exceptional.” M. de Guermantes,
infuriated by his wife’s chatter, fixed on her with a terrible immobility
a pair of eyes already loaded. “I don’t wish to say anything against
poor Mémé, who, by the way, could not come this evening,” went on
the Duchess, “I quite admit there’s no one like him, he’s delightful;
he has a delicacy, a warmth of heart that you don’t as a rule find in
men. He has a woman’s heart, Mémé has!” “What you say is
absurd,” M. de Guermantes broke in sharply. “There’s nothing
effeminate about Mémé, I know nobody so manly as he is.” “But I
am not suggesting that he’s the least bit in the world effeminate. Do
at least take the trouble to understand what I say,” retorted the
Duchess. “He’s always like that the moment anyone mentions his
brother,” she added, turning to the Princesse de Parme. “It’s very
charming, it’s a pleasure to hear him. There’s nothing so nice as two
brothers who are fond of each other,” replied the Princess, as many
a humbler person might have replied, for it is possible to belong to a
princely race by birth and at the same time to be mentally affiliated
to a race that is thoroughly plebeian.
“As we’re discussing your family, Oriane,” said the Princess, “I saw
your nephew Saint-Loup yesterday; I believe he wants to ask you to
do something for him.” The Duc de Guermantes bent his Olympian
brow. When he did not himself care to do a service, he preferred his
wife not to assume the responsibility for it, knowing that it would
come to the same thing in the end and that the people to whom the
Duchess would be obliged to apply would put this concession down
to the common account of the household, just as much as if it had
been asked of them by the husband alone. “Why didn’t he tell me
about it himself?” said the Duchess, “he was here yesterday and
stayed a couple of hours, and heaven only knows what a bore he
managed to make himself. He would be no stupider than anyone
else if he had only the sense, like many people we know, to be
content with being a fool. It’s his veneer of knowledge that’s so
terrible. He wants to preserve an open mind—open to all the things
he doesn’t understand. He talks to you about Morocco. It’s
appalling.”
“He can’t go back there, because of Rachel,” said the Prince de
Foix. “Surely, now that they’ve broken it off,” interrupted M. de
Bréauté. “So far from breaking it off, I found her a couple of days
ago in Robert’s rooms, they didn’t look at all like people who’d
quarrelled, I can assure you,” replied the Prince de Foix, who loved
to spread abroad every rumour that could damage Robert’s chances
of marrying, and might for that matter have been misled by one of
the intermittent resumptions of a connexion that was practically at
an end.
“That Rachel was speaking to me about you, I see her like that in
the mornings, on the way to the Champs-Élysées; she’s a kind of
head-in-air, as you say, what you call ‘unlaced’, a sort of ‘Dame aux
Camélias’, only figuratively speaking, of course.” This speech was
addressed to me by Prince Von, who liked always to appear
conversant with French literature and Parisian catch-words.
“Why, that’s just what it was—Morocco!” exclaimed the Princess,
flinging herself into this opening. “What on earth can he want in
Morocco?” asked M. de Guermantes sternly; “Oriane can do
absolutely nothing for him there, as he knows perfectly well.” “He
thinks he invented strategy,” Mme. de Guermantes pursued the
theme, “and then he uses impossible words for the most trivial
things, which doesn’t prevent him from making blots all over his
letters. The other day he announced that he’d been given some
sublime potatoes, and that he’d taken a sublime stage box.” “He
speaks Latin,” the Duke went one better. “What! Latin?” the Princess
gasped. “’Pon my soul he does! Ma’am can ask Oriane if I’m not
telling the truth.” “Why, of course, Ma’am; the other day he said to
us straight out, without stopping to think: ‘I know of no more
touching example of sic transit gloria mundi.’ I can repeat the phrase
now to your Highness because, after endless inquiries and by
appealing to linguists, we succeeded in reconstructing it, but Robert
flung it out without pausing for breath, one could hardly make out
that there was Latin in it, he was just like a character in the Malade
Imaginaire. And all this referred simply to the death of the Empress
of Austria!” “Poor woman!” cried the Princess, “what a delicious
creature she was.” “Yes,” replied the Duchess, “a trifle mad, a trifle
headstrong, but she was a thoroughly good woman, a nice, kind-
hearted lunatic; the only thing I could never make out about her was
why she had never managed to get her teeth made to fit her; they
always came loose half-way through a sentence and she was obliged
to stop short or she’ld have swallowed them.” “That Rachel was
speaking to me about you, she told me that young Saint-Loup
worshipped you, that he was fonder of you than he was of her,” said
Prince Von to me, devouring his food like an ogre as he spoke, his
face scarlet, his teeth bared by his perpetual grin. “But in that case
she must be jealous of me and hate me,” said I. “Not at all, she told
me all sorts of nice things about you. The Prince de Foix’s mistress
would perhaps be jealous if he preferred you to her. You don’t
understand? Come home with me, and I’ll explain it all to you.” “I’m
afraid I can’t, I’m going on to M. de Charlus at eleven.” “Why, he
sent round to me yesterday to ask me to dine with him this evening,
but told me not to come after a quarter to eleven. But if you must
go to him, at least come with me as far as the Théâtre-Français, you
will be in the periphery,” said the Prince, who thought doubtless that
this last word meant “proximity” or possibly “centre”.
But the bulging eyes in his coarse though handsome red face
frightened me and I declined, saying that a friend was coming to call
for me. This reply seemed to me in no way offensive. The Prince,
however, apparently formed a different impression of it for he did
not say another word to me.
“I really must go and see the Queen of Naples; what a grief it
must be to her,” said (or at least appeared to me to have said) the
Princesse de Parme. For her words had come to me only indistinctly
through the intervening screen of those addressed to me, albeit in
an undertone, by Prince Von, who had doubtless been afraid, if he
spoke louder, of being overheard by the Prince de Foix. “Oh, dear,
no!” replied the Duchess, “I don’t believe it has been any grief at
all.” “None at all! You do always fly to extremes so, Oriane,” said M.
de Guermantes, resuming his part of the cliff which by standing up
to the wave forces it to fling higher its crest of foam. “Basin knows
even better than I that I’m telling the truth,” replied the Duchess,
“but he thinks he’s obliged to look severe because you are present,
Ma’am, and he’s afraid of my shocking you.” “Oh, please, no, I beg
of you,” cried the Princesse de Parme, dreading the slightest
alteration on her account of these delicious Fridays at the Duchesse
de Guermantes’s, this forbidden fruit which the Queen of Sweden
herself had not yet acquired the right to taste. “Why, it was Basin
himself that she told, when he said to her with a duly sorrowful
expression: ‘But the Queen is in mourning; for whom, pray, is it a
great grief to your Majesty?’—‘No, it’s not a deep mourning, it’s a
light mourning, quite a light mourning, it’s my sister.’ The truth is,
she’s delighted about it, as Basin knows perfectly well, she invited us
to a party that very evening, and gave me two pearls. I wish she
could lose a sister every day! So far from weeping for her sister’s
death, she was in fits of laughter over it. She probably says to
herself, like Robert, ‘sic transit——’ I forget how it goes on,” she
added modestly, knowing how it went on perfectly well.
In saying all this Mme. de Guermantes was only being witty, and
with complete insincerity, for the Queen of Naples, like the Duchesse
d’Alençon, also doomed to a tragic fate, had the warmest heart in
the world and mourned quite sincerely for her kinsfolk. Mme. de
Guermantes knew those noble Bavarian sisters, her cousins, too well
not to be aware of this. “He would like not to go back to Morocco,”
said the Princesse de Parme, alighting hurriedly again upon the
perch of Robert’s name which had been held out to her, quite
unintentionally, by Mme. de Guermantes. “I believe you know
General de Monserfeuil.” “Very slightly,” replied the Duchess, who
was an intimate friend of the officer in question. The Princess
explained what it was that Saint-Loup wanted. “Good gracious, yes,
if I see him—it is possible that I may meet him,” the Duchess
replied, so as not to appear to be refusing, the occasions of her
meeting General de Monserfeuil seeming to extend rapidly farther
apart as soon as it became a question of her asking him for
anything. This uncertainty did not, however, satisfy the Duke, who
interrupted his wife: “You know perfectly well you won’t be seeing
him, Oriane, and besides you have already asked him for two things
which he hasn’t done. My wife has a passion for doing good turns to
people,” he went on, growing more and more furious, in order to
force the Princess to withdraw her request, without there being any
question made of his wife’s good nature and so that Mme. de Parme
should throw the blame back upon his own character, which was
essentially obstructive. “Robert could get anything he wanted out of
Monserfeuil. Only, as he happens not to know himself what he
wants, he gets us to ask for it because he knows there’s no better
way of making the whole thing fall through. Oriane has asked too
many favours of Monserfeuil. A request from her now would be a
reason for him to refuse.” “Oh, in that case, it would be better if the
Duchess did nothing,” said Mme. de Parme. “Obviously!” the Duke
closed the discussion. “Poor General, he’s been defeated again at the
elections,” said the Princess, so as to turn the conversation from
Robert. “Oh, it’s nothing serious, it’s only the seventh time,” said the
Duke, who, having been obliged himself to retire from politics, quite
enjoyed hearing of other people’s failures at the polls. “He has
consoled himself by giving his wife another baby.” “What! Is that
poor Mme. de Monserfeuil in an interesting condition again?” cried
the Princess. “Why, of course,” replied the Duke, “that’s the one
division where the poor General has never failed to get in.”
In the period that followed I was continually to be invited, were it
with a small party only, to these repasts at which I had at one time
imagined the guests as seated like the Apostles in the Sainte-
Chapelle. They did assemble there indeed, like the early Christians,
not to partake merely of a material nourishment, which incidentally
was exquisite, but in a sort of social Eucharist; so that in the course
of a few dinner-parties I assimilated the acquaintance of all the
friends of my hosts, friends to whom they presented me with a
shade of benevolent patronage so marked (as a person for whom
they had always had a sort of parental affection) that there was not
one among them who would not have felt himself to be failing in his
duty to the Duke and Duchess if he had given a ball without
including my name on his list, and at the same time, while I sipped
one of those Yquems which lay concealed in the Guermantes cellars,
I tasted ortolans dressed according to each of the different recipes
which the Duke himself used to elaborate and modified with
prudence. However, for one who had already set his knees more
than once beneath the mystic board, the consumption of the latter
was not indispensable. Old friends of M. and Mme. de Guermantes
came in to see them after dinner, “with the tooth-picks”, as Mme.
Swann would have said, without being expected, and took in winter
a cup of tilleul in the lighted warmth of the great drawing-room, in
summer a glass of orangeade in the darkness of the little rectangular
strip of garden outside. There was no record of anything else,
among the Guermantes, in these evenings in the garden, but
orangeade. It had a sort of ritual meaning. To have added other
refreshments would have seemed to be falsifying the tradition, just
as a big at-home in the Faubourg Saint-Germain ceases to be an at-
home if there is a play also, or music. You must be supposed to have
come simply—though there be five hundred of you—to pay a call on,
let us say, the Princesse de Guermantes. People marvelled at my
influence because I was able to procure the addition to this
orangeade of a jug containing the juice of stewed cherries or stewed
pears. I took a dislike on this account to the Prince d’Agrigente, who
was like all the people who, lacking in imagination but not in
covetousness, take a keen interest in what one is drinking and ask if
they may taste a little of it themselves. Which meant that, every
time, M. d’Agrigente, by diminishing my ration, spoiled my pleasure.
For this fruit juice can never be provided in sufficient quantities to
quench one’s thirst for it. Nothing is less cloying than these
transpositions into flavour of the colour of a fruit which when cooked
seems to have travelled backwards to the past season of its
blossoming. Blushing like an orchard in spring, or, it may be,
colourless and cool like the zephyr beneath the fruit-trees, the juice
lets itself be breathed and gazed into one drop by drop, and M.
d’Agrigente prevented me, regularly, from taking my fill of it. Despite
these distillations the traditional orangeade persisted like the tilleul.
In these humble kinds, the social communion was none the less
administered. In this respect, doubtless, the friends of M. and Mme.
de Guermantes had, after all, as I had originally imagined, remained
more different from the rest of humanity than their outward
appearance might have misled me into supposing. Numbers of
elderly men came to receive from the Duchess, together with the
invariable drink, a welcome that was often far from cordial. Now this
could not have been due to snobbishness, they themselves being of
a rank to which there was none superior; nor to love of splendour;
they did love it perhaps, but on less stringent social conditions might
have been enjoying a glittering example of it, for on these same
evenings the charming wife of a colossally rich financier would have
given anything in the world to have them among the brilliant
shooting-party she was giving for a couple of days for the King of
Spain. They had nevertheless declined her invitation, and had come
round without fail to inquire whether Mme. de Guermantes was at
home. They were not even certain of finding there opinions that
conformed entirely with their own, or sentiments of any great
warmth; Mme. de Guermantes let fall now and then, on the Dreyfus
Case, on the Republic, the Laws against Religion, or even in an
undertone on themselves, their weaknesses, the dullness of their
conversation, comments which they had to appear not to notice. No
doubt, if they kept up their habit of coming there, it was owing to
their superfine training as epicures in things worldly, to their clear
consciousness of the prime and perfect quality of the social dish,
with its familiar, reassuring, sappy savour, free from blend or taint,
with the origin and history of which they were as well aware as she
who served them with it, remaining more “noble” in this respect
than they themselves imagined. Now, on this occasion, among the
visitors to whom I was introduced after dinner, it so happened that
there was that General de Monserfeuil of whom the Princesse de
Parme had been speaking, while Mme. de Guermantes, of whose
drawing-room he was one of the regular frequenters, had not known
that he was going to be there that evening. He bowed before me, on
hearing my name, as though I had been the President of the
Supreme War Council. I had supposed it to be simply from some
deep-rooted unwillingness to oblige, in which the Duke, as in wit if
not in love, was his wife’s accomplice, that the Duchess had
practically refused to recommend her nephew to M. de Monserfeuil.
And I saw in this an indifference all the more blameworthy in that I
seemed to have gathered from a few words let fall by the Princess
that Robert was in a post of danger from which it would be prudent
to have him removed. But it was by the genuine malice of Mme. de
Guermantes that I was revolted when, the Princesse de Parme
having timidly suggested that she might say something herself and
on her own responsibility to the General, the Duchess did everything
in her power to dissuade her. “But Ma’am,” she cried, “Monserfeuil
has no sort of standing or influence whatever with the new
Government. You would be wasting your breath.” “I think he can
hear us,” murmured the Princess, as a hint to the Duchess not to
speak so loud. Without lowering her voice: “Your Highness need not
be afraid, he’s as deaf as a post,” said the Duchess, every word
reaching the General distinctly. “The thing is, I believe M. de Saint-
Loup is in a place that is not very safe,” said the Princess. “What is
one to do?” replied the Duchess. “He’s in the same boat as
everybody else, the only difference being that it was he who
originally asked to be sent there. Besides, no, it’s not really
dangerous; if it was, you can imagine how anxious I should be to
help. I should have spoken to Saint-Joseph about it during dinner. He
has far more influence, and he’s a real worker. But, as you see, he’s
gone now. Still, asking him would be less awkward than going to this
one, who has three of his sons in Morocco just now and has refused
to apply for them to be exchanged; he might raise that as an
objection. Since your Highness insists on it, I shall speak to Saint-
Joseph—if I see him again, or to Beautreillis. But if I don’t see either
of them, you mustn’t waste your pity on Robert. It was explained to
us the other day exactly where he is. I’m sure he couldn’t wish for a
better place.”
“What a pretty flower, I’ve never seen one like it; there’s no one
like you, Oriane, for having such marvellous things in your house,”
said the Princess de Parme, who, fearing that General de Monserfeuil
might have overheard the Duchess, sought now to change the
conversation. I looked and recognised a plant of the sort that I had
watched Elstir painting. “I am so glad you like them; they are
charming, do look at their little purple velvet collars; the only thing
against them is—as may happen with people who are very pretty
and very nicely dressed—they have a hideous name and a horrid
smell. In spite of which I am very fond of them. But what is rather
sad is that they are dying.” “But they’re growing in a pot, they aren’t
cut flowers,” said the Princess. “No,” answered the Duchess with a
smile, “but it comes to the same thing, as they’re all ladies. It’s a
kind of plant where the ladies and the gentlemen don’t both grow on
the same stalk. I’m like people who keep a lady dog. I have to find a
husband for my flowers. Otherwise I shan’t have any young ones!”
“How very strange. Do you mean to say that in nature...?” “Yes!
There are certain insects whose duty it is to bring about the
marriage, as they do with Sovereigns, by proxy, without the bride
and bridegroom ever having set eyes on one another. And so, I
assure you, I always tell my man to put my plant out in the window
as often as possible, on the courtyard side and the garden side turn
about, in the hope that the necessary insect will arrive. But the odds
are too great. Fancy, he has first to have been seen by a person of
the same species and the opposite sex, and he must then have
taken it into his head to come and leave cards at the house. He
hasn’t appeared so far, I believe my plant can still qualify for the
white flower of a blameless life, but I must say a little immodesty
would please me better. It’s just the same with that fine tree we
have in the courtyard; he will die childless because he belongs to a
kind that’s very rare in these latitudes. In his case, it’s the wind
that’s responsible for consummating the marriage, but the wall is a
trifle high.” “By Jove, yes,” said M. de Bréauté, “you ought to take
just a couple of inches off the top, that will be quite enough. There
are certain operations one ought to know how to perform. The
flavour of vanilla we tasted in the excellent ice you gave us this
evening, Duchess, comes from a plant called the vanilla tree. This
plant produces flowers which are both male and female, but a sort
of solid wall set up between them prevents any communication. And
so we could never get any fruit from them until a young negro, a
native of Réunion, by the name of Albins, which by the way is rather
an odd name for a black man since it means ‘white’, had the happy
thought of using the point of a needle to bring the separate organs
into contact.” “Babal, you’re divine, you know everything,” cried the
Duchess. “But you yourself, Oriane, have told me things I had no
idea of,” the Princesse de Parme assured her. “I must explain to your
Highness that it is Swann who has always talked to me all about
botany. Sometimes when we were too bored to go to a tea-party or
a concert we would set off for the country, and he would shew me
extraordinary marriages between flowers, which was far more
amusing than going to human marriages—no wedding-breakfast and
no crowd in the sacristy. We never had time to go very far. Now that
motor-cars have come in, it would be delightful. Unfortunately, in the
interval he himself has made an even more astonishing marriage,
which makes everything very difficult. Oh, Ma’am, life is a dreadful
business, we spend our whole time doing things that bore us, and
when by mere chance we come across somebody with whom we
could go and look at something really interesting, he has to make a
marriage like Swann’s. Faced with the alternatives of giving up my
botanical expeditions and being obliged to call upon a degrading
person, I chose the former calamity. Besides, when it comes to that,
there was no need to go quite so far. It seems that here, in my own
little bit of garden, more odd things happen in broad daylight than at
midnight—in the Bois de Boulogne! Only they attract no attention,
because among flowers it’s all done quite simply, you see a little
orange shower, or else a very dusty fly coming to wipe its feet or
take a bath before crawling into a flower. And that does the trick!”
“The cabinet the plant is standing on is splendid, too; it’s Empire, I
think,” said the Princess, who, not being familiar with the works of
Darwin and his followers, was unable to grasp the point of the
Duchess’s pleasantries. “It’s lovely, isn’t it? I’m so glad Ma’am likes
it,” replied the Duchess, “it’s a magnificent piece. I must tell you that
I’ve always adored the Empire style, even when it wasn’t in fashion.
I remember at Guermantes I got into terrible disgrace with my
mother-in-law because I told them to bring down from the attics all
the splendid Empire furniture Basin had inherited from the
Montesquious, and used it to furnish the wing we lived in.” M. de
Guermantes smiled. He must nevertheless have remembered that
the course of events had been totally different. But, the witticisms of
the Princesse des Laumes at the expense of her mother-in-law’s bad
taste having been a tradition during the short time in which the
Prince was in love with his wife, his love for the latter had been
outlasted by a certain contempt for the intellectual inferiority of the
former, a contempt which, however, went hand in hand with a
considerable attachment and respect. “The Iénas have the same
armchair with Wedgwood medallions, it’s a lovely thing, but I prefer
my own;” said the Duchess, with the same air of impartiality as if
she had been the possessor of neither of the articles under
discussion. “I know, of course, that they’ve some marvellous things
which I haven’t got.” The Princesse de Parme remained silent. “But
it’s quite true; your Highness hasn’t seen their collection. Oh, you
ought really to come there one day with me, it’s one of the most
magnificent things in Paris. You’ld say it was a museum come to
life.” And since this suggestion was one of the most “Guermantes” of
the Duchess’s audacities, inasmuch as the Iénas were for the
Princesse de Parme rank usurpers, their son bearing like her own the
title of Duc de Guastalla, Mme. de Guermantes in thus launching it
could not refrain (so far did the love that she bore for her own
originality prevail over the deference due to the Princess de Parme)
from casting at her other guests a smiling glance of amusement.
They too made an effort to smile, at once frightened, bewildered,
and above all delighted to think that they were being ear-witnesses
of Oriane’s very “latest” and could carry it away with them “red hot”.
They were only half shocked, knowing that the Duchess had the
knack of strewing the ground with all the Courvoisier prejudices to
achieve a vital success more thrilling and more enjoyable. Had she
not, within the last few years, brought together Princesse Mathilde
and that Duc d’Aumale who had written to the Princess’s own
brother the famous letter: “In my family all the men are brave and
the women chaste”? And inasmuch as Princes remain princely even
at those moments when they appear anxious to forget that they are,
the Duc d’Aumale and Princesse Mathilde had enjoyed themselves so
greatly at Mme. de Guermantes’s that they had thereafter formed a
defensive alliance, with that faculty for forgetting the past which
Louis XVIII shewed when he took as his Minister Fouché, who had
voted the death of his brother. Mme. de Guermantes was now
nourishing a similar project of arranging a meeting between
Princesse Murat and the Queen of Naples. In the meantime, the
Princesse de Parme appeared as embarrassed as might have been
the heirs-apparent to the Thrones of the Netherlands and Belgium,
styled respectively Prince of Orange and Duke of Brabant, had one
offered to present to them M. de Mailly Nesle, Prince d’Orange, and
M. de Charlus, Duc de Brabant. But, before anything further could
happen, the Duchess, whom Swann and M. de Charlus between
them (albeit the latter was resolute in ignoring the Iénas’ existence)
had with great difficulty succeeded in making admire the Empire
style, exclaimed: “Honestly, Ma’am, I can’t tell you how beautiful you
will think it! I must confess that the Empire style has always had a
fascination for me. But at the Iénas’ it is really like a hallucination.
That sort of—what shall I say—reflux from the Expedition to Egypt,
and also the sweep forward into our own times from Antiquity, all
those things that invade our houses, the Sphinxes that come to
crouch at the feet of the sofas, the serpents coiled round
candelabra, a huge Muse who holds out a little torch for you to play
at bouillotte, or has quietly climbed on to the mantelpiece and is
leaning against your clock; and then all the Pompeian lamps, the
little boat-shaped beds which look as if they had been found floating
on the Nile so that you expect to see Moses climb out of them, the
classical chariots galloping along the bed tables....” “They’re not very
comfortable to sit in, those Empire chairs,” the Princess ventured.
“No,” the Duchess agreed, “but,” she at once added, insisting on the
point with a smile: “I like being uncomfortable on those mahogany
seats covered with ruby velvet or green silk. I like that discomfort of
the warrior who understands nothing but the curule chair and in the
middle of his principal drawing-room crosses his fasces and piles his
laurels. I can assure you that at the Iénas’ one doesn’t stop to think
for a moment of how comfortable one is, when one sees in front of
one a great strapping wench of a Victory painted in fresco on the
wall. My husband is going to say that I’m a very bad Royalist, but
I’m terribly disaffected, as you know, I can assure you that in those
people’s house one comes to love all the big ‘N’s and all the bees.
Good gracious, after all for a good many years under our Kings we
weren’t exactly surfeited with glory, and so these warriors who
brought home so many crowns that they stuck them even on the
arms of the chairs, I must say I think it’s all rather fetching! Your
Highness ought really.” “Why, my dear, if you think so,” said the
Princess, “but it seems to me that it won’t be easy.” “But Ma’am will
find that it will all go quite smoothly. They are very good people, and
no fools. We took Mme. de Chevreuse there,” added the Duchess,
knowing the force of this example, “she was enchanted. The son is
really very pleasant. I’m going to say something that’s not quite
proper,” she went on, “but he has a bedroom, and more especially a
bed in it, in which I should love to sleep—without him! What is even
less proper is that I went to see him once when he was ill and lying
in it. By his side on the frame of the bed was moulded a long Siren,
stretched out at full length, a lovely thing with a mother-of-pearl tail
and some sort of lotus flowers in her hand. I assure you,” went on
Mme. de Guermantes, reducing the speed of her utterances to bring
into even bolder relief the words which she had the air of modelling
with the pout of her fine lips, drawing them out with her long
expressive hands, directing on the Princess as she spoke a gentle,
steady and searching gaze, “that with the palms and the golden
crown at the side of it was most moving, it was just the arrangement
of Gustave Moreau’s Death and the Young Man (your Highness must
know that great work, of course).” The Princesse de Parme, who did
not know so much as the painter’s name, made violent movements
with her head and smiled ardently, in order to manifest her
admiration for his picture. But the intensity of her mimicry could not
fill the place of that light which is absent from our eyes so long as
we do not understand what people are trying to tell us. “A good-
looking boy, I believe?” she asked. “No, for he’s just like a tapir. The
eyes are a little those of a Queen Hortense on a screen. But he has
probably come to the conclusion that it is rather absurd for a man to
develop such a resemblance, and it is lost in the encaustic surface of
his cheeks which give him really rather a Mameluke appearance. You
feel that the polisher must call round every morning. Swann,” she
went on, reverting to the bed of the young Duke, “was struck by the
resemblance between this Siren and Gustave Moreau’s Death. But
apart from that,” she added, her speech becoming more rapid
though still serious, so as to provoke more laughter, “there was
nothing really that could strike us, for it was only a cold in the head,
and the young man made a marvellous recovery.” “They say he’s a
snob?” put in M. de Bréauté, with a malicious twinkle, expecting to
be answered with the same precision as though he had said: “They
tell me that he has only four fingers on his right hand; is that so?”
“G—ood g—racious, n—o,” replied Mme. de Guermantes with a smile
of benign indulgence. “Perhaps just the least little bit of a snob in
appearance, because he’s extremely young, but I should be
surprised to hear that he was really, for he’s intelligent,” she added,
as though there were to her mind some absolute incompatibility
between snobbishness and intelligence. “He has wit, too, I’ve known
him be quite amusing,” she said again, laughing with the air of an
epicure and expert, as though the act of declaring that a person
could be amusing demanded a certain expression of merriment from
the speaker, or as though the Duc de Guastalla’s sallies were
recurring to her mind as she spoke. “Anyway, as he never goes
anywhere, he can’t have much field for his snobbishness,” she
wound up, forgetting that this was hardly encouraging the Princesse
de Parme to make overtures. “I cannot help wondering what the
Prince de Guermantes, who calls her Mme. Iéna, will say if he hears
that I’ve been to see her.” “What!” cried the Duchess with
extraordinary vivacity. “Don’t you know that it was we who gave up
to Gilbert” (she bitterly regretted that surrender now) “a complete
card-room done in the Empire style which came to us from Quiou-
Quiou, and is an absolute marvel! There was no room for it here,
though I think it would look better here than it does with him. It’s a
thing of sheer beauty, half Etruscan, half Egyptian....” “Egyptian?”
queried the Princess, to whom the word Etruscan conveyed little.
“Well, really, you know, a little of both. Swann told us that, he
explained it all to me, only you know I’m such a dunce. But then,
Ma’am, what one has to bear in mind is that the Egypt of the Empire
cabinet-makers has nothing to do with the historical Egypt, nor their
Roman with the Romans nor their Etruria....” “Indeed,” said the
Princess. “No, it’s like what they used to call a Louis XV costume
under the Second Empire, when Anna de Monchy and dear Brigode’s
mother were girls. Basin was talking to you just now about
Beethoven. We heard a thing of his played the other day which was
really quite good, though a little stiff, with a Russian theme in it. It’s
pathetic to think that he believed it to be Russian. In the same way
as the Chinese painters believed they were copying Bellini. Besides,
even in the same country, whenever anybody begins to look at
things in a way that is slightly novel, nine hundred and ninety-nine
people out of a thousand are totally incapable of seeing what he
puts before them. It takes at least forty years before they can
manage to make it out.” “Forty years!” the Princess cried in alarm.
“Why, yes,” went on the Duchess, adding more and more to her
words (which were practically my own, for I had just been
expressing a similar idea to her), thanks to her way of pronouncing
them, the equivalent of what on the printed page is called italics:
“it’s like a sort of first isolated individual of a species which does not
yet exist but is going to multiply in the future, an individual endowed
with a kind of sense which the human race of his generation does
not possess. I can hardly give myself as an instance because I, on
the contrary, have always loved any interesting production from the
very start, however novel it might be. But really, the other day I was
with the Grand Duchess in the Louvre and we happened to pass
before Manet’s Olympia. Nowadays nobody is in the least surprised
by it. It looks just like an Ingres! And yet, heaven only knows how
many spears I’ve had to break for that picture, which I don’t
altogether like but which is unquestionably the work of somebody.”
“And is the Grand Duchess well?” inquired the Princesse de Parme,
to whom the Tsar’s aunt was infinitely more familiar than Manet’s
model. “Yes; we talked about you. After all,” she resumed, clinging
to her idea, “the fact of the matter is, as my brother-in-law
Palamède always says, that one has between oneself and the rest of
the world the barrier of a strange language. Though I admit that
there’s no one it’s quite so true of as Gilbert. If it amuses you to go
to the Iénas’, you have far too much sense to let your actions be
governed by what that poor fellow may think, who is a dear,
innocent creature, but really lives in a different world. I feel myself
nearer, more akin to my coachman, my horses even, than to a man
who keeps on harking back to what people would have thought
under Philip the Bold or Louis the Fat. Just fancy, when he goes for a
walk in the country, he takes a stick to drive the peasants out of his
way, quite in a friendly spirit, saying: ‘Get on, clowns!’ Really, I’m
just as much surprised when he speaks to me as if I heard myself
addressed by one of the ‘recumbents’ on the old gothic tombs. It’s
all very well that animated gravestone’s being my cousin; he
frightens me, and the only idea that comes into my head is to let
him stay in his Middle Ages. Apart from that, I quite admit that he’s
never assassinated anyone.” “I’ve just been seeing him at dinner at
Mme. de Villeparisis’s,” said the General, but without either smiling
at or endorsing the Duchess’s pleasantries. “Was M. de Norpois
there?” asked Prince Von, whose mind still ran on the Academy of
Moral Sciences. “Why, yes;” said the General. “In fact, he was talking
about your Emperor.” “It seems, the Emperor William is highly
intelligent, but he does not care for Elstir’s painting. Not that I’m
saying this against him,” said the Duchess, “I quite share his point of
view. Although Elstir has done a fine portrait of me. You don’t know
it? It’s not in the least like me, but it’s a remarkable piece of work.
He is interesting while one’s sitting to him. He has made me like a
little old woman. It’s after the style of the Regents of the Hospital,
by Hals. I expect you know those sublimities, to borrow my
nephew’s favourite expression,” the Duchess turned to myself, gently
flapping her fan of black feathers. More than erect on her chair, she
flung her head nobly backwards, for, while always a great lady, she
was a trifle inclined to play the great lady also. I said that I had been
once to Amsterdam and The Hague, but that to avoid confusing my
mind, as my time was limited, I had left out Haarlem. “Ah! The
Hague! What a gallery!” cried M. de Guermantes. I said to him that
he had doubtless admired Vermeer’s Street in Delft. But the Duke
was less erudite than arrogant. Accordingly he contented himself
with replying in a tone of sufficiency, as was his habit whenever
anyone spoke to him of a picture in a gallery, or in the Salon, which
he did not remember having seen. “If it’s to be seen, I saw it!”
“What? You’ve been to Holland, and you never visited Haarlem!”
cried the Duchess. “Why, even if you had only a quarter of an hour
to spend in the place, they’re an extraordinary thing to have seen,
those Halses. I don’t mind saying that a person who only caught a
passing glimpse of them from the top of a tramway-car without
stopping, supposing they were hung out to view in the street, would
open his eyes pretty wide.” This utterance shocked me as indicating
a misconception of the way in which artistic impressions are formed
in our minds, and because it seemed to imply that our eye is in that
case simply a recording machine which takes instantaneous
photographs.
M. de Guermantes, rejoicing that she should be speaking to me
with so competent a knowledge of the subjects that interested me,
gazed at the illustrious bearing of his wife, listened to what she was
saying about Franz Hals, and thought: “She rides rough-shod over
everything! Our young friend can go home and say that he’s had
before his eyes a great lady of the old school, in the full sense of the
word, the like of whom couldn’t be found anywhere to-day.” Thus I
beheld the pair of them, withdrawn from that name Guermantes in
which long ago I had imagined them leading an unimaginable life,
now just like other men and other women, lingering, only, behind
their contemporaries a little way, and that not evenly, as in so many
households of the Faubourg, where the wife has had the good taste
to stop at the golden, the husband the misfortune to come down to
the pinchbeck age of history, she remaining still Louis XV while her
partner is pompously Louis-Philippe. That Mme. de Guermantes
should be like other women had been for me at first a
disappointment; it was now, by a natural reaction and with all these
good wines to help, almost a miracle. A Don John of Austria, an
Isabella d’Este, situated for us in the world of names, have as little
communication with the great pages of history as the Méséglise way
had with the Guermantes. Isabella d’Este was no doubt in reality a
very minor Princess, similar to those who under Louis XIV obtained
no special place at Court. But seeming to us to be of a unique and
therefore incomparable essence, we cannot conceive of her as being
any less in greatness, so that a supper-party with Louis XIV would
appear to us only to be rather interesting, whereas with Isabella
d’Este we should find ourself, were we to meet her, gazing with our
own eyes on a supernatural heroine of romance. Well, after we
have, in studying Isabella d’Este, in transplanting her patiently from
this world of fairyland into that of history, established the fact that
her life, her thought contained nothing of that mysterious
strangeness which had been suggested to us by her name, once this
disappointment is complete we feel a boundless gratitude to this
Princess for having had, of Mantegna’s paintings, a knowledge
almost equal to that, hitherto despised by us and put, as Françoise
would have said, lower than the dirt, of M. Lafenestre. After having
scaled the inaccessible heights of the name Guermantes, on
descending the inner slope of the life of the Duchess, I felt on
finding there the names, familiar elsewhere, of Victor Hugo, Franz
Hals and, I regret to say, Vibert, the same astonishment that an
explorer, after having taken into account, to imagine the singularity
of the native customs in some wild valley of Central America or
Northern Africa, its geographical remoteness, the strangeness of its
flora, feels on discovering, once he has made his way through a
hedge of giant aloes or manchineels, inhabitants who (sometimes
indeed among the ruins of a Roman theatre and beneath a column
dedicated to Venus) are engaged in reading Mérope or Alzire. And
similarly, so remote, so distinct from, so far superior to the educated
women of the middle classes whom I had known, the similar culture
by which Mme. de Guermantes had made herself, with no ulterior
motive, to gratify no ambition, descend to the level of people whom
she would never know, had the character—meritorious, almost
touching by virtue of being wholly useless—of an erudition in
Phoenician antiquities in a politician or a doctor. “I might have shewn
you a very fine one,” said Mme. de Guermantes, still speaking of
Hals, “the finest in existence, some people say, which was left to me
by a German cousin. Unfortunately, it turned out to be ‘enfeoffed’ in
the castle—you don’t know the expression, nor I either,” she added,
with her fondness for making jokes (which made her, she thought,
seem modern) at the expense of the old customs to which
nevertheless she was unconsciously but keenly attached. “I am glad
you have seen my Elstirs, but, I must admit, I should have been a
great deal more glad if I could have done you the honours of my
Hals, this ‘enfeoffed’ picture.” “I know the one,” said Prince Von, “it’s
the Grand Duke of Hesse’s Hals.” “Quite so; his brother married my
sister,” said M. de Guermantes, “and his mother and Oriane’s were
first cousins as well.” “But so far as M. Elstir is concerned,” the Prince
went on, “I shall take the liberty of saying, without having any
opinion of his work, which I do not know, that the hatred with which
the Emperor pursues him ought not, it seems to me, to be counted
against him. The Emperor is a man of marvellous intelligence.” “Yes,
I’ve met him at dinner twice, once at my aunt Sagan’s and once at
my aunt Radziwill’s, and I must say I found him quite unusual. I
didn’t find him at all simple! But there is something amusing about
him, something ‘forced’,” she detached the word, “like a green
carnation, that is to say a thing that surprises me and does not
please me enormously, a thing it is surprising that anyone should
have been able to create but which I feel would have been just as
well uncreated. I trust I’m not shocking you.” “The Emperor is a man
of astounding intelligence,” resumed the Prince, “he is passionately
fond of the arts, he has for works of art a taste that is practically
infallible, if a thing is good he spots it at once and takes a dislike to
it. If he detests anything, there can be no more doubt about it, the
thing is excellent.” Everyone smiled. “You set my mind at rest,” said
the Duchess. “I should be inclined to compare the Emperor,” went on
the Prince, who, not knowing how to pronounce the word
archaeologist (that is to say, as though it were spelt “arkeologist”),
never missed an opportunity of using it, “to an old archaeologist”
(but the Prince said “arsheologist”) “we have in Berlin. If you put
him in front of a genuine Assyrian antique, he weeps. But if it is a
modern sham, if it is not really old, he does not weep. And so, when
they want to know whether an arsheological piece is really old, they
take it to the old arsheologist. If he weeps, they buy the piece for
the Museum. If his eyes remain dry, they send it back to the dealer,
and prosecute him for fraud. Well, every time I dine at Potsdam, if
the Emperor says to me, of a play: ‘Prince, you must see that, it’s a
work of genius,’ I make a note not to go to it; and when I hear him
fulminating against an exhibition, I rush to see it at the first possible
opportunity.” “Norpois is in favour of an Anglo-French understanding,
isn’t he?” said M. de Guermantes. “What use would that be to you?”
asked Prince Von, who could not endure the English, in a tone at
once of irritation and cunning. “The English are so schtubid. I know,
of course, that it would not be as soldiers that they would help you.
But one can judge them, all the same, by the stupidity of their
Generals. A friend of mine was talking the other day to Botha, you
know, the Boer leader. He said to my friend: ‘It’s terrible, an army
like that. I rather like the English, as a matter of fact, but just
imagine that I, who am only a peasant, have beaten them in every
battle. And in the last, when I gave way before a force twenty times
the strength of my own, while I myself surrendered, because I had
to, I managed to take two thousand prisoners! That was good
enough, because I was only commanding an army of farmers, but if
those poor fools ever have to stand up against a European army,
one trembles to think what may happen to them!’ Besides, you have
only to see how their King, whom you know as well as I do, passes
for a great man in England.” I barely listened to these stories, stories
of the kind that M. de Norpois used to tell my father; they supplied
no food for my favourite train of thought; and besides, even had
they possessed the elements which they lacked, they would have
had to be of a very exciting quality for my inner life to awaken
during those hours in which I dwelt in my skin, my well-brushed hair,
my starched shirt-front, in which, that is to say, I could feel nothing
of what constituted for me the pleasure of life. “Oh, I don’t agree
with you at all,” said Mme. de Guermantes, who felt that the German
Prince was wanting in tact, “I find King Edward charming, so simple,
and much cleverer than people think. And the Queen is, even now,
the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in the world.” “But, Madame
la Duchesse,” said the Prince, who was losing his temper and did not
see that he was giving offence, “You must admit that if the Prince of
Wales had been an ordinary person there isn’t a club that wouldn’t
have blackballed him, and nobody would have been willing to shake
hands with him. The Queen is charming, exceedingly sweet and
limited. But after all there is something shocking about a royal
couple who are literally kept by their subjects, who get the big
Jewish financiers to foot all the bills they ought to pay themselves,
and create them Baronets in return. It’s like the Prince of
Bulgaria....” “He’s our cousin,” put in the Duchess. “He’s a clever
fellow.” “He’s mine, too, but we don’t think him a good fellow on that
account. No, it is us you ought to make friends with, it’s the
Emperor’s dearest wish, but he insists on its coming from the heart.
He says: ‘What I want to see is a hand clasped in mine, not waving
a hat in the air.’ With that, you would be invincible. It would be more
practical than the Anglo-French friendship M. de Norpois preaches.”
“You know him, of course,” the Duchess said, turning to me, so as
not to leave me out of the conversation. Remembering that M. de
Norpois had said that I had once looked as though I wanted to kiss
his hand, thinking that he had no doubt repeated this story to Mme.
de Guermantes, and in any event could have spoken of me to her
only with malice, since in spite of his friendship with my father he
had not hesitated to make me appear so ridiculous, I did not do
what a man of the world would have done. He would have said that

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© Laurie J. Mullins 1985, 2010 (print)

The screenshots in this book are reprinted by permission of Microsoft Corporation.

ISBN: 978-1-292-42238-1 (print)

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

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Front cover image: Shutterstock Editorial

Cover credit: Simon Ward/Shutterstock

Print edition typeset in 9.5/12.5pt Frutiger Neue LT W1G by Straive

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In acknowledgement and appreciation xviii

0 Your study of management and organisational behaviour 1

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Appendix Review of developing your personal skills and employability 593

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In acknowledgement and appreciation xviii

2 The work environment 56

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Formal and informal organisations 71

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The Managerial/Leadership grid® 359

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12 Patterns of structure and 13 Organisational control and

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