Page 376 - swanns-way

was not altogether that held by fashionable people. For the
latter, fashion is a thing that emanates from a comparatively
small number of leaders, who project it to a considerable
distance—with more or less strength according as one is
nearer to or farther from their intimate centre—over the
widening circle of their friends and the friends of their
friends, whose names form a sort of tabulated index. Peo-
ple ‘in society’ know this index by heart, they are gifted in
such matters with an erudition from which they have ex-
tracted a sort of taste, of tact, so automatic in its operation
that Swann, for example, without needing to draw upon his
knowledge of the world, if he read in a newspaper the names
of the people who had been guests at a dinner, could tell at
once how fashionable the dinner had been, just as a man
of letters, merely by reading a phrase, can estimate exactly
the literary merit of its author. But Odette was one of those
persons (an extremely numerous class, whatever the fash-
ionable world may think, and to be found in every section of
society) who do not share this knowledge, but imagine fash-
ion to be something of quite another kind, which assumes
different aspects according to the circle to which they them-
selves belong, but has the special characteristic—common
alike to the fashion of which Odette used to dream and to
that before which Mme. Cottard bowed—of being directly
accessible to all. The other kind, the fashion of ‘fashionable
people,’ is, it must be admitted, accessible also; but there are
inevitable delays. Odette would say of some one: ‘He never
goes to any place that isn’t really smart.’
And if Swann were to ask her what she meant by that,

376 Swann’s Way