My Years With Proust - Day 716

   "All this reminds me," I said to her, "of that first evening when I went to the Princesse de Guermantes's, when I wasn't sure that I had been invited to her party and half expected to be shown the door, and when you wore a red dress and red shoes."  "Good heaven, how long ago all that was!" said the  Duchesse de Guermantes, accentuating by her words my own impression of time elapsed.  She seemed to be gazing into this remote past in a melancholy mood, and yet she laid a particular emphasis upon the red dress.  I asked her to describe it to me, which she did most willingly.  "One couldn't possibly wear a thing like that now.  It was the sort of dress that was worn in those days." "But it was pretty, wasn't it?" I said.  She was always afraid of giving away a point in conversation, of saying something that might depreciate her in the eyes of others.  "Personally, I found it a charming fashion.  If nobody wears those dresses today, it is simply because it isn't done.  But they will come back, as fashions always do - in clothes, in music, in painting," she added with vigour, for she supposed there to be a certain originality in this philosophic reflection. Then the sad thought that she was growing old caused her to resume her languid manner, which a smile, however, momentarily contradicted: "Are you sure that they were red shoes that I wore?  I thought they were gold." I assured her that I had the most vivid reflection of the colour of her shoes, though I preferred not to describe the incident which made me so certain on this point.  "How kind of you to remember that!" she said to me sweetly, for women call it kindness when you remember their beauty, just as painters do when you admire their work.

Marcel Proust, Time Regained, pp. 1063-1064

Talking to the Duchesse de Guermantes, Marcel shares an anecdote relating to a red dress that she had worn years earlier.  The funny thing is that he did, earlier in the novel, recount that initial meeting and mentioned the red dress then, and the novel is so long that it felt as much a distant memory of my own as much as of Marcel's.  Proust writes, "'How kind of you to remember that!' she said to me sweetly, for women call it kindness when you remember their beauty, just as painters do when you admire their work."  I suppose that this is a sexist statement, or at least an old-fashioned one, although it's also one that I tend to agree with, which means that I'm either sexist or old-fashioned or probably both (although I'll just bring it up on spending too much time in the South where it was considered poor manners to not comment on a woman's beauty).  No matter the current state of my manners, the Duchesse is charmed by the comment, and defends the color of the dress by pointing out that even though it wouldn't be something worn then it would eventually come back "as fashions always do - in clothes, in music, in painting."  Her philosophizing momentarily depressed her, "Then the sad thought that she was growing old caused her to resume her languid manner, which a smile, momentarily, contadicted . . ."