Wharton, Edith EDITH WHARTON COLLECTION Page 1 of 43 YALE UNIVERSITY BEINECKE RARE BOOK AND MANUSCRIPT LIBRARY YALE COLLECTION OF AMERICAN LITERATURE p4. EDITH WHARTON COLLECTION YCAL MSS 42 by William K. Finley New Haven, Connecticut July 1989 Last updated: June 2003 View Search for digital images from Connect to Beinecke Connect to Yale Library's Finding catalog this archive [using call Library's Home Page Aid Database [the source of this record number] file] EXTENT Total Boxes: 68 Other storage formats: Linear Feet: 38.75 Copyright © 2003 by the Yale University Library. ADMINISTRATIVE INFORMATION PROVENANCE The collection was formed from gifts from the Edith Wharton Estate (1938-1939), Gaillard Lapsley (1938-1946), Oscar Lichtenberg (1959-1965), Percy Lubbock (1954), Georges Markow- Totevy (1980), and Louis Auchincloss (?), with smaller bequests from numerous other donors (especially John Hugh Smith and Margaret Chanler) and with purchases with Beinecke funds. OWNERSHIP AND LITERARY RIGHTS The Edith Wharton Collection is the physical property of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Literary rights, including coyright, belong to the authors or their legal heirs or assigns. For further information, consult the appropriate curator. CITE AS http://webtext.library.yale.edu/xml2html/beinecke.wharton.con.htm 10/8/2003 EDITH WHARTON COLLECTION Page 2 of 43 Edith Wharton Collection. Yale Collection of American Literature. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. RESTRICTIONS ON ACCESS This collection is open for research. EDITH WHARTON, 1862-1937 Born Edith Newbold Jones on January 24, 1862, in New York City, Edith Wharton was from birth a part of the wealthy New York society she depicted SO vividly in her fiction. Through her father, George Frederic Jones, and her mother, Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander Jones, she could claim descent from three families whose names were synonymous with wealth and position: the Stevenses, Rhinelanders, and Schermerhorns. Educated at home with tutors and exposed at an early age to the classics in her father's large library, Edith Wharton showed early literary precocity. Although it cannot be said that her parents encouraged her writing, Lucretia Jones recognized her daughter's talent and in 1878 had a slim volume of her adolescent poems (titled simply Verses) privately printed and distributed to family and friends. By this time, however, Edith had already completed an unpublished novella of some 30,000 words that she called Fast and Loose. After these youthful trials, Edith for the most part put aside her serious literary endeavors to play the role of a young society lady. Having suffered through a broken engagement with eligible young Harry Stevens when she was nineteen, Edith in 1885 married Edward R. "Teddy" Wharton, a member of a prominent Boston family and thirteen years her senior The couple settled first in New York City, then purchased a home, "Land's End," in fashionable Newport, In 1902 they moved into "The Mount," their impressively large mansion in Lenox, Massachusetts, with Edith herself contributing to the design and interior decoration. She had already displayed her talent in this field in collaborating in 1897 with the architect Ogden Codman on The Decoration of Houses, her first full- length published work. Edith and Teddy's marriage, however, was never on a very solid footing. From the first they experienced intellectual and sexual incompatibility, with Teddy's later neurological disorders adding to their estrangement. After living apart for many years, they divorced in 1913 when Edith was fifty- one. They had no children. Although she never relinquished her American citizenship and made occasional visits to the United States, Edith Wharton lived permanently in France, from 1907 until her death, first in the fashionable Rue de Varenne in Paris and, after World War I, at her two homes: the chateau Ste. Claire at Hyeres and the Pavillon Colombe near Paris. Here she graciously entertained many of the noted literati of Europe and took great delight in her gardens, which became famous throughout France. Among her closest acquaintances who experienced her friendship and hospitality were Walter Berry, Gaillard Lapsley, Percy Lubbock, Robert Norton, Bernard Berenson, Paul Bourget, and, most prominently, Henry James, with whom she discussed her writing and from whom she received much advice. http://webtext.library.yale.edu/xml2html/beinecke.wharton.con.html 10/8/2003 EDITH WHARTON COLLECTION Page 3 of 43 Still in Paris when World War I erupted, Edith Wharton spent most of the war years organizing various charities for war relief, the most prominent being her two organizations for war refugees, the Children of Flanders and the American Hostel for Refugees. For her unflagging aid to war-torn France and French and Belgian refugees, she was awarded numerous decorations by the French and Belgian governments, the most noted being the French Legion of Honor. After the war she continued for many years her aid to tubercular patients in France. In 1923 Edith Wharton was awarded an honorary doctorate of letters by Yale University for both her contributions to literature and her humanitarian endeavors. From the publication of her first short story in 1889, Edith Wharton devoted her life to her writing. During her lifetime she published twenty-two novels, eleven collections of short stories, two volumes of poetry, four books of travel or cultural interpretations, an autobiography, three other works of non-fiction, several translations, and numerous uncollected poems, stories, or articles. Although Edith Wharton's novels and stories reveal many themes and settings, those novels which unflinchingly depict New York aristocratic life have won her enduring fame. Among her most critically acclaimed titles are The House of Mirth (1905), Ethan Frome (1911), The Custom of the Country (1913), and The Age of Innocence (1920), which won for her the Pulitzer Prize. She is best known as a novelist, but several of her many short stories have been judged among the best American stories of the twentieth century. Although most of her collections contain stories of note, two that are often singled out as exemplary are early collections: The Greater Inclination (her first published collection, 1899) and The Descent of Man and Other Stories (1904). A complex woman of her day, Edith Wharton was long before her death generally regarded as one of the foremost American authors of the twentieth century, her work admired and acclaimed by many of the leading writers and critics of her time. The many biographies and critical studies devoted to her life and work give testimony to her enduring reputation, and her surviving correspondence with many leading men and women of letters, as well as her family and friends, gives clear indication of her varied interests and concerns and often includes perceptive comments on her unique world. Edith Wharton died at her home in Hyeres, France on August 11, 1937, at age seventy-five. DESCRIPTION OF THE PAPERS The Edith Wharton Collection at The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, estimated at some 50,000 items, consists of manuscripts, letters, photographs, and miscellaneous personal papers that belonged to Edith Wharton and were part of her estate at her death; letters, manuscript material, photographs and related papers from the Louis Auchincloss, Gaillard Lapsley, Percy Lubbock, Oscar Lichtenberg, and Georges Markow-Totevy collections of Wharton material; and essays, articles, and other material pertaining to Wharton's life and writings. The collection spans the years from Edith Wharton's early life (1876) to recent Wharton scholarship (1980), with the bulk of material covering the years of Wharton's greatest literary productivity, 1910 to 1937. The Edith Wharton Collection is divided into twelve series: I. Writings, II. Personal Correspondence, III. Professional Correspondence, IV. General Correspondence, V. Personal Papers, VI. Photographs, VII. Gaillard Lapsley Material, VIII. Oscar Lichtenberg Material, IX. http://webtext.library.yale.edu/xml2html/beinecke.wharton.con.html 10/8/2003 EDITH WHARTON COLLECTION Page 4 of 43 Percy Lubbock Material, X. Georges Markow-Totevy Material, XI. Louis Auchincloss Material, and XII. Other Papers. Oversize material is housed at the end of the collection. Series I, Writings (Boxes 1-22), contains complete and incomplete holograph and typed manuscripts for the majority of Edith Wharton's novels, stories, essays, plays, poems, and translations, from her early to her final works, most of them given to Yale by her estate after her death. Included in the collection are the complete or substantially complete manuscripts of her major novels The House of Mirth, The Valley of Decision, Twilight Sleep, Mother's Recompense, The Children, The Gods Arrive, and her volume of memoirs A Backward Glance, forty-two short stories; twelve essays; and some fifty poems. There are also a substantial number of incomplete manuscripts for novels, stories, poems, plays, and essays, or manuscripts for works that Wharton never finished. Almost all of the manuscripts contain numerous revisions, and many exist in different drafts. The various drafts, in many cases accompanied by outlines, synopses, or notes, provide a revealing glimpse of this major writer's creative process. The series also contains contemporary reviews of many of her books. French or Italian translations are included for several novels, stories, and essays. In addition, five notebooks containing material for and about her works exist for the years 1900, 1910-1914, and 1918-1928. These notes reveal the genesis and development of several of Wharton's works. Series II, Personal Correspondence (Boxes 23-30), contains letters to and from Edith Wharton. Included here are letters or notes from numerous literary figures, the most prominent being Joseph Conrad, Walter De La Mare, Clyde Fitch, John Galsworthy, Andre Gide, Edmund Gosse, Thomas Hardy, William Dean Howells, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, John Masefield, H. G. Wells, and William Butler Yeats. Other noteworthy correspondents include Bernard Berenson, Walter Rensselear Berry, Sir Kenneth Clark, William James, Joseph Joffre, Jean Jusserand, Henry Cabot Lodge, Charles Eliot Norton, Louis Pasteur, John J. Pershing, Herbert Read, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Theodore Roosevelt, John Singer Sargent, and Sir George Trevelyan. Many of these letters concern contributions to Wharton's Book of the Homeless (1916), published to secure aid for European refugees. The Edith Wharton Collection at Yale is especially rich in letters from Henry James (170 letters). Covering the years 1900 to 1915, the letters give insight into James's personality and his views on a variety of subjects. Several letters give critiques of Wharton's publications and offer advice on her writing. "I egg you on in your study of the American life," he tells her in a letter of October 26, 1900; and in a letter of August 17, 1902, praising her novel The Valley of Decision, he reiterates his advice to stick to the American scene in urging her to "do New York." A letter of October 13, 1908, reveals James's concern over Edith's deteriorating marriage and offers stoic advice ("Out of it something valuable will come. "); subsequent letters before her divorce in 1913 give further commiseration and advice. An interesting inclusion in the James correspondence is a series of postcards written in rhyme by Edith Wharton (and signed also by Walter Berry) to James during her travels in Italy in 1911. Another item deserving mention is a letter to Wharton from Charles Scribner on April 2, 1913 (with an accompanying letter to Scribner from James), referring to her gift of $8,000 to James from royalties for her Scribner titles under the guise of an advance from Scribner's to James for a promised novel. The "hushed up" contract between Wharton and Scribner's for this concealed financial aid is also present. http://webtext.library.yale.edu/xml2html/beinecke.wharton.con.html 10/8/2003 In a number of letters James mentions other writers and their works. A letter of February 27, 1914, discusses Joseph Conrad and his novel Chance and mentions a testimonial to Conrad in which James, at least initially, was not a participant ("I am glad I haven't your popularity in the U.S.--there are such compensations in my obscurity"). His letter of October 20, 1914 recounts a meeting with Henry Adams and his two nieces. James's later letters frequently discuss his deteriorating health, and letters from late 1914 to his death reveal his reaction to the war in Europe and his sense of patriotism. Passionate letters of September 21 and October 17, 1914, speak at length of "the most unspeakable & immeasurable horror and infamy" of the battle of Reims. Two letters from Wharton dated February 28 and March 11, 1915 (addressed to "Dearest Cher Maitre" and "Cherest Maitre"), discuss at some length her visits with Walter Berry to the front line and the army hospitals around Verdun. A letter from James on July 26, 1915, mentions his help with Wharton's The Book of the Homeless and the fact that he finds correspondence with H. G. Wells "disagreeable and in fact impossible to me." Among Edith Wharton's other close friends, those most fully represented in the collection are Bernard Berenson, Walter Berry, Margaret Chanler, Beatrix Jones Farrand, Robert Grant, John Hugh Smith, Mary Cadwalader Jones, Sara ("Sally") Norton, and Howard Sturgis. These letters to and from those closest to Wharton reveal much about her personal life, writings, travels, and thoughts on a variety of subjects and people. Smaller files from persons close to Wharton include those of Mary Berenson, Paul Bourget, Max Farrand, Catherine Gross (Wharton's housekeeper), Gaillard Lapsley, Percy Lubbock, Anna de Noailles, Violet Paget ("Vernon Lee"), and Emelyn Washburn. There is also a small file of letters from her husband Teddy. Bernard Berenson's letters, covering the periods 1910-1917 and 1928-1937, discuss a variety of topics: his work in art, his travels, literature, opera, World War I, friends and acquaintances. A letter from Rome of May 6, 1910 announces, "I suddenly find that the Renaissance is no longer my North Star. Its sculpture I have long since done with. Now it is the architecture which is vanishing from my vision. I wonder whether I shall ever get to the end of its painting?" He discusses his work on Leonardo da Vinci in a letter of February 6, 1917, and adds, "I have as much to say on a thousand subjects of art, literature, and humanity." Many of Berenson's letters comment on Wharton's writing. A letter of March 23, 1912, praises her work highly and applauds her realism: "To a hazardous degree you are bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh." Other letters comment at some length on his travels throughout Europe and at times include brief notes on his visits to villas where architecture impressed him, or to art galleries or exhibitions. A letter of May 12, 1915, discusses the war and the sinking of the Lusitania. The collection contains numerous letters from his life-long friend Walter Berry between 1898 and 1904 (with one additional letter from 1923), though most of Berry's letters to Wharton do not survive. In addition to discussing popular fiction and drama of the day (with comments on Kipling, Barrie, Conrad, James, etc.), Berry frequently comments on Wharton's works. Wharton often sought Berry's advice on her writing; a letter of November 25, 1901 offers his analysis of The Valley of Decision. A letter of January 20, 1901 discusses Coquillin and his letter of September 6, 1904 enthusiastically discusses the St. Louis Exposition. Several other correspondents deserve brief mention here. Wharton's numerous letters to her close friend Margaret "Daisy" Chanler (1902-1933) are intimately chatty and discuss her reading, http://webtext.library.yale.edu/xml2html/beinecke.wharton.con.html 10/8/2003 EDITH WHARTON COLLECTION Page 6 of 43 travels, daily routines, visitors, etc. A series of letters to Chanler in 1929-1930 discusses a proposed lengthy European trip the two planned but never fulfilled. An undated letter from Louis Bromfield describes his trip to India and a jungle safari on elephants. A brief letter from Max Beerbohm on August 25, 1915, includes his pencil sketch of a meeting between Lord Curzon and M. Cammaerts. An intriguing letter from the Reverend Morgan Dix (December 1, 1905) surveys The House of Mirth and several of her stories from a religious viewpoint. A letter from Wharton to dramatist Clyde Fitch on April 14, 1907, discusses a play by Henry James and a French translation of The House of Mirth. A lengthy letter from Fitch dated August 9 (1909?) discusses his own work and comments on several plays he has seen performed. A number of letters from Wharton are scattered throughout the correspondence, especially letters to Margaret Chanler and Beatrix and Walter Farrand. A letter to Beatrix Farrand on August 18. 1936. offers advice to Farrand on editing the memoirs of her mother, Wharton's sister-in-law and close friend, Mary Cadwalader Jones. A copy of her letter to Edmund Gosse on June 16, 1916, concerns her opposition to the publication of Henry James's letters by his niece Peggy James. Gosse's response is revealed in his letter of August 6. Series III, Professional Correspondence (Boxes 31-39), consists primarily of letters to and from publishers, magazine editors, professional organizations, booksellers, and individuals writing to Wharton principally about her literary work (translations, interpretations, dramatizations, permissions for quoting or reprinting, etc.). Most revealing, perhaps, are the extensive files from her publishers and agents: Charles Scribner's Sons (1905-1937), Curtis Brown, Ltd. (1919-1928), Macmillan and Co. (1905-1930), and D. Appleton and Co. (1916-1937). The correspondence in these files tells much about her concerns with contracts and royalties, revisions, printers' errors, etc. Taken as a whole, the professional correspondence reveals Edith Wharton's shrewdness as a businesswoman. Correspondence with her various publishers documents the sales patterns of her works and her concerns with both sales and textual accuracy. Letters to and from magazine editors indicate the nature and problems of magazine fiction writing in the first several decades of this century. Letters to foreign publishers or literary agents suggest the frequent problems of translations or financial remuneration. Mrs. Wharton's favorite editor was Rutger Jewett of D. Appleton and Co.; and their correspondence is a blend of business and friendship, often revealing much about her approach to her writing. Correspondence with literary agents--Curtis Brown, Eric Pinker, etc.--reveals a writer's working relationship with such literary middlemen. Her correspondence in 1934-1935 with Alice Kauser, Zoe Akins Rumbold, and the American Play Company relates to the dramatization of The Old Maid, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1935. Also included in letter general files are numerous fan letters praising Wharton's writing or requesting her autograph or advice. Series IV, General Correspondence (Boxes 40-49), covers the years 1916-1937 (with one letter from 1901) and contains a wide variety of correspondence generally of a non-literary business nature, arranged chronologically. Numerous letters to furniture and antique dealers and garden supply houses relate to the decoration and landscaping of her several homes in France. Correspondence about the purchase and maintenance of her automobiles reveals her concern for comfort and safety in the several cars in which she took great delight and pride. Included in this series are letters relating to Wharton's work with various war charities, http://webtext.library.yale.edu/xml2html/beinecke.wharton.con.html 10/8/2003 EDITH WHARTON COLLECTION Page 25 of 43 ILY general Campbell, Mrs. Patrick See: Theodora Perry Tiffany, Box 30, folder 932 730 Cambon, Jules M. 1916, 1918 Canby, Henry Seidel See: The Literary Review, Box 37, folder 1140 24 731-41 Chanler, Margaret ("Daisy") 1902-33 742 Clark, Sir Kenneth M. 1936-37 Clark, Lady Elizabeth 743 Claudel, Paul n.d. 744 Conrad, Joseph 1912-17 745 Crawford, Francis Marion 1899 Apr 2 746 "D" general 1905-36 747 De La Mare, Walter 1936-37 748 Deland, Margaret 1899 Oct 20 749 Dimnet, Ernest 1932-35 750 D'Indy, Vincent 1916 Sep 22 751 Dix, Morgan 1902, 1905 752 Doane, William Croswell 1907 Nov 18 753 Dorr, George B. 1902-06 754 Dumaine, Jacques 1918, n.d. 755 Dunsany, Edward John 1911 Jan 19 756 "E" general 1930-33 757 "F" general 1906, 1910 758 Fairchild, Sally [1915?] Nov 17 25 759-66 Farrand, Beatrix Jones 1912-37 767-68 Farrand, Max 1914-36 769 Fitch, Clyde 1907-[09?] See also: Box 36, folder 1105 770 Fitzgerald, F. Scott (copy only) 1925 771 French, Daniel Chester 1905 Nov 12 772 Frederich, J. 1935-37 773 Fuller, Henry Blake 1902 Mar 27 774 Fullerton, William Morton [1907] Oct 19 775 "G" general 1934 776 Galsworthy, John 1915, 1918 777 Gide, Andre 1916-19, n.d. 778 Gilder, Richard Watson 1902-09, n.d. http://webtext.library.yale.edu/xml2html/beinecke.wharton.con.htm 10/8/2003 Wharton Page 1 of 4 FRC REMARK HARRY RANSOM HUMANITIES RESEARCH CENTER AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT a ABOUT THE CENTER NEWS EXHIBITIONS & EVENTS RESEARCH COLLECT EDITH WHARTON, 1862 - 1937 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MORTON FULLERTON, 1907-1931 Acquisition: Purchase, 1980 Access: Open for research Processed by: Jeffrey B. Scott, 1994 RLIN Record ID: TXRC95-A0 Biographical Sketch Edith Newbold Jones Wharton was born on January 24, 1862 into a distinguished New York family. Wharton was privately educated and began at an early age to write, a habit viewed by her family as unsuitable for a woman of her social class and as an eccentricity best ignored and left undiscussed. Her first published work consisted of a group of poems published anonymously in 1878 under the title Verses. In 1885 the twenty-three year old Edith Jones married Edward Wharton, a wealthy Bostonian who was thirteen years her senior. They divided their year between New York and Newport and later Lenox, Massachusetts, where Edith Wharton had designed a home called "The Mount." In 1897 she co-authored a book with Ogden Codman, Jr., titled The Decoration of Houses. Two years later a collection of her short stories was published as The Greater Inclination. She produced her first novel, The Valley of Decision, in 1902. It was followed in 1905 by The House of Mirth, which established Wharton's reputation as a skilled novelist. During her lifetime she published over forty books. Her most well known works include Ethan Frome (1911), and The Age of Innocence (1920), for which Wharton received the Pulitzer Prize. In 1907 the Whartons moved to Paris. It was while living there that she met William Morton Fullerton, who was to become her close friend and lover. Fullerton was born in 1865 and was a graduate of Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and received his Bachelor of Arts from Harvard in 1886. He is said to have been involved in the founding of the Harvard Monthly. In 1890 he began working in the Paris office of the London Times after having worked as a journalist in Boston for several years. Soon after their initial introduction in the spring of 1907, Fullerton, drawing upon his extensive knowledge of the Paris literary scene, helped Wharton to secure magazine publication of the French translation of her novel The House of Mirth. Their affair lasted from 1908 to 1910. Fullerton continued to work for the London Times until 1911. He authored several books and numerous periodical articles. During World War I he served as an officer. He later joined the staff of Le Figaro in Paris. He died there in 1952. Wharton divorced her husband in 1913 due to his mental condition, his carelessness with money, and his numerous extra- marital affairs. Wharton continued to live in France for the rest of her life. She died in 1937 after suffering a stroke. In his 1975 work Edith Wharton: A Biography, R.W.B. Lewis suggested that Wharton and Fullerton had been lovers, but no evidence at the time was available to prove his suspicions. The correspondence described here came to light in 1980 and was purchased by the Ransom Center from a Parisian owner through Zeitlen and Ver Brugge Booksellers. The content of these letters confirmed Lewis's suspicions regarding the true nature of their relationship. This collection has been the subject of much research. Many of the letters it contains have been reproduced in R.W.B. Lewis's The Letters of Edith Wharton (1988), which also offers a history of the collection and a useful chronology of Wharton's life. The collection was also the subject of three articles found in The Library Chronicle (New Series Number http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/research/fa/wharton.html 12/14/2005 Wharton Page 2 of 4 31, September 1985). They are Alan Gribben's "The Heart is Insatiable": A Selection from Edith Wharton's Letters to Morton Fullerton, 1907-1915; Edith Wharton Letters Selected, Transcribed, and Annotated, also by Gribben; and Clare Colquitt's Unpacking Her Treasures: Edith Wharton's "Mysterious Correspondence" with Morton Fullerton. The letters were also examined by Gloria C. Erlich in her book The Sexual Education of Edith Wharton (1992). Scope and Contents This collection of letters of Edith Wharton, 1907-1931 (bulk 1907-1917) consists in the greatest part of letters which have been arranged in three series: I. Letters to Morton Fullerton; II. Letters to Edith Wharton; and III. Letters from Edith Wharton to others. This collection was assembled by Morton Fullerton, Wharton's friend and lover. The great majority of items in this collection are letters written by Wharton to Fullerton, found in the first series. These letters range in date from 1907 to 1931, but the bulk are from the height of their affair during the period 1908 to 1910. They offer great insight into their little-known relationship, Wharton's marriage to Edward Wharton, and her literary activities and travels during the period. Wharton's letters to Fullerton have been divided into two groups: the first arranged by date of the letter and the second arranged by type of stationery. The arrangement of these materials was complicated by the fact that Wharton did not date the vast majority of her letters. Some of them have been dated in another hand, possibly Fullerton's. In attempting to attribute dates to as many letters as possible to facilitate their arrangement, two sources proved very useful. The first was R.W.B. Lewis's book, The Letters of Edith Wharton (New York: Scribner, C. 1988). The second was the original sale listing from Zeitlin and Ver Brugge, which has been noted to contain a number of inaccuracies. The large number of Wharton's letters to Fullerton for which no date could be determined were arranged by the type of stationery on which they were written in the hope that a Wharton scholar familiar with her letter writing habits may be able to attribute possible dates for these items. Criteria for grouping the stationery types were presence of printed monograms or addresses, presence of watermarks, and color of paper. In addition to the letters from Wharton to Fullerton, a few letters written to Fullerton by Walter Berry, Henry James and others are present in the collection. There are also a number of other items related to Edith Wharton, including letters written to her (from Henry James, William Osler, Theodore Roosevelt, Edward Wharton, and others) and letters written by her to Katherine Fullerton Gerould and others. The collection also contains four manuscript poems, three written by Edith Wharton (among her letters to Morton Fullerton) and one by an unidentified author. Other materials relating to Wharton at the HRHRC can be found in the John Lane, Mary Augusta Ward, and Elizabeth Hardwick collections. Edith Wharton--Folder List Box Folder Description Series I. Letters to Morton Fullerton, 1907-1931 1 1 Unidentified authors: Included with these: Unidentified author. Manuscript poem, "For I have always hated to be sure 2 Berry, I. Berry, Walter Friederich, J. James, G. http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/research/fa/wharton.html 12/14/2005 Wharton Page 3 of 4 & James, Henry Wharton, Edith -- letters arranged chronologically 3 1907 4 1908: Included with these: Wharton, Edith. Manuscript poem, "Senlis, May 17" (with letter from dated 17 May 1908) Davray, Mr. and Mme. Card (with letter dated 19 December 1908) 5 1909 6 1910: Included with these: Wharton, Edith. Manuscript poem, "When you and I and all things kind or cruel " (with letter dated, 14 April 1910) James, Henry, telegram (with letter dated 24 March 1910) Osler, William, letter (with letter dated 19 March 1910) 7 1911 8 1912 9 1913 10 1914 11 1915 12 1916 13 1917 14 1931 Wharton, Edith -- letters arranged by type of stationery 15 White: embossed `58 RUE DE VARENNE' 16 Blue: embossed 53 RUE DE VARENNE, TEL. 706-13 17 Blue: embossed 53 RUE DE VARENNE, TEL. SAXE 06-13' 18 Various white: embossed 53 RUE DE VARENNE' 19 Cards embossed `Mrs. Edward Wharton' 20 Various monograms 21 'EW' monogram embossed in blue and gold 22 Assorted addresses and hotel letterheads 23 White: watermark reading Imperial Treasury de la Rue' with a crown and DLR device 24 White: watermark reading 'St. Chubert' with a shield and lion 25 Assorted white stationeries: Included with these: Wharton, Edith. Manuscript poem, "A Picture by Sebastiani" 26 Assorted blue stationeries Series II. Letters to Edith Wharton 27 French, Mary Fullerton, William Morton (an envelope) Roosevelt, Theodore Wharton, Edward Series III. Letters from Edith Wharton to Others 28 French, Mr. Fullerton, Miss (Katharine Fullerton Gerould) Wickersham, Mr. http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/research/fa/wharton.html 12/14/2005 The Mount: Edith Wharton and the American Renaissance Page 1 of 2 The Mount Edith Wharton and the American Renaissance American Renaissance Edith Wharton > Wharton's Homes > Ogden Codman Jr. > The Decoration of Houses > Edith Wharton Life in the Berkshires The Mount Life in the Berkshires Timeline Resources The Berkshires, a mountainous region extending Letter last ID USTA throughout western Massachusetts, was a summer tonic effect (1) me 2 and autumn resort community in the mid- to late I fee like & new edition nineteenth century. review and connection If Berkeley's hot types Kay Davis Inspired by the pastoral landscape, wealthy families University of Virginia from Boston and New York purchased farms there with Wharton © 2001-2003 and transformed them into country estates. The IN Sara Norther (pl) estates of this new American aristocracy resembled country seats in Europe. Giraud Foster's Bellefontaine was modeled after the Petit Trianon at Versailles. Anson Phelps Stokes's Shadowbrook was a Tudor-style home. William Douglas Sloane's Elm Court was designed in the Shingle style. (30) Anson Phelps Stokes's Shadowbrook "Inland Newport" By the 1880s, the Berkshires had become known as the "inland Newport," a place where families made rich by industry resided each summer. Like Newport, Lenox and the surrounding towns of Pittsfield and Stockbridge drew a community of writers and artists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Herman Melville, and Daniel Chester French. By 1900 this list would include Edith Wharton. The Whartons' New Home http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA01/Davis/wharton/wharton/berkshires.html 3/30/2004 The Mount: Edith Wharton and the American Renaissance Page 2 of 2 Edith and Teddy Wharton began summering in the Lenox, Massachusetts, area in the late 1890s, visiting Teddy's mother at her Lenox home, Pine Acre, or staying at the Curtis Hotel. During the summers of 1900 to 1902, they lived at The Poplars, a summer cottage in Lenox. (31) In 1901 the Whartons purchased a 113-acre plot of land called Laurel Lake Farm from Georgiana Sargent, watercolorist and distant relative of painter John Singer Sargent. (32) A turn-of-the-century photograph shows the couple standing proudly on the rock outcropping that would become the foundation for their new home. Edith and Teddy Wharton at the Site of The Mount The site commanded a view of Laurel Lake, and beyond, the Tyringham Mountains. View from The Mount Writing to her friend Sara Norton the summer before moving into The Mount, Wharton said, "Lenox has has its usual tonic effect on me, & I feel like a new edition, revised & corrected, in Berkeley's best type." (33) Notes I Credits I Site Map Feedback Home http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA01/Davis/wharton/wharton/berkshires.htm) 3/30/2004 Mrs. Edith Wharton to George B. Dorr September 3d, 1904. The Mount, Lenox, Mass. Dear Mr. Dorr, I found the book on the terrace just after you left, and it was sent to Boston in accordance with your direc- tions. I have been meaning to write and tell you this and also to say again how much I appreciated the trouble you took to help me in my gardening, or rather landscape gardening, problems. Your visit was SO helpful, and you left behind you SO many fruitful ideas that I often feel you are not really gone, and must be somewhere about, ready to answer the new questions which the solving of some of the old problems has already raised. Your path is finished, and the task of planting its borders now confronts me; and we are just about to attack the laying out of the path from the flower-garden to the little valley which is to be my future wild garden. I am in hopes you may really be able to spare us a day or two on your return, for though the autumn work Beinecke YCAL 42 Box 24, Folder 753 Note: See additional letters in Yale fo Her September 3rd, 1904) 2. will be nearly over by that time, there will be many future plans to discuss. My only fear is that my pigmy planting will quite vanish from your mind among the giant boles of the redwoods! The Vanderbilts want us to spend October with them at Biltmore, but the season is one of far too much in- - terest here and I told them they must let us come in the spring instead. We have been off in the motor digging ferns for our rocky slopes, and now I have discovered a stony pasture near Great Barrington full of the "sweet fern" which is SO rarely found in this region, and am going to fetch a load of it tomorrow. It is all great fun, but I wish you were here to suggest and approve. Sincerely yours, Edith Wharton. 826 CHRONOLOGY CHRONOLOGY 827 novelist Paul Bourget and his wife are guests. Three storics, her earliest stories: "I regard them as the excesses of "That Good May Come," "The Fulness of Life," and "The youth. They were all written 'at the top of my voice,' & Lamp of Psyche," accepted by Scribner's, whose editor, The Fulness of Life is one long shrick-I may not write Edward Burlingame, proposes a short story volume for any better, but at least I hope that I write in a lower Charles Scribner's Sons. Wharton agrees, suggesting in- kcy Suffers mental and physical breakdown in Au- clusion of "Bunner Sisters." Sails for Europe in December. gust. Goes to Philadelphia in October to take the "rest cure" invented by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell and is treated as an 1894-95 Burlingame rejects "Something Exquisite" (later revised outpatient under Mitchell's supervision. Therapy involves and published as "Friends"). Writes to him from Flo- massage, electrical stimulation of the muscles, abundant rence, expressing gratitude for his criticism and doubt cating, and near total isolation. about her own abilities. Travels through Tuscany. Visits Violet Paget ("Vernon Lee"), English novelist and histo- 1899 January, settles with Edward for four-month stay in house rian of eightcenth-century Italy. After research at monas- at 1329 K Street in Washington, found for them by Walter tery of San Vivaldo and in Florence muscums, identifies Berry, who becomes close literary adviser and supporter. group of terra-cotta sculptures, previously thought to date The Greater Inclination, long-delayed collection of short from the seventeenth century, as work of the late fif- stories, published by Scribner's in March to enthusiastic teenth-carly sixteenth century school of the Robbias. reviews; sales exceed 3,000 copies. Protests to Scribner's Writes article for Scribner's on her findings and surround- that book has been insufficiently advertised. Begins exten- ing Tuscan landscape. Notifics Burlingame in July 1894 sive correspondence with Sara Norton, daughter of Har- that short-story volume will need another six months to vard professor Charles Eliot Norton. Summer, travels in prepare. Suffering from intense exhaustion, nausea, and Europe, joined by the Bourgets in Switzerland; tours melancholia, breaks off correspondence with Burlingame northern Italy with them, through Bergamo and Val Ca- for sixteen months. Mother moves to Paris (brothers monica. Returns to Land's End in September. Seeking es- Frederic and Henry both live in Europe); meetings and cape from Newport climate, visits Lenox, Massachusetts, correspondence with her become infrequent. Writes "The in fall. Valley of Childish Things, and Other Emblems," collec- tion of ten short fables, and sends it in December 1895 to 1900 Novella, The Touchstone (in England, A Gift from the Burlingame, who rejects it. Grave), appears in the March and April Scribner's, pub- lished by Scribner's in April, selling 5,000 copies by year's 1896-97 Writes, with architect Ogden Codman, The Decoration of end. Travels in England, Paris, and northern Italy, again Houses, study of interior arrangements and furnishings in accompanied by the Bourgets. Spends summer and fall at upper-class city homes. Shows incomplete manuscript to inn in Lenox while Edward goes on yachting trip. Begins Burlingame, who gives it to William Brownell, senior ed- concerted work on novel The Valley of Decision. Sends itor at Scribner's. Summer 1897, resumes friendship with Henry James copy of "The Line of Least Resistance"; he Walter Berry, who stays for a month at Land's End, assist- responds with praise and detailed criticism, encouraging ing Wharton in the revision of The Decoration of Houses further effort. Wharton removes story from volume being (Codman is incapacitated by sunstroke). Wharton per- prepared. suades Brownell to increase the number of halftone plates and makes extensive recommendations concerning the 1901 February to June, negotiates purchase for $40,600 of book's design. Published by Scribner's December 1897; 113-acre Lenox property extending into the village of Lee. sales are unexpectedly good. After breaking with Codman over his fee, hires architect Francis V. L. Hoppin to design house modeled on Chris- 1898 Writes and revises seven stories between March and July, topher Wren's Belton House in Lincolnshire, England. despite recurring illness. In letter to Burlingame, discusses 1899-1905 828 CHRONOLOGY CHRONOLOGY 829 Oversees landscaping and gardening. Crucial Instances, Lombardy, inspecting estates for series of articles commis- second volume of stories, published by Scribner's in April. sioned by R. W. Gilder for Century. Enjoys her first auto- Mother dics in Paris, age seventy-six, on June 28. Her will mobile ride. Visits Violet Paget at Villa Pomerino outside leaves large sums outright to Frederic and Henry but crc- of Florence. Meets art expert Bernhard Berenson, who ates a trust fund for Wharton's share of the remainder of strongly dislikes her. Goes to Salsomaggiore, west of the estate. Trust eventually amounts to $90,000; total Parma, for treatment of her asthma. Spends summer and annual income from parents' and Joshua Jones's trusts is fall at The Mount, with interval at Newport. Sells Land's about $22,000. Wharton visits London and Paris and per- End for $122,500, June 13. Begins The House of Mirth. No- suades her brothers to make husband Edward co-trustce vella Sanctuary published by Scribner's in October. Sails with brother Henry. Works on play The Man of Genius for England, early December. First conversations with (never finished) and on dramatization of Prosper Méri- Henry James, who comes up from Rye to London in mid- méc's Manon Lescaut (never produced). December. 1902 The Valley of Decision, historical novel set in cighteenth- 1904 Purchases her first automobile, a Panhard-Levassor. With century Italy, published by Scribner's in February. Whar- Edward driving, travels south to Hyères for a stay with ton criticizes its design while it is being prepared. Suffers the Bourgets, then to Cannes and Monte Carlo and back collapse (nausca, depression, fatigue) after publication. across France. In England, visits Henry James in Ryc and Reviews are generally enthusiastic and sales are good. Be- tours Sussex with him. Returns to Lenox in late spring. gins Disintegration, novel set in contemporary New York Enthusiastic about motor travel, hires Charles Cook as a society, but docs not finish it. Writes travel articles, poet- permanent chauffeur (he retains this position until 1921, ry, theatrical reviews, and literary criticism, including cs- when he suffers a stroke). The Descent of Man, collection says on Gabricle D'Annunzio and George Eliot. Translates of stories, published by Scribner's in April. After reading Hermann Sudermann's play Es Lebe das Leben as The Joy of reviews, writes Brownell that "the continued cry that I am Living (it runs briefly on Broadway and sells in book form an echo of Mr. James (whose books of the last ten years I for a number of years). Henry James writes Wharton in can't read, much as I delight in the man) makes me August that The Valley of Decision is "accomplished, pon- feel rather hopeless." Hires Anna Bahlmann as secretary dered, saturated" and "brilliant and interesting from a lit- and literary assistant. Agrees with Burlingame in August crary point of view," but urges her to abandon historical to begin serialization of The House of Mirth in January 1905 subject matter "in favour of the American subject. There Scribner's undertakes schedule of intense work (usually it is round you. Don't pass it by-the immediate, the real, writing in the morning) to meet deadline. (Finishes in the only, the yours, the novelist's that it waits for. Take March 1905; serialized Jan.-Nov.) House guests at The hold of it and keep hold and let it pull you where it will Mount include Brooks Adams and his wife, George Cabot Do New York! The ist-hand account is precious." Lodge (son of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge), Walter Meets Theodore Roosevelt in Newport at christening of Berry, and Gaillard Lapsley, American-born don of medi- his godchild, son of Wharton's friends Margaret and Win- eval history at Trinity College, Cambridge. Henry James throp Chanler, beginning a long friendship. Moves into arrives in October with his friend Howard Sturgis, whom Lenox house, named "The Mount" after Long Island Wharton calls "the kindest and strangest of men." Italian home of Revolutionary War ancestor Ebenezer Stevens, Villas and Their Gardens, based on magazine articles, pub- in September. Edward suffers first of series of nervous lished by The Century Company in November. Returns collapses. to New York just before Christmas. 1903 January, sails for Italy with ailing husband. Travels slowly 1905 Henry James visits at 884 Park Avenue for a few days in north from Rome through Tuscany, the Vencto, and January. Whartons dine at the White House with Presi- 830 CHRONOLOGY CHRONOLOGY 831 dent Roosevelt in March. Italian Backgrounds, sketches the Faubourg St. Germain. The Fruit of the Tree serialized written since 1894, published by Scribner's in March. Af- in Scribner's, January-November. March, takes a "motor- ter European trip in spring, including visit to Salsomag- flight" through France with Edward and Henry James, giore for asthma treatment, returns to The Mount. House visiting Nohant and touring southern France. Invites guests include printer Berkeley Updike, illustrator Mon- James to stay for another month, and takes a short auto- cure Robinson, publisher Walter Maynard, Robert Grant, mobile trip with James and Gaillard Lapsley. Engages in- novelist and judge of the probate court in Boston, and structor to teach her contemporary French; for a lesson Henry James. Visits Sara and Charles Eliot Norton. The exercise, writes a precursor sketch of Ethan Frome. April, House of Mirth published by Scribner's, October 14, in first sees much of William Morton Fullerton, forty-two-year- printing of 40,000; 140,000 copies in print by the end of old Paris correspondent for the London Times, former stu- the year, "the most rapid sale of any book ever published dent of Charles Eliot Norton, and disciple of Henry by Scribner," according to Brownell. Literary earnings for James. Spends summer at The Mount. Sales of The Fruit of year exceed $20,000. Henry James writes Wharton that the Tree, published by Scribner's in October, reach 60,000. the novel is an "altogether superior thing" but "better Reviews are good. Fullerton arrives at The Mount in Oc- written than composed." Reviews generally favorable. De- tober for a visit of several days. Wharton begins a journal cember, undertakes collaboration on stage version with addressed to him. Returns to Paris in December. The playwright Clyde Fitch. House of Mirth appears as Chez les Heureux du Monde in the Revue de Paris, translated by Charles du Bos, a young 1906 Sails for France, March 10. Through Paul Bourget, enters follower of Bourget. intellectual and social circles of Paris, especially those of the Faubourg St. Germain. Among new acquaintances are 1908 January-February, Edward afflicted by "nervous depres- poct Comtesse Anna de Noailles, historian Gustave sion." Wharton leads active social life, seeing linguist Vi- Schlumberger, and his close friend, Comtesse Charlotte de comte Robert d'Humières, American ambassador Henry Cossé-Brissac. Gocs to England at the end of April. Whar- White, watercolorist Walter Gay and his wife, Matilda, tons and Henry James make short motor tour of England. James Van Alen, Fullerton, Comtesse Rosa de Fitz-James, Visits Queen's Acre, Howard Sturgis's home in Windsor, Bourget, playwright Paul Hervieu, Charles du Bos, and for the first time (it soon becomes the center of her En- others. February, spends time with Fullerton while Ed- glish social life). Meets Percy Lubbock, young writer and ward is away, and begins an affair with him in March. disciple of Henry James. Returns to France and takes mo- Edward, suffering from depression and pervasive pain, tor tour with brother Henry, visiting cathedrals at Antiens leaves for spa at Hot Springs, Arkansas, March 21. Whar- and Beauvais, and Nohant, home of George Sand. Re- ton writes Brownell that Edward's illness has prevented turns to Lenox in Junc. Works on novel Justine Brent (later her from making much progress on new novel, The Cus- retitled The Fruit of the Tree). Novella Madame de Treymes tom of the Country, and doubts that it will be ready for appears in the August Scribner's (published by Scribner's serial publication by January 1909. April, moves to brother in February 1907). September, goes to Detroit with Ed- Henry's townhouse on Place des Etats-Unis when he goes ward and Walter Berry to see first performance of stage to America on business. Egerton Winthrop visits. When version of The House of Mirth. October opening in New Henry James visits, arranges to have Jacques Emile York is a critical and commercial failure; Wharton calls the Blanche paint portrait that she considers the best ever experience "instructive." Edward is away from Lenox, done of him. May, has first significant meetings with hunting and fishing, during much of the fall. Literary Henry Adams. Meditates in her journal on the propriety earnings for the year total almost $32,000. of her affair with Fullerton; writes series of love sonnets. May 22, gives Fullerton journal addressed to him; he re- 1907 Returns to Paris in January and rents the apartment of the turns it the following day as she leaves for America. On George Vanderbilts at 58 Rue de Varenne, in the heart of fifth day of crossing, writes story "The Choice"; resumes Wharton mss Page 1 of 1 WHARTON MSS. The Wharton mss., 1836-1975, but chiefly 1900-1937, consist of the correspondence, diaries, and writings of novelist Edith Newbold Jones Wharton, 1862-1937. All of this material was consulted and used by R.W.B. Lewis in his volume Edith Wharton : A Biography (New York: Harper & Row, 1975) and is described and cited there as the William Royall Tyler Collection, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC. The earliest items in the collection are family related: a commonplace book of Lucretia Rhinelander (Wharton's mother) and an 1847 journal of her father's, George Frederic Jones. The correspondence begins in 1901 and includes letters from Bernar d Berenson, Mary (Smith) Berenson, Paul Bourget, Louis Bromfield, Sir Kenneth Clark, Royal Cortissoz, Beatrix Farrand, William Alexander Gerhardie, Louis Gillet, Abbé Arthur Mugnier, Violet Paget, Edward Brewster Sheldon, Logan Pearsall Smith, Elis ina Tyler, Royall Tyler, and William Royal Tyler, as well as nearly 400 letters from Edith Wharton to the Tyler family. Her own diaries cover primarily 1920- 1937, but also present is the so-called "love diary" (A Life Apart) of 1907-08. Writings present include typescripts of her full-length works, Age of Innocence, A Backward Glance, and Gods Arrive, as well as many poems both published and unpublished, and a file of about two hundred photographs of Wharton and friends, of Pavillon Colombe, of Saint Claire Château, and of her other residences (The Mount, Pencraig and 58 rue de Varenne) complete this portion of the collection. The remaining portion of the collection consists of files relating to Edith Wharton's death and her estate, as well as correspondence and other materials gathered by the executor of her French will, Elisina Tyler, for a planned biography of Wharto n. The biography was never completed and following Elisina's death in 1959, her son, William Royall Tyler, took over as executor of the Wharton estate. His correspondence as well as some additional materials relating to his own reminiscences of Mrs. Wh arton, complete the entire collection. Among the correspondents in this Wharton / Tyler portion of the collection are William Morton Fullerton, William Alexander Gerhardie, Frederic Rhinelander King, John Hugh Smith, Elisina Tyler, William Royall Tyler, Emelyn Webster Washburn, and Armitage Watkins. There is a box and folder list available, as well as an in-house index to the correspondence. Purchase. William Royall Tyler, Washington, D.C. 1976 ca. 1200 items http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/lilly/mss/html/wharton.html 12/14/2005 Wharton Mss. Box/Folder List Page 1 of 4 WHARTON MSS. Box/folder list Box 1 Letters to Edith Wharton: Bernard Berenson, 1928-1936 (14 folders) William Gerhardie, 1922-1931 (1 folder) Box 2 Letters to EW, 1900-1937 (11 folders) Letters from EW, 1917-1937 (4 items) Box 3 Letters from EW to the Tyler family: Elisina, 1914-1937 (8 folders) Royall Tyler, 1918-1935 (17 items ) William Royall Tyler, 1923-1937 (1 folder) Box 4 Diaries, EW (7 vols.) Box 5 Diaries, not EW: Lucretia Rhinelander, 1836-1840 [commonplace book] George Frederic Jones, Apr. 7, 1847-June 1, 1848 [diary] Box 6 Writings by EW: A-Bt Age of Innocence. T[ypescript] D[ocument] A Backward Glance. T.D. Beaumetz, February 23rd 1915. T.D. 2p. The Bitter End. A[utograph] D[ocument], incomplete Box 7 Writings by EW: Bu-F The Buccaneers. T.D. Derivation of the word cant. A. D. and T.D. Easter. A. D. and T.D Fast and Loose. A Novelette by David Olivieri. photocopy of ms. ; T.D. 59p. Fast and Loose [imaginary reviews ] A.D. and T.D. Freeman is "perfectly lovely" or "quite too lovely". [1st line] T.D., 1p. Box 8 Writings by EW: G-Z The Gods Arrive. bound T.D. Hoe. A.D. http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/lilly/mss/subfile/whartoninv.html 12/14/2005 Wharton Mss. Box/Folder List Page 2 of 4 In this world T.D. Literary Tendencies. A.D. in notebook with autobiographical fragments Memories (summary) . T.D. Misc. & fragments. A.D. The Mummy Room. incomplete A.D. and T.D. My Books - Literary Essays. A.D. and T.D. Notebook 1, April 1914. A.D. Notebook 2: [poems] A. D. The Southwind The Northwind The new Litany Song (Let us be lovers ) Song (Mirth of life's blooming time ) The Rose Weltschmerz Phyllis Death Gifts The Inferno Beauty Swinburne A Patient Soul The Sonnet's Boundaries A Vision Esther Ante-Mortem The So-Called Venus of Milo Lucrezia Buonvisi's Lover (Dying at Vareggion) (?) Dactylics The Masque of Life Dante The Old Odysseus Mindest Thou no more? The Duchess of Palliano The Dead Wife Demeter October in Newport In the Forest The Tomb of Ilaria Giunigi Terza Rima Sapphics Renunciation Latomia dei Cappucini Cor Cordium A Dialogue The Leper's Funeral and Death (In mediaeval England) Beaulieu Wood Browsing in the Abbey http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/lilly/mss/subfile/whartoninv.html 12/14/2005 Wharton Mss. Box/Folder List Page 3 of 4 Cynthia From "The New and the Old" Friends Lucrezia Buonvisi Remembers Life An Autumn Day Lines for "Boulterby Ridge" Life Song Cinque Cents The 'Beata Beatrix' of Rossetti Hymn to Colom Ogrin the Hermit. A.D. and T.D. Pennelope. T.D. A Princess of the House of Este. A.D. The so-called Venus of Milo. A.D. Treasure. A.D. With the Tide. A.D. Printed [poems - 2 items] Box 9 Photographs Box 10 Miscellaneous folder 1: Identity and travel papers, 1914-1937 folder 2: [inventory of Walter Berry's library] folder 3: "Mademoiselle Colombe l'..." A. D. 11p. In French. on verso" History of Pavillon Colombe & des soeurs Colombe" folder 4 : Notes, fragments, lists, etc. [some are in Wharton's hand] folder 5: [Proust, ] Marcel. "Response a une question: Léon Radziwill" T (carbon) D. 3p folder 6: recipes folder 7: Rhinelander : "Our debt to Britain." 1918, printed [a memorial service address] folder 8: [Sketchbook] folder 9 : Printed articles, etc. by or relating to EW folder 10: clippings: by or about EW [see also folio] folder 11: clippings: miscellaneous Box 11: Elisina Tyler files folders 1-8: Tyler, E. correspondence, 1919-1954 folder 9 : typed transcripts of Wharton's letters to Edward Sheldon folder 10: miscellaneous re: Wharton estate, 1937 folder 11: miscellaneous notes, extracts, etc. re: Wharton Box 12: Elisina Tyler files (cont. ) http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/lilly/mss/subfile/whartoninv.html 12/14/2005 Wharton Mss. Box/Folder List Page 4 of 4 folder 1: 1919 "Outline for proposed interview with Mrs. Royall Tyler" T. (carbon) D. 6p. folder 2: 1925. Edith Wharton, by R.M. Lovett [photocopy] folder 3: 1937, June 11-Aug. 7. [E. Tyler account of EW's last illness and death] T. D. 34p. heavily annotated in ink; T (carbon) 34p. folder 4 : 1937 EW obituaries - clippings folder 5: 1939, June. E. Tyler: "Statement concerning Mrs. Wharton's last illness and of the execution of her last will and testament. 11 T. D. 19p. with handwritten changes and corrections; T(carbon) . 34p. folder 6: [1949] Wilson, Edmund "Edith Wharton: A Memoir by an English Friend. : T. .D., 5p. T (carbon) 5p. William Royall Tyler files: folder 7 : Tyler, W.R. correspondence, 1947-1975 folder 8: correspondence with and about William Gerhardie, 1971-1974 folder 9 : "Transcripts of tapes recorded summer 1972 by W.R.T. from E.R.T. correspondence and documents, mostly concerning E.W. " T.D. folder 10: [extracts from various E.W. or E. T. letters, etc.] Return to the Wharton Mss. Collection Description http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/lilly/mss/subfile/whartoninv.html 12/14/2005 Newport Notables Page 1 of 4 N N Edith Newbold Jones Wharton b. New York City, NY January 24 (some sources say 23), 1862 (some sources say 1861) d. St. Brice - sous Forêt, France, August 11, 1937 Edith "Pussy" Wharton was born into a wealthy New York family. Her father George Frederic Jones, a gentlemen of leisure, and mother Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander Jones become summer residents in Newport around 1850. Edith spent most of her childhood in New York City (winters) and Newport (summers). The Jones' long time summer residence, known as Pencraig, was built in early 1860s. Edith lived here prior to family move to Europe due to economic depression at the end of Civil War. They resided in Europe from November 1866 to June 1872. Family returned to Newport for summer season of 1872. Edith's early Newport days appear to be happy ones, her later days in Newport differ. As a child she enjoyed riding her pony, playing on the family property that gently sloped to Newport Harbor, and swimming and fishing off the dock. At the turn of the 20th century Jones' property is owned by Sidney Webster. Then spelled Pencraig, now Pen-Craig, the main house no longer exists. The property has been subdivided into three homes, represented by #99 - #101 - #103 Harrison Avenue. In the summer of 1880, Edith meets Henry Leyden Stevens (b. 1859) in Newport. He was the son of Marietta Reed, who had married the wealthy Paran Stevens. Henry was known as a sporting enthusiast. His family estate was located on what is now the Cherry & Webb portion of Bellevue Shopping Center. http://www.redwoodlibrary.org/notables/wharton.htm 7/30/2004 Newport Notables Page 2 of 4 A romance developed between Edith and Henry with speculation that an engagement would be eminent. After much talk by society, it finally happened two years later and was reported by the Newport Mercury on August 19, 1882, "The engagement of Mr. Harry Stevens, only son of Mrs. Paran Stevens, to Miss Edith, daughter of the late George F. Jones of New York, is announced." By October the engagement was off. It has been suggested that Henry's mother, a society matron, was responsible in the abrupt end due to her social concerns and financial interests. As the story goes, when Henry turned twenty-five years of age or married - his father's $1.25 million estate would come into his possession. His mother needed to keep the monies under her control - for her own benefit. This incident may have haunted Edith for some time, she seemed shaken by it. In time, Edith meets and marries a friend of her brother Harry who visited Pencraig many times prior. Married Edward "Teddy" Wharton on April 29, 1885. Divorced in 1913. During the first three months of marriage, they lived with her mother, either in the main house or a small cottage on the grounds, before moving across the street to the other family owned house in the late summer of 1885. From June to February they live in Newport, the remainder of year in Europe. Harry Stevens died that summer (1885). After getting married, Edith realized the social duties/obligations of Newport bored her. "Teddy" demonstrated social gaffe. One incident that raised social eyebrows - late for a luncheon engagement, he hailed and accepted ride in butcher cart up Bellevue Avenue. She spent much time in her garden at the house known as "Pencraig Cottage" or "Penn Craig Cottage." The couple lived here until 1893. This house, eventually the Colonel Hoppin residence "Auton House," still stands. The name has been changed to Quail Tree House, #100 Harrison Avenue. In March of 1893, Wharton's purchased house for $80,000. Some have suggested Edith chose a location far enough from her mother, however, still in Newport. This house is known as Land's End. http://www.redwoodlibrary.org/notables/wharton.htm 7/30/2004 Newport Notables Page 3 of 4 Edith described it "the outside of the house was incurably ugly, but we helped it to a certain dignity " Almost immediately work commenced. Ogden Codman, Jr. was brought into supervise the alteration, interior decoration and landscape design. The incorporated ideas of this house were the basis for the book, The Decoration of Houses published in 1897. Written by Wharton in collaboration with Codman, earned her her first royalty check. Edith grew tired of Newport and the dampness of the air here. At the turn of the 20th century Land's End was sold. The Wharton's moved to Lenox, MA where their home "The Mount" was built. Afterwards, Edith visited Newport occasionally. Land's End still stands today at the southern end of the southeast end of Ledge Road. EDITH WHARTON: PUBLISHED REFERENCES TO NEWPORT Verses. Newport, R.I., C.E. Hammett, Jr., 1878. unsigned, privately published, it appeared just before Christmas. A book of her poems, her first published work, Edith was 16 years old. The Twilight of the God, a short play in her The Greater Inclination. New York, Scribner, 1899. The setting is Newport. The Age of Innocence. New York, London, Appleton, 1920. Her most famous novel, some consider it her best work. Wharton awarded Pulitzer Prize in 1921, the first time a woman received that prize for a novel. A Backward Glance. New York, London, Appleton, Century, 1934. Ab Her autobiography. Hib American novelist, poet and short story writer. Considered the most celebrated American female author of her times. More than 50 books to her credit, including travel books, historical novels and criticism. Member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, received Gold Medal of the institute. Spends latter years in Europe, good friend of Henry James [q.v.]. Returned to U.S. only once to receive an honorary doctorate from Yale University in 1923 - the first woman to receive that honor. http://www.redwoodlibrary.org/notables/wharton.htm 7/30/2004 Redwood and its Treasures Page 1 of 3 N N Edith Newbold Jones Wharton b. New York City, NY, January 24 (some sources say 23), 1862 (some sources say 1861) d. St. Brice - sous Forêt, France, August 11, 1937 Bibliography 2 "Death of George F. Jones," Newport Mercury, 18 March 1882. "The Summer Season," Newport Mercury, 19 August 1882. "Late Edith Wharton Well-Known Here," Newport Daily News, 13 August 1937. Corcoran, Marlena G. "Edith Wharton and Her Newport Years," Providence Journal, 3 September 1992. Auchincloss, Louis. Edith Wharton: A Woman in Her Time. New York: The Viking Press, 1971. Auchincloss, Louis. "Wharton, Edith Newbold Jones" in Notable American Women 1607-1950. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971. 3:570-573. Bell, Millicent. Edith Wharton & Henry James: The Story of Their Friendship. New York: George Braziller, 1965. Benstock, Shari. No Gifts From Chance: A Biography of Edith Wharton. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1994. Champlin, Richard L. "Colonel Hoppin's Newport," Newport History: Bulletin of the Newport Historical Society. Newport: Newport Historical Society. vol. 59 part 1 no. 201 (Winter 1986): 32. http://www.redwoodlibrary.org/notables/wharton_bib.htm 7/30/2004 Redwood and its Treasures Page 2 of 3 Dwight, Eleanor. Edith Wharton: An Extraordinary Life. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 1994. Davis, Lavinia. A Bibliography of the Writings of Edith Wharton. Portland, ME: The Southworth Press, 1933. Erlich, Gloria C. The Sexual Education of Edith Wharton. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992. Goodman, Susan. Edith Wharton's Women: Friends & Rivals. Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1990. Henry James, Edith Wharton and Newport. An Address Delivered by Leo Edel at the Opening of the Exhibition Held at the Redwood Library and Athenaeum Newport, Rhode Island, July and August 1966. Hopkins, G.M. Atlas of the City of Newport, Rhode Island, Philadelphia, 1883. Plate 22. Hopkins, G.M. City Atlas of Newport, Rhode Island, Philadelphia, 1876. Plate V. Jordy, William H. and Christopher P. Monkhouse. Buildings on Paper: Rhode Island Architectural Drawings 1825-1945. Brown University, Rhode Island Historical Society, Rhode Island School of Design, 1981. 50,51. Kellogg, Grace. The Two Lives of Edith Wharton. New York: Appleton-Century, 1965. Lewis, R.W.B. Edith Wharton: A Biography. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1975. La France, Curtis. "Literate Travelers: Edith Wharton and Henry James on Tour in France," Newport History: Bulletin of the Newport Historical Society. Newport: Newport Historical Society. vol. 61 part 3 no. 211 (Summer 1988): 76-94. Marshall, Scott. The Mount Home of Edith Wharton: A Historic Structure Report. Lenox, MA: Edith Wharton Restoration, Inc., 1997. Metcalf, Pauline C. ed. Ogden Codman and the Decoration of Houses. Boston: David R. Godine, Publisher, 1988. Newport City Directory 1856/57 - 1901. http://www.redwoodlibrary.org/notables/wharton_bib.htm 7/30/2004 Redwood and its Treasures Page 3 of 3 Phelps, Harriet Jackson. Newport in Flower. Newport: The Preservation Society of Newport County, 1979. 71,138. Springer, Marlene. "Edith Newbold Jones Wharton" in American Women Writers. vol. 4. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1982, 368-374. The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, vol. 14 New York: James T. White & Company, 1910, 80,81. Trosky, Susan M. ed. Contemporary Authors. vol. 132 Detroit: Gale Research Inc., 1991, 447-452. Wharton, Edith. A Backward Glance. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1933. Wharton, Edith and Ogden Codman, Jr. The Decoration of Houses. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1897. Back N N Redwood Library and Athenxum Newport Notables Visit the oldest American library still in its A Finding Aid to the Famous, the Infamous. the Celebrated. and the Celebrities of original building! Newport, Rhode Island. 50 Bellevue Avenue Newport, Rhode Island Contents 02840 USA Essentials Treasures Newport & Beyond http://www.redwoodlibrary.org/notables/wharton_bib.htm 7/30/2004 EDITH HARTON'S WOMEN FRIENDS SRIVALS SUSAN GOODMAN Edith wherton EDITH WHARTON 1925 UNIVERSITY PRESS OF NEW ENGLAND Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana HANOVER AND LONDON Also by Claire Preston Edith Wharton's SIR THOMAS BROWNE: Selected Writings (editor) EDITH WHARTON: The Glimpses of the Moon (editor) Social Register Claire Preston Sidney Sussex College Cambridge The Mount Recent News Page 1 of 7 THE MOUNT Centennial Celebration Interior Designers The following article ran in the September 2003 issue of Landscape Architecture. The Estate From the Terrace A lightning turnaround in the Berkshires restores The Gardens the 100-year-old landscape at Edith Wharton's The Mount. Edith Wharton By Allen Freeman General Information A hundred years ago, novelist and nonfiction writer Edith Wharton began filling in the grounds she had designed for her new summer estate in the Berkshire Lecture Series Hills of western Massachusetts. Wharton and her husband, Teddy, had purchased 113 farmland acres in Readings Lenox and had sited a large house, which they called The view today from The Mount, on the top of a slope to take advantage of a Italian walled garden panoramic view. During the previous summer, as the Bookstore at The Mount house was being finished and furnished, Wharton had overseen preliminary work on her design for the Calendar of Events gardens and orchards. Along the way she had consulted with her niece, Beatrix Jones (later Farrand), a founding member of the American Society of Giving to The Mount Landscape Architects, who designed the approach to the main house. Throughout that first decade of the twentieth century, the prolific author of The Age of Home Innocence (for which she would become, in 1921, the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for fiction) was to apply to The Mount her knowledge about landscape gardening and horticulture. She was steeped in the traditions of Renaissance Italy (one of her many books was the 1904 Italian Villas and Their Gardens) and eighteenth-century France and enthusiastic about the ideas of British landscape gardener and writer Gertrude Jekyll. A broad terrace on the main floor of the new house provided a platform for viewing the distant hills, Laurel Lake, and a meadow, as well as the gardens Wharton meticulously planned immediately below. A Palladian staircase led to a path covered in marble chips and more steps descending through a series of parterres, bordered in arborvitae and hemlock hedges, and to an allée flanked by pleached lindens called the lime walk, extending parallel to the wide rear elevation of the house. The southwest terminus of the lime walk was a walled Italian garden with a rock fountain and a minimum of plantings. The garden's east wall was breached by arched openings framing views toward the lake and hills. At the opposite end of the walk, Wharton http://www.edithwharton.org/lanscapearchitecture.html 8/4/2004 The Mount Recent News Page 2 of 7 literally oversaw the planting of annuals; from her bedroom on the house's northeast corner, the writer could evaluate profusions of petunias, phlox, snap- dragons, stocks, penstemons, and hollyhocks, and she could descend grass steps from the house toward her handiwork. Just beyond the flower garden, she had positioned an arched trellis niche, which terminated that end of the lime-walk axis. Wharton wrote her first bestseller, The House of Mirth (1905), at The Mount. Describing her routine there, she corresponded to a friend: "Here I write every morning, & then devote myself to horticulture; while Teddy plays golf & cuts down trees." Six years later, her marriage was over, her sojourn in the Berkshires permanently ended. Wharton moved to France in 1911; she died there in 1937 and was buried in the town of Versailles. "I first saw The Mount in February 1982," says David H. Bennett, ASLA, then a student at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design and now a senior associate at EDAW Earthasia Ltd. in Hong Kong and head of the board of directors' grounds committee at The Mount. "Covered by deep snow with a slick coating of ice and shrouded in thick, gray fog, the place could not have been more gloomy and forlorn. The large, white stucco house seemed overwhelmed by an evergreen thicket on all sides, but below the terrace that wrapped around the main floor of the house, it was possible to make out a series of terraces defined by arborvitae hedges." He continues, "On a return visit that spring I found The Mount occupied by actors and crew of the theater company that performed on the grounds. Stage sets were being constructed on top of the garden walls and fountains, and the lower branches of the hemlock hedges had been hacked away to make room for port- a-johns. There was no evidence of the lindens along the lime walk. The outlines of this path and other walks were barely discernible in the grass. The stone walls, arches, and pergola of the sunken garden retained a certain faded charm, but the circular pool in the center was cracked, and the dolphin fountain from Wharton's flower garden had been placed here." Just four years ago, the grounds of The Mount were still a ruin. Yet today, as you look down from the terrace, a scene spreads before you that curiously approximates the conditions that the Whartons experienced during the summer of 1903. The outlines are pristine, the stone- chip paths immaculate, the lime walk flanked by rows of immature lindens planted in perfectly mulched squares. The parterre hedges are low to the ground, the lawns are blankets, and the walled garden and flower garden await the planting of annuals. Susan Child, ASLA, of the Boston-based firm of Child Associates, led the lightning turnaround for a nonprofit called Edith Wharton Restoration, Inc. (EWR), the owner of The Mount since http://www.edithwharton.org/lanscapearchitecture.html 8/4/2004 The Mount Recent News Page 3 of 7 1980. For better, for worse, and ultimately for the best, The Mount has had six owners. In the fall of 1911, the Whartons sold their Berkshire estate to Albert R. and Mary Shattuck, who had rented it for two summers and, as owners, called it White Lodge. Shattuck heirs sold The Mount in 1938 to an elderly couple, Carr Vattel Van Anda, a retired managing editor of The New York Times, and his wife, Louise. The fourth owner, beginning in 1942, was the neighboring Foxhollow School for girls. The school converted the house's second floor and attic into a dormitory, lodged horses in the stable next to the approach road, and generally took good care of the place. In 1976, at the instigation of Foxhollow School's last headmistress, The Mount was nominated to the National Register of Historic Places. A Connecticut developer purchased the property in 1977 and sold it to a theater group called Shakespeare & Company early the following year. Beginning in 1980, when EWR was founded under financial arrangements devised by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, The Mount's stewardship suffered from the conflicting purposes of the Shakespeareans and the underfunded preservationists. Harvard University's Graduate School of Design undertook a study of the grounds in 1982, and piecemeal work on the house assured that the structure survived mostly intact through the 1980s. But the current era of financial solvency and the comprehensive restoration of the landscape and buildings did not begin until 1992 when the EWR board selected Stephanie W. Copeland as president and CEO. Originally a theatrical producer in New York City, Copeland became a consultant to the National Endowment for the Humanities' theater program and then a turnaround artist for struggling nonprofit theater groups. Having helped Shakespeare & Company get out of the red in the early 1980s, she was invited back a decade later to head the besieged restoration effort. Copeland recruited as deputy director Scott Marshall, a preservationist trained at Columbia University, who had come to The Mount as an intern in 1985 and served as the organization's assistant director from 1986 to 1989. Before his death last October, Marshall authored The Mount's 256-page historic structure report, which consists of a historical narrative plus a description of the mansion's existing condition by John G. Waite Associates, Architects. Historian Cynthia Zaitzevsky is finalizing another document, the cultural landscape report; Zaitzevsky's findings, including descriptive passages of The Mount in correspondence between Wharton and such illustrious guests as writer Henry James and sculptor Daniel Chester French plus historic photographs that Marshall researched and collected, have guided the grounds restoration for the past three http://www.edithwharton.org/lanscapearchitecture.html 8/4/2004 The Mount Recent News Page 4 of 7 years. Such secondary documents are important to the restoration because no drawings survive of the landscape that extends behind the house. The Mount's landscape restoration was triggered in May 1999 when the federal Save America's Treasures (SAT) program, which channels congressionally appropriated and private funds into preservation projects nationwide, announced a $2.865 million matching grant to EWR. Of the $5.73 million total, $2.5 million went into the landscape restoration. A SAT requirement was that the grant and its match had to be spent "in very little time," Copeland recalls, so EWR quickly put out a request for proposals for 19 initial landscape restoration projects-including the lime walk, the flower garden, and the walled garden-and invited four responding firms to give presentations. "Child Associates was immediately our choice," she says. The 19 projects were narrowed to 11, says David Andersen, EWR project manager, "in part because we didn't have the money." One project that awaits restoration is the kitchen garden, designed by Farrand, near the estate's main gate. It will cost close to $1 million, Andersen estimates. Child says she had read Wharton's novels and many of her short stories in the 1970s and had visited The Mount in the late 1980s when "it was so overgrown that my only impression was grass terraces perceived through enormous arborvitaes. I had no sense of a real vista. The grounds seemed constricted, the house decrepit. It reminded me of some unattended Southern mansions I've seen. The request for proposals included a recent schematic drawing by artist and photographer Carole Palermo Schulze showing the layout of the gardens. There are things in the drawing that aren't very precise, but the idea was there." An archaeological site examination, begun in 1999 by a team from University of Massachusetts at Amherst, revealed exact dimensions and some original materials. Discoveries included the paths' substructure, which was composed of shards of marble probably excavated at the site for the foundations of the house. Roping off sections, the workers dug at certain points to reveal the soil strata. A few key digs enabled them to determine the paths' layout and dimensions. "If there is anything that the writer of a cultural landscape report hopes to acquire, it is the kind of exact validation like the one the archaeologists uncovered at The Mount," Child says. Two Berkshire County landscape contractors, Ingersoll, Inc., and Webster Gardens, collaborated on the restoration. "They first removed the huge, overgrown trees that were meant to be bushes," Copeland explains. "They started in the walled garden and backed out of the site, coming down the lime walk, clearing the terraces, doing the rock garden, and http://www.edithwharton.org/lanscapearchitecture.html 8/4/2004 The Mount Recent News Page 5 of 7 backing all the way into the flower garden. They didn't want to have to bring in the heavy equipment more than once." Re-creating Wharton-era plants has involved a combination of strategies. Contractors Tom Ingersoll and Ben Webster recommended substitutions for some plants, such as those in the now-shaded walled garden where sun-dependent flowers would not thrive, and for hemlock, a target of the wooly adaelgid. Boxwood is used instead. At the other end of the lime walk, regeneration of the flower garden required a detective search. "The garden wasn't static during the Wharton years, so we are restoring to an era," Child explains. "The documentation is catch-as-catch-can. The historic photos are not always dated. They don't repeat the same view of the garden or section of the garden. They are taken at different seasons." One set of photographs, for instance, shows blooms surrounding the pool in the flower garden. "We all looked at the images," Child says, "but no one could identify the flowers until we consulted curator Peter Del Tredici, the director of Harvard's Arnold Arboretum. And Peter said, 'I really think this is an early form of petunia, probably an import.' So we looked it up in [L.H. Bailey's Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture] and, sure enough, it was a very loose sort of fluffy petunia, Petunia axillaries, from Argentina. Peter obtained seeds from one of the historic seed banks, and Greg Ward of Ward's nursery in Sheffield, Massachusetts, propagated them for us. Last summer, they were all around the pools, and they looked wonderful. This year, because of finances, they put in impatiens instead." Child also is fascinated by the pervasive influence of Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932). Wharton visited the influential English writer's gardens and discussed her concepts with Farrand. Separately, both Americans met Jekyll in Surrey-Farrand during the summer of 1895 and Wharton a few years later. Much as Wharton and her cowriter Ogden Codman Jr. suggested alternatives to stodgy Victorian notions of interior decor in The Decoration of Houses, Jekyll looked anew at garden design, arranging perennials to express exuberance instead of trotting out greenhouse exotics and arranging them in stiff displays. "Wharton used European layouts, but she was caught up in collecting seed, like everybody else," Child says. "She took advantage of the new freedom to paint her own canvas." Authors experience the ebb and flow of scholarly perception and popular acceptance, and Wharton's stock, buoyed by women's studies and successful movie adaptations of The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth, is rising. But was Wharton, born with a silver spoon in her mouth, a mere dabbler in house http://www.edithwharton.org/lanscapearchitecture.html 8/4/2004 The Mount Recent News Page 6 of 7 decoration? Was she a garden dilettante, as some have charged; was she strongly influenced by her niece? How did Wharton acquire the skill and knowledge to design her own garden? First of all, as Henry Hope Reed, the author of books on classical design and the first curator of Central Park, has written, she was an outstanding figure in a generation of Americans "who seized on the great classical tradition of Western art and used it to help shape the arts in our country." One concludes from the series of essays collected in Italian Villas and Their Gardens that Wharton applied the same prodigious analytical skills that make her the author of enduring fiction to a subject, landscape gardening, about which she was passionate. She traveled, she observed, she analyzed, and she wrote, sometimes with sardonicism, as in this passage from the introduction to Italian Villas: "The cult of the Italian garden has spread from England to America, and there is a general feeling that, by placing a marble bench here and a sun-dial there, Italian 'effects' may be achieved. The results produced, even where much money and thought have been expended, are not altogether satisfactory." Indeed, a major point of the book is to elevate the taste of the rising American middle class in the creation of their gardens. Lost and found, the restored landscape at The Mount is a new window into Wharton's mind. The restored grounds spreading down from the terrace were obviously shaped by a person with strong ideas about adapting European precedents in North America. Compare The Mount to the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina, where in the 1890s George W. Vanderbilt spent a much vaster inherited fortune hiring the towering landscape figure Frederick Law Olmsted and a famous architect of the day, Richard Morris Hunt, and importing European decorative and fine art. Among all the Biltmore acquisitions, Vanderbilt recedes; it is difficult to imagine who he was. In marked contrast, Wharton is emphatically present at The Mount. "Edith somehow knitted this formal landscape into a very natural landscape," says Child. "She wasn't copying any specific place. She just understood." She lived and worked there, and you can picture her studying landscape effects from her bedroom or from the terrace and directing adjustments-to the lawn steps, to the arrangement of evergreens in the bosk next to the walled garden, to the displays in the flower garden. Without any question, the house and the landscape are a single piece of cloth, a tapestry expressing the pivotal decade in the life of an intellectual woman. As a novelist, Wharton experienced her first popular success during the period of The Mount, and she seems to have achieved emotional independence there as well. And then she escaped to France. End. http://www.edithwharton.org/lanscapearchitecture.html 8/4/2004 A writer's other great passion, restored - The Boston Globe Page 1 of 3 boston.com THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING A writer's other great passion, restored The Boston Globe Edith Wharton's garden reblooms By Carol Stocker, Globe Staff August 11, 2005 LENOX -- The mistress had a corner bedroom so she could look down on her flower garden while writing longhand in bed. This she did each day from about 6 a.m. to noon, often with a dog propped under one arm as she dropped each completed page on the floor to be collected by her maid and typed by her secretary. This was how Edith Wharton wrote "The House of Mirth" at The Mount, her vacation home in the Berkshires, 100 summers ago. Her novel about Lily Bart, a sincere and vulnerable young woman destroyed by the hypocrisy of high society, became a record-breaking bestseller and gave Wharton the confidence to pursue a career as a writer. To celebrate the centennial of Wharton's first literary masterpiece, her beloved flower garden was replanted at The Mount this June through a $500,000 grant from an anonymous Boston foundation. "You don't often get a chance to plant a 3,000-perennial garden in this day and age. It's very exciting," said Susan Child of Boston, who designed the garden with former associate M. Christopher Alonso. The magnificent garden looks like it was planted years ago. Hundreds of fragrant lilies, old-fashioned mignonettes, and stately delphiniums recreate the luxurious abundance that hallmarked the Gilded Age. The color scheme is sparkling white, vivid blue, and deep purple with bright splashes of pink from the garden phlox that Wharton especially loved. Tall filigree thalictrum and filipendula contribute the airy effect that Wharton sought in defiance of her era's convention of compact and regimented plants. Asters and fall-blooming anemones are among the many flowers designed to carry the garden through October, when The Mount closes for the season. The four large rectangular borders enclose a rebuilt fountain. Child describes the scene as "exuberance within the confines of rigor." The flower garden is the climax of a $35 million restoration project that has brought The Mount back from the brink of collapse. "This garden is the crown jewel of the entire restoration project," said project manager David Andersen. "The flowers cost $150,000. But it cost four times that for the layers upon layers of work in this garden that people never see, such as the archeology, the engineering, and the irrigation." Wharton often spent her afternoons gardening. Despite 10 live-in gardeners and groundskeepers, she liked to get her hands dirty, said Child, "something women of her class never did.' Though her childless marriage proved unfortunate, Wharton lived a very full life here, entertaining her friends and managing an elegant "great house" with 35 rooms and a staff of 20. Before she became known as a novelist, Wharton had another career as an early arbiter of interior and landscape design. This is not as odd as it sounds, as she was born into the upper level of New York society when women's creativity was confined to matters of the home. But Wharton brought her discerning eye to every endeavor open to her. Her first book, "The Decoration of Houses," written with Ogden Codman Jr. in 1897 as a corrective to Victorian clutter, was a surprise success. It promoted European ideas of proportion and symmetry, practicality, and classical restraint, which, not coincidentally, were also characteristics of the writing style Wharton was honing. Wharton believed that the house and garden should be fully integrated with each other and with the landscape. At the Lenox site she selected for her summer home, this landscape includes views of Laurel Lake and the Berkshire Hills that reminded her of Tuscany. The bone-white Georgian-style house she built in 1902 http://www.boston.com/yourlife/home/articles/2005/08/11/a_writers_other_great_passion 12/14/2005 A writer's other great passion, restored - The Boston Globe Page 2 of 3 and the 3 acres of formal gardens she completed in 1907 comprised a laboratory for the ideas in her design books, as well as a working retreat from her residence in Manhattan. Wharton was an early practitioner of fusion in design, enhancing a distant New England view with an Italianate foreground of formal hedges and terraces, anchored at one end by this French-style fountain garden planted with billowing perennials in the British style pioneered by contemporary garden designer Gertrude Jekyll, and at the other by a walled Italian garden -- a "giardino segreto." Wharton produced six novels and numerous other writings during the decade she summered at The Mount with her mentally unstable husband, Teddy. When they separated in 1911, he sold The Mount without her permission and many of its carefully chosen furnishings were auctioned. Wharton moved permanently to France. In 1921 she became the first woman awarded a Pulitzer Prize for fiction for "The Age of Innocence." Three years before her death in 1937, Wharton wrote wistfully, "The Mount was my first real home, and though it is nearly twenty years since I last saw it (for I was too happy there ever to want to revisit it as a stranger) its blessed influence still lives in me." During the subsequent years, Wharton's reputation went into mid-20th-century eclipse and The Mount's fortunes reflected this. It passed through several hands, including the Foxhollow School for Girls and Shakespeare & Company. The buildings gradually deteriorated and the gardens were lost to neglect. But the potential for restoration endured and was galvanized by landscape architect David Bennett. In 1980 it was bought by the nonprofit Edith Wharton Restoration. After long negotiations with the resident theatrical troupe, which needed another home, EWR stabilized and restored the sagging summer mansion, its shattered greenhouse, the decaying carriage house, and the remaining overgrown 49-acre landscape. The estate, located at 2 Plunkett St., has attracted nearly 90,000 visitors since re-opening in 2002. One section of the gardens that had survived in good shape was a winding woodland driveway lined with sugar maples designed by Wharton's niece Beatrix Jones (later Farrand), who went on to a stellar landscape- design career culminating in Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. The heart of the landscape is the huge brick terrace where the Whartons entertained. All the major rooms of the house open onto this and the gardens spread out below it. These include a large, steep rock garden with grass stairs now planted with dozens of hydrangeas. There are also witch hazels like the ones reportedly presented to Wharton by a lover. (Because they bloom late in the fall, they were said to signify that Wharton, who wrote "The House of Mirth" in her 40s, was a late bloomer.) Many low hedges of dwarf globe arborvitae and cold-hardy Green Mountain boxwood, evergreens not available in Wharton's era, parallel the immense brick terrace, replacing original hedges of hemlock and full- size arborvitae that required much pruning to contain. Two rows of formally planted linden trees will be pruned into a continuous aerial hedge lining a bright white path of crushed limestone running below the terrace. Garden designers studied old photographs assembled by historian Scott Marshall and writings uncovered by landscape historian Cynthia Zaitzevsky to try to identify and copy the original plantings as much as possible. Even the height of the water spraying from the recreated dolphin fountain is based on photographs. One of the antique varieties Wharton planted, which horticulturist Gordon Clark is still trying to acquire, is called Old Cellar Hole. But old labor-intensive plants have been superseded by newer varieties in some cases. For instance, the Arnold Arboretum's Peter del Tredici identified the original white petunias that surrounded the fountain in old photographs as a wild Mexican species, which was then obtained and grown from seed. But soon people were complaining about the work entailed in deadheading this annual -- just as one of Wharton's literary houseguests had in a letter after he unwisely had volunteered to help out in the garden. This year, the fountain is planted with modern petunias. It is more unusual and difficult to restore a garden than a building because gardens are so much more ephemeral. This project could probably not have happened if Wharton had not become recognized as a great American author, if her gardens had not been such a key element in her creative vision, or if the footprints of the garden had not remained intact without new buildings or subdivisions rising on top of them in the http://www.boston.com/yourlife/home/articles/2005/08/11/a_writers_other_great_passion 12/14/2005 A-writer's other great passion, restored - The Boston Globe Page 3 of 3 intervening century. All these components have enabled a near miracle to occur: the recreation of one of the great Berkshire summer house gardens of the Gilded Age a century after it first bloomed. Most of the grand contemporary gardens are long gone. But you can visit two notable survivors while you are in the area: Naumkeag, 9 Prospect Hill, Stockbridge (413-298-3239), the former home of Joseph Choate, US ambassador to England in Wharton's day, and Chesterwood, 4 Lanesville Road, Stockbridge (413-298-3579, ext. 211), home of Lincoln Memorial sculptor Daniel Chester French. Special exhibits and lectures this summer are observing "The House of Mirth" centennial at The Mount. For more information on hours, tours, exhibitions, and lecture programs, visit edithwharton.org or call 413-637- 1899. © Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company http://www.boston.com/yourlife/home/articles/2005/08/11/a_writers_other_great_passion. 12/14/2005 The Mount | Edith Wharton's Estate and Gardens Page 1 of 3 THE MOUNT Estate & Gardens About Press Room The Mount, Edith Wharton's Landmark Estate, Pur Prized Library from Rare Book Dealer in England Lenox, MA (December 15, 2005) -- Read the New York Times article Stephanie Copeland, President and Executive Director of The Mount, t Landmark country estate in Lenox, MA, designed and built in 1902 by Wharton, today announced the purchase of the writer's 2,600 volume dealer and bibliophile George Ramsden, owner of Stone Trough Books, England. Ms. Wharton left the unique library in her will to her close friend, the r in trust for his son, Colin Clark, her godson. Colin Clark later sold the I LTD of London, which in turn sold it to Mr. Ramsden in 1984. The Mou library and will ship it back to Lenox, MA where it will be on display to the first time to beginning in May of 2006. The purchase was made po benefactor. Considered one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, Edith Whai born into wealth in "Old New York," a rigidly-structured society that di: achieving anything beyond a proper marriage. She wrote more than 4 including such classics as the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Age of Innoce Custom of the Country. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the | of Mirth, a popular success that launched her career as a major writer. The library will form the centerpiece of the fund-raising effort to restor herself assembled and edited The Book of the Homeless, an anthology writers, artists, and composers of her day (including Henry James, Mo raise money for her refugee relief work during World War I. The Mount books to recognize contributors to its capital campaign. Names of maj http://www.edithwharton.org/about/4.php?record=23 12/16/2005 The Mount I Edith Wharton's Estate and Gardens Page 2 of 3 permanently associated with titles from the library, in the same way t named for donors in a building campaign. Edith Wharton's library is a window on her life as a writer and the frier other great intellects and artists of her time. In her autobiography, sh my life was under my roof, among my books and my intimate friends. periods of her life, from when she was a girl of ten up until a few week age of seventy-five, and reflects both her deep American roots and he Europe. The books have great value for scholarship in what they reveal about 1 influences on her writing, and her intellectual development through th firm pencil-strokes she made in the margins. In a letter to Sara Nortor copy of George Santayana's Sonnets and other Verses, she wrote: "I S book with a faint scratch here and there to show you the detached thir the nearest approach to talking over a book together." In addition to containing 22 copies of her own works, some of the mor in the collection according to independent appraisers include: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1866, first Amer copies printed. Wharton recalled that as a child she knew Alice "by The Golden Bowl by Henry James, signed by the author: "To Edith 1 - Henry James, November 1904." There are more than 25 works by including Terminations, Embarrassments, and Wings of the Dove, C intimate friendship. Ulysses by James Joyce. This is one of 750 copies published by Sylv and Company in 1922. America and the World War by Theodore Roosevelt, 1915. Inscribe from an American - American! Theodore Roosevelt Feb 6th 1915." The Education of Henry Adams (Privately printed for the author), 1. copies. Sets of books from her father's library, including his two-volume set of the poets she loved, including Arnold, Browning, Coleridge, Donne, Ho Tennyson, Yeats, and three volumes of Walt Whitman, a personal favo Essentially self-educated, she was fluent in French, German, and Italia literature in translation. She revered the works of Goethe and read all fifteen. Works by Italian writers including Boccaccio, Machiavelli, Dant by side on her shelves with French masters Racine, Pascal, Balzac, Ste Proust. http://www.edithwharton.org/about/4.php?record=23 12/16/2005 The Mount I Edith Wharton's Estate and Gardens Page 3 of 3 Edith Wharton had an insatiable curiosity on a wide range of subjects. and science through Darwin and Huxley, philosophy with Nietzsche an collected works on the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church, Freethou Christian Science, and Mormonism. Wharton herself was a published a interior design and landscape gardening, and included numerous work own collection. Her library also includes books on her craft, including a Thesaurus, and travel books that reflect her many tours throughout El Mediterranean. The collection even chronicles her brief love affair, at 47, with the Ame Morton Fullerton, who sent her a copy of the great love story, Tristan I 1909 with a poem dedicated to her on the flyleaf. There are books fror her collection as well as those from other intellectuals of her day, inclu Henry James and Theodore Roosevelt. According to George Ramsden's catalogue, Edith Wharton's Library: "E palace of dreams, the scene of her 'aloneness' but the key to her close expression of a supremely imaginative life." Ms. Copeland, President and Executive Director of The Mount, Edith W MA, said: "We are thrilled that the empty shelves of the library at The filled with Edith Wharton's lifelong collection of books. Nothing informs extraordinary genius than the books that helped to shape her life and house and gardens, the return of her library to The Mount completes t remarkable American woman." http://www.edithwharton.org/about/4.php?record=23 12/16/2005 Edith Wharton, 75, Is Dead in France Page 1 of 7 On THIS Day Back to Main August 13, 1937 Student OBITUARY IS News Summaries Edith Wharton, 75, Is Dead Daily News Quiz in France Word of the Day Test Prep Question of the Day Special Cable to The New York Times Science Q & A Letters to the PARIS, Aug. 12.--Edith Wharton, Editor American novelist, died yesterday afternoon Ask a Reporter at her villa, Pavilion Colombes, near Saint Web Navigator Brice, Seine-et-Oise. She had been in fairly good health until she Teacher suffered an apoplectic stroke early yesterday morning and did not recover Daily Lesson Plan consciousness. She died at 5:30 P.M., but Lesson Plan her death was not known in Paris. At her Archive bedside was her friend, Mrs. Royal Tyler. News Snapshot Issues in Depth Many of her friends will drive tomorrow to On This Day in the villa, where the body is lying in state. History Among them will be Edward Tuck, the Crossword Puzzle philanthropist; Mrs. Walter Gay Wells and American and French officials. Campus Weblines Education News Funeral of Author Newspaper in Today Education (NIE) Teacher Resources Saint Brice Sous Foret, France, Aug. 12 Classroom (AP).--Edith Wharton will be buried in the Subscriptions Protestant cemetery at Versailles tomorrow. Representatives of the French War Veterans Association of Saint Brice will Parent accompany the coffin, honoring her for her war work for France. Conversation Starters She is survived by a niece, Mrs. Max Vacation Donation Ferrard, wife of a noted historian Plan Discussion Topics Published Thirty-eight Books Site Guide Edith Wharton was the child as well as the Feedback author of the Age of Innocence. In her http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0124.html 6/27/2014 Edith Wharton, 75, Is Dead in France Page 2 of 7 Job Opportunities seventy-five years of life she published thirty-eight books, including that great love story , "Ethan Frome." But her reputation rested mostly upon her achievement as the chronicler of Fifth Avenue, when the brownstone front hid wealth and dignity at its ease upon the antimacassar-covered plush chairs of the Brown Decade. As a child she lived within the inner circle of New York society that always thought of itself as spelled with a capital S. In her ancestry was a long succession of important names. The Schermerhorns, the Joneses, Pendletons, Stevenses, Ledyards, Rhinelanders and Gallatins, who had led the social life of New York before Mrs. Astor's horse was a symbol, before Commodore from Staten Island, or men with strange new names from the West had descended on the town. Her own father, although not overly rich, was, nevertheless, able to live, as she said, "a life of leisure and amiable hospitality." Besides Fifth Avenue, there was Newport. Beyond that was only Europe. When little Edith walked on the Avenue she passed nothing but brownstone and the cow pasture of the Misses Kennedy. When she went on Bailey's Beach she shielded her fair skin from the sun with a black veil. When she went to Europe it was an escape from the crudities of American society--even that with a capital S. Innocence was the life of her childhood and it was the stuff of her better books. Much Abroad as Child Edith Wharton was born Edith Newbold Jones on Jan. 24, 1862. Her father was George Frederick Jones; her mother was the former Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander, and back of each were Colonial and Revolutionary ancestors. When she was 4 the family went abroad in pursuit of culture, health and economy, for her father's http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0124.html, 6/27/2014 Edith Wharton, 75, Is Dead in France Page 3 of 7 inherited funds had not increased during the Civil War that was just ended. Her early impressions were the international--New York and Newport, Rome, Paris and Madrid. Added to this was a vivid imagination, which found outlet in story telling even before she could read. In keeping with the sheltered life of the time, she was never sent to school, but was taught at home. She began writing short stories in her early teens, but they were never about "real people." Little happened to the real people she knew; what did "happen" was generally not talked about. It was from this background that Mrs. Wharton was to inherit the belief from which she never departed, that "any one gifted with the least creative faculty knows the absurdity of such a charge" as that of "putting flesh-and-blood people into books." Later critics were to say that in this was her greatest lack. The young author wrote her first efforts on brown paper salvaged from parcels. She was not encouraged. "In the eyes of our provincial society," she was later to say, "authorship was still regarded as something between a black art and a form of manual labor." Each was equally despised in her social level. Her first acceptance was three poems which she sent to the editor with her calling card attached. Wrote a Novel at 11 In her autobiography Mrs. Wharton gives a picture of her literary beginnings along with a picture of her life. Her first novel, written when she as 11, began: ""Oh, how do you do, Mrs. Brown?' said Mrs. Tompkins. 'If only I had known you were going to call I should have tidied up the drawing room." The little girl showed it to her mother, whose icy comment was: "Drawing rooms are always tidy." http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0124.html 6/27/2014 Edith Wharton, 75, Is Dead in France Page 4 of 7 Her first published book was a collaboration called "The Decoration of Homes." How many short stories she wrote before 1899 is not know. But she was encouraged in her writing by such friends as Egerton Winthrop and Walter Berry and somehow, while abroad, met Paul Bourget, the "chronicler of the bourgeoisie." Other mentors were William Brownell and Edward Burlingame, for many years editor of Scribner's Magazine. In her autobiography she writes: "I do not think I have ever forgotten one word of the counsels they gave me." To which a well- known critic added, "One well believes it." But it was Henry James who was her closest friend and most worth-while advocate. She was always his respectful disciple and, although in their many meetings he disguised the severity of his judgments with his usual elaborate verbal courtesies, he managed to convey the meaning of his criticism. He remained her close friend until his death. In 1899 Mrs. Wharton--she had been married to Edward Wharton, a Boston banker, in 1885-- published her first book: "The Greater Inclination." In this may be found two of her best short stories, "The Pelican" and "Souls Belated." This volume did not make her a wide reputation overnight. In fact, it was not until 1905 that she gained a large public, although in the interim there had appeared these books: "The Touchstone," "Crucial Instances," "The Valley of Decision" and "The Descent of Man and Other Stories," and her flare for travel books had asserted itself in two volumes on Italy, its villas and gardens. In 1905 she published her first of many best-sellers, "The House of Mirth." Most critics do not consider this her greatest book, but its popularity established her as a writer. This was in reality her first novel, although she had written long short stories in her other books. Its title came from the http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0124.html 6/27/2014 Edith Wharton, 75, Is Dead in France Page 5 of 7 biblical assertion, "The heart of fools is in the House of Mirth," and it was a happy title for projecting, as Wilbur Cross once put it, "a group of pleasure-loving New Yorkers, mostly as dull as they are immoral, and letting them play out their drama unmolested by others." Other novels came in rapid succession, but none attracted the attention in this country that was reserved for the book Elmer Davis once called "the last great American love story" -- "Ethan Frome." Those which had gone between were "Madame de Treymes," in which certain French critics detected the influence of Flaubert and Maupassant; "The Fruit of the Tree," "The Hermit and the Wild Woman" and "Artemis to Actaeon." "Ethan Frome," which was most successfully dramatized two seasons ago, was written in 1911. In it she most successfully blended the psychological refinements she had learned from Henry James with her own inimitable ability to tell a story with a beginning and an end. One critic has said it is comparable only to the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne as a tragedy of New England life. A novelette, it is considered a masterpiece of love and frustration, and is likely to stand, despite its comparative brevity, as her most accomplished work. Until 1906 Mrs. Wharton had divided her time between New York and her Summer home at Lenox, Mass. In that year she went to live in France, in Summer at Saint Brice and in Winter at Hyeres in Provence. Did Relief Work in War When the World War broke out she was in Paris and she plunged at once into relief work, opening a room for skilled women of the quarter where she lived who were thrown out of employment by the closing of workrooms. She also fed and housed 600 Belgian refugee orphans. In recognition France awarded her the Cross of the Legion http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0124.html 6/27/2014 Edith Wharton, 75, Is Dead in France Page 6 of 7 of Honor and Belgium made her a Chevalier of the Order of Leopold. Meanwhile she wrote stories and articles on the war, including "Fighting France" and "The Marne." After the war she visited Africa with General Lyautey at the invitation of the French Government, and wrote as a result "In Morocco." "The Age of Innocence" was her next book and in terms of sales her most successful. Here she used actually the materials she had hitherto used only for background--the social life of the New York into which she had been born and in which she was bread. Published serially here and abroad, it was widely read, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for 1920. It showed Mrs. Wharton at her best, understanding the cramped society of her youth, unaware of the world beyond it. Four years later she followed it with four novelettes published under the title of "Old New York," a constricted panorama of society in the Forties, Fifties, Sixties and Seventies respectively. Shortly after the publication of this volume she was made an officer of the Legion of Honor. Then she returned to America, to be awarded the Gold Medal of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the first woman to be SO honored. In 1924 she also became the first woman to be awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by Yale University. In 1930 she was made a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Four years later she was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Since that time she had written other books, including "Twilight Sleep," a story of fashionable life in modern New York; "The Children," a study of the children of expatriated divorcees; "Hudson River Bracketed," a study of a modern writer, and "Certain People," a collection of short stories. http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0124.html 6/27/2014 Edith Wharton, 75, Is Dead in France Page 7 of 7 But that was many years ago. That generation which knew her best for "The Age of Innocence" flocked to see "Ethan Frome" when it was adapted for the stage by Owen Davis and his son, Donald. Presented on Broadway with Pauline Lord, Ruth Gordon and Raymond Massey in the leading roles, the grim tragedy proved to be as good theatre as it had previously been a great book. "Ethan Frome" was not the only one of her books to have been translated into plays in recent years. "The Age of Innocence" helped add to the luster of Katharine Cornell eight years ago, and one of her shorter pieces became "The Old Maid" of the theatre, in which Judith Anderson and Helen Menken starred in 1935. Back to the top of this page. Back to today's page. Go to another day. Copyright 2011 The New York Times Company Children's Privacy Notice http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0124.html 6/27/2014 Edith Wharton, 75, Is Dead in France Page 1 of 5 New On THIS Day Back to Main August 13, 1937 Student OBITUARY News Summaries Edith Wharton, 75, Is Dead in France Daily News Quiz Word of the Day Special Cable to The New York Times Test Prep Question of the Day PARIS, Aug. 12.--Edith Wharton, American novelist, died yesterday Science O & A afternoon at her villa, Pavilion Colombes, near Saint Brice, Seine-et- Letters to the Oise. Editor Ask a Reporter She had been in fairly good health until she suffered an apoplectic stroke Web Navigator early yesterday morning and did not recover consciousness. She died at 5:30 P.M., but her death was not known in Paris. At her bedside was her friend, Mrs. Royal Tyler. Teacher Many of her friends will drive tomorrow to the villa, where the body is Daily Lesson Plan lying in state. Among them will be Edward Tuck, the philanthropist; Lesson Plan Mrs. Walter Gay Wells and American and French officials. Archive News Snapshot Funeral of Author Today Issues in Depth On This Day in Saint Brice Sous Foret, France, Aug. 12 (AP) -- Edith Wharton will be History buried in the Protestant cemetery at Versailles tomorrow. Crossword Puzzle Representatives of the French War Veterans Association of Saint Brice Campus Weblines will accompany the coffin, honoring her for her war work for France. Education News Newspaper in She is survived by a niece, Mrs. Max Ferrard, wife of a noted historian. Education (NIE) Teacher Resources Published Thirty-eight Books Classroom Subscriptions Edith Wharton was the child as well as the author of the Age of Innocence. In her seventy-five years of life she published thirty-eight books, including that great love story, "Ethan Frome." But her reputation Parent rested mostly upon her achievement as the chronicler of Fifth Avenue, when the brownstone front hid wealth and dignity at its ease upon the Conversation antimacassar-covered plush chairs of the Brown Decade. Starters Vacation Donation As a child she lived within the inner circle of New York society that Plan always thought of itself as spelled with a capital S. In her ancestry was a Discussion Topies long succession of important names. The Schermerhorns, the Joneses, Pendletons, Stevenses, Ledyards, Rhinelanders and Gallatins, who had led the social life of New York before Mrs. Astor's horse was a symbol, Site Guide before Commodore from Staten Island, or men with strange new names Feedback from the West had descended on the town. Her own father, although not http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0124.html 2/27/2014 Edith Wharton, 75, Is Dead in France Page 2 of 5 Job Opportunities overly rich, was, nevertheless, able to live, as she said, "a life of leisure and amiable hospitality." TO Besides Fifth Avenue, there was Newport. Beyond that was only Europe. When little Edith walked on the Avenue she passed nothing but brownstone and the cow pasture of the Misses Kennedy. When she went on Bailey's Beach she shielded her fair skin from the sun with a black veil. When she went to Europe it was an escape from the crudities of American society--even that with a capital S. Innocence was the life of her childhood and it was the stuff of her better books. Much Abroad as Child Edith Wharton was born Edith Newbold Jones on Jan. 24, 1862. Her father was George Frederick Jones; her mother was the former Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander, and back of each were Colonial and Revolutionary ancestors. When she was 4 the family went abroad in pursuit of culture, health and economy, for her father's inherited funds had not increased during the Civil War that was just ended. Her early impressions were the international--New York and Newport, Rome, Paris and Madrid. Added to this was a vivid imagination, which found outlet in story telling even before she could read. In keeping with the sheltered life of the time, she was never sent to school, but was taught at home. She began writing short stories in her early teens, but they were never about "real people." Little happened to the real people she knew; what did "happen" was generally not talked about. It was from this background that Mrs. Wharton was to inherit the belief from which she never departed, that "any one gifted with the least creative faculty knows the absurdity of such a charge" as that of "putting flesh-and-blood people into books." Later critics were to say that in this was her greatest lack. The young author wrote her first efforts on brown paper salvaged from parcels. She was not encouraged. "In the eyes of our provincial society," she was later to say, "authorship was still regarded as something between a black art and a form of manual labor." Each was equally despised in her social level. Her first acceptance was three poems which she sent to the editor with her calling card attached. Wrote a Novel at 11 In her autobiography Mrs. Wharton gives a picture of her literary beginnings along with a picture of her life. Her first novel, written when she as 11, began: ""Oh, how do you do, Mrs. Brown?' said Mrs. Tompkins. 'If only I had known you were going to call I should have tidied up the drawing room.'" The little girl showed it to her mother, whose icy comment was: "Drawing rooms are always tidy." http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0124.html 2/27/2014 Edith Wharton, 75, Is Dead in France Page 3 of 5 Her first published book was a collaboration called "The Decoration of Homes." How many short stories she wrote before 1899 is not know. But she was encouraged in her writing by such friends as Egerton Winthrop and Walter Berry and somehow, while abroad, met Paul Bourget, the "chronicler of the bourgeoisie." Other mentors were William Brownell and Edward Burlingame, for many years editor of Scribner's Magazine. In her autobiography she writes: "I do not think I have ever forgotten one word of the counsels they gave me." To which a well- known critic added, "One well believes it." But it was Henry James who was her closest friend and most worth- while advocate. She was always his respectful disciple and, although in their many meetings he disguised the severity of his judgments with his usual elaborate verbal courtesies, he managed to convey the meaning of his criticism. He remained her close friend until his death. In 1899 Mrs. Wharton--she had been married to Edward Wharton, a Boston banker, in 1885-- published her first book: "The Greater Inclination." In this may be found two of her best short stories, "The Pelican" and "Souls Belated." This volume did not make her a wide reputation overnight. In fact, it was not until 1905 that she gained a large public, although in the interim there had appeared these books: "The Touchstone," "Crucial Instances," "The Valley of Decision" and "The Descent of Man and Other Stories," and her flare for travel books had asserted itself in two volumes on Italy, its villas and gardens. In 1905 she published her first of many best-sellers, "The House of Mirth." Most critics do not consider this her greatest book, but its popularity established her as a writer. This was in reality her first novel, although she had written long short stories in her other books. Its title came from the biblical assertion, "The heart of fools is in the House of Mirth," and it was a happy title for projecting, as Wilbur Cross once put it, "a group of pleasure-loving New Yorkers, mostly as dull as they are immoral, and letting them play out their drama unmolested by others." Other novels came in rapid succession, but none attracted the attention in this country that was reserved for the book Elmer Davis once called "the last great American love story"--"Ethan Frome." Those which had gone between were "Madame de Treymes," in which certain French critics detected the influence of Flaubert and Maupassant; "The Fruit of the Tree," "The Hermit and the Wild Woman" and "Artemis to Actaeon." "Ethan Frome," which was most successfully dramatized two seasons ago, was written in 1911. In it she most successfully blended the psychological refinements she had learned from Henry James with her own inimitable ability to tell a story with a beginning and an end. One critic has said it is comparable only to the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne as a tragedy of New England life. A novelette, it is considered a masterpiece of love and frustration, and is likely to stand, despite its comparative brevity, as her most accomplished work. http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0124.html 2/27/2014 Edith Wharton, 75, Is Dead in France Page 4 of 5 Until 1906 Mrs. Wharton had divided her time between New York and her Summer home at Lenox, Mass. In that year she went to live in France, in Summer at Saint Brice and in Winter at Hyeres in Provence. Did Relief Work in War When the World War broke out she was in Paris and she plunged at once into relief work, opening a room for skilled women of the quarter where she lived who were thrown out of employment by the closing of workrooms. She also fed and housed 600 Belgian refugee orphans. In recognition France awarded her the Cross of the Legion of Honor and Belgium made her a Chevalier of the Order of Leopold. Meanwhile she wrote stories and articles on the war, including "Fighting France" and "The Marne." After the war she visited Africa with General Lyautey at the invitation of the French Government, and wrote as a result "In Morocco." "The Age of Innocence" was her next book and in terms of sales her most successful. Here she used actually the materials she had hitherto used only for background--the social life of the New York into which she had been born and in which she was bread. Published serially here and abroad, it was widely read, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for 1920. It showed Mrs. Wharton at her best, understanding the cramped society of her youth, unaware of the world beyond it. Four years later she followed it with four novelettes published under the title of "Old New York," a constricted panorama of society in the Forties, Fifties, Sixties and Seventies respectively. Shortly after the publication of this volume she was made an officer of the Legion of Honor. Then she returned to America, to be awarded the Gold Medal of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the first woman to be SO honored. In 1924 she also became the first woman to be awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by Yale University. In 1930 she was made a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Four years later she was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Since that time she had written other books, including "Twilight Sleep," a story of fashionable life in modern New York; "The Children," a study of the children of expatriated divorcees; "Hudson River Bracketed," a study of a modern writer, and "Certain People," a collection of short stories. But that was many years ago. That generation which knew her best for "The Age of Innocence" flocked to see "Ethan Frome" when it was adapted for the stage by Owen Davis and his son, Donald. Presented on Broadway with Pauline Lord, Ruth Gordon and Raymond Massey in the leading roles, the grim tragedy proved to be as good theatre as it had previously been a great http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0124.html 2/27/2014 Edith Wharton, 75, Is Dead in France Page 5 of 5 book. "Ethan Frome" was not the only one of her books to have been translated into plays in recent years. "The Age of Innocence" helped add to the luster of Katharine Cornell eight years ago, and one of her shorter pieces became "The Old Maid" of the theatre, in which Judith Anderson and Helen Menken starred in 1935. Back to the top of this page. Back to today's page. Go to another day. Copyright 2011 The New York Times Company Children's Privacy Notice http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0124.htm 2/27/2014 3/4/2015 Edith Wharton at 150 3/0/15 New York Social YOUR LINK TO SOCIETY iary Published on New York Social Diary (http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com) Home > Edith Wharton at 150 Edith Wharton at 150 [1] Bar Harbor's Main St., 1881. by Brad Emerson, The Downeast Dilettante [2] Several things I intended to do in the last few days have slipped past me - - although seemingly fully conscious and alert, I forgot to go to a lunch that I was looking forward to - I have been forgiven, but feel like a cur - and I forgot to post this little bit about Edith Wharton and her visits to Maine, as I had intended to on January 24th, her 150th birthday. Significant events of her early life played out here, and of course those of us who are partisans of this part of Maine indulge in speculation about what would have happened had it been Maine, rather than Lenox, where she had chosen to live after departing Newport. Ethan Frome might have been a Lobster fisherman, and under the influence of the good clean Maine air, Lily Bart might have married a college professor who summered in Northeast Harbor and lived happily ever after. In 1880, the future Mrs. Wharton's older brother Frederic Jones and his wife Mary Cadwalader were putting the finishing touches on Reef Point, their new summer house on the Shore Path in Bar Harbor. Their architects were a leading Boston firm, Rotch & Tilden, who were to be designers of a number of Bar Harbor's grander estates. That same summer, the senior Joneses and young Edith forsook their usual Young Edith Wharton. Newport season, spending it instead at http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/print/1907768 1/6 3/4/2015 Edith Wharton at 150 Bar Harbor. Accompanying them was Harry Leyden Stevens, the son of social parvenu Mrs. Paran Stevens. Harry Stevens was rumored to be engaged to Edith, although friends, who called him her 'shadow', felt it would not last. Reef Point, the Jones cottage at Bar Harbor. 3/4/2015 Edith Wharton at 150 The Shore Path, like the Cliff Walk at Newport, traversed between the ocean and large estates, a favorite destination for late afternoon walks. The next two summers were spent in Europe, where it was hoped that the climate would prove beneficial to Mr. Jones' health. It did not, and he died there in March of 1882. Returning to Newport, Wharton's engagement to Harry Stevens was officially announced, and nearly as soon ended, apparently by the interference of his mother (on this score, Wharton would later exact her revenge by using Mrs. Stevens as the model for the comic Mrs. Lemuel Struthers, the arriviste widow of a shoe polish manufacturer, in The Age of Innocence). In 1883, Lucretia Rhinelander Jones, wishing to put the sad events behind them, took Edith once again to Bar Harbor. Steamers at the wharf in Bar Harbor C. 1880. The buckboards transported arriving visitors to the hotels. It is likely that Wharton & Walter Berry rented their canoe here (Courtesy MCHP). That July in Maine, two of the defining relationships of Edith Jones' future life were begun. Bar Harbor was reaching its stride as a major stop on the summer rounds of Society, the anti-Newport, (relatively) simpler, (relatively) less formal, with healthy emphasis on outdoor activities, and with less rigid chaperoning of young people, it was considered an ideal spot for romance. http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/print/1907768 3/6 3/4/2015 Edith Wharton at 150 Pastimes included dances at the big hotels, notably Rodick's, where the huge lobby was known as 'The Fish Bowl", hiking on the mountain trails, and canoeing. It was against this backdrop that Edith met and fell in with Walter Berry, a well connected young lawyer and budding aesthete staying that summer at the Rodick Hotel, whom she would later refer to as 'the great love of my life'. A CANOE PARTY. A Canoe Party, from 'Bar Harbor Days' by Mrs. F. Burton Harrison 1886. Whether their friendship was actually ever romantic has ever been a subject of speculation, for Wharton later destroyed most of her correspondence with Berry. A surviving letter from Berry to Wharton in 1923 hints cryptically at that summer, and of a previous conversation: "Dearest - The real dream - mine - was in the canoe and in the night afterwards, - for / lay awake wondering and wondering, - and then, when morning came, wondering how / could have wondered, - / a $-less lawyer (not even that yet) with just about enough cash for the canoe and for Rodick's bill - And then, later, in the little cottage Newport, / wondered why / hadn't - for it would have been good, - and the slices of years slid by. Well, my dear, I've never 'wondered' about anyone else, and there wouldn't be much of me if you were cut out of it. Forty years of it is you, dear. W." http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/print/1907768 4/6 3/4/2015 Edith Wharton at 150 The Rodick Hotel, newly enlarged to 400 rooms in 1881, as it appeared when Walter Berry stayed there. Its 500-foot wooden veranda was a favorite spot for flirtation and gossip. Berry's tennis holiday came to an end, and the friendship begun in Bar Harbor was apparently not picked up again until the 1890s in Newport, but no matter, for on the scene appeared an old friend of Edith's older brother Harry, Edward Wharton of Boston, a 33-year-old gentleman of leisure. Though he had known Edith since childhood, it was that summer at Bar Harbor that he began to pay her court, and two years later they were married. Only by chance of timing did another of Mrs. Wharton's great friendships not receive its initial spark. Only days after the Joneses left Bar Harbor that summer, Henry James arrived for a visit. That friendship instead would have to wait until the latter part of the decade. In 1898, by now a published writer, suffering from bronchial complaints and at odds with her editors over publication of some short stories, Mrs. Wharton and Teddy went up to Bar Harbor for a change of scenery, visiting her sister-in-law, now divorced from Frederic Jones. To supplement her reduced income, Mary Jones was by now the manager of Henry James' literary affairs in America, and would be Edith's agent, and her daughter Beatrix was embarked on her career as a landscape Edith Wharton in 1905 at The Mount. designer. Though the weather was not always reliable (the very definition of a Maine summer - leaving damp Newport for Maine would be analogous to carrying coals to Newcastle), Wharton recovered. While on Mount Desert, the Whartons visited Teddy's cousin Mrs. Gardiner, whose cottage was to Edith an 'ideal of a country place', and inspired her desire to have a place away from the seashore, culminating in her purchase of the land at Lenox where she would build 'The Mount' (which bore little resemblance to the plain shingle style of the Gardiner house). Within a few years of course, Wharton the renowned novelist, would give up America entirely and remove herself to France. Although she remained devotedly close to Mary Jones and Beatrix Jones Farrand, her closest relatives, Wharton did not again visit Bar Harbor, although over the years she did send more than one of her fictional characters there in the course of their navigations through the Social waters. http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/print/1907768 5/6 3/4/2015 Edith Wharton at 150 Pavilion Colombe, St. Brice-sous-Forêt, France, where Edith Wharton died of a stroke in 1937. For many facts in this piece, / am indebted information gleaned from the works of Wharton's excellent biographers - R.W.B. Lewis, Hermione Lee, Eleanor Dwight (who herself summered on the Shore Path in Bar Harbor), Louis Auchincloss, and Shari Benstock. Source URL: htp://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/social-history/2012/edith-wharton-at-15 Links [1] htp://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/social-history/2012/edith-wharton-at-150 [2] http://thedowneastdilettante.blogspot.com/ http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/print/1907768 6/6 THE AGE OF INNOCENCE BY EDITH WHARTON ries called "novels," what a pleasure it is to turn the pages of this consummate work of art. The common method today of writing a novel is to begin with the birth of the hero, shove in all experiences that the author can remember of his own child- hood, take him to school, throw in more experiences, introduce him to the her- oine, more experiences, quit when the book seems long enough, and write the whole biography in colloquial jargon. Here is a novel whose basis is a story. It begins on a night at the opera. The charac- ters are introduced naturally - every ac- tion and every conversation advance the plot. The style is a thing of beauty from first page to last. One dwells with pleasure on the "exquisite moments" of passion and tragedy, and of the "silver correspon- dences" that rise from the sky like the moon on a cloudless night. New York soci- ety and customs are described with an ac- curacy that is almost uncanny; to read these pages is to live again. The two young women of the story are contrasted in a manner that is of the essence of drama without being artificial. The radiantly beautiful young wife might have had her way without a shadow on it, were it not for the appearance of the Countess Olenska, who is, what the other women are not, a personality. Newland cumbers with a steel knife? Archer, between these two women, and OCT. 17, 1920 It was "The House of Mirth" that gave loved by both, is not at all to be envied. rs. Wharton's admirable career is a pro- Mrs. Wharton an international reputa- The love scenes between him and Ellen ression from the external to the internal; tion. If one wishes to see how far her art are wonderful in their terrible, inarticu- e began as a decorator and is now an has advanced since that popular book, late passion; it is curious how much more alyst. She has always been an expert in one has merely to compare it with "The real they are than the unrestrained de- ardens and in furniture. Her first book Age of Innocence." By the side of the abso- tailed descriptions thought by so many as called "Decoration of Houses," writ- lute mastery of the plot, character and writers to be realism. n in 1897, and in 1904 she produced a style displayed in her latest novel, "The I wonder if the horrible moment when ork on Italian villas and their gardens. House of Mirth" seems almost crude. Newland Archer, looking at his devoted hese studies are much in evidence in her Like her idol and master, Henry James, young wife, suddenly has the diabolical ovel; I do not remember when I have she is forever comparing America with wish that she were dead, is a reminis- ad a work of fiction that gives the reader Europe to the latter's advantage. I have cence of Mrs. Wharton's early studies of ) vivid an idea of the furnishing and illu- no quarrel with her on this score, for, after Sudermann. In a powerful story by that inating of rooms in fashionable houses all, it is simply a matter of taste, so far as writer, "The Wish," not only is that mo- : one will find in "The Age of Innocence." questions of art are concerned; but it is mentary impulse the root of the tragedy, Those who are interested in good din- only occasionally in this latest book that but it is analyzed with such skill that no ers - and who is not? - will find much the direct comparison is made. Describ- one is likely to forget it. It comes into this admire in these brilliant pages. Many ing a hot day in Boston: novel like a sudden chill. ears ago when reading about banquets "Archer found a cab and drove to the And is not Guy de Maupassant out of Dickens, I determined that some day I Somerset Club for breakfast. Even the place in the early seventies? Archer is un- ould write an essay on novelists from fashionable quarters had the air of untidy packing some new books - "a new vol- e culinary point of view. I have never domesticity to which no excess of heat ume of Herbert Spencer, another col- t around to it, but this story would loom ever degrades the European cities." lection of Guy de Maupassant's incompa- rge in such a disquisition. The formal It is a matter of no importance, but I do rable tales." I suppose Mrs. Wharton nd elaborate dinner parties in New York not believe that statement to be true. I knows her Maupassant thoroughly; but the seventies are described here with a should not like to compare my knowledge unless I am quite at fault, it was not in the usto that the studied undercurrent of of Europe with hers; Mrs. Wharton has ei- early seventies, but in the early eighties, ony quite fails to conceal; there were ther missed city scenes in Europe in the that his tales began to appear. bicures in those days who sailed from dog days, or has shut her eyes. But these are flecks. The appearance of eir Fifth Avenue mausoleums not to Yet I am in no mood to complain. Edith "The Age of Innocence" is a matter for lk, but to dine. They were professional Wharton is a writer who brings glory to public rejoicing. It is one of the best novels ners-out, who noticed details - why the name America, and this is her best of the 20th century and looks like a per- bes she allow her butler to cut the cu- book. After reading so many slipshod dia- manent addition to literature. STRATION BY NAI ZAKHARIA Wm. L. Phelps. N.Y.Times Book Revtew. Nov.202