The Children – Edith Wharton (1928)

The Children is the fourth Edith Wharton novel I have read this year. I have been reflecting on how glad I am that I have come to her fairly late. I first read The House of Mirth many, many years ago, when, I think, I was too young to appreciate her. I then re-read it in January and it remains one of my favourite reads of 2012.
The Children I think is probably a novel that is less well-known than some and according to the introduction to my edition by Marilyn French – much less appreciated. Yet I have to say straight off that I loved it.
The subject is one that many people (especially at the time when it was written) may have found rather distasteful – the infatuation of a middle-aged man for a fifteen year old girl. Future readers however will be pleased to know that this story is not Lolita. Judith Wheater is a charmingly honest young girl by turn maternal and childlike whose preoccupations are totally innocent and familial.

“The young face mounting towards him continued to bend over the baby, the girl’s frail shoulders to droop increasingly under their burden, as the congestion ahead of her forced the young lady to maintain her slanting position halfway up the liner’s flank.”

Many Edith Wharton novels are known for their exploration of the old New York society into which she was born and within which she lived for many years. This old New York society with its mores, manners and conventions is very much in the background of this novel. The setting is Europe, yet the characters are from the very sections of society that Edith Wharton is famed for writing about.
While travelling by cruise ship between Algiers and Venice Martin Boyne an unmarried engineer from New York – and very much part of that old New York Society, although a poor one – meets the children of the title. Seven children ranging in age from a toddler to a girl of fifteen, they are a group of full blood, half and step siblings who are travelling with their governess and nursery maids. Judith the eldest has taken on the role of surrogate mother to the younger children. The children’s parents a group of self-centred wealthy nouveau riche – who live mainly out of hotels, and think nothing of marrying, divorcing, re-marrying, and squabbling over their children – are the other section of society that Edith Wharton portrays brilliantly, with a satirical slant. Martin is due to meet up with the woman he has loved for many years, Rose Sellars a conventional member of New York society is newly widowed and now free to acknowledge her feelings for Martin which her marriage had not allowed her to do. Drawn into the lives of the Wheaters however, Martin decides to stay for a couple of days in Venice before going on to Switzerland, and here he involves himself further into the lives of the children and their parents.

“Lady Wrench had snatched up her daughter and stood, in an approved film attitude, pressing Zinnie’s damp cheek against her own, while the child’s orange-coloured curls mixed with the red-gold of hers. “What’s that nasty beast been doing to momma’s darling?” she demanded, glaring over Zinnie’s head at Judith. “Whipping you for wanting to see your own mother, I suppose? You just tell momma what it was and she’ll…”

The children are determined to stay together, rather than be farmed back out to the various natural or stepparents who decide they want them at one time or another. Martin pledges to help, not admitting even to himself at first, his true infatuation to Judith. Martin does have very real affection for all the children, and does want to help them. However when the group follow him to Switzerland without their parent’s knowledge, Martin’s and Rose’s burgeoning engagement is affected. Martin is endlessly pulled between these two different worlds, the world of polite old New York that is represented by Rose Sellars and the less conventional world of the children.
The characters of the children are wonderful, they are funny and endearing, and the relationships between each of them and with Martin Boyne are poignant and deeply charming. Martin is a fool, but a sympathetic one nonetheless. Martin’s dilemmas and mistakes are age-old ones, the ending inevitable and beautifully poignant.