Old New York – Edith Wharton (1924)

Part of my August reading each year tends to be some vmc titles (or books from equivalent publishers) for All Virago All August which is a reading challenge first started by members of a Virago group on Librarything. This year, I really didn’t do very well, only managing two books – this was the second of them, but what a treat it was.

Edith Wharton is perhaps best known for her novels that depict the upper class society that she herself knew so well. Old New York contains four short novels set in New York of the 1840s, 50s 60s and 70s. Just like in some of her full length novels, here Wharton shows us a society that is ruled by its customs, prejudices and strict moral codes of behaviour, it is a society of great privilege but also one of some suffocation. In these four brilliant stories Wharton uses themes of marriage, infidelity, illegitimacy and jealousy to explore this complex society.

The first novella is False Dawn and concerns the changing fashions of art appreciation, a young man and the expectations placed upon him by his wealthy father. Lewis Raycie is an only son of a brilliant but exacting father. As the novella opens Lewis is preparing to leave home for his Grand Tour – he has also fallen in love with the adopted daughter of another family, who he thinks his father won’t approve of for him. Halston Raycie is a man who has very particular ideas about things – and it seems it is not just his son who find themselves unequal to contradicting him.

“Now and again the gentlemen, warned by a menacing hum, slapped their cheeks, their brows or their bald crowns; but they did so as furtively as possible, for Mr. Halston Raycie, on whose verandah they sat, would not admit that there were mosquitoes at High Point.”

So, when Lewis is charged by his father to return to America with fashionable Italian old masters – it is a quest Lewis takes very seriously, determined to get as much for his father’s money as he can. Halston Raycie has a dream of creating a gallery of heirlooms. Lewis sets out on his travels – naturally he is away for a long time, and while in Italy he is lucky to meet John Ruskin – and it is under his influence and following his advice that Lewis makes the purchases he does. On his return to America, Lewis’ father judges the paintings to be utter rubbish – they are indeed great works, but by artists unknown to Halston Raycie and his associates, and so Lewis is made a laughing stock, punished and derided for his apparent error.

If I had to pick a favourite from the four novellas collected here, then The Old Maid would be it – it concerns a woman who breaks the strict sexual code of her class. Charlotte Lovell is engaged to be married when she reveals to her astonished cousin Delia Lovell Ralston the secret she has been keeping from everyone. Charlotte had briefly felt a great passion for Clem Spender – a young man Delia had once harboured feelings for, before she settled for a safe, society marriage. Charlotte had crossed the line of what was acceptable between unmarried young people of the times, and she bore Clem’s child in secret. The child was placed with people to care for her – but Charlotte loves her child fiercely and wants to be part of her daughters life. Following Delia’s advice and with her help, Charlotte breaks off her engagement – as she is ‘unworthy’ of the man who knows nothing of her transgression. Delia finds a way for Charlotte to have her daughter in her life – although she can never be acknowledged as her mother. The novella mainly focusses on the different ways society allow these two women to experience motherhood – and how the woman seen as ‘the old maid’ is the only one of them to have experienced a strong and memorable passion.

“You could always have told, everyone agreed afterward, that Charlotte Lovell was meant to be an old maid. Even before her illness it had been manifest: there was something prim about her in spite of her fiery hair. Lucky enough for her, poor girl, considering her wretched health in her youth: Mrs James Ralston’s contemporaries, for instance, remembered Charlotte as a mere ghost, coughing her lungs out – that, of course, had been the reason for her breaking her engagement with Joe Ralston.”

The narrator of The Spark is a young man who is fascinated by a man of his parents’ society – in Hayley Delane the narrator sees something different to the other men of his age and type. He is particularly puzzled by Hayley’s marriage – a marriage Hayley entered into against his friends’ advice. Leila is fifteen years younger than her husband – her father a drunken disgrace who has been ejected from his clubs. Leila has no money – and isn’t especially beautiful – she isn’t even in love with Hayley, and after her marriage is often seen indulging in other flirtations. Hayley quietly puts up with all her antics because it seems that he loves her. When Hayley Delane horsewhips a young man for his mistreatment of a horse – it is assumed by everyone that it’s really in revenge for his flirtation with Leila – however it really was because he hated to see a horse beaten. His morality is such though that his actions will be seen to compromise his wife – and so Hayley apologises to the man – and so all is well. Ironically – and Wharton excels at irony – it is Hayley’s goodness and morality bring him into conflict with the society in which he lives.

As so often in Wharton’s fiction it is society’s prejudices and assumptions that hurt those who are suspected of breaking its rules In New Year’s Day we meet Lizzie Hazeldean a woman whose fortunes improved dramatically when she married. There are too many potential spoilers for me to say much about this lovely, subtle story, but when Lizzie is suspected by those who matter of having an affair – she is judged and finally ostracised. In the fate and treatment of Lizzie Hazeldean we see how society treated women – what silly narrow lives these women had, born into a particular class, denied the right the work, yet without sufficient money – marriage was their hope and saviour. This story is, as Marilyn French in her introduction to this edition suggests, a protest to this very situation.

Old New York is a simply marvellous collection of four novellas – classic Wharton storytelling at its best. This was an excellent pick for my All Virago All August.