Louis Auchindoss
EDITH WHARTON AND HER NEW YORKS
Henry James, writing to Edith Wharton's sister-in-law in
1902, warned her that their mutual friend should be "tethered in
native pastures, even if it reduces her to a backyard in New York."
Mrs. Wharton was living, at this time, increasingly
in
Europe, and
he, already an expatriate of twenty years' standing, knew well enough
the danger to the artist inherent in such a way of life. Ten years
later,
in
a letter to Mrs. Wharton herself, we find him repeating
his warning,
this
time with a
wry
little touch of humor at his own
expense:
Your only drawback is not having the homeliness and the inevit–
ability and the happy limitation, and the affluent poverty of a Country
of your Own
(comme moi) par exemple!).
Viewed from the vantage point of today this comment seems
almost a cliche.
It
is hard to read the slick satires of Edith Wharton's
later years about an America which she had not bothered to revisit
for two decades, without reflecting that she appeared, at the end, to
have lost not only her country but her talent. What is curious, there–
fore, is that James should have foreseen this so clearly and yet
should never have quite appreciated how much in 1902, and even
in
1912, she still
had
a country, or at least a city, of her own.
It
may have been that he was too out of touch with New York to see
how well she was still writing about it. Her ties, of course, were
stronger than his. She had been brought up in the city and had mar–
ried there. She had experienced its social life, in greater doses than
she had wanted. She knew its men and women of property; she
knew their history and their origins, their prejudices and ideals, the
source of their money and how they spent their summers. This
