Passions, Artistic Friends, and Travel
During the first two years of 1900, the Whartons built a summer home in Lennox, Massachusetts, naming it “The Mount.” Edith was an avid gardener and her home had extensive gardens. The novelist Henry James (1843–1916) became a lifelong friend during this time. Also from a wealthy family, James had traveled extensively, living in Paris and England, and shared Edith’s sense of irony and humor. Theodore Roosevelt, whose second wife was a distant cousin of Edith’s, met the Whartons when he visited Newport. Later, Edith attended the awarding of TR’s honorary degree from Williams College; he dined at the Wharton’s home on Long Island, Sagamore Hill, and he makes a fictional appearance in The Age of Innocence. During these years, Edith wrote her first novel, The Valley of Decision. In 1903, she toured Italy for material for magazine articles, and she also published another novella, Sanctuary.
A trip through England with Henry James in 1904 was the first of many motor trips through Europe that became part of Edith’s life. She bought a Paris apartment in Faubourg Saint-Germain. Then she discovered her husband was keeping a mistress in Boston and misappropriating her money. She visited England without Teddy and began an affair with a journalist from the London Times named Morton Fullerton. He became the great love of her life and she found the passion that was missing in her marriage. In these years she wrote Italian Villas and Their Gardens and The Descent of Man. She also published one of her more famous novels, The House of Mirth, a social satire about Lily Bart, a beautiful but poor woman trying to marry rich to survive in materialistic New York City.
During this period, Edith socialized with such literary figures as James, Henry Adams, Bourget, Gide, and Cocteau as well as expatriate artists and writers. Teddy Roosevelt dined at her Paris apartment, she began a friendship with Bernard Berenson, and she published another short story collection called Tales of Men and Ghosts. By now, her husband, Teddy, had embezzled over $50,000 from her trust funds; he made restitution later by selling The Mount. By 1910, she was back in Paris and Teddy was in a sanitarium suffering from depression. His father had endured depression and committed suicide in 1891. Teddy would follow in his father’s footsteps, having difficulties with depression until his death in 1928. Between 1910 and 1913, Wharton published Ethan Frome, The Reef, and The Custom of the Country. Continuing her friendship with Berry and Berenson, she legally separated from Teddy, later divorcing him in 1913. She spent the rest of her life in France.
The War and Later Years
In 1914, Wharton urged America to join the war and carried on numerous efforts to help those in need. She founded the American Hostels for Refugees and the Children of Flanders Rescue Committee. Engaging in fund raising and visiting military hospitals, she also helped refugees coming into Paris after the battles of Marne and Ypres, finding them shelter, jobs, and food. She wrote The Book of the Homeless, asking for contributions from writers and artists, and giving the proceeds for war relief. For all these charitable deeds, she was decorated by the French Legion of Honor. In 1918, Wharton bought Villa Jean-Marie near Paris, naming it Pavillon Colombe. She divided her later years between this home and a chateau in the south of France, which was near Hyeres and named Chateau Sainte-Claire. Novels that came out of her war experiences include The Marne (1918), French Ways and Their Meaning (1919), and Sons at the Front (1923). The middle book was an attempt to explain French attitudes to Americans, as she had seen Americans come to Paris after the war and their actions were distasteful to her. As time went by, this abhorrence of American excess was replaced by a feeling that even the narrow-minded social code of 1870s New Yorkers had something noble about its ability to pass on civilized values.
Meanwhile, she was becoming famous as an American woman of letters and she was awarded several prizes during these years. In 1920, The Age of Innocence was published, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1921.Two years later, Wharton came to America for the last time to receive an honorary doctorate from Yale. In 1924, she was awarded the Gold Medal by the National Institute of Arts and letters, the first woman so honored. Over the next five years, she published several important works, including The Writing of Fiction in 1925, which discussed many contemporary writers’ works and also elaborated on her own methods of writing. The Age of Innocence was adapted for the stage and opened at the Empire Theatre in New York on November 27, playing 207 performances. Also during this time, her friend Walter Berry and her ex-husband, Teddy, died. From 1920 to 1933, Wharton spent a great deal of time among authors and artistic circles in Paris. She published her autobiography, A Backward Glance, in 1934, which described the pleasures of her childhood, her early years as an author, and her friends and travels. In 1935, she suffered a slight stroke, but the following year she was writing again and published The World Over. In 1937, while visiting Ogden Codman’s chateau, she suffered another stroke and died on August 11. She was buried in Cimitiere des Gonards in Versailles near Walter Berry. Posthumously, her novel The Buccaneers was published, completed by Marion Mainwaring. Wharton had begun it in 1934, and it was similar in theme to The Custom of the Country, concerning nouveau riche New Yorkers whose daughters go to Europe to seek out aristocratic European titles.
