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.
