A Backward Glance by Edith Wharton ...

👆Land‘s End - Wharton‘s Newport RI home

A Backward Glance - Chapters I-V
(Next week, Nov 29, chapters VI-VIII )

Before Newport, there is Rome, Alhambra, Paris, Bad Wildbad (Germany), old brownstone Manhattan, Florence and a yacht tour of the Aegean. We also meet Egerton Winthrop, Ogden Codman, Walter Berry, and kinda/sorta Mr. Wharton. Lush stuff, presented as natural and even middle class. The leisure class world. Thoughts?

Graywacke #whartonbuddyread
@CarolynM @Currey @IMASLOWREADER @jewright @Lcsmcat @Leftcoastzen @TheBookHippie 3d

Graywacke @CarolynM - looks like your handle didn‘t take above 3d

Graywacke Scroll down for a video of Land‘s End. It recently sold for $8.6 million. Be sure to check out the backyard views. https://liladelman.com/listing/42-ledge-rd-newport/ 3d

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Currey @Graywacke ah, yes, nice middle class views 3d

Leftcoastzen Her writing is just wonderful , as always! I knew we were not going to get true confessions! 😁Her descriptions of her travels with such details of the art & architecture, great . I love the details of how NYC changed from her youth . And her love of books and her father‘s library ! I know people of means loved the long vacation tours . It was harder then , but they had nothing to compare it to . Part of their education indeed ! 3d

Currey @Graywacke She does indeed seem to believe that she was middle class but during that era, the life she describes is not middle class. Her father‘s reversals of fortunes even did not leave them destitute but only forced them to live a cheaper life in Europe. 3d

Currey @Graywacke @leftcoastzen I really enjoyed the section about her mother‘s English and how that reflected exactly their place in society. And as always, it is wonderful to be back in Wharton‘s prose. I also was delighted to see how her life travels turned up later in her books 3d

Graywacke @Leftcoastzen that prose. How does she do it? It‘s the first thing I notice here is how lovely that voice is. Relaxes this reader immediately 3d

Graywacke @Currey right. I think she is clearly advertising the lost joys of the leisure class. But she can‘t bring herself to acknowledge it wasn‘t the fairest of lives. So she pleads denial, while fronting amazing travel, food, books and houses. But - what a childhood! And I love the visual impressions of 1870‘s Manhattan (edited) 3d

Graywacke @Currey one side trip to the accidentally wrong part of the Alps formed the basis of 3 books! I was also fascinated by the focus on the proper spoken English 3d

Graywacke @Leftcoastzen @Currey i‘m so happy you‘re enjoying. I didn‘t know what to expect. It feels lovely so far 3d

Lcsmcat Wow. If that‘s middle class, I‘m destitute. 😂 I think it shows how many even more wealthy people she hung around with! 3d

Lcsmcat I loved her mention of the (then) unpublished Fast and Loose “It was destined for the private enjoyment of a girlfriend, and was never exposed to the garish light of print.” 3d

Lcsmcat She did seem to be trying to justify her privilege. “In every society there is the room, and the need, for a cultivated leisure class” Is there really, Edith, is there really? 3d

Graywacke @Lcsmcat can i volunteer to take that role - for the civic wellbeing? 3d

Graywacke She was a wonderful reader. A quote: “There was in me a secret retreat where I wished no one to intrude, or at least no one whom I had yet encountered. Words and cadences haunted it like song-birds in a magic wood, and I wanted to be able to steal away and listen when they called.” 3d

Lcsmcat @Graywacke Why not? Edith says we need one. 😂 3d

Lcsmcat @Graywacke Per your quote, I wonder if that desire of hers was part of the reason her marriage failed - a la Hudson River Bracketed. She needed more interior life than her society was willing to allow her? 3d

Graywacke @Lcsmcat there were larger issues. He mentally broke down (and emptied her trust secretly) 3d

Lcsmcat @Graywacke And yet she (so far at least) makes no attempt to foreshadow this, which I find odd. 3d

Graywacke @Lcsmcat yes. She hasn‘t said his name, or anything significant about their relationship or his personality. 3d

TheBookHippie Sorry so late! I love the prose. I just love it. As for the leisure class is there a sign up?? The video was a WOWOWOW. Do you think she thought she was middle class??? As for the English it reminded me of my Grandmother who knew the upper and lower class French, Dutch and Yiddish (as it was used) she would say that‘s a scrub woman‘s French of Dutch- I would about pass out ..however she used that in ⬇️ (edited) 3d

TheBookHippie ⬆️volunteering in nursing homes with senile or Alzheimer patients as they‘d lose English immediately if they were immigrants and or refugees like she was- (back in the 1960- 1980s) she felt she owed it to help. 3d

TheBookHippie The not mentioning the MR is saying A LOT. I‘m very much loving this. Do you think she wanted to be single but society didn‘t allow it? 3d

Lcsmcat @TheBookHippie I don‘t know if she wanted to be single when she was young, but I think she didn‘t want to repeat the experiment when older. 😀 3d

Graywacke @TheBookHippie a scrub woman‘s French of Dutch. 🙂 You‘re not late. No clocks here. And I‘m with you on the prose! 3d

TheBookHippie @Lcsmcat For sure that! 3d

TheBookHippie @Graywacke my Bubbe was something ELSE. The prose is so very good. 3d

jewright She certainly had a fascinating childhood. I can‘t imagine spending so much time traveling. I always find people‘s earliest memories interesting, and that‘s how she started the book. 1d

Graywacke @jewright me too - I enjoy reading about early childhoods. I‘m fascinated by the nature of traveling in the 1860‘s & 1870‘s. (I tend to forget she was a child of this era. I think of her as an early 20th century person because that‘s when she started publishing. But she had a lived a lot before that) 22h

CarolynM I haven‘t had a chance to get to this yet. Hoping to catch you up before the end 🙂 11h

Graywacke @CarolynM i was worried about reading it. But it‘s been lovely. Read when you can. Glad you gave an update. 35m

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