''Old New York'' (1924) is a collection of four novellas by
Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton (; born Edith Newbold Jones; January 24, 1862 – August 11, 1937) was an American novelist, short story writer, and interior designer. Wharton drew upon her insider's knowledge of the upper-class New York "aristocracy" to portray ...
, revolving around upper-class
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
society in the 1840s, 1850s, 1860s, and 1870s.
Overview
The novellas are not directly interconnected, though certain fictional characters appear in more than one story. The New York of these stories is the same as the New York of ''
The Age of Innocence
''The Age of Innocence'' is a 1920 novel by American author Edith Wharton. It was her twelfth novel, and was initially serialized in 1920 in four parts, in the magazine ''Pictorial Review''. Later that year, it was released as a book by D. Apple ...
'' (1920), from which several fictional characters have spilled over into these stories. The observation of the manners and morals of 19th century New York upper-class society is directly reminiscent of ''The Age of Innocence'', but these novellas are shaped more as character studies than as a full-blown novel.
Some characters who overlap among these four stories and ''The Age of Innocence:'' Mrs. (Catherine) Manson Mingott, Sillerton Jackson, Mrs. Lemuel Struthers, Henry Van der Luyden. Other families and institutions also appear in more than one place among this extended set of New York stories.
The four novellas
The decades indicated in the subtitles to the stories make them prequels, after a fashion, to ''The Age of Innocence.'' All five might as well be cut from the same bolt of cloth, sharing settings, characters, social insight, a similar knowing eye for a telling detail, and the occasional prop (a canary coach, an ormolu clock).
''False Dawn'' (Parts One and Two) (The Forties)
![Old New York 1 False Dawn - cover](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Old_New_York_1_False_Dawn_-_cover.png)
Lewis Raycie, just turned 21 years old, is sent to Europe by his father, Halston Raycie, to collect great art as the seed of a collection by which the senior Raycie hopes to be known to posterity. Halston Raycie has made his own fortune; he intends to be known to history as the patriarch of a dynasty.
Lewis is expected to bring back works of art by well-known artists already acknowledged and accepted by New York's reigning tastemakers. He knows what is expected of him, but in Europe he makes friends, including John Ruskin, who influence him to buy instead works, which they consider superior, by artists heretofore unknown in New York.
When Lewis shows the works to his father upon returning, his father is dismayed at his choices. His father to all practical measures disowns Lewis. Dying shortly thereafter, his father also is not able to disapprove of Lewis's choice in marriage. Lewis's beloved bears a striking resemblance to the subjects of the works Lewis bought with his father's fortune, and together they open a gallery to show his works.
New York society in general disapproves of the works, and it is not until decades later, long after all the Raycies have died, that the art Lewis chose is recognized as valuable.
''The Old Maid'' (Parts One and Two) (The Fifties)
![The-Old-Maid-Stage-1935](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/The-Old-Maid-Stage-1935.jpg)
This novella takes up a full third of the set and has arguably the most richly developed characters and storyline.
Delia Ralston, née Lovell, receives her cousin Charlotte ("Chatty") Lovell, who is about to be married. Charlotte confesses that she is the mother of an infamous foundling child. Her intended, Joe Ralston, who does not know of her child, wishes her to abandon her work at the orphanage where the child lives. Charlotte does not want to give up seeing her daughter, Clementina ("Tina"). The child's father is Clement Spender, a New Yorker who moved overseas to pursue the life of an artist. At one time, Delia was also romantically attracted to Spender.
Delia agrees to see to it that Tina and Charlotte are not separated, but she also sees to it that Charlotte is not allowed to marry Joe Ralston (a cousin of Delia's husband Jim). Delia's husband dies, and Charlotte and Tina move into Delia's home. When Tina comes of age, since she is known to society as an orphan, with no family or estate, her marriage prospects are dim, although she attracts many suitors. Charlotte fears that Tina will repeat the pattern Charlotte started, by getting pregnant before she finds a husband.
To avert this fate, Delia adopts Tina as her own daughter, and Tina finds a fiancé. The story ends on the night before Tina is to marry, with heightened tension between the two older women over who has the right to be considered Tina's mother.
The novella was adapted for the stage by
Zoë Akins
Zoe Byrd Akins (October 30, 1886 – October 29, 1958) was an American playwright, poet, and author. She won the 1935 Pulitzer Prize for drama for '' The Old Maid''.
Early life
Zoe Byrd Akins was born in Humansville, Missouri, second of three ...
, and won the 1935
Pulitzer Prize for Drama
The Pulitzer Prize for Drama is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It is one of the original Pulitzers, for the program was inaugurated in 1917 with seven prizes, four of which were a ...
. A film version was subsequently produced in 1939 by
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. D ...
Directed by
Edmund Goulding
Edmund Goulding (20 March 1891 – 24 December 1959) was a British screenwriter and film director. As an actor early in his career he was one of the 'Ghosts' in the 1922 silent film ''Three Live Ghosts'' alongside Norman Kerry and Cyril Chadwick. ...
, the film starred
Bette Davis
Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis (; April 5, 1908 – October 6, 1989) was an American actress with a career spanning more than 50 years and 100 acting credits. She was noted for playing unsympathetic, sardonic characters, and was famous for her pe ...
in an acclaimed performance as Charlotte, with
Miriam Hopkins
Ellen Miriam Hopkins (October 18, 1902 – October 9, 1972) was an American actress known for her versatility. She first signed with Paramount Pictures in 1930.
Her best-known roles included a pickpocket in Ernst Lubitsch's romantic comedy '' T ...
as Delia and
George Brent
George Brent (born George Brendan Nolan; 15 March 1904 – 26 May 1979) was an Irish-American stage, film, and television actor. He is best remembered for the eleven films he made with Bette Davis, which included ''Jezebel'' and ''Dark Victory ...
as Clem Spender. The studio had difficulties getting approval from the
Production Code Administration
The Motion Picture Association (MPA) is an American trade association representing the Major film studios#Present, five major film studios of the United States, as well as the video streaming service Netflix. Founded in 1922 as the Motion Pic ...
due to the story's themes of an illicit affair and the illegitimacy of the child.
''The Spark'' (The Sixties)
![Old New York 3 The Spark - cover](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/Old_New_York_3_The_Spark_-_cover.png)
The least formally developed of the four novellas is told from the perspective of the 1890s, though its period of interest purports to be the 1860s. It regards Hayley Delane, who was a schoolboy when the Civil War started. He ran off to join the war, was wounded at Bull Run, and spent a long time recovering in a hospital camp in Washington. There he met a mysterious stranger, whose memory has stayed with him all these years, almost a spiritual or moral guide.
Delane marries Leila Gracy, daughter of old Bill Gracy, a drinker and gambler of ill repute. The narrator observes that Hayley Delane seems to belong to a different age, trying to guess whether he would fit in better as a Roman or a Greek or some other ancient European. Leila alternates between being devoted to Hayley and devoted to affairs with other men. The narrator witnesses Hayley beating one of her suitors when Hayley sees him abusing a polo pony.
The narrator acknowledges that there's not much story behind the character sketch. Hayley takes Bill Gracy into his house as the old man gets older and needs assistance; Leila puts up with her father for a while and then drifts off to Europe; Hayley, unperturbed by her judgment or society's, continues caring for his father-in-law.
Hayley comes to visit the narrator one day and discovers by accident that the old fellow he knew from the Civil War hospital camp was
Walt Whitman
Walter Whitman (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among t ...
. The narrator reveres Whitman and his writing; Hayley doesn't think much of it.
''New Year's Day'' (The Seventies)
Society thinks little of Mrs. Lizzie Hazeldean's apparent affair with the unmarried Henry Prest. As it turns out, society's understanding of the affair is uninformed and insensitive.
All the stories are filled with dense and lively interplay of ideas. Religion, women's rights, art criticism, the strictures and structures of society, the place of wealth among Manhattan's élite class, familial loyalty, love and passion and honor, are all examined in the spotlight of Wharton's scrutiny, interwoven with Wharton's incisive, often aphoristic observations about a society she knew well from having been raised in it. An example, from "New Year's Day": "The self-sufficing little society of that vanished New York attached no great importance to wealth, but regarded poverty as so distasteful that it simply took no account of it." Throughout, Wharton captures a keen sense of the arc of time; frequently remarking nostalgically on things that change or are lost with the passage of generations (objects, locations, families, institutions, mores). Innumerable illuminating subplots and details have been omitted in the synopses.
Publication
The four novellas were first published in 1924 by D. Appleton and Company, with illustrations by Edward C. Caswell. The copyright was renewed in 1951 by William R. Tyler. They are currently (2011) available in a trade paper edition from Scribner, released in 1995 () and in hardcover from
Library of America
The Library of America (LOA) is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature. Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LOA has published over 300 volumes by authors rangi ...
.
References
External links
* The full text of ''Old New York'' at
HathiTrust Digital Library
HathiTrust Digital Library is a large-scale collaborative repository of digital content from research libraries including content digitized via Google Books and the Internet Archive digitization initiatives, as well as content digitized locally ...
:
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False Dawn
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The Old Maid
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The Spark
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New Year's Day
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Old New York
1924 American novels
Novels by Edith Wharton
Novels set in New York City