Irene Goldman-Price and Edith Wharton

Wharton’s whispers
By BARBARA HOFFMAN and ISAAC GUZMAN
Last Updated: 10:18 PM, March 17, 2012
Posted: 9:44 PM, March 17, 2012
http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/wharton_whispers_J8y0opravKkWvYBTGXbiAN



It was a time when Old Money talked — but in hushed whispers — and society women made the newspapers on three occasions: birth, marriage and death.
Edith Wharton was one of those women. Born 150 years ago into the prosperous Jones family — the clan who inspired the phrase “Keeping up with the Joneses” — she led a cosseted life in New York, Newport and Europe; married a manic-depressive; befriended Henry James and, at the ripe age of 45, discovered the joy of (adulterous) sex. Along the way, the woman known as “Puss” turned her narrow slice of society into “The Age of Innocence,” “The House of Mirth” and other brilliant books we read today.

EDITH WHARTON IN NYC 1884 THE LILLY LIBRARY, INDIANA UNIVERSITY, BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA
Society girl Edith Wharton is distraught over her estranged lover.

“Edith Wharton’s New York City: A Backward Glance,” just opened at the 257-year-old New York Society Library, where her father, George Frederic Jones, was a member. The books and memorabilia on display come from the library archive, and the Mount, the Lenox, Mass., home and gardens she designed between novels.
“Edith thought New York rather ugly and mundane, compared with what she knew in Rome,” says Irene Goldman Price, author of the upcoming book “My Dear Governess: The Letters of Edith Wharton to Anna Bahlmann.” And yet it was at 884 Park Ave., the house Wharton shared with her hubby, Teddy, that she became a writer — when she wasn’t busy being the Tinsley Mortimer of her day. Pity Page Six wasn’t around then. Inspired by her letters and memoirs, we can only imagine . . .


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