Footprints in New York by James Nevius & Michelle Nevius

Author:James Nevius & Michelle Nevius
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lyons Press
Published: 2014-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Archer had gone through this formality as resignedly as through all the others which made of a nineteenth century New York wedding a rite that seemed to belong to the dawn of history. . . . “How like a first night at the Opera!” he thought, recognising all the same faces in the same boxes (no, pews), and wondering if, when the Last Trump sounded, Mrs. Selfridge Merry would be there with the same towering ostrich feathers in her bonnet, and Mrs. Beaufort with the same diamond earrings and the same smile—and whether suitable proscenium seats were already prepared for them in another world.

It can be a bit of a fool’s errand to try to align every character in Wharton’s works with a flesh-and-blood counterpart, but in her New York novels there are distinct parallels between Wharton’s fiction and her real life. Aspects of Mrs. Beaufort, the grand dame of New York Society in Age of Innocence, were certainly inspired by Caroline Astor, and many writers see Edith’s mother—Lucretia Jones—as the basis for Newland Archer’s mother.

If that’s the case, Wharton is then casting herself, in an intriguing gender-reversal, as Newland Archer. It seems to fit: Newland isn’t looking forward to this marriage (he’s in love with Countess Olenska, a married woman), and Edith Jones wasn’t necessarily thrilled when she married Teddy Wharton in 1885. In fact, Edith would go on to have an affair of her own and eventually divorce her husband in 1913.

As I pass the chancel step, I imagine the sanctuary filled with Beauforts, Archers, Van der Luydens, and Dagonets—the first families of Wharton’s fictional New York—as well as the Joneses, Schermerhorns, Astors, Rhinelanders, and the other society families who might have been in attendance here on Easter Sunday, 1862, to see Edith Newbold Jones baptized. Edith would not officially enter society until she was a teenager, but her christening at Grace Church was a debut of sorts. Throughout her career, Wharton would in turn celebrate and excoriate these “safe, monotonous, and rigidly circumscribed” traditions; her characters are both drawn to, and sometimes shackled by, the class into which she and they were born.

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