Love, Fiercely by Jean Zimmerman

Author:Jean Zimmerman
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

11. For Richer or Poorer

In one sense, Paris came through for Edith and Newton. Their extended honeymoon cum escape in the City of Light allowed the young couple to break away from the family fold. By putting a whole ocean between themselves and Susanna, Anson and Helen, they gained license to live their lives differently than their parents. The two years they spent in Paris would prove to be a time of vital development, indeed a period of rebirth for both of them. It would also give them a perspective on New York City that had lasting consequences, especially for Newton.

But in another sense, the golden days in Paris proved disappointing. Edith fully expected to be with child by the time she returned home. That did not happen. The “honey” in “honeymoon” refers to the ancient practice of a newlywed couple drinking mead, which supposedly ensured fertility. The honeymoon’s purpose was to ignite the process of procreation that was the true goal of matrimony. Edith and Newton’s relationship did not lack intimacy. It only lacked result. The two of them marked the milestone of thirty together, an age when many women of the day had whole broods. Edith’s heart remained whole and hopeful. But she heard a niggling voice. Was something wrong?

Edith and Newton’s liner came into the famous harbor, passed the iconic statue, slid into its berth. The no-longer-new newlyweds disembarked. They entered the familiar city. All changed, changed utterly. Edith might more readily accept her hometown’s myriad transformations, but her conservative, sentimental husband felt a deep sense that something valuable had been irretrievably lost. It was a conviction that would alter both their lives.

Edith and Newton moved in temporarily with his parents. Anson and Helen had remained in the brownstone mansion at 229 Madison. So Newton lived all that fall in the home of his childhood, a comforting situation given the city’s flux. Upon the completion of his and Edith’s own house, at 118 East 22nd Street, on Gramercy Park, they found themselves sharing a back yard with Susanna Minturn. Susanna’s home, at 109 East 21st Street, faced the private park. She had supervised the construction of the young couple’s new domicile, based on plans Newton and Edith had worked out in Paris.

Gramercy the park and Gramercy the neighborhood managed to retain its sense of timeless quiet, even as the rest of New York changed pell-mell. In one of the contradictions that distinguished the proudly progressive family, they lived on a park that limited public access to 2 days a year. For the other 363, Gramercy acted as a block-sized private preserve for the residents of the surrounding homes, each of whom possessed a key. It was (and still is) the only sizeable private park in New York, and stood in solitary contrast to the egalitarian acreage of the still new Central Park, which Minturn social reformers had fought to create a generation before.

Susanna Minturn’s fine old townhouse, remodeled according to her wishes by Charles McKim, featured a twenty-foot garden to shield it from the common sidewalk stroller.

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