The steel-mirror of her smile

13 October 1904. And so we ride. In July we purchased the vehicle of passion – a Pope-Hartford touring car, and whenever I am not writing or gardening or on the terrace star- gazing I am bundled in the car, with dogs, Teddy, HJ, and dear Charles Cook as charioteer. Yesterday we toured Lee and Becket, and the voyage reminded me that one has to glimpse only a sliver of a scene to know it complete.
A vision I won’t soon forget– We turned off Main Street in Becket village & began to climb a high street; where I saw sheds built from rough boards clinging to the stark mountainside. An inhabitant of one such place stood motionless in a black doorway, her face gnarled like the granite flank on which she lived. My heart pounded at the scene–HJ beside me saw it too but I don’t believe he had the same reaction. We motored on; the shadows bruised and grew long. The burnished Lenox autumn around Laurel Lake suddenly was very far away.
Some time ago Rev. Lynch in Lenox told me about a woman who became seriously ill in such a shack on Bear Mountain. She was from one of the drunken mountain outlaw families who live
on the fringes of the Berkshire hilltowns. When he arrived to administer last rites, he found her already dead, flung on a bare mattress on the floor, her skirts bunched up to reveal one glistening leg, swollen with rot. She lay there like a dead dog in a ditch, her family in the shadows, half-drunk and inchoate with animal grief. The Rev said the sight of the living faces too horribly showed by what stages hers had lapsed into death. There was no coffin. Someone had dug a hole for her body, and they carried her out into the bitter cold on the mattress. These glimpses of squalid misery are but a fragment; I see the entirety with something other than my weary old eyes. Perhaps my possession of this other sight is what compels Teddy to call my writing a form of witchcraft. My dear old man doesn’t see me, and for that matter I no longer see him ...
Newborns screaming in a cold shack, slippery with blood, brown bread and a dull knife on a greasy table, smoke and fire spluttering in a cold hearth– they all flash between the trees, in the steep periphery, on every motor-flight. I cannot evade these images, they’re in my chest, crying to come out, needing to be told.

All Soul’s Day, 1904. The Mount. Will be closing up soon for the season and then on to warmer climes. Finishing the final edits to House of Mirth, revising the ending. Charming letter from Walter arrived today, asking if House’s interior decoration is being attended to...and praying that none of its chimneys smoke. Seated at my desk in the library now, I have to smile.
In the end, Lily was right. Freedom is a draught meant to be drained to its lees, and success is not a country with a pass-code known only by those who see no difference between money and poverty. Those who see no difference are fools. There is a difference.
In the end, Lily is no longer a case to be clinically studied by Selden; nor is she a butterfly writhing on the end of a pin, praying for suffocation between two dusty panes of glass. Her face, once mobile, is cold and impassive in death. I agonized over this final scene and slashed at it last week; this morning some sort of grace blew off the lake and into my chilly bedroom. It is late fall here but I gave Selden a spring morning and a smarting chill light to look one last time at her now expressionless face. Lily’s actual death and the close of the book were easier to write than her living death, earlier in the story. In the Baroque phase of Lily’s life, she poses, sensationally, as “Mrs. Lloyd,” the Sir Joshua Reynolds painting, as part of a tableau vivant amusement. I situated the scene at a party hosted by the freshly minted Wellington Brys. In her silken, almost sheer gown, it seemed as though she wore nothing underneath, and her onlookers – the petrol of the great machine – were at once uplifted and disgusted by her display. Humiliations to follow. Birth, marriage, death – the polite woman’s lot ... Lily transcends all three. Scribner’s will be serializing House of Mirth in its issues starting January. The novel will publish in October 05. May none of its chimneys smoke, indeed.

le 3 Mars 1907. 58 Rue de Varenne, Paris. T & I and the dogs and the servants are settled in to the new apt. I can breathe freely, a home in Paris at last; even Teddy thinks I’m in fine form again. And yet my hand shakes as I write this. Not certain what this feeling is. But I am not naive; I know its connected to something, or someone, very new. At Rosa’s salon last week I met an American journalist named Morton Fullerton; I believe he’s a Parisian correspondent for the Times. My mind is wandering at these inanities even as I write. His eyes are a mocking icy blue, framed by dark lashes and gleaming black hair. He is almost my height; compact, coiled. Physically at ease with himself, stunning to see in a male. Lithe, almost an effeminate air I find immensely attractive, what with the transparency and devotedness of most of my men friends...Henry, Walter, etc. I know M can be of help for me for French serialization of The House of Mirth; trying to reserve some time so we can speak privately about the matter. Want him to have tea with H & me. There’s something very mysterious about Fullerton, something hidden behind the magnetic emptiness of those eyes. Very knowledgeable about Franco-American relations, George Meredith (M is a fan and a friend, evidently), etc. Easy to talk to – when one can find him.

6 March 1907. 58 Rue de Varenne. Yes, there is something mysterious about dear Monsieur Fullerton. He doesn’t respond to my notes or request for help in placement of House of Mirth. Sally tells me he has family in eastern Massachusetts and some sort of business there this summer. I’ll send him a note asking if he would like to visit The Mount in the fall.

7 March 1907. M replied and said he most certainly will visit; Mon cher Henry however tells me he’ll make an excuse at the last minute and not come. I refuse to believe it and already look fwd to October in Lenox.

28 October 1907. The Mount. Whatever sadness was upon me, mocking me...I have succeeded in waving away its black wings. M was here last Monday and Tuesday–already a week ago. It was a brief visit, and I am just beginning to feel its reverberations now.
On Tuesday I took M and Eliot on a motor-flight, and despite the chill and the early snow I was warm inside, looking at M’s glossy head in the front seat, next to Cook. We stopped so Cook could put chains on the wheels; M and I sat in the wet leaves (did I get cold? I can’t remember). I noticed a wych-hazel in bloom nearby. To me, the shrub is the sign of the late-bloomer... an old woman’s blossom. At 45 years of age (although the same probably could be said of me at 18), I am a late-bloomer. We dropped M off in Westfield so he could get on to his family in Brockton; E and I continued on; I thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the trip. The air was dazzlingly clear; I drank it down gratefully...a white note on my tongue.
I received a thank-you note from M today, and folded inside the paper was a sprig of wych-hazel. I read the kind letter in my boudoir and held the tough little brown and yellow sprig in my fingers, and tears of emotion welled up in my eyes and pressed against my chest. Forty-five years of lonely interior life and only now am I feeling this ache which must be love, I can deduce as much for I am falling; this is the plunge I have, until this moment, only read about.
Without M here now I only wish to return to Paris.

Le 22 mai 1908. 58 Rue de Varenne. After the events of this spring, it seems errant and incorrect, somehow, to be leaving for Lenox tomorrow. After Teddy, in misery, left Paris for a spa in Arkansas in March, I have taken many liberties with M. Or as many as possible what with my schedule. Have been snatching time to meet with him whenever I can. Lately he has been teasing me about my lack of experience in matters of love; his taunts are almost not playful and they make my cheeks burn with shame. It is true–I am inexperienced. Lately my lack has been v. much in the foreground. I am not pretty enough, not young enough, not many things enough for M. I have been too sad, for too long, & something in my nature – some lack, I suppose– has left me starving for what other women seem at least once in their life to know.
And yet those bitter feelings are washed away by other afternoons. The other day we sat in le jardin de Lux and took in the warmth; in my feverish ear he whispered that I was his love, his darling, and I stared at the other lovers walking carefully side by side and I wondered if they knew what I knew...that my bottomless appetite for this man has drained the world of its blood. I can’t bear the thought of a summer and fall in Lenox. I will miss the constant bleus...our word for the little notes that fly between us several times a day. Meet me at the Louvre, le Bois du Boulogne, les Tuileries. Jusqu’a le moment prochain...I love it, you know I do...with these fragments of scribbled phrase on my breakfast tray an entire scene unfolds in my mind as I hurtle toward our next meeting.

1 October 1908. Lenox. Nothing. No letters, no bleus, nothing. Curt replies through the spring and early summer have dwindled and no longer arrive. I wrote M today asking for my letters back, for what can remain? He has forgotten me, or has forgotten what was between us. I cannot know what is worse. Anything on earth wd be better ... than to sit here and wonder: What was I to him, then?
I am reminded of George Meredith’s Modern Love, a favourite of M’s...written in 1862, after Meredith’s marriage crumbled under his wife’s infidelity. Written the year I was born. I find myself returning to the verses again and again: Yea filthiness of body is most vile,/but faithlessness of heart I do hold worse./The former, it were not so great a curse/To read on the steel-mirror of her smile.
Also I am reminded of the poem’s original subtitle —This is not meat for little people or for fools. Aah, I am still too young and tender, somewhere, to be hurt this way And too old to play these girlish games that end in heartache. The silence and too-obvious faithlessness of his heart is crushing me. It’s still suffocatingly hot here and I cannot bear to be in my once beloved Lenox paradise a moment longer.

5 June 1909, Charing Cross Hotel, London. Sensing last night was a coda or terminus of sorts. I thought as much even as I was crying into M’s open mouth, as we lay in the sooty bed, bathed in lurid red light, palm to palm, breast to breast. He left some time ago and sent roses just now. Outside the window the train thrumming within and without as we made love, and the rhythm jolted me into a meter I must try to master—

14 July 1911, The Mount. Yesterday’s horrors tell me I have no choice but to sell the house. Teddy initially agreed, but is now vehemently opposed. He returned from a fishing trip yesterday and immediately became abusive, much to H’s horror. After tearing through the gallery, and up the stairs to my boudoir (I could hear him clattering below) he told me that I must save myself and leave him. But he still won’t agree to sell this boat anchor of a house and then begs me not to turn my back on him. Oh, if I were free—free—free! Isn’t it awful to have a chain snaffled around one’s neck all the time, without knowing it? And again, a miserable heat wave. H left today, mortified by the scene.

26 Sept 1911, Rue de Varenne. When I landed a few days ago I received a cable that Teddy had sold The Mount. All this, after I made him promise to do no such thing until I cabled him from Paris and could consult with him. I wish I could be more pleased about the publication of Ethan Frome, but I have received news from the doctors in French Lick, Indiana that Teddy does have some sort of psychosis.
Feeling terrible vertigo and shock. Have much in common with Mr. Frome and his crushed hopes. Little else makes sense to me. Without The Mount for us to share there is truly nothing for me and the dear old man. I no longer recognize the gallant, supportive, and gentle soul I married 26 yrs ago. I timidly write the word I have been avoiding with heart and pen: divorce.

27 July 1914, Poitiers. It’s nonsense. It cannot be. Yet there it is, tonight, on a heavy lidded evening, one of many in summertime France. A reality is drifting into my hotel window: passerby are singing La Marseillaise, and rousing us from a pleasant doze. Walter and I both craned our necks out of our windows and gazed into the square, as people raced below, taking up the rousing refrain. It can’t be war.

3 August 1914, Rue de Varenne. After reading my last entry, I can only reply: It most certainly is. Germany declared war on Belgium yesterday, and today, on France. One can only hope that this conflict ends within a few weeks.

20 October 1914, Rue de Varenne. After a foolishly-timed late summer sojourn in England – where I tried to convince myself that my destiny is this dear domestic paradise – the quaint Anglo countryside I returned to Paris in late September and found a new mistress to run my sewing shop on the rue de l’Univ. Hopefully the shop can help unmarried ladies or war widows...friends are offering plenty of financial and moral support. American friends included, of course...but why is my native country not offering its military aid? These American pacifists in Washington and beyond don’t know the monstrous results of their decision not to act!

17 Feb 1915. Vauquois. Writing this from the relative safety of the Mercedes. Cook has taken us to Vauquois, and I can hear and see the battle Even Walter thinks our travels have been thrilling. What a motor-flight After months of brutality in the Argonne, France seems to be fighting back against the hideous Boche and finally gaining ground. In the distance, on the butte, I can see men in silhouette, running and falling, running and falling. It looks like a story I should write one day, but it is not. War has somehow extinguished all narrative. War is “like” nothing. Blood is not a crimson seal, dying with dirt in your mouth, while what used to be the sky erupts and liquefies overhead (a wounded soldier the other day used these words to describe the Front to me), is not “like” being buried alive. It is not “like” hell.
Cannon fire thrums until we scarcely notice it. Smeared faces with blood on their teeth walk on. And, to that end, a refrain we hear again and again: Sauvez, sauvez la France. I will not abandon you again.

FIN

“The steel-mirror of her smile” is a work of fiction. However, some of the passages have been taken directly from Edith Wharton's novels, letters, and actual diary entries. Those brief phrases are bolded in this text. Sources for this work are Hermione Lee’s 2007 biography of Edith Wharton (Vintage Books), Modern Love and Other Poems by George Meredith (Kessinger Publishing, 2008), Wharton’s The House of Mirth (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1905) and Summer (1993, Bantam Books).