The Old Colossus

a field trip to Edith Wharton's estate

by Molly Young

On Friday we drove to Lenox, Massachusetts, to visit Edith Wharton's estate. "Spacious and dignified" is how she described it. And it is, though spacious mostly because all of the furniture has been sold at auction. What is left are bones - bare rooms and doors and closets. Anything you might learn about Wharton has to be assembled from these skeletal things, and it is not always easy.

The first thing you notice is how tiny the main entrance is. "While the main purpose of a door is to admit," the author wrote, "Its secondary purpose is to exclude."

A visit to Edith Wharton's home, then, is mostly speculative. Not only do you have to fill in the missing details of the house, but you also have to filter out the misguided modern additions (leopard-print carpet, bowl of plastic fruit) that are the result of a designer showcase in 2002. "Most of the furniture is stuff left over from that," a guide told us.

Here is what's left: a pair of Wharton's pince-nez, a few scraps of wallpaper, and Henry James' guest suite. His bathroom, mysteriously, does not contain a toilet.

Wharton's own private rooms are empty. The boudoir has walls that are the color of a dolphin dipped in cream. "She objected in theory to wallpaper because she felt it was unsanitary," reads a card. Nonetheless, there is wallpaper in the bedroom. It is so thick and supple that it can't be touched because a fingertip will stain it with oils. A small flap of wallpaper stapled to a sign invites visitors to fondle it. It feels like a pool table.

Wharton had a husband but the estate was by no means a joint operation. Teddy Wharton's room next to Edith's is a dinky appendage, like a sidecar, where he ostensibly managed his wife's finances and thought about horses.

In the next room I come upon a construction worker boredly toeing a flake of plaster across the floor. "Hi," he said. We finish up on the top floor and go downstairs. The staircase empties out in front of a niche in which a small sign has been placed:

This is the Whartons' original icebox.

The icebox is empty and small, exactly the size of a hotel minibar. Suddenly I am hungry for tea and a cold chicken sandwich. All that is left to see of the estate is the gift shop (desultory) and the gardens, since only a small portion of the house is open to visitors. There is a tourist café that is closed until further notice.

After our tour of the house we walk through the gardens. They are formal and capacious, more evidence of a decorative sense that is indistinguishable from a literary and moral sense. We had planned to pop over to Herman Melville's house in Pittsfield afterward - a ten-minute drive from the Wharton estate - but I realize that I'm tired of the effort it takes to imagine a drooping structure in full flower, and we decide to go home instead.

It isn't that Wharton's place is in shambles, exactly; its just that there's so much of it (42 rooms) and it is all slightly soured, like milk that you could probably drink but shouldn't. Wishful thinking is exhausting when it has to meet the demands of historical accuracy, and one can only handle so much.

Molly Young is the senior contributor to This Recording. She undoes the internet at Magic Molly.

BODIES OF WATER TO IMMERSE YOURSELF IN

"Under the Pines" - Bodies of Water (mp3)

"Keep Me On" - Bodies of Water (mp3)

"Darling, Be Here" - Bodies of Water (mp3)

"The Mud Gapes Open" - Bodies of Water (mp3)

the new album drops on the 22nd

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