Wharton – Stories

tutorials and critical studies of the stories of Edith Wharton

tutorials and critical studies of the stories of Edith Wharton

After Holbein

November 18, 2013 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

After Holbein first appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in May 1928. It was subsequently included in Edith Wharton’s collection of short fiction, Certain People published in 1930.

Danse Macabre

After Holbein – critical comments

The surprising thing about this story is the very fine balance between sympathy and satire in Edith Wharton’s presentation of its two principal characters. There is obviously a critical edge to her depiction of Anson Warley’s naive drift into the perils of old age and Mrs Jasper’s other-wordly existence in the twilight zone of dementia. Both of them are clearly deluded characters. Yet at the same time she is neither cruel nor lacking in sympathy for their plight.

Mrs Jasper is fairly close to a Dickensian character: she has a black wig tinged with purple, and orthopaedic shoes, and she has clearly lost touch with reality – but the characterisation is not calculated to make her look either ridiculous or pathetic. Similarly Anson Warley is presented as a dreamer, sleepwalking into the perils of old age and death.

Servants

It is interesting to note that both of these principal characters are supported by servants who appear to have a genuine concern for their wellbeing. Warley has his valet/manservant Filmore who tries without success to prevent him from going out or exposing himself to health dangers; and Mrs Jasper has Lavinia, a family servant who seems to be almost as old as herself, and whose chief concern is to protect her mistress from embarrassment and exposure to problems.

Also of note is the financial dependence of some of the servants. Miss Cress has every reason to keep Mrs Jasper happy, because her job depends upon it. And she imputes similar sympathetic views to Lavinia as they deal with the issue of the ageing (and absent) butler Munson

and all because poor old Munson’s memory was going, like his mistress’s, like Lavinia’s, and because he had forgotten it was one of the dinner nights … the tears were running down Lavinia’s cheeks, and Miss Cress knew she was thinking “If the daughters send him off—and they will—where’s he going to, old and deaf as he is, and all his people dead? Oh if only he can hold on until she dies, and get his pension …”

Structure

There is a very well organised structure to the story. Two characters. Anson Warley and Mrs Jasper, are preparing themselves for a dinner party later in the evening. They both have servants who help them dress. Both of them have had strokes and are losing touch with the real world. Both of them think they are being harassed or deceived by the people around them. And they are preparing for a dinner which is not scheduled to take place – but which does.

Warley has forgotten where he is supposed to be going. Mrs Jasper only has imaginary dinner parties. Yet because of ancient social connections between them he ends up being an uninvited guest at her house, and they dine together in sublime ignorance of the fact that nobody else is there.

Part of the humour in the story is created by the disparate cultural references which emphasise the differences between the time frame in which the characters are living imaginatively and that in which they actually exist. When Warley goes out his reflections are linked to the real world Manhattan where he lives:

The doctors, poor fools, called it the stomach, or high blood-pressure; but it was only the dizzy plunge of the sands in the hour glass, the everlasting plunge that emptied one of heart and bowels, like the drop of an elevator from the top of a sky-scraper.

In contrast, when the imaginary dinner party is about to begin, Mrs Jasper thinks she hears horse drawn carriages arriving – a clear reference to the nineteenth century which she still inhabits.

After Holbein – study resources

The New York Stories – New York Review Books – Amazon UK

The New York Stories – New York Review Books – Amazon US

Edith Wharton Stories 1911-1937 – Norton Critical – Amazon UK

Edith Wharton Stories 1911-1937 – Norton Critical – Amazon US

After Holbein – eBook format at Project Gutenberg

A Historical Guide to Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Introduction to Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

After Holbein – story synopsis

Part I. Anson Warley is an ageing New York bachelor who once had high cultural aspirations, but he has left them behind to give himself up to the life of a socialite and dandy.

Part II. Despite signs that his health is failing, he chooses to dine out nightly, ignoring the cautions of his manservant Filmore. On the morning of the story he has had a minor stroke which has left him looking pale through lunch, but he is determined to go out to dinner with a few friends.

Part III. Meanwhile Mrs Evelyn Jasper, a society hostess, is preparing to dress for an elaborate dinner. She is an elderly woman who wears a black wig and orthopaedic shoes. She is suffering from a form of dementia following a stroke, and is protected from reality by an equally old servant who is a family retainer. She imagines guests are arriving in carriages and recites a list of their names, including some who are already dead. Her jewellery is recovered from a safe, and she goes down to the dining room.

Part IV. Displaying signs of confusion, Anson Warley dresses for dinner and refutes Filmore’s warnings about the night being cold. Once out on Fifth Avenue he suddenly realises that he doesn’t know where he is dining. Mrs Jasper enters his thoughts as he just happens to be passing her house – so he assumes that is where he is supposed to be going.

Part V. As Anson Warley arrives at the house the staff are appalled at the social embarrassment likely to ensue. Warley has not been invited; there are no other guests; and the staff are worried that the shock might be fatal to Mrs Jasper.

But Mrs Jasper comes into the dining room supporting Warley on her arm and they dine as if everything were normal, exchanging formulaic conversation, and as if they were surrounded by other guests. The footman George serves mediocre food and passes spa water off as wine. At the end of the dinner Mrs Jasper invites Warley to join her after he has had cigars with the other male guests.

Part VI. Warley’s temperature has been rising all day. Leaving the house, he struggles to get into his coat, and he thinks he is ‘going on’ to some other social event. However, as soon as the cold night air hits him, he dies on the pavement.

Edith Wharton’s 42-room house – The Mount

Principal characters

Anson Warley	an ‘ageing’ (63) New York bachelor
Filmore	his valet and manservant
Mrs Evelyn Jasper	an elderly society hostess with dementia
Lavinia	her aged servant
Miss Cress	her young nurse

first edition

Other works by Edith Wharton

The Custom of the Country (1913) is Edith Wharton’s satiric anatomy of American society in the first decade of the twentieth century. It follows the career of Undine Spragg, recently arrived in New York from the midwest and determined to conquer high society. Glamorous, selfish, mercenary and manipulative, her principal assets are her striking beauty, her tenacity, and her father’s money. With her sights set on an advantageous marriage, Undine pursues her schemes in a world of shifting values, where triumph is swiftly followed by disillusion. This is a study of modern ambition and materialism written a hundred years before its time.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
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The House of Mirth (1905) is the story of Lily Bart, who is beautiful, poor, and still unmarried at twenty-nine. In her search for a husband with money and position she betrays her own heart and sows the seeds of the tragedy that finally overwhelms her. The book is a disturbing analysis of the stifling limitations imposed upon women of Wharton’s generation. In telling the story of Lily Bart, who must marry to survive, Wharton recasts the age-old themes of family, marriage, and money in ways that transform the traditional novel of manners into an arresting modern document of cultural anthropology.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

Edith Wharton – web links

Edith Wharton at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides to the major novels, tutorials on the shorter fiction, bibliographies, critiques of the shorter fiction, and web links.

The Short Stories of Edith Wharton
This is an old-fashioned but excellently detailed site listing the publication details of all Edith Wharton’s eighty-six short stories – with links to digital versions available free on line.

Edith Wharton at Gutenberg
Free eTexts of the major novels and collections of stories in a variety of digital formats – also includes travel writing and interior design.

Edith Wharton at Wikipedia
Full details of novels, stories, and travel writing, adaptations for television and the cinema, plus web links to related sites.

The Edith Wharton Society
Old but comprehensive collection of free eTexts of the major novels, stories, and travel writing, linking archives at University of Virginia and Washington State University.

The Mount: Edith Wharton’s Home
Aggressively commercial site devoted to exploiting The Mount – the house and estate designed by Edith Wharton. Plan your wedding reception here.

Edith Wharton at Fantastic Fiction
A compilation which purports to be a complete bibliography, arranged as novels, collections, non-fiction, anthologies, short stories, letters, and commentaries – but is largely links to book-selling sites, which however contain some hidden gems.

Wharton’s manuscripts
Archive of Wharton holdings at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Edith Wharton – short stories
More on Edith Wharton
More on short stories

Afterward

January 31, 2014 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

Afterward was first published in The Century Magazine for January 1910, and was then reprinted in the collection Tales of Men and Ghosts published later the same year. It was one of a number of ghost stories written by Edith Wharton. The genre was very popular at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth.

Afterward – critical commentary

It is very difficult to analyse or pass critical comment on a ghost story – unless one takes the supernatural premise seriously – for which in this case there seems to be little incentive provided. Edward and Mary Boyne have profited handsomely from the Blue Star Mine venture, and they have a naively romantic notion to retire to a fashionably old English country estate, where the house is so traditional they hope it will be haunted. The opening of the story is pitched at a mildly satirical level, poking gentle fun at their enthusiasm for a home with no heating or electric lighting.

But they have made their money by enduring ‘for fourteen years the soul-deadening ugliness of the Middle West’. The windfall fortune has now made that sacrifice worthwhile. Edward Boyne has profited from America’s system of individual enterprise and free market capitalism, and he can now afford to turn his back on it.

But he has profited at the expense of his colleague Robert Elwell, who introduced Boyne to the Blue Star venture in the first place. Elwell has borrowed money to put into the scheme, but then lost it when Boyne ‘got ahead’ of him in business. Elwell has tried to commit suicide, then has died shortly afterwards, leaving his wife destitute.

Edward Boyne moves to the old house in Dorset and almost immediately begins to behave strangely. When Elwell makes his two ‘visits’ to the house, Boyne recognises his figure on both occasions. The first occurs on the day he attempts suicide, and the second is on the day he dies (in America). Elwell therefore acts as the embodiment of Boyne’s guilty conscience over his dubious business dealings regarding the Blue Star Mine.

This does not explain how or why he disappears, but at least it provides a psychological underpinning to the story, which as a matter of fact might well have a second ‘disappearance’ – that of Mary Boyne herself.

The story begins with Mary in the library at the house in Lyng, recalling to herself the events that have led up to the disappearance of her husband. This gives the impression that hers is the controlling perspective and point of view in the narrative – and that (logically) she is still alive in order to recount the entire story, which is unfolding retrospectively. But the tale also ends with her in the library, receiving the gruesome news from Parvis about the attempted suicide and subsequent death of Elwell. She realises that she has directed the supernatural Elwell to her husband in the same room, and the shock appears to kill her.

She felt the walls of the room rush towards her, like inward falling ruins, and she heard Parvis, a long way off, as if through the ruins, crying to her, and struggling to get at her. But she was numb to his touch, she did not know what he was saying. Through the tumult she heard but one clear note, the voice of Alida Stair, speaking on the lawn at Pangbourne.

“You won’t know till afterward” it said. “You won’t know till long, long afterward.”

If this is the case, it is a neat technical achievement on Edith Wharton’s part – because she has created a narrative which ends with the death of the person from whose point of view the story is being told.

Afterward – study resources

Edith Wharton Stories 1891-1910 – Norton Critical – Amazon UK

Edith Wharton Stories 1891-1910 – Norton Critical – Amazon US

Afterward – eBook format at Project Gutenberg

Afterward – AudioBook format at librivox

A Historical Guide to Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Introduction to Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

Afterward – story synopsis

Part I. Americans Edward and Mary Boyne make a lot of money in the Blue Star Mine venture and decide to live in England. They choose an old country house in Dorset which they hope will have its own authentic residential ghost. Their English cousin Alida Stair reassures them that there is a ghost, but they won’t know about it. Ned Boyne hopes to write a book on economics and culture, but he seems out of sorts to his wife. She thinks it might be the influence of the haunted house, but since no ghost has ever been seen, this notion cannot be verified.

She locates a concealed panel which provides access to the roof, from where she and Ned see a figure approaching the house. Ned goes down to meet him, but when Mary follows them the man is no longer there. Ned gives her an explanation, but appears to be disturbed.

Part II. Two months later she thinks she sees the same figure again – but it turns out to be her husband, whose moods appear to change in a disconcerting manner. A letter then arrives announcing legal threats brought against Ned and his dealings with the Blue Star Mine by his former partner Robert Elwell. But Edward reassures Mary that the matters in the letter have now been settled.

Part III. Next day Mary feels completely reassured and she enjoys a proprietary stroll in the grounds, where she meets a young man who has come to see Ned. Since Ned is busy, he says he will come back again later. But when Mary goes in to lunch Ned is missing. The servants report that he has gone out with the young man. Mary interrogates the staff, but they know nothing about the stranger, except that he was wearing a strange hat.

Part IV. Two weeks later Ned has still not reappeared and has left behind a fragment of a letter to a Mr Parvis relating to the legal dispute over the Mine. Mary makes extensive enquiries, but there is no trace of Ned. She gradually adjusts to the fact that he may not be coming back.

Part V. Mr Parvis arrives from the USA to explain that Ned’s partner Robert Elwell lost money in the Mine venture and has died following an attempt to commit suicide. His widow has fallen on hard times. Parvis shows Mary a newspaper clipping which reveals a photograph of the young man who twice called at the house. Mary calculates that the first visit took place at the same time as his attempted suicide and the second later visit was at the time he actually died. The last words she recalls are those of her cousin warning her that “You won’t know [about the ghost] till long, long afterward.”