Born in 1862 into an affluent and socially prominent New
York family, “Old New York,” a magnificent city in a Gilded Age, was to become
the focus of Pulitzer-Prize winning author Edith Wharton’s literary and
lifelong obsession. She called it
“incurably ugly,” yet found it endlessly fascinating.
Nothing
would have interested James more than watching his two friends Wharton and
Fullerton as they circled each other. How wonderful is this room? And that
dress? "Extremely" being the only acceptable answer of course.
“It was the old New York way
of taking life “without effusion of blood”:
the way of people who dreaded scandal
more than disease,
who placed decency above courage,
and who considered that
nothing was more ill-bred than “scenes,”
except the behavior of those
who gave rise to them.”
~The Age of Innocence. 1920
