Tag Archives: Edith Wharton

Treasure House

Treasure House. That’s how the guide introduced the Codman Estate in Lincoln, Massachusetts, long known as “The Grange,” at the beginning of her tour the other day. It’s a term which has a specific meaning for Historic New England, which has been the owner and steward of the house since 1968: not only the house itself, but all of the treasures therein, encompassing the possessions and papers of the Codman family of Boston. The Grange was their summer house, expanded and decorated in successive eras by family members/design luminaries John Hubbard Sturgis and Ogden Codman Jr. My ears pricked up when I heard that term, because it’s how Salem was often described in the early and mid-twentieth century, as a treasure house of American material culture. That’s certainly not how Salem is thought of now, but in that heyday, proponents of the Colonial Revival like Ogden Codman Jr. thought and referred to it as such. When I was writing my chapter on Colonial Revival Salem for our forthcoming book this summer, I read quite widely (trying to make up for a disciplinary deficit) and reread Edith Wharton’s and Codman’s classic collaboration, The Decoration of Houses (1897). This book is so crystal clear in its articulation and presentation of interior design as a branch of architecture rather than “dressmaking” that I became more interested in Codman, who was both an architect and interior designer. I went off on a tangent, learning some very interesting design theories and practices as well as trivial details like the fact that he called Wharton (who was his client before his collaborator) “Pussy” and she called him “Coddy.”  And then it only seemed right to revisit the Grange, as the last time I went there, when I was in my 20s, I didn’t have a clue. I seem to remember being impressed with its Federal forthrightness, but not its interior, which I found “shabby.”

Well, its origins are not Federal: the models above show how the original Georgian house was transformed into the Federal Grange over the next century or so. But, it still strikes me as shabby, in an authentic rather than “chic” way: very layered and very waspy. This was really his father’s house, and there were things that Ogden Codman Jr. could change and things he could or would not. You can see his attempts to lighten things up, in his characteristic French-Colonial Revival fusion style, but the heavier hand of his uncle, John Hubbard Sturgis, is still much in evidence. So it’s quite a melange! Toile and Chintz in the sitting rooms and Tudor Revival in the dining room. I think I liked chintz back then, not a fan now, but will always love toile.

The very different stamps of Sturgis and Codman Jr. make for an interesting house. The Elizabethan dining room must have driven the latter crazy, but I love it. We went into only the front bedrooms, which seemed very Ogdenesque.

The other layering effect in the house is a result of the sheer number of Codman possessions therein: photographs, paintings, books, assorted personal items. There’s a time-capsule feeling, as if the family just went out the door, quite a while ago. That feeling is really resonant in the back of the house, where the servants lived and worked. I don’t remember seeing these spaces before: such a succession of rooms and staircases! How many staircases are there in this house? An impressive double staircase in front, and two or three in back? I lost track. Sturgis designed the rear addition, but I’m sure that neither he nor Codman ventured out back, so in a way (and except for the appliances and utilitarian elements) these ways feel even more timeless.

All the staircases and the way out back, eventually into the Italian Garden, which was being set up for a wedding on a VERY humid afternoon. I hope everything went well!


Road Trip, Part Three: Pilgrimage to the Mount

The contrast between Edith Wharton’s aunt’s house, Wyndcliffe, and her own Berkshire “cottage”, The Mount, could not be more extreme:  decaying Victorian Gothic indulgence as opposed to restored (or in the process of being restored) and restrained American neo-Classicism.  Even before Wharton penned her fictional bestsellers she wrote a popular interior design manual with her friend and collaborator Ogden Codman, Jr., The Decoration of Houses (1898), and The Mount fulfilled her vision. There have been some obstacles and challenges in its ongoing restoration over the past 15 years, but on this beautiful August morning it looked bright and cheerful and orderly. By all accounts, Wharton considered The Mount to be her first real home, and it seems like such a shame that she only spend a decade in seasonal residence, from its construction in 1902 until the break-up of her marriage and departure for France in 1911.

Our vivacious guide kept referring to the house as English in inspiration and style, and I suppose it is:  Wharton always proclaimed her admiration for the Georgian style above all others.  But The Mount felt very American to me, in that assimilated, melting-pot way: Georgian house, Italian gardens, French courtyard.  None of the original furnishings are in the house, so contemporary designers have recreated an updated Edwardian ambiance inside, adhering to the original finishes and arrangements whenever possible.  I did like Bunny Williams’s dining room, but I was more drawn to the original features of the house no matter how mundane:  hardware, the “trunk lift”, the unrestored scullery in the basement.

Less decorative license was taken upstairs in the private rooms of The Mount, including in what is arguably the most important room in the entire house, Mrs. Wharton’s bedroom, where she did all of her writing, in bed.  She would write every morning, numbering her pages and casting them to the floor, where her maid would pick them up and send them off to her secretary to be typewritten.  She loved little yapping dogs, whose presence is felt by the placement of stuffed animals around the house and a pet cemetery out back.

Private spaces made public:  Edith Wharton’s bedroom and adjacent bathroom.

The Mount, Plunkett Street (off Route 7), Lenox, Massachusetts.

Because I was having a completely indulgent day (one in a series), after my morning at The Mount, I stopped on the way back to my inn to pick up that must-have publication of the season, the September issue of Vogue Magazine.  I opened it up, and there she was:  Edith Wharton in Vogue!  Or model Natalia Vodianova playing Edith in residence, in an 18-page article and spread entitled “The Custom of the Country” by Colm Tóibín with photographs by Annie Leibovitz. There was Edith/Natalia ensconced where I just was, along with various actors, authors and models playing members of her inner circle who were regularly invited to the Mount (Henry James, Walter Berry, Theodore Roosevelt, her landscaper niece Beatrix Farrand, and sculptor Daniel Chester French–whose home I also visited yesterday).  A happy coincidence.


Road Trip, Part Two: Road to Ruin

I drove through south central Vermont towards the Hudson River Valley on roads still-ravaged by Hurricane Irene, a year ago, and along riverbeds of displaced rocks.  Not all was perfect and picturesque in the Green Mountain State; there has obviously been a lot of suffering.  There were poignant messages spray-painted on boarded-up houses:  why, Irene?

I checked in at my brother’s house in Rhinebeck, New York and we planned our itinerary for the next day:  first up, one of the most famous of the grand Hudson River Valley ruined mansions:  Wyndcliffe, built in an imposing Romanesque Revival style in 1853 by Edith Wharton’s paternal aunt, Edith Schermerhorn Jones (1810-1876).  Wyndcliffe has been in a state of decline for 50 years or so, and is now nearly ready to come down.  We approached it on a road marked private (in very small letters), and a very nice Kevin Kline-esque man reproached us, more for our own safety than any territorial inclination:  the “structure” does look like it could collapse at any moment and he said people had been going into it at night. We quickly took a few photographs and left, with additional protective neighbors watching us like guardians.

There are several stories swirling around Wyndecliffe.  It was the first of the really ostentatious, over-the-top mansions in the region: 24 rooms, terraced gardens on 80 acres, Norman-esque tower, elaborate brickwork.  It is said (again and again, although I could not find a contemporary source) that the house represented such a flagrant display of wealth that it inspired the phrase keeping up with the Joneses.  Better documented are Edith Jones Wharton’s visits to the house, which she did not particularly care for, but nonetheless used as a setting for at least one of her books, Hudson River Bracketed.  After her aunt’s death, the house became known as “Linden Grove” and “Linden Hall” with the tenure of industrial brewer Andrew Finck, whose descendants owned the property until 1927.  After that, a serious of owners (including a group of Hungarian nudists!) oversaw its slow but steady decline.

The house in its heyday, and in a series of exterior and interior photographs taken in 1975 by Jack E. Boucher, photographer for the Historic American Buildings Survey, Library of Congress:

And some pictures from yesterday, most of which were taken by my brother as I had forgotten to charge my camera battery!  The house is definitely beginning to cave in on itself (although the pictures above illustrate that this has been happening for some time) but maintains that strong sense of dignity and presence often apparent at the very end.


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