1908

  January–February, Edward afflicted by “nervous depression.” Wharton leads active social life, seeing linguist Vicomte Robert d’Humières, American ambassador Henry White, watercolorist Walter Gay and his wife, Matilda, James Van Alen, Fullerton, Comtesse Rosa de Fitz-James, Bourget, playwright Paul Hervieu, Charles du Bos, and others. February, spends time with Fullerton while Edward is away, and begins an affair with him in March. Edward, suffering from depression and pervasive pain, leaves for spa at Hot Springs, Arkansas, March 21. Wharton writes Brownell that Edward’s illness has prevented her from making much progress on new novel, The Custom of the Country, and doubts that it will be ready for serial publication by January 1909. April, moves to brother Henry’s townhouse on Place des États-Unis when he goes to America on business. Egerton Winthrop visits. When Henry James visits, arranges to have Jacques Émile Blanche paint portrait that she considers the best ever done of him. May, has first significant meetings with Henry Adams. Meditates in her journal on her affair with Fullerton; writes series of love sonnets. May 22, gives Fullerton journal addressed to him; he returns it the following day as she leaves for America. On fifth day of crossing, writes story “The Choice”; resumes work on The Custom of the Country. In Lenox, has difficulty breathing for six weeks; tells Sally Norton she has hay fever. Scribner’s publishes The Hermit and the Wild Woman, fourth collection of stories, in September, A Motor-Flight Through France, travel account, in October. Writes poetry, enjoys reading Nietzsche’s Jenseits von Gut und Böse (Beyond Good and Evil). Leaves for Europe, October 30. Introduced by Henry James to aging George Meredith at Box Hill, near London; meets Somerset Maugham; goes with James Barrie to see performance of his play What Every Woman Knows. At Stanway, Gloucestershire home of Lady Mary Elcho, meets two young Englishmen who become close friends: Robert Norton, a landscape painter, and John Hugh Smith, a banker expert in Anglo-Russian financial affairs. Sees much of Henry James, who soon professes exhaustion from her visits, referring to her as “the Angel of Devastation.” Crosses to France with Howard Sturgis for Christmas. Literary earnings for year are about $15,000.

  1909

  January, Edward arrives in Paris, suffering from insomnia and inexplicable pain in his face and limbs. Work on The Custom of the Country again interrupted. Continues to write poetry, including “Ogrin the Hermit,” long narrative based on a portion of the Tristan and Iseult legend. When lease on 58 Rue de Varenne expires, moves to large suite in Hotel Crillon, Place de la Concorde, March. Edward returns to Lenox in mid-April. Artemis to Actaeon, book of poetry, published by Scribner’s in late April. French short-story collection, Les Metteurs en Scène, published in May. Involves Henry James and Frederick Macmillan, Fullerton’s publisher, in complicated scheme to conceal gift of money to Fullerton to meet blackmail demands of an ex-mistress. June, goes to London with Fullerton; they spend the night at the Charing Cross Hotel. After Fullerton leaves for America, writes “Terminus,” fifty-two-line love poem. Stays in England until mid-July, visiting with Sturgis, Lapsley, and James. When Fullerton returns, they spend night in Rye at James’s Lamb House. September, Henry Adams arranges another meeting between Wharton and Bernhard Berenson. Friendship develops. Edward arrives in Paris with his sister Nancy in October; soon confesses to Wharton that during the summer he sold some of her holdings, bought property in Boston, and lived there with his mistress. Edward returns to Boston. Later admits to embezzling $50,000 from Wharton’s trust funds; makes restitution by drawing upon $67,000 recently inherited from his mother, who died in August.

  1910

  Moves into apartment at 53 Rue de Varenne, January. Writes stories “The Eyes” and “The Triumph of Night.” Sells New York houses. Edward returns to Paris in February, agrees to enter Swiss sanatorium for treatment of his depression. Goes to England in March to see Henry James, who is recovering from a “nervous breakdown.” Begins short novel Ethan Frome. Walter Berry moves to Paris, stays in Whartons’ guest suite for several months. July 3, sees Nijinsky dance in L’Oiseau de Feu. Affair with Fullerton ends. Visits Henry and William James at Lamb House in August. Sails in September to New York with Edward. October, Edward departs on trip around the world; Wharton returns to Paris, ill and exhausted. Tales of Men and Ghosts published by Scribner’s in October; sells about 4,000 copies.

  1911

  January, confesses to Hugh Smith that “my writing tires and preoccupies me more than it used to.” Tries unsuccessfully with William Dean Howells and Edmund Gosse to secure the Nobel Prize for Henry James. Edward returns to Paris in April. May, at Salsomaggiore for hay fever; resumes concerted work on The Custom of the Country. Returns to Lenox at beginning of July. Has Henry James, Hugh Smith, and Lapsley as guests. Wharton and Edward agree to formal separation in late July, then reverse decision. Returns to Europe in September after entrusting Edward with power to sell The Mount. Ethan Frome serialized in Scribner’s from August through October, published by Scribner’s in September. Reviewers in America and England call it one of her finest achievements. Disappointed with Scribner’s reports of sales (4,200 copies by mid-November), Wharton protests lack of advertising, poor distribution, and bad typesetting. With Berry, tours central Italy and visits Berenson for the first time at his home, Villa I Tatti, near Florence, in October. Puts The Custom of the Country aside in November to work on novel The Reef. Visits England, November–December.

  1912

  Edward arrives in February at Rue de Varenne and stays until May. Relations remain distant and strained. Visits Spain with Rosa and Jean Du Breuil; and La Verna, monastery in Tuscany mountains, with Berry; their car must be lowered by ropes for them to return. Sale of The Mount for undisclosed sum completed in June. Offers to live with Edward in United States, but he refuses. Summer, sees much of Henry James during visits to England. Arranges with Charles Scribner for $8,000 of her royalties to be given to James under the guise of an advance for his novel-in-progress, The Ivory Tower. (James receives $3,600 in 1913; the novel is never completed.) The Reef published by D. Appleton and Company, which had given her $15,000 advance. Reviews are relatively poor; sales reach 7,000. Resumes work on The Custom of the Country. In November, meets with brother Frederic, who has had a stroke.

  1913

  The Custom of the Country appears in Scribner’s, January–November. Receives unexpected letter from brother Henry denouncing her for coldness toward Countess Tecla, his mistress and intended wife. Sues Edward for divorce on grounds of adultery; Paris tribunal grants decree, April 16. Helps to initiate effort to raise gift of $5,000 for Henry James’s seventieth birthday; effort abandoned when James discovers and angrily rejects it. Drives across Sicily with Berry in April. Friendship develops with Geoffrey Scott, author of The Architecture of Humanism, with whom she travels through northern Italy. Favorably impressed by premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s ballet Le Sacre du Printemps in Paris, May 29. Considers buying house outside of London, but eventually decides against it. August, finishes The Custom of the Country. Travels with Berenson through Luxembourg and Germany, stopping at Cologne, Dresden, and Berlin. Begins autobiographical novel Literature, never completed. The Custom of the Country published by Scribner’s in October; sales reach nearly 60,000. December, sails to New York with Berry for wedding of niece, landscape gardener Beatrix Jones (daughter of brother Frederic and Mary Cadwalader), and Yale historian Max Farrand. Delayed when she contracts influenza, misses ceremony but arrives in time for reception. Finds New York “queer, rootless” and “overwhelming.”

  1914

  Returns to Paris in January. Sends Henry James copy of Marcel Proust’s recently published Du Côté de chez Swann. March, sails from Marseilles to Algiers with Percy Lubbock. Drives through northern Algeria and Tunisia, “an unexpurgated page of the Arabian Nights!” Frightened in Timgad, Algeria, by attack from intruder in her room, but breaks away from him and screams; he flees. July, tours Spain with Berry for three weeks, viewing cave paintings at Altamira. Returns to Paris July 31, three days before outbreak of war between France and Germany. August, establishes workroom near Rue de Varenne for seamstresses and other women thrown out of work by the economic disruption of general mobilization. Collects funds, selects supervisory staff, arranges for supply of work orders, free lunches, and coal allotments. Late August, goes to Stocks, English country house rented from novelist Mrs. Humphry Ward, a trip planned before the war. Sees Henry James at Rye. After learning of battle of the Marne, makes arrangements, with difficulty, to return to Paris; succeeds by end of September. November, establishes and directs American Hostels for Refugees. Selects Elisina Tyler, friend since 1912, as administrative deputy; raises $100,000 in first twelve months. (Hostels assists 9,330 refugees by end of 1915, providing free or low-cost food, clothing, coal, housing, medical and child care, and assistance in finding work.)

  1915

  February, visits the front in the Argonne and at Verdun with Berry. Tours hospitals, investigating need for blankets and clothing; watches French assault on village of Vauquois. Makes four more visits to front with Berry in next six months, including tour of frontline trenches in the Vosges; describes them in articles for Scribner’s (collected in Fighting France, from Dunkerque to Belfort, published by Scribner’s in November). April, organizes Children of Flanders Rescue Committee with Tyler, establishing six homes between Paris and the Normandy coast. Committee sets up classes in lacemaking for girls, industrial training for boys, French for Flemish speakers. Nearly 750 Flemish children, many of them tubercular, cared for in 1915. Increasingly concentrates on fund-raising and creation of sponsoring committees in France and the United States, delegating daily administration to Tyler. Arranges benefit concerts and an art exhibition. Edits The Book of the Homeless (published by Scribner’s in January 1916), with introductions by Marshal Joffre and Theodore Roosevelt. Contributors of poetry, essays, art, fiction, and musical scores include Cocteau, Conrad, Howells, Anna de Noailles, Hardy, Sargent, Santayana, Yeats, Eleanora Duse, Sarah Bernhardt, Henry James, Max Beerbohm, Paul Claudel, Edmond Rostand, Monet, Renoir, Leon Bakst, and Stravinsky. Wharton does most of the translations. Proceeds (approximately $2,500 from the book, $7,000 from the sale of art and manuscripts) go to Hostels and Rescue Committee. Friendship develops with André Gide, who serves on a Hostels committee. October, makes short visit to England to visit ailing Henry James. Learns in December that James is dying; writes Lapsley: “His friendship has been the pride & honour of my life.”

  1916

  Henry James dies February 28. Spring, helps establish treatment program for tubercular French soldiers. Made Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, March. Mourns deaths of Egerton Winthrop (tells Berenson that Winthrop and Henry James “made up the sum of the best I have known in human nature”) and secretary Anna Bahlmann. Informs Charles Scribner that she is working on novel The Glimpses of the Moon and a work “of the dimensions of Ethan Frome. It deals with the same kind of life in a midsummer landscape.” Offers the latter for serial publication, but Charles Scribner declines, having already scheduled her 1892 “Bunner Sisters” for fall; accepts offer from Appleton for book and from McClure’s for serial. Feels financial pressure due to expense of refugee work, reduced literary earnings, and effects of American income tax. Xingu and Other Stories (all except one story written before the war) published in October by Scribner’s.

  1917

  Summer, companion piece to Ethan Frome, serialized in McClure’s for $7,000, February–August; published by Appleton July 2. Makes two final visits to war zones in April and October. Grows fond of Ronald Simmons, young American officer and painter. After tuberculosis treatment centers are taken over by the Red Cross, establishes four convalescent homes for tubercular civilians. September–October, makes month-long tour of French Morocco with Walter Berry. Witnesses self-lacerative ritual dances and visits harem, noting its air of “somewhat melancholy respectability.”

  1918

  February, gives lecture on American life at the Société des Conférences, and April, gives talk to American soldiers that becomes first chapter of French Ways and Their Meaning. After long negotiation, purchases Jean-Marie, house in village of St. Brice-sous-Fôret, outside of Paris in March for 90,000 francs (will restore its original name, Pavillon Colombe). Summer, begins novels The Marne and A Son at the Front. May–July, has three minor heart attacks. June, brother Frederic dies; Wharton, long estranged from him, writes sadly of her brother Henry’s failure to contact her. Deeply grieved by death from Spanish flu of Ronald Simmons, August 12. The Marne published by Appleton in December.

  1919

  Rising expenses, support of financially troubled Mary Cadwalader Jones, establishment of trust fund for three Belgian children, together with changing New York real estate market and effects of American income tax, create financial pressure. Accepts offer of $18,000 from The Pictorial Review for serial rights to her next novel. Unable to finish The Glimpses of the Moon, suggests A Son at the Front, but editors cable her: “War Books Dead in America.” Proposes novel Old New York (later retitled The Age of Innocence), set in 1875. Magazine accepts, and Appleton advances $15,000 against royalties. Leases Ste.-Claire-du-Vieux-Château in Hyères, overlooking Mediterranean. Moves into Pavillon Colombe in July. Starts to create gardens for both houses, with advice from garden-designers Lawrence Johnston and niece Beatrix Farrand. French Ways and Their Meaning, collection of magazine articles, published by Appleton. “Beatrice Palmato” outline and fragment, explicit treatment of father-daughter incest, probably written at this time (the story is never finished). Made Chevalier of the Order of Leopold by King Albert of Belgium.

  1920

  Howard Sturgis dies in January; end of Queen’s Acre gatherings. In Morocco, travel account, published by Scribner’s in October after serialization the previous year. The Age of Innocence, serialized in The Pictorial Review July–October, published by Appleton in October, sells 66,000 copies in six months (by 1922 it earns Wharton $50,000). November, given the Prix de Vertú from the Académie française. December, moves to Hyères for several months.

  1921

  Resumes work on The Glimpses of the Moon. Writes The Old Maid, novella about out-of-wedlock birth (rejected by Ladies’ Home Journal for being “a bit too vigorous for us”). Begins long friendship with Philomène de Lévis-Mirepoix (later Philomène de la Forest-Divonne, who will write journalism and novels under the name Claude Sylve). The Age of Innocence awarded Pulitzer Prize in May. Later learns that the jury had originally voted for Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street, but had been overruled by the trustees of Columbia University, who thought it too controversial. Writes to Lewis in August of her “disgust” at the action and invites him to St. Brice (he makes the first of several visits in October). The Old Maid bought by RedBook for $2,250 (serialized February–April 1922). September, finishes The Glimpses of the Moon. Goes to Hyères in mid-December.

  1922

  At Hyères until late May; June to mid-December at St. Brice. Summer, longtime friend and correspondent Sally Norton dies. When estranged brother Henry dies in August Wharton writes Berenson that “he was the dearest of brothers to all my youth.” The Glimpses of the Moon serialized in The Pictorial Review; published by Appleton in July, sells more than 100,000 copies in America and Britain in six months, earning her $60,000 from various rights and royalties. Reads William Gerhardi’s Futility and begins correspondence with him.

  1923

  Film version of The Glimpses of the Moon, with dialogue titles by F. Scott Fitzgerald, released in April. (Six other films were made from Wharton’s works from 1918 to 1934; she had no involvement in any of the productions.) In May, invited by Yale University to receive honorary Doctor of Letters degree. Although reluctant to attend, decides she needs to see United States if she is to continue writing about it. Accepts degree (the first to be awarded to a woman by Yale) at commencement in New Haven, June 20. Returns to France after eleven-day visit (during which she meets playwright Edward Sheldon), her first since 1913 and her last. Novel A Son at the Front published by Scribner’s in September, fulfilling promise made a decade earlier to give Scribner’s another novel after The Custom of the Country; sales are poor. Works on novel The Mother’s Recompense. Promoted to Officer of the Legion of Honor. Meets Lytton Strachey during visit to Pontigny.

  1924

  January, Gerhardi visits Ste.-Claire, and becomes a regular visitor. Old New York, collection of four novellas, published by Appleton in May in boxed sets of four volumes. Titles are False Dawn (The ’Forties), The Old Maid (The ’Fifties), The Spark (The ’Sixties), New Year’s Day (The ’Seventies). About 26,000 sets sold in six months, with another 3,000 volumes sold individually. Declines election as honorary vice-president of the Authors’ League of America. Begins keeping diary sporadically as notes for a future autobiography.

  1925

  Becomes first woman to be awarded Gold Medal for “distinguished service” by National Institute of Arts and Letters. The Mother’s Recompense published by Appleton in April after serialization in The Pictorial Review October 1924–March 1925. Sales are good, earning her $55,000 in the first few months. June, receives inscribed copy of The Great Gatsby from Fitzgerald. July, Fitzgerald visits St. Brice; the encounter is strained and awkward. The Writing of Fiction, collection of five essays, including long appreciation of Proust, published by Scribner’s in the late summer. In September, travels to Spain with Berry.