I’ve been plugging away at Hermione Lee’s Edith Wharton since the end of December of 2009. I read a big chunk then and after that set it aside and picked away at it from time to time. Now I’ve gotten back into and am reading it regularly weekends and evenings. And enjoying it very much.
Wharton knew several people Virginia Woolf also knew and I wondered if they had ever met. I’ve read biographies of Woolf and don’t recall it being mentioned. Now I know the answer. They never met. Wharton despised all things Bloomsbury which she associated with “lesbianism, feminism, bad manners, socialism and ‘Bolshevism,’ obscenity, exhibitionism and experimental art.” She did not like stream-of-conciousness writing and a good many of the techniques used by most modern writers. She thought modernism was formulaic and over-theorised and tended to get it tangled up in her ideas of class, race, and democracy.
Mary Berensen tried to persuade her to read Orlando. The novel was illustrated with “alluring” pictures of Vita Sackville-West and Wharton told Mary that it made her “quite ill” to look at it. She said she would read it but I don’t know if she did. I suspect that if she did, she hated it.
In 1925 both Wharton and Woolf had new books published. Wharton was resentful and prickly that her book, The Mother’s Recompense was called “old-fashioned” and Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway was praised as being “brilliant experimentalism.”
Woolf really ticked her off that same year when she published a somewhat condescending essay on American fiction in the Saturday Review. Wharton wrote to a friend:
Mrs. Virginia Woolf writes a long article…to say that no interesting American fiction is, or should be, written in English; and that Henry Hergesheimer [sic] and I are negligible because we have nothing new to give–not even a language! Well–such discipline is salutary.
I had to laugh because Woolf and Wharton are both snobs. Their differences seem to be generational. Wharton resents not being respected for her age and wisdom and Woolf, as younger generations often do, just wants the old fogey to get out of the way.
So now my question is answered. Woolf and Wharton never met but they knew enough about each other that if they had met it would have been with icy politeness and a hasty departure.
Bring on all things Bloomsbury.
The horrors of bad manners!!
For all of Woolf’s brilliance, she was a poor judge of her contemporaries. In addition to her dismissal of James, she also found Joyce revolting, and she did a deliberate set against Arnold Bennett who was a much more broadminded critic and is still very readable and enjoyable, even in his minor works – more than one can say for Wharton, a very uneven writer.
In fairness to Woolf she did at last give Joyce’s Ulysses a rather grudging approval.
It seems strange that Woolf could write so well of so many books and be insensitive and wrongheaded about so many of her contemporaries.
My mother had to explain to her book group what Bloomsbury was. The had read March and she told them about the American Bloomsbury and they had no clue as to what she was talking about.
Interesting post – is the Biography really good. It has been a while since I have read a great Biography and I was kind of leaning toward something about Emily Dickinson but could be persuaded to switch.
This is fascinating. I wouldn’t have thought of the two of them as living in the same time period, but I guess Wharton was older and wrote about the end of the 19th century from a few decade’s distance. I’ve become a bit disillusioned with Woolf this year after reading a few of her novels (Mrs Dalloway and The Waves, I don’t think she writes strong endings which bothers me), but I’m not in a rush to read much Wharton either, as her endings all seem to be sad! I am obviously a picky ending reader.
Fascinating! You answered one of those things I’d always wondered about… thank you and have a good weekend!
I wondere whether there were any traditional American writers she did admire?
Richard, here! Here!
Daphne, I know! What might the world come to?
Bob, you are right. I think outside the Bloomsbury circle Woolf wasn’t the best of judges about contemporary literature. Wharton didn’t like Joyce either but that’s no surprise. I wonder if part of Woolf’s short-sightedness had anything to do with jealousy or her snobbishness?
pburt, is Bloomsbury fading from knowledge already? What a sad thought. The biography is fantastic. It is huge though and unless you are interested in Wharton go with the Dickinson bio you mention.
Carolyn, Wharton was grounded in a very specific upper class New York sensibility and even though she mocked it and struggled against it, she could only go so far. sorry to hear you’ve become disillusioned with Woolf. Mrs. Dalloway is one of my top ten favorite books. I didn’t like it the first time, the second time I liked it a lot, the third time it jumped onto my all-time favorites list. Don’t give up on Woolf, maybe she just needs time to grow on you
Smithereens, glad to have answered your question and glad I wasn’t the only one who ever wondered about it! You have a good weekend too!
Verbivore, good question. I don’t think Woolf liked Americans very much in general though she happily published her work here. She did like T.S. Eliot if I recall. I’m interested in looking up that essay she wrote to see who she mentions in it!
Yes, the iciness of that imagined meeting is a bit frightening even to think about!
When I read your quote of Wharton’s outburst about Woolf, I imagined the two of them in the same room with Dorothy Parker. Now wouldn’t that be fun! Snobby meets Snarky!
I read Woolf in college and loved Mrs. Dalloway the best. Yes, I agree with Stefanie: don’t give up on Woolf. My colleagues loved To the Lighthouse, but I think Mrs. Dalloway is the best.
Has anyone read Hermione Lee’s biog of Woolf? I have it and haven’t read it yet.
Enjoyed this post very much. Thanks!
I hadn’t thought of them being contemporaries either – it does give an added fillip to their books now. I’ve picked up a lit crit book of essays on modernism by Denis Donoghue – I wonder if he addresses it?
@Verna Wilder Lee’s bio of Woolf is absolutely stunning. I highly recommend it.
A passing of the guards so to speak. I will always love Edith Wharton, but the pleasure of looking at literature from an even more modern perspective is being able to appreciate them both. I still think VW as a most formidable woman and would have been scared senseless to ever meet her–she would have looked down her nose at me, I’m sure!
Like Carolyn, I wouldn’t have thought of them as having lived in the same period – possibly because the few decades that separate them seem worlds apart! I must read Lee’s biographies of them both.
How fascinating! It’s interesting to think about the fact that two writers I like very much wouldn’t have liked each other at all. I guess they appeal to two different sides of me, or perhaps they are too much alike? Or it was generational, as you say. Thank goodness the writers I like don’t have to like each other then!
Hilarious! No wonder they didn’t get on, though; they were both such particular characters, with such distinct perspectives. And yes, Wharton representing the heights of realism and Woolf the treasure house of experimentalism. At least they didn’t actively discourage each other! Hmm, now should I read a Wharton novel next? I’m clearly working out my reading choices through your posts, Stefanie!
Verna, Parker, Woolf and Wharton in the same room, would that be a meeting! Lee’s Woolf bio is excellent as Emily notes. I’ve read it too and found it fantastic.
Emily, I know! I got a chill from just imagining it.
Carrie, that book on modernism sounds interesting. If he addresses it be sure to share!
Danielle, I love Wharton too and she resented so much being labed as old-fashioned but she really was considering the times. And while I like old-fashioned I do so like what Woolf does in her work. I would have been terried of VW too. She would no doubt find me a babbling idiot!
Nymeth, I hadn’t thought of them being in the same period either until I started recognizing names Woolf mentions and then I began to wonder. Wharton was 20 years older than Woolf which in their writing styles seems like it should be an even bigger age difference.
Dorothy, it’s a very good thing that the authors we like don’t have to actually like each other. I’d hate to have to choose sides.
Litlove, one of the interesting reasons Wharton didn’t like moderism is that she felt it had no respect for the past. I can see how she could feel that way given all the hard work she did and the risks she took in her books even though to us now they don’t seem that risky. If you decide to read Wharton give one of her later books a whirl. I’m currently trying to figure out how to fit Hudson River Bracketed into my reading schedule. You might be interested in her book called The Mother’s Recompense.
Just to come back to this, I just picked up Thoreau’s Journals for NYRB reading week coming up and found on the back that Virginia Woolf of all people had given it a glowing recommendation! Perhaps because she also kept a journal throughout her life. Anyway, there’s at least one American writer Woolf seems to like… (perhaps also because he was dead and couldn’t compete with her!)
Carolyn, now that you mention it, I vaguely recall Woolf liking Thoreau. You made me laugh with your final sentence about Woolf possibly liking Thoreau because he was dead and no competition!
It’s just because I remember that Woolf was rather glad when Katherine Mansfield died, because then she couldn’t compete with her… sad that she felt insecure as a writer, instead of being glad there was more than one woman writer in her time doing well. Which seems at odds with A Room of One’s Own, which was encouraging more women to write.
very interesting! I’ve liked both Warton and Woolf but it’s hard to remember that they were alive at the same time, since they are so very different!
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Rebecca, I know! They come from two so very different worlds it is surprising to find that they overlapped.
Oh no! Why can’t all the writers I like get along? It does sound like Wharton was just as snobby as Woolf so I guess they might have talked about their mutual dislike for people if they’d ever met. Perhaps they might both have arrived in a drawing room, coming from somewhere else and got rather drunk to counter having to meet each other. Yes I see it all now – fingers waving drunkenly at each other going’ You know who I really hate, that Joyce fellow’.
Catching up on posts from my HK trip period. As I read your post my first thought was generational! And then you said it. Sounds like both were pretty opinionated, eh? I suppose to be the sorts of writers they were, that’s not surprising.