The Age of Innocence. by Edith Wharton pdf download

Among New York City’s upper class of the 1870s, before the advent of electric lights, telephones or motor vehicles, there was a small cluster of aristocratic families that ruled New York’s social life. 

To those at the apex of the social world one’s occupation or abilities were secondary to heredity and family connections, and one’s reputation and outward appearance was of foremost importance. At the center of the highest circles is Newland Archer, a lawyer set to enter into a socially safe marriage with the sheltered and beautiful May Welland — a decision Archer is forced to re-consider after the appearance of Countess Ellen Olenska, May’s exotic and beautiful cousin, recently returned from a lengthy stay in Europe.

beneath the rose- trees; and here and there a daisy grafted on a rose- branch flowered with a luxuriance prophetic of Mr. Luther Burbank’s far-off prodigies.

In the centre of this enchanted garden Madame Nilsson, in white cashmere slashed with pale blue satin, a reticule dangling from a blue girdle, and large yellow braids carefully disposed on each side of her muslin chemisette, listened with downcast eyes to M. Capoul’s impassioned wooing, and affected a guileless incomprehension of his designs whenever, by word or glance, he persuasively indicated the ground floor window of the neat brick villa projecting obliquely from the right wing.

“The darling!” thought Newland Archer, his glance flitting back to the young girl with the lilies-of-the- valley. “She doesn’t even guess what it’s all about.” And he contemplated her absorbed young face with a thrill of possessorship in which pride in his own masculine initiation was mingled with a tender reverence for her abysmal purity. “We’ll read Faust together.

On a January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson was singing in

Faust at the Academy of Music in New York.

Though there was already talk of the erection, in remote metropolitan

distances “above the Forties,” of a new Opera House which should compete in

costliness and splendour with those of the great European capitals, the world of

fashion was still content to reassemble every winter in the shabby red and gold

boxes of the sociable old Academy. Conservatives cherished it for being small

and inconvenient, and thus keeping out the “new people” whom New York was

beginning to dread and yet be drawn to; and the sentimental clung to it for its

historic associations, and the musical for its excellent acoustics, always so

problematic a quality in halls built for the hearing of music.

It was Madame Nilsson’s first appearance that winter, and what the daily

press had already learned to describe as “an exceptionally brilliant audience” had

gathered to hear her, transported through the slippery, snowy streets in private

broughams, in the spacious family landau, or in the humbler but more

convenient “Brown coupe.” To come to the Opera in a Brown coupe was almost

as honourable a way of arriving as in one’s own carriage; and departure by the

same means had the immense advantage of enabling one (with a playful allusion

to democratic principles) to scramble into the first Brown conveyance in the line,

instead of waiting till the cold-and-gin congested nose of one’s own coachman

gleamed under the portico of the Academy. It was one of the great livery-

stableman’s most masterly intuitions to have discovered that Americans want to

get away from amusement even more quickly than they want to get to it.

When Newland Archer opened the door at the back of the club box the

curtain had just gone up on the garden scene. There was no reason why the

young man should not have come earlier, for he had dined at seven, alone with

his mother and sister, and had lingered afterward over a cigar in the Gothic

library with glazed black-walnut bookcases and finial-topped chairs which was

the only room in the house where Mrs. Archer allowed smoking. But, in the first

place, New York was a metropolis, and perfectly aware that in metropolises it

was “not the thing” to arrive early at the opera; and what was or was not “the

thing” played a part as important in Newland Archer’s New York as the

inscrutable totem terrors that had ruled the destinies of his forefathers thousands

of years ago.

The second reason for his delay was a personal one. He had dawdled over his

cigar because he was at heart a dilettante, and thinking over a pleasure to come

often gave him a subtler satisfaction than its realisation. This was especially the

case when the pleasure was a delicate one, as his pleasures mostly were; and on

this occasion the moment he looked forward to was so rare and exquisite in

quality that—well, if he had timed his arrival in accord with the prima donna’s

stage-manager he could not have entered the Academy at a more significant

moment than just as she was singing: “He loves me—he loves me not—HE

LOVES ME!—” and sprinkling the falling daisy petals with notes as clear as

dew.

She sang, of course, “M’ama!” and not “he loves me,” since an unalterable

and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of

French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the

clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences. This seemed as natural to

Newland Archer as all the other

conventions on which his life was moulded:

such as the duty of using two silver-backed brushes with his monogram in blue

enamel to part his hair, and of never appearing in society without a flower

(preferably a gardenia) in his buttonhole.

“M’ama … non m’ama …” the prima donna sang, and “M’ama!”, with a final

burst of love triumphant, as she pressed the dishevelled daisy to her lips and

lifted her large eyes to the sophisticated countenance of the little brown Faust-

Capoul, who was vainly trying, in a tight purple velvet doublet and plumed cap,

to look as pure and true as his artless victim.

Newland Archer, leaning against the wall at the back of the club box, turned

his eyes from the stage and scanned the opposite side of the house. Directly

facing him was the box of old Mrs. Manson Mingott, whose monstrous obesity

had long since made it impossible for her to attend the Opera, but who was

always represented on fashionable nights by some of the younger members of

the family. On this occasion, the front of the box was filled by her daughter-in-

law, Mrs. Lovell Mingott, and her daughter, Mrs. Welland; and slightly

withdrawn behind these brocaded matrons sat a young girl in white with eyes

ecstatically fixed on the stagelovers. As Madame Nilsson’s “M’ama!” thrilled out

above the silent house (the boxes always stopped talking during the Daisy Song)

a warm pink mounted to the girl’s cheek, mantled her brow to the roots of her

fair braids, and suffused the young slope of her breast to the line where it met a

modest tulle tucker fastened with a single gardenia. She dropped her eyes to the

immense bouquet of lilies-of-the-valley on her knee, and Newland Archer saw