Edith Wharton (1862-1937) & Her Dogs...

    In 1901, with her affluent mother Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander Jones having just died & an inheritance forthcoming, author, designer & dog-lover Edith Wharton & her husband Edward ("Teddy") Robbins Wharton, purchased 113 acres in Lenox, MA for $40,600. Here, Edith would design "The Mount", collaborating with her friend Ogden Codman II & her niece, noted landscape architect Beatrix Jones Farrand.

    "The Mount,” Edith wrote in her memoir, “was to give me country cares and joys, long happy rides and drives through the wooded lanes of that loveliest region, the companionship of a few dear friends, and the freedom from trivial obligations, which was necessary if I was to go on with my writing.”

     Edith Newbold Jones had been married to fellow dog lover Teddy since 1885. Though they shared few common interests, were untethered & childless, they had 2 consuming passions: travel & dogs...they indulged thusly in the early days of their marriage which was filled with Teddy’s terrier "Jules", Edith’s Poodle "Mouton" & her two Papillons, "Mimi" & "Miza" (see below).

     Edith Newbold Jones was born in NYC when her mother Lucretia was 37 years of age & her brothers, Frederic & Harry were well on their way (at ages 16 & 11, respectively). The aristocratic Jones ("keeping up with the Joneses") family traveled abroad during Edith's early childhood, instilling within Edith a great love of travel, as well as a fluency in several languages. Lucretia has been classified, by all accounts, as an intensely vapid snob (I see it more as she being a creature of the times), with Lucretia & Edith having a complex relationship in which Edith was, among other things, banned from reading novels until she was married. It is quite evident that Lucretia stood stolidly in victorianism....whilst Edith forged through the social intricacies of same, rejecting them quite openly & plunging through to the newly emerged social mores. The torrid mother-daughter relationship plays out quite forensically in Edith's novels where the vulgarity of victorian frivolity is sacked with feminine rebellion & savvy...all quite embryonic when Edith wrote her remarkable "House Of Mirth". 

    “What is writing a novel like? The beginning: a ride through a spring wood. The middle: the Gobi desert. The end: a night with a lover.”

    In 1897, Edith & her friend Ogden had co-authored the much celebrated book: "The Decoration of Houses" (which lives on to this day as the bible of interior design). Thus, their collaboration in designing The Mount, was a natural evolution which coalesced from Edith's belief in simple, straight-forward proportion, harmony & sensibility as regards one's surroundings. We can tour the mansion today (see video below) & wonder where on God's green earth that the simplicity, proportion & sensibility are....but, for the era, The Mount was the height  of restraint!

    The 1901-02 construction expenses of the estate are as follows:   (16,850 sq. ft. main house: $57,619; stable: $20,354; gatehouse: $5,356). To provide some insight, the average annual salary in 1901 was $676.00.

   Fraught with difficulties & anxieties borne largely from Teddy's depression (in fact, his father had been institutionalised with "melancholia") & the occasional butting of heads between he & Ogden, Edith ultimately had to change architects just to complete The Mount. By the time she & Teddy finally moved into their estate in September of 1902, Teddy had descended into an acute, restless & ultimately incurable depression. He was often gone to the family compound in Newport, Rhode Island, thus, Edith's dogs kept her company whilst she wrote in bed...a habit which lasted her entire lifetime. 
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    Though the marriage eventually disintegrated in 1913 (it is rumored that Teddy had spent a formidable chunk of Edith's inheritance, thereby forcing the sale of The Mount), the house succeeded as being the atmospheric stream which fed Edith's most spectacular works. With her dogs underfoot & acting almost as conduit, she wrote "Ethan Frome" (1911), "Custom of the Country"(1913) &  " The Age of Innocence"(1920) (which won the Pulizter Prize in 1921) were born. In the end (she sold The Mount in 1911), she candidly wrote in her memoir "A Backward Glance":  “It was only at the Mount that I was really happy...” 

    Edith's dog Mimi died a year after the acreage for The Mount had been purchased...it is touching that Mimi's hillside grave, visible from the library and sitting room, took into account such especial placement. Three more gravesites in the pet cemetery were to follow...(see below)...

     In the end, Edith passed  into the aethyr at her home in the south of France. & always, dogs provided her with comfort, companionship & cardinal direction throughout an undoubtedly turbulent life. We can gaze at fotos of Edith (particularly the startling early childhood fotos...) & see a lonely little person. Yet, that stubborn set-of-jaw reveals far more in it's absolution, it is prelude to the very nature of her life-path. Dignified, stubborn  & independent, just like the dogs she chose to live with.