Lubbock’s Portrait of Edith Wharton is definitive: “Edith settled, the strapped hampers (which she likes to think of as ‘corded bales’) set side by side, the rugs spread, the guests ‘star-scattered in their places: poetic allusion is never amiss at these symposia. Nobody at this point is to help her; she unpacks, distributes, and apportions all. Nor will you find that anything lacks for the meals you might have enjoyed indoors, save the ceiling and the table.”

Featured Image: Wharton with Walter Berry in an undated photograph.

See Percy Lubbock. Portrait of Edith Wharton New York:  D. Appleton, 1947