Madame de Treymes
()
About this ebook
The tale features American expatriates living in France, and contrasts new world simplicity and individual freedoms with old world family traditions and manipulation.
"Madame de Treymes" is the story of the tactical defeat but moral victory of an honest and upstanding American in his struggle to win a wife from a tightly united but feudally minded French aristocratic family.
Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton was born in 1862 to a prominent and wealthy New York family. In 1885 she married Boston socialite 'Teddy' Wharton but the marriage was unhappy and they divorced in 1913. The couple travelled frequently to Europe and settled in France, where Wharton stayed until her death in 1937. Her first major novel was The House of Mirth (1905); many short stories, travel books, memoirs and novels followed, including Ethan Frome (1911) and The Reef (1912). She was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature with The Age of Innocence (1920) and she was thrice nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. She was also decorated for her humanitarian work during the First World War.
Read more from Edith Wharton
The Custom of the Country Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Mother's Recompense Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Son at the Front Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Age of Innocence Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Glimpses of the Moon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Touchstone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Children Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Writing of Fiction: The Classic Guide to the Art of the Short Story and the Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSummer Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Reef Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Roman Fever and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Works of Edith Wharton. Illustrated: The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth, Ethan Frome and others Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Old Maid: The 'Fifties Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Manhattan Noir 2: The Classics Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Collected Short Stories of Edith Wharton Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Custom of the Country Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Roman Fever: Short Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Backward Glance: An Autobiography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/550 Feminist Masterpieces you have to read before you die (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Greatest American Short Stories: 50+ Classics of American Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIn Morocco Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Here and Beyond Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Age of Innocence: The Wild and Wanton Edition Volume 1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Short Stories Of Edith Wharton - Volume I: Madame de Treymes & Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to Madame de Treymes
Related ebooks
Madame de Treymes Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Madame De Treymes (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Short Stories Of Edith Wharton - Volume I: Madame de Treymes & Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Reef by Edith Wharton - Delphi Classics (Illustrated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Uttermost Farthing Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Reef (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gambara Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWoman and Puppet Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Rescue Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCaught in the Net Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Pretty Lady Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings“Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame” Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPeg Woffington Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSLAVES OF PARIS (Complete Edition): Caught in the Net & The Champdoce Mystery Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCount Hannibal: A Romance of the Court of France Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Reef: “Genius is of small use to a woman who does not know how to do her hair.” Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMoulin Rouge Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsI Will Repay Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCapricious Caroline Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHis Own People Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsI Will Repay: “Virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant when it is crushed.” Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Divine Lady: A Romance of Nelson and Emma Hamilton Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Little French Girl Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPetticoat Government Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSlaves of Paris Volume 1: Caught In The Net Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSlaves of Paris: Caught in the Net & The Champdoce Mystery Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAdventures and Enthusiasms Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Romance of the Forest: “One act of beneficence, one act of real usefulness, is worth all the abstract sentiment in the world” Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLe Monsieur De La Petite Dame Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Classics For You
Flowers for Algernon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Master & Margarita Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5East of Eden (Original Classic Edition) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Little Women (Seasons Edition -- Winter) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Old Man and the Sea: The Hemingway Library Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Confederacy of Dunces Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fellowship Of The Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Learn French! Apprends l'Anglais! THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY: In French and English Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Jungle: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mythos Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Farewell to Arms Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad: The Fitzgerald Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Animal Farm: A Fairy Story Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Titus Groan Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Republic by Plato Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wuthering Heights (with an Introduction by Mary Augusta Ward) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Count of Monte-Cristo English and French Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Heroes: The Greek Myths Reimagined Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ulysses: With linked Table of Contents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sense and Sensibility (Centaur Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Quiet American Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As I Lay Dying Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bell Jar: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Scarlet Letter Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Related categories
Reviews for Madame de Treymes
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Madame de Treymes - Edith Wharton
10
MADAME DE TREYMES
Edith Wharton
Chapter 1
John Durham, while he waited for Madame de Malrive to draw on her gloves, stood in the hotel doorway looking out across the Rue de Rivoli at the afternoon brightness of the Tuileries gardens.
His European visits were infrequent enough to have kept unimpaired the freshness of his eye, and he was always struck anew by the vast and consummately ordered spectacle of Paris: by its look of having been boldly and deliberately planned as a background for the enjoyment of life, instead of being forced into grudging concessions to the festive instincts, or barricading itself against them in unenlightened ugliness, like his own lamentable New York.
But to-day, if the scene had never presented itself more alluringly, in that moist spring bloom between showers, when the horse-chestnuts dome themselves in unreal green against a gauzy sky, and the very dust of the pavement seems the fragrance of lilac made visible—to-day for the first time the sense of a personal stake in it all, of having to reckon individually with its effects and influences, kept Durham from an unrestrained yielding to the spell. Paris might still be—to the unimplicated it doubtless still was—the most beautiful city in the world; but whether it were the most lovable or the most detestable depended for him, in the last analysis, on the buttoning of the white glove over which Fanny de Malrive still lingered.
The mere fact of her having forgotten to draw on her gloves as they were descending in the hotel lift from his mother's drawing-room was, in this connection, charged with significance to Durham. She was the kind of woman who always presents herself to the mind's eye as completely equipped, as made up of exquisitely cared for and finely-related details; and that the heat of her parting with his family should have left her unconscious that she was emerging gloveless into Paris, seemed, on the whole, to speak hopefully for Durham's future opinion of the city.
Even now, he could detect a certain confusion, a desire to draw breath and catch up with life, in the way she dawdled over the last buttons in the dimness of the porte-cochere, while her footman, outside, hung on her retarded signal.
When at length they emerged, it was to learn from that functionary that Madame la Marquise's carriage had been obliged to yield its place at the door, but was at the moment in the act of regaining it. Madame de Malrive cut the explanation short. I shall walk home. The carriage this evening at eight.
As the footman turned away, she raised her eyes for the first time to Durham's.
Will you walk with me? Let us cross the Tuileries. I should like to sit a moment on the terrace.
She spoke quite easily and naturally, as if it were the most commonplace thing in the world for them to be straying afoot together over Paris; but even his vague knowledge of the world she lived in—a knowledge mainly acquired through the perusal of yellow-backed fiction—gave a thrilling significance to her naturalness. Durham, indeed, was beginning to find that one of the charms of a sophisticated society is that it lends point and perspective to the slightest contact between the sexes. If, in the old unrestricted New York days, Fanny Frisbee, from a brown stone door-step, had proposed that they should take a walk in the Park, the idea would have presented itself to her companion as agreeable but unimportant; whereas Fanny de Malrive's suggestion that they should stroll across the Tuileries was obviously fraught with unspecified possibilities.
He was so throbbing with the sense of these possibilities that he walked beside her without speaking down the length of the wide alley which follows the line of the Rue de Rivoli, suffering her even, when they reached its farthest end, to direct him in silence up the steps to the terrace of the Feuillants. For, after all, the possibilities were double-faced, and her bold departure from custom might simply mean that what she had to say was so dreadful that it needed all the tenderest mitigation of circumstance.
There was apparently nothing embarrassing to her in his silence: it was a part of her long European discipline that she had learned to manage pauses with ease. In her Frisbee days she might have packed this one with a random fluency; now she was content to let it widen slowly before them like the spacious prospect opening at their feet. The complicated beauty of this prospect, as they moved toward it between the symmetrically clipped limes of the lateral terrace, touched him anew through her nearness, as with the hint of some vast impersonal power, controlling and regulating her life in ways he could not guess, putting between himself and her the whole width of the civilization into which her marriage had absorbed her. And there was such fear in the thought—he read such derision of what he had to offer in the splendour of the great avenues tapering upward to the sunset glories of the Arch—that all he had meant to say when he finally spoke compressed itself at last into an abrupt unmitigated: Well?
She answered at once—as though she had only awaited the call of the national interrogation—I don't know when I have been so happy.
So happy?
The suddenness of his joy flushed up through his fair skin.
As I was just now—taking tea with your mother and sisters.
Durham's Oh!
of surprise betrayed also a note of disillusionment, which she met only by the reconciling murmur: Shall we sit down?
He found two of the springy yellow chairs indigenous to the spot,