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    The Custom of the Country
    The Custom of the Country
    The Custom of the Country
    Ebook511 pages9 hours

    The Custom of the Country

    By Edith Wharton

    4/5

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    Edith Wharton’s classic story of one woman’s quest for wealth and status after the turn of the twentieth century

    Beautiful, selfish, and driven, Undine Spragg arrives in New York with all of the ambition and naiveté that her midwestern, nouveau riche upbringing afforded her. As cunning as she is lovely, Undine has but one goal in life: to ascend to the upper echelons of high society. And so with a single-minded tenacity, Undine continues to maneuver through life, finding all the while that true satisfaction remains just beyond her grasp.

    Hailed by Elizabeth Hardwick as “Edith Wharton’s finest achievement,” The Custom of the Country is a riveting novel of ruthless ambition and a literary master class in the art of the antiheroine.

    This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateJan 27, 2015
    ISBN9781497684355
    Author

    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.

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    • 5/5
      Oh Undine!I have to address you, but I must confess that I am very nearly lost for words. I have never met anyone quite like you – in fact or in fiction – and you have made such an impression. You really are a force of nature. You had to be, to have lived the life that you have lived.Looking back it’s hard to believe that you were the daughter of a self-made man, that you came from Apex in North Carolina. But, of course, you were the apple of your parents’ eyes, and they were prepared to invest everything they had, and to do without themselves, to help you reach the very highest echelons of New York society.You always got what you wanted. Always.Did you appreciate what they did for you? Did you understand how much they sacrifice? I think not; there was nothing in your words, your actions, your demeanour to suggest that you did.At first I was inclined to blame your parents for spoiling you, but I came to realise that it wasn’t them, it was you. I began to feel sorry for them.You made some mistakes as you climbed the ladder, because you didn’t quite understand quite how that rarefied society worked, but you were a wonderfully quick learner. You changed your behaviour, your appearance, your expectations, to become the person you wanted to be, the person you needed to be, to achieve your ambitions.And you succeeded. You drew the attention of Ralph Marvell, the son of one of the oldest, grandest families in New York. He loved your beauty, your difference; and you loved everything that he stood for. And so you married …..Sadly, it wasn’t a happy ending.You didn’t understand that the families at the pinnacle of society were not the wealthiest. You couldn’t understand that Ralph didn’t share your ambitions – I don’t think that you even realised that was possible – and certainly it was quite beyond your comprehension that he dreamed of a writing a novel. He never did, he had not one iota of your drive and ambition, and I suspect that he lacked the talent. Ralph drifted through life, disappointed that he could not expand your narrow horizons, that he could not open your eyes to the beauty of the art and literature that he loved.He was part of an old order that was dying, and you were part of a new order that would adapt and survive. You learned how to bend and even change society’s rules to allow you to do exactly what you wanted to do. You really didn’t understand him, you broke him, and my heart broke for him.I even began to feel at little sorry for you, despite your selfishness, because there was so much that you didn’t understand. There are more important things than money, luxury, fashion, and social position. Things can’t really make you happy, because there will always be other things to want, there will always be things beyond your reach. You learned so much, but you never learned that.There would be more marriages, more travels, more possessions ….There would be more damage. My heart broke again, for the son you so often seemed to forget you had. And though you would never admit it, you were damaged by your own actions. But you were a survivor Undine, weren’t you?You did learn a little; I learned a little about your past, and I came to feel that I understood you a little better; most of all, I do think that when you finally married the right man it made all the difference. It wasn’t quite enough for me to say that I liked you, but I was always fascinated by you.Now I find myself wanting to do what Alice did at the end of ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I want to throw you in the air and say, “You’re just a fictional character!” But I can’t. Because you are so utterly real; not a heroine, not a villainess, but a vivid, three-dimensional human being, with strengths and weaknesses.You are perfectly realised; your world and everything, everything around you is perfectly realised. The telling of your story is compelling, beautiful and so very profound. It speaks of its times and it has things to say that are timeless. Because, though times may change, human nature stays the same.Edith Wharton was a genius – it’s as simple as that.
    • 5/5
      This is fabulous book - masterfully crafted, eloquently written, and I am just sorry I haven't read more of her book, but I will remeday that. I sumply must read more (all) of Edith Warton's works. Her writing is beautiful and succinct; her characters are well built and interesting.
    • 5/5
      How does Wharton do it? In Undine Spregg she has created a very unsympathetic character - selfish, spoiled, cruel, materialistic, heartless – who turns over husbands much as she does dresses and discards her child – and yet Wharton’s Undine is fascinating and unforgettable. Though Undine is a ruthless social climber the quality of the prose, the exquisite characterisations, the vivid scenes and exchanges, the variety of viewpoints are all so good one can only continue. And Undine is never indecisive – the story never wavers or palls because she never takes her eye from the next prize.But Wharton loves to throw the cat among the pigeons. She is also using Undine to comment on the social mores of the time. She shows how the nature of business is shifting, and the nouveau riche are pushing aside the stuffy old guard. She also draws some interesting comparisons between American and Europe society. Wharton combines superb prose with an acute understanding of human character.
    • 4/5
      Edith Wharton is truly a woman of letters. I cannot think of a contemporary writer who even comes close to matching her style and use of language. It is a pleasure to read her prose, and not difficult or archaic as some may think “Classic Novels” to be. Along with her beautiful prose is her keen insights into human nature, and her ability to skewer and satirize every social class with knowing intimacy.

      Wharton daringly takes a wholly unlikeable and unsympathetic character, Undine Sprague, and makes her the main character of this novel. Undine is one of the most spoiled characters I have ever read about in a novel; she and Becky Sharp from Vanity Fair seem to be tied for this title. While Undine has brief flashes of insight and understanding of her world, her ambitions and those around her, they are very brief and she dismisses them quickly so as not to lose sight of the next rung up on the Social ladder in which she is ascending.

      While this is not my favorite Wharton book, (Undine is just too unsympathetic for that) I would absolutely recommend it, if for no other reason than to read beautiful prose, something that seems to be a lost art today in “literary fiction.”
    • 4/5
      I like Edith Wharton's writing very much, and this novel has many of her strengths, but I struggled with it because of Edith Wharton's relentless snobbery towards her main character, Undine Spragg, a loathsome and predatory specimen of the "nouveau riche" who preys on and ingratiates herself into classy but faded old-money New York society.Edith Wharton directs (or at least strongly nudges) the reader to hate Unidine and take the side of her victims, but the old rich of New York are no better than the nouveau riche in my view: their old money ultimately derives from expropriating Native American land, so why should I sympathise with them?Thus, although Undine is most certainly far from likable, I found myself with a sneaking admiration for her, and felt that, portrayed by another author with a broader range of human sympathies, she could have emerged as a heroic, or at least anti-heroic, character. I'll fight you for her, Edith!
    • 5/5
      Oh, Edith. Why does it always seem like you're speaking to me directly, that your books are your end of our correspondence, that your heroines are mere reflections of the person I truly am? Why, oh, why can you find just the tender spot, the flaw I wish I didn't have and then show me what would happen if I didn't keep it in check? How can you crash into my life at the very moment I need it most? The Custom of the Country reads like a cautionary tale and yet it's impossible for me to blame the heroine as I see too much of myself in her. Undine's childish belief that a fat bank account buys happiness, her blind refusal to really deeply consider that money does not grow on trees, her selfish yet brave belief that she must be happy no matter what even if she hurts everyone that stands in her way, all down to her eternal quest for an unreachable satisfaction with her lot. This is a brilliant book because it reads like a tragedy that's full of stuff and I revel in material things, however much I wish I didn't. Details of dresses lined in a wardrobe 'like so many unfulfilled promises', exquisite art, theatre, food, houses. It's an orgy of aristocratic detail the inherent dizziness of which plays into the ultimate catastrophe and the spiralling fall. It's about climbing a neverending ladder to the stars and not being able to appreciate the world in between. The writing is marvellous, the emotions raw. Oh, what a treat that was.
    • 4/5
      The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton tells the story of Undine Spragg, a Midwestern girl who attempts to scale the heights of New York City society. Undine is one of the most unique characters I have come across. Beautiful, selfish, and ignorant. She is terribly spoiled and seems incapable of understanding the consequences of her actions. She has no empathy and leaves a wake of damaged lives behind her. She repulsed me with her nastiness, yet I had to read on and find out what she was going to do next. As we follow Undine through first one husband and then another, I kept waiting for her to learn a life lesson or two, but instead she always seems to think that her wishes must come first, that money should always be available to her and that her beauty entitled her to anything she wanted. Undine always seems to get what she wanted, but she also was quickly dissatisfied. Motherhood did nothing either mature her and I felt very sorry for her son, Paul. Wharton never wavered in keeping Undine true to her vision, even at the end of the book, the reader is given a glimpse of Undine that allows us to know that she will never be satisfied with the status quo. Wharton delivers her story beautifully and uses her wit and insight to give us a sharp look at upper crust society as the nouveau riche come up against the old guard. I enjoyed this book immensely and will keep Undine Spragg on the memory shelf alongside of Scarlett O’Hara and Becky Sharp.
    • 3/5
      about a horrible, selfish social climber--main character is so annoying that I could barely force myself to finish the book--proves that women today are lucky to be educated with careers so they can divert their energy toward better things than parties clothes and status
    • 5/5
      Edith Wharton understood a certain type of woman as well or better than anyone who ever wrote a book. Undine was narcissistic, beautiful, manipulative, clever (but not overly intelligent or curious), and, above all, ambitious. She was more ruthless and eviscerating than a mafia don.Eventually, one of her captivated followers might notice her complete lack of concern for anyone but herself and her lack of interest in anything other than shopping or dining. Some even began to find her boring, but as a reader I was never bored by her. She was a fascinating piece of work and the book is absolutely wonderful.
    • 5/5
      This is such a depressing book. You know why someone like Undine exists. And so you "cut her some slack." But she is so horrible. It makes you angry that she exists. And then you feel so bad for her husbands (a string of them) and her little boy. I'm glad I have lived in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Reading Wharton and James over the past few weeks. She is so good.
    • 4/5
      Even now, however, she was not always happy. She had everything she wanted, but she still felt, at times, that there were other things she might want if she knew about them.As soon as I saw that the heroine's name was Undine Spragg I could tell that this book would be fun, and I was right. It is a satire about a social climbing golddigger from the mid-West and her attempts to marry into high society via several different husbands.Undine is a nightmare and I started off pitying her poor parents, but then decided that they had brought it on themselves by spoiling her so badly. However, the story makes the serious point that if men keep their wives in the dark about their careers and everything else that is important to them, it is not surprising that their wives are empty-headed and vain as they have nothing but socialising to occupy themselves with. Undine is manipulative but stupid and would be no match for Becky Sharp, although she ends the book in a far better position in life than Becky did in Vanity Fair. If you have the Oxford World Classics edition, leave the introduction until last as it is full of spoilers.
    • 4/5
      This is, perhaps, Edith Wharton's most scathing satire of haute bourgeoisie society of all the novels she wrote. I have seen it compared to The House of Mirth but while Lily Barth was bad (but probably not bad enough), Undine Spragg is just plain awful: shallow, uneducated, vulgar and totally narcissistic. She lives in her own selfish world that must unceasingly revolve around herself.Unfortunately, like many beautiful women she has a string of enablers - starting with her parents who bend to her every whim. The novel chronicles her rise from a midwestern city (Chicago? Cleveland?) to New York where she marries into an old New York family (Think the Welland family from The Age of Innocence only with a whole lot less money). She quickly becomes disillusioned with him, and moves onto greener pastures with a French aristocrat, only to see that his expectations of domestic life do not meet her expectations of how she wants to live.Finally we find her with husband number three - a vulgar Donald rump-like character - who is very rich and understands that he will only hold onto her as long as his money holds out. Along the way, Undine leaves a trail of destruction in her wake: suicide, bankruptcy,a neglected child and ruined parents. Up to the very end, she is neither satisfied, nor is she sorry for anything that she does.In today's age of income inequality and narcissistic culture, this book, written 100 years ago is just as relevant to day as when it was written in 1912.
    • 4/5
      Edith Wharton paints a fascinating anti-heroine in Udine. Ambitious, totally selfish and self-deceiving Udine sets out to conquer Society in both America and turn-of-the-century France. Divorcing her husbands and neglecting her child to achieve superficial supremacy if not personal satisfaction.
    • 4/5
      ** spoiler alert ** The story of Undine Spragg, possibly the most self-centred heroine I have ever encountered, who forces her long-suffering parents to move to New York so that she can meet "the best people". She marries Ralph, from an "old family" and has a son with him, but divorces him because he is too poor. She plans to marry her lover, Peter, but he drops her and so, after much strategizing on her part she marries a French nobleman, Raymond. Raymond too fails to keep her in the style she had expected, so she ditches him for the dubious Elmer Moffatt, to whom, it is revealed towards the end, she was briefly married as a teenager. Even with his riches, she is dissatisfied and the final page sees her furious that as a divorcee she can never be the wife of an ambassador.Things I liked about this novel:Undine's realisation that Raymond and his friends are bored by her because she is ignorant and has no interests or conversation.The fact that Peter ditches her (or at least says he does) because of her heartless disregard for her husband when he is so ill.The comments that: Undine regards money as something the men in her life must provide for her and she is wholly uninterested in how it is earned/obtained; American men keep their women ignorant about money and thus value them and their intelligence less than Europeans do their wives.On the other hand:Ralph's suicide came out of nowhere and seemed precipitate - surely he knew Undine didn't really want Paul?Presumably Undine's divorce from Elmer meant that her marriage to Raymond in the RC church was unlawful. This doesn't affect the plot because the divorce was kept secret, but were we supposed to note this?
    • 4/5
      If you’re the kind of person who gets angry while reading about annoying characters to the point of wanting to punch them in their fictitious faces, don’t read this book. Wharton does paint an enduring portrait of a gold digger in Undine Spragg, but at 500+ pages, it gets to be a little much. She also satirizes ‘new money’ in America, both how it was made, through unscrupulous backroom deals and connections, as well as its lack of grace and culture. Undine has an extraordinary amount of ambition, but as a woman can only channel this by using her charms to marry a rich man, and someone with connections in society. As with all greedy, selfish people, no amount of material possessions are ever enough for Undine, and she can only improve her situation by divorcing and remarrying, something that carries a stigma in America and is not possible in France, where she lives for a portion of the novel. Wharton’s writing is great, but none of the characters are likeable, so it’s a bit of a masochistic read. It’s the 8th novel I’ve read by her and was far from a disappointment, but I would recommend ‘The Age of Innocence’, ‘The House of Mirth’, ‘The Reef’, or good old ‘Ethan Frome’ instead.Quotes:On beauty, a sign of the times then (and again now), and I liked the last phrase:“She was tall enough to carry off a little extra weight, but excessive slimness was the fashion, and she shuddered at the thought that she might some day deviate from the perpendicular.”And this one, on being admired:“What could be more delightful than to feel that, while all the women envied her dress, the men did not so much as look at it?”On men:“He put it to her at last, standing squarely before her, his batrachian sallowness unpleasantly flushed, and primitive man looking out of the eyes from which a frock-coated gentleman usually pined at her.”On moments of rapture, and writing; the best passage of the book:“It was one of those moments when the accumulated impressions of life converge on heart and brain, elucidating, enlacing each other, in a mysterious confusion of beauty. He had had glimpses of such a state before, of such mergings of the personal with the general life that one felt one’s self a mere wave on the wild stream of being, yet thrilled with a sharper sense of individuality than can be known within the mere bounds of the actual. But now he knew the sensation in its fullness, and with it came the releasing power of language. Words were flashing like brilliant birds through the boughs overhead; he had but to wave his magic wand to have them flutter down to him. Only they were so beautiful up there, weaving their fantastic flights against the blue, that it was pleasanter, for the moment, to watch them and let the wand lie.”

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    • 3/5
      This is another dip into the Lifetime Reading Plan well.

      Undine Spragg is a beautiful but spoiled little Midwestern bourgeois princess. She goads her parents into relocating to New York City, where she hopes to realize her dream of marrying well, entering "society" as she sees it, and living a life of ease and entertainment, surrounded by all the things lots and lots of money can buy.

      A succession of marital adventures (each with an aristocrat of a different type) teach her nothing about living a truly fulfilling life. Undine is sort of a proto-Scarlett O'Hara. But unlike Scarlett, she never undergoes any refining hardship, and thus, never develops her character into someone the reader can truly like.

      This is a didactic book, in which Wharton shows us how the prevailing definitions and behaviors of success in business create such "perfect monsters" as Undine. A perceptive mouthpiece of a character states this theme outright in the first third of the book. "The custom of the country" has created her. The remainder of the book merely hammers the lesson home over and over again. Although there are some surprises and reversals, Undine is allowed to remain the same spoiled Undine she was from the beginning.
    • 3/5
      I liked that this book was set in New York and Edith Wharton was obviously very clever. But overall, I just didn’t dig this book much. There is something about the story of “vapid but beautiful jerk that always gets her way” that just doesn't do it for me. Snooze.

    • 5/5
      I read The Customs of the Country before I learned that Edith Wharton was the subject of the September issue of Vogue magazine, entitled “The Customs of the Country.” I just about died. How did I not know about this before???? Supermodel Natalia Vodianova plays Edith Wharton, and several famous actors and authors play various people in her life, including Jeffrey Eugenides as Henry James (gasp! A win-win combination in my book, pun intended). It looks as though Edith Wharton is having a bit of a revival at the moment; a cache of her letters has been published recently, in conjunction with the fact that this year is the 150th anniversary of her birth. In addition, Vintage Classics have reprinted several of her novels, including this one, Ethan Frome, The House of Mirth, and The Age of Innocence, all with simple and simply beautiful covers. Edith Wharton was notoriously both fascinated by and contemptuous of New York society, and The Customs of the Country is another such novel in which she skewers her characters and the world in which they live. The Customs of the Country is the story of Undine Spragg, a rapaciously acquisitive young woman who constantly strives for more. She and her parents come to New York City, having recently hit the apex of society in the aptly-named midwestern town of Apex, and Undine is on a quest to marry well and acquire money and power. Yet Undine is constantly an outsider looking in, someone that true high-class New York society doesn’t take completely seriously.She marries Ralph Marvel, a man with whom she couldn’t be more incompatible. Ralph’s family have come down in the world, and Ralph is an artistic type who would rather be composing poetry than working a 9-5 job on Wall Street. The novel chronicles Undine’s adventures in marriage, her scandalous affairs, from New York to France and back again. Meanwhile, a shocking secret from Undine's path threatens to reveal itself and spoil all her plans. I was intrigued by the author's choice of the name Undine for her protagonist. An undine is a water spirit, said to gain a soul by marrying and having a child. So you might easily see the connection between the mythological creature and Undine Spragg and the hope that Wharton might have had for her main character as she created her. There's also the German folktale of Ondine, in which a woman curses her unfaithful husband to cease breathing. Shoe-on-the-other-foot syndrome, maybe? You get the sense that Edith Wharton was not only fascinated with the monster she created, but repelled by her actions at the same time. As such, the reader doesn’t quite know whether to dislike Undine or laugh at her, because half the time her antics are really quite ridiculous. At the end of the day, though, the reader has to wonder: what’s all of this social striving for? To what end? That’s why this novel is sometimes tinged with a hint of sadness.
    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed this book despite the main character being totally unappealing. Funny how Wharton can make her female characters so superficial and unlikable and yet, as a woman, I continue to read and enjoy the book. Her writing is so elegant. So many times I wanted to thank her for saying something so beautifully and spot on.
    • 4/5
      Edith Wharton's damning portrait of the never satisfied, social climbing, money grubbing American is an excellent read. Follow the marital career of Undine Spragg and cringe throughout the entire story. Undine represents all that is base and ugly about the upstart American women contrasted with the elegant, complex European social system. I particularly love the closing, as Undine ponders her awareness that there is one thing she cannot have. She cannot be the wife of an asmbassador because she has been divorced. How crushing! To me, this is a harsher, blunter Edith Wharton than I am used to, yet still wonderful!
    • 4/5
      Undine Spragg, a woman of powerful and thoughtless beauty in the Paris Hilton school of vulgarity, must arouse the disgust and impatience of all decent readers, even while arousing their curiosity as to how far, this time, she might be willing to go to achieve her ends. Wharton's intention in this tragicomic novel was to critique the weakness of the established ruling classes, as exemplified by the husband of Undine who commits suicide, in the face of the challenge from a vulgar breed of interlopers who sought out society to realize their ambitions for place and power. Of all the most revolting qualities of Undine, apart from her indifference to the husband she leads to commit suicide, must be her attitude towards her children, whom she does not scruple to use as political footballs in her quest for recognition and acceptance. Fortunately, she meets, in her last husband, a dangerous and breathtakingly materialistic man who is thoroughly her match.
    • 4/5
      You can't always get what you want, Undine, but, in the words of the Rolling Stones, you get what you need. Undine is a spoiled and larger-than-life character who wants and "needs" many things. She's not afraid to do what it takes to get them and frequently uses her beauty to take advantage of people. The ineffectual men in her life are tossed aside like yesterday's newspapers. There is always something bigger and better around the corner for her. I came to love to hate Undine, especially when she treated her son with cold indifference. She is truly one of the most distasteful characters Edith Wharton has created...and one of the most memorable.This book is all over the place geographically from the midwest to New York City to France and back again. Undine observes others and absorbs their behavior, thus always moving upwards to attain her goal of having money and the recognition of people in high society. It's fun to see her setbacks offset by her greed and undaunted social climbing.Wharton's writing is accomplished as always, using irony and her own astute observations to create a world of manipulation and misfortune. I'm going to indulge myself and end this review with another quote from The Stones: "I can't get no satisfaction." This is a perfect description of Undine's nature.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoy Edith Wharton’s writing this one has some good lines that made me giggle and Undine’s attitude towards life and other people is laughable.Undine is a social climber of the highest form she even goes so far as to call it her career. And that every bit of unhappiness she goes through is someone else’s fault and everyone is out to get her. She finds out that climbing up isn’t always better. And she is never satisfied! As much as Undine is not a very good person she is written so well I couldn’t help but like her even if she is supposed to be so unlikable. Or maybe I just enjoyed her story more than I liked her I don’t know I do know I really enjoyed this book! It was so funny to me how really delusional she is at times. I just enjoyed the character of Undine so much and also Moffatt I knew whenever he came in the picture fun things were going to happen or at least some great lines! This is set in such a time when society was hilarious a bunch of highbrows or at least they thought they were and Undine’s quest to fit in with the “right” crowd made for a great story.This is my second Edith Wharton book and I have enjoyed both of them very much and plan to go on to read everything she’s written!I listened to this on audio narrated by, Grace Conlin who does a very good job at the narration.
    • 5/5
      Published in 1913, two years after Ethan Frome, but in gestation since 1907, The Custom of the Country is a novel that combines the tradition of the 'money' novel with Wharton's customary depiction of New York society and, in this case, also Parisian society. Undine Spragg is a beautiful, domineering, and spoiled young woman from somewhere in the Midwest who enters this society with the baggage of one divorce already behind her. Wharton's satirical prose envelopes Undine, her parents, and the New York social crowd, as Undine attempts to join it in her effort to get ahead. Never satisfied with her lot in life (sometimes anxious and always observant of those around her imagining what they expect from her), she is impatient and makes mistakes including marrying Ralph Marvell whose family is pedigreed but impecunious. Her attempts to live in a lifestyle which she considers worthy of her grand ambition quickly leads to difficulties that engulf the marriage. Her story continues with financial intrigue on the part of her first husband, who has also migrated to New York from the Midwest for greater financial opportunities. Undine in the meantime lives in Europe chasing after a Prince before settling on a marriage to Count Raymond de Chelles. However, her all-consuming greed leads to the end of that marriage; while further financial dealings bring vast wealth to Elmer Moffat, her first husband who has become more and more interesting to her throughout the story.Undine is one of Edith Wharton's greatest creations, who resembles Thackeray's Becky Sharp, a heroine from an earlier age. With her reliance on men of questionable financial character and the increased rate of change in society in the new century Undine devastates the social landscape before her as its representatives are shown to have feet of clay. I found myself unable to generate any sympathy for her character, unlike my experience reading about Wharton's other leading ladies (Lily Bart in The House of Mirth and Ellen Olenska in The Age of Innocence). In its structure the novel covers new ground for Wharton with the introduction of a journalistic narrator, Mrs Heany, in the second half of the book. The result is a more modern novel than her other great works. The story ultimately is one of a self-made woman who, while lacking moral character, is able to create a world through her ability to use the people around her for her material advantage. The novel is one in which satire is omnipresent and the result is a brittle yet brilliant achievement.
    • 4/5
      This was the first Edith Wharton I read, having lucked out of Ethan Frome in high school. I was totally gabsmocked by the book -- what a wonderful, snarky, insightful novel. That the heroine is almost completely unsympathetic didn't make me want to put it down for a moment.
    • 4/5
      Undine Spragg, Wharton's eminently unlikable heroine, is a grasping, abrasive, ill-tempered, clueless social climber who is only really ever interested in that which is out of her reach.In some ways, Undine is the anti-Lily Bart, even though both women are constantly putting themselves in rather compromising positions with men to whom they are not married in order to obtain financial security. Undine's idea of financial security, however, is to be rich enough to indulge her every whim without ever having to hear a word of reporach. Sadly for her, she marries repeatedly and in haste men whose resources do not equal their reputations, and finds herself under continual financial strain.Wharton's at her driest and funniest here; she's a uniquely American combination of Dickens and Austen, satirizing social convention and the money-grubbing that seems so often to go along with it, but also painting a picture of the vast unhappiness that the social structure forces not just on Undine, but also on the men who bob, bewildered, in her glittering wake. I don't like this as well as The House of Mirth, but it's just as good, and makes an interesting contrast with that more famous work. As with other Penguin Classics, I'd leave the introduction for afterwards if you chose that edition of the work.
    • 5/5
      Undine Sprague is probably the most terrifying fictional character who I have ever encountered. Many others are more malicious and deliberately cruel, but her absolute indifference to any other person's needs or feelings is chilling. She hardly seems aware that other people exist except as means to achieve her own self-absorbed ends.
    • 4/5
      I liked this book more than I thought I would when I picked it up. Undine Spragg, the main character, is a deplorable human being. She never passed the stage in life where she realised there was more to life than her own person. She was extremely selfish and constantly wanting more. She had no thought for anyone else. She divorces and remarries as often as she buys a new dress. When the husband is no longer in fashion or no longer can provide her what she wants she moves on. She was never taught that she couldn't have everything she wanted. Undine was never satified.If you enjoy classics, like I do, you should like this book. Edith Wharton depicts the times when nouveau riche were invading the stolid New York "aristocracy" with witty criticism.
    • 3/5
      I picked this up because Age of Innocence is one of my favorite books, Undie Spragg is an amazing name for a heroine and it was a dollar. I've enjoyed it, but I haven't been moved to finish it.

    Book preview

    The Custom of the Country - Edith Wharton

    I

    UNDINE SPRAGG—HOW CAN YOU? her mother wailed, raising a prematurely-wrinkled hand heavy with rings to defend the note which a languid bell-boy had just brought in.

    But her defence was as feeble as her protest, and she continued to smile on her visitor while Miss Spragg, with a turn of her quick young fingers, possessed herself of the missive and withdrew to the window to read it.

    I guess it’s meant for me, she merely threw over her shoulder at her mother.

    Did you EVER, Mrs. Heeny? Mrs. Spragg murmured with deprecating pride.

    Mrs. Heeny, a stout professional-looking person in a waterproof, her rusty veil thrown back, and a shabby alligator bag at her feet, followed the mother’s glance with good-humoured approval.

    I never met with a lovelier form, she agreed, answering the spirit rather than the letter of her hostess’s enquiry.

    Mrs. Spragg and her visitor were enthroned in two heavy gilt armchairs in one of the private drawing-rooms of the Hotel Stentorian. The Spragg rooms were known as one of the Looey suites, and the drawing-room walls, above their wainscoting of highly-varnished mahogany, were hung with salmon-pink damask and adorned with oval portraits of Marie Antoinette and the Princess de Lamballe. In the centre of the florid carpet a gilt table with a top of Mexican onyx sustained a palm in a gilt basket tied with a pink bow. But for this ornament, and a copy of The Hound of the Baskervilles which lay beside it, the room showed no traces of human use, and Mrs. Spragg herself wore as complete an air of detachment as if she had been a wax figure in a show-window. Her attire was fashionable enough to justify such a post, and her pale soft-cheeked face, with puffy eye-lids and drooping mouth, suggested a partially-melted wax figure which had run to double-chin.

    Mrs. Heeny, in comparison, had a reassuring look of solidity and reality. The planting of her firm black bulk in its chair, and the grasp of her broad red hands on the gilt arms, bespoke an organized and self-reliant activity, accounted for by the fact that Mrs. Heeny was a society manicure and masseuse. Toward Mrs. Spragg and her daughter she filled the double role of manipulator and friend; and it was in the latter capacity that, her day’s task ended, she had dropped in for a moment to cheer up the lonely ladies of the Stentorian.

    The young girl whose form had won Mrs. Heeny’s professional commendation suddenly shifted its lovely lines as she turned back from the window.

    Here—you can have it after all, she said, crumpling the note and tossing it with a contemptuous gesture into her mother’s lap.

    Why—isn’t it from Mr. Popple? Mrs. Spragg exclaimed unguardedly.

    No—it isn’t. What made you think I thought it was? snapped her daughter; but the next instant she added, with an outbreak of childish disappointment: It’s only from Mr. Marvell’s sister—at least she says she’s his sister.

    Mrs. Spragg, with a puzzled frown, groped for her eye-glass among the jet fringes of her tightly-girded front.

    Mrs. Heeny’s small blue eyes shot out sparks of curiosity. Marvell—what Marvell is that?

    The girl explained languidly: A little fellow—I think Mr. Popple said his name was Ralph; while her mother continued: Undine met them both last night at that party downstairs. And from something Mr. Popple said to her about going to one of the new plays, she thought—

    How on earth do you know what I thought? Undine flashed back, her grey eyes darting warnings at her mother under their straight black brows.

    Why, you SAID you thought— Mrs. Spragg began reproachfully; but Mrs. Heeny, heedless of their bickerings, was pursuing her own train of thought.

    What Popple? Claud Walsingham Popple—the portrait painter?

    Yes—I suppose so. He said he’d like to paint me. Mabel Lipscomb introduced him. I don’t care if I never see him again, the girl said, bathed in angry pink.

    Do you know him, Mrs. Heeny? Mrs. Spragg enquired.

    I should say I did. I manicured him for his first society portrait—a full-length of Mrs. Harmon B. Driscoll. Mrs. Heeny smiled indulgently on her hearers. I know everybody. If they don’t know ME they ain’t in it, and Claud Walsingham Popple’s in it. But he ain’t nearly AS in it, she continued judicially, as Ralph Marvell—the little fellow, as you call him.

    Undine Spragg, at the word, swept round on the speaker with one of the quick turns that revealed her youthful flexibility. She was always doubling and twisting on herself, and every movement she made seemed to start at the nape of her neck, just below the lifted roll of reddish-gold hair, and flow without a break through her whole slim length to the tips of her fingers and the points of her slender restless feet.

    Why, do you know the Marvells? Are THEY stylish? she asked.

    Mrs. Heeny gave the discouraged gesture of a pedagogue who has vainly striven to implant the rudiments of knowledge in a rebellious mind.

    Why, Undine Spragg, I’ve told you all about them time and again! His mother was a Dagonet. They live with old Urban Dagonet down in Washington Square.

    To Mrs. Spragg this conveyed even less than to her daughter, way down there? Why do they live with somebody else? Haven’t they got the means to have a home of their own?

    Undine’s perceptions were more rapid, and she fixed her eyes searchingly on Mrs. Heeny.

    Do you mean to say Mr. Marvell’s as swell as Mr. Popple?

    As swell? Why, Claud Walsingham Popple ain’t in the same class with him!

    The girl was upon her mother with a spring, snatching and smoothing out the crumpled note.

    Laura Fairford—is that the sister’s name?

    Mrs. Henley Fairford; yes. What does she write about?

    Undine’s face lit up as if a shaft of sunset had struck it through the triple-curtained windows of the Stentorian.

    She says she wants me to dine with her next Wednesday. Isn’t it queer? Why does SHE want me? She’s never seen me! Her tone implied that she had long been accustomed to being wanted by those who had.

    Mrs. Heeny laughed. HE saw you, didn’t he?

    Who? Ralph Marvell? Why, of course he did—Mr. Popple brought him to the party here last night.

    Well, there you are … When a young man in society wants to meet a girl again, he gets his sister to ask her.

    Undine stared at her incredulously. How queer! But they haven’t all got sisters, have they? It must be fearfully poky for the ones that haven’t.

    They get their mothers—or their married friends, said Mrs. Heeny omnisciently.

    Married gentlemen? enquired Mrs. Spragg, slightly shocked, but genuinely desirous of mastering her lesson.

    Mercy, no! Married ladies.

    But are there never any gentlemen present? pursued Mrs. Spragg, feeling that if this were the case Undine would certainly be disappointed.

    Present where? At their dinners? Of course—Mrs. Fairford gives the smartest little dinners in town. There was an account of one she gave last week in this morning’s TOWN TALK: I guess it’s right here among my clippings. Mrs. Heeny, swooping down on her bag, drew from it a handful of newspaper cuttings, which she spread on her ample lap and proceeded to sort with a moistened forefinger. Here, she said, holding one of the slips at arm’s length; and throwing back her head she read, in a slow unpunctuated chant: ‘Mrs. Henley Fairford gave another of her natty little dinners last Wednesday as usual it was smart small and exclusive and there was much gnashing of teeth among the left-outs as Madame Olga Loukowska gave some of her new steppe dances after dinner’—that’s the French for new dance steps, Mrs. Heeny concluded, thrusting the documents back into her bag.

    Do you know Mrs. Fairford too? Undine asked eagerly; while Mrs. Spragg, impressed, but anxious for facts, pursued: Does she reside on Fifth Avenue?

    No, she has a little house in Thirty-eighth Street, down beyond Park Avenue.

    The ladies’ faces drooped again, and the masseuse went on promptly: But they’re glad enough to have her in the big houses!—Why, yes, I know her, she said, addressing herself to Undine. I mass’d her for a sprained ankle a couple of years ago. She’s got a lovely manner, but NO conversation. Some of my patients converse exquisitely, Mrs. Heeny added with discrimination.

    Undine was brooding over the note. It IS written to mother—Mrs. Abner E. Spragg—I never saw anything so funny! ‘Will you ALLOW your daughter to dine with me?’ Allow! Is Mrs. Fairford peculiar?

    No—you are, said Mrs. Heeny bluntly. Don’t you know it’s the thing in the best society to pretend that girls can’t do anything without their mothers’ permission? You just remember that, Undine. You mustn’t accept invitations from gentlemen without you say you’ve got to ask your mother first.

    Mercy! But how’ll mother know what to say?

    Why, she’ll say what you tell her to, of course. You’d better tell her you want to dine with Mrs. Fairford, Mrs. Heeny added humorously, as she gathered her waterproof together and stooped for her bag.

    Have I got to write the note, then? Mrs. Spragg asked with rising agitation.

    Mrs. Heeny reflected. Why, no. I guess Undine can write it as if it was from you. Mrs. Fairford don’t know your writing.

    This was an evident relief to Mrs. Spragg, and as Undine swept to her room with the note her mother sank back, murmuring plaintively: Oh, don’t go yet, Mrs. Heeny. I haven’t seen a human being all day, and I can’t seem to find anything to say to that French maid.

    Mrs. Heeny looked at her hostess with friendly compassion. She was well aware that she was the only bright spot on Mrs. Spragg’s horizon. Since the Spraggs, some two years previously, had moved from Apex City to New York, they had made little progress in establishing relations with their new environment; and when, about four months earlier, Mrs. Spragg’s doctor had called in Mrs. Heeny to minister professionally to his patient, he had done more for her spirit than for her body. Mrs. Heeny had had such cases before: she knew the rich helpless family, stranded in lonely splendour in a sumptuous West Side hotel, with a father compelled to seek a semblance of social life at the hotel bar, and a mother deprived of even this contact with her kind, and reduced to illness by boredom and inactivity. Poor Mrs. Spragg had done her own washing in her youth, but since her rising fortunes had made this occupation unsuitable she had sunk into the relative inertia which the ladies of Apex City regarded as one of the prerogatives of affluence. At Apex, however, she had belonged to a social club, and, until they moved to the Mealey House, had been kept busy by the incessant struggle with domestic cares; whereas New York seemed to offer no field for any form of lady-like activity. She therefore took her exercise vicariously, with Mrs. Heeny’s help; and Mrs. Heeny knew how to manipulate her imagination as well as her muscles. It was Mrs. Heeny who peopled the solitude of the long ghostly days with lively anecdotes of the Van Degens, the Driscolls, the Chauncey Ellings and the other social potentates whose least doings Mrs. Spragg and Undine had followed from afar in the Apex papers, and who had come to seem so much more remote since only the width of the Central Park divided mother and daughter from their Olympian portals.

    Mrs. Spragg had no ambition for herself—she seemed to have transferred her whole personality to her child—but she was passionately resolved that Undine should have what she wanted, and she sometimes fancied that Mrs. Heeny, who crossed those sacred thresholds so familiarly, might some day gain admission for Undine.

    Well—I’ll stay a little mite longer if you want; and supposing I was to rub up your nails while we’re talking? It’ll be more sociable, the masseuse suggested, lifting her bag to the table and covering its shiny onyx surface with bottles and polishers.

    Mrs. Spragg consentingly slipped the rings from her small mottled hands. It was soothing to feel herself in Mrs. Heeny’s grasp, and though she knew the attention would cost her three dollars she was secure in the sense that Abner wouldn’t mind. It had been clear to Mrs. Spragg, ever since their rather precipitate departure from Apex City, that Abner was resolved not to mind—resolved at any cost to see through the New York adventure. It seemed likely now that the cost would be considerable. They had lived in New York for two years without any social benefit to their daughter; and it was of course for that purpose that they had come. If, at the time, there had been other and more pressing reasons, they were such as Mrs. Spragg and her husband never touched on, even in the gilded privacy of their bedroom at the Stentorian; and so completely had silence closed in on the subject that to Mrs. Spragg it had become non-existent: she really believed that, as Abner put it, they had left Apex because Undine was too big for the place.

    She seemed as yet—poor child!—too small for New York: actually imperceptible to its heedless multitudes; and her mother trembled for the day when her invisibility should be borne in on her. Mrs. Spragg did not mind the long delay for herself—she had stores of lymphatic patience. But she had noticed lately that Undine was beginning to be nervous, and there was nothing that Undine’s parents dreaded so much as her being nervous. Mrs. Spragg’s maternal apprehensions unconsciously escaped in her next words.

    I do hope she’ll quiet down now, she murmured, feeling quieter herself as her hand sank into Mrs. Heeny’s roomy palm.

    Who’s that? Undine?

    Yes. She seemed so set on that Mr. Popple’s coming round. From the way he acted last night she thought he’d be sure to come round this morning. She’s so lonesome, poor child—I can’t say as I blame her.

    Oh, he’ll come round. Things don’t happen as quick as that in New York, said Mrs. Heeny, driving her nail-polisher cheeringly.

    Mrs. Spragg sighed again. They don’t appear to. They say New Yorkers are always in a hurry; but I can’t say as they’ve hurried much to make our acquaintance.

    Mrs. Heeny drew back to study the effect of her work. You wait, Mrs. Spragg, you wait. If you go too fast you sometimes have to rip out the whole seam.

    Oh, that’s so—that’s SO! Mrs. Spragg exclaimed, with a tragic emphasis that made the masseuse glance up at her.

    Of course it’s so. And it’s more so in New York than anywhere. The wrong set’s like fly-paper: once you’re in it you can pull and pull, but you’ll never get out of it again.

    Undine’s mother heaved another and more helpless sigh. I wish YOU’D tell Undine that, Mrs. Heeny.

    Oh, I guess Undine’s all right. A girl like her can afford to wait. And if young Marvell’s really taken with her she’ll have the run of the place in no time.

    This solacing thought enabled Mrs. Spragg to yield herself unreservedly to Mrs. Heeny’s ministrations, which were prolonged for a happy confidential hour; and she had just bidden the masseuse good-bye, and was restoring the rings to her fingers, when the door opened to admit her husband.

    Mr. Spragg came in silently, setting his high hat down on the centre-table, and laying his overcoat across one of the gilt chairs. He was tallish, grey-bearded and somewhat stooping, with the slack figure of the sedentary man who would be stout if he were not dyspeptic; and his cautious grey eyes with pouch-like underlids had straight black brows like his daughter’s. His thin hair was worn a little too long over his coat collar, and a Masonic emblem dangled from the heavy gold chain which crossed his crumpled black waistcoat.

    He stood still in the middle of the room, casting a slow pioneering glance about its gilded void; then he said gently: Well, mother?

    Mrs. Spragg remained seated, but her eyes dwelt on him affectionately. Undine’s been asked out to a dinner-party; and Mrs. Heeny says it’s to one of the first families. It’s the sister of one of the gentlemen that Mabel Lipscomb introduced her to last night.

    There was a mild triumph in her tone, for it was owing to her insistence and Undine’s that Mr. Spragg had been induced to give up the house they had bought in West End Avenue, and move with his family to the Stentorian. Undine had early decided that they could not hope to get on while they kept house—all the fashionable people she knew either boarded or lived in hotels. Mrs. Spragg was easily induced to take the same view, but Mr. Spragg had resisted, being at the moment unable either to sell his house or to let it as advantageously as he had hoped. After the move was made it seemed for a time as though he had been right, and the first social steps would be as difficult to make in a hotel as in one’s own house; and Mrs. Spragg was therefore eager to have him know that Undine really owed her first invitation to a meeting under the roof of the Stentorian.

    You see we were right to come here, Abner, she added, and he absently rejoined: I guess you two always manage to be right.

    But his face remained unsmiling, and instead of seating himself and lighting his cigar, as he usually did before dinner, he took two or three aimless turns about the room, and then paused in front of his wife.

    What’s the matter—anything wrong down town? she asked, her eyes reflecting his anxiety.

    Mrs. Spragg’s knowledge of what went on down town was of the most elementary kind, but her husband’s face was the barometer in which she had long been accustomed to read the leave to go on unrestrictedly, or the warning to pause and abstain till the coming storm should be weathered.

    He shook his head. N—no. Nothing worse than what I can see to, if you and Undine will go steady for a while. He paused and looked across the room at his daughter’s door. Where is she—out?

    I guess she’s in her room, going over her dresses with that French maid. I don’t know as she’s got anything fit to wear to that dinner, Mrs. Spragg added in a tentative murmur.

    Mr. Spragg smiled at last. Well—I guess she WILL have, he said prophetically.

    He glanced again at his daughter’s door, as if to make sure of its being shut; then, standing close before his wife, he lowered his voice to say: I saw Elmer Moffatt down town to-day.

    Oh, Abner! A wave of almost physical apprehension passed over Mrs. Spragg. Her jewelled hands trembled in her black brocade lap, and the pulpy curves of her face collapsed as if it were a pricked balloon.

    Oh, Abner, she moaned again, her eyes also on her daughter’s door. Mr. Spragg’s black eyebrows gathered in an angry frown, but it was evident that his anger was not against his wife.

    What’s the good of Oh Abner-ing? Elmer Moffatt’s nothing to us—no more’n if we never laid eyes on him.

    No—I know it; but what’s he doing here? Did you speak to him? she faltered.

    He slipped his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets. No—I guess Elmer and I are pretty well talked out.

    Mrs. Spragg took up her moan. Don’t you tell her you saw him, Abner.

    I’ll do as you say; but she may meet him herself.

    Oh, I guess not—not in this new set she’s going with! Don’t tell her ANYHOW.

    He turned away, feeling for one of the cigars which he always carried loose in his pocket; and his wife, rising, stole after him, and laid her hand on his arm.

    He can’t do anything to her, can he?

    Do anything to her? He swung about furiously. I’d like to see him touch her—that’s all!

    II

    UNDINE’S WHITE AND GOLD BEDROOM, with sea-green panels and old rose carpet, looked along Seventy-second Street toward the leafless tree-tops of the Central Park.

    She went to the window, and drawing back its many layers of lace gazed eastward down the long brownstone perspective. Beyond the Park lay Fifth Avenue—and Fifth Avenue was where she wanted to be!

    She turned back into the room, and going to her writing-table laid Mrs. Fairford’s note before her, and began to study it minutely. She had read in the Boudoir Chat of one of the Sunday papers that the smartest women were using the new pigeon-blood notepaper with white ink; and rather against her mother’s advice she had ordered a large supply, with her monogram in silver. It was a disappointment, therefore, to find that Mrs. Fairford wrote on the old-fashioned white sheet, without even a monogram—simply her address and telephone number. It gave Undine rather a poor opinion of Mrs. Fairford’s social standing, and for a moment she thought with considerable satisfaction of answering the note on her pigeon-blood paper. Then she remembered Mrs. Heeny’s emphatic commendation of Mrs. Fairford, and her pen wavered. What if white paper were really newer than pigeon blood? It might be more stylish, anyhow. Well, she didn’t care if Mrs. Fairford didn’t like red paper—SHE did! And she wasn’t going to truckle to any woman who lived in a small house down beyond Park Avenue …

    Undine was fiercely independent and yet passionately imitative. She wanted to surprise every one by her dash and originality, but she could not help modelling herself on the last person she met, and the confusion of ideals thus produced caused her much perturbation when she had to choose between two courses. She hesitated a moment longer, and then took from the drawer a plain sheet with the hotel address.

    It was amusing to write the note in her mother’s name—she giggled as she formed the phrase I shall be happy to permit my daughter to take dinner with you (take dinner seemed more elegant than Mrs. Fairford’s dine)—but when she came to the signature she was met by a new difficulty. Mrs. Fairford had signed herself Laura Fairford—just as one school-girl would write to another. But could this be a proper model for Mrs. Spragg? Undine could not tolerate the thought of her mother’s abasing herself to a denizen of regions beyond Park Avenue, and she resolutely formed the signature: Sincerely, Mrs. Abner E. Spragg. Then uncertainty overcame her, and she re-wrote her note and copied Mrs. Fairford’s formula: Yours sincerely, Leota B. Spragg. But this struck her as an odd juxtaposition of formality and freedom, and she made a third attempt: Yours with love, Leota B. Spragg. This, however, seemed excessive, as the ladies had never met; and after several other experiments she finally decided on a compromise, and ended the note: Yours sincerely, Mrs. Leota B. Spragg. That might be conventional. Undine reflected, but it was certainly correct. This point settled, she flung open her door, calling imperiously down the passage: Celeste! and adding, as the French maid appeared: I want to look over all my dinner-dresses.

    Considering the extent of Miss Spragg’s wardrobe her dinner-dresses were not many. She had ordered a number the year before but, vexed at her lack of use for them, had tossed them over impatiently to the maid. Since then, indeed, she and Mrs. Spragg had succumbed to the abstract pleasure of buying two or three more, simply because they were too exquisite and Undine looked too lovely in them; but she had grown tired of these also—tired of seeing them hang unworn in her wardrobe, like so many derisive points of interrogation. And now, as Celeste spread them out on the bed, they seemed disgustingly common-place, and as familiar as if she had danced them to shreds. Nevertheless, she yielded to the maid’s persuasions and tried them on.

    The first and second did not gain by prolonged inspection: they looked old-fashioned already. It’s something about the sleeves, Undine grumbled as she threw them aside.

    The third was certainly the prettiest; but then it was the one she had worn at the hotel dance the night before and the impossibility of wearing it again within the week was too obvious for discussion. Yet she enjoyed looking at herself in it, for it reminded her of her sparkling passages with Claud Walsingham Popple, and her quieter but more fruitful talk with his little friend—the young man she had hardly noticed.

    You can go, Celeste—I’ll take off the dress myself, she said: and when Celeste had passed out, laden with discarded finery. Undine bolted her door, dragged the tall pier-glass forward and, rummaging in a drawer for fan and gloves, swept to a seat before the mirror with the air of a lady arriving at an evening party. Celeste, before leaving, had drawn down the blinds and turned on the electric light, and the white and gold room, with its blazing wall-brackets, formed a sufficiently brilliant background to carry out the illusion. So untempered a glare would have been destructive to all half-tones and subtleties of modelling; but Undine’s beauty was as vivid, and almost as crude, as the brightness suffusing it. Her black brows, her reddish-tawny hair and the pure red and white of her complexion defied the searching decomposing radiance: she might have been some fabled creature whose home was in a beam of light.

    Undine, as a child, had taken but a lukewarm interest in the diversions of her playmates. Even in the early days when she had lived with her parents in a ragged outskirt of Apex, and hung on the fence with Indiana Frusk, the freckled daughter of the plumber across the way, she had cared little for dolls or skipping-ropes, and still less for the riotous games in which the loud Indiana played Atalanta to all the boyhood of the quarter. Already Undine’s chief delight was to dress up in her mother’s Sunday skirt and play lady before the wardrobe mirror. The taste had outlasted childhood, and she still practised the same secret pantomime, gliding in, settling her skirts, swaying her fan, moving her lips in soundless talk and laughter; but lately she had shrunk from everything that reminded her of her baffled social yearnings. Now, however, she could yield without afterthought to the joy of dramatizing her beauty. Within a few days she would be enacting the scene she was now mimicking; and it amused her to see in advance just what impression she would produce on Mrs. Fairford’s guests.

    For a while she carried on her chat with an imaginary circle of admirers, twisting this way and that, fanning, fidgeting, twitching at her draperies, as she did in real life when people were noticing her. Her incessant movements were not the result of shyness: she thought it the correct thing to be animated in society, and noise and restlessness were her only notion of vivacity. She therefore watched herself approvingly, admiring the light on her hair, the flash of teeth between her smiling lips, the pure shadows of her throat and shoulders as she passed from one attitude to another. Only one fact disturbed her: there was a hint of too much fulness in the curves of her neck and in the spring of her hips. She was tall enough to carry off a little extra weight, but excessive slimness was the fashion, and she shuddered at the thought that she might some day deviate from the perpendicular.

    Presently she ceased to twist and sparkle at her image, and sinking into her chair gave herself up to retrospection. She was vexed, in looking back, to think how little notice she had taken of young Marvell, who turned out to be so much less negligible than his brilliant friend. She remembered thinking him rather shy, less accustomed to society; and though in his quiet deprecating way he had said one or two droll things he lacked Mr. Popple’s masterly manner, his domineering yet caressing address. When Mr. Popple had fixed his black eyes on Undine, and murmured something artistic about the colour of her hair, she had thrilled to the depths of her being. Even now it seemed incredible that he should not turn out to be more distinguished than young Marvell: he seemed so much more in the key of the world she read about in the Sunday papers—the dazzling auriferous world of the Van Degens, the Driscolls and their peers.

    She was roused by the sound in the hall of her mother’s last words to Mrs. Heeny. Undine waited till their adieux were over; then, opening her door, she seized the astonished masseuse and dragged her into the room. Mrs. Heeny gazed in admiration at the luminous apparition in whose hold she found herself.

    Mercy, Undine—you do look stunning! Are you trying on your dress for Mrs. Fairford’s?

    Yes—no—this is only an old thing. The girl’s eyes glittered under their black brows. Mrs. Heeny, you’ve got to tell me the truth—ARE they as swell as you said?

    Who? The Fairfords and Marvells? If they ain’t swell enough for you. Undine Spragg, you’d better go right over to the court of England!

    Undine straightened herself. I want the best. Are they as swell as the Driscolls and Van Degens?

    Mrs. Heeny sounded a scornful laugh. Look at here, now, you unbelieving girl! As sure as I’m standing here before you, I’ve seen Mrs. Harmon B. Driscoll of Fifth Avenue laying in her pink velvet bed with Honiton lace sheets on it, and crying her eyes out because she couldn’t get asked to one of Mrs. Paul Marvell’s musicals. She’d never ’a dreamt of being asked to a dinner there! Not all of her money couldn’t ’a bought her that—and she knows it!

    Undine stood for a moment with bright cheeks and parted lips; then she flung her soft arms about the masseuse. Oh Mrs. Heeny—you’re lovely to me! she breathed, her lips on Mrs. Heeny’s rusty veil; while the latter, freeing herself with a good-natured laugh, said as she turned away: Go steady. Undine, and you’ll get anywheres.

    GO STEADY, UNDINE! Yes, that was the advice she needed. Sometimes, in her dark moods, she blamed her parents for not having given it to her. She was so young… and they had told her so little! As she looked back she shuddered at some of her escapes. Even since they had come to New York she had been on the verge of one or two perilous adventures, and there had been a moment during their first winter when she had actually engaged herself to the handsome Austrian riding-master who accompanied her in the Park. He had carelessly shown her a card-case with a coronet, and had confided in her that he had been forced to resign from a crack cavalry regiment for fighting a duel about a Countess; and as a result of these confidences she had pledged herself to him, and bestowed on him her pink pearl ring in exchange for one of twisted silver, which he said the Countess had given him on her deathbed with the request that he should never take it off till he met a woman more beautiful than herself.

    Soon afterward, luckily, Undine had run across Mabel Lipscomb, whom she had known at a middle western boarding-school as Mabel Blitch. Miss Blitch occupied a position of distinction as the only New York girl at the school, and for a time there had been sharp rivalry for her favour between Undine and Indiana Frusk, whose parents had somehow contrived—for one term—to obtain her admission to the same establishment. In spite of Indiana’s unscrupulous methods, and of a certain violent way she had of capturing attention, the victory remained with Undine, whom Mabel pronounced more refined; and the discomfited Indiana, denouncing her schoolmates as a bunch of mushes, had disappeared forever from the scene of her defeat.

    Since then Mabel had returned to New York and married a stock-broker; and Undine’s first steps in social enlightenment dated from the day when she had met Mrs. Harry Lipscomb, and been again taken under her wing.

    Harry Lipscomb had insisted on investigating the riding-master’s record, and had found that his real name was Aaronson, and that he had left Cracow under a charge of swindling servant-girls out of their savings; in the light of which discoveries Undine noticed for the first time that his lips were too red and that his hair was pommaded. That was one of the episodes that sickened her as she looked back, and made her resolve once more to trust less to her impulses—especially in the matter of giving away rings. In the interval, however, she felt she had learned a good deal, especially since, by Mabel Lipscomb’s advice, the Spraggs had moved to the Stentorian, where that lady was herself established.

    There was nothing of the monopolist about Mabel, and she lost no time in making Undine free of the Stentorian group and its affiliated branches: a society addicted to days, and linked together by membership in countless clubs, mundane, cultural or earnest. Mabel took Undine to the days, and introduced her as a guest to the club-meetings, where she was supported by the presence of many other guests—my friend Miss Stager, of Phalanx, Georgia, or (if the lady were literary) simply my friend Ora Prance Chettle of Nebraska—you know what Mrs. Chettle stands for.

    Some of these reunions took place in the lofty hotels moored like a sonorously named fleet of battle-ships along the upper reaches of the West Side: the Olympian, the Incandescent, the Ormolu; while others, perhaps the more exclusive, were held in the equally lofty but more romantically styled apartment-houses: the Parthenon, the Tintern Abbey or the Lido.

    Undine’s preference was for the worldly parties, at which games were played, and she returned home laden with prizes in Dutch silver; but she was duly impressed by the debating clubs, where ladies of local distinction addressed the company from an improvised platform, or the members argued on subjects of such imperishable interest as: What is charm? or The Problem-Novel after which pink lemonade and rainbow sandwiches were consumed amid heated discussion of the ethical aspect of the question.

    It was all very novel and interesting, and at first Undine envied Mabel Lipscomb for having made herself a place in such circles; but in time she began to despise her for being content to remain there. For it did not take Undine long to learn that introduction to Mabel’s set had brought her no nearer to Fifth Avenue. Even in Apex, Undine’s tender imagination had been nurtured on the feats and gestures of Fifth Avenue. She knew all of New York’s golden aristocracy by name, and the lineaments of its most distinguished scions had been made familiar by passionate poring over the daily press. In Mabel’s world she sought in vain for the originals, and only now and then caught a tantalizing glimpse of one of their familiars: as when Claud Walsingham Popple, engaged on the portrait of a lady whom the Lipscombs described as the wife of a Steel Magnet, felt it his duty to attend one of his client’s teas, where it became Mabel’s privilege to make his acquaintance and to name to him her friend Miss Spragg.

    Unsuspected social gradations were thus revealed to the attentive Undine, but she was beginning to think that her sad proficiency had been acquired in vain when her hopes were revived by the appearance of Mr. Popple and his friend at the Stentorian dance. She thought she had learned enough to be safe from any risk of repeating the hideous Aaronson mistake; yet she now saw she had blundered again in distinguishing Claud Walsingham Popple while she almost snubbed his more retiring companion. It was all very puzzling, and her perplexity had been farther increased by Mrs. Heeny’s tale of the great Mrs. Harmon B. Driscoll’s despair.

    Hitherto Undine had imagined that the Driscoll and Van Degen clans and their allies held undisputed suzerainty over New York society. Mabel Lipscomb thought so too, and was given to bragging of her acquaintance with a Mrs. Spoff, who was merely a second cousin of Mrs. Harmon B. Driscoll’s. Yet here was she, Undine Spragg of Apex, about to be introduced into an inner circle to which Driscolls and Van Degens had laid siege in vain! It was enough to make her feel a little dizzy with her triumph—to work her up into that state of perilous self-confidence in which all her worst follies had been committed.

    She stood up and, going close to the glass, examined the reflection of her bright eyes and glowing cheeks. This time her fears were superfluous: there were to be no more mistakes and no more follies now! She was going to know the right people at last—she was going to get what she wanted!

    As she stood there, smiling at her happy image, she heard her father’s voice in the room beyond, and instantly began to tear off her dress, strip the long gloves from her arms and unpin the rose in her hair. Tossing the fallen finery aside, she slipped on a dressing-gown and opened the door into the drawing-room.

    Mr. Spragg was standing near her mother, who sat in a drooping attitude, her head sunk on her breast, as she did when she had one of her turns. He looked up abruptly as Undine entered.

    Father—has mother told you? Mrs. Fairford has asked me to dine. She’s Mrs. Paul Marvell’s daughter—Mrs. Marvell was a Dagonet—and they’re sweller than anybody; they WON’T KNOW the Driscolls and Van Degens!

    Mr. Spragg surveyed her with humorous fondness.

    That so? What do they want to know you for, I wonder? he jeered.

    Can’t imagine—unless they think I’ll introduce YOU! she jeered back in the same key, her arms around his stooping shoulders, her shining hair against his cheek.

    Well—and are you going to? Have you accepted? he took up her joke as she held him pinioned; while Mrs. Spragg, behind them, stirred in her seat with a little moan.

    Undine threw back her head, plunging her eyes in his, and pressing so close that to his tired elderly sight her face was a mere bright blur.

    I want to awfully, she declared, but I haven’t got a single thing to wear.

    Mrs. Spragg, at this, moaned more audibly. Undine, I wouldn’t ask father to buy any more clothes right on top of those last bills.

    I ain’t on top of those last bills yet—I’m way down under them, Mr. Spragg interrupted, raising his hands to imprison his daughter’s slender wrists.

    Oh, well—if you want me to look like a scarecrow, and not get asked again, I’ve got a dress that’ll do PERFECTLY, Undine threatened, in a tone between banter and vexation.

    Mr. Spragg held her away at arm’s length, a smile drawing up the loose wrinkles about his eyes.

    Well, that kind of dress might come in mighty handy on SOME occasions; so I guess you’d better hold on to it for future use, and go and select another for this Fairford dinner, he said; and before he could finish he was in her arms again, and she was smothering his last word in little cries and kisses.

    III

    THOUGH SHE WOULD NOT for the world have owned it to her parents, Undine was disappointed in the Fairford dinner.

    The house, to begin with, was small and rather shabby. There was no gilding, no lavish diffusion of light: the room they sat in after dinner, with its green-shaded lamps making faint pools of brightness, and its rows of books from floor to ceiling, reminded Undine of the old circulating library at Apex, before the new marble building was put up. Then, instead of a gas-log, or a polished grate with electric bulbs behind ruby glass, there was an old-fashioned wood-fire, like pictures of Back to the farm for Christmas; and when the logs fell forward Mrs. Fairford or her brother had to jump up to push them in place, and the ashes scattered over the hearth untidily.

    The dinner too was disappointing. Undine was too young to take note of culinary details, but she had expected to view the company through a bower of orchids and eat pretty-coloured entrees in ruffled papers. Instead, there was only a low centre-dish of ferns, and plain roasted and broiled meat that one could recognize—as if they’d been dyspeptics on a diet! With all the hints in the Sunday papers, she thought it dull of Mrs. Fairford not to have picked up something newer; and as the evening progressed she began to suspect that it wasn’t a real dinner party, and that they had just asked her in to share what they had when they were alone.

    But a glance about the table convinced her that Mrs. Fairford could not have meant to treat her other guests so lightly. They were only eight in number, but one was no less a person than young Mrs. Peter Van Degen—the one who had been a Dagonet—and the consideration which this young lady, herself one of the choicest ornaments of the Society Column, displayed toward the rest of the company, convinced Undine that they must be more important than they looked. She liked Mrs.

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