I always feel presumptious if I rate classics but I want to remember that I enjoyed this slim book and should look for more Wharton works. I'm thinking that she writes about serious subjects like infidelity, parent-child expectations and disappointments, sibling rivalry of an intense sort, but all with a gentle hand and thus a realistic hand. Plus it is fun to read about the setting of old New York and the Dutch families with all their wealth and ways of doing things. To think of changing the meal times--what a daring thing to do!

From the serene and halcyon days of the 1840s to the brittleness
of the 1870s, Edith Wharton weaves her magic as she reveals the
codes and customs that ruled society in each decade.
FALSE DAWN tells of Lewis who wants to make his father proud of
him and hopes to do that when he is entrusted with art purchases
as he makes his Grand Tour. There is a small scene before he
departs - his sister is hurrying to take provisions to a poor
family in the town, the Poes and Lewis speaks glowingly of
hearing Mr. Poe give a reading of some of his stories.
Mr. Raycie, though, is a bully and leaves Lewis no leaway for his
own painting choices but once on the continent Lewis falls in with
a radical group (Ruskin and Rossetti) and the Art he brings home
has dire consequences for the rest of his life. All finished with
a typical Wharton twist!!
THE OLD MAID was a celebrated Bette Davis tearjerker from 1939 but
this is the original, a slightly more gentle story of Aunt Charlotte,
the perennial old maid. She is a poor relation of the flighty Delia
and has reappeared after a year's recuperation down South which
has been a constant source of talk. She has left her girlish ways
and is now a tireless worker for the poor and destitute, even
starting up an orphanage where there is a lot of talk about a
little foundling girl who was brought in with a $100 pinned to her
dress. In the 1850s conventions are rigid but Charlotte and Delia
combine their love to give little Tina the kind of future she would
have had as her due, if her parentage had been legitimate.
THE SPARK - Clumsy, impatient Hayley Delane is regarded as a figure
of fun among his cronies but the young narrator feels there is
something deep down that sets him apart from his contemporaries.
It is with a shock that he realises that Hayley, far from being a
dullard, had run away from school to enlist in the Civil War and
a chance meeting with Walt Whitman enthuses young Hayley with just
"the spark" he needs for his moral rehabilitation.
NEW YEAR'S DAY is my very favourite. A chance remark about a
scandalous affair has a young man remembering back to an incident
in his youth when the Fifth Avenue Hotel caught fire - "it was
frequented by politicians and "Westerners", two classes of citizens
whom my mother....ranked with illiterates and criminals". With more
than a passing nod to Lily Bart, Lizzie Hazeldean is a noted New
York beauty clinging precariously to society's edges but soon to
be cut adrift when her affair with dandy Henry Prest becomes
common knowledge - all on account of the fire. Lizzie's triumph is
not without some heart wrenching - "she could not read books but
she could read hearts" says the young narrator who comes to admire
her very much.
Wharton reveals the 1870s as a time when, if a woman has no husband
the future is bleak indeed. The time was still in the future when
a woman could use her own ingenuity to start a small business such
as hat trimming etc or just to try to get on as Lily Bart tried.

What good fortune: the last 2 books I've read have been AMAZING. Still swooning from the effects of I, Claudius and ancient Rome, I was transported to Edith Wharton's Old New York.

Wharton is perfection, and I've since learned to navigate her long, sometimes circuitous sentences and numerous semi-colons. Apart from Ethan Frome, I've treasured every story of hers I've read so far. But it's her collections of novellas and short stories that I'm most partial to. And this four-novella collection in particular, is jostling for first place right now. Why do her stories affect me so, when she almost always works with the same themes, struggles, and formulas when it comes to her New York stories? I'll add to this when I get to figure it out.

Note: Generally, Wharton's stories are the anti-thesis of "feel good"; her conclusions are usually bittersweet. Surprisingly, only 1 out of 4 stories here ends on a melancholic note (which, and this I have to add, does not diminish the story in any way).