I have had about enough of Edith Wharton and her damn
Age of Innocence. I like
Ethan Fromme and all that well enough, but for any combination of reasons, I cannot abide this book. So what does anyone do about it, but write a parody?
Here's a little excerpt of my disdainful mockery:
Mrs. Margaret Sedgewick-Stainthorpe, mother of Mr. Martin Shubrookery was an introverted woman who shrank from social gatherings, but nonetheless liked to be well-informed of its comings and goings. Her aged comrade Mr. Clayton Rhys-Honeybourne Jefford-Scott applied to the investigation of his friends’ affairs the patience of a collector and the science of a naturalist; and his sister, Mrs. Daphne Brackenbury-Aldwinckle, who lived with him, and was entertained by all the people who could not secure her much-sought-after brother, brought home bits of minor gossip that filled out usefully the gaps in his picture.
Therefore, whenever anything transpired that Mrs. Margaret Sedgewick- Stainthorpe wanted to know about, she asked Mr. Clayton Rhys-Honeybourne Jefford-Scott to dine; and as she honoured few people with her invitations, and as she and her daughter Zoë were an excellent audience, Mr. Clayton Rhys-Honeybourne Jefford-Scott usually attended himself instead of sending his sister, Mrs. Daphne Brackenbury-Aldwinckle. If he could have dictated all the conditions, he would have selected the evenings when Mr. Martin Shubrookery was out; not because the young man was uncongenial to him (the two got on capitally at their club) but because the old anecdotist sometimes felt, on Mr. Martin Shubrookery’s part, a tendency to weigh his evidence that the ladies of the family never showed.
Mr. Clayton Rhys-Honeybourne Jefford-Scott, if perfection had been attainable on earth, would also have asked that Mrs. Margaret Sedgewick-Stainthorpe’s food should be a little better. But then New York, as far back as the mind of man could travel, had been divided into the two great fundamental groups of the Mingotts and Mansons and all their clan, who cared about eating and clothes and money, and the Shubrookery -van-der-Luyden tribe, who were devoted to travel, horticulture and the best fiction, and looked down on the grosser forms of pleasure.
You couldn’t have everything, after all. If you dined with the Lovell Mingotts you got canvas-back and terrapin and vintage wines; at Mrs. Margaret Sedgewick-Stainthorpe you could converse about Alpine panorama and opera overtures. Therefore when a sociable summons arrived from Mrs. Margaret Sedgewick-Stainthorpe, Mr. Clayton Rhys-Honeybourne Jefford-Scott, who was a devoted eclectic, would usually articulate to his sister: “I’ve been a little gouty since my last dinner at the Lovell Mingotts’—it will do me good to diet at Mrs. Margaret Sedgewick-Stainthorpe’s.”
Mrs. Margaret Sedgewick-Stainthorpe, who had long been a widow, resided with her son and daughter in South-West Seventy-fourth Avenue. An upper level was dedicated to Mr. Martin Shubrookery, and the two women squeezed themselves into narrower quarters below. In an unclouded harmonization of tastes and interests they cultivated various shrubs, made macramé lace and wool embroidery, collected American revolutionary ostrich sculptures, subscribed to eight psychological journals, and read Shakespeare.
Mrs. and Miss Sedgewick-Stainthorpe were both immense enthusiasts of scenery. It was what they principally sought and admired on their occasional travels abroad; considering architecture and painting as subjects for men (the most superior creation on God’s good earth). Mrs. Margaret Sedgewick-Stainthorpe had been born a Shubrookery, and mother and daughter, who were as like as sisters, were both, as people said, “true Shubrookery’s”; lofty, pastel, and slightly round-shouldered, with protracted proboscises, saccharine smiles and a kind of floppy peculiarity. Their physical resemblance would have been complete if an elderly eventual obesity had not stretched Mrs. Margaret Sedgewick-Stainthorpe’s black brocade, while Miss Sedgewick-Stainthorpe’s brown and purple ribbons hung, as the years sped on, increasingly slackly on her virgin frame.
Mentally, the likeness between them, as Mr. Martin Shubrookery was aware, was less complete than their identical mannerisms often made it appear. The extensive tradition of habituating together in mutually dependent intimacy had given them the same vocabulary, and the same habit of beginning their phrases “Mother thinks” or “Zoë thinks,” according as one or the other wished to advance an opinion of her own. But in reality, while Mrs. Margaret Sedgewick-Stainthorpe’s serene unimaginativeness lay in repose rather effortlessly in the conventional and familiar, Zoë was subject to musings and aberrations of fancy welling up from springs of suppressed romance, as she had many beaus, including the roguish Willoughby Norrington-Oxley and the striking Nigel Fitzpatrick Barrington-Rothwell-Simms.
And on, and on, and so forth, and such. Sweet Jesus God, make it stop.
3. Every stranger has a story. Is it careless of us not to know? One person's story seems more significant than another only because of proximity. Even though there is not a human responsibility to make contact with everyone, it still seems to matter, somehow.
