Restoration Drama.(Edith Wharton Restoration)(Brief biography)

Stephanie Copeland, the president of the Edith Wharton Restoration, was hoping for sunshine on the April morning, two years ago, that she was to receive First Lady Laura Bush at the Mount, Wharton's country house, in Lenox, Massachusetts; but, like so many spring mornings in the Berkshires, that day dawned blustery and chill. Copeland, a tall, forceful woman of about sixty, with snow-white hair and eyes the color of sea glass, was undaunted. The previous day, a heated tent had been erected on the grounds--an irrigation line or two had been punctured by the stakes as they were driven in, but no matter--and a midnight trip to Kinko's had secured an enormous blown-up photograph of the Mount as seen on a brilliant day, to serve as a backdrop for the proceedings. A little wind and rain would not spoil this visit, for which Copeland had been lobbying for almost a year, ever since being invited to the Oval Office to receive a Preserve America Presidential Award on behalf of the Edith Wharton Restoration, the not-for-profit organization that is the proprietor of the Mount. On that occasion, the First Lady, grasping Copeland's hand in valediction, had said, "I want to come see that beautiful house."

A beautiful house it certainly was: a three-and-a-half-story villa of white stucco, perched upon a rocky ledge, topped with a green-roofed cupola, and skirted by an expansive brick-paved terrace, from which a Palladian staircase led to exquisite formal gardens set amid bosky hillsides. In 1901, workers began building the Mount, according to the principles outlined by Wharton in her first book, "The Decoration of Houses," which was published in 1897. In the book, which she co-wrote with Ogden Codman, she argued against the stuffy, cluttered, over-upholstered drawing rooms that prevailed at the time, in favor of an interior design that was simple, architectural, and pleasingly functional without being drably utilitarian. More modest in scale than the neighboring mansions commissioned by Vanderbilts, Sloanes, and Adamses (and misleadingly known as "cottages"), the Mount was intended by Wharton to be a place where she would be able to work--she wrote in bed in the mornings--and to entertain only her dearest friends. (There were just two guest bedrooms.) Among these was Henry James, who motored through the countryside with his hostess during the afternoon, and read Whitman aloud on the terrace after dinner. "Every comfort prevails, and you needn't bring supplementary apples or candies in your dressing-bag," James wrote appreciatively to Howard Sturgis from his customary guest room, which had an easterly aspect and faced a walled Italianate garden.

Mrs. Bush's visit was timed to celebrate the recent acquisition of Wharton's surviving personal library, twenty-six hundred volumes in all, which Wharton had willed to her godson, Colin Clark, the son of Sir Kenneth Clark, the English art historian. (Another legatee had received Wharton's art, archeology, and travel books; these were destroyed in the Blitz.) In the early nineteen-eighties, the books had come into the hands of George Ramsden, a British book dealer, who then spent twenty years regathering dispersed volumes and cataloguing the collection's contents. The library was a prize that Copeland had coveted ever since she became the head of the Edith Wharton Restoration, in 1993.

Wharton cherished libraries: she had begun her self-motivated and socially anomalous intellectual education in her father's study, and she gave directives for the proper design of libraries in "The Decoration of Houses." ("Plain shelves filled with good editions in good bindings are more truly decorative than ornate bookcases lined with tawdry books.") Though she was disparaging of those who purchased literary works less for their content than for their appearance--"The Xs tell me they have decided to have books in their library," she once observed dryly of some Lenox neighbors--she nonetheless believed that books were as crucial to a well-furnished home as they were to a well-furnished mind. Wharton's library at the Mount had oak-panelled walls decorated with scrollwork, and bookcases filled with finely bound volumes. Some of them were inscribed ("To Edith Wharton in sympathy," James wrote enigmatically in a copy of "The Golden Bowl"), and many others--from the poetry of Shelley to gardening manuals--were marked up with pencilled ticks and underlinings in Wharton's tidy hand.

Mrs. Bush arrived at the Mount at three o'clock. After touring the house, she delivered some remarks in the tent, saying, "As a librarian and a lover of literature, I believe it's important for Americans to be able to visit the homes of our most renowned and beloved authors." Stephanie Copeland described the occasion as "no doubt the most exciting and important day in the Mount's history." This assessment may have failed to do justice to other milestones, professional and personal, that were passed during Wharton's residence at the Mount--she wrote "The House of Mirth" while living there, and also conducted the correspondence that was ...