The Age of Foreclosure

Cincinnati

IT’S recently been announced that the Mount, Edith Wharton’s home in Lenox, Mass., faces foreclosure, unless as much as million can be raised before April 24. This loss would be terrible for fans of American literature, not merely because Wharton is one of our most enduring novelists and we would lose a valuable window into her life and work, the place where she finished writing “House of Mirth” and was inspired to write “Ethan Frome.” We would also lose access to the grand 35-room white classical-revival house, surrounded by three acres of gardens, as beautiful and inspired a creation as Wharton’s fiction, which is saying something.

Just as significant, foreclosure on the Mount would send a clear signal to the scholars and readers who depend on the houses of other writers for research and inspiration: literature and all that goes into creating it, because it is not financially viable, is not worth preserving.

The reasons for the foreclosure are depressingly familiar to those who operate, sustain and care about historical homes: unmet fund-raising goals, heavy debts and, in the case of the Mount, a .5 million loan used to buy Wharton’s 2,600-volume library from a British book collector. But sometimes familiar problems call for unfamiliar solutions. That’s why it is not enough to merely send a donation to the Save the Mount campaign. Citizens and public officials of New York City should buy the Mount outright, to make it their own. Yes, the house stands in Massachusetts, but for various reasons I believe it is up to New Yorkers to save it.

First, Edith Wharton is a New York writer, not a New England one. Her greatest novels, “The Age of Innocence” and “The House of Mirth,” are set in New York City, and have contributed mightily to our understanding of Manhattan in the Gilded Age. It is almost impossible to separate our sense of turn-of-the-last-century New York from Wharton’s depictions of it. Nor should we want to: New York is a great place, but greater yet for having inspired Wharton’s novels.

Her most famous New England novel, “Ethan Frome,” is also powerful and influential, but maybe unfortunately so: before that book was written, rural northern New Englanders were known for their optimism and volubility; after “Ethan Frome,” they came to be thought of as doomed, taciturn mopes. Indeed, I assume New Englanders would gladly allow New York to buy the Mount, in the hope that the veil of “Ethan Frome” would be lifted and they could be happy-go-lucky once more.

Perhaps the stress of their literary legacy is causing New Englanders to take less-than-perfect care of their famous writers’ homes. In December, a group of teenagers in Ripton, Vt., vandalized one of Robert Frost’s houses, causing thousands of dollars of damage. Just as the ornate Mount is a reflection of its former owner’s writing style, so does the simple Frost farmhouse exemplify the New England austerity that came to define his poetry. To have the Mount imperiled so soon after the Frost farmhouse was vandalized makes one wonder if something larger and more sinister is at work here. (Disclosure: I wrote a novel in which several writers’ homes are destroyed, but I meant it to be a satire, not a blueprint).

Taking control of the Edith Wharton house would also go a long way toward helping New Yorkers reclaim from Massachusetts the mantle of regional superiority. As any New Yorker knows, the Empire State has fallen behind in most important categories. The Red Sox have won two World Series Championships in the last four years, the Yankees and Mets none. The Celtics have the best record in the National Basketball Association, while the Knicks have one of the worst.

The purchase would be practical, given that Lenox is pretty much overrun by New Yorkers who in summer flock to see the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood, and who have long known that it’s cheaper to park their BMWs there than to pay for a garage in Manhattan. Buying the Mount would only make their presence more official. And as owners, they’d have a motive to spend more time at this glorious house conceived and lived in by one of our most brilliant authors.

New Yorkers know a worthy cause when they see one. Edith Wharton and her house, the Mount, is such a worthy cause. I hope that New Yorkers will make that cause their own.

Brock Clarke, the author, most recently, of "An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England," is an associate professor of creative writing at the University of Cincinnati.