The Age of Innocence | Page 3

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Etext prepared by JudithBoss, proofed by Charles Keller.

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Book I

I.
On a January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson was
singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York.
Though there was already talk of the erection, in remote metropolitan
distances "above the Forties," of a new Opera House which should
compete in costliness and splendour with those of the great European
capitals, the world of fashion was still content to reassemble every
winter in the shabby red and gold boxes of the sociable old Academy.
Conservatives cherished it for being small and inconvenient, and thus
keeping out the "new people" whom New York was beginning to dread
and yet be drawn to; and the sentimental clung to it for its historic
associations, and the musical for its excellent acoustics, always so
problematic a quality in halls built for the hearing of music.
It was Madame Nilsson's first appearance that winter, and what the
daily press had already learned to describe as "an exceptionally brilliant
audience" had gathered to hear her, transported through the slippery,
snowy streets in private broughams, in the spacious family landau, or in
the humbler but more convenient "Brown coupe" To come to the Opera
in a Brown coupe was almost as honourable a way of arriving as in
one's own carriage; and departure by the same means had the immense
advantage of enabling one (with a playful allusion to democratic
principles) to scramble into the first Brown conveyance in the line,
instead of waiting till the cold-and-gin congested nose of one's own
coachman gleamed under the portico of the Academy. It was one of the

great livery-stableman's most masterly intuitions to have discovered
that Americans want to get away from amusement even more quickly
than they want to get to it.
When Newland Archer opened the door at the back of the club box the
curtain had just gone up on the garden scene. There was no reason why
the young man should not have come earlier, for he had dined at seven,
alone with his mother and sister, and had lingered afterward over a
cigar in the Gothic library with glazed black-walnut bookcases and
finial-topped chairs which was the only room in the house where Mrs.
Archer allowed smoking. But, in the first place, New York was a
metropolis, and perfectly aware that in metropolises it was "not the
thing" to arrive early at the opera; and what was or was not "the thing"
played a part as important in Newland Archer's New York as the
inscrutable totem terrors that had ruled the destinies of his forefathers
thousands of years ago.
The second reason for his delay was a personal one. He had dawdled
over his cigar because he was at heart a dilettante, and thinking over a
pleasure to come often gave him a subtler satisfaction than its
realisation. This was especially the case when the pleasure was a
delicate one, as his pleasures mostly were; and on this occasion the
moment he looked forward to was so rare and exquisite in quality
that--well, if he had timed his arrival in accord with the prima donna's
stage-manager he could not have entered the Academy at a more
significant moment than just as she was singing: "He loves me--he
loves me not--HE LOVES ME!--" and