Below, Edith Wharton writes to close friend Sara Norton about her transatlantic voyage to Paris, on the occasion of The House of Mirth‘s appearance in French.
TO SARA NORTON
December 18, 1907, Paris
Dear Sally—Your letter of farewell reached me on the steamer, & the sun was shining so brightly & balmily when we sailed that your picture of turbid waves lapping sullenly against the prow didn’t at all fit—but by night-fall the said turbid waves were upon us, & they shook & harried & hunted us from one continent to the other. We really had a brutal crossing, but it was a very short one, luckily, as we were on a fast boat—& already, in less than a week, the horrors have faded, & I am sunk in the usual demoralizing happiness which this atmosphere produces in me. Dieu que c’est beau after six months of eye-starving! The tranquil majesty of the architectural lines, the wonderful blurred winter lights, the long lines of lamps garlanding the avenues & the quays—je l’ai dans mon sang! We have been lucky, too, in having lots of sunshine to see it by, & last Sunday my brother carried us off in his motor to see an old Louis XIII château down in Normandy, & all the way the fields were so green, with cattle grazing in them, & the lights on the Seine so tender & hazy, that it seemed more like late March than late Dec.—& in the wayside gardens the tea-roses & chrysanthemums were still in bloom!
We shall be with my brother till next week, & so far I have not seen or done much, or looked people up. But tomorrow we go to the Academy to see Bourget receive Maurice Donnay, & in the evening to a dinner which the B.s are giving to Donnay & where there will be some rather interesting people.
My little translator, Charles Du Bos, is in the seventh heaven because “Chez les Heureux du Monde”[1] is making itself immensely talked about, & his translation is much praised. The volume is to come out in March, I believe.
I shall have more amusing things to tell you later, when we are in the rue de Varenne & have begun to see people. This is only meant to carry you all—rather tardily, I fear—our best wishes & most affectionate thoughts for Christmas.—
I hope your father is better now, and has quite recovered from his attack of birthdayitis.
Affly Yr E. W.
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FOOTNOTES
[1] The French title of The House of Mirth