The Touchstone

By Edith Wharton

Published in 1900, eleven years prior to her masterpiece Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton's novella The Touchstone explores the emotional complexities of love and betrayal. Penniless and unable to marry the woman he loves, the financially struggling lawyer Stephen Glennard discovers a way out of his predicaments by selling love letters written to him by deceased author Margaret Aubyn. Glennard's psychological anguish as he grapples with his guilt and the repercussions of his actions presents a poignant narrative of human conscience and morality.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Release date: Mar 20, 2024
• ISBN: 9780486854106

Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton (1862 - 1937) was an acclaimed American novelist. Known for her use of dramatic irony, she found success early in her career with The House of Mirth, which garnered praise upon its publication. In 1921, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her tour-de-force novel, The Age of Innocence.

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The Touchstone

The Touchstone

Edith Wharton

Dover Publications

Garden City, New York

DOVER THRIFT EDITIONS

General Editor: Susan L. Rattiner

Editor of This Volume: Michael Croland

Copyright © 2024 by Dover Publications

All rights reserved.

This Dover edition, first published in 2024, is an unabridged republication of the work, originally published by Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, in 1900. A new introductory Note has been specially prepared for this edition.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Wharton, Edith, 1862–1937, author.

Title: The touchstone / Edith Wharton.

Description: Dover edition. | Garden City, New York : Dover Publications, 2024. | Series: Dover thrift editions | Summary: New York lawyer Stephen Glennard, in an effort to raise money to pay for his upcoming wedding to his sweetheart, sells love letters written to him by deceased author Margaret Aubyn. This action comes back to haunt him and his marriage, exposing a betrayal that becomes the talk of New York society—Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2023037606 | ISBN 9780486852713 (paperback) | ISBN 0486852717 (paperback)

Subjects: LCSH: Triangles (Interpersonal relations)—Fiction. | Rejection (Psychology)—Fiction. | Women novelists—Fiction. | Married people—Fiction. | Love-letters—Fiction. | LCGFT: Psychological fiction. | Novels.

Classification: LCC PS3545.H16 T68 2024 | DDC 813/.52—dc23/eng/20231002

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023037606

Manufactured in the United States of America

www.doverpublications.com

Note

E

DITH

W

HARTON WAS

born Edith Newbold Jones in New York City in 1862. She spent much of her childhood traveling with her parents to Newport, Rhode Island, as well as France, Italy, and Spain. As was the custom for well-to-do young women, she was homeschooled by governesses and tutors. She displayed a knack for writing and languages early on. Her father’s large library became her passion: No children of my own age . . . were as close to me as the great voices that spoke to me from books. By the age of eighteen, she had written a novella, had a volume of her poetry privately printed, and published poems in The Atlantic Monthly.

She married her husband, Teddy, in 1885. The affluent couple had homes in New York and Newport. They continued the frequent trips to Europe that Wharton enjoyed so much.

The Touchstone (1900) explores love and loyalty. This moving novella displays Wharton’s brand of social satire, which she would come to be known for with her later novels. As novelist Salley Vickers put it, The Touchstone is a chilling testament to the power of love to extend beyond mere corporeal existence, to educate and enlighten, and, painfully, to transform. According to R. W. B. Lewis, the author of Edith Wharton: A Biography, "The Touchstone is without doubt expertly written, and it contains a number of the beautifully articulated insights into the ambiguities of the moral life at which Edith Wharton was becoming a master."

In 1902, the Whartons moved into a mansion, The Mount, in Lenox, Massachusetts. During their ten years in the house, Wharton wrote two of her most famous novels, The House of Mirth (1905) and Ethan Frome (1911).

After the couple divorced in 1913, Wharton moved to France. When World War I broke out in 1914, she threw herself into humanitarian and charitable pursuits, including writing for American publications from the battlefront. She helped found two organizations for war refugees, the Children of Flanders Rescue Committee and the American Hostels for Refugees. In 1916, Wharton was awarded the French Legion of Honor for her contributions during the war. In 1921, she became the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize, for The Age of Innocence (1920). She received an honorary doctorate from Yale University in 1923. Wharton died at her country home in France in 1937.

1

Professor Joslin, who, as our readers are doubtless aware, is engaged in writing the life of Mrs. Aubyn, asks us to state that he will be greatly indebted to any of the famous novelist’s friends who will furnish him with information concerning the period previous to her coming to England. Mrs. Aubyn had so few intimate friends, and consequently so few regular correspondents, that letters will be of special value. Professor Joslin’s address is 10 Augusta Gardens, Kensington, and he begs us to say that he will promptly return any documents entrusted to him.

G

LENNARD DROPPED THE

Spectator and sat looking into the fire. The club was filling up, but he still had to himself the small inner room with its darkening outlook down the rain-streaked prospect of Fifth Avenue. It was all dull and dismal enough, yet a moment earlier his boredom had been perversely tinged by a sense of resentment at the thought that, as things were going, he might in time have to surrender even the despised privilege of boring himself within those particular four walls. It was not that he cared much for the club, but that the remote contingency of having to give it up stood to him, just then, perhaps by very reason of its insignificance and remoteness, for the symbol of his increasing abnegations; of that perpetual paring-off that was gradually reducing existence to the naked business of keeping himself alive. It was the futility of his multiplied shifts and privations that made them seem unworthy of a high attitude—the sense that, however rapidly he eliminated the superfluous, his cleared horizon was likely to offer no nearer view of the one prospect toward which he strained. To give up things in order to marry the woman one loves is easier than to give them up without being brought appreciably nearer to such a conclusion.

Through the open door he saw young Hollingsworth rise with a yawn from the ineffectual solace of a brandy-and-soda and transport his purposeless person to the window. Glennard measured his course with a contemptuous eye. It was so like Hollingsworth to get up and look out of the window just as it was growing too dark to see anything! There was a man rich enough to do what he pleased—had he been capable of being pleased—yet barred from all conceivable achievement by his own impervious dulness; while, a few feet off, Glennard, who wanted only enough to keep a decent coat on his back and a roof over the head of the woman he loved—Glennard, who had sweated, toiled, denied himself for the scant measure of opportunity that his zeal would have converted into a kingdom—sat wretchedly calculating that, even when he had resigned from the club, and knocked off his cigars, and given up his Sundays out of town, he would still be no nearer to attainment.

The Spectator had slipped to his feet, and as he picked it up his eye fell again on the paragraph addressed to the friends of Mrs. Aubyn. He had read it for the first time with a scarcely perceptible quickening of attention: her name had so long been public property that his eye passed it unseeingly, as the crowd in the street hurries without a glance by some familiar monument.

Information concerning the period previous to her coming to England. . . . The words were an evocation. He saw her again as she had looked at their first meeting, the poor woman of genius with her long pale face and short-sighted eyes, softened a little by the grace of youth and inexperience, but so incapable even then of any hold upon the pulses. When she spoke, indeed, she was wonderful, more wonderful, perhaps, than when later, to Glennard’s fancy at least, the consciousness of memorable things uttered seemed to take from even her most intimate speech the perfect bloom of privacy. It was in those earliest days, if ever, that he had come near loving her; though even then his sentiment had lived only in the intervals of its expression. Later, when to be loved by her had been a state to touch any man’s imagination,

Reviews for The Touchstone

[arubabookwoman · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

"Genius is of small use to a woman who does not know how to do her hair."This short novella is Wharton's first published full-length work. I read it for a Litsy Buddy read of all of Wharton's works which is now ongoing (we discuss our 3rd Wharton read tomorrow).Stephen Glennard is ready to get married, but is unable to do so until he is more financially secure. Many years before he had a close friendship with a woman who became a famous, but reclusive writer who has recently died. She apparently left no letters or private papers, but as it turns out, Stephen has a treasure trove letters she wrote him during their friendship. He investigates, and surreptitiously hiding himself as the recipient or source of the letters, has them published, raising enough cash to marry. Even his wife does not know how he came into the funds enabling them to marry. Once the letters are published, creating a sensation, the guilt sets in for Stephen. This was a very modern morality tale.Recommended.3 stars

[lethalmauve · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Touchstone is another singular work from Edith Wharton where conscience unveils a seemingly ordinary marriage as a performance. But the underlying disturbance in this union of supposed prosperity is volumes of intimate letters of one famous writer, Mrs Aubyn, published posthumously. In these letters, correspondences anonymously provided by Stephen Glennard, a vile unrequitedness of love and affection adds to the books' infamous reputation which the public can't stop devouring; it's an instant bestseller; a constant topic at teatime across higher social circles. As the women, including Glennard's wife, Alexa, experience second-hand embarrassment and disgrace in reading them, a remarkable conversation about publishing such letters for public consumption ensues and asks significant questions. When do we cross the line when trying to know a beloved author? What does it say about the public who loves controversies as a revelation of an author's humanity? I can't help but recall James Joyce's erotic letters (it seems he had a fart fetish) or Rebecca West's frantic letters to HG Wells. Perhaps, even some of the burnt letters of Emily Dickinson to Susan Huntington that may allude better to their supposed romance. Surely, it doesn't matter much when both people are dead. But what if one of them still lives? Such is with The Touchstone. All the while, Glennard hears of people's utter of disgust about his heartlessness in these letters. Only, he put it to himself in exchange for his desire of money. Money which lets Glennard and his wife live luxuriously. What succeeds is a state of paranoia and jealousy, a pang of remorse weighing on Glennard's back, a secret ultimately vomited at the height of matrimony's unbearably silent afflictions and brusqueness. Mrs Aubyn's apparition hangs over the Glennards' relationship. More so with the undeniable fact at how Stephen Glennard treated and had taken advantage of Mrs Aubyn. It ends abruptly at the heat of the Glennards' altercation. As expected from Wharton, like Ethan Frome's still vivid final paragraph, The Touchstone too shakes you with Alexa Glennard's response of exclamation. And it brings Walt Whitman's Sometimes with One I Love to me (also copied below).Sometimes with One I Love by Walt WhitmanSometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse unreturn’d love,But now I think there is no unreturn’d love, the pay is certain one way or another(I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not return’d,Yet out of that I have written these songs).

[anesamiller · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was the 2nd book by Wharton (a novella) that I read after THE AGE OF INNOCENCE. As compared to that wonderful book, this one is set in a slightly less aristocratic world, although the sensibility remains snobbish and self-absorbed. The language is intellectual, complex and elegant. Emphasis falls on subtle shades of emotion and morality.

“How could he continue to play his part, with this poison of indifference stealing through his veins? …What he wanted now was not immunity but castigation: his wife’s indignation might still reconcile him to himself. Her scorn was the moral antiseptic that he needed.”

The book’s protagonist is debating whether or not to sell a collection of personal letters he received over a period of years from a woman (now deceased) who later became a renowned novelist. Formerly Miss Aubyn’s friend and confidant, the hero let his correspondence with her die out after realizing he would never love her as a woman. He acknowledged that she was his moral and mental superior but not a potential life partner.

When the story begins, the hero is married and has a young child. He is keen to maintain them in the style to which they are accustomed, and he stands to obtain a considerable sum from the sale of the letters. The resulting moral struggle makes a far more engrossing tale than this attempt at retelling conveys. I recommend it to all Wharton fans and readers of historic American fiction.

[ricefun · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In my quest to immerse myself in Wharton in 2013, I was lucky to choose to read her earliest novel first in my marathon of Wharton works. I can see some of the literary stretching and testing that later turns into to Wharton's brilliantly full-bodied characters and stories. I was surprised to learn in the Epilogue of the copy I own that the story became shockingly autobiographical, because Wharton's only lover saved and sold for petty profit the letters she wrote to him. A sorry character, he did give contemporary readers the gift of having the opportunity to peer into Wharton's private thoughts.

[luli81_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Upsetting reading about feeling guilty and bearing the cross on your shoulders and final atonement.

[cbjames_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Touchstone by Edith Wharton is not something I would have ever read had it not been for the Novella Challenge. The Novella Challenge is my favorite one so far because it has brought so many wonderful books to my attention. I never would have given novellas a second thought otherwise and would have missed out on all the terrific books I read for the challenge: Faulkner's "Old Man", Thomas Wolfe's "The Lost Boy," Marquez's "No One Writes to the Colonel". Edith Wharton's "The Touchstone" can hold it's own among these and probably any other novella one can find."The Touchstone" is about Stepehn Glennard, a man of marrying age who has been seeing a young woman whom he loves for two years. Unfortunately, Glennard does not have the money or the position to marry. The time is the second half of the 19th century, and Glennard is the sort of man who has to loiter around his club waiting for someone to invite him to dinner because he does not have the money to do the inviting himself. What he does have is a collection of letters from the famous Mrs. Aubyn, the greatest novelist of her generation. She was once in love with Glennard and wrote to him faithfully during their time together and after he broke off the relationship. Mrs. Aubyn did not have many close friends and never told anyone that Glennard was the love of her life, that he broke her heart or that she poured her heart out to him in a series of letters over a period of several years.Now, after Mrs. Aubyn's death, her reputation has grown and the stack of letters is worth quite a bit. Should Glennard publish them he could make well over 10,000 dollars, enough to invest, to gain a position and to marry the woman he loves. But to publish the letters is a base act, a betrayal that would label Glennard as a scoundrel should anyone find out. Publishing the letters would make it possible for him to marry but it would also make him unworthy of the woman he loves.This situation certainly caught my interest. I won't divulge any more of the story because I want to encourage readers to give "The Touchstone" a try. This is the only work of Ms. Wharton's that I've read, but I intend to rectify that situation shortly. The story is quite simple, but the novella is still a page turner. Events soon get out of Glennard's control which only makes the reader want to know what happens next with even greater urgency. Ms. Wharton can certainly tell a story. The issues may seem a bit foreign to 21st century readers--can anyone imagine somebody hesitating before publishing private letters worth a fortune after Linda Tripp's betrayal of Monica Lewinsky's trust? Well, maybe one can actually. I found that this archaic element only added to my interest in the story. "The Touchstone" offers an entertaining tale and the satisfaction of learning what life was like in it's time period, the same satisfaction many readers get from historical fiction.Possible Spoiler Alert: I have to say that I was disappointed a little with the ending. I won't give it away except to say that I felt it relied too heavily on the myth of the good woman. Glennard's wife is so morally upright that she is able to make him a better man through her example. I suspect this was just what Ms. Wharton's contemporary readership wanted in an ending, but it was a little hard for me to swallow. Other than that, I highly recommend "The Touchstone" by Edith Wharton. I'm giving it five out of five stars

[kplatypus_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One of Edith Wharton's shorter, earlier, and happier books, The Touchstone looks at the ways in which the choices we make can come back to haunt us. Glennard, the main character, must weigh his desires and logic against what he feels to be right and then live with the consequences of his actions. It is also about the relationship between a husband and wife and how it evolves throughout a marriage. There are some amazing lines that demonstrate what a depth of insight Wharton really had into our relations with each other, such as: "We live in our own souls as in an unmapped region, a few acres of which we have cleared for our habitation; while of the nature of those nearest to us we know but the boundaries that march with ours." I love Edith Wharton.