THE DECORATION OF HOUSES

A Friendly But Unequal Partnership

Photograph of Ogden Codman, Jr. in Dinard, France

Wharton met Codman soon after her marriage. He assisted her in the redesign of the gardens and interiors of her Newport mansion, Land’s End, and they remained friends long after. Wharton affectionately called Codman “Coddy” and trusted him to contribute to plans for The Mount, her country estate in Lenox, Massachusetts. Their friendship was based on mutual commitment to the principles of simple and architecturally informed interior design. Inspired by their devotion to these ideals, they decided to coauthor The Decoration of Houses. Though Wharton continued to collaborate with Codman on architecture and design projects, they never wrote together again. This decision could have been related in part to the inequality of their working relationship: letters Wharton wrote to Codman while they were working on The Decoration of Houses reveal that she was often frustrated with Codman’s insufficient contributions to the project.

Letter from Wharton to Ogden Codman, Jr., describing life at Land’s End, 1897

Wharton begins the letter on the left—written from Land’s End, the Newport home Codman helped her redesign—with the friendly greeting “Dear Coddy.”

In another letter, written the year of the publication of The Decoration of Houses, Wharton scolds Codman for his lack of dedication to their project. This 1897 letter in the collection of Historic New England states,

“Anytime in the last three months you could have made the whole bibliography in your office in an hour—I regret very much that I undertook the book. I certainly should not have done so if I had not understood that you were willing to do half, and that the illustrations and all the work that had to be done with the help of your books were to be included in your half. I hate to put my name to something so badly turned out.”

This first edition of The Decoration of Houses, seen below, belonged to Codman. The pages within match other copies of the book, but the colorful endpapers and the decorated leather spine are distinctive.

Codman's first edition copy of The Decoration of Houses