Edith Wharton: Designing the Drawing Room

PUBLISHED DRAWING ROOMS

May Welland’s Drawing Room

Unlike Ellen, who creates a room “unlike any other,” May assembles a drawing room that follows the customs of her society. Before Wharton presents May’s actual drawing room, she allows Newland to imagine what this space will look like when he waits in Ellen’s drawing room. Unable to imagine May’s design choices when immersed in Ellen’s creativity, he instead pictures May’s family’s drawing room. In Newland’s imagination and in reality—described in the passage below—May’s drawing room is characterized by brightness and by a profusion of shiny, new objects.

Wharton revised this passage further and the transcription below reflects the text from the published novel.

“The tall lamps were all lit, and Mr. van der Luyden's orchids had been conspicuously disposed in various receptacles of modern porcelain and knobby silver. Mrs. Newland Archer's drawing room was generally thought a great success. A gilt bamboo jardinière, in which the primulas and cinerarias were punctually renewed, blocked the access to the bay window (where the old-fashioned would have preferred a bronze reduction of the Venus of Milo); the sofas and armchairs of pale brocade were cleverly grouped about little plush tables densely covered with silver toys, porcelain animals and efflorescent photograph frames; and tall rosy-shaded lamps shot up like tropical flowers among the palms.”

The drawing room below is included in an 1883 book titled Artistic Houses that showed off the fanciest homes of the New York City elite. This drawing room, in the home of Cornelia M. Stewart, resembles the space Wharton describes in May’s home after her marriage to Newland. Wharton emphasizes the brightness of May’s drawing room; this room contains three large windows and massive mirrors to reflect light across the room. This space, described as a “grand drawing-room,” contains several groups of chairs and tables that divide the large, resplendent room into smaller portions, much like the furniture arrangements in May’s drawing room.

Cornelia M. Stewart's drawing room featured in Artistic Houses

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