Another of the projects of Lee’s book has been to address her much talked-up relationship to Henry James - often presented as her mentor, (and Wharton his imitator). “I wanted to rescue her from the shadow of James,” says Lee. “And look at the shifting dynamic between them.
When they first met, James was the more famous writer, but later Wharton had become more successful. And she always had more money. She was quite bossy and managerial and James would do his sort of comic groveling act. He once referred to her visits in a letter as the ‘reigns of terror’”.
Wharton wasn’t always so domineering, though. As a child she was shy and awkward and when it came to writing about herself she never lost that reserve. “Wharton’s marriage was a disaster. She made what seemed like an eminently suitable match, but it turned out to be extremely difficult. Her husband was very unstable and deceitful. Wharton preserved herself through her work and her friendships, though, and on the surface she was very funny and open but she always kept a sort of iron mask over herself. She was hard to get at.”
A consequence of Wharton’s reserve is the scarcity of personal letters and diaries, I am told. “There were lots of gaps in the archives that I didn’t come across with other subjects like Virginia Woolf, who always wrote very fully and directly.” So how do you think she would have reacted to your biography? I ask. “Oh, I think she’d have hated having a biography written about her. She would have hated to be a public spectacle. I hope that she would have thought that I was true to her work though”. “But, on the whole”, she laughs, “she’d have given me short shrift.” ER