Undine Spraggâs Life in Objects
Undine Spraggâs Life in Objects
Beauty, charm and luck all factor into the social ascent of Edith Whartonâs ambitious protagonist â but money, crucially, matters the most.
Mrs. Sidney Smith, P. A. Clark, Mrs. James T. Burden, Stanford White, James Henry Smith, Norman Whitehouse, Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish and Sidney Smith (seated) at the 1905 James Hazen Hyde costume ball.Credit.Byron Company/The Museum of the City of New York/Art Resource, NY
By Samuel Rutter
This article is part of Tâs to R.S.V.P. to a virtual conversation, led by Claire Messud, about âThe Custom of the Country,â to be held on Jan. 28.
Rhode Island Rescues
Photograph by Gavin Ashworth. All photographs courtesy of the Preservation Society of Newport County, Newport, Rhode Island.
The story of the Preservation Society begins with the mission to rescue Hunter House (Fig. 1) and the question put to financier George Henry Warren Jr. after its purchase by his wife, Katherine Warren: “Well, you’ve got this house, now what are you going to do with it?”
In 1945, Newport stone carver John Howard Benson became alarmed that Hunter House a rare surviving waterfront property with deep ties to Newport’s history might be irretrievably lost. The residence was no longer needed by the Rhode Island Catholic Diocese, which had used it for a convent, and its survival was in jeopardy. So concerned was Benson that he and John Perkins Brown, whose Georgian Society also wished to save Hunter House, decided to speak with the Warrens. Benson and Brown traveled to the couple’s winter residence in New York City to warn, “the grea