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The Age of Innocence
by Edith Wharton
Book I
I.
On a January evening of the early seventies, Christine
Nilsson was singing in Faust at the Academy of
Music in New York.
Though there was already talk of the erection, in
remote metropolitan distances "above the Forties," of
a new Opera House which should compete in costliness
and splendour with those of the great European capitals,
the world of fashion was still content to reassemble
every winter in the shabby red and gold boxes of
the sociable old Academy. Conservatives cherished it
for being small and inconvenient, and thus keeping out
the "new people" whom New York was beginning to
dread and yet be drawn to; and the sentimental clung
to it for its historic associations, and the musical for its
excellent acoustics, always so problematic a quality in
halls built for the hearing of music.
It was Madame Nilsson's first appearance that
winter, and what the daily press had already learned to
describe as "an exceptionally brilliant audience" had
gathered to hear her, transported through the slippery,
snowy streets in private broughams, in the spacious
family landau, or in the humbler but more convenient
"Brown coupe" To come to the Opera in a Brown
coupe was almost as honourable a way of arriving
as in one's own carriage; and departure by the same
means had the immense advantage of enabling one
(with a playful allusion to democratic principles) to
scramble into the first Brown conveyance in the line,
instead of waiting till the cold-and-gin congested nose
of one's own coachman gleamed under the portico of
the Academy. It was one of the great livery-stableman's
most masterly intuitions to have discovered that Americans
want to get away from amusement even more
quickly than they want to get to it.
When Newland Archer opened the door at the back
of the club box the curtain had just gone up on the
garden scene. There was no reason why the young man
should not have come earlier, for he had dined at
seven, alone with his mother and sister, and had lingered
afterward over a cigar in the Gothic library with
glazed black-walnut bookcases and finial-topped chairs
which was the only room in the house where Mrs.
Archer allowed smoking. But, in the first place, New
York was a metropolis, and perfectly aware that in
metropolises it was "not the thing" to arrive early at
the opera; and what was or was not "the thing" played
a part as important in Newland Archer's New York as
the inscrutable totem terrors that had ruled the destinies
of his forefathers thousands of years ago.
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