Foreclosure - The Foreclosure To Gobble Up Literary Remains

The Foreclosure To Gobble Up Literary Remains

April 15th, 2008

The impending foreclosure on The Mount spells disaster not only for an individual but also for the nation. The Mount is the home of Edith Wharton in Lenox, Massachusetts. It will be foreclosed unless $3 million is paid to the lenders by 24th April 2008. Edith Wharton is one of the most enduring writers of American literature. With this building is associated her writing of House of Mirth. Here she was inspired to pen down Ethan Frome. Together with her memories, the American public will lose entry to a grand mansion consisting of 35 rooms. The house is a classic instance of heritage revival. The building is enveloped by three acres of green – as beautiful and inspiring as her novels.

The loss of the house will send out clear signals to the literary world of America. The house of a great writer is not valued in dollars and calculated by weight of its bricks and stones. It is something more subtle – a source of inspiration for generations to comes. With these memories is linked the might of American civilization. Yet today those in the seat of power do not think such a building like The Mount is worth preserving.

Those who care, maintain and look after historical houses know that the reason behind the foreclosure in this particular case is the same as in many others of the kind. Fund raising goals have failed leading to heavy debts and the like. In this particular instance of The Mount, a loan of $2.5 million was taken to purchase a library consisting of 2,600 books from a British collector. Merely asking for a donation to prop up Save the Mount campaign is not big enough to solve the jumbo problem. It is expected that New York City should directly purchase the heritage building and keep it as its own. Although the building is in Massachusetts, for many reasons it is up to the New Yorkers to save The Mount.

Edith Wharton is a writer from New York and not New England. Two of her great novels ‘The Age of Innocence’ and ‘The House of Mirth’ are set in New York. It has led to an understanding of the golden era of America in general and Manhattan in particular. New York is great. Wharton has made it greater. Unfortunately New Englanders are not much bothered perhaps because of how they were painted in Wharton’s famous novel Ethan Frome - doomed and depressed.