The touchstone

by Edith Wharton

Paper Book, 2004

Status

Available

Publication

Brooklyn, N.Y. : Melville House Pub., 2004.

Description

Classic Literature. Fiction. HTML: Stephen Glennard is in desperate need of money; his career is in ruins and he wants to marry his beautiful fiancee. He unearths the passionate love-letters written to him by the famous, now-deceased author Margaret Aubyn, and sells them, erasing only his name. He makes a fortune from the betrayal and begins his marriage from it. The Touchstone was Edith Wharton's first published novella..

User reviews

LibraryThing member otterley
This feels to me Edith Wharton's most 'Jamesian' book, which may or may not sell it to others! Perhaps this is because the book plays on the impact a dead character can have on the living, on motives and misunderstandings, and is profoundly ambiguous about its characters and their actions or
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inactions. Dialogue here is freighted with the weight of secret knowledge, relationships given more to bear than they are capable of standing.
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LibraryThing member ricefun
In my quest to immerse myself in Wharton in 2013, I was lucky to choose to read her earliest novel first in my marathon of Wharton works. I can see some of the literary stretching and testing that later turns into to Wharton's brilliantly full-bodied characters and stories. I was surprised to learn
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in the Epilogue of the copy I own that the story became shockingly autobiographical, because Wharton's only lover saved and sold for petty profit the letters she wrote to him. A sorry character, he did give contemporary readers the gift of having the opportunity to peer into Wharton's private thoughts.
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LibraryThing member Kplatypus
One of Edith Wharton's shorter, earlier, and happier books, The Touchstone looks at the ways in which the choices we make can come back to haunt us. Glennard, the main character, must weigh his desires and logic against what he feels to be right and then live with the consequences of his actions.
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It is also about the relationship between a husband and wife and how it evolves throughout a marriage. There are some amazing lines that demonstrate what a depth of insight Wharton really had into our relations with each other, such as: "We live in our own souls as in an unmapped region, a few acres of which we have cleared for our habitation; while of the nature of those nearest to us we know but the boundaries that march with ours." I love Edith Wharton.
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LibraryThing member lethalmauve
The Touchstone is another singular work from Edith Wharton where conscience unveils a seemingly ordinary marriage as a performance. But the underlying disturbance in this union of supposed prosperity is volumes of intimate letters of one famous writer, Mrs Aubyn, published posthumously. In these
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letters, correspondences anonymously provided by Stephen Glennard, a vile unrequitedness of love and affection adds to the books' infamous reputation which the public can't stop devouring; it's an instant bestseller; a constant topic at teatime across higher social circles. As the women, including Glennard's wife, Alexa, experience second-hand embarrassment and disgrace in reading them, a remarkable conversation about publishing such letters for public consumption ensues and asks significant questions. When do we cross the line when trying to know a beloved author? What does it say about the public who loves controversies as a revelation of an author's humanity? I can't help but recall James Joyce's erotic letters (it seems he had a fart fetish) or Rebecca West's frantic letters to HG Wells. Perhaps, even some of the burnt letters of Emily Dickinson to Susan Huntington that may allude better to their supposed romance. Surely, it doesn't matter much when both people are dead. But what if one of them still lives? Such is with The Touchstone. All the while, Glennard hears of people's utter of disgust about his heartlessness in these letters. Only, he put it to himself in exchange for his desire of money. Money which lets Glennard and his wife live luxuriously. What succeeds is a state of paranoia and jealousy, a pang of remorse weighing on Glennard's back, a secret ultimately vomited at the height of matrimony's unbearably silent afflictions and brusqueness. Mrs Aubyn's apparition hangs over the Glennards' relationship. More so with the undeniable fact at how Stephen Glennard treated and had taken advantage of Mrs Aubyn. It ends abruptly at the heat of the Glennards' altercation. As expected from Wharton, like Ethan Frome's still vivid final paragraph, The Touchstone too shakes you with Alexa Glennard's response of exclamation. And it brings Walt Whitman's Sometimes with One I Love to me (also copied below).

Sometimes with One I Love by Walt Whitman

Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse unreturn’d love,
But now I think there is no unreturn’d love, the pay is certain one way or another
(I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not return’d,
Yet out of that I have written these songs).
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LibraryThing member CBJames
The Touchstone by Edith Wharton is not something I would have ever read had it not been for the Novella Challenge. The Novella Challenge is my favorite one so far because it has brought so many wonderful books to my attention. I never would have given novellas a second thought otherwise and would
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have missed out on all the terrific books I read for the challenge: Faulkner's "Old Man", Thomas Wolfe's "The Lost Boy," Marquez's "No One Writes to the Colonel". Edith Wharton's "The Touchstone" can hold it's own among these and probably any other novella one can find.

"The Touchstone" is about Stepehn Glennard, a man of marrying age who has been seeing a young woman whom he loves for two years. Unfortunately, Glennard does not have the money or the position to marry. The time is the second half of the 19th century, and Glennard is the sort of man who has to loiter around his club waiting for someone to invite him to dinner because he does not have the money to do the inviting himself. What he does have is a collection of letters from the famous Mrs. Aubyn, the greatest novelist of her generation. She was once in love with Glennard and wrote to him faithfully during their time together and after he broke off the relationship. Mrs. Aubyn did not have many close friends and never told anyone that Glennard was the love of her life, that he broke her heart or that she poured her heart out to him in a series of letters over a period of several years.

Now, after Mrs. Aubyn's death, her reputation has grown and the stack of letters is worth quite a bit. Should Glennard publish them he could make well over 10,000 dollars, enough to invest, to gain a position and to marry the woman he loves. But to publish the letters is a base act, a betrayal that would label Glennard as a scoundrel should anyone find out. Publishing the letters would make it possible for him to marry but it would also make him unworthy of the woman he loves.

This situation certainly caught my interest. I won't divulge any more of the story because I want to encourage readers to give "The Touchstone" a try. This is the only work of Ms. Wharton's that I've read, but I intend to rectify that situation shortly. The story is quite simple, but the novella is still a page turner. Events soon get out of Glennard's control which only makes the reader want to know what happens next with even greater urgency. Ms. Wharton can certainly tell a story. The issues may seem a bit foreign to 21st century readers--can anyone imagine somebody hesitating before publishing private letters worth a fortune after Linda Tripp's betrayal of Monica Lewinsky's trust? Well, maybe one can actually. I found that this archaic element only added to my interest in the story. "The Touchstone" offers an entertaining tale and the satisfaction of learning what life was like in it's time period, the same satisfaction many readers get from historical fiction.

Possible Spoiler Alert: I have to say that I was disappointed a little with the ending. I won't give it away except to say that I felt it relied too heavily on the myth of the good woman. Glennard's wife is so morally upright that she is able to make him a better man through her example. I suspect this was just what Ms. Wharton's contemporary readership wanted in an ending, but it was a little hard for me to swallow. Other than that, I highly recommend "The Touchstone" by Edith Wharton. I'm giving it five out of five stars
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LibraryThing member Luli81
Upsetting reading about feeling guilty and bearing the cross on your shoulders and final atonement.
LibraryThing member Caitdub
Not my favorite Wharton. The bar was set high. Her prose seemed less elegant than in her popular novels and when I read her I expect to be swept away with her words. Still, the plot was intriguing and that sort of torturous Wharton you get in her short stories. I couldn't help thinking of this one
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in conjunction with her life's work. Considering the topic, it was hard to separate Wharton from the female author. Faux pas, sorry. Would be neat to look at this one alongside epistolary texts or with AS Byatt's novel, Possession.

Oversimplification of this one: Wharton saying "you don't own me *itches."
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LibraryThing member AnesaMiller
This was the 2nd book by Wharton (a novella) that I read after THE AGE OF INNOCENCE. As compared to that wonderful book, this one is set in a slightly less aristocratic world, although the sensibility remains snobbish and self-absorbed. The language is intellectual, complex and elegant. Emphasis
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falls on subtle shades of emotion and morality.

“How could he continue to play his part, with this poison of indifference stealing through his veins? …What he wanted now was not immunity but castigation: his wife’s indignation might still reconcile him to himself. Her scorn was the moral antiseptic that he needed.”

The book’s protagonist is debating whether or not to sell a collection of personal letters he received over a period of years from a woman (now deceased) who later became a renowned novelist. Formerly Miss Aubyn’s friend and confidant, the hero let his correspondence with her die out after realizing he would never love her as a woman. He acknowledged that she was his moral and mental superior but not a potential life partner.

When the story begins, the hero is married and has a young child. He is keen to maintain them in the style to which they are accustomed, and he stands to obtain a considerable sum from the sale of the letters. The resulting moral struggle makes a far more engrossing tale than this attempt at retelling conveys. I recommend it to all Wharton fans and readers of historic American fiction.
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LibraryThing member arubabookwoman
"Genius is of small use to a woman who does not know how to do her hair."

This short novella is Wharton's first published full-length work. I read it for a Litsy Buddy read of all of Wharton's works which is now ongoing (we discuss our 3rd Wharton read tomorrow).

Stephen Glennard is ready to get
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married, but is unable to do so until he is more financially secure. Many years before he had a close friendship with a woman who became a famous, but reclusive writer who has recently died. She apparently left no letters or private papers, but as it turns out, Stephen has a treasure trove letters she wrote him during their friendship. He investigates, and surreptitiously hiding himself as the recipient or source of the letters, has them published, raising enough cash to marry. Even his wife does not know how he came into the funds enabling them to marry. Once the letters are published, creating a sensation, the guilt sets in for Stephen. This was a very modern morality tale.

Recommended.

3 stars
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Original publication date

1900

Physical description

124 p.; 18 cm

ISBN

9780974607863

Local notes

fiction

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