The Glimpses of the Moon

The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton

The Glimpses of the Moon opens on Susy Branch and Nick Lansing beginning their honeymoon at Charlie Strefford's villa on Lake Como, having married on a frank bargain: since neither has money, each will release the other the moment a better match — a wealthier marriage — comes along, and until then they will live off wedding cheques and borrowed houses. Susy recalls how their courtship began among wealthy patrons like Ursula Gillow, and how she and Nick, both clever, penniless dependents on rich friends, devised their scheme after a country visit to the struggling but genuinely happy painter Nat Fulmer and his wife Grace. The couple moves on to Venice to occupy the palace of Ellie Vanderlyn, ostensibly to let Nick write his book and to look after Ellie's young daughter Clarissa while Ellie is supposedly away for a cure. Susy soon discovers that Ellie is actually conducting a love affair and has left behind letters to be posted, at intervals, to her unsuspecting husband Nelson, to disguise her absence; Susy, bound by obligation and by the comfortable summer this deception buys her and Nick, complies and says nothing to Nick. Strefford arrives as a guest, and the Mortimer Hickses, wealthy and earnest Americans with their intense daughter Coral, reappear in Nick's life, along with Fred Gillow, a former suitor of Susy's. Nelson Vanderlyn briefly visits, oblivious, and departs again with Clarissa. When Ellie returns, she carelessly reveals to Nick, in an unguarded moment of gratitude, that he and Susy were paid — in hospitality and in a valuable pearl pin — for helping conceal her infidelity. Nick confronts Susy, appalled that she compromised her integrity, and their quarrel exposes deeper cracks: Nick's rigid scruples against "dirty work" for favors, and Susy's practiced acceptance of such compromises as the price of their way of life. Nick invokes their marriage pact and leaves her, fleeing to Genoa, while Susy, devastated, carries on socially before retreating alone. Susy learns that Strefford has unexpectedly inherited an earldom and fortune after his uncle and cousin drown in an accident, and he proposes marriage to her. Meanwhile Nick, drifting in guilt and confusion, is picked up by the Hickses' yacht and drawn toward Coral, who offers him a secretarial position and hints at deeper feelings. Susy, staying with the flighty Violet Melrose (now patronizing the newly successful Nat Fulmer) and visiting the still-devoted but harried Grace Fulmer, wrestles with whether to accept a life of independence and luxury with Strefford. She writes to him, agreeing to meet him in London, while Nick — cruising toward Crete, still without word from Susy and unaware of Strefford's news — reads in a society column that Susy and Strefford are already being paired publicly.

By Edith Wharton · First published 1922 · Genre: Romance, Social Commentary, Drama · 30 chapters · 99,065 words

First lines

IT rose for them -- their honey-moon -- over the waters of a lake so famed as the scene of romantic raptures that they were rather proud of not having been afraid to choose it as the setting of their own.

"It required a total lack of humour, or as great a gift for it as ours, to risk the experiment," Susy Lansing opined, as they hung over the inevitable marble balustrade and watched their tutelary orb roll its magic carpet across the waters to their feet.

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Romance · Novel · Social Class · Marriage · Wealth · High Society · American Literature · Early 20th Century · Love Triangle · Infidelity · Divorce · Social Status

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