Cigarettes, Tea, Cards, and Chloral: Addictive Habits and Consumer Culture in The House of Mirth

During the serial publication of The House of Mirth (1905), Edith Wharton received two letters regarding the novel’s reference to Orangeine, a headache cure that was offered Lily Bart by a fellow worker during her brief career in Madame Regina’s millinery shop. The first letter, from Albert B. Hale, suggested that Wharton had unwittingly engaged in an act of product placement: “there is an unintentional advertisement of a copyrighted or patented medicine which is working incalculable harm to our nostrum swallowing public. Could it not read a headache powder.” Hale warns Wharton that she might be manipulated by greedy merchandisers: “the agents or manufacturers of this stuff may make use of your innocent reference to their commodity and thereby swell the sum of their illy gotten wealth.”1 The second letter corroborates Hale’s anxieties. Charles Bartlett, president of the Orangeine Chemical Co., thanked Wharton for her reference to his “pet prescription” and offered a complimentary year’s subscription in the “Orangeine Good Health and Good Spirits Club,” which would send her the medication at a discount in exchange for a testimonial. Bartlett included several pages of advertising with numerous statements from other members of the club and noted that “a suggestive allusion” to the medication by “a most prominent author, in the most prominent serial of a prominent monthly magazine, is a rare tribute to Orangeine, and of great value.”2 Bartlett and Hale agree that Wharton’s novel advertised Bartlett’s product, perhaps in spite of itself; in Bartlett’s view, Wharton needed only lend her name to one of Orangeine’s ads to formalize the arrangement. Wharton might well have viewed Bartlett’s request for ad copy with disdain; however, she kept the allusion to Orangeine when the novel was