Edith Wharton and John and Alice Garrett: Art and Ambassadorship in a Time of War

This article examines a collection of sixty unpublished letters between Edith Wharton and John and Alice Garrett, seeking to understand what this couple meant to Wharton and how they may have influenced her writing. During World War I, Wharton became friends with the Garretts in Paris. John Work Garrett was a diplomat who later became the U.S. ambassador to Italy. He was also a distinguished collector of rare books, fine art, and coins. Similarly, his wife, Alice, was a well-connected patron of the arts who worked in wartime charities with Wharton. The Garretts seem to have represented a cosmopolitan ideal for Wharton, seamlessly integrating political influence, aesthetic cultivation, and tangible service to those wounded or displaced by the war. Their understanding of the history, culture, and languages of other nations was of a high order, enough to enable delicate transnational negotiations in the context of war, and they seem to have transformed Wharton's view of Americanness. Wharton's letters to them even express a rare happiness at being an American. The Garretts' friendship with Wharton lasted long after the war, and their influence appears in works such as The Age of Innocence (1920), “Her Son” (1933), and “Charm, Incorporated” (1934).