French Ways And Their Meaning

by Edith Wharton

Overview

FRENCH WAYS AND THEIR MEANING by EDITH WHARTON. Originally published in 1919. PREFACE: This book is essentially a desultory book, the result of intermittent observation, and often, no doubt, of rash assumption Having been written in Pans, at odd moments, during the last two years of the war, it could hardly be more than a series of disjointed notes, and the excuse for its publication lies in the fact that the very conditions which made more con secutive work impossible al o gave unprece dented opportunities for quick notation The world since 1914 has been like a house on fire All the lodgers are on the stairs, in dishabille Their doors are swinging wide, and one gets glimpses of their furniture, reve lations of their habits, and whiffs of their cooking, that a life-time of ordinary inter course would not offer Superficial differ ences vanish, and so how much oftener do superficial resemblances, while deep ...

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781443721608
Publisher:	Clapham Press
Publication date:	11/04/2008
Pages:	168
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Born into a prosperous New York family, Edith Wharton (1862-1937) wrote more than 15 novels, including The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth, Ethan Frome, and other esteemed books. She was distinguished for her work in the First World War and was the first woman to receive a Doctorate of Letters from Yale University. She died in France at the age of 75.

Date of Birth:

January 24, 1862

Date of Death:

August 11, 1937

Place of Birth:

New York, New York

Place of Death:

Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt, France

Education:

Educated privately in New York and Europe

Read an Excerpt

n REVERENCE TAKE care! Don't eat blackberries! Don't you know they'll give you the fever?" Any American soldier who stops to fill his cap with the plump blackberries loading the hedgerows of France is sure to receive this warning from a passing peasant. Throughout the length and breadth of France, the most fruit-loving and fruit- cultivating of countries, the same queer conviction prevails, and year after year the great natural crop of blackberries, nowhere better and more abundant, is abandoned to birds and insects because in some remote and perhaps prehistoric past an ancient Gaul once decreed that "blackberries give the fever." An hour away, across the Channel, fresh blackberries and blackberry-jam form one of the staples of a great ally's diet; but the French have not yet found out that millions of Englishmen have eaten blackberries for generations without having "the fever." Even if they did find it out they would probably say: "The English are different. Blackberries have always given us the fever." Or the more enlightened might ascribe it to the climate: "The air may be different in England. Blackberries may not be unwholesome there, but here they are poison." There is not the least foundation for the statement, and the few enterprising French people who have boldly risked catching "the fever" consume blackberries in France with as much enjoyment, and as little harm, as their English neighbours. But one could no more buy a blackberry in a French market than one could buy the fruit of the nightshade; the one is considered hardly less deleterious than the other. The prejudice is all the queerer because the thrifty, food-loving French peasant has discovered theinnocuousness of so many dangerous-looking funguses that frighten the Anglo-Saxon by their cl...

Editorial Reviews

This volume marks the first in a series of collaborations between the publisher and Edith Wharton Restoration, Inc., a group dedicated to promoting and preserving Wharton's works. A facsimile of the original 1919 edition, this offers her firsthand observations on French lifeas charming as Paris in the springthat she collected when living in the City of Lights.

Library Journal