Sarah Todd reports from Lenox, MA. After last year's blowout bash celebrating Edith Wharton's 150th birthday, the Mount took a low-key yet festive approach to honoring literature's grand dame on Saturday, January 26. Free admission gave guests from Connecticut, New York, and the Berkshires open access to the stucco mansion that once played host to luminaries like Henry James and Theodore Roosevelt. Attendees' self-guided tours included Wharton's light-filled dining room, cozy library, and the airy boudoir where the great author wrote in bed each morning, letting pages drift to the floor for the maid to pick up afterward. In the drawing room, guests lingered by a French marble mantle, sipping Earl Gray tea and admiring a snow-covered landscape straight out of Ethan Frome. The junior set headed for the sewing room, where they paid tribute to Wharton's daily writing practice by creating their own handmade journals with markers and construction paper. The inside pages, like Wharton's stationary, were pale blue. Meanwhile, older bookworms attacked a vocabulary quiz with gusto, matching words like "dilettante" with their definitions in hopes of winning a free year-long membership to the Mount. Executive director Susan Wissler (above left, with Lenox Town Planner Mary Albertson), offered a toast to the lady of the hour. While Wharton couldn't be there to blow the candles out, guests demolished a frosted cake with "Happy Birthday Edith" scrawled across the top in no time.
Pittsfield daughter-mother team Jessica and Tracy Kordana; Chautauqua Opera General/Artistic Director Jay Lesenger with children's book author and illustrator Hudson Talbott.
Independent China business consultant Jill Bodnar with Eileen LaCasse, whose outfit was inspired by Edith Wharton; Ceramicists Lorene Nickel and Joe Detwiler.
Playwright Courtney Antonioli with attorney Peter Abare-Brown; the Mount's Chief Development Officer Sara Hunter-Hudson with Albany family Sullivan Alois, Kate Alois, and birthday girl Dianne Alois.
John, who preferred not to include his last name, and writer Alexandra Tinari; attorney Catherine Chester and Matthew Chester.
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Matteline deVries-Dilling, founder of Lite Brite Neon, one of the evening's honoree of this year's Upstate Benefit adresses the gala from the Caboose's caboose.
- Karen Pearson. Courtesy Art Omi.
Olana senior vice president and landscape curatorMark Prezorski, president Sean Sawyer, The evenings honoree Kristin Gamble and New York State Assemblymember Didi Barrett.
- Oxygen House Photo
