Edith Wharton and Truman Capote were both impeccable chroniclers of society. The major difference between them was that Capote was a turncoat, according to actress Irene Worth.
“You cannot betray confidences the way Truman did,” says Worth, with the same disapproval in her voice that rippled through society over Capote’s “Answered Prayers,” a novel in which the foibles of New York society were thinly disguised as fiction. “[Wharton] would never have done that. She never would have done what Truman did.”
Worth would know. Over the past five years she’s presented variations of “Irene Worth’s Portrait of Edith Wharton” — an hour-plus reading culled from Wharton novels and her autobiography — for various literary and charity events. Last fall, an associate producer at the Public Theater asked her to present the piece in New York. She agreed, and is now performing until Feb. 27 while wearing a peach Fortuny dress, “a gift from Lillian Gish.”
At 77, Worth is as grand and eloquent as ever. Preparing to be interviewed, she stretches out on the couch of her dressing room at the Public, swaddling herself in a creamy white bathrobe, holding the collar up to frame her face. Her diction, perfected by 34 years in London, lends a Shakespearean ring to any subject she broaches: instructing on the proper way to twist a Fortuny dress or praising Bill Blass’s generosity in giving $10 million to the New York Public Library.
“Her family, you know, considered her a disaster,” she says of Wharton. “They completely disapproved. She was in no man’s land emotionally as far as help and support. She was supposed to get married and have children, not kick up dust writing novels. ‘How odd,’ they thought. ‘Edith wants to be a writer.’ In that way the upper classes haven’t changed,” she adds parenthetically. “They’ve never really been supportive of the arts. Now they give a bit of money for tax breaks and social kudos.”
Listening to Worth talk, it’s almost as if she’d been an intimate of Wharton’s. Their social circles did overlap.
“I was a friend of Bernard Berenson and Kenneth Clark and his wife, Jane. And I know Florence, Italy [where Wharton fled when her marriage broke up] pretty well, so it’s easy for me to relate to these people,” the actress points out. As for what Whartonian New York would think of today’s social mores, Worth is very clear:”New York society likes to be in the papers. Edith’s family would be horrified.”