The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton | Part 2, Chapter 11:
Lily, lingering for a moment on the corner, looked out on the afternoon spectacle of Fifth Avenue. It was a day in late April, and the sweetness of spring was in the air. It mitigated the ugliness of the long crowded thoroughfare, blurred the gaunt roof-lines, threw a mauve veil over the discouraging perspective of the side streets, and gave a touch of poetry to the delicate haze of green that marked the entrance to the Park.
As Lily stood there, she recognized several familiar faces in the passing carriages. The season was over, and its ruling forces had disbanded; but a few still lingered, delaying their departure for Europe, or passing through town on their return from the South.
Lily in her eventual destitution does a lot of walking around Midtown, which was evidently even more devoid of places to rest without buying something than it is today.
I’d forgotten that Wharton refers to “a little restaurant in Fifty-ninth Street,” not on. I wonder when that usage changed.
photo: Museum of the City of New York
Easter Sunday outside St Patrick’s Cathedral ca. 1902
Edwin Levick, Frederick Lewis
