Edith Wharton and Anna Bahlmann

The letters of Edith Jones Wharton to her governess, Anna Catherine Bahlmann, which had been in the possession of the Bahlmann family, were acquired at auction in 2009 by the Beinecke Library of Yale University. Skillfully edited by Irene Goldman-Price, the letters chronicle the evolving relationship between Wharton, the distinguished American novelist, and her governess, who guided her intellectual development in her formative years and gave her significant support as she matured as a writer.

Through the letters, spanning the years 1874 to 1916, one sees the influences that shaped the personal and intellectual development of Wharton and contributed to her literary success. There were advantages associated with being a child of privilege: access to her father's library, the encouraging support of a governess, and opportunities for extensive foreign travel. Revealed in the letters are two major characteristics—passion and energy—that played major roles in contributing to Wharton's literary success. The letters also shed further light on her relationships with her family, with her literary friends, and even with her servants. The transition of Wharton from writer to relief worker is evident in the letters written from Paris in the early days of World War I.

The letters and the accompanying notes of Goldman-Price tell another story too—that of Anna Catherine Bahlmann, who served as mentor to Wharton, guiding her reading and criticizing her literary efforts over a lengthy period. Goldman-Price's notes on Bahlmann's personal situation are particularly perceptive. Little is known about her early life—other than that she was the daughter of German immigrants and that her parents had died by the time she was two.

Obviously well educated and cultivated, Bahlmann was highly sought after as a governess for the children of New York's wealthy families. Career choices for middle-class women of that era were limited, and the financial rewards were minimal. Bahlmann led a precarious existence, piecing together work from various families. Lacking a steady income and living on the fringes of the wealthy, she struggled to keep up appearances. A frugal style of life and the benevolence of her employers made it possible for her to eke out a living. Anna Bahlmann's plight was comparable to that of many unmarried middle-class women at the turn of the century. Whether governesses or public- or private-school teachers, they lived in genteel poverty.

Wharton, the daughter of privilege, and Bahlmann, the daughter of German immigrants, forged a common bond. The gifted and inspiring teacher found in Wharton a willing student passionately engaged in the love of learning. A close relationship between the two developed almost immediately, and that relationship endured for forty-two years.

Bahlmann first tutored the young Edith Jones in the fall and winter of 1873-74. When Bahlmann left to go to Newport to the Lewis Rutherford family, Edith began her correspondence with her governess, reporting on her reading, her reactions to her reading, and sending her samples of her writing to be criticized. The governess took seriously her young student's literary ambitions, and Jones confided that she regarded Bahlmann as her "supreme critic" (October 1878). Jones's report that she had a poem accepted by the Atlantic must have been rewarding to her mentor. The family encouraged the relationship between the two, extending frequent invitations to Bahlmann to visit and choosing her to chaperone Edith on a trip to Europe.

The relationship between the two changed after the marriage of Edith to Ted Wharton in July 1885. After their marriage the Whartons led a peripatetic existence, spending fall and winter in New York, spring in Europe, and summer in Newport. The extensive European travel allowed Wharton to study art, architecture, and history—interests she had developed under the tutelage of Bahlmann—and she continued to write and publish. Her husband, more a sportsman than an intellectual, shared her enthusiasm for travel but not for literary pursuits, so it was only natural that Wharton would...