Wharton Classic Finds Base In Real Society

A strange title, “The Buccaneers.” Edith Wharton’s story has nothing to do with pirates, although the spirited young American women who are her heroines do go on a sort of raiding party.

They are looking for English titles that will provide them with cachet back in New York City, where, in the 1870s, snobbish Social Register matriarchs view them as nouveaux riches and therefore socially unacceptable. An aristocratic husband, they know, will give them instant entree. What they don’t count on is the cost they may have to pay.

The sweeping story airs tonight, Monday and Tuesday on PBS, the first offering for the 25th season of long-running “Masterpiece Theatre.”

In the late 1800s such a pairing - her money and his title - was not entirely uncommon. Indeed, two of Wharton’s friends did exactly that. Jennie Jerome, daughter of a New York newspaper publisher, married Lord Randolph Churchill and became the mother of Winston, England’s future prime minister. Consuelo Vanderbilt, a railroad heiress, married the Duke of Marlborough.

As Edith Newbold Jones, born in 1862 into New York’s “old money,” the writer could trace her Dutch and English ancestors back 300 years. Her family was part of New York’s “Four Hundred,” so named because that was the number of guests who could fit into the ballroom of the Astor mansion on Fifth Avenue.

In 1885 she married Teddy Wharton, who was 13 years her senior. The couple was divorced 28 years later. At least one historian believes the marriage may never have been consummated.

The Wharton marriage may have been the model for that of “Buccaneer” Annabel St. George (Carla Gugino), called Nan, and Julius, Duke of Trevenick.

Drawing from her own experiences and those of her friends, Wharton created the story of Nan and Virginia St. George (Alison Elliott), whose name may be a nod to Jennie Jerome; Conchita Closson (Mira Sorvino), whose name echoes Wharton’s friend Consuelo Vanderbilt; and Lizzy Elmsworth (Rya Kihlstedt). Cheri Lunghi plays Laura Testvalley, Nan’s governess-chaperone.

Even Wharton fans may not have read “The Buccaneers,” a book that was only two-thirds finished when Wharton died in 1937. But like Martin Scorsese’s 1993 film version of “The Age of Innocence,” Wharton’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Buccaneers” is lush with elegant sets and lavish costuming. And like Wharton’s other work, this is a story of manners, this time between the New and Old Worlds at the end of the 19th century.

“The Buccaneers” was adapted by Maggie Wadey, who also provided an ending to the story.

A prolific writer, Wharton was in her 70s when she outlined and began writing the novel. She had already turned out 23 novels and novellas, collections of short stories, volumes of poetry and many travelogues and memoirs, as well as thousands of letters to her friends.

After Wharton became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, for “The Age of Innocence,” she sank into relative obscurity. But thanks to the Scorsese film and the television series, which already has aired in Britain, sales of her books are up.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: ‘Masterpiece Theatre’ “The Buccaneers” airs tonight through Tuesday at 8 p.m. on Spokane’s KSPS-Channel 7, Coeur d’Alene’s KCDT-Channel 26 and Moscow’s KUID-Channel 12.