The Washington Post
October 8, 1995

His Title And Her Money
By Patricia Brennan


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 for it.

The sweeping story airs Sunday, Monday and Tuesday at 9 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 story makes an ideal co-production between the BBC and WGBH in Boston.
The first "Masterpiece Theatre" presentation to originate in this country,
it features British and American actors.

"After years and years and millions of dollars spent acquiring British
drama, we began to feel a bit of the buccaneer spirit ourselves," said
Rebecca Eaton, who is marking her 10th year as the series' executive producer.
"We began to think of titles we could propose to the British."

Eaton's assistant at the time, Nathan Hasson, was studying Wharton's work
and brought her Harvard University's out-of-print copy of the unfinished
novel. The pages were hurriedly photocopied so the book could be returned,
she said.

Eaton was already a fan of Wharton's work, she said, her favorites being
"The House of Mirth" (1905) and "The Mother's Recompense" (1925). The latter
is already in script form by Alice Arlen.

"I read it {`The Buccaneers'} and I thought, `This is not a very good book,'
" said Eaton. "Edith had the terrible misfortune to die before she finished
it. I think she would have done a lot more work on it. She wouldn't have
been too pleased to have it up there with the rest of her books, because
she reworked a lot and this was just her first pass at it. But I could
tell this would be a terrific television project, so we sent the {photocopies}
to our partners at the BBC."

Eaton believes that " `The Buccaneers' is not typical Edith Wharton, in
that it is a larger tapestry, more sweeping, more characters, grander.
If it's a symphony, most of her books are chamber music."

The novel was so sweeping that screenwriter Maggie Wadey had to do a bit
of trimming, said Eaton, including eliminating "one or two of the young
American girls. What Maggie was doing was solving a lot of the dramatic
problems that Edith Wharton would have had to solve."

She also altered a few names, for example, changing Ushant, the duke, to
Julius ("we thought the name Ushant would go down a little hard," said
Eaton).

And after producer-director Phillip Saville took a look at Newport, R.I.,
she said, he "begged and pleaded" to change one of the story's locations
from its original site, Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

"That will have Edith revolving in her grave," remarked Eaton, since Newport
was an old-money stronghold. "We arrived at the rationale that we would
put the families in hotels in Newport, so we chose a house -- the Chateau
Sur Mer -- and dressed it up to look like a hotel, and we had the families
staying there."

The project, begun in 1988, finally was filmed last year. "It was a long
haul," said Eaton, "but once it was approved, the BBC came in absolutely
wholeheartedly."

A prolific writer, Wharton was in her seventies 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.

Wharton's editor at Charles Scribner's Sons, her publisher, knew that she
often revised her work substantially and was reluctant to take her unfinished
story to print. In 1938, Appleton-Century published the uncompleted 355-page
book along with its outline.

Later, other writers finished the book, devising various endings.

More than 50 years after the unfinished novel was published, Marion Mainwaring,
who had worked with Wharton biographer R.W.B. Lewis, became so interested
in the story that she took on the task of finishing it. Her book was published
in 1993 by Viking/Penguin. Eaton said she believes that 20th-Century Fox
is planning to bring that version to film.

Novelist Fay Weldon "took a pass" at the screenplay, said Eaton, "But Fay
and Edith did not make music together." So the job went to British screenwriter
Maggie Wadey, who has adapted four "Masterpiece Theatre" plays, supplied
the ending that airs this week.

"Maggie Wadey immersed herself in American biographical, historical sociological
material for that period," said Eaton. "She wrote it over a period of six
months." Wadey had already finished a preliminary script by the time
Mainwaring's
book appeared, said Eaton.

This month, still another book -- the companion book to Wadey's television
script -- will be published, completed by Angela Mack-Worth Young.

Eaton called "Masterpiece Theatre's" silver anniversary season "one blockbuster
year." It will include "Prime Suspect: The Lost Child" starring Helen Mirren
(previous "Prime Suspects" aired on "Mystery!," a series that Mobil will
no longer fund); the finale of the "House of Cards" trilogy, "The Final
Cut," starring Ian Richardson; and "The Politician's Wife," starring Juliet
Stephenson.

More dramas are already in production for "Masterpiece Theatre," although
none are from American authors, said Eaton. Among them are Joseph Conrad's
"Nostromo," being filmed in Colombia and starring Albert Finney, Claudia
Cardinale and Brian Dennehy; a biography of Cecil Rhodes, known as "the
imperialist philanthropist," starring Martin Shaw; and a fictional account
of the courtship and marriage of poets Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning
by Margaret Forster ("Georgie Girl").

Stay tuned at 10:30 p.m. Sunday for "A Lady Does Not Write," a biography
of Edith Wharton. After she 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.