Old Love the Last Blossom on the Plum Tree

By Stefan Kanfer

The scenes vary from Portofino to Harlem to the Savoy, but the '20s are coming to a close, the Depression is imminent, and no matter how far the wealthy wander and caper, their journeys are bound to end in sorrow.

That sense of the ominous haunts Brooke Astor's novel: the worst is waiting to occur immediately after the curtain falls on the kind of fiction that has been out of style since the period it concerns. In this dry, sparkling comedy of manners, reminiscent of Edith Wharton's lighter works, the glitter is incessant. Emily Codway, a widow of a certain age -- nearly 60 actually, although she will only admit to 49 -- carries on a sunset flirtation with a fortyish Italian prince, Carlo Pontevecchio. Her sister-in-law Irma Shrewsbury, also a moneyed widow, is romanced by Charlie Hopeland, a conniving young lawyer. Emily has had cosmetic surgery, but her wardrobe and behavior remain staunchly conservative. Irma, who appears "mean, as if she unconsciously wanted revenge for what she had missed," abruptly turns into a grotesque, misapplying bright red lipstick and drinking old-fashioneds with catastrophic results.

Old love has become a familiar theme of contemporary fiction: Isaac Bashevis Singer made it the title of a book of short stories; John Cheever, John Updike and Saul Bellow have explored its surprising depths and passions. In their wake Philanthropist Astor, now in her early 80s, slyly subtitles her fourth and best book "a period piece." Actually, it concerns two periods: the year before the Crash and the time after middle age. She is obviously an expert on both. With witty understatement and antic plot, she shows a high social stratum at its apogee. Messages are delivered on silver salvers. A titled Englishwoman seems to have stepped from a Gershwin song, down to the exclamation, " 'S wonderful." Irma's son, rendered useless by the lack of a trust fund, laments, "My parents have never had much use for me," and wheedles a large check from a relative. Emily, with every possible creature comfort, cannot escape the persistent complaint of the dilettante: envy. Gaping at the writers headed for the Algonquin Round Table, she "longed to know such people, share their brilliance, know what they took to be important. She wondered if she could hold her own with Bob Sherwood and George Jean Nathan and Woollcott and Mencken, but she would probably never meet them."

Women like Emily and Irma live by shibboleths learned in early youth: sleep with no woman and damn few men; he who rides a tiger must never get off; and, as the title indicates, he who sees the last blossom on the plum tree must pick it. Shakespeare was more succinct: ripeness is all, and so it proves with Emily. After meeting Carlo's ancient father, she is momentarily ( transformed into a radiant ideal: "beautiful, charming, intelligent, loving, and the perfect future Principessa Pontevecchio." Irma is another matter: abandoned by Charlie, she becomes one more foolish dowager in the tow of her parasitic heir. But these are merely the bones of the book. Astor's primary theme is irony, and the '20s international set allows her to use it undiluted.

Despite their sophistication and limitless purses, the travelers have only the vaguest idea of what makes the world work outside their bedroom doors. Fascism is on the rise in Italy, but to the myopic Americans, Mussolini seems only to be "looking after the poor, and keeping a strong government together; also, there was talk that he might sign a peace treaty within the year with the Vatican." Irma, heading back to the States, is consoled by expectations: "I am beginning to think 1929 is going to be a great year for us. There is nothing that makes me feel more alive than making money." With that sentence, the author sums up an epoch. In the process, she conspires with her readers who know, as her characters cannot, that after Black Thursday of the following October, the world will change. With certain notable exceptions, neither hereditary titles nor accumulated wealth -- nor resolutely unfashionable novels -- will ever be the same.