MADAME DE TREYMES

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907. First Edition. Hardcover. Faint dampstain to the upper outer corner of the rear cover and the last 30 pages; light foxing on a few pages. Still Near Fine. Original gilt-decorated and lettered brown cloth. SIGNED by the author on the front endpaper with a MANUSCRIPT variant version of the poem “Belgium” in Wharton's hand:

Not with her ruined silver spires,
Not with her cities shamed & rent,
Perish the imperishable fires
That shape the homestead from the tent.

Wherever men are staunch & free,
A fearless footstep shall she set,
And, homeless, to great nations be
The home of all that made them great.
Edith Wharton
Paris, Nov 11th 1914

The poem was published in 1917 in A TREASURY OF WAR POETRY: BRITISH AND AMERICAN POEMS OF THE WORLD WAR 1914-1917. This manuscript version differs from the published version with a few minor changes and the use of the line "A fearless footstep shall she set' instead of the eventually published "There shall she keep her fearless state," and with the use of the past tense in the last line rather than the present tense in the published version. Wharton spent the war helping relief agencies and was particularly interested in working with refugees from Belgium.