Hypnotic Bedtime Story - The Age of Innocence
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Hi, I'm Jessica Porter, and welcome back to Sleep Magic, a podcast where I help you find the magic of your own mind, helping you to sleep better and live better. Hi everyone, it's so good to be here. I haven't actually recorded a podcast in a few weeks. Sometimes I do a bunch of them so I can go travel or something. And, uh,

I just feel like I've missed you guys. Like I've missed doing this and the connection I feel with so many people in the world. So thank you for being there. It really enriches my life. And thank you for exploring your own minds because it's actually about what's deep inside of you, not what's coming out of me. I've heard from a lot of people that

a mother of seven, a university student, a recovering addict, people who are just finding peace within themselves. Because that's what this is all about. The subconscious mind is pretty cool, and we all have one, so let's go there. Thank you for all your feedback, and I'm paying real attention to it. Before we get started, let's hear a quick word from our sponsors who make this free content possible.

Okay, tonight, The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. So we got a pretty good response from my previous reading of To the Lighthouse, and tonight I'm reading some writing by Edith Wharton. Now, Wharton was a member of high society in New York City at the turn of the 20th century. She started writing poems as a child, but didn't write her first novel until she was 40, which is pretty cool.

Wharton was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1921 for this novel, The Age of Innocence, from which I'll be reading tonight. As always, we'll begin with some deep, relaxing hypnosis. And if you fall asleep during that, great. If you make it to the reading, just allow your mind to ride on my voice, which is riding on Wharton's words.

She is a master of detailed descriptions of sumptuous clothing, high-end decor, and the ways that society both exposes us and entraps us. There's no need for you to pick up the meaning or the plot, at least for our purposes. Just receive and enjoy the colorful ups and downs of this great piece of literature.

So get yourself into a safe and comfortable position and let's begin. Allow your eyes to close easily and gently. How was your day? Time to go inside and let ourselves process our lives, bringing the energy back inside ourselves so we can let go. As you bring your awareness to your breathing and just let your breath be normal and natural.

But you're reeling in your awareness like a fishing line. Just reel it in, bringing it back to your body, back to your breath. You're getting really good at focusing your awareness, even if it's just for a moment at a time. Awareness wants to bounce around in the world. That's what it does. So just bringing it home for a moment.

is very powerful because we exist in the moment. Moment after moment. Like right now. Good. Now I'd like you to bring your awareness up into your eyelids and allow your eyelids to get nice and heavy. Just begin to pretend that your eyelids are relaxed and they're becoming relaxed. Notice that where your imagination goes, your body follows. So as you imagine that your eyelids are sleepy,

droopy, comfortable. They're getting heavier and heavier. Now as you imagine that your eyelids are so relaxed, they won't open. I'd like you to test your eyes to make sure they won't open by wiggling your eyebrows. Look, my eyes won't open. And you're just pretending. Good. As this wonderful warm feeling of relaxation spreads from your eyelids down your face.

Feel that warm relaxation moving into your cheekbones and your jaw, letting everything become soft and warm and relaxed. And as your face is relaxing, your head is feeling heavy on the pillow. And as your head gets heavier and heavier, the relaxation moves inside your head.

Imagine this warm relaxation spiraling inside your head, taking over every single cell of your brain. As you surrender, complete mental tension disappears, disappears. It feels so nice to let your mind let go as that wonderful warm

feeling of relaxation moves down into your throat and the muscles of your neck. Feel your whole neck relaxing, releasing. Imagine the warm relaxation pouring over your shoulders like warm maple syrup, soothing and releasing your shoulders, moving down your arms as your arms feel nice and heavy.

heavy, heavy. And now that your shoulders are relaxed, you've dropped all your responsibilities from your shoulders. They're on the floor now. The responsibilities you feel at work or toward your family or friends. The feeling of responsibility you feel toward society at large, the world, the future. That can be a heavy one. The responsibility you feel

even toward the past or certain individuals in your life. They've all dropped to the floor because this is your time where your body heals itself, balances itself, and makes itself ready for tomorrow. But it's a private affair and you're allowed to enjoy it as you take yourself deeper and deeper

And that warm relaxation moves down inside your torso. Like this beautiful, sweet maple syrup of relaxation through your body. Causing all of your muscles to relax. Your whole torso feeling heavy on the bed. So heavy. So heavy. It feels so good to let go. To give up.

to surrender. You may be aware of the sounds going on in your environment. Perhaps you're hearing traffic on the street or the sounds of another person in the room. But from this moment on, no sound that you hear will bother or disturb you in any way. In fact, from this moment on, any sound that you hear will actually take you deeper and deeper into relaxation.

You're making a decision in your magic mind to allow these sounds to take you deeper as you relax into these vibrations, merging with them, relaxing into them as you take yourself deeper and deeper. The only sound you're really paying any attention to, as you know, is the sound of my voice. And the sound of my voice is also taking you deeper.

and deeper as you go on your relaxation journey tonight. Letting go, letting go. Even my voice is becoming distant, maybe coming in and out. And that's good. As that warm relaxation moves down your legs now, feel that warm maple syrup moving all the way down your legs so that they feel heavy and comfortable.

melting as you go deeper and deeper. On a January evening of the early 70s, Christine Nilsson was singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York. Though there was already talk of the erection in remote metropolitan distances above the 40s of a new opera house which should compete in costliness and splendor

with those of the great European capitals, the world of fashion was still content to reassemble every winter in the shabby red and gold boxes of the sociable old academy. Conservatives cherished it for being small and inconvenient, and thus keeping out the new people whom New York was beginning to dread and yet be drawn to.

and the sentimental clung to it for historic associations, and the musical for its excellent acoustics, always so problematic a quality in halls built for the hearing of music. It was Madame Nilsson's first appearance that winter, and what the daily press had already learned to describe as "an exceptionally brilliant audience" had gathered to hear her.

transported through the slippery, snowy streets, in private broughams, in the spacious family Landau, or in the humbler, but more convenient, brown coop. To come to the opera in a brown coop was almost as honorable a way of arriving as in one's own carriage. And departure, by the same means, had the immense advantage of enabling one

with a playful allusion to democratic principles, to scramble into the first brown conveyance in the line, instead of waiting till the cold and gin-congested nose of one's own coachman gleamed under the portico of the academy. It was one of the great livery stablemen's most masterly intuitions to have discovered that Americans want to get away from amusement

even more quickly than they want to get to it. When Newland Archer opened the door at the back of the club box, the curtain had just gone up on the garden scene. There was no reason why the young man should not have come earlier, for he had dined at seven, alone with his mother and sister, and had lingered afterward over a cigar in the Gothic library.

with glazed black walnut bookcases and finial top chairs, which was the only room in the house where Mrs. Archer allowed smoking. In the first place, New York was a metropolis and perfectly aware that in metropolises it was not the thing to arrive early at the opera. And what was or was not the thing played a part as important

in Newland Archer's New York as the inscrutable totem terror that had ruled the destinies of his forefathers thousands of years ago. The second reason for his delay was a personal one. He had dawdled over his cigar because he was, at heart, a dilettante.

and thinking over a pleasure to come often gave him a subtler satisfaction than its realization. This was especially the case when the pleasure was a delicate one, as his pleasures mostly were, and on this occasion the moment he looked forward to was so rare and exquisite in quality that,

Well, if he had timed his arrival in accord with the prima donna's stage manager, he could not have entered the academy at a more significant moment than just as she was singing, "He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me," and sprinkling the falling daisy petals with notes as clear as dew. She sang, of course, "Mama."

and not "He Loves Me," since an unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences. This seemed as natural to Newland Archer as all the other conventions on which his life was molded,

such as the duty of using two silver-backed brushes with his monogram in blue enamel to part his hair, and of never appearing in society without a flower, preferably a gardenia, in his buttonhole. Mama, non-mama, the prima donna sang, and mama, with a final burst of love triumphant,

as she pressed the disheveled daisy to her lips and lifted her large eyes to the sophisticated countenance of the little brown Faust Capul, who was vainly trying, in a tight purple velvet doublet and plumed cap, to look as pure and true as his artless victim. Newland Archer

leaning against the wall at the back of the club box, turned his eyes from the stage and scanned the opposite side of the house. Directly facing him was the box of old Mrs. Manson Mingott, whose monstrous obesity had long since made it impossible for her to attend the opera, but who was always represented on fashionable nights by some of the younger members of the family.

On this occasion, the front of the box was filled by her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Lovell Mingott, and her daughter, Mrs. Wellen. And slightly withdrawn behind these brocaded matrons sat a young girl in white with eyes ecstatically fixed on the stage lovers as Madame Nilsen's mama.

Thrilled out above the silent house, the boxes always stopped talking during the daisy song, a warm pink mounted to the girl's cheek, mantled her brow to the roots of her fair braids, and suffused the young slope of her breast to the line where it met a modest tool-tucker fastened with a single gardenia.

She dropped her eyes to the immense bouquet of the lilies of the valley on her knee, and Newland Archer saw her white-gloved fingertips touch the flowers softly. He drew a breath of satisfied vanity, and his eyes returned to the stage. No expense had been spared on the setting.

which was acknowledged to be very beautiful, even by people who shared his acquaintance with the opera houses of Paris and Vienna. The foreground to the footlights was covered with emerald green cloth. In the middle distance, symmetrical mounds of woolly green moss, bounded by croquet hoops, formed the base of shrubs

shaped like orange trees, but studded with large pink and red roses. Gigantic pansies, considerably larger than the roses, and closely resembling the floral pen wipers made by female parishioners for fashionable clergymen, sprang from the moss beneath the rose trees.

And here and there, a daisy, grafted onto a rose branch, flowered with a luxuriance prophetic of Mr. Luther Burbank's far-off prodigy. In the center of this enchanted garden, Madame Nilsson, in white cashmere slashed with pale blue satin,

a reticule dangling from a blue girdle, and large yellow braids carefully disposed on each side of her muslin chemisette, listened with downcast eyes to Monsieur Capoue's impassioned woo, and effected a guileless incomprehension of his designs whenever,

By word or glance, he persuasively indicated the ground floor window of the neat brick villa projecting obliquely from the right wing. "The Darling," thought Newland Archer, his glance flitting back to the young girl with the lilies of the valley. "She doesn't even guess what it's all about."

and he contemplated her absorbed young face with a thrill of possessorship, in which pride in his own masculine initiation was mingled with a tender reverence for her abysmal purity. We'll read Faust together. By the Italian lake, he thought,

somewhat hazily confusing the scene of his projected honeymoon with the masterpieces of literature which it would be his manly privilege to reveal to his bride. It was only that afternoon that May Welland had let him guess that she cared. New York's consecrated phrase of maiden avowal

And already his imagination, leaping ahead the engagement ring, the betrothal kiss, and the march from Lohengrin, pictured her at his side in some scene of European witchery. He did not in the least wish the future Mrs. Newland Archer to be a simpleton. He meant her, thanks to his enlightening companionship,

to develop a social tact and readiness of wit, enabling her to hold her own with the most popular married women of the younger set, in which it was the recognized custom to attract masculine homage while playfully discouraging it. If he had probed to the bottom of his vanity, as he sometimes nearly did,

he would have found there the wish that his wife should be as worldly wise and as eager to please as the married lady whose charms had held his fancy through two mildly agitated years, without, of course, any hint of the frailty which had so nearly marred that unhappy being's life and had disarranged his own plans for a whole winter.

How this miracle of fire and ice was to be created and to sustain itself in a harsh world, he had never taken the time to think out. But he was content to hold his view without analyzing it, since he knew it was that of all the carefully brushed, white waistcoated,

buttonhole-flowered gentlemen who succeeded each other in the club box, exchanged friendly greetings with him, and turned their opera glasses critically on the circle of ladies who were the product of the system. In matters intellectual and artistic,

Newland Archer felt himself distinctly the superior of these chosen specimens of old New York gentility. He had probably read more, thought more, and even seen a good deal more of the world than any other man of the number. Singly, they betrayed their inferiority, but grouped together, they represented New York.

and the habit of masculine solidarity made him accept their doctrine on all the issues called moral. He instinctively felt that in this respect it would be troublesome, and also rather bad form, to strike out for himself. "Well, upon my soul!" exclaimed Lawrence Lefferts, turning his opera glass abruptly away from the stage.

Lawrence Lefferts was, on the whole, the foremost authority on form in New York. He had probably devoted more time than anyone else to the study of this intricate and fascinating question. But study alone could not account for his complete and easy competence. One only had to look at him, from the slant of his bald forehead,

and the curve of his beautiful fair mustache to the long patent leather feet at the other end of his lean and elegant person to feel that the knowledge of form must be congenital in anyone who knew how to wear such good clothes so carelessly and carry such height with so much lounging grace as a young admirer had once said of him

If anybody can tell a fellow just when to wear a black tie with evening clothes and when not to, it's Larry Lefferts. And on the question of pumps versus patent leather Oxfords, his authority had never been disputed. My God, he said, and silently handed his glass to old Sillerton Jackson. Newland Archer, following Lefferts' glance,

saw with surprise that his exclamation had been occasioned by the entry of a new figure into old Mrs. Mingott's box. It was that of a slim young woman, a little less tall than May Welland, with brown hair growing in close curls about her temples and held in place by a narrow band of diamonds.

The suggestion of this headdress, which gave her what was then called a "Josephine" look, was carried out in the cut of the dark velvet gown, rather theatrically caught up under her bosom by a girdle with a large, old-fashioned clasp. The wearer of this unusual dress

who seemed quite unconscious of the attention it was attracting, stood a moment in the center of the box, discussing with Mrs. Welland the propriety of taking the latter's place in the right front-hand corner. Then she yielded with a slight smile and seated herself in line with Mrs. Welland's sister-in-law, Mrs. Lovell Mingott.

who was installed in the opposite corner. Mr. Sillerton Jackson had returned the opera glass to Lawrence Lefferts. The whole of the club turned instinctively, waiting to hear what the old man had to say, for old Mr. Jackson was as great an authority on family as Lawrence Lefferts was on form. He knew

the ramifications of New York's cousinships and could not only elucidate such complicated questions as that of the connection between the Mingotts through the Thorleys with the Dallases of South Carolina and that of the relationship of the elder branch of Philadelphia Thorleys to the Albany Chiverses

on no account to be confused with the Manson-Shiverses of University Place, but could also enumerate the leading characteristics of each family, as, for instance, the fabulous stinginess of the younger line of Leffertses, the Long Island ones, or the fatal tendency of the Rushworths to make foolish matches, or the insanity

recurring in every second generation of the Albany Chiverses, with whom their New York cousins had always refused to intermarry, with the disastrous exception of poor Medora Manson, who, as everybody knew, but then her mother was a Rushworth. In addition to this forest of family trees,

Mr. Sillerton Jackson carried between his narrow, hollow temples and under his soft thatch of silver hair a register of most of the scandals and mysteries that had smoldered under the unruffled surface of New York society within the last fifty years. So far, indeed, did his information extend.

and so acutely retentive was his memory that he was supposed to be the only man who could have told you who Julius Beaufort, the banker, really was and what had become of handsome Bob Spicer, Mrs. Manson Mingott's father, who had disappeared so mysteriously with a large sum of trust money.

less than a year after his marriage, on the very day that a beautiful Spanish dancer, who had been delighting thronged audiences in the old opera house on the Battery, had taken a ship for Cuba. But these mysteries, and many others, were closely locked in Mr. Jackson's breast, for not only did his keen sense of honor

forbid his repeating anything privately imparted. But he was fully aware that his reputation for discretion increased his opportunities of finding out what he wanted to know. The club box, therefore, waited in visible suspense while Mr. Sillerton Jackson handed back Lawrence Leffert's opera glass for a moment

He silently scrutinized the attentive group out of his filming eyes overhung by old, vain lids. Then he gave his mustache a thoughtful twist and said simply, "I didn't think the Mengits would have tried it on."