By hello
Passage: “I am to dine with him at Sherry’s.” (gutenberg.org) By the late 1890s Sherry’s had moved to the corner of 44th Street and Fifth Avenue and was one of the restaurants associated with New York’s social elite, “The Four Hundred.” In Edith Wharton, that tiny reference does a large amount of class work: an invitation to dine at Sherry’s is not mere supper but a credential, part of the courtship-and-display machinery that The House of Mirth anatomizes so mercilessly. Wharton chooses the restaurant because the name instantly signals fashionable legitimacy. (en.wikipedia.org)