Wharton, Edith — The Age of Innocence [62]

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 had only to look at him, from the slant of his bald forehead and the curve of his beautiful fair moustache 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. — Wharton, Edith, The Age of Innocence, 62

Note

Lefferts’s authority is made hereditary—‘congenital’—so that fashion-competence masquerades as nature. Wharton’s irony flatters the reader into seeing the arbitrariness beneath the ‘natural.’