I have been spending my first night in an American "summer hotel," and I despair of the Republic! Such dreariness, such whining callow women, such utter absence of the amenities, such crass food, crass manners, crass landscape!... What a horror it is for a whole nation to be developing without a sense of beauty, and eating bananas for breakfast.
Edith Wharton (1862–1937), U.S. author; relocated to France. As quoted in Edith Wharton, ch. 9, by R. W. B. Lewis (1975).
Written in August 1904 to her friend Sara Norton after Wharton's car broke down in Petersham, Massachusetts, and she was forced to stay at a "fashionable" new hotel called the Nichewang. Wharton came from a privileged background, had elegant taste, and lived lavishly. Beginning in the early 1900s, she spent most of her time in Paris.