Greenwich author pens essays on friends from bygone era
GREENWICH — When future Pulitzer Prize-winner Willa Cather showed Viola Roseboro an early version of “My Ántonia,” her prescient editor didn’t mince words: Cather’s novel had one fatal flaw.
“If you have the courage to throw the (manuscript) away, and sit down and rewrite it from ( Jim Burden’s) point of view, you have a great book,” Roseboro said.
The frank criticism would have crushed a lesser writer, but Roseboro’s quirky style of encouragement challenged Cather to refashion her work into the American prairie masterpiece it is today. The memorable tale also landed both women a berth in “Delightful People,” a first book by Greenwich resident Stephen Schmalhofer (published by Cluny Media, 2020).
The recently published volume includes 11 essays touching on a loose band of writers, historians, thinkers and mostly New York-based creative types who hopped trains on the New Haven Line from time to time, bringing their charming conversation to the Bush-Holley House and the Cos Cob Art Colony, sometimes spending summer weekends there.
“It’s a kind of daisy chain of connections,” said Schmalhofer, who discovered his subjects while riding the same train to work as a partner at Teamworthy Ventures, a venture capital investment firm based in New York City.
In addition to Cather and her mentor Roseboro, a magazine editor also credited with discovering Jack London and O. Henry, Schmalhofer provides windows into the wit and witticism of author Henry James, historian Henry Adams, stained glass artist and Tiffany rival John La Farge and social set standouts Winthrop and Margaret Chanler. Highlighting their interest in classicism and Catholicism, Schmalhofer traces intriguing connections to “irrepressible” Father Cyril Sigourney Fay, a friend of both
Pope Benedict XV and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Well-educated and wellto-do, the band of merry gentlefolk represent a bygone era in which friends might while away the hours reading aloud from a favorite novella or discussing the mores of the day.
“What’s interesting about many of them is that they lived an interesting private life,” said Schmalhofer. “They made an art out of their private life.”
Schmalhofer got to know his subjects better during his commute, dusting off forgotten memoirs —some from his alma mater, Yale University —and “pulling on threads” to add colorful characters along the way. Adams, often characterized as a prickly sort, comes across as almost warm and tender in more intimate moments.
Winthrop Chanler was one of the storied “Astor orphans” who was also at home alongside Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders, Schmalhofer said.
“He didn’t want for much,” the father of three girls said, “but he was comfortable with discomfort.”
Many of the book’s notables bounced back and forth from Europe, exhibiting a shared flexibility and openness to adventure and knowledge that imbues their work and their friendships. Schmalhofer, whose previous writings have appeared in The New Criterion, Spectator USA and City Journal, said he appreciated their fascination with the riches of history, especially Roman history and the Medieval world, and the effervescent way they conveyed it to their pre-World War I contemporaries.
“They had a deep connection to the written word,” he said. “You get a sense that the world was smaller.”