The editor of literary lions
Given the chance, Maxwell Perkins would have done considerable editing to his own obituary.
For a man on the very short “famous editors list” (Ben Bradlee and umm ...), he would have immediately recognized blemishes in the reporting of his death in Stamford on A6 of the June 17, 1947 edition of the Advocate.
First of all, it’s all the way back on page six. And it takes four paragraphs to mention he was the editor of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe. And neglects to mention that he shepherded publication of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ Pulitzer Prizewinner “The Yearling.”
It’s a tepid piece of prose and shorter than some of Wolfe’s sentences. But then, Perkins was shy. He might have favored the modest approach.
I looked up the obit after watching Ken Burns’ new Hemingway documentary. I’d prefer a film about Perkins, if only because editors never get the glory.
A decade ago my wife and I stopped by an open house at Perkins’ former 56 Park St. address in New Canaan. The owners, architect Richard Bergmann and his wife, Sandra, designed such elegant landscaping, nestling stealth reading spots in garden nooks, that I badly plagiarized their work (my yard lacks nooks).
It was striking to consider the pines and hemlocks that were growing since the Perkins family lived there, along with his former bookshelves. When Perkins’ funeral was held at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in New Canaan, Hemingway was unable to join the 250 mourners, citing a family conflict. Zelda Fitzgerald wrote condolences to Perkins’ widow, Louise. He was buried in nearby Lakeview Cemetery and Louise died in the house in 1965 after her cigarette set fire to her chair.
The Bergmanns also tended to the legacy of Perkins, and eventually sold the property, a National Historic Landmark, to a buyer in 2018 who envisioned transforming it into a museum.
So consider this a preview of what a museum could offer.
Perkins and his wife sampled New Canaan life in a cottage in 1924 before buying the Park Street property that was previously New Canaan Country School. He wrote to F. Scott Fitzgerald, who briefly rented a home in Westport after his marriage to Zelda in 1920, “you would hate it, but I like it.”
A. Scott Berg’s deft 1978 biography, “Max Perkins: Editor of Genius,” offers peeks into Perkins’ New Canaan life a century ago. Perkins once wrote that he was drawn by “the charm of New Canaan, a New England village at the end of a single track railroad with almost wild country in three directions, i.e. wild to the Easterner. An ideal way for bringing up children in the way they should go, girls anyhow.”
Of the four columns at the entrance of the 1836 Greek Revival structure, he wryly suggested there was “one for each daughter to lean against when the young men drive up in their buggies.”
A fifth daughter threw off the symmetry. In a 1974 Advocate article, Thomas Ashwell, a Park Street neighbor who attended Harvard with Perkins, recalled a sardonically expressed wish for a son.
“I remember asking him what he was going to name his youngest daughter when she was born,” Ashwell said.
“How about ‘Blaspheme’ ?” Perkins replied.
The Perkins wisely opted for “Nancy” instead.
It’s easy to picture Perkins scrambling with felt hat and bag to catch the 8:02 a.m. train around the bend so he could arrive at his desk at Scribner’s on 48th Street in Manhattan by 9:30. Fellow travelers described him as lugging manuscripts and seeking solitude to read them, though they gossiped that he liked to sit next to the prettiest young woman.
Despite the convenient location, he also apparently had a habit of catching the train by seconds. In 1933, Perkins shifted to using the house during summers, while spending the school year in a relative’s former home on East 49th Street. Berg wrote that the move was motivated by the realization that their daughters “were not getting first-rate education in the New Canaan schools.”
Perkins was a master of structure, but apparently struggled with the changing times. In “Hemingway: A Biography,” author Jeffrey Meyers describes a day Perkins planned a meeting with Hemingway to discuss profanities, noting “s***, piss, f***, bitch” in his calendar. Perhaps he was wary of critics.
“He is no moralist,” the Advocate reviewer sniffed of Hemingway’s 1926 debut, “The Sun Also Rises.”
For the next chapter of our tour, let me introduce a former Advocate reporter who has more intimate knowledge of the family. Louis Porter is Maxwell Perkins’ greatgrandson. I only learned from Louis Thursday that his middle name is Perkins and he is named for Max’s beloved brother.
Perkins perpetually wore a hat, even indoors. One theory is that he favored acoustics it offered for his fading hearing. Colin Firth kept his hat on while portraying Perkins in the 2016 flick “Genius,” based on Berg’s far superior book.
“(The movie) wasn’t even interesting for someone related to the main character,” Louis joked.
Max also started his professional career as a journalist, in his case, for the New York Times. Louis has the poise of his great-grandfather, with flashes of the Hemingway legend, synonymous with war, bullfights and safaris.
One Sunday about 18 years ago, while Louis and I were the only people in the newsroom, my wife called to report a squirrel ransacking our Stamford home. Louis offered to help trap the critter. Alas, his tracking efforts were no more successful than mine, and I had the advantage of being armed with a tennis racket.
Louis displays a photo in his home of Max and Hemingway in Key West in 1935 with massive fishing trophies. In it, Hemingway looks ... like Hemingway. Perkins looks, well, like a fish out of water, clad in pinstripe suit and necktie and clutching his hat and a bag that seems to tug him back to work.
Which makes Louis’ career transformation all the more ironic: Since 2014, he has been Vermont’s commissioner for Fish & Wildlife. He is also a new dad (of yes, a daughter, Mae Jemison Porter, “named in part,” he says, for the first Black woman to travel in space).
Advocate clips document the Perkins family summering in Windsor, Vermont, in the 1920s. Work kept Max at Scribner’s, but he wrote letters to his five daughters daily, with illustrations. The family sold the property about 16 years ago, and it is now the Snapdragon Inn. It’s not the only inn with a family connection. The Roger Sherman Inn in New Canaan is named for one of the Perkins’ ancestors, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
Louis recalls spending part of his youth at the Windsor property, when Max’s oldest daughter, Bertha, lived there. He’s never made it inside the house in New Canaan. He stopped by once, but Bergmann, who ran his firm from the home, was conducting business.
If it does become a museum, maybe Louis can get a family discount.