Missing Persons
Delightful People by Stephen Schmalhofer
It is pleasant, when poring over a new volume of essays, to find oneself in the company of an author who does not prove to be a mere hydrant of loud opinion. Mr. Schmalhofer's Delightful People is a good sort of literary hors d'oeuvre: never brazen or argumentative, it is ever leisurely, concerned chiefly with the lives of unnoticed or forgotten figures whose privilege it was in their time to associate with celebrities of the social, literary, and ecclesiastical spheres. Here we meet Winthrop Astor Chanler, adventurer, veteran of the Spanish-American war, and friend of Theodore Roosevelt; Viola Roseboro, editor of McClure's, patron of O. Henry and Jack London, and fairy godmother to Willa Cather's My Antonia; painter and traveler John La Farge, who in his peregrinations enjoyed the company of Henry Adams and Robert Louis Stevenson; and the sprightly priest Monsignor Cyril Fay, bon vivant, diplomat, intimate of Pope Benedict XV and spiritual advisor to a young F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Before picking up this book, I had known the names of few of its protagonists, who for all their many differences leave a common impression of having known nearly everyone one could wish to have known. They shared connections with one another, familial and professional, and spent the prime of their lives in the last decades of the nineteenth century and first years of the twentieth, a period the author evokes with a nostalgia that may be appreciated for its lack of lugubriousness. Mr. Schmalhofer is visibly and contagiously fond of his subjects, and his all-too-slender book is a pleasant testimony to their talents and their graces, natural and spiritual. He compares his chosen company to the miraculous wine at the Feast of Cana, and the savor of these characters, and the author's self-possessed style, make good on his advertisement.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Thomas Banks lives in North Carolina and teaches online at the House of Humane Letters. His poems, translations, and essays have appeared in First Things, The New English Review, Quadrant, The Imaginative Conservative, Crisis Magazine, The St. Austin Review, and other publications.
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
31.6—November/December 2018
on Childhood Encounters with a Christmas Icon by Rebecca Sicree
17.6—July/August 2004
Old Science Confronts a Formidable Challenge in the Scientific ID Movement by Jay W. Richards
29.3—May/June 2016
A Deathbed Reflection on Catholic Social Teaching & Our Future Prospects by Karl D. Stephan
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
