Queer Places:
Cornell University (Ivy League), 410 Thurston Ave, Ithaca, NY 14850
Far Afield, 670 Hot Springs Rd, Montecito, CA 93108
Santa Barbara Cemetery, 901 Channel Dr, Santa Barbara, CA 93108, United States

Hobart Chatfield Chatfield-Taylor (March 24, 1865 - January 17, 1945) was born as Hobart Taylor on March 24, 1865, in Chicago, Illinois, to Henry Hobart Taylor and Adelaide S. Chatfield Taylor, and was their only child. His paternal lineage included descent from Lieutenant John Eames of the Fifth Regiment of Continental Foot, granting him membership in the New Hampshire Society of the Cincinnati, alongside affiliations with the Illinois Society of Colonial Wars. He received his early and preparatory education at Trinity School in Tivoli, New York, and in various European schools, before entering Cornell University, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1886, later receiving an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Lake Forest College in 1912. At twenty-eight years of age, upon the death of his maternal uncle Wayne Chatfield, he inherited a fortune of three and a half million dollars with the proviso that he append his uncle's name to his own, becoming one of the first Americans to acquire a hyphenated surname. Combined with other inheritances and his subsequent marriage, his wealth reached approximately four and a half million dollars, marking him as a prominent and very wealthy figure who never dissipated his assets in harmful ways.

Chatfield-Taylor established and edited a weekly political and literary review titled America from 1888 to 1890, after which he went abroad to serve as a special correspondent for the Chicago Daily News. During the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, he served as the Spanish Consul and as a member of the Spanish Commission. As an accomplished author, novelist, and biographer, his published works included novels such as With Edged Tools (1891), An American Peeress (1893), Two Women and a Fool (1895), The Land of the Castanet (1896), The Vice of Fools (1897), The Idle Born (1900), and The Crimson Wing (1902), as well as celebrated biographies on Molière (1906) and Carlo Goldoni (1913). He also lectured on seventeenth-century French drama at the University of Chicago, Cornell, Bryn Mawr, and other institutions, and contributed to major magazines. For his literary, scientific, and artistic contributions, he earned numerous prestigious international decorations, including being named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour and Officer de l'Instruction Publique in France, a Chevalier of the Order of St. James in Portugal, an Officer of the Order of the Bust of the Liberator in Venezuela, and a Chevalier of the Royal Order of Isabella the Catholic for his services to Spain. Furthermore, he was a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society of England, while maintaining memberships in elite social establishments such as the Chicago, University, and Onwentsia Clubs of Chicago—serving as president of the latter—along with the Union Club of New York City and the Metropolitan Club of Washington, D.C.

In his personal life, Chatfield-Taylor married Rose Farwell—the youngest daughter of former United States Senator and millionaire Charles B. Farwell—in Lake Forest, Illinois, on June 19, 1890. Her sister, Anna, was married to composer Reginald de Koven, and Rose's portrait was notably painted on two occasions by Swiss-born American society painter Adolfo Müller-Ury in 1893 and 1894. Together, Hobart and Rose had four children: Adelaide Chatfield-Taylor (1891–1982), who married Hendricks Hallett Whitman in 1912, divorced in 1932, and later married William Davies Sohier Jr. in 1940; Wayne Chatfield-Taylor (1893–1967), who served distinguished roles as Under Secretary of Commerce and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President Franklin D. Roosevelt; Otis Chatfield-Taylor (1899–1948), a writer, playwright, editor, and theatrical producer who married Janet Benson in 1931, divorced in 1934, and subsequently married Marochka Borisovna Anisfeld, daughter of artist Boris Anisfeld, in 1936; and Robert Farwell Chatfield-Taylor (1908–1980), who married Valborg Edison Palmer in 1928.

Following the death of his first wife Rose in 1918, Chatfield-Taylor married Estelle Barbour Stillman on June 23, 1920, in New York. Estelle was the widow of George S. Stillman of New York and Detroit, the daughter of George Harrison Barbour, and an intimate friend of his late first wife. He split his later years between his country estate named Far Afield in Montecito, California, and his family connections elsewhere. Chatfield-Taylor passed away at his Montecito home on January 17, 1945, and was buried the following day in the Santa Barbara Cemetery.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Chatfield-Taylor was deeply integrated into Chicago's prominent artistic and intellectual communities. Fostered by novelists Hamlin Garland and Henry Blake Fuller, a group of artists occupying the coveted top-floor studios of the Fine Arts Building—prized for their capacious skylights—formed a mixed-gender social club called the Little Room. Meeting on Friday afternoons and occasional evenings, the Little Room served as a creative salon for painters, writers, and other cultural figures, many of whom were gay, including notable artists like J.C. Leyendecker and his brother Frank Xavier Leyendecker. Chatfield-Taylor participated actively in this vibrant circle alongside other esteemed members such as George Ade, Alice Gerstenberg, James T. Hatfield, Franklin Harvey Head, John T. McCutcheon, Anna Morgan, Allen Bartlit Pond, Henry Kitchell Webster, Lorado Taft, Lou Wall Moore, Jane Addams, Harriet Monroe, and Edith Wyatt.

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