Everything about Clara Longworth De Chambrun totally explained
Clara Eleanor Longworth de Chambrun, Comtesse de Chambrun (
October 18,
1873 - May 1955) an
American patron of the arts and scholar of
Shakespeare.
Born in
Cincinnati, Ohio to Nicholas Longworth and Susan Walker, Clara belonged to a wealthy family that was involved in
Ohio politics. Her father was an Ohio State Supreme Court judge, and her brother (also named
Nicholas Longworth) was a congressman from Ohio for three decades, eventually becoming
Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from
1925 to
1931.
Her brother Nicholas married
Alice Roosevelt, daughter of President
Theodore Roosevelt in 1906. Clara was reputed to dislike Alice. Clara was friends with
Josephine Crane, the second wife of
Winthrop M. Crane,
governor of Massachusetts.
She married
Count Aldebert de Chambrun, later General de Chambrun, a direct descendant of the
Marquis de Lafayette on Feb 19, 1901 in Cincinnati. She bore him two children, Suzanne Eleanore, born
1902 and René, born
1907. He was the French Military attaché in Washington, D. C. at one time, before serving as an artillery officer in World War I. He is reputed to have written his wife about the pleasure he'd in shelling his own château, near
St. Mihiel, with artillery as part of a six-week siege because it was occupied by German forces.
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In 1921, Suzanne died of heart disease in
Paris.
(External Link) That same year, at the age of 48, Clara earned a doctorate from the
Sorbonne and five years later she received the Bordin Prize of the
Académie française for a book on
Shakespeare which she wrote in
French. She was one of the founding members of the American Library in
Paris, and served as a trustee from 1921 through 1924. This was followed in 1928 by her election as a Chevalier of the French
Legion of Honour.
In 1935 her son René married
Josée Marie Laval, daughter of
Pierre Laval, who was then serving as
Premier of France. Through such connections as this, the Countess was able to keep the American Library open past France's declaration of war in September 1939, although it would later close in 1941.
In the fall of 1935, the countess rented her apartment at 58 rue de Vaugirard, at the corner of the
Luxembourg Gardens to the young poet
Elizabeth Bishop, where Bishop wrote "Cirque d'Hiver", her first poem to be published in
The New Yorker, and "Paris, 7 AM".
Works
She translated
Hamlet into
French
- Pieces of the game: A modern instance, 1915
- Playing with souls: A novel, 1922
- Shakespeare, actor-poet: As seen by his associates, explained by himself and remembered by the succeeding generation, 1927
- His wife's Romance, 1929
- The Making of Nicholas Longworth; Annals of an American Family, 1933
- Two loves I Have: the romance of William Shakespeare, (Philadelphia, London, J.B. Lippincott Co., 1934)
- Shadows Like Myself, 1936
- Cincinnati: Story of the Queen City, (New York, London: Scribner, 1939)
- Shakespeare: A Portrait Restored, (New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons, 195-)
Further Information
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