Clara Longworth de Chambrun

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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 had in shelling his own château, near St. Mihiel, with artillery as part of a six-week siege because it was occupied by German forces. [1]

In 1921, Suzanne died of heart disease in Paris. [2] 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".

[edit] 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-)