I think these citations interesting. I do not feel especially competent to produce from them inferences regarding Mr. Chambers’s own attitude toward his work.
Eris will be published early in 1923, following Mr. Chambers’s The Talkers.
iii
Mr. Chambers was born in Brooklyn, May 26, 1865, the son of William Chambers and Carolyn (Boughton) Chambers. Walter Boughton Chambers, the architect, is his brother. Robert William Chambers was a student in the Julien Academy in Paris from 1886 to 1893. He married, on July 12, 1898, Elsa Vaughn Moler. He first exhibited in the Paris Salon in 1889; he was an illustrator for Life, Truth, Vogue and other magazines. His first book, In the Quarter, was published in 1893; and when, in the same year, a collection of stories of Paris called The King in Yellow made its appearance, Robert W. Chambers became a name of literary importance.
Curiously enough, among the things persistently remembered about Mr. Chambers to this day is a particular poem in a book of rollicking verse called With the Band, which he published in 1895. This cherished—by very many people scattered here and there—poem had to do with Irishmen parading. One stanza will identify it.
| “Ses Corporal Madden to Private McFadden: ’Bedad yer a bad ’un! Now turn out yer toes! Yer belt is unhookit, Yer cap is on crookit, Yer may not be drunk, But, be jabers, ye look it! Wan-two! Wan-two! Ye monkey-faced divil, I’ll jolly ye through! Wan-two! Time! Mark! Ye march like the aigle in Cintheral Park!’” |
In the course of writing many books, Chambers has been responsible for one or two shows. He wrote for Ada Rehan, The Witch of Ellangowan, a drama produced at Daly’s Theatre. His Iole was the basis of a delightful musical comedy produced in New York in 1913. He is a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters.
Books
by Robert W. Chambers