CHAMIER, FREDERICK (1796-1870), English novelist, was the son of an Anglo-Indian official. In 1809 he entered the navy, and was in active service until 1827. He retired in 1833, and was promoted to be captain in 1856. On his retirement he settled near Waltham Abbey, and wrote several nautical novels on the lines popularized by Marryat, that had considerable success. These were The Life of a Sailor (1832), Ben Brace (1836), The Arethusa (1837), Jack Adams (1838), Tom Bowling (1841) and Jack Malcolm’s Log (1846). He wrote a number of other books, and edited and brought down to 1827 James’s Naval History (1837).
CHAMILLART, MICHEL (1652-1721), French statesman, minister of Louis XIV., was born at Paris of a family of the noblesse of recent elevation. Following the usual career of a statesman of his time he became in turn councillor of the parlement of Paris (1676), master of requests (1686), and intendant of the generality of Rouen (January 1689). Affable, of polished manners, modest and honest, Chamillart won the confidence of Madame de Maintenon and pleased the king. In 1690 he was made intendant of finances, and on the 5th of September 1699 the king appointed him controller-general of finances, to which he added on the following 7th of January the ministry of war. From the first Chamillart’s position was a difficult one. The deficit amounted to more than 53 million livres, and the credit of the state was almost exhausted. He lacked the great intelligence and energy necessary for the situation, and was unable to moderate the king’s warlike tastes, or to inaugurate economic reforms. He could only employ the usual expedients of the time—the immoderate sale of offices, the debasement of the coinage (five times in six years), reduction of the rate of interest on state debts, and increased taxation. He attempted to force into circulation a kind of paper money, billets de monnaie, but with disastrous results owing to the state of credit. He studied Vauban’s project for the royal tithe and Boisguillebert’s proposition for the taille, but did not adopt them. In October 1706 he showed the king that the debts immediately due amounted to 288 millions, and that the deficit already foreseen for 1707 was 160 millions. In October 1707 he saw with consternation that the revenue for 1708 was already entirely eaten up by anticipation, so that neither money nor credit remained for 1708. In these conditions Chamillart, who had often complained of the overwhelming burden he was carrying, and who had already wished to retire in 1706, resigned his office of controller-general. Public opinion attributed to him the ruin of the country, though he had tried in 1700 to improve the condition of commerce by the creation of a council of commerce. As secretary of state for war he had to place in the field the army for the War of the Spanish Succession, and to reorganize it three times, after the great defeats of 1704, 1706 and 1708. With an empty treasury he succeeded only in part, and he frankly warned the king that the enemy would soon be able to dictate the terms of peace. He was reproached with having secured the command of the army which besieged Turin (1706) for his son-in-law, the incapable duc de la Feuillade. Madame de Maintenon even became hostile to him, and he abandoned his position on the 10th of June 1709, retiring to his estates. He died on the 14th of April 1721.
Chamillart’s papers have been published by G. Esnault, Michel Chamillart, contrôleur général et secrétaire d’état de la guerre, correspondance et papiers inédits (2 vols., Paris, 1885); and by A. de Boislisle in vol. 2 of his Correspondance des contrôleurs généraux (1883). See D’Auvigny, Vies des hommes illustres (1739), tome vi. pp. 288-402; E. Moret, Quinze années du règne de Louis XIV (Paris, 1851); and the new edition of the Mémoires de St-Simon, by A. de Boislisle.
CHAMINADE, CÉCILE (1861- ), French musical composer, was born at Paris on the 8th of August 1861. She studied in Paris, her musical talent being shown at the age of eight by the writing of some church music which attracted Bizet’s attention; and at eighteen she came out in public as a pianist. Her own compositions, both songs (in large numbers) and instrumental pieces, were soon produced in profusion: melodious and interesting, and often charming, they became very popular, without being entitled to rank with the greater style of music. Both in Paris and in England Mlle Chaminade and her works became well known at the principal concerts. In 1908 she visited America and was warmly welcomed.
CHAMISSO, ADELBERT VON [Louis Charles Adelaide de] (1781-1838), German poet and botanist, was born at the château of Boncourt in Champagne, France, the ancestral seat of his family, on the 30th of January 1781. Driven from France by the Revolution, his parents settled in Berlin, where in 1796 young Chamisso obtained the post of page-in-waiting to the queen, and in 1798 entered a Prussian infantry regiment as ensign. His family were shortly afterwards permitted to return to France; he, however, remained behind and continued his career in the army. He had but little education, but now sought distraction from the soulless routine of the Prussian military service in assiduous study. In collaboration with Varnhagen von Ense, he founded in 1803 the Berliner Musenalmanach, in which his first verses appeared. The enterprise was a failure, and, interrupted by the war, it came to an end in 1806. It brought him, however, to the notice of many of the literary celebrities of the day and established his reputation as a rising poet. He had become lieutenant in 1801, and in 1805 accompanied his regiment to Hameln, where he shared in the humiliations following the treasonable capitulation of that fortress in the ensuing year. Placed on parole he went to France, where he found that both his parents were dead; and, returning to Berlin in the autumn of 1807, he obtained his release from the service early in the following year. Homeless and without a profession, disillusioned and despondent, he lived in Berlin until 1810, when, through the services of an old friend of the family, he was offered a professorship at the lycée at Napoléonville in La Vendée. He set out to take up the post, but drawn into the charmed circle of Madame de Staël, followed her in her exile to Coppet in Switzerland, where, devoting himself to botanical research, he remained nearly two years. In 1812 he returned to Berlin, where he continued his scientific studies. In the summer of the eventful year, 1813, he wrote the prose narrative Peter Schlemihl, the man who sold his shadow. This, the most famous of all his works, has been translated into most European languages (English by W. Howitt). It was written partly to divert his own thoughts and partly to amuse the children of his friend Hitzig. In 1815 Chamisso was appointed botanist to the Russian ship “Rurik,” which Otto von Kotzebue (son of August von Kotzebue) commanded on a scientific voyage round the world. His diary of the expedition (Tagebuch, 1821) affords some interesting glimpses of England and English life. On his return in 1818 he was made custodian of the botanical gardens in Berlin, and was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences, and in 1820 he married. Chamisso’s travels and scientific researches restrained for a while the full development of his poetical talent, and it was not until his forty-eighth year that he turned again to literature. In 1829, in collaboration with Gustav Schwab, and from 1832 in conjunction with Franz von Gaudy, he brought out the Deutsche Musenalmanach, in which his later poems were mainly published. He died on the 21st of August 1838.
As a scientist Chamisso has not left much mark, although his Bemerkungen und Ansichten, published in an incomplete form in O. von Kotzebue’s Entdeckungsreise (Weimar, 1821) and more completely in Chamisso’s Gesammelte Werke (1836), and the botanical work, Übersicht der nutzbarsten und schädlichsten Gewächse in Norddeutschland (1829) are esteemed for their careful treatment of the subjects with which they deal. As a poet Chamisso’s reputation stands high, Frauen Liebe und Leben (1830), a cycle of lyrical poems, which was set to music by Schumann, being particularly famous. Noteworthy are also Schloss Boncourt and Salas y Gomez. In estimating his success as a writer, it should not be forgotten that he was cut off from his native speech and from his natural current of thought and feeling. He often deals with gloomy and sometimes with ghastly and repulsive subjects; and even in his lighter and gayer productions there is an undertone of sadness or of satire. In the lyrical expression of the domestic emotions he displays a fine felicity, and he knew how to treat with true feeling a tale of love or vengeance. Die Löwenbraut may be taken as a sample of his weird and powerful simplicity; and Vergeltung is remarkable for a pitiless precision of treatment.