C. Haddon Chambers

Biography

On 22 April 1860, in a corner of Sydney still scented with eucalyptus and salt, Charles Haddon Chambers was born to Irish parents who had crossed the globe chasing brighter prospects. School finished, he exchanged ink pots and ledgers for a government desk in New South Wales, then traded that desk for a stockwhip and the endless dust of the outback. Two years later, restless again, he saddled up for the longest ride of his life—across oceans to London, notebook in pocket. Fleet Street absorbed the young colonial; evenings absorbed his pen. By 1888 Beerbohm Tree had snatched Chambers’s comedy Captain Swift for the Haymarket, and London laughed hard enough to make it a sensation. Two years afterward New York roared at The Idler on Broadway. Silent cameras loved him too: several of his stage pieces flickered onto early cinema screens. When the Great War ignited, Chambers harnessed his knack for dialogue to the Ministry of Information, crafting propaganda that nudged public hearts and minds. On 28 March 1921 a stroke closed the final curtain; he died in the city that had once been a distant dream to a boy from the antipodes.