John Jay Chapman
John Jay Chapman, 1899
John Jay Chapman, 1899
Born(1862-03-02)March 2, 1862
New York City, New York, U.S.
DiedNovember 4, 1933(1933-11-04) (aged 71)
Poughkeepsie, New York, U.S.
OccupationLiterary critic, essayist, lecturer, journalist, writer
NationalityAmerican
EducationHarvard University
Notable worksCauses and Consequences, Practical Agitation
Spouse
Minna Timmins
​
​
(m. 1889; died 1897)​
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1899)​
    ChildrenFour, including Victor
    RelativesJohn Jay (grandfather)
    Signature

    John Jay Chapman (March 2, 1862 – November 4, 1933) was an American writer.[1]

    Early life

    Chapman was born in New York City on March 2, 1862.[2] He was a son of Henry Grafton Chapman Jr. (1833–1883),[3] a broker who became president of the New York Stock Exchange,[1] and Eleanor Kingsland Jay (1839–1921).

    His paternal grandmother, Maria Weston Chapman, was one of the leading campaigners against slavery and worked with William Lloyd Garrison on The Liberator.[4] His maternal grandparents were John Jay (1817–1894), the U.S. Minister to Austria-Hungary, and Eleanor Kingsland (née Field) Jay (1819–1909). His grandfather was a son of William Jay and a grandson of Chief Justice John Jay of the United States Supreme Court.[1]

    Chapman was educated at St. Paul's School, in Concord, New Hampshire, and at Harvard University. After graduating from Harvard in 1884, he toured Europe before resuming his studies at the Harvard Law School.[5]

    Career

    He was admitted to the bar in 1888, and practiced law until 1898. Meanwhile, he had attracted attention as an essayist of unusual merit. His work is marked by originality and felicity of expression, and the opinion of many critics has placed him in the front rank of the American essayists of his day.[6][7]

    In 1912, on the one year anniversary of the lynching of Zachariah Walker in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, Chapman gave a speech in which he called the lynching "one of the most dreadful crimes in history" and said "our whole people are...involved in the guilt." It was published as A Nation's Responsibility.

    Chapman became involved in politics[8] and joined the City Reform Club and the Citizens' Union. He was opposed to the Tammany Hall political and business grouping, which at that time dominated New York City.[9] He lectured on the need for reform and edited the journal The Political Nursery (1897-1901).[10]

    Personal life

    Chapman was known as a passionate romantic in his personal life as well as his writing. As a law student at Harvard, he once beat a rival (astronomer Percival Lowell[11]) for a woman's love in a fight, then felt such deep remorse that he deliberately burned off his left hand as a form of self-punishment.[12] He would later brandish the stump as evidence of his passion.[13]

    Portrait of Chapman's second wife, Elizabeth Astor Winthrop Chanler (1866-1937), by John Singer Sargent.

    On July 2, 1889, he married Minna Timmins (1861–1897), with whom he had three children:

    • Victor Emmanuel Chapman (1890–1916), the first American aviator to die in France during World War I.[1][14] After Victor's death, Chapman published a memoir of his son's early life, including his letters sent from France. The letters inspired the composer Charles Loeffler, a friend of Chapman's, to write the string quartet, Music for Four Stringed Instruments.[15]
    • John Jay Chapman, Jr. (1893–1903), who drowned at Romerbad, Austria, age 9.[1]
    • Conrad Chapman (1896–1989), who was engaged to Dorothy Daphne McBurney (1912–1997) in 1934,[16] but married Judith Daphne Kemp (1906–1999) in England in 1937.[17]

    On April 23, 1899, Chapman married Elizabeth Astor Winthrop Chanler (1866–1937), the second daughter of John Winthrop Chanler and Margaret Astor Ward (of the Astor family). The soldier and explorer William A. Chanler was her brother.[18] They had one child:

    • Chanler Armstrong Chapman (1901–1982),[19] who married Olivia James, a niece of Henry James. They divorced and in 1948, he married the former Helen Riesenfeld, a writer.[20] After her death in 1970, he married Dr. Ida R. Holzbert Wagman in 1972.[21] Chanler Chapman reportedly served as a model for Eugene Henderson, the main character in Saul Bellow's 1959 novel Henderson the Rain King.[19]

    John Jay Chapman died on November 4, 1933, in Poughkeepsie, New York.[1] His funeral, held at Christ Church on West 71st Street, New York City, was attended by hundreds.[22] Elizabeth Chapman died in 1937.[18]

    Bibliography

    Non-fiction

    • (1898). Emerson and Other Essays.
    • (1898). Causes and Consequences.
    • (1900). Practical Agitation.
    • (1911). Learning and Other Essays.
    • (1913). William Lloyd Garrison [second edition, revised and enlarged, 1921].
    • (1914). Deutschland Uber Alles; or, Germany Speaks.
    • (1915). Notes on Religion.
    • (1915). Memories and Milestones.
    • (1915). Greek Genius and Other Essays.
    • (1917). Victor Chapman's Letters from France, [with memoir by John Jay Chapman].
    • (1922). A Glance toward Shakespeare.
    • (1924). Letters and Religion.
    • (1931). Lucian, Plato and Greek Morals.
    • (1932). New Horizons in American Life.

    Fiction

    • (1892). The Two Philosophers: A Quaint, Sad Comedy.
    • (1908). Four Plays for Children.
    • (1908). The Maid's Forgiveness: A Play.
    • (1909). A Sausage from Bologna: A Comedy in Four Acts.
    • (1910). The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold: A Play for a Greek Theater.
    • (1911). Neptune's Isle and Other Plays for Children.
    • (1914). Homeric Scenes: Hector's Farewell, and The Wrath of Achilles.
    • (1916). Cupid and Psyche.
    • (1919). Songs and Poems.

    Articles

    • (1909). "The Harvard Classics and Harvard," Science, Vol. 30, No. 770 (Oct. 1, 1909), pp. 440–443.
    • (1910). "Professorial Ethics," Science, Vol. XXXII, pp. 5–9.
    • (1920). "A New Menace to Education," Meredith College: Quarterly Bulletin, Series 13, Nos. 1–2.

    Translations

    • (1927). Dante.
    • (1928). Two Greek Plays.
    • (1930). The Antigone of Sophocles.

    Collected works

    • (1957). The Selected Writings of John Jay Chapman, Jacques Barzun (Editor).
    • (1970). The Collected Works of John Jay Chapman, 12 Vol., Melvin H. Bernstein (Editor).
    • (1998). Unbought Spirit: A John Jay Chapman Reader, Richard Stone (Editor), (Foreword by) Jacques Barzun.

    References

    Notes
    1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "JOHN J. CHAPMAN, AUTHOR, POET, DIES; New Yo;ker Succumbs to Long Illness at Age of 71 in Poughkeepsie Hospital. ABANDONED LAW TO WRITE Was Central Figure in Several Controversies Funeral in This City Next Wednesday". The New York Times. 5 November 1933. Retrieved 12 October 2017.
    2. ↑ "Retrospections." In John Jay Chapman and his Letters, De Wolfe Howe (ed.), Houghton Mifflin Company, 1937.
    3. ↑ "Obituary -- Henry G. Chapman". The New York Times. 17 March 1883. Retrieved 12 October 2017.
    4. ↑ "The relationship between Chapman's writings and his family history received more attention at midcentury. Chapman's grandmother was an ardent abolitionist and colleague of William Lloyd Garrison. Her grandson inherited her crusading spirit, but substituted the influence of money in politics for slavery." — Russello, Gerald J. (1999). "A Hero for the Truth," The New Criterion, Vol. 17, p. 74.
    5. ↑ "John Jay Chapman". January 2001.
    6. ↑ Hovey, Richard B. (1959). John Jay Chapman - An American Mind, Columbia University Press.
    7. ↑ Wilson, Edmund (1976). "John Jay Chapman: The Mute and the Open Strings." In The Triple Thinkers, Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
    8. ↑ Crawford, Allan Pell (2013). "The Anti-Alinsky," The American Conservative, August 7.
    9. ↑ "John Jay Chapman | American writer".
    10. ↑ Stocking, David (1960). "John Jay Chapman and Political Reform," American Quarterly, Vol. 2, No.1, pp. 62-70.
    11. ↑ Usher, Shaun (2020). Letters of Note: Love. Canongate. p. 58. ISBN 9781786895325.
    12. ↑ "John Jay Chapman". January 2001. Retrieved 3 Feb 2022. In a horrifying episode when he was a law student, he assaulted and beat a supposed rival in love and later, tormented by remorse, deliberately burned his left hand in a coal fire so badly it had to be amputated.
    13. ↑ Morris, Edmund (1979). The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan. ISBN 0-375-75678-7. Chapman was a man of near-manic passions, both romantic and intellectual. As testimony to the former, he would brandish the stump of a missing left hand, which he had deliberately burned to a cinder as self-punishment during a stormy love affair.
    14. ↑ "FRANCE AWARDS MEDAL FOR VICTOR CHAPMAN; Sends Decoration Here to Father of First Flier Killed in Lafayette Escadrille". The New York Times. 29 July 1924. Retrieved 12 October 2017.
    15. ↑ Knight, Ellen (1984). "The Evolution of Loeffler's Music for Four Stringed Instruments". American Music. 2 (3): 66–83. doi:10.2307/3052006. ISSN 0734-4392. JSTOR 3052006.
    16. ↑ "DAPHNE M'BURNEY; Announcements Received From London of Her Betrothal . to Conrad Chapman. BoTH'ARE LIVING ABROAD Prospective Bride Educated in England -- Wedding to Take Place in Near Future". The New York Times. 23 October 1934. Retrieved 12 October 2017.
    17. ↑ Dorothy Daphne McBurney married Richard M. Farmer in England in 1937.
    18. 1 2 "MRS. JOHN JAY CHAPMAN; Widow of Essayist and Poet Dies at Her Home in Barrytown" (PDF). The New York Times. 6 June 1937. Retrieved 12 October 2017.
    19. 1 2 "Chanler Chapman dead at 80". Poughkeepsie Journal. March 24, 1982. Retrieved 12 February 2019.
    20. ↑ "HELEN RIESENFELD MARRIED AT HOME; Vassar Graduate, a Writer, Becomes Bride of Chanler A. Chapman, Also an Author". The New York Times. 10 August 1948. Retrieved 12 October 2017.
    21. ↑ Times, Special To the New York (5 March 1972). "Chanler A Chapman and Dr. Ida Wagman Are Wed". The New York Times. Retrieved 12 October 2017.
    22. ↑ "HUNDREDS ATTEND CHAPMAN FUNERAL; Bishop Manning Officiates at Service in Christ Church for Lawyer and Author". The New York Times. 9 November 1933. Retrieved 12 October 2017.
    Sources

    Further reading

    • Baltzell, E. Digby (1987). The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy & Caste in America, Yale University Press.
    • Bernstein, Melvin H. (1957). The Mind of John Jay Chapman, Monthly Review Press.
    • Bernstein, Melvin H. (1964). John Jay Chapman, Twayne Publishers.
    • Brown, Stuart Gerry (1952). "John Jay Chapman and the Emersonian Gospel," The New England Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 2, pp. 147–180.
    • Howe, M. A. De Wolfe (1937). John Jay Chapman and his Letters, Houghton Mifflin Company.
    • Paul, Sherman (1960). "The Identities of John Jay Chapman," The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Vol. 59, No. 2, pp. 255–262.
    • Peel, Robin (2005). "John Jay Chapman, 'Social Order and Restraints': The Custom of the Country (1913)." In Apart from Modernism: Edith Wharton, Politics, and Fiction Before World War I, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, pp. 197–224.
    • Wilson, Edmund (1938; 1948). The Triple Thinkers, Harcourt, Brace and Company; Oxford University Press, pp. 133–164.
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