[Charles Haddon Chambers, Australian dramatist in England, lover of Dame Nellie Melba.] Autograph Letter Signed to Malcolm Watson, Daily Telegraph drama critic, regarding a play he wrote in New York, and a German production of his ‘Tyranny of Tears’.

Author: 
Charles Haddon Chambers [Charles Haddon Spurgeon Chambers] (1860-1921), Australian dramatist who settled in England, where he had an affair with Dame Nellie Melba [Malcolm Watson; Daily Telegraph]
Publication details: 
13 March [after 1900]; on letterhead of L’Hermitage, Monte-Carlo.
£65.00
SKU: 23999

Chambers is not mentioned in Dame Nellie Melba’s entry in the Oxford DNB. She met him in London in 1895, and their affair ended for unknown reasons in 1904. It is clearly the ‘notorious’ affair in whose fame Chambers ‘rejoiced to the last’, according to Somerset Maugham’s devastating assessment of the man in ‘A Writer’s Notebook’ (1946). Harry de Windt gives a markedly kinder account of Chambers in his ‘My Note-Book at Home and Abroad’ (1923). 2pp, 8vo. Bifolium. Twenty-seven lines of text. In good condition, lightly aged. Folded twice. Signed 'C Haddon Chambers'. Begins: ‘Dear Watson, / I wish you would oblige an old friend by including two items in your notes. In the first place the new play in four acts which I wrote during my recent visit to New York is not & never was by me called “A Comedy of Manners.” Such a title never occurred to me & I have no idea of the origin of the report. I have not yet decided on a title for the play.’ The letter concludes with news of a translation into German of his ‘Tyranny of Tears’, ‘to be produced on the 16th April at the Deutsche Volkstheater in Vienna’.