Clara Eleanor Longworth de Chambrun, Comtesse de Chambrun (October 18, 1873 – June 1, 1954) was an American patron of the arts and scholar of Shakespeare.
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Early life
Longworth de Chambrun was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on October 18, 1873. She was a daughter of Nicholas Longworth and the former Susan Walker. She belonged to a wealthy family that was involved in Ohio politics. Her father was an Ohio State Supreme Court judge, and her brother (also named Nicholas Longworth) was a congressman from Ohio for three decades, eventually becoming Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1925-31. He married Alice Roosevelt (daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt) in 1906. She was reputed to dislike Alice. She was friends with Josephine Crane, the second wife of Winthrop M. Crane, governor of Massachusetts.
She was attendant at her cousin Margaret Rives Nichols's marriage to the Marquis Pierre de Chambrun (elder brother of diplomat and writer Charles de Chambrun) on December 12, 1895.
Career
In 1921, the same year that her daughter died, she earned a doctorate from the Sorbonne, at the age of 48, and five years later she received the Bordin Prize of the Académie française for a book on Shakespeare which she wrote in French. She was one of the founding members of the American Library in Paris, and served as a trustee from 1921 through 1924. This was followed in 1928 by her election as a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honour.