Chambers Haldane Cooke MacFall was born in Roy Bareilli, Bengal, (now Raebareli, Uttar Pradesh), India on 24 July 1860.

[2] The family returned to England in the late 1860s and in 1870 Haldane's father remarried a sixteen year old, Frances Elizabeth Bellenden Clarke,[3] later to become a successful novelist under the pseudonym Sarah Grand.

[2] Like his father and grandfather Thomas, Haldane chose a career in the army and undertook officer training at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst.

[6] Between 1903 and 1909 he wrote biographies of Henrik Ibsen, Whistler, Henry Irving, François Boucher, Jean-Honoré Fragonard and Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, as well as several histories of art movements, numerous illustrations and book covers.

During this period Haldane also collaborated with several artists, including Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, who sculpted his bust[8] and Claud Lovat Fraser, who with Edward Gordon Craig, provided illustrations for his essay on art and aesthetics, The Splendid Wayfaring (1913).