[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.

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.

He was opposed to the Tammany Hall political and business grouping, which at that time dominated New York City.

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.