Haldane MacFall

Haldane MacFall (24 July 1860 – 25 July 1928) was a British Army officer who became an authoritative art critic, the author of several works of art history, an essayist and a novelist. He illustrated many of his own works, as well as bookplates and cover art for others, and exhibited at the Royal Academy.

Early life Chambers Haldane Cooke MacFall was born in Roy Bareilli, Bengal, (now Raebareli, Uttar Pradesh), India on 24 July 1860. His father, David Chambers McFall (1833–1898) was an army surgeon attached to the Indian border regiment. His mother, Abigail Crawford, died while Haldane and his younger brother Albert William Crawford McFall (1862–1923) were young children. The family returned to England in the late 1860s and in 1870 Haldane's father remarried a sixteen year old, Frances Elizabeth Bellenden Clarke, later to become a successful novelist under the pseudonym Sarah Grand.

Career He graduated from Sandhurst as a Second Lieutenant and in 1885 joined the West India Regiment in Jamaica. However, a tropical disease he contracted during his posting in West Africa forced his retirement from the army in 1890 with the rank of Lieutenant. before returning to England to earn his livelihood mainly as a writer.

In 1898, he moved in with his stepmother, Sarah Grand, who was then living in Tunbridge Wells. She had left Haldane's father, and their son David, in 1890, after an unhappy marriage and was successfully pursuing her own writing career. He continued to write for periodicals, combining his interest in art with critiques of exhibitions; writings which are said to have drawn the attention of Whistler. and Claud Lovat Fraser, who with Edward Gordon Craig, provided illustrations for his essay on art and aesthetics, The Splendid Wayfaring (1913). He was fluent in French.

Later life

He was 54 years old at the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, but he returned to the army and, although he was not sent to the front, he proved to be an efficient officer and was promoted rapidly to end the war with the rank of Major. Throughout the War he continued to write, publishing several books and essays on military topics.

His final work was a spirited defence of his friend Aubrey Beardsley, published in 1928, the year of his death.

He is buried with his wife Mabel on the eastern side of Highgate Cemetery.

Novels The Wooings of Jezebel Pettyfer (1898) The Masterfolk (1903) Rouge (1906) The Three Students (1926)