FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD.
(OUR MOST COSMOPOLITAN NOVELIST.)
NDREW Lang has pronounced Marion Crawford “the most versatile of modern novelists.” It may also be truly said that he is the most cosmopolitan of all our American authors. One feels after reading his stories of life and society in India, Italy, England and America that the author does not belong anywhere in particular, but is rather a citizen of the world in general.
He drew from nearly every country of culture for his education, and the result is clearly apparent in his voluminous and varied works. He is one of the rare and favored few who have stumbled almost by accident upon fame and who have increased their early fame by later labors.
Marion Crawford was born in Italy in 1854. His father was a native of Ireland, a sculptor of repute, and his mother was an American, a sister of Julia Ward Howe. His father died when he was three years old, and he was put with relatives on a farm in Bordentown, N. J., where he had a French governess. At a suitable age he was sent to St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire, and later he studied with a country clergyman in England. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he showed an aptitude for mathematics.
After studying in the Universities of Heidelberg, Carlesruhe and Rome, he went to India to make a thorough study of Sanscrit. Here his funds gave out and left him nearly stranded with no prospects of improvement.
Just as he was on the point of joining the Anglo-Indian army, he was offered the position of editor on the “Allahabad Herald,” in an unhealthy town a thousand miles from Bombay. The work was extremely difficult and absorbing for one who had never had previous connection with a newspaper, requiring sixteen hours of daily work in a climate of excessive heat.
After resigning this position he returned to Italy and took passage on a “tramp” steamer for America. He was wrecked, after a six weeks’ voyage, and thrown on the coast of Bermuda. With these varied experiences he had stored up in a fertile memory material for his numerous novels. It was his first intention to continue his Sanscrit studies at Harvard, but a circumstance of the simplest nature revealed to him and to the world his remarkable powers as a story-teller.
He has himself told how he came to write “Mr. Isaacs,” his first novel.
“On May 5, 1882, Uncle Sam (Samuel Ward) asked me to dine with him at the New York Club, which was then in the building on Madison Square now called the Madison Square bank building. We had dined rather early and were sitting in the smoking-room, while it was still light. As was natural we began to exchange stories while smoking, and I told him with a good deal of detail my recollections of an interesting man whom I had met in Sinila. When I finished he said to me, ‘That is a good two-part magazine story, and you must write it out immediately.’ He took me round to his apartments, and that night I began to write the story of ‘Mr. Isaacs.’ I kept at it from day to day, getting more and more interested in the work as I proceeded. I was so amused with the writing of it that it occurred to me that I might as well make Mr. Isaacs fall in love with an English girl, and then I kept on writing to see what would happen. By and by I remembered a mysterious Buddhist whom I had once met, so I introduced him to still further complicate matters.”
He was in Canada working on “Dr. Claudius” when “Mr. Isaacs” was issued by the publisher. When he reached Boston on his return he found the news-stands covered with posters announcing the famous story of “Mr. Isaacs,” and he himself was “interviewed,” and solicited by magazine publishers to give them a new story at once. “Dr. Claudius,” was soon ready and though less romantic found a host of readers. His constructive powers increased as he devoted himself to his art and books came from his pen in rapid succession. In 1883 he went to Italy and in the following year he married the daughter of General Berdan and established himself in a lovely villa at Sorrento where he has since lived, writing either in his villa or on board his yacht.
His third book, a tragic tale of Roman society, is called “To Leeward.” His most popular novels is the trilogy, describing the fortunes of a noble Italian family, woven in with the history of Modern Rome, from 1865 to 1887. They are in their order “Saracinesca,” “Sant’ Ilario” and “Don Orsino.” This historical trilogy depicts with much power the last struggle of the papacy for temporal power.
In 1885 he issued “Zoroaster,” a story of ancient Persia, with King Darius and the prophet Daniel for characters.
“Marzio’s Crucifix” (1887) was written in ten days. Marion Crawford had studied silver carving with a skilful workman and the idea suggested itself to him to write a story of an atheist who should put his life and soul into the carving of a crucifix.
“The Lonely Parish” was written in twenty-four days. The author had promised a novel at a certain date and the imperious publisher held him to his promise. He had studied with a clergyman in the little English village of Hatfield Regis, and to make his story he simply lifted that little village bodily out of his memory and put it into his novel, even to the extent of certain real names and localities. His other chief works are: “Witch of Prague” (1892), “Greifenstein,” “Paul Patoff” (1887), “The Three Fates,” “Katherine Lauterdale,” “The Ralstones,” and “Pietro Ghisleri.”
HORACE BELLINGHAM.[¹]
(FROM “DR. CLAUDIUS.”)
[¹] Copyright, MacMillan & Co.
Y, but he was a sight to do good to the souls of the hungry and thirsty, and of the poor and in misery!...
There are some people who turn gray, but who do not grow hoary, whose faces are furrowed but not wrinkled, whose hearts are sore wounded in many places, but are not dead. There is a youth that bids defiance to age, and there is a kindness which laughs at the world’s rough usage. These are they who have returned good for evil, not having learned it as a lesson of righteousness, but because they have no evil in them to return upon others. Whom the gods love die young because they never grow old. The poet, who, at the verge of death, said this, said it of and to this very man.
IN THE HIMALAYAS.[¹]
(FROM “MR. ISAACS.”)
[¹] Copyright, MacMillan & Co.
HE lower Himalayas are at first extremely disappointing. The scenery is enormous but not grand, and at first hardly seems large. The lower parts are at first sight a series of gently undulating hills and wooded dells; in some places it looks as if one might almost hunt the country. It is long before you realize that it is all on a gigantic scale; that the quick-set hedges are belts of rhododendrons of full growth, the water-jumps rivers, and the stone walls mountain-ridges; that to hunt a country like that you would have to ride a horse at least two hundred feet high. You cannot see at first, or even for some time, that the gentle-looking hill is a mountain of five or six thousand feet above the level of the Rhigi Kulm in Switzerland. Persons who are familiar with the aspect of the Rocky Mountains are aware of the singular lack of dignity in those enormous elevations. They are merely big, without any superior beauty until you come to the favored spots of nature’s art, where some great contrast throws into appalling relief the gulf between the high and the low. It is so in the Himalayas. You may travel for hours and days amidst vast forests and hills without the slightest sensation of pleasure or sense of admiration for the scene, till suddenly your path leads you out on to the dizzy brink of an awful precipice—a sheer fall, so exaggerated in horror that your most stirring memories of Mont Blanc, the Jungfrau, and the hideous arête of the Pitz Bernina, sink into vague insignificance. The gulf that divides you from the distant mountain seems like a huge bite taken bodily out of the world by some voracious god; far away rise snow-peaks such as were not dreamt of in your Swiss tour; the bottomless valley at your feet is misty and gloomy with blackness, streaked with mist, while the peaks above shoot gladly to the sun and catch his broadside rays like majestic white standards. Between you, as you stand leaning cautiously against the hill behind you, and the wonderful background far away in front, floats a strange vision, scarcely moving, but yet not still. A great golden shield sails steadily in vast circles, sending back the sunlight in every tint of burnished glow. The golden eagle of the Himalayas hangs in mid-air, a sheet of polished metal to the eye, pausing sometimes in the full blaze of reflection, as ages ago the sun and the moon stood still in the valley of the Ajalon; too magnificent for description, as he is too dazzling to look at. The whole scene, if no greater name can be given to it, is on a scale so Titanic in its massive length and breadth and depth, that you stand utterly trembling and weak and foolish as you look for the first time. You have never seen such masses of the world before.
