Francis Marion Crawford

Early life

Crawford was born in Bagni di Lucca, in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, on August 2, 1854. He was the only son of the American sculptor Thomas Crawford and Louisa Cutler Ward. His sister was the writer Mary Crawford Fraser (aka Mrs. Hugh Fraser), and he was the nephew of Julia Ward Howe, the American poet. After his father's death in 1857, his mother remarried to Luther Terry, with whom she had Crawford's half-sister, Margaret Ward Terry, who later became the wife of Winthrop Astor Chanler.

He studied successively at St Paul's School, Concord, New Hampshire; Cambridge University; University of Heidelberg; and the University of Rome.

In 1879, he went to India, where he studied Sanskrit and edited The Indian Herald in Allahabad. While there Crawford came across the jewel trader A. M. Jacob, who was the inspiration for the main character of his first novel. Returning to America in February 1881, he continued to study Sanskrit at Harvard University for a year and for two years contributed to various periodicals, mainly The Critic. Early in 1882, he established his lifelong close friendship with Isabella Stewart Gardner.

During this period he lived most of the time in Boston at his aunt Julia Ward Howe's house and in the company of his uncle, Sam Ward. His family was concerned about his financial prospects. His mother had hoped he could train in Boston for a career as an operatic baritone based on his private renditions of Schubert lieder. In January 1882, George Henschel, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, assessed his prospects and determined Crawford would "never be able to sing in perfect tune". Ward suggested that he try writing about his years in India, particularly urging him to write a novel based on Jacob's exploits there, and helped him develop contacts with New York publishers.

Career

In December 1882, he produce his first novel, Mr Isaacs, a sketch of modern Anglo-Indian life mingled with a touch of Oriental mystery. It had an immediate success, and Dr Claudius (1883) followed promptly. In May 1883, he returned to Italy, where he made his permanent home. He lived at the historic Hotel Cocumella in Sorrento during 1885 and settled permanently in Sant'Agnello, where in the fall he bought the Villa Renzi that became Villa Crawford. More than half his novels are set in Italy. He wrote three long historical studies of Italy and was well advanced with a history of Rome in the Middle Ages when he died. This may explain why Marion Crawford's books stand apart from any distinctively American current in literature.

Year by year Crawford published a number of successful novels. However his 1896 novel Adam Johnstone's Son was thought by the late nineteenth century English novelist George Gissing to be "rubbish". Late in the 1890s, Crawford began to write his historical works. These are: Ave Roma Immortalis (1898), Rulers of the South (1900) renamed Southern Italy and Sicily and The Rulers of the South in 1905 for the American market, and Gleanings from Venetian History (1905) with the American title Salvae Venetia, reissued in 1909 as Venice; the Place and the People. In these, his intimate knowledge of local Italian history combines with the romanticist's imaginative faculty to excellent effect. His shorter book Constantinople (1895) belongs to this category.

After most of his fictional works had been published, most came to think he was a gifted narrator; and his books of fiction, full of historic vitality and dramatic characterization, became widely popular among readers to whom the realism of problems or the eccentricities of subjective analysis were repellent. In The Novel: What It Is (1893), he defended his literary approach, self-conceived as a combination of romanticism and realism, defining the art form in terms of its marketplace and audience. The novel, he wrote, is "a marketable commodity" and "intellectual artistic luxury" (8, 9) that "must amuse, indeed, but should amuse reasonably, from an intellectual point of view. . . . Its intention is to amuse and please, and certainly not to teach and preach; but in order to amuse well it must be a finely-balanced creation. . . ." (82).

The Saracinesca series is perhaps known to be his best work, with the third in the series, Don Orsino (1892) set against the background of a real estate bubble, told with effective concision. The second volume is Sant' Ilario [Hilary] (1889). A fourth book in the series, Corleone (1897), was the first major treatment of the Mafia in literature, and used the now-familiar but then-original device of a priest unable to testify to a crime because of the Seal of the Confessional; the novel is not one of his major works, having failed to live up to the standard set by the books earlier in the series. Crawford ended Rulers of the South (1900) with a chapter about the Sicilian Mafia.

Personal life

In 1880, Crawford converted to Roman Catholicism. In October 1884 he married Elizabeth Berdan, the daughter of the American Civil War Union General Hiram Berdan. They had two sons and two daughters, Eleanor, Harold, Clara and Bertram.

Crawford died at Sorrento on Good Friday 1909 at Villa Crawford of a heart attack. It was the result of a severe lung injury ten years previous, caused by inhalation of toxic gases at a glass-smelting works in Colorado, which happened during his American lecture tour in the winter of 1897–1898. He was gathering technical information for his historical novel Marietta (1901), that describes glass-making in late medieval Venice. After his death, his widow sued for breach of contract related to the production of Crawford's novels into a film.

Legacy and influence

In his 1929 article "Some Remarks on Ghost Stories" M. R. James praised Crawford's supernatural fiction. James stated that "Marion Crawford and his horrid story of 'The Upper Berth', which (with 'The Screaming Skull' some distance behind) is the best in his collection of Uncanny Tales, and stands high among ghost stories in general." H. Russell Wakefield, in an essay on ghost stories, called Crawford's "The Upper Berth" "the very best one" of such stories. Norman Douglas credits Crawford's financial success as instrumental in encouraging himself to write (though he remained critical of Crawford's habit of inserting first-person editorial comments into his fiction).

The F. Marion Crawford Memorial Society was founded in 1975 and published the literary review The Romantist from 1977 until 1997.

In 1997 the Centro Studi e Ricerche Francis Marion Crawford was founded at Sant'Agnello di Sorrento. It is formally associated with the FMC Memorial Society and continues The Romantist in its annual review Genius Loci (1997–).

In early May 1988 at Sant'Agnello, a Conference was held to commemorate Crawford. It was organized by the Comune di Sant' Agnello di Sorrento and the Istituto Universitario Orientale (Naples). Its "Acta" were published in English and Italian as Il Magnifico Crawford. Scrittore per Mestiere / The Magnificent Crawford. Writer by Trade (1990), edited by Gordon Poole. In mid-May 2009 the Centro Studi e Ricerche Francis Marion Crawford and the Comune di Sant' Agnello organized another Conference – Francis Marion Crawford; 100 Anni Dopo – to remember Crawford on the centenary of his death. Its "Acta" were published in Italian and English as Nuova Luce Su Francis Marion Crawford. Cento Anni Dopo 2009-1909 / A Hundred Years Later: New Light on Francis Marion Crawford early in 2011, edited by Gordon Poole. The F. Marion Crawford Memorial Society collaborated in the organization of both Conferences.

There is a major street in the Italian town of Sant'Agnello di Sorrento (the town where he died) named after him, the Corso Marion Crawford. There is a historical marker on the house where Crawford was born, in Bagni di Lucca. Villa Crawford was donated many years ago by Crawford's daughters Lady Eleanor Rocca-Crawford and Mother Clare Marion-Crawford to the Salesian Sisters, who operate it today as a high school for girls.