The San Francisco call., 1909-08-08
Life and Works of T. Marion Crawford

university when he was at Cambridge.
so. as he expressed it, I'VE got under
way after a few lively minutes"
While he was at Cambridge his fam
lily met with money losses which made
1t necessary that he should support
himself, and the hard training which
he underwent for several years was
invaluable in his after career. For
some time in Rome he did any sort of
work that he could get. such as trans
lation and newspaper correspondence;
then he decided to try his luck a
professor of philology in India, and he
started for Bombay on money lent him
by his old friend Augustus J. c. Hare.
Things went so badly with him there
that he was on the point of enlisting
as a trooper in an English cavalry
regim ant, when the editor of the
Allahabad Herald having . died of
cholera. his place was offered to Craw-
ford. For the following Is months he
did everything connected with a news
paper, not only writing it all, including
the advertisements and correcting the
proof, but sometimes helping the slen-
der native staff to strike it off.
When he first found himself" as a
writer of fiction at the age of IS, the
result was like the rush of an artesian
book followed another in rapid sue
cession. Those who think that he
forced himself to write are mistaken;
the writing forced him. When he was
at work on novel he was possessed
by it--he heard the characters speak
and saw them move, and they We're as
real to him for the time as living men
and women. No novelist who has
written many books is always at his
best--there would be no best If that
were so.but Marion Crawford. from
first to last, gave all that was in him
to his work. and a proof of its high
average is that half a dozen people
will often give as many different opin-
ions as to which is his best book
Even when not at work his mind was
always collecting material for future
use. and, as often happens, when he
was thought to have invented wildly
improbable situations, he was only set
ting down facts. The triple ira gedy in
"Greifenstein" occurred in a noble Ger
man family before the middle of the
last century, and the son of the house,
the last of his race, entered the church
and died a cardinal. There are two
well known instances in which priests
kept the secret of the confessional
as Don Ippolito does in "CorIeone," but
with the difference that they were con-
victed of the crimes which they had
not committed, one being sent to ST.
IBERIA. the other to French penal
colony
He had finished two novels before
his fatal illness, but when they have
appeared there will be no more. The
pen which has Frightened so many
hours for thousands since the first
words of Mr.. Isaacs'' were written
quiet now, and it's master has gone to
his own place.
To those who knew the man well no
such presence will ever come again.
His devotion TO his family and to those
friends outside it whom he loved; his
high sense of honor, his absence of
vanity, his simplicity OF nature and his
generosity of thought and deed COM
bined to make him companion who
was always desired. 1t may truly be
said that much as he gave the world,
he left 1t nothing so good as what
died with him. Like Tennyson's
Ulysses, he was a part of all that he
had met. and like him he has touched
the happy isles and seen the great
Achilles, whom he knew.