F. MARION CRAWFORDF. MARION CRAWFORDAT SORRENTO
F. MARION CRAWFORD
To most people who have travelled in the south of Italy the name of Sorrento recalls one of the loveliest places in the world, which has been so often and so well described that it forms part of the mental picture-gallery even of those who have never been there. We all seem to know the cheerful little town, perched high above the glorious bay, and crowded with tourists during more than half the year. On any bright morning, especially in early spring, the tiny shops in the principal street fairly swarm with strangers, to whom polite and polyglot dealers sell ornaments of tortoise-shell and lava, silk sashes which will look like impressionist rainbows under sober English skies, and endless boxes and book-shelves of inlaid woods, destined to fall to pieces under the fiery breath of the American furnace. In contrast to these frivolous travellers one may also see the conscientious Germans, whose long-saved pence are thriftily expended, seeking out every possible and impossible haunt of Tasso’s ghost, with the aid of Baedeker, the apostle of modern travel.
Comparatively few of this constantly changing company ever think of taking the side street which runs between the high-road to Castellamare and the sea, and it is possible to spend some time at Sorrento without having seen the home of Marion Crawford at all. Follow this side street, called the “rota,” because it curves like the rim of a wheel, and you will find yourself presently going back toward Naples, shut in on either hand by the high walls of villas and gardens, over which the orange and lemon and olive trees look down into the dusty lane. Just across the boundary line between Sorrento and the village of Sant’ Agnello, named after a martial abbot who is said to have fought the Turks, as many a churchman did in his time, there stands a sedate old inn, the Cocumella, or Little Gourd, which is a complete contrast to the two great hotels in the larger town. It was once the property of the Jesuits, and the King Ferdinand of Naples who was Nelson’s friend, nobly generous with the belongings of others, after the manner of kings, gave it, with the adjoining church, to the forefather of its present owner. The house has been an inn ever since, but the title to the church has never been settled, and the building is kept in repair by the landlord as a sort of courtesy to Heaven. To this old-fashioned inn many Italians and quiet English families come for the season, and it was in a cave or grotto at thefoot of its garden, which slopes toward the cliff, whence there is a steep descent through the rocks to the sea, thatMr.Crawford wrote “To Leeward” and “Saracinesca,” before he married and bought his present house.
Beyond the Cocumella lies the parish of Sant’ Agnello, a village quite independent of its more fashionable neighbor, with a post-office and a few little shops of its own. Keeping to the lane, at about an English mile from Sorrento, a quaint old Capuchin monastery is reached on the left, with a small church and a rambling almshouse just showing above a high white-washed wall, which runs on to a gateway of gray stone over which ivy hangs in masses, while on each side the name of the place, “Villa Crawford,” is carved in plain block letters. The heavy dark-green doors of the gate stand hospitably open, and show the straight, narrow drive, bordered with roses, geraniums, and jasmine, and leading down to a square garden-court, not large but full of flowers and crooked old olive trees, over which wistaria has been trained from one to the other, so that in spring they are a mass of delicate bloom and fragrance. The house is very simple, built of rough stone partly stuccoed, as usual in that part of Italy, and irregular in shape because it has been added to from time to time. WhenMr.Crawford took it for a season, soon after his marriage to a daughter of GeneralBerdan, it was in such a very tumble-down condition that when the fierce winter gales swept over snow-clad Vesuvius from the northeast, the teeth of every lock chattered and the carpets rose in billows along the tiled floors. But the site is one of the most beautiful on the whole bay, for the house stands on the edge of a cliff which falls abruptly nearly two hundred feet to the water, and sinceMr.Crawford bought it he has strengthened it with a solid tower which can be seen for some distance out at sea.
The front door opens directly upon a simple hall where there are plants in tubs, and a tall old monastery clock stands near the door leading to the stone staircase. The long drawing-room opens upon a tiled terrace, and is almost always full of sunshine, the scent of flowers, and the voices of children. It cannot be said to be furnished in the modern style, but it contains many objects which could only have been collected by people having both taste and opportunity. When in Constantinople, many years ago,Mr.Crawford was so fortunate as to find an unusually large quantity of the beautiful Rhodes embroidery formerly worked by the women of the Greek islands for the Knights of Malta, of which none has been made for over a hundred years. The pattern always consists of Maltese crosses, in every possible variety of design, embroidered in dark-red silk on a coarse linenground which is entirely covered. Draped here and there the effect is exceedingly rich and soft, as well as striking, and some fine old Persian armor over the doors tells of a visit which the author and his wife made to the Caucasus during one of his rare holidays. A magnificent portrait of Mrs. Crawford by Lenbach, a gift from the artist to her husband, was painted during a winter spent at Munich; and on the opposite wall hangs a brilliant water-color drawing of a Moorish warrior, by Villegas, presented by him to Mrs. Crawford after a visit to his studio in Rome. On a table placed against the back of an upright piano, among a number of more or less curious and valuable objects, lies the large gold medal of the Prix Monbinne, the only prize ever given by the French Academy to foreign men-of-letters, which was awarded toMr.Crawford for the French editions of “Zoroaster” and “Marzio’s Crucifix.”
A door leads from one end of the drawing-room into the library, a high square room completely lined with old carved bookcases of black walnut, built more than two hundred years ago for Cardinal Altieri before he became Pope Clement the Tenth, and of which the wanderings, down to their final sale, would be an interesting bit of Roman social history. The library is not a workroom, but the place where the author’s books are kept in careful order, those he needs at any time beingcarried up to his study and brought down again when no longer wanted. There are about five thousand volumes, very largely books of reference and classics, partly collected by the author himself, and in part inherited from his uncle, the late Samuel Ward, and his father-in-law, General Berdan. The room is so full that one large bookcase has been placed in the middle, so that both sides of it are used. Besides the books the library contains only a writing-table, three or four chairs, and a bronze bust ofMr.Ward.
But it is hard to think of these rooms without their inmates—the father, who is at his best, as he certainly is at his happiest, in his own house, the beautiful and gracious mother, and the four strikingly handsome children, with their healthy simplicity and unconsciousness which speak of that ideal home life which is the author’s highest fortune. The eldest child is a girl of twelve, “as fair as wheat,” with thoughtful eyes; next comes a boy two years younger, much darker in coloring, and with a face already full of expression; and last a pair of twins of eight, a boy and a girl—she with a nimbus of curly golden hair that makes her look like a saint by Fra Angelico, and he a singularly grave and sturdy little fellow, whose present energies are bent on being a sailor-man—a disposition which he gains fairly, forMr.Crawford’s friends know that if he might have consulted onlythe natural bent of his mind, he would have followed the sea as his profession. From early boyhood he has passed the happiest hours of his leisure on board a boat, and he is as proficient in the management of the picturesque but dangerous felluca as any native skipper along the coast.
When he bought an old New York pilot-boat, in 1896, he was admitted to the examination of the Association of American Ship-masters in consideration of his long experience, and he holds a proper ship-master’s certificate authorizing him to navigate sailing-vessels on the high seas. He proved his ability by navigating his little schooner across the Atlantic with entire success, and without the slightest assistance from the mate he took with him. This episode in a life which has had more variety than falls to the lot of most men shows clearly the predominant trait of Marion Crawford’s character, which is determination to follow out anything he undertakes until he knows how it should be done, even if he has not the time to work at it much afterward. Readers of “Casa Braccio” may have noticed that the old cobbler who is Paul Griggs’s friend is described with touches which show acquaintance with his trade, the fact being that while the author was preparing for college in the English village which he describes later in “A Tale of a Lonely Parish,” he made a pair of shoes “to see how it was done,” ashe also joined the local bell-ringers to become familiar with the somewhat complicated system of peals and chimes. Mere curiosity is like the clutch of a child’s hand, which usually means nothing, and may break what it seizes, but the insatiable thirst for knowledge of all kinds is entirely different, and has always formed part of the true artistic temperament.
The description of silver chiselling in “Marzio’s Crucifix” is the result of actual experience, forMr.Crawford once studied this branch of art, and produced several objects of considerable promise. In rebuilding and adding to his house he has never employed an architect, for he is a good practical builder and stone-mason, as well as a creditable mathematician, and his foreman in all such work is a clever laborer who can neither read nor write. Like many left-handed men, he is skilful in the use of tools, and his mechanical capacity was tested recently when, having taken out a complete system of American plumbing, including a kitchen boiler, he could find no workmen who understood such appliances, and so put them all in himself, with the help of two or three plumbers whose knowledge did not extend beyond soldering a joint. When the job was done everything worked perfectly, to his justifiable satisfaction. As he is a very fair classical scholar and an excellent linguist, he could easily support himself as a tutor if itwere necessary, or he might even attain to the awful dignity of a high-class courier.
His study or workroom at Villa Crawford is on the top of the house, by the tower, and opens upon a flat roof, after the Italian fashion. There are windows on three sides, as it is often important to be able to shut out the sun without losing too much light; the walls are simply white-washed, and the floor is of green and white tiles. In the middle there is a very large table, with a shelf at the back on which stand in a row a number of engravings and etchings, most of which were given him by his wife, prominent among them being “The Knight, Death, and the Devil,” by Dürer, mentioned in the beginning of “A Rose of Yesterday.” A small revolving bookcase full of books of reference has its place close to his hand, and his writing chair is of the most ordinary American pattern. The large plain brick fireplace projects into the room, and on the broad mantel-shelf stands a replica of his father Thomas Crawford’s Peri, a winged figure, fully draped, gazing sadly toward the forfeited paradise. On one wall hangs an engraving by Van Dalen after a portrait of Giorgione by Titian, of which the original has been destroyed, and on another a large photograph of Giorgione’s Knight of Malta, and small ones of his pilot-schooner as she looked when he crossed the ocean in her, and as she appears now, transformedinto the yacht Alda, and refitted so that his wife and children may accompany him on the cruises which form his usual vacations. The effect of the room as a whole is severe and simple, but the view from its windows is most beautiful and varied. To the south lie olive-clad hills, with white houses dotted here and there among orange-groves, and with the craggy mass of Monte Sant’ Angelo, rising higher than Vesuvius itself, for a background; westward one looks over Sant’ Agnello and the neighboring townships, and to the northeast, across the shining bay, the curved white line of Naples stretches far along the shore, while Vesuvius broods fatefully over the villages at its feet.
Mr.Crawford is an early riser, being usually at his writing-table between six and seven o’clock. If it is winter he lights his own fire, and in any season begins the day, like most people who have lived much in southern countries, with a small cup of black coffee and a pipe. About nine o’clock he goes down-stairs to spend an hour with his wife and children, and then returns to his study and works uninterruptedly until luncheon, which in summer is an early dinner. In warm weather the household goes to sleep immediately after this meal, to re-assemble toward five o’clock; but the author often works straight through this time, always, however, giving the late afternoon andevening to his family. The common impression that the south of Italy is unbearably hot in summer is due to the fact that the guide-books in general use are written by Germans or Englishmen, whose blood boils at what seems to us a very tolerable temperature. Inland cities like Milan and Florence often suffer from oppressive heat, but records show that neither at Naples nor at Palermo does the thermometer mark so high as in New York, and at Sorrento it rarely goes above 84°. On Sundays, after early church, parents and children go off in a boat to some one of the many lovely spots which are to be found among the rocks along the shore, taking with them fire-wood, a kettle, and all that is necessary for a “macaronata,” or macaroni picnic. The sailors do the cooking, while the children look on or go in swimming with their father, and when the simple feast is over the rest of the afternoon is spent in sailing over the bay, perhaps as far as Capri if the breeze holds.
While every one acknowledges Marion Crawford’s talent as a story-teller, he is sometimes reproached with inventing impossible situations, or at least straining probability, which is only another illustration of the old saying about fact and fiction, for in each of the cases usually referred to he has set down what actually happened. The triple tragedy in “Greifenstein” was a terrible fact in a noble German family before the middleof the present century, and the son of the house, the last of his race, entered the Church and died a Cardinal. In “Casa Braccio,” the elopement of the nun and the burning of the substituted body took place in South America exactly as described, and the story was told to the author by a person who had met the real Gloria. The incident of Don Teodoro in “Taquisara,” who, although not ordained, acted as a priest for many years, occurred in the neighborhood of Rome, and there have been two well-known cases in which priests kept the secret of the confessional as Don Ippolito does in “Corleone,” but with the difference that they were both convicted of crimes which they had not committed, one being sent to the mines of Siberia, the other to a French penal colony.
The impression, quite generally entertained, thatMr.Crawford throws off one book after another as fast as he can write them down, is based upon a misapprehension of his method of working. For months, or even for several years, a subject is constantly in his mind, and he spares no study to improve his rendering of it. Travellers in Arabia, for instance, have commended the “local color” of his “Khaled,” which, however, is quite as much due to patient reading as to imagination, for he has never been there. The actual writing of his stories is done quickly, partly because few authors have had such large experience of all themechanical work connected with literature. From early manhood he has been entirely dependent on his own resources, and during his two years’ editorship of an Indian newspaper he practically wrote it all every day, correcting the proof into the bargain. After his return to America, and before writing “Mr.Isaacs,” he supported himself by any literary work that he could get, during which time, by the way, he was a frequent contributor toThe Critic. The man so often called “a born story-teller” is also a careful student, especially reverent of the precious inheritance of our language, and some of his works are now used as class-books for the study of modern English literature throughout this country, a fact which may easily escape the knowledge of the novel-reading public which owes him so much pleasure.
Mr.Crawford has made a success at play-writing as well as at novel writing. His “In the Palace of the King,” which has been played so successfully by Miss Viola Allen, was a play before he turned it into a novel, and he has recently written a drama founded on a new version of the story of Francesca and Paola, which Madame Sarah Bernhardt has produced with great success.
William Bond.
Author portrait