Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 March 1884 — The Author of "Mr. Isaacs.” [ARTICLE]

The Author of "Mr. Isaacs.”

F. Marion Crawford, the celebrated author of “Mr. Isaacs,” “Dr. Claudius,” “A Roman Singer,” “To Leeward,” etc., lives in a twenty-four-foot room in Rome. It is furnished almost to meagerness, and contains, besides the ordinary furniture, only a few books and two or three busts. He is a tall, darkhaired, blue-eyed young man, with a hearty English voice, powerful shoulders, and muscular limbs. He is only 26 years old, and was born at the Baths of Lucca. He received a cosmopolitan education, studying in turns at Cambridge, Cdrlsruhe, Bombay, and Rome. He, however, remained a true American. loving Newport and believing with unflinching faith in Boston. He has none of the affectations so common to writers, and, beyond his few books and the writing-pad and inkstand, his room shows little to indicate the literary character of its occupant. He is an excellent scholar in philosophy and the languages, especially Sanskrit and the other tongues of the East. Indeed, this is his chief delight and aspiration, and the intrusion of fiction into his work is a droll one. He is remarkably well informed upon almost all subjects, and is a musician of no small talent. He is the son of Thomas Crawford, the sculptor of the Washington monument, who lived in Rome, and (bed young, After having married Miss Louisa Cutler Ward, the sister of Sam Ward. He learned English at Dr. Coit’s famous New Hampshire school. After studying at the places named above, he went to Bombay with his Roman teacher of Sanskrit. he began tb write for the press, and became editor of the India Herald. Here he learned to speak Hindustan and write Urdu. He then returned to Home, and afterward to America, visiting Julia Ward Howe. He went to Harvard and took a Sanskrit diploma. He wrote a paper on the silver question, which was read at the Bankers’ Convention at Niagara* and also wrote a long list of reviews on social, political, or philosophical subjects. While dining with his uncle Sam in New Yofk he told him the true story of Mr. Jacobs, a diamond merchant of India, and it so interested the bon vivant that he insisted that his nephew should writo it. The young man locked himself in a room and wrote “Mr. Isaacs” in thirty-five days. His other novels have been completed in almost the same length of time. He lives in Rome in Indian fashion. He swims before luncheon, rows when through with his day’s work, and goes abroad at night. His best work, “To Leeward,” was written in the caves of Sorrento.