Page:The American Novel - Carl Van Doren.djvu/255

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THE EIGHTIES AND THEIR KIN
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of a Persian jewel merchant who in the story is elaborated into the mysterious protagonist. The success was prompt and complete, like that of George Wood in The Three Fates (1892), which is admitted to be partly autobiographical. Crawford recognized his vocation once for all. The melodramatic Doctor Claudius, with its unabashed mixture of nationalities and characters and motives, followed the next year. Thomas Bailey Aldrich asked for a serial in the Atlantic and got A Roman Singer (1884), the story of an Italian urchin with a marvelous voice who rises to fame and marries the daughter of a Prussian count. To Leeward (1884) tells how the English wife of an Italian husband deceives him and is murdered for it. In An American Politician (1885) Crawford did what an innocent bystander could with politics as played in Boston. Zoroaster (1885), written also in French by Crawford himself, plunged headlong into the past, into affairs of intrigue and love in the Persia of Darius. Crawford's recollections of that period of his schooling which he had passed at Hatfield Regis appeared in A Tale of a Lonely Parish (1886). Marzio's Crucifix (1887), written also in French as well, deals with the career of an Italian metal worker at Rome who carries on the ancient traditions of Benvenuto Cellini but who is bewildered by modern ideas. Paul Patoff (1887) was based upon adventures which Crawford had himself had in Constantinople. Saracinesca (1887) first represented the great Roman family of Saracinesca. With the Immortals (1888) brought Heine, Chopin, Julius Caesar, Leonardo da Vinci, Francis the First, Dr. Johnson, the Chevalier Bayard, and Pascal together in a delightful post-mortem symposium near Sor-