F. Marion Crawford had a successful career as a historical novelist, writing and directing plays. He didn’t need to write ghost stories. But we can be glad that he did.
Francis Marion Crawford (1854-1909) was an American writer who produced only one collection, but a very good one, called Wandering Ghosts (1911). It was published two years after his death. H. P. Lovecraft wrote of him in “Supernatural Horror in Literature”:
F. Marion Crawford produced several weird tales of varying quality, now collected in a volume entitled Wandering Ghosts. “For the Blood Is the Life” touches powerfully on a case of moon-cursed vampirism near an ancient tower on the rocks of the lonely South Italian sea-coast. “The Dead Smile” treats of family horrors in an old house and an ancestral vault in Ireland, and introduces the banshee with considerable force. “The Upper Berth”, however, is Crawford’s weird masterpiece; and is one of the most tremendous horror-stories in all literature. In this tale of a suicide-haunted stateroom such things as the spectral salt-water dampness, the strangely open porthole, and the nightmare struggle with the nameless object are handled with incomparable dexterity.
I have to agree with old HPL that “The Upper Berth” is his best, and I believe, one of the top ten ghost stories of all time. (That will have to be another post!) Farnsworth Wright, ye old editor of Weird Tales, reprinted “The Upper Berth” (June 1926) and Leo Marguiles used “The Dead Smile” in Weird Tales, Summer 1974. As Terence Hanley points out at Tellers of Weird Tales, Lovecraft borrowed names from Crawford for his inhabitants of Arkham. He is in good company with his fellow Americans: Ambrose Bierce and Robert W. Chambers as influences.
“The Dead Smile” (Ainslee’s, August 1899) Listen here.
“The Screaming Skull” (Collier’s, July 11-18, 1908) Listen here.
“Man Overboard” (1903) Listen here.
“For the Blood Is the Life” (Collier’s, December 16, 1905) made my “Vampire’s Greatest Hits”. Listen here.
“The Upper Berth” (Unwin’s Annual for 1886) Listen here.
“By the Waters of Paradise” (Unwin’s Annual for 1887) Listen here.
“The Doll’s Ghost” (The Illustrated London News, Christmas 1896) Listen here.
What I like about this collection–and those from the same time period–is that writers still had the best of the Victorian attitude while gaining the style of more modern fiction. The early Victorians like Charles Dickens and Charlotte Riddell have a fruitcakiness to them that feels quite Christmasy but those that came later, like the good don, M. R. James, have learned techniques not available to earlier writers. They have a subtlety–and let’s be honest–readability that the stuff from the 1860s does not have. Crawford is such a writer, using his skill to suggest rather than baldly display phantoms and monsters.
This is a matter of taste, of course, but these more modern influences on H. P. Lovecraft and the Pulpsters are more my cup of tea. (That’s ironic. I am a hardcore coffee drinker. ) That’s also ironic when you consider M. R. James found the Pulpsters too graphic and utter lacking in subtlety. (More on that here.) That is another matter of taste. How gory do you like your Horror stories? Writers like Crawford and James suggest rather than over-reveal. That’s perfect for a Christmas ghost story. Respectable and British in tone. (Halloween is a whole other ball of wax!)
I have written in both modes but my Christmas collection is rather on the British side, though I have included two Cthulhu Mythos tales and three Strange Northerns.
