Oswald Crawfurd

Oswald Crawfurd was born in London in 1834, the son of John Crawfurd who wrote on Burma and Malaysia and played an important role in the founding of Singapore. His mother, Horatia Perry, was a godchild of Nelson, and the daughter of James Perry, a well-known journalist. Crawfurd was schooled at Eton, but left Oxford without graduating, joining the Foreign Office in 1857. After a time in London and a spell in Madeira, he was appointed acting consul in Oporto in 1866 and confirmed in the post in 1867, staying there until 1891.

Like Eça de Queiroz, who was Portuguese consul in Newcastle and Bristol in the same period, Crawfurd found the time to write books about Portugal and novels, and to compile many anthologies. Unlike Eça, however, his work has not withstood the test of time, although some of his books are still available. Of around 40 works, three were on Portugal. Travels in Portugal was published under the pseudonym of John Latouche. According to Livermore, this goes “in search of the unusual and undescribed, but tends rather to the nondescript”. Portugal Old and New consists mainly of articles by Crawfurd, many reprinted from magazines to which he had contributed. According to Crawfurd: “My book is neither a book of history, nor of criticism, nor of pure description; nor an antiquarian work, nor a social or statistical one, nor a book of travel; but it is a medley of all these things." His third work, Round the Calendar in Portugal, explores the seasonal events that take place in the Minho, particularly related to agriculture and fishing, folklore, and social customs.

Charles Sellers probably derived the name of his classic book, Oporto, Old and New, from Crawfurd’s second book. Sellers returns the favour in the final chapter of his book (page 310), describing Travels in Portugal as a “most amusing and interesting book…… No author has written in a more friendly spirit, and with a more graceful pen about Portugal, than Mr. Crawfurd….. His name will never be forgotten by educated Portonians.” John Delaforce, in his book on Joseph James Forrester, also mentions Crawfurd as being well-qualified to comment on the merits of the disagreements between Forrester and the other wine exporters. He also quotes Crawfurd’s amusingly disparaging observations on the Select Committee of the House of Commons, to which Forrester gave evidence in 1852. “What happened in most Parliamentary Committees happened in this one. A huge mass of evidence, some valuable, more worthless and most of it ex parte and interested, and therefore worse than worthless, was laid before a party of not very competent judges…”

Despite his considerable interest in Portugal, Crawfurd was also keen to maximise his time in Britain. According to Livermore, he would take his leave in April, apply for an extension in July and not return until September or October, leaving everything in the capable, if underpaid, hands of the vice-consul. He had much to occupy himself in the UK: for a time he was a director of the publishers Chapman & Hall. In 1873 he founded and edited the New Quarterly Magazine, selling it in 1877.

Crawfurd’s novels written while he was in Porto included Sylvia Arden, his best known, and The World we Live In. Another popular novel was The Revelations of Inspector Morgan, a first edition of which is for sale online for £125 .

In 1888 he published an article in the Nineteenth Century entitled Slavery in East Central Africa. His qualifications to write this seem minimal, as he had never been to Africa. In the article he soundly rejected as “indefensible and absurd” the Rose-coloured Map of July 1887, published by the Portuguese government to show Portuguese possession of the land between Angola and Mozambique, on the basis of its exploration of the area. The article had little impact in Portugal until the January 1890 Ultimatum, also known as Lord Salisbury’s Ultimatum, which instructed Portugal to leave the claimed land.

The ease with which their country gave in to this British demand led to many Portuguese venting their sense of outrage on Crawfurd and demanding the withdrawal of his diplomatic rights and privileges. His house was stoned. Opposition to the British remained strong in Porto, despite calming down in Lisbon, and Crawfurd drew up plans for the evacuation of women and children, who were to assemble at the Quinta de Veiga, his residence in the east of the city. He forwarded the plan to the Admiralty, which pointed out that to send a warship would provoke the kind of disturbance it was desired to avoid.

The Porto authorities sent the ambassador in Lisbon a demand for Crawfurd to be recalled, who advised him to go on leave. In June 1891 he returned to England and resigned, thereafter devoting himself exclusively to literature, which, as he was independently wealthy, was solely a recreation and, perhaps, an opportunity to meet famous people. He died in 1909. His first wife, Margaret Ford, died in 1899. He remarried in Paris in 1902, to Lita Browne. Among the authors he published in his anthologies was the feminist writer Isobel Violet Hunt, lover of Somerset Maugham, H. G. Wells and Ford Madox Ford, with whom he is also said to have had an affair.