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Saturday, February 19, 2005
I didn’t know Sam Francis as well as I would like to have, but he and I had several long talks together and some correspondence at different times over the last seven or eight years of his life. I have very fond memories of these conversations and the impish gleams that so often crept into Sam’s eyes just before he delivered himself of some delightful anecdote or apercu.
Apart from our shared political interests, we were both slightly shame-faced aficianados of British horror-story writers like M.R. James, H.P. Lovercraft, and Sheridan Le Fanu and had a wistful admiration for that numinous world of ivy-clad vicarages, fog-bound English country houses and haunted churches. Yet while I was content just to read the stories, Sam had researched into the writers, the stories they wrote, and their sociopolitical context—perhaps rather more than these rather lightweight subjects merited. But such intellectual curiousity and thoroughness was characteristic of the man. Without ever becoming embittered or cynical, he took nothing on trust, but would always cut to the quick, whether discussing Vathek, immigration, the Tudors, or revolutions from the middle. Without being bombastic or self-satisfied, he was someone perfectly prepared to suffer for his principles and for his art. Nor did he bear grudges against those who had behaved so contemptibly toward him. His print lacerations of those who had attacked him, although cutting, were never ill-judged or unmanly and were antiseptic rather than poisonous—which is more than can be said about the streams of bile that flowed in his direction from those who hoped that by denouncing him they might themselves escape attack.
Even from a trans-Atlantic perspective, I can see that his death (how ironic that he should have suffered this heart trouble despite his resolute and highly effective weight-loss programme) has deprived the American Right (and, for that matter, the Western world) of one of its most distinctive and eloquent voices and left a gaping hole at the heart of many worthwhile enterprises and publications, not least Chronicles. Such gaps can never be filled completely, but he has mercifully left a corpus of insightful and invaluable work that can and will help inspire similarly doughty Westerners in the future. He would have smiled at the sentiment and demurred at the compliment, but the fact remains that he was—and will remain—a noble example to all who value what he valued.
—Derek Turner
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More than 35 years ago, Sam Francis and I were raw recruits together in the faltering cause of the Old Republic. Like his fellow Tennessean, General Bedford Forrest, Sam bought a one way ticket to the war, never looked back, and grew into a peerless comrade and leader. How can we ever fill such a huge gap in our ranks?
—Clyde Wilson
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Friday, February 18, 2005
I was shocked to hear about Samuel Francis’s death. It looked for a while as if he would pull through; and then this happens. What a terrible loss to us all.
His passing deprives us of one of America’s most courageous and funniest writers. How I wish I’d met him more than once (we did exchange the occasional cordial e-mail and telephone call). Glad to have confirmed my suspicion that underneath his irascibility was a good deal of sensitivity, not to mention downright timidity.
Every writer who read Dr. Francis’s work realized that here was a master stylist, witty, opulent, and devastating. However much one might try to achieve a Francis-like idiom oneself, the feat was impossible. He could be neither emulated nor even adequately mimicked, because le style, c’était l’homme. At least he retained his formidable authorial skills to the last. If his hand had forgotten its literary cunning, he would, I should think, have found that unbearable.
—RJ Stove
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Sam and I corresponded regularly from 1992 up until a few short months ago, and I enjoyed his company at John Randolph Club functions and similar get-togethers. I remember the standing ovation he received just by walking into a room at the Soldiers and Sailors Club in Manhattan, where he was to give a talk. It was a thrill for me to receive a letter through mail or e-mail from a writer I so admired. In reading numerous other e-mail testimonials, I notice that other people felt the same way. If you wrote Sam, he’d find time to return the favor. One recalls both Thomas Jefferson and Robert E. Lee, in their final years, writing one return letter after another to total strangers.
Sam figured prominently in three of my books. I chose his 1992 essay “Nationalism, Old and New” to close out my 1999 collection, The Paleoconservatives. That pretty much says it all. I can only add that reading Sam’s column in Chronicles—not just for its worldview, but for its manly prose—gave me the same pleasure as did a passage from William Faulkner or Thomas Wolfe or Andrew Lytle. He was that great a writer.
—Joseph Scotchie
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I was deeply saddened to learn of Samuel Francis’s sudden death. Although I haven’t met or known him personally, his brilliant essays were well known to me.
His views and comments on conservatism, religion, and current culture-war issues were both valuable and impressive, and one could get to know his character through them. Mr. Francis’ leave is a great loss, and he will be missed by his colleagues and friends, as well as his readers. Let me express my sincere sympathy.
—Vladimir Palko, Minister of the Interior, Slovak Republic
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“I’m more afraid of a microwave than a gun.”
That was one of Sam Francis’ witty observations, during a debate on gun control, in one the many editorial meetings we attended while working at the Washington Times. I met Sam at the Times, and there I came to know his caustic humor and wonderful prose, and most importantly, there I learned at his knee.
Nearly all the tributes to Sam make a few of the same points: He was gruff and grumpy, possessed of humor as pointed as a poniard, endowed with the gift of writing magnificent prose, which in turn flowed from surpassing intellect and erudition, and perhaps most importantly, courageously stood on the ramparts of our culture when the other weekend warriors fled to the bushes.
The personality quirk that made Sam hard to know also made him a fine writer. Sam was a bit of a curmudgeon, a man who grumbled good morning on the way by your desk. He was, as Tom Fleming says, a skeptic; indeed, he was, but he was also a witty and inviting conversationalist whose expanse of knowledge left interlocutors like me feel as if we were standing in the middle of the Mojave desert, unsure of which way to turn. Sam’s learning was as deep as it was wide, and for all his erudition on serious subjects such as history, whether it was the Earl of Clarendon or the British monarchy, he was also versed in contemporary matters.
One of Sam’s favorite novels and films, for instance, was The Godfather. He called the movies “masterpieces,” a point he proved when he penned his fabulous essay, “The Godfather as Political Metaphor,” for Chronicles.
Sam Francis the Writer
Everyone reading here is familiar with Sam’s singular gift of crafting prose and turning a phrase. Such was Sam’s talent that he twice won the Distinguished Editorial Writing Award from the American Society Newspaper Editors. This was no small feat given the ideological tone of that organization, and that Sam was writing editorials for the conservative Moonie newspaper in Washington, which others in the media often said wasn’t a “real newspaper.” How good was Sam? Here are a few of his better lines from those prize-winning editorials.
In “A brief history of the L-word,” (Oct. 31, 1988) Sam wrote about “what may be the most intellectually embarrassing event of the year,” when a “small host of the nation’s literati” purchased an advertisement in the New York Times to complain that President Reagan had made “sport” of the word “liberal.” After listing the signers of the ad, Sam wrote that they “assure the readers that they paid for the ad themselves and that it ‘has not been authorized by any candidate’—although you don’t need a Ph.D. to know which candidate most of these eggheads are supporting.”
Writing about the discovery of a Stone-Age culture called the “Natufians” in a piece called “The way we weren’t” (Dec. 28, 1988), Sam quoted one scientist as saying that the long-dead Natufians had “everything but mailboxes, practically.” Quipped Sam: “There are two possible reasons why they had no mailboxes: (1) there was no one else in the world to send them any mail, or (2) there was lots of mail, but the postal service was too primitive to deliver it—further evidence that the more things change, the more they stay the same.”
When Sam wrote about a man having an idea, the man didn’t just “have an idea.” It “percolated up from his brain pan.” Howell Heflin didn’t walk to the Senate floor to denounce the United Daughters of the Confederacy. He “waddled.” When Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan went to Vassar College, he didn’t go to give a speech, he went to “harangue the sisters.”
In Sam Francis, we enjoyed a rare combination of talents: the ability to put a pen into the service of a brilliant mind. Many thinkers cannot express thoughts in writing, and many writers have no thoughts worth writing about. Sam had a bottomless reserve of significant things to say, and he said them well. Indeed, he often said them without equal.
Sam was also a fine editor. When he edited an editorial, he invariably improved it. He edited seamlessly and could make it appear as if no editing were done. A great editor improves your work, he does not diminish it. Sam did that. A great editor edits without inserting his own voice to make what he edits sound the way he wants it; he edits with your voice in mind and makes it sound the way you want it. Sam did that, too.
From Sam, I learned to write poetically and rhythmically. But he was, after all, a Southerner. Southerners make sublime writers. Sam was certainly both of those.
Sam Francis the Man
Sam Francis was a scholar from the old school. If he had been a professor, I imagine he would have been one of the old cap-and-gown “misters” padding along the stone walks and ivied walls of a 700-year-old college in England. Like his colleague Tom Fleming and others, Sam was among those lucky enough to have attended college when college offered a genuine education and was not, as colleges became in the 1970’s, another four years of high school and excuse to behave like an adolescent.
A few personal stories. One day, Sam was walking by editorialist Ken Smith’s desk eating a donut or pastry. Whatever it was, a few crumbs tumbled down Sam’s tie to the ground. Without missing a beat, Ken said, “Careful, Sam, you’ll get some of that in your mouth.” I don’t recall Sam’s laughing, but it leveled me. Now that Sam has joined Ken, who died so tragically and so young of liver cancer, I wonder if they’re remembering that one.
On a more serous note, in 1990, my wife at the time announced that she was divorcing me and taking my children to California. The damage from the blow lasted years, but like a gunshot, initially you’re numb to the pain. I went to work at the Times the next morning, but it wasn’t long before I needed to talk to someone. I got up from my desk and walked to the closest private office. It was Sam’s. I walked in, tears welling in my eyes, and Sam, big as he was back then, leaped from his chair. “What’s wrong, Cort?” he asked. He listened patiently to my sad story. It was all a friend could ask.
Now, if anyone says they know the breadth of Sam’s learning, few know it as well as me, and I learned about it the hard way. You can often judge a man’s intellect by the size and content of his library. Sam knew that I had done some improvement work on my home and asked if I would install book shelves in the basement of his new home. Sam wanted book shelves along two walls, the kind of shelves that require slotted brackets affixed to the wall and plywood shelves resting on movable braces. The job took two days and required boring into the concrete walls with a rented hammer drill. Such was the weight and size of Sam’s ponderous library, probably only a few books short of the Vatican’s, that the metal brackets required toggle bolts and lead wall anchors. Erecting shelves for Sam’s library was nothing less than a construction project, and my sinuses were coated with concrete dust for days. But it was a worthy endeavor. I learned that this man had a giant intellect and insatiable appetite for knowledge. Over the past few years, I lost personal touch with Sam, which I regret. I should have made the effort. But I never lost interest in reading what he had to say, most of which he said in nonpareil fashion. Despite his towering intellect, Sam never made you feel small, even though you knew that he knew his grasp of just about everything was cosmically greater than yours. That, said Robert E. Lee, is the mark of a gentlemen.
To close, let me refer to one of Sam’s favorite films, The Godfather, Part II. In a quiet, emotional scene, Tom Hagen tells Michael Corleone he always wanted Michael to consider him a brother. Well, I always wanted Sam to consider me a friend. I hope he did.
—R Cort Kirkwood
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Thursday, February 17, 2005
Sam was brilliant and courageous, and is irreplaceable. Despite his great knowledge of Machiavellian political thinkers, Sam’s writing was anything but Machiavellian. He was not interested in writing to advance an agenda, much less an agenda devoted to self-promotion. What interested Sam was truth, and what motivated his writing was a desire to tell the truth as he saw the truth, regardless of the consequences to himself.
Sam was also a wonderful friend. Talking with Sam was always a treat. His knowledge was vast, ranging from a profound grasp of history and political theory, to an amazing familiarity with the many strands of American conservatism, to a keen appreciation of good books and movies. He also possessed as dry and fine a wit as anyone I have ever known. He will be missed.
—Tom Piatak
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I wish to express my condolences to the staff of the Rockford Institute and Chronicles for the death of Sam Francis. I share your loss deeply because of the power of the well crafted words that he wrote in his columns. While I may not have always agreed with everything he said, like any good editorial writer, he still made me think and occasionally brought me around to his side. His analyses of politics and foreign relations were very insightful, and I can say now that I watch the Godfather movies in a different way thanks to his essays on them. Paleo writers on the young side like myself can only hope to be a tenth of what Sam Francis was to Chronicles and journalism in general. Again, I express my condolences and sorrow at our loss.
—Sean Scallon
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Sith the death of Sam Francis, the world has lost a voice of singular brilliance and clarity. I have always feared getting into a debate with him, but I will miss the acuity with which he delivered his blows against political foolishnenss and moral deceit.
—Harold OJ Brown
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The enemies of our culture, civilization, and decency may breathe a sigh of relief.
—Srdja Trifkovic
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Wednesday, February 16, 2005
Sam was indeed a gentleman of the old school and capable of great courtesy as well as gruffness and bluntness. I always appreciated his kindness to me and I admired his strength of character, which was evident in many ways. He was also very funny, and I can remember him clearly, sitting in the midst of a group of Chronicles editors, surprisingly attentive to his lengthening cigarette ash as he waved it above his host’s carpet, making witty observations that were both bleak and accurate.
I am about fifteen years younger than he was, and I have long felt that Sam was one of a group of men who, whatever their respective faults, have a combination of abilities and qualities that people my age or younger do not have. So to lose his knowledge and clarity and decency seems a very great loss, and larger than a personal one.
—Katherine Dalton Boyer
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Sam Francis was one of my heroes. I think of myself as his student, as someone who benefited immeasurably from the writings of a man who never backed away from telling the truth. I’m certain there a lot of Sam’s readers who feel the same way. I am fortunate to have known him. He was a genuine patriot and a first class intellect. The real America has lost a true son and champion. Good bye, Sam, we’ll miss you. May the Good Lord bless and keep you, may He make His face to shine upon you and give you peace.
—Wayne Allensworth
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Although I had known about his grave condition and had tried unsuccessfuly to visit Sam the day before his passing, the news of his death shook me deeply nonetheless. Sam was one of my closest personal friends and during my years in Washington, my wife and children had viewed him as a family member. What seemed his solitary nature concealed a fearless heart and a devastating wit, which helped turn him into a brilliant, courageous journalist. May our longtime comrade-in-arms dwell in the house of the Lord forever!
—Paul Gottfried
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The likes of him will not soon be seen again.
—Roger D McGrath
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This space was to be Dr. Francis’ new weblog, which I created the night before he died. We had high hopes that he would recover, and Creators Syndicate even indicated that we should look for another column from him by the end of the month. The Almighty had other plans, however, as today, sadly, we learned that he had passed away.
We shall, instead, use this space for Chronicles editors to leave memorials for our colleague and friend. Dr. Francis was one of a kind. Cantankerous yet friendly, he was always a joy to be around. Though a fierce opponent in debate, he was, in private, always quick with a joke and would express kindness. On hearing of the birth of my youngest son, Carl, he congratulated me and said, “I hope I can see him soon.”
The legacy that he leaves behind is powerful. His scholarship was first-rate, and younger radical conservatives in particular must do their best to study his works and transmit his ideas, just as he did James Burnham’s. His warnings on the deadly dangers of the managerial state and anarcho-tyranny are crucial to the survival of genuine conservatism.
Samuel Francis will be sorely missed, but, as Dr. Fleming wrote, we have good reason to believe that Sam found his help in the Name of the Lord, Who made Heaven and Earth. As always, we trust in the mercy of God, Who spared not His only-begotten Son for us.
—Aaron D Wolf
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Samuel Francis (1947-2005) was the political editor of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture and a syndicated columnist.
View a brief slideshow moviewith pictures of Dr. Francis.
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Click here for the Sam Francis archives.
Click here for a word from Thomas Fleming on Samuel Francis.
Click here for a brief obituary.
Recorded Lectures by Sam Francis
The British Origins of the Modern State
The English Classical Republicans and the Resistance to the Modern State
The Machiavellian Tradition, Pt. I
The Machiavellian Tradition, Pt. II
All audiotapes are $12.50
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Beautiful Losers:Essays on the Failure ofAmerican Conservatism.Click here to order online.
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