Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Third Supplement.djvu/224

 anxiety to satisfy every claim that came before him gave more frequent offence than blunt refusals might have done. He lacked, also, the knack of dazzling the public eye. But the task before him was one to sap the health and expose the weak points even of the very strongest. Moreover, the partition of 1905, intended to lighten, increased the burden by the violent agitation to which it gave rise. Fraser did not originate the method of partition that was adopted; indeed, he criticized it to good effect before its adoption. But he probably hesitated to oppose a scheme which his patron, Lord Curzon, was believed to be promoting. He fully appreciated the strength of the vested interests affected, but he did not believe in the local nationalism which, as it turned out, those vested interests were able to exploit. The question was to him merely one of administrative convenience; personal modesty prevented him from realizing that the lieutenant-governor could be a symbol of national unity; his own mind was not liable to be moved by illogical sentiment, which accordingly did not enter into his estimate of the problem.

The partition became law: and in meeting the storm which arose Fraser was handicapped by a liberal dislike for all repressive measures: but he gave a fine example of personal courage in the face of repeated attempts on his own life, an example well followed not only by the British but also by the Indian public servants of the province. In 1907 Fraser was chosen moderator of the Presbyterian Church assembly in India, an honour particularly acceptable to him in view of his father’s sixty years of active missionary work in India. He retired in November 1908 and settled in the highlands of Scotland. He published a book of reminiscences, Among Indian Rajahs and Ryots (1911), was a frequent contributor to the reviews, and, especially during the European War, discharged numerous honorary administrative offices. In 1919 he gave in the press a qualified and hesitating approval to the Montagu-Chelmsford scheme. He died in Edinburgh 26 February 1919.

Fraser was twice married: first, in 1872 to Agnes (died 1877), daughter of Robert Archibald, of Devonvale, Tillicoultry; secondly, in 1883 to Henrietta Catherine Lucy, daughter of Colonel Harry Ibbotson Lugard, Indian army and Central Provinces commission. There were one son and one daughter of the marriage, and three sons of the second, all of whom, with his second wife, survived him.

 FRASER, CLAUD LOVAT (1890–1921), artist and designer, the elder son of Claud Fraser, solicitor, of the Red House, Buntingford, Hertfordshire, by his wife, Florence Margaret Walsh, was born in London 15 May 1890. He was educated at Charterhouse, and in 1908 entered into articles of clerkship in his father’s office. The year 1911, however, found him freed from the law and at work at the Westminster School of Art. By 1912 he had already begun an independent career, and he found almost at once a style for the expression of his art from which he never really departed. His work at this period included drawings of theatrical characters and scenes, and decorations for chap-books and broadsides, which were published under the title Flying Fame (1913). Judged by their imaginative quality, these latter designs are perhaps the most important which he achieved. On the outbreak of the European War in 1914 Fraser joined the army, and in 1916 was invalided home from Flanders. In 1919 he held the first representative exhibition of his work, and established his reputation. In the next year his designs for the settings and costumes of As You Like It and The Beggar’s Opera, produced at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, brought him unusual fame, and from this time onwards he produced innumerable designs for the theatre. He made a close study also of the various approaches to process-reproduction in colour, and this resulted in a prolific output by him of booklets, rhyme sheets, end papers, trade cards, and similar matter. He had realized early the importance of visualizing design and type together as an inseparable whole; and the methods which he came to employ in his printed and published work exercised a considerable influence. Among the later books which he decorated, Poems from the Works of Charles Cotton (1922) and The Luck of the Bean-Rows by Charles Nodier (1921) are notable examples. He made designs for other theatrical productions, such as La Serva Padrona, Lord Dunsany’s If, two ballets for Madame Tamar Karsavina, and Gustav Holst’s Savitri.  198