Months previous to this, however, there were two persons of influence in their respective spheres who had interested themselves in Crane. Early in 1894 the well-known New York correspondent who writes under the name of “ Holland * described, in the course of a letter to a Philadelphia paper, the literary hardships of a rather remarkable boy. This lad, not yet twenty-one, had, he said, written a story called “Maggie, A Girl of the Streets,” based on his observations as space-paid reporter. Unable to find a publisher, he had gone into a job-printing office and himself set some of the type for a small edition which appeared over the pseudonym of “Johnston Smith.” Only a few copies were published, and these went to the author’s friends. But one fell into the hands of Hamlin Garland, who introduced Crane to William Dean Howells. The latter was sufficiently impressed by the quality of the work to look further into the writings of his new acquaintance. The result was the discovery of some unusual poetry which, at Mr. Howell’s suggestion, was read before a meeting of one of those New York societies which indulge in the generally dubious luxury of what they please to call “Uncut Leaves.”
Meanwhile Crane was seeking a market for “The Red Badge” and shortly after, in what was for them an evil hour, this tale was bought by a large literary syndicate. They paid their usual price for it, but were able to sell it to but one large paper, the very one, as it chanced, to which a Holland’s * letter about Crane had been written. At the time this journal, “The Press,” — the Philadelphia paper referred to by the sarcastic paragrapher above quoted, — was printing, somewhat after the French fashion, a series of novels in daily instalments. The stock had run low, but the demand had increased, and the literary editor, Mr. James O. G. Duffy, was in great need of available “copy” when the syndicate offered “The Red Badge of Courage.” At first glance everything was against the story. For their own purposes the temporary owners had reduced it from 60,000 to 40,000 words, and, with the usual unerring instinct of the blue pencil, had managed to “cut” the best portion. Moreover, the book dealt with a struggle in which a fickle public was already losing interest and, above all, the narrative was, unlike its predecessors in the series, the work of a totally unknown writer. Being, however, a man of the keenest literary instinct, Mr. Duffy, although he had forgotten “Holland’s” letter about its author, immediately saw that he had made a discovery of importance. He accordingly accepted the story and began its publication at once, the first instalment appearing December 3, 1894.
Unfortunately for the profession, a journalist has small opportunity of judging the effect of his work upon his public. Yet several letters of inquiry reached the office in regard to Crane’s tale, and three days after the first chapters of the story appeared one of the editors of the paper, a man of more than national reputation in the literary and scientific world, came into Mr. Duffy’s office where several of the staff were gathered.
“Who is this man Crane, anyhow?” he asked.
Nobody recollected the New York correspondence of some months before, and a general ignorance was expressed.
“Well,” continued the inquirer, “If he keeps this up, we’ll all know who he is in a few years,” and he wrote an editorial which appeared the next day declaring that “Stephen Crane is a new name, but everybody will be talking about him if he goes on as he has begun.”
This was the first critical notice of Crane’s work, and it appeared — be it remembered — in that department which a newspaper generally holds sacred to a very different sort of comment.
Upon Crane the effect was decidedly buoyant. Almost at once he took heart so far as to call at one of the largest publishing houses in New York with two new short stories. These were read over by the firm’s adviser, Mr. Ripley Hitchcock, who, when the author came to learn his decision, replied: “Mr. Crane, I like your work very much. It has strength and originality; but these stories are too short for us. Haven’t you got something we can make a book of?”
Hesitatingly, Crane answered that he had a rather “long thing” which had been coming out in a Philadelphia newspaper and which “some of the boys around the office seemed to like.” Mr. Hitchcock asked to see it and was sent the clippings, together with the editorial comment. The story was at once accepted, the missing 20,000 words were inserted, and as soon as Crane returned to read the proofs from a journalistic expedition into Mexico, the book was published by the Appletons.
This is the true story of Stephen Crane’s literary beginnings. For some reason or other, it has never before been made public, but it is high time that it should be known in order to put an end to the mistaken gossip which is passing current as the true facts of the case. Crane never spent a night in a Mills Hotel except in search of material. The men who first accepted and praised his book were not New York but Philadelphia journalists. Chancellorsville only suggested the battle-scene, and the publication of the story in book form occurred in this country five months before it occurred in London. It was its American success that first brought the work to the attention of the English critics.
Reginald Wright Kauffman.
Philadelphia, Pa.
From: The Literary Digest V. XX, No.25, June 23, 1900 p.750
STEPHEN CRANE: A “WONDERFUL BOY.” (The Literary Digest V. XX, No.25, June 23, 1900)
The death of Mr. Stephen Crane, while yet barely thirty, is widely regarded as a serious loss to American literature, one which it can ill afford. Mr. Crane, who had for some time past resided in Surrey, England, had been critically ill for some months previous to his death and had lately been taken to Baden to obtain the benefit of the waters. His best known works are: “Maggie: A Girl of the Streets” ; “The Red Badge of Courage”; “The Little Regiment”; “The Black Riders”; “War Is Kind”; “The Open Boat” ; “The Third Violet”; “George’s Mother”; and “Active Service.” In three somewhat widely separated lines of fiction – stories of slum-life (especially of the demi-monde), war stories, and tales about boy-life – Mr. Crane attained notable success. By many critics it is doubted whether any one has ever got nearer the spirit of the boy of today than has Stephen Crane in these latter tales, altho his fame has been founded more upon his stories of low-life and of war. Whether his fame would ever have reached a higher level is open to doubt, and perhaps critical opinion largely leans to the judgment that his artistic attainment would never have been able to go beyond the extremely clever but impressionistic word-painting of the work already produced by him. Mr. Crane came honestly by his love of military life. One paternal grandfather was colonel of the Sixth New Jersey Infantry during the Revolution, and ranking major-general of the regular army at the time of his death; while a younger brother of this officer was ranking commodore of the navy — at that time the highest American naval rank. Mr. Crane, in a letter written to the editor of the Rochester Post-Express a few weeks ago, gives the following account of his boyhood and early journalistic career:
“My father was a Methodist minister, author of numerous works of theology, and an editor of various periodicals of the church. He was a graduate of Princeton, and he was a great, fine, simple mind. As for myself, I went to Lafayette College, but did not graduate. I found mining-engineering not at all to my taste. I preferred baseball. Later I attended Syracuse University, where I attempted to study literature, but found baseball again much more to my taste. My first work in fiction was for the New York Tribune, when I was about eighteen years old. During this time, one story of the series went into The Cosmopolitan. At the age of twenty I wrote my first novel—’Maggie.’ It never really got on the market, but it made for me the friendship of William Dean Howells and Hamlin Garland, and since that time I have never been conscious for an instant that those friendships have at all diminished. After completing ‘ Maggie,’ I wrote mainly for the New York Press and for The Arena. In the latter part of my twenty-first year I began ‘The Red Badge of Courage,’ and completed it early in my twenty-second year.
The year following I wrote the poems contained in the volume
known as ‘The Black Riders.’ On the first day of last November I was precisely twenty-nine years old and had finished my fifth novel, ‘Active Service.’ I have only one pride, and that is that the English edition of ‘The Red Badge of Courage’ has been received with great praise by the English reviewers. I am proud of this simply because the remoter people would seem more just and harder to win.”
In another letter to the same gentleman Mr. Crane touches on his literary philosophy. He writes:
“The one thing that deeply pleases me is the fact that men of sense invariably believe me to be sincere. I know that my work does not amount to a string of dried beans — I always calmly admit it-but I also know that I do the best that is in me without regard to praise or blame. When I was the mark for every humorist in the country, I went ahead; and now when I am the mark for only fifty per cent of the humorists of the country, I go ahead; for I understand that a. man is born into the world with his own pair of eyes, and he is not at all responsible for his vision — he is merely responsible for his quality of personal honesty. To keep close to this personal honesty is my supreme ambition. There is a sublime egotism in talking of honesty. I, however, do not say that I am honest. I merely say that I am as nearly honest as a weak mental machinery will allow. This aim in life struck me as being the only thing worth while. A man is sure to fail at it, but there is something in the failure.”
The New York Evening Post says:
“Mr. Crane’s mental attitude was that of one for whom there were to be no surprises. His confidence in himself was thorough. His belief in the excellence of his work was complete, but not often expressed; and toward the last he frequently made light of the early style in which he placed too much dependence upon adjectives of color, and in some stories of child life (commenced on board a despatch-boat in the Santiago blockade) he was trying for that finish and nicer use of language which his critics had said he lacked. Notwithstanding a kind of shyness of manner, he was always self-possessed. In the matter of social conduct, few conventions were permitted to interfere with what he felt inclined to do; and as war correspondent, on the top of the encircled hill at Guantanamo and in the field before Santiago, he showed absolute fearlessness of danger.”
The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle draws some interesting lessons for literary aspirants from Mr. Crane’s career;
“In seeking to gather from what Stephen Crane has done indications of what he might have done, had he lived, it is necessary to take into account his youth and his handicaps. He was only a boy when he began to write. He undertook ‘The Red Badge of Courage ‘ before he was twenty-one. He was little more than a boy when death stopped his writing forever. He started upon his literary career with no equipment but such literary powers as nature had given him. He had not even the technical equipment that common scholarship gives to a writer. ‘The Red Badge of Courage’ shows that, at the age of twenty-one, he could never be sure whether or not he was writing commonly correct English. It also shows that he then lacked literary good taste and discrimination. He had to learn as he went along. During all his literary career he seems never to have been free from the necessity of doing a great deal of hack work. For months past he had been suffering from a lingering and enervating disease. His working days were few and far from free of distractions. And yet he wrote ‘The Open Boat’ and ‘The Monster.’”
From: The Delta Upsilon Quarterly V. XXVI, No.2, March 15, 1908, p.135-137
SYRACUSE CHAPTER HOUSE’S UNIQUE MEMORIAL by Lew Collings
Sunset, May, 1891 — Stephen Crane,” carved on the cupola walls of his college home at 310 Ostrom Avenue — the Syracuse chapter house — is almost the sole reminder left at Syracuse University of one of its students who has attained worldwide distinction as a literary artist. Many are the stories told of Crane’s brief career as a student, but most of them agree in the fact that he found more of interest in the doings of men in the city about him than he did in the cut-and-dried courses of the curriculum. He neglected the classroom to haunt the newspaper office. The psychology of the professor remained a hidden quantity, eclipsed by that keen psychological study of human nature revealed in his stories. His genius, aptly characterized as “chaotic,” despised precedent. Like many another he preferred to learn his lessons in the school of experience.
Stephen Crane’s love of sports amounted to a passion. The story is told by old graduates of how he headed the ‘Varsity baseball subscription list with a ten-dollar donation at a time when he was himself dependent for support upon a chance story’s finding grace with some sympathetic editor. It is said that at one time he staked all his clothing on the result of a football match. Luck went against him, but his friend declined to collect the wager.
Opposite the entry of Crane’s name and class in the records of Syracuse University is a blank, showing that he received no credits at the institution. Of this period of his life Crane is quoted as saying:
“When I was about sixteen I began to write for New York newspapers. Later I began to write special articles and short stories for the Sunday papers and one of the literary syndicates, reading a great deal in the meantime and gradually acquiring a style. I decided that the nearer a writer gets to life the greater he becomes as an artist, and most of my prose writings have been toward the goal partially described by that misunderstood and abused word — realism.
“Tolstoy is the writer I admire most of all. I’ve been a free lance during most of the time I have been doing literary work, writing stories and articles about anything under heaven that seemed to possess interest, and selling them wherever I could. It was hopeless work. Of all the human lots for a person of sensibility, that of an obscure free lance in literature or journalism is, I think, the most discouraging.”
Crane was born at Newark, N. J., in 1870. He matriculated at Syracuse University when about twenty years of age. He had previously been admitted to Lafayette College, but is said to have left there on account of trouble with the authorities. He remained in Syracuse a part of one year, during which time he participated in ‘Varsity baseball and took an active interest in everything except his college work.
During his college days he lived at 310 Ostrom Avenue, in the chapter house still occupied by the Fraternity, of which he was a member. This residence is located on one of the highest portions of the city, overlooking the campus and the business district. Sitting in the cupola of the chapter house, a few sheets spread before him, Crane was wont to dream away the hours, penning the vivid color-pictures which in imagination he saw beyond the horizon. At night the varied life of the city below fascinated him as a mystery which he must fathom. No nook of the hidden by-ways that he did not explore, no character of the underground world with whom he was not on speaking terms.
In 1892 Crane was attracted to New York City. His studies of East Side life, while doing hack work on various newspapers, are embodied in “Maggie, a Child of the Streets.” The effort won recognition from William Dean Howells.
Crane followed up his previous slight success with his first long war story, “The Red Badge of Courage.” This scarlet study of a raw recruit’s experience in the Civil War, written by a young man of twenty-three, who had never seen a musket fired in pitched battle, was heralded as the acme of genius. Notwithstanding the fact that the defects of the book are glaring, Crane was picked to write the great American novel. When he removed to England, he was welcomed into the select circles of the metropolis.
Speaking of “The Red Badge of Courage,” Crane has said: “It was an effort born of pain, despair almost, and I believe this made it a better piece of literature than it otherwise would have been. It seems a pity that art should be a child of pain, and yet I think it is. Of course, we have fine writers who are prosperous and contented, but, in my opinion, their work would be greater if it were not so. It lacks the sting it would have if written under the spur of a great need.”
Crane wrote eleven books in all. Two were in manuscript when he died. His later short stories have b
een termed “brilliant fragments,” but their genuine literary qualities have given them rank among the masterpieces of American authors.
Much of the latter part of his life was spent as a war correspondent to great newspapers. In the Greco-Turkish War of 1897 he represented the Westminster Gazette and New York Journal on the scene of battle. The next year he reported the Spanish-American War for the New York Journal and the New York World. While filibustering to Cuba he was shipwrecked and was one of the three survivors of the catastrophe. “The Open Boat” is the story of this event. In the official dispatches of 1898 he was commended for gallantry under fire at Guantanamo, Santiago. Porto Rico, and Havana.
The last two years of Crane’s life were passed in the big, rural homestead at Brede Place. Sussex. With his wife and child he lived there quietly, fighting off the approaches of disease. His last journey in his battle against ill-health took him to the Black Forest, where he died at Badenweller, Baden, before his thirtieth birthday. Had he lived until Friday, November 1, 1907, he would have been thirty-seven years old, the age at which most writers settle down to mature production.
From: Notes on Life and Letters, Joseph Conrad, Doubleday, Page & Company, 1921, p.49-52
STEPHEN CRANE — A Note Without Dates, 1919
Complete Works of Stephen Crane Page 182
