Complete Works of Stephen Crane

by Stephen Crane

  “My Dear Friend: So much of my row with the world has to be silence and endurance that sometimes I wear the appearance of having forgotten my best friends, those to whom I am indebted for everything. As a matter of fact, I have just crawled out of the fifty-third ditch into which I have been cast, and now I feel that I can write you a letter which will not make you ill. – put me in one of the ditches. He kept ‘The Red Badge’ six months until I was near mad. Oh, yes — he was going to use it but — Finally I took it to B. They use it in January in a shortened form. I have just completed a New York book that leaves ‘Maggie’ at the post. It 18 my best thing. Since you are not here I am going to see if Mr. Howells will not read it. I am still working for the ‘Press.’”

  At this point his affairs took a sudden turn, and he was made the figure I had hoped to see him two years before. The English critics spoke in highest praise of “The Red Badge,” and the book became the critical bone of contention between military 0bjectors and literary enthusiasts here at home, and Crane became the talk of the day. He was accepted as a very remarkable literary man of genius.

  He was too brilliant, too fickle, too erratic to last. Men cannot go on doing stories like “The Red Badge of Courage.” The danger with such highly individual work lies in this — the words which astonish, the phrases which excite wonder and admiration, come eventually to seem like tricks. They lose force with repetition, and come at last to be absolutely distasteful. “The Red Badge of Courage” was marvelous, but manifestly Crane could not go on doing such work. If he wrote in conventional phrase, his power lessened. If he continued to write in his own phrases he came under the charge of repeating himself.

  It seems now that he was destined from the first to be a sort of present-day Poe. His was a singular and daring soul, as irresponsible as the wind. He was a man to be called a genius, for we call that power genius which we do not easily understand or measure. I have never known a man whose source of power was so unaccounted for.

  The fact of the matter seems to be this. Crane’s mind was more largely subconscious in its workings than that of most men. He did not understand his own mental processes or resources. When he put pen to paper he found marvelous words, images, sentences, pictures already to be drawn off and fixed upon paper. His pen was “a spout,” as he says. The farther he got from his own field, his own inborn tendency, the weaker he became. Such a man cannot afford to enter the white-hot public thoroughfare, for his genius is of the lonely and the solitary shadow-land.

  From: The Bookman, V. XIII, April 1901, p.148

  A NOTE ON STEPHEN CRANE. (The Bookman, V. XIII, April 1901)

  Not long ago, the New York Evening Post, in an editorial discussing “The Decay of Decadence,” grouped the late Stephen Crane, as a poet, with the Symbolists of France and England. I was struck by the association, for the reason that I happened to be familiar with the peculiar circumstances under which The Black Riders and Other Lines, from which a quotation is made in the editorial, had come to be written. As a matter of fact, at the time of writing that volume it is probable that Mr. Crane had never even heard of the Symbolists; if he had heard of them, it is pretty certain that he had never read them. He was then about twenty-one years of age, and he was woefully ignorant of books. Indeed, he deliberately avoided reading from a fear of being influenced by other writers. He had already published Maggie, his first novel, and by sending it to Mr. Hamlin Garland he had made an enthusiastic friend. Through Mr. Garland he met several other writers, among them Mr. W. D. Howells. One evening while receiving a visit from Mr. Crane, Mr. Howells took from his shelves a volume of Emily Dickinson’s verses and read some of these aloud. Mr. Crane was deeply impressed, and a short time afterward he showed me thirty poems in manuscript, written, as he explained, in three days. These furnished the bulk of the volume entitled The Black Riders. It was plain enough to me that they had been directly inspired by Miss Dickinson, who, so far as I am aware, has never been classed with the Symbolists. And yet, among all the critics who have discussed the book, no one, to my knowledge, at any rate, has called attention to the resemblance between the two American writers. It is curious that this boy, feeling his way toward expression as he was then doing, should have been stimulated by so simple and so sincere a writer as Miss Dickinson into unconscious cooperation with the decadent writers of Europe. Perhaps an explanation may be suggested by the association of Mr. Crane at this period with a group of young American painters, who had brought from France the impressionistic influences, which with him took literary form.

  The Black Riders received comparatively little attention, though it was favourably noticed in The Bookman and in other periodicals, and it was ridiculed in several. Its publishers apparently made no effort to take advantage of the success achieved by Mr. Crane a few months later with The Red Badge of Courage. Few readers are now aware of its existence. Whatever may be thought of its qualities as verse, no one can dispute its being a curiosity of literature.

  While writing of Mr. Crane, it may not be amiss to give a detail or two of his life which I have not seen in print. His bent toward the writer’s career probably came from his mother, who, he once told me, had been a newspaper writer. It was his mother who secured for him his first chance to write regularly for money as a New Jersey correspondent for the New York Tribune. I think he said that she had held the post herself. I have a distinct recollection of Crane’s remarking, with a humour made grim by his poverty at the time, that he had been discharged from the position of correspondent because he had given offence to some organisation of workingmen by writing satirically of one of their parades. For the Tribune he wrote some sketches which had all the qualities of observation, humour, and grotesque originality of expression that characterised much of his later work. At the time of his death he was acquiring from the world the education he had missed in his brief experience at college. Among other things, he was learning new words, fine words, the words that most writers know and never use. He snatched at them as a child snatches at bits of flashing jewelry, and he stuck them into his stories with a splendid disregard of their fitness. Whilomville Stories, one of his latest books, instead of being written in the simple language suitable to the child-life described, is full of such words; they fairly stick out of the page. If Mr. Crane had lived a few years longer, he would undoubtedly have stored those words in his memory, kept them shut up there, and returned to plain speech.

  John D. Barry.

  From: The Lafayette Weekly, V. XXIX, No. 13, January 23, 1903, p.108

  A MEMORIAL TO STEPHEN CRANE.

  Under the auspices of the Philadelphia Alumni Association a fund is being raised for a memorial of the late Stephen Crane, novelist and war correspondent, the author of “The Red Badge of Courage.”

  The nature of the memorial has not yet been decided on by the committee members, of which are Dr. McCluney Radcliffe, ‘77, and Charles B. Adamson, ‘77, but in all likelihood, it will be in the form of a bronze tablet, placed in Van Wickle Library. Although the matter is in the hands of the Philadelphia Alumni Association, contributions are solicited from all Lafayette men, and each alumnus is urged to do what ever he can. Dr. McCluney Radcliffe, 711 North Sixteenth Street, Philadelphia, is the treasurer of the fund, and all money should be sent to him.

  Stephen Crane registered at Lafayette College, as a mining engineer, September 12, 1890, with the class of 1894, at the age of 18. He remained in college until February of the following year, and during his brief stay lived in East Hall. At the time of registration his home was in Asbury Park, N. J. Beyond this, little can be said of his college life. He had very few intimate friends, cared little for society, and never seemed to be particularly interested in anything that transpired in college except baseball. He was somewhat careless in his dress and negligent of his lectures; was always cool, never worried about anything, smoked infinite quantities of tobacco, and took life just as it came. Crane was not possessed of a strong individuality. He was simply unimpressive, and his s
tudent days gave no promise of the talent he later displayed. Of the 500 students in attendance at Lafayette College during his stay, only a few will remember him at all.

  From the standpoint of his professors, Mr. Crane’s college course was a failure. He had no natural taste for study, and never tried to cultivate one. His favorite subject was history. He left the college without a degree, and was never enrolled as a student in any regular course, but was “on schedule,” taking whatever struck his fancy. Yet his college days were not wasted. He preferred to select his own course of instruction rather than follow the cut-and-dried curriculum of a college. Men always had a greater interest for him than books, and when he ought to have been at recitations he was strolling the streets looking at those that passed. One of his favorite haunts was the “square” in Northampton street, where a large number of people daily congregated.

  Although throughout his college days Crane was strongly bohemian, he was neither dolt nor loafer. He was an omnivorous reader, particularly of historical subjects, and sat up late at night, diligently poring over the masterpieces of literature, or trying to put on paper his own peculiar views of men and life.

  “At Baden, in the Black Forest, in June of MCM, fell Stephen Crane into his long sleep. To him it was not given to live out the allotted span of man’s days on earth, his but to leave life unfinished and die. To the world of letters he left a rich legacy, and heritage to men unborn. Age cannot wither nor custom state his brief but wide variety.”

  From: The Critic, V. XXXVIII, No. 3m, March 1901, p.198-199

  The Critic, V. XXXVIII, No. 3m, March 1901

  Mrs. Stephen Crane has given up the house occupied by Crane for two years up to the time of his death in Sussex, and has taken up her residence in Milborne Grove, South Kensington, London, where she holds an occasional Sunday afternoon at which one may meet interesting representatives of the literary society of London. Though Mrs. Crane was born in America she comes of old English stock. Previous to her marriage with Stephen Crane she spent several years travelling. Her experiences ranged from a wreck in the Black Sea to participation in an engagement in the Greek war. She was in the battle of Valestino, and almost lost her life by the explosion of a low-flying bomb. She also went through the Cuban war with Crane at Santiago.

  Mrs. Crane has taken up literature with a determination to win. It was her intention at first to finish “ The O’Ruddy,” Crane’s incomplete novel, but pressure of other work induced her to assign the task to Mr. A. E. W. Mason, a friend of Crane’s, whom it will be remembered was the author of “The Philanderers,” “ Miranda of the Balcony,” and Andrew Lang’s collaborator on “ Parson Kelly.”

  Mr. Carl Edwin Harriman tells me that Mrs. Crane is compiling a volume of her husband’s stories and sketches which when finished will represent his literary growth from his fourteenth year to the moment of his death. Aside from this task, Mrs. Crane has taken upon herself the labor of completing seven or eight short stories that her husband left unfinished. Thus three books of Crane’s may be looked for. “The O’Ruddy” will be published late next summer and the other two at about the same time if Mrs. Crane’s portion of the labor of making the tales ready is completed. Then, too, Mrs. Crane has a novel of her own well in hand, a story of the American Revolution in which she will introduce historical personages from whom Stephen Crane was directly descended. She also has an idea that seems fair to be realized of writing a biography of her husband. In all probability, according to Mrs. Crane herself, this slight book will appear at the time set by Stokes for the publication of “The O’Ruddy.” Of Mrs. Crane’s own work she has received sufficient encouragement from authors and editors in England to feel warranted in continuing. She has sold the English and American rights to her story, “The Squire’s Madness,” to the Literary Syndicate, and for another tale, “ Jose and the Saints,” she has found a ready market. It may be interesting to those who have read Crane’s Whilomville stories to know that the angel child, “little Cora,” of those tales is Mrs. Crane herself.

  From: Selected Writings of Elbert Hubbard, Wm. H. Wise & Co., 1922, p.140-143

  Stevie Crane (Selected Writings of Elbert Hubbard, Wm. H. Wise & Co., 1922)

  Stevie is not quite at home here — he’ll not remain so very long,” said a woman to me in 1895.

  Five years have gone by, and last week the cable flashed the news that Stephen Crane was dead. Dead at twenty-nine, with ten books to his credit, two of them good, which is two more than most of us scribblers will ever write. Yes, Stephen Crane wrote two things that are immortal. The Red Badge of Courage is the strongest, most vivid work of the imagination ever fished from the ink-pot by an American.

  “Men who write from the imagination are helpless when in the presence of the fact,” said James Russell Lowell. In answer to which I’ll point you The Open Boat, the sternest, creepiest bit of realism ever penned, and Stevie was in the boat. American critics honored Stephen Crane with more ridicule, abuse and unkind comment than was bestowed on any other writer of his time. Possibly the vagueness, and the loose, unsleeked quality of his work invited the gibes, jeers, and the loud laughter that tokens the vacant mind; yet as half apology for the critics we might say that scathing criticism never killed good work, and this is true, but it sometimes has killed the man.

  Stephen Crane never answered back, nor made explanation, but that he was stung by the continual efforts of the press to laugh him down, I am very sure.

  The lack of appreciation at home caused him to shake the dust of America from his feet and take up his abode across the sea, where his genius was being recognized, and where strong men stretched out sinewy hands of welcome, and words of appreciation were heard instead of silly, insulting parody. In passing, it is well to note that the five strongest writers of America had their passports to greatness vised in England before they were granted recognition at home. I refer to Walt Whitman, Thoreau, Emerson, Poe and Stephen Crane.

  Stevie did not know he cared for approbation, but this constant refusal to read what the newspapers said about him was proof that he did. He boycotted the tribe of Romeike, because he knew that nine clippings out of every ten would be unkind, and his sensitive soul shrank from the pin-pricks.

  Contemporary estimates are usually wrong, and Crane is only another of the long list of men of genius to whom Fame brings a wreath and finds her poet dead.

  Stephen Crane was a reincarnation of Frederick Chopin. Both were small in stature, slight, fair-haired, and of that sensitive, acute, receptive temperament — capable of highest joy and keyed for exquisite pain. Haunted with the prophetic vision of quick-coming death and with the hectic desire to get their work done, they often toiled the night away and were surprised by the rays of the rising sun.

  Shrinking yet proud, shy but bold, with a feminine longing for love and tenderness; mad gaiety, that illy masked a breaking heart, at times took the reins and the spirits of children just out of school, seemed to hold the road. At other times — and this was the prevailing mood — the manner was one of placid, patient calm and smooth, unruffled hope; but back and behind all this was a dynamo of energy, a brooding melancholy of unrest, and the crouching world-sorrow which this life could never quite unseat. Chopin reached sublimity through sweet sounds; Crane attained the same heights through the sense of sight, and words that symboled color, shapes and scenes. In each the distinguishing feature is the intense imagination and active sympathy. Knowledge consists in a sense of values — of distinguishing this from that, for truth lies in the mass. The delicate nuances of Chopin’s music have never been equaled by another composer; every note is cryptic, every sound a symbol. And yet it is dance-music, too, but still it tells its story of baffled hope and stifled desire — the tragedy of Poland in sweet sounds. Stephen Crane was an artist in his ability to convey the feeling by just the right word, or a word misplaced, like a lady’s dress in disarray, or a hat askew. This daring quality marks everything he wrote. The recognition that language is fluid, an
d at best only an expedient, flavors all his work. He makes no fetich of grammar — if the grammar gets in the way so much worse for the grammar. All is packed with color, and charged with feeling, yet the work is usually quiet in quality and modest in manner.

  Art is born of heart, not head; and so it seems to me that the work of those men whose names I have somewhat arbitrarily linked, will live. Each sowed in sorrow and reaped in grief. They were tender, kind, gentle, and each possessed a capacity for love that passes the love of women. They were each indifferent to the proprieties, very much as children are. They lived in cloister-like retirement, hidden from the public gaze, or wandered unnoticed and unknown. They founded no schools, delivered no public addresses, and in their day made small impress on the times. They were sublimely indifferent to what had been said and done — the term precedent not being found within the cover of their bright lexicon of words. In the nature of each was a goodly trace of tincture of iron that often manifested itself in the man’s work. They belong to that elect few who have built for the centuries. The influence of Chopin, beyond that of other composers, is alive to-day, and moves unconsciously, but profoundly, every music-maker; the seemingly careless style of Crane is really lapidaric, and is helping to file the fetters from every writer who has ideas plus, and thoughts that burn.

  He is dead now — Steve is dead. How he faced death the records do not say; but I know, for I knew the soul of the lad. Within the breast of that pale youth there dwelt a lion’s heart. He held his own life and reputation lightly. He sided with the weak, the ignorant, the unfortunate and his purse and strength and influence were ever given lavishly to those in need. He died trying to save others.