So here’s to you, Steve Crane, wherever you may be! You were not so very good, but you were as good as I am — and better in many ways — our faults were different, that’s all. I don’t know where you are, Stevie, but when I die I hope I will face Death as manfully as you did; and I hope, too, that I shall then go where you are now. And so, Stevie, good-bye and good-bye!
From: Current Literature, V. XVIII, No.1, July 1895, p.9
GENERAL GOSSIP OF AUTHORS AND WRITERS. (Current Literature, V. XVIII, No.1, July 1895)
You will, says The Bookman, look in vain through the pages of the Trade Circular for any record of a story of New York life entitled Maggie : A Girl of the Streets, which was published three or four years ago in this city. At the moment of going to press the timorous publishers withdrew their imprint from the book, which was sold, in paper covers, for fifty cents. There seems to be considerable difficulty now in securing copies, but the fact that there is no publisher’s name to the book, and that the author appears under the “ nom de plume “ of “Johnson Smith,” may have something to do with its apparent disappearance. The copy which came into the writer’s possession was addressed to the Rev. Thomas Dixon a few months ago, before the author went West on a journalistic trip to Nebraska, and has these words written across the cover: “It is inevitable that this book will I greatly shock you, but continue, pray, with great courage to the end, for it tries to show that environment is a tremendous thing in this world, and often shapes lives regardlessly. If one could prove that theory, one would make room in Heaven for all sorts of souls (notably an occasional street girl) who are not confidently expected to be there by many excellent people.” The author of this story and the writer of these words is Stephen Crane, whose Lines (he does not call them poems) have just been published by Copeland & Day, and are certain to make a sensation.
Stephen Crane is not yet twenty-four years old, but (competent critics aver that his command of the English language is such as to raise the highest hopes for his future career. The impression he makes on his literary co-workers is that he is a young man of almost unlimited resources. The realism of his Maggie — a story that might have taken a greater hold on the public than even Chimmie Fadden, had the publishers been less timid — is of that daring and terrible directness which in its iconoclasm is the very characteristic of rugged undisciplined strength in a youth of genius. We hear the echo ‘of this mood in number XLV. of his Lines:
“Tradition, thou art for suckling children,
Thou art the enlivening milk for babes;
But no meat for men is in thee.
Then –
But, alas, we are all babes.”
Mr. Crane started to write for the press when only sixteen, and he has been at newspaper work ever since. He has done very little outside of journalism; some of his stories have been contributed to the Cosmopolitan, and a story entitled The Red Badge of Courage, which relates the adventures of a recruit under fire for the first time during the Civil War, was one of the most successful serials which the Bacheller syndicate have handled in a long time. This serial has now been set up in book form, and will be published in the summer by Messrs. Appleton & Co., who think very highly of his work. Among other manuscripts which are now in the publishers’ hands is one entitled A Woman Without Weapons. It is a story of New York life, like Maggie, but its scenes are laid on the borderland of the slums, and not down in the Devil’s Row and Rum Alley. When Mr. Hamlin Garland read Maggie and reviewed it in the Arena on its appearance, he sought out the intrepid young author and introduced him to Mr. W. D. Howells, who in turn extended his kindness to young Crane, and made him acquainted with several of his “confréres,” who were’ likely to encourage his literary inspirations. For over a year Mr. Crane has been on the staff of the Bacheller syndicate, and he is now in Mexico “writing up” that country for them. Mr. Crane is a New Yorker, and both his father and mother are dead. All the stanzas in the little volume which has just been published were written in a sudden fit of inspiration in less than three days, and were polished and finished and sent off within a fortnight. The cover design of The Black Riders was drawn by Mr. F. C. Gordon, whose work on the beautiful holiday edition of Tennyson’s Becket met with signal approbation. What Hamlin Garland said of the author a few years ago may be now repeated with a more certain assurance of fulfillment: “With such a technique already in command, with life mainly before him, Stephen Crane is to be henceforth reckoned with.”
From: Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly, V. LVI, No. 5, September 1903, p.517
Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly, V. LVI, No. 5, September 1903
Stephen Crane’s Irish romance, entitled “The O’Ruddy,” is at last to be published, and is said to be full of humor, dash and incident.
All the world knows that just before his death Stephen Crane was at work on the MS. of this novel, of which he had completed about two-thirds. When his fatal illness began he started for the Continent. Robert Barr, his friend, went with him as far as the Channel and bade him good-by there. Before they separated they had a long, detailed talk over the novel and its completion. Crane thought that he would never get well, and expressed the strongest desire that Barr should finish “The O’Ruddy” if he himself should not live to do so.
After Crane’s death Barr was so occupied with writing “ Over the Border ‘‘ and editing The Idler, of which he had become the proprietor, that he was not able to do any thing with the story, but has now yielded to the urgent requests of his publishers, who are also Crane’s publishers, and has carried his old friend’s novel to a triumphant conclusion.
Its publication will be a literary event of the first magnitude, as it is the last work of the brilliant Stephen Crane completed by another brilliant writer in entire sympathy with him, especially in the new and delicious treatment of that surprising Irish hero, the O’Ruddy.
From: Munsey’s Magazine, V. XXIII, No. 5, August 1900, p.713
STEPHEN CRANE’S REGRET THAT REAL WARFARE DID NOT EQUAL HIS DESCRIPTION IN “THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE.” (Munsey’s Magazine, V. XXIII, No. 5, August 1900)
No man was ever freer from responsibility than Stephen Crane. The most important consideration with him was to enjoy. Long before his death was certain, he knew what the end would be unless he took care of himself.
He was purely an imaginative writer. Whether it was in Cuba during the Spanish war or rambling about in New York, Crane could enjoy; but he had no knack in describing the things he actually saw. He could imagine much better than he could see. Creations of his fancy carried with them more convictions than actual scenes he described.
Above all things, he loved excitement. That strange and wonderful daredevil, “Dynamite Johnnie” O’Brien, who commanded more filibustering expeditions and has taken more desperate chances than almost any contemporary along the Atlantic coast, appealed to Crane. He preferred O’Brien to almost any other companion.
It is impossible to say what Crane would have accomplished had he lived, but to those who knew him well it is impossible to suppose that there was any chance of his living until he reached middle age. For years his friends had foretold that he would not live to be older than thirty years. Crane himself used to say he would not live long. That never troubled him half so much as many things of not the slightest importance.
There were times when Crane found great delight in writing, while at others it was torture to him. One of the great disappointments of his life was his failure to find anything in actual warfare that equaled his descriptions in “The Red Badge of Courage.”
From: Life, No. 799, April 2, 1898, p.281
Life, No. 799, April 2, 1898
Young authors who meet with success are always interesting to the reading public. It gives us pleasure, therefore, to be able to record the fact that Mr. Stephen Crane never writes without a chameleon upon his desk. He first maps out his story, writes it simply, and then, with the aid of the chameleon, puts in his adjectives. It is a good plan, and we re
commend it to the large number of writers of colorless fiction who are supplying us with our literary provender to-day. Mr. Crane feeds his chameleon on pigments which he mixes himself, and which, we are I old, the amusing little creature devours with avidity. In this connection we wish to say that we have reason to believe that Mr. Crane has declined the offer of a certain “colored-cartoon” paper in New York to accept the position of Painter-in-Chief on its staff. We are also able to deny emphatically that this talented writer has accepted an offer from Major Pond of ten thousand dollars a week to give a series of readings in the South before exclusively colored audiences.
From: Authors and I, by Charles Lewis Hind, John Lane Company, 1921, p.70-74
STEPHEN CRANE by Charles Lewis
To have written “The Red Badge of Courage” before he was 25; to have produced all of his work ere the age of 30 — is wonderful. Slender, quiet, and neat; unaffected, unromantic, and unobtrusive; always watchful yet always seeming weary and brooding, with the penetrating blue eyes of the visionary — so I saw, and remember Stephen Crane — vividly. That was in the summer of 1899.
We were thrown together under circumstances that have made a lasting impression upon me. He had rented Brede Place, in Sussex, and there Mr. and Mrs. Crane entertained in a way that was very original if seemingly rather extravagant.
Brede Place, I should explain, is one of the oldest manor-houses in Sussex, standing in a vast untidy park. At that time the owners had not lived there for some years; house and park had been neglected, and it would have cost a small fortune to give the place the patted and petted look of propriety in which Englishmen love to garb their estates. How old Brede Place is I know not, but I well remember a stand for falcons in the outer entrance hall, that has survived all changes! The house has grown; wings have been added; the floors are of different levels; you lose your way; you peer from the window embrasures to learn where you are, and seeing the thickness of the wall you wonder at the men of old time who built so perdurably.
In recent years Brede Place has been put in order; today you may see tennis played on the lawns, and hear Debussy in the parlours. But when Stephen Crane rented it all was delightfully muddled and mediaeval. Why he took Brede Place I know not. He liked adventures and new experiences, and Brede Place, Sussex, was a change from Mulberry Street, Newark, New Jersey.
He found himself in a far-flung colony of writers. Crane was a fine horseman, and within riding, cycling or driving distance (motors were uncommon then) lived Henry James, H. G. Wells, Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Hueffer, and others. They were proud to have the author of “The Red badge of Courage” among them, and he had lately achieved another brilliant success with “The Open Boat.” That year I was spending my summer holiday at Winchelsea, and as I had been writing in The Academy, with admiration, of this young American who had captured literary England, it was natural that I should wish to see him. So one day in full summer, when the hops were head high, and all the country decked with bloom and greenery, I cycled over to Brede Place.
Stephen Crane was seated before a long, deal table facing the glorious view. He had been writing hard; the table was littered with papers, and he read aloud to me in his precise, remote voice what he had composed that afternoon. One passage has remained with me — about a sailor in a cabin, and above his head swung a vast huddle of bananas. He seemed over-anxious about the right description of that huddle of bananas; and it seemed strange to find this fair, slight, sensitive youth sitting in the quiet of Brede Place writing about wild deeds in outlandish places.
Our next meeting was amazing. I received an invitation to spend three days in Brede Place; on the second day a play was to be performed at the schoolroom in Brede Village a mile away up the hill. This play we were informed, sub rosa, had been written by Henry James, H. G. Wells, A. E. W. Mason and other lights of literature.
Duly I arrived at Brede Place. Surely there has never been such a house party. The ancient house, in spite of its size, was taxed to the uttermost. There were six men in the vast, bare chamber where I slept, the six iron bedsteads, procured for the occasion, quite lost in the amplitude of the chamber. At the dance, which was held on the evening of our arrival, I was presented to bevies of beautiful American girls in beauteous frocks. I wondered where they came from. And all the time, yes, as far as I remember, all the time our host, the author of “The Red Badge of Courage,” sat in a corner of the great fireplace in the hall, not unamused, but very silent. He seemed rather bewildered by what had happened to him.
Of the play I have no recollection. The performance has been driven from my mind by the memory of the agony of getting to Brede village. It was a pouring wet night, with thunder and lightning. The omnibuses which transported us up the hill stuck in the miry roads. Again and again we had to alight and push, and each time we returned to our seats on the top (the American girls were inside) I remarked to my neighbour, H. G. Wells, that Brede village is not a suitable place for dramatic performances.
Many people reread “The Red Badge of Courage” during the Great War, and the strange thing is that this work of imagination seems more real than the actual accounts of the fighting in Flanders. Yet this is not strange. The imagination is able to give a verisimilitude to invented happenings that a report, however accurate, does not achieve. The artist selects. He treats only that which is necessary to produce his effects. Stephen Crane was an artist. He imagined what he himself, an inarticulate, bewildered unit in the Civil War, would think, feel, and do; he projected his imagination into the conflict, and the result was that astonishing work—”The Red Badge of Courage.”
The Civil War stories in “The Little Regiment” volumes are as good as “The Red Badge,” but the editor or publisher who asked him to write essays on “The Great Battles of the World” did not know his business. They are routine work. His imagination was not moved, as it was in “The Red Badge,” and in “Maggie,” the first book he wrote, which was published when he was 21. It was natural that Crane should want to see actual warfare, and editors were eager to employ him. So he saw the Graeco-Turkish War, and the Spanish-American War, but nothing vital came from these experiences. His imagination worked better in a room than on a battlefield.
Yet one thing came out of his experiences of real warfare — one sentence. When he returned he said: “The Red Badge’ is all right.”
From: The Christian Advocate, V. XCVII, No. 28,
July 13, 1922, p.866-867
Stephen Crane: A Genius Born in a Methodist Parsonage by Carl F. Price
It is of more than passing interest that fifty years ago, November 1, there was born in a Methodist parsonage in Newark, N. J., 14 Mulberry Street, one who has been hailed by the foremost literary men as the first expression of a new period of writing, Stephen Crane. H. G. Wells has styled him “one of the most brilliant, most significant, and most distinctly American of all English writers.” Joseph Conrad, in those delightful literary discussions published a year or so ago under the title Notes on Life and Letters, says: “He had indeed a wonderful power of vision, which he applied to the things of this earth and of our mortal humanity with a penetrating force that seemed to reach, within life’s appearances and forms, the very spirit of life’s truth.”
The miracle which Crane first achieved was to write at the age of twenty-two that intensely imaginative and realistic war story “The Red Badge of Courage,” in which he conjured forth from his inner self a picture of a man’s emotions on first plunging into the horrors of battle. So wonderfully accurate was his psychology that civil war veterans declared that they had never before read so vivid a description of what they themselves had emotionally experienced upon entering battle as is here portrayed by a callow youth who had never seen war in any form. All of his life’s work was but a youthful adventure; for Stephen Crane died while still in his twenties.
His father, the Rev. Jonathan Townley Crane, D.D. (Dickinson), one-time president of Pennington Seminary, was pastor of the Central Methodist Episc
opal Church in Newark when Stephen was born, the youngest of fourteen children. He afterward served in the Newark Conference as pastor at Morristown and Hackettstown, as presiding elder for four years each of the Newark and Elizabeth Districts, then again as pastor in Paterson and Port Jervis; all of which consequently became in succession the homes of the boy Stephen.
Sound Stock
Jonathan Crane was a forceful speaker as well as a ready writer, most tenacious of the opinions which he espoused. Although not all of his readers could accept the views which he expressed in his books on Holiness, the Birthright of all God’s Children, An Essay on Dancing, The Right Way; or Practical Lectures on the Decalogue, Popular Amusements. The Arts 0/ Intoxication and Methodism and its Methods, nevertheless the books were admittedly forceful statements of his thought on these themes. One of his fellow members in the Newark Conference, Dr. F. Bloom, has told us of a typical experience of Dr. Crane’s, while presiding elder, in preaching for the Rev. Louis Burgess at Kingwood, N. J. When Crane rose in the pulpit and announced his text, Burgess pulled his coat-tails and said: “Brother Crane, you preached from this text here once before.” The elder replied! “Well, we have another barrel load along with us, and we’ll see what we can do with another text.” Whereupon he launched into quite a different sermon and held his audience spell-bound as he delivered his message with tenderness and with real eloquence
Dr. Crane, left an orphan at the age of thirteen, began his career by working in a trunk factory until he was twenty-one; worked his way through Princeton University where he graduated; and in 1845 entered the Newark Conference, which he represented in five successive General Conferences from 1856 to 1872His sudden death at Port Jervis on February 16, 1880, at the age of sixty, was a shock to the Church. He had preached twice the day before from his pulpit and even on that fatal Monday had conducted family worship, as was his invariable custom, using the home readings from the Berean Leaflet. His funeral service at Port Jervis was attended by fifteen hundred; and the next day his body was borne to Elizabeth, where in Saint James Church over a hundred ministers attended, and Bishops Simpson, Hurst and Spellmeyer (the last two not yet elected bishops) paid high tribute to his character. Such was the father of Stephen Crane.
Complete Works of Stephen Crane Page 185
