University of Virginia Library

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Stephen Crane and "Corporal O'Connor's Story"
by
Gillian G. M. Kyles

In his introduction to a facsimile edition of the 1894 New York Press appearance of Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage, Joseph Katz quotes an April 2, 1893, letter of Crane's in which he relates that he spent ten days writing a war story (always identified as the first version of the Red Badge) that he now thinks he will have to 'do all over again.'[1] Professor Katz remarks: "This first attempt is lost. Perhaps part of it survives in the barely legible fragment of 'Corporal O'Connor's Story,' a scrap of paper in the Butler Library [Special Collections, Columbia University Libraries] which refers to a 'Delsartean' philosophy and a young man fresh from his studies. The paper seems right, the handwriting, the protagonist, and the philosophical stress seem right, but the brief glimpse is sufficient for speculation into only what-could-have-been."[2] Both recto (containing the notes) and verso (containing the jotting 'Corporal O'Connor's Story') are reproduced, but not transcribed.

The notation 'Corporal O'Connor's Story' is not readily identifiable but may have some relation to an unfinished early manuscript about the Twelfth Cavalry and the Indian wars which has as its protagonist a Corporal Smith. The paper, a cheap wove, appears to be the same in each; the present manuscript measures 249.5 x 140.4 mm. (the horizontal measurement does not allow for a stuck-down crease running the full length of the page, reducing the width by at least 20 mm.) and the 'Twelfth Cavalry' manuscript measures 249.5 x 162.5 mm. The handwriting of the two manuscripts is markedly similar and is unlike the later, tighter hand of the Red Badge manuscript, which was inscribed on legal-size ledger paper; and indeed it much resembles that of "Across the Covered Pit" in the Barrett Collection at the University of Virginia which may be dated 1890.[3] The text appears to be notes or a draft of a news story dating from Crane's Asbury Park days as assistant to his brother Townley, who was correspondent for the New York Tribune.

Insofar as the words can be determined, the fragment reads as follows:

Delsartean systim and the[n made] inquiries as to [which] methods made < >

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philosophy prominen[ent] about ten years [ago] In the fall of 18[6]9, Mr Steele Mc[Kaye] fresh from his studies with Mr. Franco[is] < > Delsarte, came to this country and

François Alexandre Nicolas Chéri Delsarte (1811-1871) was a French drama and singing teacher who invented a system of calisthenics to develop co-ordination, power, and grace on the stage. Among his students was James Morrison Steele MacKaye (known as Steele MacKaye), an American actor and dramatist, who studied with Delsarte towards the end of the master's life and brought the system to the United States where he taught it in his drama school. The reference to MacKaye and to Delsarte establishes that Crane was writing about a method of acting and not about a philosophy of war. In short the inscriptions on the two sides of the paper have no relation to each other.

During the summers of 1890-92 Crane assisted his brother by covering, among other events, the actvities of the Avon Seaside Assembly, where Madame Alberti, the Dean of the School of Expression (part of the Assembly complex), lectured regularly on the methods developed by Delsarte and taught by MacKaye. She and her husband William had been friends of the older Cranes and Crane may well have met them socially as well as in his function as cub reporter. Crane reported her lectures for several years. For example, in an attributed dispatch "On the Banks of the Shark River" in the Tribune for July 11, 1891, one reads: "Madame Alberti in the School of Expression taught the correct use of the muscles of the arm and wrist. . . . The pupils of Madame Alberti have been rehearsing the Greek play 'Electra,' which is to be given in August."[4] A report next year on September 6, 1892, is more specific:

It is probable that Madame Alberti would have mentioned MacKaye in one of her lectures in the years 1890-92 and that Crane, functioning as a reporter, repeated her reference although the news report that resulted from these notes (if it was printed) has not been identified. Whatever the significance of the jotting of a title on the other side of the leaf, the fragment has no connection with The Red Badge of Courage.

Notes