STEPHEN CRANE: A "WONDERFUL BOY."
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.'"
