within the arctic region. The two could not be compared; at least I
have never detected Crane stretched full length and sustained on
his elbows on a grass plot, in order to gaze at me; on the other hand,
this was his usual attitude of communion with the small child — with
f
him who was called the Boy and whose destiny it was to see more war before he came of age than the author of ‘The Red Badge” had time to see in ail the allotted days of his life. In the gravity of its disposition the baby came quite up to Crane; yet those two would sometimes fined something to laugh at in each other. Then there would be silence, and glancing out of the low window of my room I would see them, very still, staring at each other with a solemn understanding that needed no words, or perhaps was beyond words altogether. I could not object on any ground to their profound intimacy, but I do no see why Crane should have developed such an unreasonable suspicion as to my paternal efficiency. He seemed to be everlastingly taking the boy’s part. I could not see that the baby was being oppressed, hectored over, or in any way deprived of its rights, or ever wounded in its feeling by me; but Crane seemed always to nurse some vague unexpressed grievance as to my conduct. I was inconsiderate. For instance — why could I not get a dog for the boy? One day he made quite a scene about it. He
seemed to imply I should drop everything and go look for a dog. I sat under the storm and said nothing. At last an appeal to first principles, but for an answer I pointed at the windows and said: “Behold the boy.” ... He was sitting on a rug spread on the grass, with his little red stocking-cap very much over one eye (a fact of which he seemed unaware), and propped round with many pillows on account of his propensity to roll over on his side helplessly. My answer was irresistible. This is one of the few occasions on which I heard Stephen Crane laugh outright. He dropped his preaching on the dog theme and went out to the boy while I went on with my work. But he was strangely incorrigible. When he came back after an hour or so, his first words were. “Joseph, I will teach your boy to ride.” I closed the offer at once — but it was not to be. He was not given the time.
The happiest mental picture my wife and I preserve of Crane is on the occasion of our first visit to Brede Place when he rode to meet us at the Park gate. He looked at his best on horseback. On that day he must have been feeling well. As usual, he was happy in the saddle. As he went on trotting by the side of the open trap I said to him: “If you give the boy your seat I will be perfectly satisfied.” I knew this would please him; and indeed this face remained wreathed in smiles all the way to the front door. He looked about him at that bit of the world, down the green slopes and up the brown fields, with an appreciative serenity and the confident bearing of a man who is feeling very sure of the present and of the future. All because he was looking at life from the saddle, with a good morning’s work behind him. Nothing more is needed to give a man a blessed moment of illusion. The more I think of that morning, the more I believe it was just that; that it had been really been given me to see Crane perfectly happy for a couple of hours; and that it was under this spell that directly we arrived he led me impatiently to the room in which he worked when at Brede. After we got there he said to me, “Joseph, I will give you something.” I had no idea what it would be, till I saw him sit down to write an inscription in a very slim volume. He presented it to me with averted head. It was ‘The Black Riders.” He had never spoken to me of his verse before. It was while
holding the book in my hand that I learned that they were written years before in America. I expressed my appreciation of them that afternoon in the usual half a dozen or dozen, words which we allowed ourselves when completely pleased with each other’s work. When the pleasure was not so complete the words would be many. And that was a great waste of breath and time. I must confess that we were no critics, I mean temperamentally. Crane was even less of a critic than myself. Criticism is very much a matter of a vocabulary, very consciously used; with us it was the intonation that mattered. The tone of a grunt could convey as infinity of meaning between us.
The articulate literary conscience at our elbow was Edward Garnett. He, of course, was worth listening to. His analytical appreciation (or appreciative analysis) or Crane’s art, in the London Academy of 17th December, 1898,1 goes to the root of the matter with Edward’s almost uncanny insight, and a well-balanced sympathy with the blind, pathetic striving of the artist towards a complete realization of his individual gift. How highly Edward Garnett rated Crane’s gift is recorded in the conclusions of that admirable and, within the limits of its space, masterly article of some two columns, where at the end are down such affirmative phrases as: The chief impressionist of the age.”... “Mr. Crane’s talent is unique”... and where he hails him as” the creator of fresh rhythms and phrases,” while the very last words state confidently that:” Undoubtedly, of the young school it is Mr. Crane who is the genius — the others have their talents.”
My part here being not that of critic but of private friend, all I will say is that I agreed warmly at the time with that article, which from the quoted phrases might be supposed a merely enthusiastic pronouncement, but on reading will be found to be based on that calm sagacity which Edward Garnett, for all his fiery zeal in the cause of letters, could always summon for the judgment of matters emotional — as all response to the various forms of art must be in the main. I had occasion to re-read it last year in its expanded form in a collection of literary essays of great, now almost historical, interest in the record of American and English imaginative literature. I found there a passage or two, not bearing precisely on Crane’s
work but giving a view of his temperament, on which of course his art was based; and of the conditions, moral and materia!, under which he had to put forth his creative faculties and his power of steady composition. Of those matters, as a man who had the opportunity to look at Crane’s life in England. I wish to offer a few remarks before closing my contribution to the memory of my friend.
I do not know that he was ever dunned for money and had to work under a threat of legal proceedings. I don’t think he was ever dunned in the sense in which such a phrase is used about a spendthrift unscrupulous in incurring debts. No doubt he was sometimes pressed for money. He lived by his pen, and the prices he obtained were not great. Personally he was not extravagant; and I will not quarrel with him for not choosing to live in a garret. The tenancy of Brede Place was held by him at a nominal rent. That glorious old place was not restored then, and the greatest part of it was uninhabitable. The Cranes had furnished in a modest way six or seven of the least dilapidated rooms, which even then looked bare and half empty. Certainly there was a horse, and at one time even two, but that luxury was not so very expensive at that time. One man looked after them. Riding was the only exercise open the Crane; and if he did work so hard, surely he was entitled to some relaxation, if only for the preservation of his unique talent.
His greatest extravagance was hospitality, of which I, too, had my share; often in the company, I am sorry to say, of men who after sitting at his board chose to speak of him and of his wife slightingly. Having some rudimentary sense of decency, their behaviour while actually under the Cranes’ roof often produced on me a disagreeable impression. Once I ventured to say to him, “You are too good-natured, Stephen.” He gave me one of his quiet smiles, that seemed to hint so poignantly at the vanity of all things, and after a period of silence remarked: “I am glad those Indians are gone.” He was surrounded by men who, secretly envious, hostile to the real quality of his genius (and a little afraid of it), were also in antagonism with the essential fineness of his nature. But enough of them. Pu/vis et umbra sunt. I mean even those that may be alive yet. They were ever hardly anything else; one would have forgotten them if were not for the
legend (if one may dignify perfidious and contemptible gossip by that name) they created in order to satisfy that same obscure instinct of base humanity, which in the past would ofte
n bring against any exceptional man the charge of consorting with the devil. It was just as vague, just a senseless, and in its implications just as lying as the mediaeval kind. I have heard one of these “friends” hint before several other Philistines that Crane could not write his tales without getting drunk!
Putting aside the gross palpable stupidity of such a statement — which the creature’ gave out as an instance of the artistic temperament — I am in a position to disclose what may have been the foundation of this piece of gossip. I have seen repeatedly Crane at work. A small jug of still smaller ale would be brought into the study at about then o’clock; Crane would pour out some of it into a glass and settle himself at the long table at which he used to write in Brede Place. I would take a book and settle myself at the other end of the same table, with my back to him; and for two hours or so not a sound would be heard in that room. At the end of that time Crane would say suddenly: “I won’t do any more now, Joseph.” He would have covered three of his large sheets with his regular, legible, perfectly controlled handwriting, with no more than a half-a-dozen erasures — mostly single words — in the whole lot. It seemed to me always a perfect miracle in the way of mastery over material and expression. Most of the ale would be still in the glass, and how flat by that time I don’t like to think! The most amusing part was to see Crane, as if moved my some obscure sense of duty, drain the last drop of that untempting remnant before we left the room to stroll to and fro in front of the house while waiting for lunch. Such is the origin of some of these gleeful whispers making up the Crane legend of “unrestrained temperament.” I have known various sorts of temperaments — some perfidious and some lying — but “unrestrained temperament’ is mere parrot talk. It has no meaning. But it was suggestive. It was founded on Crane’s visits to town, during which I more than once met him there. We used to spend afternoons and evenings together, and I did not see any of his supposed revels in progress; nor yet have I ever detected any after
effects of them on any occasion. Neither have I ever seen anybody who would own to having been a partner in those excesses — if only to the extent of standing by charitably — which would have been a noble part to play. I daresay all those “excesses” amounted to very little more than the one in which he asked me to join him in the following letter. It is the only note I have kept from the very few which we exchanged. The reader will see why it is one of my most carefully preserved possessions.
Ravensbrook, Oxted, March 17 (1899).
My Dear Conrad:
I am enclosing you a bit of MS. under the supposition that you might like to keep it in remembrance of my warm and endless friendship for you. I am still hoping that you will consent to Stokes’ invitation to come to that you will consent to Stokes’ invitation to come to the Savage on Saturday night. Cannot you endure it? Give my affectionate remembrances to Mrs. Conrad and my love to the boy.
Yours always,
Stephen Crane.
P.S. You must accept says Cora — and I — our invitation to come home with me on Sat. night.
I joined him. We had a very amusing time with the Savages. Afterwards Crane refused to go home till the last train. Evidence of what somebody has called his “unrestrained temperament,” no doubt. So we went and sat at Gatti’s, I believe — unless it was in a Bodega which existed then in that neighbourhood — and talked. I have a vivid memory of this awful debauch because it was on that evening that Crane told me of a subject for a story — a very exceptional thing for him to do. He called it ‘The Predecessor.” I could not recall now by what capricious turns and odd associations of thought he reached the enthusiastic conclusion that it would make a good play, and that we must do it together. He wanted me to share in a certain success — “a dead sure thing,” he said. His was an unrestrainedly generous temperament. But let that pass. I must have been specially
predisposed because I caught the infection at once. There and then we began to build up the masterpiece, interrupting each other eagerly, for, I don’t know how it was, the air around us had suddenly grown thick with felicitous suggestions. We carried on this collaboration as far as the railway time-table would let us, and then made a break for the last train. Afterwards we did talk of our collaboration now and then, but no attempt at it was ever made. Crane had other stories to write; I was immersed deeply in “Lord Jim,” of which I had to keep up the instalments in Blackwood’s, difficulties in presenting the subject on the stage rose one after another before our experience. The general subject consisted in a man personating his “predecessor” (who had died) in the hope of winning a girl’s heart. The scenes were to include a ranch at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, I remember, and the action, I fear, would have been frankly melodramatic. Crane insisted that one of the situations should present the man and the girl on a boundless plain standing by their dead ponies after a furious ride a truly Crane touch). I made some objections. A boundless plain in the light of a sunset could be got into back-cloth. I admitted; but I doubted whether we could induce the management of any London theatre to deposit two stuffed horses on its stage.
Recalling now those earnestly fantastic discussions, it occurs to me that Crane and I must have been unconsciously penetrated by a prophetic sense of the technique and of the very spirit of film-plays, of which even the name was unknown then to the world. But if gifted with prophetic sense, we must have been strangely ignorant of ourselves, since it must be obvious to any one who has read a page of our writings that a collaboration between us two could never have come to anything in the end — could never even have been begun. The project was merely the expression of our affection for each other. We were fascinated for a moment by the will-of-the-wisp of close artistic communion. It would in no case have led us into a bog. I flatter myself we both had too much regard for each other’s gifts not to be clear-eyed about them. We would not have followed the lure very far. At the same time it cannot be denied that there were profound , if not extensive, similitudes in our temperaments which could create for a moment that fascinating illusion. It is not
to be regretted, for it had, at any rate, given us some of the most light-hearted moments in the clear but sober atmosphere of our intimacy. From the force of circumstances there could not be much sunshine in it. “None of them saw the colour of the sky!” And alas, it stood already written that it was the younger man who would fail to make a landing through the surf. So I am glad to have that episode to remember, a brotherly serio-comic interlude, played under the shadow of coming events. But I would not have alluded to it at all if it had not come out in the course of my most interesting talk with the author of this biography, that Crane had thought it worth while to mention it in his correspondence, whether seriously or humorously, I know not. So here it is without the charm which it had for me, but which cannot be reproduced in the mere relation of its outward characteristics: a clear gleam on us two, succeeded by the Spanish-American War into which Crane disappeared like a wilful man walking into the depths of an ominous twilight.
The cloudy afternoon when we two went rushing all over London together was for him the beginning of the end. The problem was to find £60 that day, before the sun set, before dinner, before the “six-forty” train to Oxted, at once, that instant — lest peace should be declared and the opportunity or seeing a war be missed. I had not £60 to lend him. Sixty shillings was nearer my mark. We tried various offices but had no luck, or rather we had the usual luck of money-hunting enterprises. The man was either gone out to see about a dog, or would take no interest in the Spanish-American War. In one place the man wanted to know what was the hurry? He would have like to have forty-eight hours to think the matter over. As we came downstairs, Crane’s white-faced excitement frightened me. Finally it occurred to me take him to Messrs. William Blackwoods & Sons’ London office. There he was received in a most friendly way. Presently I escorted him to Charing Cross, where he took the train for home with the assurance that he would have the means to start “for the war” next day. That is
the reason I cannot to this day read his tale, ‘The Price of the Harness,” without a pang. It has done nothing more deadly than pay his debt to Messrs. Blackwood; yet now and then I feel as though that afternoon I had led him by the
hand to his doom. But, indeed, I was only the blind agent of the fate that had him in her grip! Nothing could have held him back. He was ready to swim the ocean.
Thirteen years afterwards I made use, half consciously of the shadow of the primary idea of ‘The Predecessor” in one of my short tales which were serialized in the Metropolitan Magazine. But in that tale the dead man in background is not a Predecessor but merely an assistant on a lonely plantation; and instead of the ranch, the mountains, and the plains, there is a cloud-capped island, a bird-haunted reef, and the sea. All this the mere distorted shadow of what we two used to talk about in a fantastic mood; but now and then, as I wrote, I had the feeling that he had the right to come and look over my shoulder. But he never came. I received no suggestions from him, subtly conveyed without words. There will never by any collaboration for us now. But I wonder, were he alive, whether he would be pleased with the tale. I don’t know. Perhaps not. Or, perhaps, after picking up the volume with that detached air I remember so well and turning over page after page in silence, he would suddenly read aloud a line or two and then, looking straight into my eyes as was his wont on such occasions, say with all the intense earnestness of affection that was in him: “I — like — that, Joseph.”
HIS WAR BOOK
A Preface to Stephen Crane’s “The Reo Badge of Courage”
One of the most enduring memories of my literary life is the sensation produced by the appearance in 1895 of Crane’s “Red Badge of Courage” in a small volume belonging to Mr. Heinemann’s Pioneer Series of Modern Fiction — very modern fiction of that time, and upon the whole not devoid of merit.! have an idea the series was meant to give us shocks, and as far as my recollection goes there were, to use a term made familiar to all by another war, no “duds” in that small and lively bombardment. But Crane’s work detonated on the mild din of that attack on our literary sensibilities with the impact and force of a twelve-inch shell charged with a very high explosive. Unexpected it fell amongst us; and its fall was followed by a great outcry.
Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) Page 704