The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1900-06-07
INTERESTING CHARACTER SKETCH
OF THE ECCENTRIC AUTHOR.
The Author and the Man Were Appar-
emily n Dual Personality-His
Experience i'm Cuba.

almost perfect taste. The man Is hippant,
careless, indolent, selfish and an offense
against most of the canons of society.
When his recent book of poems was pub
lished those who knew him by his work
were aghast at the tawdry balderdash.
They sought to find some esoteric meaning
in Her Little. Little Shoes" and failing.
gave IL up. They read over THE Red
Badge of Courage" but in the clear, clean
English of the book there is no hint to
afford clew to the literary misdemeanor
he has just committed. To those who know
Crane apart from his stories there was no
mystery in the verses. 1t was simply that
the personal Crane had got hold of the lit
erary mans pen-a mishap always likely to
occur in a dual personality. His dearth OF
conscience permitted him to put forth work
of the worthlessness of which nobody was
more cognizant than he. The name OF Ste
phen Crane would insure the publication
of anything, and he is sardonic enough to
guess and enjoy the fact that the public
would endeavor to read meaning into his
work. 1t was a thing very typical of Crane.
A year and half ago he returned to
this continent from England to see the
war. He had been a great success In Eng
seems to be, and everybody looked for
something wonderful when the high lights
of war flashed into the splendid camera
which is his mind. The papers bid high for
his work. but 1 do not think any news
paper that secured IL was satisfied with the
return. His war reports first in the New
York World, then in the Journal, were
characterless and scant Richard Harding
Davis, with a fraction of his skill and
power, did immensely better. Yet Crane
saw it all. War showed in him cold cour-
age remarkable even at q time when brav
cry was a commonplace, and an endurance
totally at variance with his slight ply
sique. Wherever men were being killed
most lavishly there was Crane. In the
trenches at Guantanamo with the marines.
at Caney helping to bring In the wounded
Rough Riders, at San Juan Hill. In Porto
Rico. Crane was ever in the thick or IL.
always the same desolate, disconSolate
figure, with his ragged overalls and but
tonless shirt Tapping about his emaciated
limbs. lie was the dirtiest man in an army
that had no time to wash and no clothes TO
change. But while the soldiers were bound
to their posts and could not trim up, the
novelist was almost every day In contact
with the zone of razors and clean raiment,
but the contact never seduced him from his
untidy jeans. The wonderful things Crane
saw during the campaign remain untold.
When he tried to tell them for the papers
ne represented the tmme0late demand 1Or
copy dimmed the luster of his impressions.
A POOR CORRESPONDENT.
In all those months of campaigning, jour
neying and suffering. Crane did not write
one report that was above mediocrity. 1t
was not his fault. His mind is like pho
tcgraphic plate. 1t takes time to bring out
its impressions, and hasty development
only fogs the negative. Just now, more
than year after he saw the war Stephen
Crane is beginning to give a series of ade-
quate pictures of it. This is not a new
trait In the writer's makeup. Once DUR
ing the Cuban rebellion he started with a
filibustering expedition on the steam
er Commodore. The steamer was wrecked
on the Florida coast, and Crane, with the
captain, cook and one other, had one of
those terrible experiences in small boat
that is feature of most shipwrecks. They
barely escaped destruction in the surf--the
fourth man of the party died there-when
they finally reached the coast.
People could scarcely wait for the liter
airy product of his stirring adventure. When
it came it was dull. lifeless. wooden-not
nearly good 2 story as the cook told
Ia long time afterwards-Crane published
story called THE Open Boat" 1t is the
first in his last volume of sketches pub
lished in America. 1t is all in that story:
the wreck, the horror of the angry sea- the
feelings of men from whom hope of life
is gone. pathos, humor, character study
and description. 1t is classic of the sea.
During the shipwreck Crane showed the
splendid fibre of his natural courage. The
whole-souled desperate who captained the
lest expedition swears the novelist is the
bravest man he has met in a lifetime of ad-
venturing.
A question / have often heard asks
whether Stephen Crane in his obliviousness
to ordinary requirements and disregard of
civilized ethics is genuine or posing. 1t is
a hard question to answer. During the
long days and nights on the dispatch boats
at sea he was "A pleasant companion. but
he had brought back stock of British
isms that he never tired of using. Every
body who did not please him was "bleddy
boundeh, and he never failed to beg the
rest of us 10 buck up" In spite of this
little affectation the idea of Crane taking
ridiculous.
He does not talk particularly well. proba-
bly, for the same reason that he requires
much time in which to do his writing, and
he is devoid of other entertaining accom-
plishments. Be IL recorded to his credit,
however, his head is not a bit swelled by
success. He cannot be coaxed to talk about
his books-or. for that matter. anybody
elses. Serious conversation is a thing TO
him unknown. IL he Is with men who insist
on 1t he will try to turn the current with
fantastic whimsicalities, and IL that fails
he mopes by himself until the time for
grave talk Is done.
QUEER COMBINATION.
There Is i'm Cranes disavowal Of RESPONSE
bility or obligation no intentional mean
ness. His money, when he has 1t. is at the
disposal of anybody who is in his company.
1t goes through his hands like water. He
will throw IL to any beggar. On the other
hand. Crane is likely to do the cruelest
things with little thought of cruelty as
a baby pulling off a fy's wings. When
Crane returned from the West Indies after
the war he brought with him a young col
ored boy he had picked up at st. Thomas.
Tue lad had never been of the little island
where he was born, but Crane thought he
would look well among his Greek serv-
ants-souvenirs OF the Graeco-Turkish
warm the home he had established in a
suburb of London. Crane was very fond of
the boy On the way up the tropic-reared
lad suffered from the cold, and his master
gave him his overcoat and shivered in the
evenings himself. Crane did not go TO
England at once, but charged of TO Ha-
vana TO describe the transformation from
Spanish TO American. He never gave the
West Indian boy thought. but cut him
adrift in New York. and never even made
inquiry about him when he passed through
the city months later on his way TO Eng
land. He had simply forgotten all about
him.
There is great deal of gentleness in