It Happened Here--The Judge's Youngest Brother Visits  

                 

  William Crane was a pillar of the community in Port Jervis, New York in the 1890's. A prominent lawyer, the sobriquet of "judge" had stuck with him though he had served but one year as a temporary judge for Orange County.  In 1891 his brother Stephen came for what would be several extended visits.

 Born in Newark, N.J., Stephen was the youngest of fourteen Crane children.  Four of Stephen's  siblings closest in age to him had died in their infancy so there was a large gap in age between the youngest Crane and his surviving brothers and sisters, who often served more as mentors and parents than peers. His sister Agnes, fifteen years his seniors, was largely responsible for his early upbringing and education, and first stirred his interest in writing and self-expression. The Cranes' father, Rev. Jonathan Townley Crane who became the pastor of the large Drew Methodist Church of Port Jervis was consumed by church business as was his mother in the Women's Christian Temperance Union and various church charities and other church functions. Reverend Crane died suddenly when Stephen was eight.

Stephen's brother Edmund became his caretaker, taking him to Hartwood New York. Later his mother moved to the Methodist community of Ashbury Park, N.J. enrolling him in the Ashbury Park School and two years later Pennington Seminary.  Stephen rebelled against the seminary's strict behavioral code. He  declared he wanted to pursue a military career and prepare for West Point.

Rt.9H Claverack

His family next enrolled him in Claverack College, a combination quasi-military-college preparatory school and junior college, also affiliated with the Methodist church. By now, a teenager in full rebellion, the youngest Crane was at loggerheads with a school administration  that promoted a highly structured classical education, that discounted creativity; one that promoted strict  Methodist behavioral standards.  Though he excelled at military drill and exercises, and participated in literary societies, he hated his courses and would often stay up late (smoking and playing poker),  then sleeping in and

Last surviving building on Claverack College campus*

missing his classes. After two and a half years the young scholar was still a freshman!

The family, being at wit's ends, brother William intervened.  William Crane, who was something of an amateur historian had enchanted young Stephen with stories of the battles of Chancellorsville and Gettysburg.  Stephen's Uncle, Wilbur Fisk Peck had been an army surgeon's assistant and had become the head of the Army hospital at Yorktown, though the experience had left him a shattered man and an alcoholic. Stephen carried Uncle Wilbur's sword in military exercises at Claverack.  So it was left to William to express to Stephen a belief that another war was not likely in Stephen's lifetime and consequently, opportunities for military distinction and advancement would be unlikely for someone pursuing a military career.  Much of the Crane family's wealth had come from shares of Pennsylvania coal stock.  Perhaps he should consider a career in mining engineering!

In 1890 Stephen was off to the mining-engineering program at Lafayette College in Easton, PA.  Lafayette, like all of his previous educational experiences was church-rooted--in this case Presbyterian, not Methodist, with bible study and daily chapel attendance required. It featured a fixed four year program, that allowed no elective courses. It didn't take long for Stephen to realize he had probably jumped from the frying pan into the fire. The first semester he took seven courses and failed five of them.  His worst grade was in "Theme Writing"  (a Zero!)  Being an engineering program, students enrolled in it were required to write on assigned technical subjects using specialized jargon.  Stephen wasn't interested.

The realization that her son was not cut out to be a mining engineer led Stephen's mother to seek a place for him at Syracuse University. Because her wayward son had attended Claverack, one of the University's preferred  college preparatory schools, and because Stephen's grand-uncle was Bishop Jesse T. Peck, one of the University's founders, Mrs. Crane pulled some strings and got him admitted with a scholarship.  She even arranged for him to board at the Bishop's widow's residence.  Stephen probably agreed only because Syracuse had a good baseball team;  he was passionate about baseball and an excellent catcher in his own right.  His housing arrangement lasted only a few days before the Bishop's wife and the rebellious, unconventional Crane mutually agreed to part company. While at Lafayette, Stephen had pledged at Delta Upsilon fraternity and soon found lodgings at the DU house on the Syracuse Campus.  There he became something of a leader of his fraternity's rebels, occupying an unused, unheated  cupola in the fraternity house to smoke, play cards and sing bawdy drinking songs, with his new friends.  Crane took courses mainly in history and literature that he thought would interest him, and did not follow a degree program.  As one semester turned into two semesters Stephen spent more and more time writing stories, beginning a novel  Maggie: A Girl of the Streets and often going out into the streets to observe people. By the third semester he failed to register for a single course.   For  a few summers he had worked for his brother Townley as a reporter hustling up leads and stories for him along the Jersey shore summer communities, for Townley's news service that provided copy for several large and small newspapers.  When one of his professors confronted Stephen about his lack of interest in academics, and Stephen confessed he was more interested in writing and journalism, Professor Little offered to try to get him a reporter's job. Stephen started as the Syracuse correspondent for the New York Tribune, and soon he was frequenting the police courts, tenements and red light district of Syracuse.  By the end of his Spring semester Crane would inscribe on the wall of his fraternity house cupola 'Sunset--1891--May--Steph. Crane'.

Summer 1891 would begin a period where Stephen would divide  his time between visiting his brother Edmund, in Hartwood, and camping with family in rural Sullivan county; staying with brother William in Port Jervis; and living a bohemian lifestyle with other artists, on the edge of the Bowery in NY City. There he would continuing gathering material for, and revising and polishing "Maggie."  From his experiences in the country would emerge several short stories, several published at the time and posthumously collected into Stephen Crane:  Sullivan County Tales and Sketches.

After experiencing frustration at getting "Maggie" published**, Crane was at a friend's in New York and considering writing a civil war pulp fiction/action story or novel to get some quick cash.  (A new generation of readers was discovering the civil war  as both a subject of romantic/action fiction, and as a more serious historical object. )  As he poured over a stack of Century Magazines containing a series on "Battles and Leaders of the Civil War"*** he realized they all focused on what happened and what their main actors said and did,  not what their participants thought and felt and how they were effected by events.  The germ of the idea for Crane's greatest novel, the one that would make him famous, was born.

Port Jervis would be the source of several of the images and insights that Stephen would be incorporated into his stories and novels.  Orange Square is a small city park, diagonally across from the Drew Methodist Church.  The summer before his father died, Stephen witnessed a catastrophic accident. Two black Civil War veterans of the U.S. Colored Volunteer Heavy Artillery  were readying a cannon for the start of the annual Forth of July celebration.  Suddenly a horrific fireball blew the two artillerymen across the park. One died shortly; the other survived with the features of his face largely blasted away and charred, with but one staring eye intact--a terrible memory for an eight year old boy to carry with him. In 1892 a second incident would occur across from William's house, days before Stephen's return from a sojourn doing correspondent work on the Jersey shore. A black man, falsely  accused of raping a  woman was hanged twice by a mob of some 2000.  William and a few others had tried in vain to stop the hanging.  He had given a deposition at the inquest. Stephen would have learned all about it from his brother, and Tribune articles when he returned. Undoubtedly he participated in many conversations about human nature, prejudice, fear and mob violence. Five years later the emotional freight of these two incidents would appear in Crane's "The Monster".

In 1886 Orange Square received a monument dedicated to Civil War veterans.  It became a focal point for Fourth of July celebrants and veterans, principal among them, veterans of the 124th New York State Volunteer Regiment raised in Sullivan and Orange Counties, nicknamed the "Orange Blossoms".  After Crane had decided to write something about the Civil War he began to frequent the park to talk to veterans about their experiences. They quickly disabused him from any lingering notions of inherent glory in combat he may have had,  but they also galvanized him into returning to William's house to write a first draft of The Red Badge  of Courage.

The Red Badge of Courage would catapult Stephen Crane into literary fame.  His desire to experience life close to the characters he was attempting to create would lead him to a life of hardship and adventure the next few years: sailing with "filibusters" trying to aid the Cuban revolutionaries, being shipwrecked in an open boat, attempting to reach the Greco-Turkish War, reporting on the Spanish American War  and charging up San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders.  In seven years of writing he would produce five novels, two novellas, two collections of poetry, over 200 stories and sketches and dozens of newspaper reports. But Crane's "strenuous  life" along with heavy smoking would have consequences for the slight-built author.  By the summer of 1900 Crane would be dead of tuberculosis, at age 28.

*For years, a private residence, this building, built in 1869, was  owned by Russian artist Mihail Chemiakin and is up for sale as of 7/1/19--asking price $1.7 million. 
**Popular themes were either of the downtrodden girl with a heart of gold saved by the wealthy hero, or moralistic tales of wanton girls eventually brought down by the wages of sin. "Maggie" was neither of these, but instead a naturalistic unblinking look into life in the Bowery. Eventually, Stephen would self-publish his novella, using his inheritance from his mother's estate. To Crane's great disappointment, it would go largely unnoticed.
***Ulysses Grant contributed  to this series and it would launch him on his life's final project as an autobiographer.  See
NYSHM:  It Happened Here--Ulysses S. Grant on Horses, Smoking, Dying and Determination   7/ 9/18. 

In addition to the usual Wikipedia/ online sources, Paul Sorrentino's Stephen Crane, A Life of Fire. Cambridge, MA. 2014. is readable and multifaceted.


Marker(s) of the Week--   First things First!

Rte. 23, Windham

Sometimes among the first early settlers on the frontier were people of extremely limited resources. For these hearty souls getting their first crops into the ground and harvesting them so they would have food superseded all other needs including building a decent home.  A few NYSHMs suggest to us  the precarious nature of their existence.

Rte. 7, Duanesburg