warmest heart, the largest sympathy—­and all that in perfect measure.  There’s enough there to ruin the prospects of any writer.  For you know very well, my dear Edward, that if you had Antinous himself in a booth of the world’s fair, and killed yourself in protesting that his soul was as perfect as his body, you wouldn’t get one per cent. of the crowd struggling next door for a sight of the Double-headed Nightingale or of some weak-kneed giant grinning through a horse collar.

J. C.

STEPHEN CRANE—­A NOTE WITHOUT DATES—­1919

My acquaintance with Stephen Crane was brought about by Mr. Pawling, partner in the publishing firm of Mr. William Heinemann.

One day Mr. Pawling said to me:  “Stephen Crane has arrived in England.  I asked him if there was anybody he wanted to meet and he mentioned two names.  One of them was yours.”  I had then just been reading, like the rest of the world, Crane’s Red Badge of Courage.  The subject of that story was war, from the point of view of an individual soldier’s emotions.  That individual (he remains nameless throughout) was interesting enough in himself, but on turning over the pages of that little book which had for the moment secured such a noisy recognition I had been even more interested in the personality of the writer.  The picture of a simple and untried youth becoming through the needs of his country part of a great fighting machine was presented with an earnestness of purpose, a sense of tragic issues, and an imaginative force of expression which struck me as quite uncommon and altogether worthy of admiration.

Apparently Stephen Crane had received a favourable impression from the reading of the Nigger of the Narcissus, a book of mine which had also been published lately.  I was truly pleased to hear this.

On my next visit to town we met at a lunch.  I saw a young man of medium stature and slender build, with very steady, penetrating blue eyes, the eyes of a being who not only sees visions but can brood over them to some purpose.

He had indeed a wonderful power of vision, which he applied to the things of this earth and of our mortal humanity with a penetrating force that seemed to reach, within life’s appearances and forms, the very spirit of life’s truth.  His ignorance of the world at large—­he had seen very little of it—­did not stand in the way of his imaginative grasp of facts, events, and picturesque men.

His manner was very quiet, his personality at first sight interesting, and he talked slowly with an intonation which on some people, mainly Americans, had, I believe, a jarring effect.  But not on me.  Whatever he said had a personal note, and he expressed himself with a graphic simplicity which was extremely engaging.  He knew little of literature, either of his own country or of any other, but he was himself a wonderful artist in words whenever he took a pen into his hand.  Then his gift came out—­and it was seen then to be much more than mere felicity of language.  His impressionism of phrase went really deeper than the surface.  In his writing he was very sure of his effects.  I don’t think he was ever in doubt about what he could do.  Yet it often seemed to me that he was but half aware of the exceptional quality of his achievement.