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.
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