Stephen Crane and a Sussex Ghost

What is it about young ex-pats writing single performance plays performed by amateurs at Christmas? A recent Jot told the story of The Princess and the Pauper, a drama by the 24 year old British humorist Harry Graham, which was performed by amateurs at Christmas 1900 in Government House, Ottawa. Exactly a year earlier, a one-off performance of The Ghost, written mainly by the 27 year old American Stephen Crane, best known for The Red Badge of Courage, was acted out by amateurs, at Brede, near Rye in Sussex.

In 1899 Crane and his wife Cora were renting Brede Place, a crumbling mainly late medieval manor house, a mile from the village, with huge fireplaces but no indoor plumbing.

Though the Cranes were enchanted by its old-world charm and maintained an open house for all and sundry, some visitors were less enamoured. One was Karl Edwin Harriman, who in print complained of the ‘chill, damp and draughts of the old house ‘, and of the wind ‘which whistled through the casements every moment of the day and night ‘. Ford Madox Ford described it in Mightier than the Sword as ‘ an ill-fated mansion…full of evil influences ‘.

Inadvertencies

I have found a curious pamphlet from the rather neglected Mill House Press which was run by Edward Gathorne- Hardy whose pic is below. Printed on mould made paper in 1963 It is one of 200 copies only and called Inadvertencies collected from the works of several eminent authors.

Basically a collection of inadvertently obscene passages from mostly 19th century classics. The double entendre game. This passage from Charles Dickens gives the flavour -- 'She touched his organ; and from that bright epoch, even it, the old companion of his happiest hours, incapable, as he had thought, of elevation, began a new and deified existence.' My favourites are from Henry James. There is always a faint air of embarrassment with the Master anyway and Gathorne- Hardy has found some corkers.

"'Oh, I can't explain,' cried Roderick impatiently, returning to his work. 'I've only one way of expressing my deepest feelings - it's this.' And he swung his tool." (Roderick Hudson)

 "You think me a queer fellow already. It's not easy to tell you how I feel, not easy for so queer a fellow as I to tell you in how many ways he's queer." (Passionate Pilgrim)

'What an intimacy, what an intensity of relation, I said to myself, so successful a process implied! It was of course familiar enough that when people were so deeply in love they rubbed off on each other....' (The Sacred Fount)

"It 's just like Longueville, you know," Gordon Wright went on;"he always comes at you from behind; he 's so awfully fond of surprises." (Confidence)

"Then she had had her equal consciousness that within five minutes something between them had--well, she couldn't call it anything but come."  (The Wings of the Dove)

"This time therefore I left excuses to his more practised patience, only relieving myself in response to a direct appeal from a young lady next whom, in the hall, I had found myself sitting.' (The Coxon Fund).

 For more on Eddie G-H go to Bookride. If anyone has a tape of the man talking please send it over.The sound of his voice and his eccentric delivery are still talked about in these parts...