Stephen Crane


Literary San Antonio Stephen Crane
IMAGE CREDIT: "Stephen Crane: Man, Myth, & Legend"	As a late Romantic Southern poet afflicted by the disease that claimed the lives of many great artists, Sydney Lanier had not found it difficult to romanticize the somewhat meager beauties of San Antonio in the last quarter of the nineteenth century; about twenty years later an even more prominent American author would visit the city whose sensibilities generally did not tend toward the Romantic. This writer was Stephen Crane. Coincidentally, both men were afflicted with tuberculosis, and both eventually succumbed to its attacks, but consumption was not what brought Stephen Crane to San Antonio early in 1895. Instead he was traveling as a journalist through Texas and Mexico, sending stories back to an Eastern newspaper syndicate about his adventure in the Southwest. One of the journalistic essays he produced was a piece on San Antonio which he called "Patriot Shrine of Texas."
Trolley track in front of the San Antonio Museum of Art Early photo of a trolley car (DRT Library)	By the time of Crane's visit in January 1895, San Antonio had already acquired a reputation as an interesting destination. Crane noted that, even before his arrival, "From all manner of people there came an exhibition of profound affection for San Antonio. It seemed to symbolize for them the poetry of life in Texas" (Katz 36). As Olmsted and Lanier had been struck by the exotic atmosphere of the city during their day, Crane was caught off-guard by its modernity: At first the city presents a totally modern aspect to the astonished visitor. The principal streets are lanes between rows of handsome business blocks and upon them proceeds with important uproar the terrible and almighty trolley car. The prevailing type of citizen is not seated in the sun; on the contrary, he is making his way with the speed and intentness of one who competes in a community that is commercially in earnest. And the victorious derby hat of the north spreads its wings in the holy place of legends. (Katz 36)
Partially restored area of Mission Concepción	Yet Crane could see an ominous side to what he called "the victory of the north," for "the serene Anglo-Saxon erects business blocks upon the dreams of transient monks; he strings telegraph wires across the face of their sky of hope and over the . . . accomplishments of these pious fathers of the early church passes the wheel, the hoof, the heel." Crane seemed to regret that these edifices had been reared "upon the amitions of a race" (Katz 36).
Façade of Mission Espada	In making these sober comments, Crane must have been thinking specifically of the four missions on the southern outskirts of San Antonio, for he reflected on them collectively in decidedly somber terms: Upon the gently rolling plains the mission churches with their yellow stone towers outlined upon the sky called with their bells at evening a multitude of friars and meek Indians and gleaming soldiers to service in the shadows before the flaming candles, the solemn shrine, the slow-pacing, chanting priests. And wicked and hopeless Indians, hearing these bells, scudded off into the blue twilight of the prairie. (Katz 37) Crane followed up this imaginative reconstruction of mission life with a descriptive observation that "the ruins of these missions are now besieged in the valley south of the city by indomitable thickets of mesquite" (Katz 37). Because Crane was seeing the missions before modern restoration took place, he lamented their sad appearance:
Ruins at Mission San Juan	Time has torn at these pale yellow structures and overturned walls and towers here and there, defaced this and obliterated that. Relic hunters with their singular rapacity have dragged down little saints from their niches and pulled important stones from arches. They have performed offices of destruction which the wind and the rain of the innumerable years were not capable. They are part of the general scheme of attack by nature. (Katz 37)
Façade of Mission San Juan Mission	As a pioneering American Naturalist, Crane emphasized the central role that an indifferent Nature played in the destruction of the missions, in combination with human destructiveness. He wondered who could fathom the ways of Nature, who "thrusts her spear in the eye of Tradition and her agents feed on his locks" (Katz 38). Yet Crane found hope in the realization that, despite the ravages of nature and the destructive hand of man, "these portentous monuments to the toil, the profound convictions of the fathers, remain stolid and unyielding, with the bravery of stone, until it appears like the last stand of an army" (Katz 38).
	Unlike Lanier and Olmsted, who had practically ignored the Alamo in contrast to the other four missions, Stephen Crane was enchanted with the site, which, for him and others, had become "the patriot shrine of Texas," the patriots being mostly Anglo-Saxons. In fact, by 1895, the Alamo had already become so famous that Crane exhibited a little reluctance at giving it so much attention in his essay: It is something of a habit among the newspaper men and others who write here to say: "Well, there's a good market for Alamo stuff, now!" Or perhaps they say: "Too bad! Alamo stuff isn't going very strong, now." Literary aspirants of the locality, as soon as they finish writing about Her Eyes, begin on the Alamo. (Katz 38)
Contemporary façade of the Alamo contrasted to its appearance in the mid-nineteenth century (DRT Library)	In spite of the Alamo's prominence among popular writers in Crane's day, he insisted that "it remains the greatest memorial to courage which civilization has allowed to stand" (Katz 38) and launched into a six-paragraph summary of the decisive battle which took place there in March 1836.

The Koehler House, one of the local historic houses used in the film The Rough Riders	While Crane's account of the Alamo siege is reasonably accurate, a recent version of Crane's visit to San Antonio is patently inaccurate. It appears in a film version of Theodore Roosevelt's memoirs The Rough Riders, directed by John Milius and produced for Turner Network Television in 1998. It depicts Stephen Crane as being present in San Antonio in 1898, when Roosevelt was here selecting and training his Rough Riders, in addition to Crane's subsequent presence in Cuba, where he worked effectively as a war correspondent for some major New York newspapers. While the film's portrayal of Crane's activities in Cuba may be generally accurate, the pretense of his being in San Antonio in 1898 is one of the myths that tend to collect around fascinating characters like Stephen Crane.
A mesquite grove near Mission San Juan	Moving on in his fast-paced journalistic style to a description of the outlying areas around the city, Crane took special notice of the numerous mesquite trees, which were even more ubiquitous in 1895 than they are today. This "wilderness of persistent mesquite, a bush that grows in defiance of everything" (Katz 40), as Crane described it, must have made quite an impression on him, for he gave a prominent place to it in some descriptive passages of one of his later stories, "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" (1897), which begins with a train ride from San Antonio through the countryside to the frontier town of Yellow Sky (probably Laredo, Texas).
The main entrance to Fort Sam Houston House assigned to Col. and Mrs. Dwight Eisenhower during 1941	Stephen Crane ended his tribute to San Antonio and its patriot shrine by pointing out that "upon a hillock in the outskirts of the city is situated the government military post, Fort Sam Houston" (Katz 41). The installation must have been the pride of the Anglo-American community in the 1890's, certainly the military contingent, and its significance was not lost on Crane, who heaped generous praise on what must have been its impressive appearance in 1895: There are four yellow and blue squadrons of cavalry, two beautiful red and blue batteries of light artillery and six beautiful white and blue companies of infantry. Officers' row resembles a collection of Newport cottages. There are magnificent lawns and gardens. The presence of so many officers of the line beside the gorgeous members of the staff of the commanding general imparts a certain brilliant quality to San Antonio society. (Katz 41)
Parade ground at Fort Sam Houston	Unless Crane was being sarcastic in his concluding remarks on San Antonio's Fort Sam Houston and its soldiers--not to mention his idealized portrayal of the Alamo battle--it forms a distinct contrast to his grimly ironic portrayal of war in his classic novel, The Red Badge of Courage, an early edition of which had just been published at the end of 1894, shortly before his visit to San Antonio.