Cora Crane's Thwarted Romance

STANLEY WERTHEIM

tephen Crane and Poultney Bigelow, controversial American
journalist, historian, and political commentator, may have
met as fellow members of The Author's Club, in New York
City, in 1896 or as correspondents in the Cuban War during the
spring or early summer of 1898. Crane was on the staff of Pulitzer's
New York World, while Bigelow was reporting for the New York
Herald and the London Times. In 1899-1900 Bigelow and his
novelist wife, Edith Evelyn, occasionally visited the Cranes at Brede
Place, the rambling, decayed country manor in Sussex which they
leased from Moreton and Clara Frewen. Cora and Edith Bigelow
were members, with Lady Randolph Churchill, of the Society
of American Women in London, and Crane and Bigelow wrote
about their Cuban War experiences in consecutive numbers of
Lady Randolph's Anglo-Saxon Review. Crane's poignant "War
Memories" appeared in the December, 1899 volume, while
Bigelow's "The Latter-Day Fighting Animal" was published in
March, 1900.

Of mutual concern to Crane and Bigelow was the apotheosis by
the press of exploits by volunteer regiments such as Lieutenant
Colonel Roosevelt's Rough Riders, while the routine bravery ofthe
common soldier was ignored. In "Regulars Get No Glory,"
published in the New York World, July 20, 1898, Crane deplored
the voracious public interest in "the gallantry of Reginald Marma-
duke Maurice Montmorenci Sturtevant, and for goodness sake
how the poor old chappy endures that dreadful hard-tack and
bacon" at the expense ofthe infantry regular, whom Crane names
Michael Nolan: the ungodly Nolan, the sweating, swearing, over¬
loaded, hungry, thirsty, sleepless Nolan, tearing his breeches on the
barbed wire entanglements, wallowing through the muddy fords,
pursuing his way through the stiletto-pointed thickets, climbing the
fire-crowned hill—Nolan gets shot. In "The Latter-Day Fighting
 

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