Brede Place Visitors, House Guests Publish
in 1904. See below. As is so often the case, some writers become famous. Others die young. Or both.
Brede Place, East Sussex, a 14th century stone manor house built by one of Edward III's knights, rented in 1899 to the writer Stephen Crane and Cora, the woman he called his wife. Crane died the following year.
Moreton Frewen, a somewhat dissolute gambler, sometime investor and Cowboy in the American West and son of an aristocrat whose properties included Brede Place, must have been glad of the rental income from the Cranes, as Frewen often experienced financial hard times despite having married the "good" daughter of American milllionaire Leonard Jerome (the "naughty" daughter was Jennie who became Lady Randolph Churchill, mother of Winston and mistress of Edward VII). Frewen's offspring, the sculptress Clara Consuelo Sheridan nee Frewen, who died in 1970, would inherit Brede Place and is buried nearby. The house is said to be haunted by a sixteenth century maid, among other ghosts.
An invitation to Brede Place was much sought after by the literati while the celebrated author of Red Badge of Courage, dying of tuberculosis, resided there. Those who became the young writer's friends included:
Joseph Conrad (Nostromo, 1904)
H.G. Wells ("In the Country of the Blind" published in Strand Magazine 1904, and collected 1911)
Henry James (The Golden Bowl, 1904)
J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan, 1904). It was surely at Brede Place that Barrie heard the story of the local East Sussex clergyman who'd lost a hand and had it replaced with a hook -- and hid his dark past as a pirate from his congregation until his bo'sun Smith appeared and had his revenge with the truth.
Let it also be noted that another of Crane's friends, James Huneker, New York music critic and writer (Overtones, a study of Balzac, Flaubert, Wagner, Richard Strauss and others, published 1904), was the (somewhat questionable) source of the story that on his deathbed Crane was writing a novel about a boy prostitute.
Which is in part the subject of Edmund White's new work, Hotel de Dream: a New York Novel, which the writer discussed last night with Michael Silverblatt, host of KCRW's "Bookworm" program as part of the Library Foundation of Los Angeles's ALOUD series at the Richard Riordan Central Library, downtown Los Angeles.
It was a truly fascinating evening, as always when Michael is talking with a writer, which began with how the two men met -- at Joyce Carol Oates's house -- and included Edmund reading a passage from his novel in which "that old woman" Henry James comes for tea at Brede Place to see the young Stephen Crane and his wife Cora, who like Edmund White, does not care much for Henry James.
At least Edmund seemed not to care for Henry James, which gave Michael a way to draw Edmund into a discussion of sensibilty and style -- James's style versus Crane's, for starters, which led in turn to a discussion of gay writers from James to Genet to Proust to White's work and their respective styles and sensibilities.
The discussion was provocative for a number of reasons, not the least being that Edmund, as part of the generation of gay writers after Stonewall, has helped shape the style and sensibility of gay writing and gay culture in our time. Certainly as he said last night the success of his novel A Boy's Own Story had much to do with timing. In 1982, when the novel came out, there was an audience ready and eager for the work of that informal group known as the Violet Quill Club, which included Edmund as well as Felice Picano (who was in the audience), Andrew Holleran, Robert Ferro, Christopher Cox and George Whitmore. Writers who became famous, or died young, or both. Or who survived and have continued to write and to help shape the style and sensibility of a new generation.
So I couldn't help thinking of Stephen Crane, lying there in that Sussex manor house, dying from his century's equivalent of AIDS, being visited by H.G. Wells and Joseph Conrad and J.M. Barrie and Henry James, and no doubt wondering about his posterity and theirs. He was 28 years old when he died.
There's no evidence that Stephen's ghost haunts Brede Place, of course. But as Edmund knows, watching talented young people die takes its toll on everyone. There is the burden of telling their stories as well as your own. Hotel de Dream is then, at least in part, the story of a writer who tries to pass his story on to another writer to finish.
To Be Continued.
Moreton Frewen, a somewhat dissolute gambler, sometime investor and Cowboy in the American West and son of an aristocrat whose properties included Brede Place, must have been glad of the rental income from the Cranes, as Frewen often experienced financial hard times despite having married the "good" daughter of American milllionaire Leonard Jerome (the "naughty" daughter was Jennie who became Lady Randolph Churchill, mother of Winston and mistress of Edward VII). Frewen's offspring, the sculptress Clara Consuelo Sheridan nee Frewen, who died in 1970, would inherit Brede Place and is buried nearby. The house is said to be haunted by a sixteenth century maid, among other ghosts.
An invitation to Brede Place was much sought after by the literati while the celebrated author of Red Badge of Courage, dying of tuberculosis, resided there. Those who became the young writer's friends included:
Joseph Conrad (Nostromo, 1904)
H.G. Wells ("In the Country of the Blind" published in Strand Magazine 1904, and collected 1911)
Henry James (The Golden Bowl, 1904)
J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan, 1904). It was surely at Brede Place that Barrie heard the story of the local East Sussex clergyman who'd lost a hand and had it replaced with a hook -- and hid his dark past as a pirate from his congregation until his bo'sun Smith appeared and had his revenge with the truth.
Let it also be noted that another of Crane's friends, James Huneker, New York music critic and writer (Overtones, a study of Balzac, Flaubert, Wagner, Richard Strauss and others, published 1904), was the (somewhat questionable) source of the story that on his deathbed Crane was writing a novel about a boy prostitute.
Which is in part the subject of Edmund White's new work, Hotel de Dream: a New York Novel, which the writer discussed last night with Michael Silverblatt, host of KCRW's "Bookworm" program as part of the Library Foundation of Los Angeles's ALOUD series at the Richard Riordan Central Library, downtown Los Angeles.
It was a truly fascinating evening, as always when Michael is talking with a writer, which began with how the two men met -- at Joyce Carol Oates's house -- and included Edmund reading a passage from his novel in which "that old woman" Henry James comes for tea at Brede Place to see the young Stephen Crane and his wife Cora, who like Edmund White, does not care much for Henry James.
At least Edmund seemed not to care for Henry James, which gave Michael a way to draw Edmund into a discussion of sensibilty and style -- James's style versus Crane's, for starters, which led in turn to a discussion of gay writers from James to Genet to Proust to White's work and their respective styles and sensibilities.
The discussion was provocative for a number of reasons, not the least being that Edmund, as part of the generation of gay writers after Stonewall, has helped shape the style and sensibility of gay writing and gay culture in our time. Certainly as he said last night the success of his novel A Boy's Own Story had much to do with timing. In 1982, when the novel came out, there was an audience ready and eager for the work of that informal group known as the Violet Quill Club, which included Edmund as well as Felice Picano (who was in the audience), Andrew Holleran, Robert Ferro, Christopher Cox and George Whitmore. Writers who became famous, or died young, or both. Or who survived and have continued to write and to help shape the style and sensibility of a new generation.
So I couldn't help thinking of Stephen Crane, lying there in that Sussex manor house, dying from his century's equivalent of AIDS, being visited by H.G. Wells and Joseph Conrad and J.M. Barrie and Henry James, and no doubt wondering about his posterity and theirs. He was 28 years old when he died.
There's no evidence that Stephen's ghost haunts Brede Place, of course. But as Edmund knows, watching talented young people die takes its toll on everyone. There is the burden of telling their stories as well as your own. Hotel de Dream is then, at least in part, the story of a writer who tries to pass his story on to another writer to finish.
To Be Continued.
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