A New Stephen Crane Item

Abstract

NOTES A NEW STEPHEN CRANE ITEM Lillian Barnard Gilkes Tryon, North Carolina The mysterious circumstances surrounding the death in 1897 of Bamett ("Barney") Barnato, South African financier said to have leapt from the rear deck of an ocean liner, were overshadowed in the blaze of newspaper publicity devoted to the will he left. The alleged suicide apparently went unquestioned. The international spotlight focused exclusively on the will as a unique instrument for tax evasion, something before unheard of, it seems, in English courts of chancery. Barnato, a London-born Jew who changed his name from Isaacs, had gone with a brother to South Africa wherehe acquired interests in the diamond fields and pioneered in developing the Kimberley mines. With a fortune in hand, he quickly became the greatest area threat to the financial and colonial suzerainty of Cecil Rhodes.1 From news stories, Stephen Crane, of course, would have learned the details of Barnato's meteoric rise, when the shock of his will burst upon a flabbergasted officialdom. Crane would also have heard more about this remarkable man from Harold Frederic, during convalescence from a carriage accident in which Stephen suffered abrokennose. Itwill be recalled that he and Cora were a week or longer at Homefield before running off with the Frederics on a holiday jaunt to Ireland. TheBarnato episode is thus of twofold interest. Not generally known is the fact that Frederic drew upon the diamond king for the character of Joel Thorpe, the strong-man swindler of his last novel, The Market-Place2 as evidenced by the similarity of names (Barnato's business partner was a Mr. Joel) and other circumstantialresemblances. Barney Barnato, in life, was forced to sell out to Rhodes in exactly the same manner as the fictional Thorpe squeezed out his competitors in the novel. Frederic's previous novel, Gloria Mundi,3 then just completed, was probably read by the Cranes in manuscript at the time of their Homefield sojourn. Cora reviewed it briefly in one of the London Newsletters on which she and Stephen were collaborating.4 She also contributed to the Newsletter series a sketch of Barnato, abrasively antisemitic in tone, in which she quotes the facetious popular designation of sculptured representations of "Night," "Morning," "Truth," 256Notes "Welcome" and "Fidelity" adorning the exterior of Barnato's Brighton home: "petrified bondholders."5 But the diamond man's story would have had a special fascination for Crane as a vehicle for the interplay of irony, so much a part of his reportorial and aesthetic perception. The ironic cast, the wry humor subjoined to a diction one easily recognizes as characteristic, stamps the piece given below as pure Crane. Of further interest in this connection is the reference to "Bonanza Mackay,"6 discoverer of the great "Bonanza Vein" in the Comstock lode. Crane would certainly have heard tales of the exploits of the colorful Virginia City tycoon, or perhaps have run acrosshim in person somewhere on his Western trip for the Bachelier-Johnson syndicate. The untitled Barnato piece was not a part of the Crane Newsletters; it appeared in the New York Press six weeks after the series ended. I am indebted to Fredson Bowers for first calling it to my attention. Bowers evidently concurred in my earlier, mistaken attribution to Harold Frederic (who never wrote for the New York Press) since he did not publish the piece himself. Itis offeredhere as a new Stephen Crane item: The action of the Duke of Beaufort follows close on that of Barney Barnato. Barnato did not turn his fortune over to his son. No one expected his death less than himself, and thatten minutes before he leaped overboard from a South African liner. In London he was reputed to be worth $50,000,000; in America $100,000,000, and in Australia $200,000,000 while probably the Bradstreets of the Martians had him down for $500,000,000. For Barney was the greatest advertised millionaire in the world, outside of Bonanza Mackay. He was actually worth $20,000,000, clear and above board. When his executors turned inhis estate as beingworth alittleless than $5,000,000 the Treasury officials uttered a whistle as loud as a steam...