The Cranes at Pennington Seminary

Abstract

NEITHER THOMAS BEER NOR JOHN BERRYMAN in their biographies of I923 and I950 makes a single reference to Crane's life at Pennington Seminary.' Both, however, do mention that his father, Jonathan Townley D.D., had once been the school's principal. R. W. Stallman says emphatically: Stephen attended school at Asbury Park, I882-I888, and from i888 to I890 he attended Pennington Seminary at Pennington, New Jersey, and then the Hudson River Institute at Claverack, New York.2 This summary is incorrect, and seems based on the undocumented chronology found in the Williams-Starrett bibliography.3 Some years ago, Lyndon Pratt showed that Crane began attending Claverack College (Hudson River Institute) in January, i888.4 Edwin Cady writes that the time-honored solution was to send the boy [Stephen] away to school. Apparently Mrs. Crane first tried the Pennington Seminary of which Dr. Crane had been principal for ten years before the Civil War, and that parental surrogate failed promptly.5 I recently uncovered new evidence to prove conclusively that Crane did in fact attend Pennington; even the length of his stay can now be pinpointed with complete accuracy. Most important, the atmosphere of Pennington (never discussed by the Crane critics) was of inestimable value to young Crane's education and to his future career as journalist and creative writer. When the thirteen-year-old Crane entered Pennington Seminary (the school is located about seven miles north of Trenton) his name was duly recorded in the Students Register/Pennington Seminary/I88I-I898. He first registered on September 14 for the 1 The school was originally called Methodist Episcopal Male Seminary of the New Jersey Conference; later it was known as Pennington Seminary and Female Collegiate Institute. Now it is The Pennington School, and no longer coeducational. 'Stephen Crane: Letters, ed. R. W. Stallman and Lillian Gilkes (New York, I960), p. 6. 3 Ames W. Williams and Vincent Starrett, Crane: A Bibliography (Glendale, Calif., I948), p3. 'The Formal Education of Crane, American literature, X, 46I (Jan., I939). 5Stephen Crane (New York, I962), p. 26.