The novelist Stephen Crane died in a sanatorium at Badenweiler, in the Black Forest, on June 5, 1900. The received account runs that escorted by his common-law wife, together with a doctor and nursing care, he had travelled to Germany from his English home at Brede Place, Sussex, in a last search for health following major lung hemorrhages in December 1899 and March, April 1900. In England, Crane's medical care was primarily in the hands of Dr.

Ernest B. Skinner, a general practitioner who lived a few miles from Brede Place at Bank House, Rye ( Gilkes367). Skinner also acted as Henry James's day-to-day medical adviser, most notably during his illnesses after 1910 ( Edel and Powerspassim). In a letter to his brother William in that year, Henry James twice described the doctor as "devoted" and even referred to him as "the blest [sic] Skinner" ( Edel 1984 , 546-48). Indeed, Miranda Seymour has written of James having had "the warmest of feelings for the Rye doctor," and of Skinner having shown himself "to be all and more than Henry James could have hoped for in a local practitioner" (202, 34). Skinner's connection with the Cranes seems to have dated principally from H. G. Wells's famous dawn bicycle-ride from Brede Place to call out the doctor following Crane's collapse in December 1899 ( Wertheim and Sorrentino408). Skinner's involvement with the Cranes' affairs, medical and financial, was then to continue up to and beyond Stephen Crane's death. The purpose of this article is to collate what is known, what has been said, and what may be further deduced about that relationship by way of providing a context for a previously unrecorded Cora Crane inscription.

In April 1900 Skinner was recommending that Crane be moved to the more salubrious air of Bournemouth and, following that, that a sea-voyage might benefit his patient. (A working trip to Gibraltar and even to St. Helena were variously entertained by the Cranes [ Wertheim and Sorrentino 625, 631, 408].) On occasion Skinner has been judged rather severely for what proved to be an inadequate grasp of Crane's medical condition: Miranda Seymour, indeed, has deemed Crane to have been "as unlucky in his medical attendants as Byron at Missolonghi" (35). However, Cora's letters of the period indicate not only that Skinner kept up her spirits by his optimistic view of Crane's condition, but also that Skinner became an increasingly trusted adviser, as the Cranes' domestic and financial circumstances became more difficult. Around April 15, Cora wrote to James B. Pinker, Crane's literary agent:

The doctor said to him today -- "In three weeks you can work." As soon as he is strong enough, we will (the doctor & I) take him up to London for another consultation as to the best way to care for his health in future. I shall have to take him to some sea-side place for a few weeks from there. I think that I can send one nurse away in another week. The wonderfully good care he has had has pulled him through. Dr. Skinner says that the trouble seems only superficial; not deeply rooted. (Wertheim and Sorrentino 624)

Skinner's assistance extended beyond the strictly medical. On April 21 the Rye doctor was one of two witnesses to Crane's will and its codicil, which, as Lilian Gilkes put it, at last recognized the legitimacy of Cora as Stephen Crane's wife, whatever constraints it placed upon Cora in the matter of remarriage (244). Effectively, however, the will promised Cora little security, for the Cranes' finances functioned on a desperately provisional basis and were being made even more precarious by the cost of consulting a London specialist and by the expense in prospect of the proposed journeys of convalescence. In deed, Crane's death was to leave Cora with an inheritance of debt. Crane's friend Moreton Frewen, who worked keenly to set up some charitable assistance for the Cranes in their difficulties, corresponded with Skinner about their problems, possibly enlisting Skinner's help in connection with the demands of local creditors (Gilkes 252), though even more probably writing with specific reference to the Cranes' outstanding debts to Skinner himself: the Cranes' solicitor, Alfred T. Plant, wrote to Cora on May 7, 1900, that "I believe he [Frewen] has written direct to Dr. Skinner, & am certain he is doing all in his power to help you" (Wertheim and Sorrentino 409, 640). Certainly Leon Edel records that Henry James was to be "particularly incensed that Cora had made no effort to pay Dr Skinner, who had been with Crane to the end" (1972, 66). On May 10, Stephen's phlegmatic brother, William Howe Crane, acknowledged receipt of a letter from Dr. Skinner. Again, one may speculate whether that letter dealt with Skinner's own financial claims on the Cranes or perhaps was written at Cora's urging, backing up her own persistent but largely unavailing requests for money from Stephen's relatives with some account of the novelist's worsening condition and of the sheer necessity of his making the impending costly trip to the Continent (Wertheim and Sorrentino 644).

Leon Edel writes of Skinner's role in the Cranes' journey:

Cora . . . had stayed with Crane in the damp old house [Brede Place] all winter, but now with the warmth of approaching summer she rushed him off to the Continent, borrowing money on all sides, arranging for a special train, taking the Rye Doctor, Ernest Skinner, along to give Crane constant medical attention. (1972, 64)

On May 5, Cora wrote to Pinker about the impending journey that "I shall have to take nurse & the Doctor will go with us," a point that she repeated to him in a letter which has been assigned to May 8 (Wertheim and Sorrentino 638,641). Similarly, writing from Dover, Cora told. H. G. Wells: "We rest here one week and then if I can arrange it & all goes well, I take him on to the Black Forest. Dr. Mitchel Bruce said one lung is all right so far & that there is the chance of recovery -- I should say, the chance of life! The doctor & two nurses have to go with us" (Wertheim and Sorrentino 646).

In her biography of Cora, Lilian Gilkes observed that Bruce "connection with the case is unexplained", though it was at least known that Bruce had been the prime mover of the merits of the Black Forest as a location for Crane's convalescence and had written to German medical contacts in advance of the journey (251). Elsewhere, Gilkes and R. W. Stallman hazarded that Mitchel Bruce was probably the doctor who was to travel with the Cranes (283). That it was in fact Ernest Skinner who crossed the Channel with them appears to be confirmed in retrospect by Henry James's letter to Pinker dated August 29 in which he refers to "the young local doctor here, who gave almost all his time to them, quite devotedly, during all Crane's illness, and took them to the Black Forest" ( Edel1984, 163). However, the accounts of Crane's death tend to be hazy on the question of any travelling doctor's identity. Even Hagemann's meticulous account, which made use of official documents referring in some detail to the American citizens and their servants in the party, leaves the question unresolved. Cora's own writings on the Continent make no explicit reference to Skinner's presence, while some may be read as implying that Dr. Skinner was in fact a very long way away. In particular, when Stephen Crane died (following another hemorrhage at Badenweiler), Cora was disturbed that his death might have been precipitated by an overzealous use of morphine in the sanatorium. She confided to her notebook a somewhat cryptic set of jottings about Crane's death, and these may in part be read as indicating just how much both Cora and Stephen had come to depend upon Skinner, and how much each felt his absence in moments of extreme crisis. Cora's entries, which have the characteristics of a journalist's notes on the spot, are undated; Wertheim and Sorrentino, quite reasonably, see them as composed "shortly after" Crane's death, unsatisfactorily elastic though such a period may be (409). The jottings begin with the words "Write Dr. Skinner about morphine." One immediately notices the readiness with which Cora turned to the figure of Skinner, even though surrounded by specialists; but if the entries were made during the day or two after Crane's death, why, one immediately asks, would Cora have needed to write to Skinner about her anxieties concerning the morphine -- unless Skinner was elsewhere? (The jottings emphasize the nature of Cora's concern in what appears to be the reported comment of an observer of Crane's deathbed, referring to the action of the morphine: "'That's what destroyed him."') Another apparently reported comment (very comprehensible as a remark of Crane's expressing discontent with one of his new continental doctors) runs: "'Little Butcher. I will tell Skinner how he came to Bale [Basle] and stole me"' (Wertheim and Sorrentino 409-10). The fact that first- and third-person voices in Cora's notebook declare intentions to "write" and "tell" Skinner about various aspects of Stephen's treatment suggest that if Skinner accompanied the Cranes on their journey and gave Stephen "constant medical attention," he may not literally have done so, in Leon Edel's words, "to the end." James's letter of August 29 states that Skinner "took them to the Black Forest"; it does not say how long Skinner actually stayed with the Cranes. In context, James's mention of Skinner attending "during all Crane's illness" may well refer only to the period between December and late May.

Assuming that Skinner was the travelling doctor, but that he was not present to the end -- and that he may have left the Cranes at Basle, where the medical baton could be passed on to the sanatorium doctors -- may explain some puzzles arising from James's letter to Cora dated June 5. There James apologizes for not having replied earlier to a letter received from Cora that she had written from Dover, and explains, "Skinner was to give me your new address, & twice have I been to ask for it without finding him. I have it now only from the Frewens." One may deduce from this that James was at least under the impression that Skinner (although he had not found him) was in fact in England for some portion of the period between the Cranes' departure from Dover and the day of Crane's death. But did James's failure to find Skinner at home In Rye mean that he was under a false impression, and that the doctor was in fact abroad, accompanying the Cranes during the entire period up to Stephen's death? Later in the same letter James remarked of the Cranes' departure from Dover, "I learned afterwards that you had waited a day or two longer, but Skinner expressed doubts of Crane's having been able to see me even if I had gone -- & that partly consoled me" (Wertheim and Sorrentino 658). This phrasing clearly suggests that James had a conversation with Skinner at some point while the Cranes were abroad. One might hypothesize that Skinner expressed the views that James mentions in a letter directed to James from abroad, but it is then hard to know why James had no record of a usable continental address for the party. Besides, if James had understood Skinner to be abroad the whole time, it is difficult to understand why he should have been knocking at Skinner's door in Rye in search of the doctor and that address. Moreover, in his letter of condolence to Cora of June 7, James observed, "I don't know whom you may have with you at present -- I hope such aid and service as may be needful. It occurs to me that your brother-in-law will perhaps have arrived" (Edel1984, 145). If, at this point, James had thought Skinner with the Cranes, he might be expected to have been in no doubt about Cora having needful aid and service to hand, and would hardly have been grasping at the straw of William Howe Crane's appearance from across the Atlantic. In short, in key with James's letter of August 129, events and correspondence may make better sense if Skinner is understood simply to have accompanied the Cranes to the Black Forest or -- remembering what appears to be Stephen's comment in Cora's notebook -- to have accompanied them just to Basle (from where Crane was "stolen" by another doctor), and then to have returned to England independently, with time to have conversed with James before June 5 about how Crane's health had been when he was at Dover (though subsequently happening to miss James's visits when the novelist came for Cora's continental address).

Cora took Stephen's body back to England and on to the United States for burial. Returning then to England, Cora was kept extremely busy with financial affairs during the summer of 1900, trying to make as much as she could out of the residue of Stephen's literary property. In September she was living in London.

The extended relationship between the Cranes and Ernest Skinner to which such fragments of correspondence and of Cora's notebook testify -- whether or not Skinner was present "to the end" -- is singularly corroborated by a copy of the first English edition of Stephen Crane Wounds in the Rain in my possession. This particular copy has suffered over the years and at some point has had to be rebound; however, the rebinding has preserved the original flyleaf, and with it an ink inscription, in Cora's hand, running "To Doctor Ernest Skinner / From / Mrs. Stephen Crane. / Sep. 28th. 1900."¹

While the very title, and indeed the themes, of Wounds in the Rain made it an appropriate gift to the doctor, its poignancy of association principally lay in the fact of Crane having been involved in finalizing arrangements about the book's manuscript and its title during the period of Skinner's attendance, and in the sad eventuality of the book's publication only posthumously. Indeed, on the day of the inscription, September 28, it had been published only very recently.² Moreover, for Skinner Wounds in the Rain should have had the additional association of being dedicated to their mutual friend and Skinner's correspondent, Moreton Frewen. Stephen Crane's wording of that dedication had been carefully transmitted by Cora to Pinker back in April. It encoded a grateful acknowledgement of Frewen's efforts to establish a stable financial situation for the novelist and Cora: "To / Moreton Frewen / this small token of things / well remembered by / his friend / Stephen Crane. / Brede Place, Sussex, April, 1900" (Wertheim and Sorrentino 630).

That Henry James should have been a recipient of a copy of Wounds in the Rain from Cora's hands is hardly surprising (Edel1972, 66). Apart from anything else, he had sent money to the Cranes in June, and Cora was keen to make continuing use of James's influence. In Skinner's case, Cora's gift of Wounds in the Rain may be understood as a rather touching act of recognition of the doctor's medical attendance during Stephen Crane's last months. Importantly, the book and its inscription constitutes concrete evidence for Miranda Seymour's contention that Skinner "had never been reproached by Cora for the disastrous inaccuracy of his diagnosis -- an excessively optimistic one -- of Crane's illness" (203). Indeed, it corroborates other evidence to the effect that Cora never saw Skinner's judgment of Crane's condition in such a light, and particularly that at the end, in Badenweiler, she only regretted the doctor's absence. However, the significance of the presentation copy in the context of the financial relationship of the doctor and the Cranes may be more problematical. James's letter to Pinker of August 29 reads, at greater length: and yet I learn that the young local doctor here, who gave almost all his time to them, quite devotedly, during all Crane's illness, and took them to the Black Forest, has never yet, in spite of the money gathered in by her at that time, received a penny, and doesn't in the least expect to. It's really a swindle."

Miranda Seymour comments that James's judgment on Cora "was unnecessarily harsh. Skinner's fare and lodging had been paid, if not his fees" (203). However, Seymour seems to have misread the evolution of James's anger at Skinner's situation. Seymour contends that James's check for £50 accompanying his June 5 letter to Cora was "sent to cover the costs of Dr. Skinner's visits during Crane's last illness," that the check "betrays more anxiety about Skinner's losses than interest in Crane's getting the best possible treatment," and that James's anger sprang from the money not having been directed toward Skinner, as he had expressly wished but having been spent to meet the costs of Stephen's treatment in Germany (36, 202). Yet James's letter of June 5 had placed no such restrictions on the use of the check; quite the contrary: "I feel that I am not taking too much for granted in believing that you may be in the midst of worries on the money-score which will perhaps make the cheque, for Fifty Pounds, that I enclose, a convenience to you. Please view it as such & dedicate it to whatever service it may best render my stricken young friend. It meagrely represents my tender benediction to you." In his letter of August 129, James referred to having sent the check "out of pity for him," but even though this remark occurs in a discussion of Skinner's situation, by "him" James clearly meant Stephen Crane -- not Skinner. James's irritation about Cora's failure to pay Skinner only matured by late August, and perhaps sprang out of James redefining his own motives and intentions with a hindsight that was sharply clarifying his view of Cora, "the importunate lady." By late August he would certainly have been able to see his £50 as just part of "the money gathered in by her at that time" -- a pool of cash that he could now see might reasonably have been in part applied to settling with Skinner. But, in the first instance, James's £50 was clearly sent to help Stephen Crane, and in any way that Cora thought best -- not, as Seymour insists, out of anxiety for "Skinner's losses."

Katz has wisely warned of the dangers of too blithely turning the story of Stephen Crane's death, and in particular, the financial aftermath for Cora, into "standard melodrama." However, some elements of melodrama refuse to go away. Unpaid by August 29, and despite the hope expressed by Cora a few days earlier that all obligations of the estate might be paid off quickly (Gilkes 285), there is little reason to imagine Skinner having been paid by September 28. Crane's debts ran to £1,000; the estate was giving priority to Cora's maintenance over creditors' claims; in October, the solicitor Plant was still urgently seeking a way to pay creditors a dividend. Until she left England the following year, there is much evidence that Cora herself was working hard to secure, and at the same time being dunned for, relatively small sums of money (Gilkes 276, 283, 285). On the one hand, it is hard not to see Cora's presentation copy of Wounds in the Rain to Ernest Skinner as constituting a moving archaeological trace of her genuine gratitude for the professional, practical, and emotional support that the Rye doctor gave both the Cranes earlier in the year -- hard, even, not to see it as the presentation that Stephen would have made had he lived. At the same time, there also may be grounds, given Cora's undoubted financial difficulties, for understanding it more wryly as something of a sop toward a rural general practitioner's forbearance in the matter of the Cranes' financial indebtedness to him. As they came from the publisher into Cora's hands, one copy of Wounds in the Rain went to the Henry James who had sent £50 at a time of need, while another went to the local doctor who had been so much a part of their lives but who was yet to be paid: a small token of things remembered, but perhaps by necessity still rather incompletely remembered, by Mrs. Stephen Crane.

PETER MILES University of Wales, Lampeter

NOTES

WORKS CITED

Edel, Leon, ed. Henry, James: Letters. Vol. 4. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1984 . 4 vols. 1974-84.

-----. The Master, 1901-1916. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1972 . Vol. 5 of Henry James. 5 vols. 1953-72.

Edel, Leon, and Lyall H. Powers, eds. The Complete Notebooks of Henry James. New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1987 .

Gilkes, Lilian. Cora Crane: A Biography of Mrs. Stephen Crane. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1960 .

Gilkes, Lilian, and Robert Wooster Stallman, eds. Stephen Crane: Letters. London: Peter Owen, 1960 .

Hagemann, Earl R. "The Death of Stephen Crane". Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society 77 ( July 1959 ): 173-84.

Katz, Joseph. "The Estate of Stephen Crane". Studies in American Fiction 10 ( 1982 ): 135-50.

Seymour, Miranda. A Ring of Conspirators: Henry James and His Literao Circle, 1895-1915. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1988 .