Unlike the death of Alberto Caeiro, which Pessoa tells us happened decades earlier, or that of Ricardo Reis, which was determined by Saramago and others to have occurred later, the disappearance of Álvaro de Campos, it has been assumed, took place on Saturday, 30 November 1935, the same day that Pessoa himself died. Readers of Portuguese newspapers read the news, but no British newspaper reported the Portuguese poet's death. But there was one death notice in the London Times that has caught my attention. On the very day that Pessoa (and presumably Campos) died, John Drew Cormack, who was born on 15 May 1870, also died – in Glasgow. I quote from the obituary in the Times:

Of the great Western poets, Luis Vaz de Camões (c. 1524-80) remains the least known outside his native land, and, of the premier Western epics, his Os Lusíadas (1572) has the unenviable distinction of continuing to be poetry's best-kept secret. Yet a century and a half after the Portuguese poet's death Voltaire named him the 'Portuguese Virgil', and the nineteenth century, valuing the history and biography embodied in the poem, called him the 'Portuguese Plutarch'. Camões has always had the respect of poets and critics. His poetic eminence was noted by poets such as Torquato Tasso, Góngora, and Goethe, and the dramatist Lope de Vega. In the twentieth century Erich Auerbach called the Lusíadas 'the most beautiful epic of the Iberian Peninsula'. It is 'the great epic of the ocean', he adds, 'which sings of Vasco da Gama's voyage around Africa and the Portuguese colonization of the Indies'. The Lusíadas is universally taken as Portugal's national epic, celebrating the voyages of discovery that, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, made that country a great maritime and imperial power. The 'Lusíadas' of the title are the sons or people of Lusus (the legendary founder of the province the Romans had named Lusitania), that is to say, the Portuguese.

Literature 3 (August 27, 1898), p. 178

Under this heading we may perhaps take note of a book of a different kind. Mr. Stephen Crane's Pictures of War, a collection of seven of his military sketches, beginning with his well-known “Red Badge of Courage,” appeals perhaps to the literary artist more than to the soldier, and the interest of the former in the reprint will be much heightened by the “Appreciation” contributed by Mr. George Wyndham. Mr. Wyndham has much to say that is true, discriminating, and suggestive, though his efforts to say something original in an original way strike one as rather exhausting in this hot weather. He finds but one descriptive deficiency in Mr. Crane:—

This is mentioned as a fault in Mr. Crane's “observation”—perhaps hardly a correct word to use in the case of a writer who, when he drew his first and most famous “picture of war,” is believed to have actually heard neither the whine nor the snatch. There Mr. Crane is at a disadvantage in comparison with Tolstoi, who, so Mr. Wyndham thinks, gives a less true picture of war than the young American with his imaginary battlefield. It might be argued plausibly that to describe fighting it is not necessary to have fought.

Jeannette L. Gilder. “Stephen Crane's New Book of Stories.” New York World, October 25, 1896, p. 25

Mr. Stephen Crane is reported to have said that, when he finished The Little Regiment and Other Episodes of the American Civil War, he would write no more war stories. I have just finished reading an advance copy of this book, by the courtesy of the publishers, D. Appleton & Co., and I am compelled to say that if Mr. Crane has turned his back upon the war story he has snubbed his best friend. The Little Regiment and other tales that go to make this book are as much superior to his “slum” tales—Maggie and George's Mother—as it is possible to imagine. There are tricks of style that show the same hand to have written these stories and the two above mentioned, as well as The Red Badge of Courage, for Mr. Crane is fond of awkward sentences, and he often labors painfully for eccentricity of expression, but at the same time he shows in this book that he can tell a good story when he does not try too hard. Some of his descriptions are remarkably vivid, and they are often more vivid when terse than when he gives more words to them. The story that gives the book its name is of two brothers who belonged to the same regiment, and who, while at heart fond of each other, were apparently bitter enemies.

“By the Late Stephen Crane.” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 10, 1900, p. 13

Stephen Crane's “Great Battles of the World” was among the very last work which came from his pen. The book is made up of eight sketches, each devoted to a historical conflict of arms. The author's purpose was to give a vigorous and vivid story of a number of the great battles in the world's history, whose consequences were far reaching and epoch-making. The list begins with Bunker Hill, then comes the battle of Vittoria in Wellington's Peninsular Campaign of 1812, then the siege of Plevna and next the storming of Burkersdorf Heights, one of the notable battles fought by Frederick the Great against the Austrians in 1762. The other conflicts described are Leipsic and Lutzen in Gustavus Adolphus' campaign in Germany, the storming of Badajos, the battle of New Orleans and the battle of Solferino. It is probable that had Crane's life been prolonged he would have extended the list still further.

We are so accustomed to regarding Stephen Crane as an almost matchless describer of battle scenes that it seems novel to encounter him in a work that is essentially historical in its character. And it will become apparent as the reader peruses these sketches that when his imaginative genius is limited by the necessity of confining himself to the facts of the history, that his spontaneity and the brilliancy of his descriptive style suffers.

Glasgow Evening News, April 22, 1898

Anyone who wants to know what a literary landsman feels like when shipwrecked can get enlightenment from Mr. Stephen Crane's new volume of short tales, “THE OPEN BOAT,” wherein, in the title story, is to be found an account of the author's experiences and sensations while tossed about in a small dinghey after the sinking of the steamer Commodore. This account has a perfectly lightning-like vividness and an intensity of strength that together make the reader feel that he made an invisible fifth in that open boat. All the other stories—or, more accurately, episodes and sketches—have this same glow and this same strength; the complete volume forms a kind of verbal kaleidoscope where a hundred modern scenes—Texan scenes, New York scenes, scenes from the Graeco–Turkish war—glitter forth with startling clearness and incisive force. But the effect at best is tawdry. Mr. Stephen Crane's short stories are after all but journalism apotheosised, glorified newspaper reports. In spite of their wealth of detail, they are thin. In spite of their broad and pitiless humanness they have nothing of true human nature in them, and consequently nothing of permanence. The trail of the special reporter is over them. Yet has Mr. Crane, though he may be ungrammatical on occasion, a wonderful instinct for the right word, and, as fleeting pictures, these tales, like those that have gone before them, will fascinate and thrill.

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 25, 1900, p. 7

Was Stephen Crane a genius? Did he do permanent work; something that will last and become a part of the lasting literature of the English language? There are critics who claim that nothing can really be termed “literature” until it has stood the test of time, and has really become more or less of a classic. It is not often that fiction attains to this distinction, and Crane was a fictionist, pure and simple. His power lay in a certain genius for minute analysis and description, and the skill to endow these with an unusual degree of interest, even when the subject was of the most trivial character. He died before he had come to the full fruition of his genius—power, skill—call it what you will—and we will never know what he might have done had his life been spared, and his mind had time to ripen and expand with increasing knowledge of men and the world of men. But does the work he left behind give any evidence that in time he might have come to a high place among those whose interpretations of human life have secured for them a deathless fame with the generations that come after them? Was it worth while to be so minute in the delineation of a trivial subject? Was it not photography instead of art?

“King of the Irelands.” New York Times, November 21, 1903, p. BR8

A romance galloping splendidly on its headlong way, and looking back now and again to smile gayly and wink at the reader and to jeer at itself, that's “The O'Ruddy.” As a story it begins well and ends well. As a rhodomontade it goes with a whoop and a shower of sparks from the hoofs of speeding horses, high words and jests of the riders flung behind. As a sly satire upon other rhodomontades it is magnificent. You can, if you choose, however, forget the satire utterly in the pounding of horses, the clash of swords, and the resounding hubbub caused by the O'Ruddy “figuring the use of boots” by “kicking a blackguard into the inn yard adjacent,” or be swept along by the whirlwind raised by the same O'Ruddy revolving eagerly about a table in the inn while the Countess of Westport with equal eagerness revolves after him. And you can also, if you are so minded, forget the world and the “commercialism of the age” while you watch the Irish hero run the first swordsman in England harmlessly through the body, or, backed up against a friendly wall, contrive so to pink in the knuckles nine hired ruffians that their nine swords fall clattering all at once to the pavement in a shower of clanging steel, while nine bleeding right fists fly to the nine mouths of the owners.

“New Novels.” Manchester Guardian, April 2, 1902, p. 3

The unusual interest that attaches to the posthumous book of a writer who died while his powers were still unfulfilled is keenly roused by Mr. Stephen Crane's LAST WORDS. Although it would be unfair to criticise this heterogeneous collection of tales and sketches as though it were a finished performance put forward by the author himself, yet we may take it, in its very variety and unevenness, as affording clues to a singular and distinctive temperament. Here we find studies of London, New York, and Ireland; war stories of two centuries, besides sketches and tales, some humorous and some tragic. One quality, the quality of nervous force, runs through all these. The style, quick and pointed, is the same throughout. But the level of excellence reached is astonishingly different. While the humorous sketches all fall flat and the fanciful and imaginative sketches are failures, we find the impressionist studies of great cities and all the war stories and sketches most effective after their kind. It is by comparing his failure with his success that we gain an insight into Mr. Stephen Crane's peculiar faculty. It is an absolutely modern one, the fruit of life in great cities—that of working on the nerve. The tumult of his nerves makes itself felt in describing the ordinary affairs of life, even in comedy, and the result is often jarring and unpleasant. Movements of excitement rouse them to fury.

“New Books.” New York Sun, May 20, 1899

The century is nearly closed, and Stephen Crane may be said to be just in time with his volume of age-end poems entitled “War Is Kind.” The poet has departed from an earlier and distinguished device, and the new poems are not printed in capital letters; still the presentation of them is sufficiently peculiar and comports with the great strangeness of the poems themselves. They are printed in pale type on gray paper, with vast spaces of paper only, and Will Bradley has illustrated them in a conscientious and most becoming manner. Mr. Bradley's picture of a horse dying in a castle moat, on page 29, is one of the most remarkable things in the line of pictorial endeavor that has ever come under our observation. With his right pair of legs the dying steed is scratching himself, while the left pair stick straight up as though calling heaven to witness that here is a horse that has made his 2:40 and never been harnessed to a milk cart. The shaft of a spear protrudes from the breast of the curiously expiring animal. The castle, enlivened by two shoots of gladiolus, towers grimly aloft and trees resembling shad roes decorate the symmetrical top of a neighboring cast iron mountain.

“Notes on New Books.” Manchester Guardian, July 18, 1900, p. 4

The early death of Mr. Stephen Crane is a serious loss to English literature. He had produced enough work to give what seemed a fine promise of better things to come. He had the faculty of conveying in clear and definite language certain states of mind and feeling which have perhaps never before been definitely translated from terms of sense to terms of language. Mr. Crane's description of fear in the “Red Badge of Courage” remains in the memory as a convincing portraiture of a state of mind through which all human beings are liable to pass. In this sense his work is always original; for, however ancient the subject-matter, he was always able to introduce some subtler analysis of the ways of human feeling, some closer observation, some truer perception. These features of his work, which marked him apart from the common run of writers, are almost as conspicuous in his two stories of New York slum life, The Bowery Tales, which were first produced in America in 1896 and are now republished on this side of the Atlantic. The subject here is wholly different from the strenuous and fearful rhapsody of war. It is the ordinary humdrum life of the people in the great settlements of New York.

“Scenes of Low Life: Strong Characters and Incidents Depicted by Stephen Crane in George's Mother.” New York Herald, June 6, 1896, p. 13

A very clever writer is Stephen Crane, and he has written nothing more clever than “George's Mother,” which has just been published by Edward Arnold. A small book it is, and the story is a simple one. The characters in it are not attractive, and the incidents are vulgar, and will to some hypersensitive readers seem repulsive. Mr. Crane has drawn the characters and described the incidents with considerable skill, and if workmanship alone is to be considered “George's Mother” is in some degree a work of art. But workmanship is not the only factor in a literary production, and more than faultless workmanship is needed if a book is to have enduring vitality. Great works of fiction endure from generation to generation, because their characters are either true to life or are stamped with an individuality which renders it impossible for us to forget them. Mr. Crane may some day give us one or two such characters, but I see no trace of them in “George's Mother.” As an authority on slum life he takes high rank, but is it necessary to tell us so very much about life in the slums? Zola has treated this subject with unparalleled skill, and yet at times we even weary of Zola.

“World of Letters.” New York Mail and Express, October 11, 1899, p. 6

In “The Red Badge of Courage,” Mr. Stephen Crane wrote of a war that he did not see, in “Active Service” he tells us of a war that he did see, and which was not. Talk there was—Southern eloquence in comparison with which Daudet's Tarasconnais are taciturn—and embraces, kisses of transport and patriotism, shouts and songs, but no fighting. The modern Epaminondases and Leonidases played the most pitiful farce of modern history, and with their Crownprince marched up the hill and down again. Of all this opera bouffe campaign, which he went to report for a New York paper, Mr. Crane saw but one salient feature—the only one to be seen—and that was emotion misdirected in the channel of talk. There was not even mismanagement, or bad leadership—nothing but a skyrocket that fizzled in the air, and came down a smoking stick. The romance of modern Greece has been effectively dispelled by the modern Greeks themselves.

Having started out to tell a story about a war that was not war at all, Mr. Crane was forced to find its main interest elsewhere. The war, therefore, is mainly one between two women, in which the good one wins in the end, though she, like some of the other characters, occasionally behaves in such a puzzling manner as to perplex the reader.

Chicago Evening Post, December 18, 1899, p. 5

“The Monster,” by Stephen Crane, is one of those painful stories which should, perhaps, never have been written. Being written, it is of those which will never be forgotten by its readers. It is as horrible as Poe's “M. Valdemar” and as real as—well, as real as “The Open Boat.” It contains nothing supernatural, nothing extravagant, nothing which might not actually come to pass in the everyday life of a country town. It is told in a series of patchy chapters, each an episode, a lifelike study elaborated to the fraction of a hair. Never was a truer bit of childlife, never a more astonishing comprehension of polite colored circles in a northern village, never a truer transcript of volunteer fire companies or conversation in a barber-shop, never a more vivid description of the magic action of chemicals.

Some of these disconnected bits are too long, too full of detail, too carefully insisted on; but before the reader can grow weary the artist has put his red patch and his saffron piece and his ghastly blue blot together, and presto! the picture stands forth, startling, ineffaceable. Mr. Crane, in his own willful, unpleasant way, is an artist, and he has here created a small and odious work of art.