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Book—.- 



STUDIES OF LIVING WRITERS 
BY VARIOUS WRITERS 

ARNOLD BENNETT 
JOSEPH CONRAD 
ANATOLE FRANCE 
BERNARD SHAW 
H. G. WELLS 

Others to follow 



JOSEPH CONRAD 




JOSEPH CONRAD 



JOSEPH CONRAD 

A STUDY 



BY 

RICHARD CURLE 



AUTHOR OF 



ASPECTS OF GEORGE MEREDITH,' SHADOWS OUT OF THE CROWD 
' LIFE IS A DREAM ' 



WITH A FRONTISPIECE 



' Efficiency of a practically flawless kind may 
be reached naturally in the struggle for bread. 
But there is something beyond — a higher point, 
a subtle and unmistakable touch of love and 
pride beyond mere skill ; almost an inspiration 
which gives to all work that finish which is 
almost art — which is art.' 

The Mirror of the Sea 



GARDEN CITY NEW YORK 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

1914 






^ 



TO 

CONSTANTIN PHOTIADfeS, 

NOVELIST AND CRITIC 



PREFACE 

The facts in this book relative to Mr Conrad have 
Mr Conrad's authorization, the criticism is entirely my 
own affair. 

No one can realize more clearly than I the difficulty 
of writing a pioneer book about Mr Conrad's works. 
My excuse for doing it must be my excuse for the 
way in which it is done. There are many points that 
need further developing — the individual structure of 
the books, for instance, the general sense of form, the 
realism and romance of Mr Conrad's art, his feeling 
for tragedy, and his philosophy. As to this last, I 
must admit that I dislike the habit of writing gravely 
about the philosophy of novelists. That is to wreck 
the meaning of a work of art, although it is true 
enough that art divorced from ideas soon wears 
very thin. A novelist's philosophy, as such, does 
not concern literary criticism, although his person- 
ality, which is largely the acciimulative effect of his 
outlook, does. The purely moral treatise type of 
fiction is neither more nor less ridiculous than the 
type which is concerned wholly with experiments in 
form. As in everything else, common sense is the 
surest guide in criticism. 

Let me point out here that part of my object in 
writing this book is to arouse interest in the greatest 



viii JOSEPH CONRAD 

and least known of Mr Conrad's novels, in the mar- 
vellous Nostromo. My judgment in regard to this 
novel is, I believe, heterodox, and I am aware that 
it is almost impossible to convert critics who have 
already made up their minds, but I do hope that 
what I have to say will have some influence. 

This study of Mr Conrad has been written both for 
the students of his work and for those who know 
nothing about it. (The last part of Chapter II. and 
all of Chapter III. are especially intended for the 
latter.) But throughout I have aimed at real criti- 
cism and not mere statement or, in fact, mere 
rhetoric. I should like to add that I have re- 
ceived many very valuable suggestions from various 
friends, of which I have made the freest use. 

But, indeed, Mr Conrad is in some respects his 
own best critic. Readers of Some Reminiscences 
will remember that that book is full of remarks as to 
his methods and ideas — criticism of the subtlest and 
most distinguished order. (" Conrad's Achievement 
in the Light of his own Criticism " would make an 
absorbing twelfth chapter to this study.) But it is 
in The New Review for 1897, in that discarded Preface 
to The Nigger of the " Narcissus," that Mr Conrad has 
most beautifully crystalHzed the very foundations of 
his artistic ideals. Those forgotten pages should be 
in the hands of every student of Mr Conrad's work. 

R. C. 

April 1914 



CONTENTS 



Preface ..... 

CHAP. 

I. Conrad, his Critics and his Contempor 

ARIES .... 

II. Conrad's Biography and Autobiographical 
Books .... 

III. Conrad's Novels and Stories 

IV. Conrad's Atmosphere 
V. Conrad as Psychologist 

VI. Conrad's Men 
VII. Conrad's Women 
VIII. Conrad's Irony and Sardonic Humour 
IX. Conrad's Prose 
X. Conrad as Artist 
XL Conrad's Position in Literature . 
List of Conrad's Published Books 
Index ...... 



PAGE 

vii 



15 
27 
66 
92 
112 

145 
161 
180 
198 
222 
237 
239 



ix 



CHAPTER I 

CONRAD, HIS CRITICS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 

I HAVE long wished to say something about Conrad 
which could not be said in the space of a single article. 
Since I first began to read his books I have been drawn 
to them to a very unusual extent. And that must be 
my chief excuse for doing what it is generally ridiculous 
to do, writing a book about a living author. In fact, 
to write books at all about authors is rather stupid. 
People form their opinions for themselves. Moreover, 
time settles all questions of merit with a pretty 
accurate hand. Yes, it is so, and for my final justifica- 
tion I must fall back on a profound conviction. And 
my conviction is thi&— that Conrad's work actually 
does mark a new epoch. 

I know that it is easy, and not in the least convincing, 
to make such statements, and that the only proof of 
the pudding is in the eating. And therefore I would 
urge every reader of this book to study Conrad for 
himself. For criticism, unlike creation, has few magic 
words at its service. There is a kind of intuitive 
accord that seems to defy expression, a kind of close 
and familiar appreciation that seems to illumine the 
mind and to paralyse the tongue. The business of 
criticism is to surmount this impasse between con- 
viction and the power to convince. And I believe that 
it can be done. No doubt the magic word would 
A ^ 



^ JOSEPH CONRAD 

clothe the voiceless perception in a way that logic 
alone could not, for it would be the creative element 
in criticism and would possess the illusive qualities 
of the thing criticised, but, failing that, the same result 
can be attained, at last, by absolute sincerity and 
sympathy. In the long run these do achieve their 
purpose, they do present a real picture, they do sur- 
mount the fearful obstacle of which all critics are so 
acutely aware. And that is what I would like to 
claim for this monograph. I have studied Conrad's 
works very closely and I have come to some definite 
conclusions. It is these that I present here as well as 
I can. 

Of course, Conrad is an exceptionally difficult 
writer to discuss. He is one of these men whose extra- 
ordinarily vivid personality pervades everything he 
writes to such an extent that a good many people 
do find him impossible to read. One must differentiate 
all this from mere mannerism, the mannerism that 
spoils such writers as Meredith and Hugo. It is not 
mannerism in the case of men like Conrad, that is 
to say, it is not the mannerism of eccentricity, it is 
the positive strength of their personality. Flaubert, 
for instance, an indubitably great artist, arouses this 
antipathy to a marked degree. He could efface him- 
self in one sense, but in another he was visible in 
every line of his work, and not only visible, because, 
of course, everyone who is anyone is that, but visible 
in a singular and almost menacing fashion. He sets 
up in certain minds a temperamental antagonism. 
Nor is he unique in that. Other commanding writers 
do the same, such writers as Dostoievsky and Walt 
Whitman, for instance. And now, as far as I can 
judge, we have to add Conrad to this list. Some 
people of intelligence are quite hostile to Conrad. I 



CRITICS AND CONTEMPORARIES 3 

think it must be that he seems to envelop things with 
his own sombre and poetic imagination rather than 
show them to us in their actual light. Take, for ex- 
ample, his story "Youth" and contrast it with Hudson's 
The Purple Land. Essentially they are both concerned 
with the same idea — the glamour and romance of 
youth ; but I can quite understand people asserting 
that Hudson's story does give the feeling of youth, 
whereas Conrad's story gives only a philosophic 
dream of what youth ought to be. Even if that were 
true, which I doubt, I do not think it matters (it is 
the difference between a self-conscious and an unself- 
conscious artist) ; but I see why the supposition 
might arise, and, in seeing that, I grasp what it 
is about Conrad that is antipathetic to some. It 
is his passionately romantic, melancholy, and ironic 
mind. 

But, of course, there is also a much simpler reason. 
To read Conrad calls for exertion, and nowadays that 
is enough to damn an3^one. The exertion arises from 
the fact that he is imaginative, and requires, in his 
readers, a corresponding and increasing effort of the 
imagination. Reading him, as a friend of mine says, 
is " like a leap of the mind." And, furthermore, 
he is a visualiser. To follow him we have to form 
very definite images. He actually excites the optic 
nerve. Unless the reader is prepared for this effort 
he will lose half the effect. And, again, although he 
is romantic and a visualiser yet he is emphatically a 
man of hard edges. In a few words he can create a 
sharp outline. This is an almost unique gift, and 
combined as it is with his romantic manner, is quite 
sufficient to arouse our lurking and natural antagonism 
for the unexpected. 

And Conrad's reputation suffers from another and 



JOSEPH CONRAD 



a much more insidious cause. It appears to me that 
he is positively misunderstood by many of the people 
who admire him most. I do not know how I can put 
it better than by saying that he is regarded as the 
author of Lord Jim rather than as the author of 
Nostromo. Anyone who really understands Conrad 
will follow me. For Lord Jim, powerful as it is, is 
representative, on the whole, of the more ordinary 
and didactic side of Conrad, whereas the neglected 
Nostromo is representative of a much subtler, more 
moving, and more truly creative side. Indeed, 
Nostromo has an imaginative maturity quite beyond 
the scope of Lord Jim. That one instance gives us 
the key to a widespread misconception about Conrad 
— a misconception none the less complete and all the 
more difficult to refute from the fact that it is half- 
hidden under the guise of judicial wisdom. I don't 
want to be misapprehended. I only take the question 
of Lord Jim and Nostromo as a sort of symbol to explain 
something I find it hard to explain. It seems to me 
that the really poetical and thrilling things in Conrad 
are largely ignored and that they are ignored because 
most of the critics are upon the wrong tack. Most, 
not all. Moreover, there is a kind of Conrad ' ' tradition 
in the air — a thing as dea.dly to a man as a spider's 
web to a fly. For a tradition enwraps an artist's 
endeavour in a mist of delicate falsehood. How many 
careers have been ruined by an epigram ? And though 
Conrad is obviously too striking a writer to be sum- 
marised in a phrase, still the critics have begun to 
expect from him work of a certain kind. Not only is 
he pre- judged, which at the best is a stultifying process, 
but he is pre-judged along bad lines. These " tradi- 
tions " about authors are always dangerous, and 
v/hen they are positively wrong then the whole critical 



CRITICS AND CONTEMPORARIES 5 

ground slips from under the feet. Year by year 
Conrad is emerging into recognition, a Conrad famous, 
respected, but a Conrad more or less " placed." And 
" placing " is a compliment v/hich is meant to round 
you off for good and all. 

These charges are vague, indeed, and hard to sub- 
stantiate. There has been little set criticism of Conrad 
and the ordinary book review is notoriously untrust- 
worthy. Of course, I do not mean to say there has 
not been some good criticism. The most penetrating 
I have read was that by Ford Madox Hueffer in The 
English Revieiv for December 191 1. Unfortunately 
it is very slight. But, indeed, it is to Edward 
Garnett that readers of Conrad owe the greatest 
debt. For he was the first to "discover" him — 
if I must use such an offensive expression. That his 
earliest work should have fallen into the hands of 
this eclectic and un-insular critic is something to 
be thankful for. For Conrad has told me, himself, 
that if Almayer's Folly had been rejected he would 
never have written another book. But, except for 
such rare and shining exceptions, we can put all the 
criticisms aside. If I had to prove my point from them 
alone it would be easy enough. Denser ineptitudes 
never gave heartier praise to an original genius. I 
include my own past writings. But in saying that 
discerning critics miss the best in Conrad I am not 
talking so much of the written word. The wisest 
remarks about modern authors are nearly alwaj'^s 
those spoken, and' it is in conversation, mainly, that 
one feels the pulse of current opinion. And though 
I have heard some very wise and piercing things said 
about Conrad the general pulse is beating in a groove 
and beating in vain. And in all this, let me emphasise, 
I am not referring to his enemies but to his admirers. 



6 JOSEPH CONRAD 

For it is they who have leavened public taste in regard 
to Conrad. 

In making the general statement that Conrad is 
not properly understood I do not want to run my 
head against a wall. I know I put my case roughly. 
Such impressions are often only highly sensitive re- 
actions and as such quite beyond positive proof. A 
parrot cry is easy to lay hold of, but a mental attitude 
is like a will-o'-the-wisp. Besides, criticism has 
become something of an intellectual vested interest. 
When critics get hold of an author they are not only 
annoyed if outsiders disagree with them, but they are 
annoyed if the author, himself, disagrees. In other 
words, they are pained when an author's work does not 
fit into their preconceived theories about it. That 
is one reason why critics are so fond of labels. The 
more remarkable the author the more intolerant are 
they of his reputation. This is curious but easily 
explicable. Anyone whose personality lies strongly 
upon his work is bound to affect his readers in a very 
definite way. At once an image is formed, which 
is cherished like a fetish and guarded with an excluding 
jealousy. Such images are precious, dogmatic, and 
easily outraged. (I need only instance the reception 
of The Secret Agent in Conrad's case.) Whatever 
happens, the author is prejudged. And in my opinion 
Conrad is in grave peril of this. The final word on 
him trembles upon the critics' lips. 

The truth of the matter is that Conrad, as a pheno- 
menon, is as yet but little realised. He is still con- 
founded with men of talent. For it is hard to believe 
that a real genius can have arisen with so small a 
perceptible stir. Conrad never woke to find himself 
suddenly famous. And the very scope and essence 
of his originality is bewildering. For he is not simply 



CRITICS AND CONTEMPORARIES 7 

original in the ordinary sense, he is volcanic without 
being anarchic. There is nothing bizarre about 
Conrad. His work belongs to a tradition (not an 
English tradition, it is true), but it no more resembles 
the work from which it derives than a fish spued up 
from the bottom of the Atlantic might resemble a fish 
of the surface except in so far as they were both fishes. 
The volcanic in Conrad staggers some people, whereas 
his lack of anarchy and fanaticism annoys others. 
For in England an original writer is the man of ideas 
rather than the man of subtlety. We want brilliance, 
and if we cannot have brilliance we want a problem. 
It is not the least surprising that men like Shaw, 
Wells, and Galsworthy are so influential. They are 
influential because they are representative of the best 
side of English insularity. Of course their popularity 
is as nothing compared to that of Florence Barclay 
or Hall Caine, and perhaps not even so big as that of 
the society novelists, Hichens, Benson, Locke, and so 
on, but they are probably as popular as any intel- 
lectuals are ever likely to be with us. Conrad's genius, 
on the other hand, is foreign to even the most advanced 
English tradition. He is not concerned with righting 
the world and he is not sparkling. He is neither the 
novelist of himself like Chesterton nor the novelist 
of types like Meredith. He is the novelist of real 
people. Such impersonality has never been appre- 
ciated in England. And Conrad's romantic spirit, 
too, is alien to the English mind. It is not the mere 
spirit of improbable adventure, but a sort of philosophy 
impressing itself with ardour and pessimism upon the 
splendour and darkness of the world. Romance as 
the last word of realism is an uncomfortable idea. 
People hasten to explain it by the word "Slavonic," 
just as they hasten to explain the exuberance of his 



8 JOSEPH CONRAD 

style by the words " The Tropics " — if, indeed, anyone 
who so transgresses the ideals of Pater and Wilde 
can be said to have a style at all. 

To speak frankly, there is a far-reaching popular 
delusion as to style. What is regarded by many 
people as style is technique of a particularly con- 
ceited and self-conscious type. Not only has taste 
for the negative qualities been obliterated, but taste 
for the robust personal qualities as well. I discuss 
Conrad's prose elsewhere, so will merely say here that 
his defects and his qualities alike would horrify a 
"stylist." Who can wonder at the reaction against 
style or blame those who consider it a devilish inven- 
tion, banishing jollity, and humanity ? Better far 
revert to fire-works, morality, and complicated plots 
than swoon with " stylists " in a garden of roses. 

That Conrad should have an increasing reputation 
on the Continent is not astonishing, for, after all, 
his affinities lie there, but that he is now considerably 
read in England and America calls for some remark. 
Of course, there is a fashion in these things, founded 
chiefly on curiosity and vanity, but we must suppose, 
also, that Conrad's enormous power has really begun 
to make headway against prejudice. If ever a man 
has forced the enemy's gate that man is Conrad. It 
is an odd thing that both in England and America 
deep originality is generally appreciated in the long 
run though it may not be much understood. And 
in both countries people are now becoming " aware " 
. of Conrad, although he is too massive to be seen clearly 
all at once. It is always thus. 

But when we talk of Conrad's popularity (for fame 
is not popularity) we must bear in mind that there 
are other reasons that militate against him. He is 
aloof not only in his style but in his whole manner and 



CRITICS AND CONTEMPORARIES 9 



range of subject. He does not give us the warm, 
comfortable feeling of an Arnold Bennett. About 
him there is not that placid, unhurried faculty which 
makes Bennett's finest novels so engrossing and so easy 
to read. Conrad is as restless as the sea. And his sar- 
donic humour hovers over his work with a suggestion, 
not so much of mockery as in Anatole France, as of 
disillusionment. His irony can be severe (as in " Heart 
of Darkness "), or it can be a form of pity (as in " Freya 
of the Seven Islands"), but in any case it is "un- 
English." And furthermore, his psychology is partly 
developed in disquieting hints — in that resembling the 
wonderful psychology of Dostoievsky. In no sense is 
Conrad a "homely" writer. He knows too much about 
"the secret of hearts" to be that, even had he placed the 
scenes of his books in the valley of the Thames instead 
of in the wild places of dark continents, as he usually 
does. And, indeed, when he choses London for his 
scene, as in The Secret Agent, there is something 
mysterious and exotic in his touch which throws a 
film of sinister romance over the friendly city. 

And then, again, Conrad is not preoccupied solely 
with the emotion of love. That, generally speaking, 
is the great touchstone of popularity, although, 
strangely enough, two of the most popular of modern 
writers, Stevenson and Synge, did try to avoid it as 
much as possible. It is a sickness that has affected 
nearly every writer of our time with a fatal loss of 
the sense of proportion. Of course, literature has 
always concerned itself with passion, but it is only 
recently, as time goes, that it has turned it into a 
universally morbid disease. Introspection has much 
to answer for in art even if it has unbared for us the 
last shelters of egoism. 

Although Conrad is an artist there is nothing in 



10 JOSEPH CONRAD 

him of that pale phantom " art for art's sake." After 
all, he is absorbed with life, and his choice of words 
and his descriptive ability are part of, and not distinct 
from, that illusion of reality which he is intent on 
creating. You will not find in him the corrupt 
simplicity of a George Moore or the dashing pose of a 
Cunninghame Graham. And being entirely natural 
he is neither purposely hectic like Masefield, nor pur- 
posely vulgar like Kipling. His work, like the work 
of Henry James, is essentially dignified and quite 
untinged by the pettiness of conscious self-approval. 
That is not to deny that it is mannered. In its own 
way it is as mannered as the work of Stevenson. But 
Stevenson allowed his love of words to get between 
him and his object, whereas Conrad, with a similar 
love of words, realises that they are subordinate 
to the object itself. Both Conrad and Henry James 
have a passion for their theme. And thus their 
mannerisms have a genuine ring and, not being an 
aim in themselves, merge at last, together with all 
their other idiosyncrasies, into one revelation of the 
" grand manner " — a term for expressing real emin- 
ence in art. 

Although a writer of Conrad's calibre must eventually 
have been recognised, still it is interesting to notice 
that he did appear at a rather favourable moment. 
Within the last few years a new and vitalising energy 
has been breathed into English literature, which had 
been languishing deplorably since the early '90's, 
since the end of the aesthetes and the dawn of the 
empire builders. Men of concrete vigour and tireless 
production are now the leaders. And it is on the crest 
of their popularity that Conrad, himself outside and 
beyond their ideals, has achieved fame. Let me make 
myself clear. He could not have gained his reputation 



CRITICS AND CONTEMPORARIES 11 

unless he had been what he is, but under the anaemic 
conditions of twenty years ago he could hardly have 
gained it at all. A wave of sound common sense has 
blown the cobwebs out of English literature — (that 
it has blown in other obnoxious things in their stead 
is not our business here). Conrad could only be 
understood in a society where reality had some sort 
of a hold. 

But I will venture the remark that it is Stevenson, 
rather than the contributors to The Yellow Book or 
The National Observer, who has poisoned our English 
critical intelligence for a decade. For Stevenson's 
appeal is more cunning. He is neither unhealthy nor 
exaggerated and he does not lay himself open to ridicule 
or hatred. Our error has been in taking him too 
seriously. Why should this charming light-weight 
be considered a demi-god ? His mind was intelligent, 
humane, but not particularly distinguished, and his 
style was a transparent and empty mannerism. But 
his personality was attractive and his appeal has the 
glitter of romance. And the result of it all is really 
disastrous. In innumerable minds he is now the model 
of what an artist should be. And by this standard 
the great masters are judged and found wanting. 
Stevenson sailed delightfully over the surface, little 
guessing of the tragic depths waiting to be plumbed 
by men like Conrad. 

Well, this is something of a digression, but it may 
serve to show one of the reasons why such a writer 
as Conrad finds himself, so to speak, on virgin soil in 
England. People take a long time to admit that 
there are two sides to a question and a still longer to 
admit that the second side may be the correct one. 
And even if they allow Conrad to be an artist, his 
art may seem to them almost purposeless. Realism 



u 



12 JOSEPH CONRAD 

uncoloured by erotic emotion appears to belie its 
title. In England one allows for the attenuated 
mysticism of a W. B. Yeats or a Rabindranath Tagore, 
and one allows for the frank sensuality of an H. G. 
Wells or a D. H. Lawrence, but one looks askance at 
I , an austere morality that is founded neither on the 
\ life of dreams nor on the restraint of the senses. That- 
\'. remark of Giorgio Viola's at the end of No stroma, 
when everything is shattering about his head, " Si — 
duty," falls upon inattentive ears., Few of us can even 
appreciate the incorruptibility of the old Garibaldino. 
But to Conrad duty is the basis not only of existence 
but of art itself. I state this with no moralising 
significance — Conrad's work is built upon no idea 
other than that of reality. But to him sincerity, 
duty, self-command are essential to reality. Without 
them there is only the chaos of anarchy. That is 
why so much modern literature is worthless — because, 
in its very essence, it is insincere and consequently 
anarchic. For there is as much anarchy in the banal 
as in Post-Impressionism. 

I have no wish, in this chapter, to be led into a dis- 
cussion of Conrad's work or point of view. I just put 
forward these instances to try to account, in part, 
for his lack of wider and deeper appreciation. There 
are yet other causes no doubt. A certain indirectness 
in his manner of narration must explain a good deal, 
and a monotonous richness of language in his earlier 
work has certainly repelled many. The popular idea 
■of Conrad as a "picturesque " writer is unfortunate, 
because people at once jump to the conclusion that he 
is that and nothing more. In the ordinary way there 
is not much critical discrimination in England and 
one false cry may help or retard a man's reputation 
for years. Still, why should I labour a subject that 



CRITICS AND CONTEMPORARIES 13 

will soon be merely historical ? For I am sure that 
Conrad's day is at hand and that once his sun has 
risen it will not set. 

I do not mean, of course, that he will ever be popular. 
His work is not cast in that mould. But I mean that 
he will be genuinely revered. The popular appeal 
is not necessarily debased and Conrad's v/ork loses 
something by not possessing it. It loses a certain 
universal significance which is the birthright of those 
artists, such artists as Shakespeare, or Turgenev, 
or even Maupassant, who have also been popular. 
And it must be understood that by artists I mean 
realists. In my opinion realists are the only true artists 
in fiction. And I do not mean the realism of a Zola 
which is coarseness or the realism of a Dickens which 
is caricature — I mean, essentially, the realism of a 
writer like Turgenev or Conrad, the realism, in fact, 
of typical and distinguished reality. Anthony 
Trollope, it is true, is a realist, but he has obviously 
a second rate intelligence and therefore his creations 
are wanting in the highest actuality. They are not 
imagined with the passionate nuances of real life. 
So when I say that Conrad lacks the popular appeal 
I am not really meaning the appeal of a man like 
Dickens (great genius though he is), but rather the 
appeal of a man of his own genre such as Turgenev. 

There is something exalted in Conrad's creations 
which will for ever keep them slightly apart from wide- 
spread sympathy. We must grasp that when com- 
paring him with his contemporaries, some of whom 
have more than a touch of this intimate, universal 
appeal. In a sense it is easier to get en rapport with 
the people of Gissing or Bennett than with the people 
of Conrad. This is partly for two reasons. Firstly, 
they have a wider general interest, and secondly they 



U JOSEPH CONRAD 

lack just that touch of distinction which is inherent 
in the projections of a mind as subtly reserved as 
Conrad's. About all Conrad's work there is a kind 
of aristocratic flavour which has nothing directly to 
do with the work itself. Just consider the difference 
between his view of the East and Kipling's view. 
There is something sublime about one and something 
cockney about the other. Conrad is a philosopher 
and Kipling is an observer. Both have sanity (that 
uncommon possession), both know their subject, 
both show literary genius — and yet no two men could 
be further apart. For Conrad has his eye upon destiny, 
whereas Kipling has his eye upon Simla society. 

Of course, there is a good deal of unfairness in this 
comparison — as there is in all such comparisons. 
One sets out to prove a point and one proves it — but 
other people may not agree that the point is worth 
proving or that it has, indeed, been fairly proved. 
On certain formulas one can demonstrate that almost 
anyone is either great or negligible. Fortunately 
unbacked ex parte statements do not carry conviction. 
I say all this because I am unwilling that people should 
think that I am simply putting Conrad on a pinnacle. 
I quite realise Conrad's defects and I quite realise 
other people's merits. But perfection is not neces- 
sarily a criterion of genius and the finest writers may 
be the easiest to criticise. What differentiates Conrad 
from nearly all his contemporaries is the quality of 
greatness. He is on a different plane, as it were, and 
therefore comparisons are almost certain to miss the 
real point. I present this here as an opinion, but in 
the following pages I hope to demonstrate it as a 
truth. 



BIOGRAPHY AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY 25 

the two men ! For it is in such things, above all, 
that the secret character reveals itself. Who, for 
instance, would not respect Evelyn more than Pepys, 
and like Pepys more than Evelyn ? And Conrad, 
in his two books of memories, stands before us in the 
clear light of day. He may tell us little about himself 
in one way, in the material way, but in another he 
tells us much. To read these books sympathetically 
is to understand Conrad's attitude towards life and 
art. His works should never again be mysterious to 
us, as the works of the few men of real temperamental 
genius are so apt to be. No, these two books of 
Conrad's are the true " open sesame " to his novels 
and stories. In the complete rectitude and sincerity 
of his art he never allows imagination to rob him for 
more than a moment of his hold upon the earth. 

Indeed, as I said before, many of his stories are 
actually founded upon incidents of his own career. 
That is partly why they possess, against their romantic 
background, such an air of invincible reality. They 
are the products of an enormously active and dramatic 
memory, a memory whose main outline is filled in and 
amplified by a very sure artistic grasp. Conrad's 
philosophy and romance may colour all his work 
but they never distort it. For they only exist to the 
point of making his realism more dramatic. His own 
reminiscences are the foundation of his stories — some- 
times obviously, sometimes so subtly that no exact 
relationship could be established. For I think one 
does feel that almost all the characters in Conrad, 
and a great proportion of the events, have definite 
prototypes — if it be only in embryo. And the more 
one studies these two autobiographical books the more 
one feels this. For he shows us admittedly real people, 
admittedly real incidents precisely as he shows us the 



/ 

/ 



26 JOSEPH CONRAD 

people and incidents of imagination. His is the art, 
which, at its best, conceals the effort in the con- 
summate ease and realism of his manner. And, con- 
sequently, in the two books where he is recounting 
actual adventures there is neither a greater nor a 
lesser air of reality than in his stories and novels. For 
the realism of the former is toned down by art and the 
art of the latter is saturated with realism, 

I cannot end this chapter without commenting on 
the astonishing series of events that led a Polish boy 
to enter the British Merchant Service, and a master 
mariner to become a novelist. It seems quite incom- 
prehensible — one of these marvellous " flukes " that 
fate keeps up its sleeve for a hundred years and then 
flings in our face. I will not enlarge : it is more astound- 
ing as a mere fact than any embroidery could make it. 
It is, indeed, strangely appropriate that the man who 
has led one of the most wandering and one of the 
hardest lives of our time should have written the most 
realistically-romantic novels of our age. 



CHAPTER III 

Conrad's novels and stories 

Let me say at once that this chapter, hke the previous 
one, is of small critical importance and will not interest 
real students of Conrad. They are advised not to read 
it. It is, as it were, spade-work — rather dull but of 
a certain value. For I think it best, before starting 
upon a reasoned examination of Conrad's art, to give 
a short summary of all his published novels and stories. 
(I say " published," because Mr Conrad has completed 
another novel of the East which has not yet appeared, 
and also because there are about half a dozen short 
stories of his which have been issued serially but have 
not as yet been gathered into a volume. But there is 
nothing to be gained from criticising work that cannot 
easily be consulted.) So that this chapter must be 
considered more explanatory than critical. And yet 
even in my summaries I present the spirit rather than 
the story — they are not complete, they only suggest 
the salient ideas. Conrad's books are not sufficiently 
well known for one to assume a general knowledge 
of them in every reader, and as I shall constantly 
have to refer to them it does seem wiser to have them 
definitely and concisely before our eyes once and for 
all. Of course an objection may well be raised to 
the method of this book as a whole ; and, in the 
ordinary course, I agree that a more valuable study 
might be produced by devoting a separate chapter 
to each one of Conrad's books rather than by dwelling 

?7 



28 JOSEPH CONRAD 

on the distinct phases of his work. No one can see 
more clearly than I do the danger of discussing an 
author's qualities in any other way but as part of a 
criticism of individual books — the books not being 
a mere casket containing various mental attributes but 
themselves the living body — but I have decided on 
the course I have because I want to prove certain 
things about Conrad which will pave the road to a 
more minute study of his books. I do not lose sight 
of the fact that, though individual excellencies may 
make a novelist remarkable, it is only by the continuity 
of the completed structure that he can be judged as 
an artist — I do not lose sight of that fact either in 
theory or in practice. For this book is not a mere 
introduction to Conrad, though, being a pioneer book, 
I have had to lay emphasis on things that in future 
may be taken for granted and to treat his work, con- 
sequently, in a manner that is not the ideally critical 
one. Some day Conrad may have a critic who will 
build up a vast edifice from the subtle dissection of 
a few novels ; but for me it is enough to prove that 
he is a writer worthy of such a critic. 

This, therefore, must be my excuse for the arrange- 
ment of the whole book and for the drawn-out 
simplicity of this special chapter. 

Up to the present Conrad has published ten novels 
(two of them in collaboration with Ford Madox 
Hueffer) and five volumes of stories. I will examine 
his own novels to begin with. 

His first book is Almayer's Folly (1895). This 
" story of an Eastern River " is one of illusion, weariness, 
and irresistible passion. Almayer is the white trader, 
the only white trader, of Sambir, a distant and obscure 



CONRAD'S NOVELS AND STORIES 29 

settlement up the river Pantai of an island in the Dutch 
East Indies. He has been there many, many years, 
first with high hope, with much business, and under 
the protection of powerful Captain Lingard, the 
famous and dreaded " Rajah Laut," but latterly with 
nothing left to him but his love for his half-caste 
daughter Nina and his belief in a vast treasure waiting 
for him in the interior. For Captain Lingard has 
disappeared for ever, ruined and broken, and the 
wily Abdulla, the Arab treacherously introduced so 
long ago by Willems (see An Outcast of the Islands), 
has sapped the very life of his trade. A heretic 
amongst the True Believers, the once-influential 
Almayer passes a despised and perilous existence beside 
the steaming waters of the Pantai. Everything around 
him has sunk into decay before his brooding and 
embittered sight, but at last hope, in the form of Dain 
Maroola, a Malay of noble family, has come to him 
with the promise of wealth. For it is with Dain the 
great expedition into the interior is to be made. And 
with the gold he and Nina will escape from their prison 
to Europe, and all the misery of the past will be blotted 
out. But in these visions of a splendid future Almayer 
is blind to the present, and even as he dreams of 
perfect felicity, Dain, the conspirator, has stolen away 
the heart of Nina. And far from that forlorn and 
hopeless spot she flies with him across the sea, the 
mysterious and untamed Nina, to the house of his 
father, the Rajah. But Almayer, weakly violent and 
affectionate by turns, sinks under the double blow 
of calamity and disappointment. 

There is a secret air of plotting in this book, the plot- 
ting of the local Rajah, Lakamba, and his councillor, 
the one-eyed and pessimistic Babalatchi, the plotting 
of Almayer and Dain, of Dain and the Rajah, of Dain 



^0 JOSEPH CONRAD 

and Nina, of Babalatchi and Mrs Almayer, of Abdulla 
and the Dutch, and, as it were, the patient and 
sombre plotting of the forces of nature. For the 
stifling, moist, and foetid smell of the jungle fills the 
book with a whispered tension. The poisonous breath 
of the river and of the rotting forests seems to have 
entered into the hearts of all these actors, and there 
is positive relief in the thought of Almayer's death. 
Almayer's Folly is not one of Conrad's easiest stories 
to read. Its monotonous and oppressive atmosphere 
has an almost physical effect upon the nerves. But 
it is an imposing effort of its kind, this sinister revela- 
tion of a tropical backwater. 

Conrad's next book is An Outcast of the Islands 
(1896). This is another tragic story of Sambir and 
the Pantai, and it would have been almost better 
to consider it before Almayer's Folly because it treats 
of a date fifteen to twenty years anterior to that novel. 
In An Outcast of the Islands Almayer is still young and 
Nina a tiny child. Captain Lingard is still in his full 
vigour, there is still activity on the wharf of Lingard 
and Co., and the influence of Abdulla is but a shadow. 
And, indeed, all might have remained well but for 
the cursed Willems, Hudig's defaulting clerk from 
Macassar. It was Captain Lingard, autocratic and 
indulgent, who had given Willems his first start in 
life, and it was Captain Lingard who bore him off to 
the safe retreat of Sambir when the outraged Hudig 
thrust him forth with curses. From the outset 
Willems and Almayer hate one another. It is a thing 
the likelihood of which Captain Lingard should have 
guessed. When he sailed down the river, leaving 
the two men together in the treacherous solitude of 
the forest, he might have known that disaster would 



CONRAD'S NOVELS AND STORIES 31 



follow. But he knew only that his will was law and 
that he, the benevolent despot, was doing everything 
for the best. Willems, idle and bored to death, 
meets in his forest walks the enchanting Aissa, daughter 
of the old sea-pirate who lives under Lakaniba's pro- 
tection. They love with the swift and passionate 
abandon of the East. And it is in the slavish infatua- 
tion of this white man that the one-eyed Babalatchi 
grasps an opening for his eternal sense of intrigue. 
Aissa is taken secretly from Willems, and in the 
madness of his raving he is told that only under one 
condition will he ever see her again — on the condition 
of pilotting Abdulla's ship from the river's mouth to 
the settlement. Abdulla is rich, he is unscrupulous, 
and once he is in Sambir the power of Lingard, the 
dreaded " Rajah Laut," will cease. The infatuated 
Willems, a megalomaniac and a man without con- 
science, commits this baseness ; and the rich preserve 
of the white captain, his benefactor, is filched from him 
for ever. 

The latter part of the story consists of Captain 
Lingard' s punishment of Willems. He returns to 
the settlement and he finds out all from the in- 
dignant Almayer. On his boat he had actually 
brought with him Willem's wife and child and he came 
back full of plans and good thoughts for his protege. 
But his revenge is terrible enough. He sentences 
Willems to perpetual imprisonment in a dark clearing 
of the Pantai. Before him the river, behind him and 
on both sides the impenetrable jungle. Willem's 
love for Aissa has turned to loathing and he seeks 
desperately to escape. But at the moment of his 
flight (made possible — in appearance — by the 
treachery of Almayer), she shoots him with his own 
revolver. 



5^ JOSEPH CONRAD 

The story of An Outcast of the Islands is one of 
violent emotion soon spent — like a tropical downpour. 
There is scheming in it, hatred, and passion. The 
action is, I consider, too long drawn out, but 
the situation is impressive and even terrible. As 
in Almayer's Folly the teeming, patient, and silent 
life of the wilds weighs upon every person and thing, 
colouring the whole aspect of nature not only in a 
material but in a spiritual sense. An Outcast of the 
Island reeks of the dank undergrowth. 

The Nigger of the " Narcissus " (1898) is Conrad's 
third novel. It is the story of one voyage of the sail- 
ing-ship Narcissus from Bombay to London — a story 
dealing with calms and with storms, with mutiny on 
the high seas, with bravery and with cowardice, with 
tumultuous life, and with death, the releaser from 
toil. " The nigger of the Narcissus " is James Wait, 
a huge St Kitts negro, who is dying from con- 
sumption but who clings to existence with scorn, with 
terror, and with evil words. His sinking hfe hangs 
like a mill-stone round the hearts of the sailors. Only 
Donkin, the Cockney, who pilfers from the dying man, 
feels in his dirty little soul no touch of compassion. 

It is, in fact, the nigger who is the centre figure of 
the book. From the moment he steps aboard at 
Bombay till the moment his dead body is lowered 
into the northern sea he dominates the whole life of 
the ship. The wastrel Donkin is cunning enough to 
use him and his illness as a lever for stirring up unrest 
in the hearts of the crew. They admire their officers 
but they cannot understand their attitude towards 
the dying man. And bewilderment to simple men is 
the first step in disorganisation. But the individual 
human interest is incidental to the real purpose of 



CONRAD'S NOVELS AND STORIES 33 

the story, which is to conjure up the actual spirit of 
a voyage, to make it live again before our very eyes. 
This book is realistic in the finest sense, alike in its 
atmosphere and its characterisation. We can almost 
smell the ocean, almost feel the ship moving beneath 
our feet, almost sense the tropical heat and the winter 
cold. And it is the same when we come to look at the 
men. The pictures of the three officers, and of such 
men as Singleton, " a sixty-year-old child of the 
mysterious sea," of Podmore the cook, of Craig (known 
commonly as " Belfast "), of Wait the nigger, and of 
the despised (and influential) Donkin, are extraordin- 
arily defined and brilliant. 

It is impossible to say much about The Nigger of the 
" Narcissus," because it is still more a novel without 
a plot than Vanity Fair is a novel without a hero. 
And yet it is one of Conrad's most original conceptions. 
He alone has ever written such a book. It has the 
vividness of an actual experience touched by the magic 
glitter of remembrance. The descriptions of the sea 
and of the life on board are strangely beautiful. The 
Nigger of the " Narcissus " has the qualities of an epic — 
an epic of the arduous, the exacting, and the enslaving 
service of the sea. 

Lord Jim (1900) is Conrad's next novel. It is a 
story of remorse and of the effort to regain self-respect 
for a deed of fatal and unexpected cowardice. The 
sea and secluded Eastern settlements are the back- 
ground. "Lord Jim," son of a clergyman, and a young 
man of romantic imagination, faith in himself, and an 
almost morbid sensibility, is an officer on the pilgrim- 
ship Patna, a " steamer as old as the hills, lean like a 
greyhound, and eaten up with rust worse than a con- 
demned water-tank." On a calm night in the Red 



S4 JOSEPH CONRAD 

Sea, while Jim on the bridge, lulled into a sense of 
delicious and perfect security, is awaiting the end of 
his watch, the Patna passes over a derelict. To a boat 
in her condition such a thing would have been fatal 
ninety-nine times out of a hundred. Not one of the 
eight hundred sleeping pilgrims realises what has 
happened, but immediately a subdued, hideous panic 
breaks out on the upper deck amongst the few white 
officers and engineers. Jim, disdainful of their terror, 
watches in scornful silence while they lower a boat with 
feverish haste. At any instant the bulkheads may give 
(Jim himself has made an examination and has seen 
the plates bulging inwards) — and there are no boats 
for the pilgrims. He watches with utter disgust 
the secret fury of their terror, and suddenly, when 
the boat is already in the water, he jumps. He had 
not meant to do so, he was sure of himself, but at the 
crisis — he jumps. And it is this lapse for which all 
the rest of his life has to atone. For public disgrace 
follows quick upon their action. By some unaccount- 
able fortune the Patna succeeds in keeping afloat, 
and is towed into Suez by a French man-of-war — 
a ship deserted by her officers. So the more or less 
plausible story invented by the captain, who knew that 
dead men tell no tales, turns upon them to rend them 
for good and all. 

It is at the court of inquiry that Marlow, the narrator 
of the tale, makes Jim's acquaintance. He is attracted 
to him against his will, and in all Jim's subsequent 
wanderings he takes some active or passive participa- 
tion. And Jim's wanderings are many and strange, 
for they are, indeed, the wanderings of an uneasy 
spirit. Everjrwhere he is dogged by some evidence, 
some reminiscence of that one act, and he flees from 
spot to spot, throwing up good and permanent billets 



CONRAD'S NOVELS AND STORIES 35 

at the breath of suspicion. For he is the slave of an 
idea — the idea of rehabiUtation. And at last, in far 
Patusan, as adviser and virtual ruler of a savage and 
trusting people, he gains all the peace of mind that he 
is ever likely to know. In the sun of this colossal 
triumph the shadow of his failure is hardly discernible. 
Marlow visits him in this distant corner of the East 
and finds him crowned with the prestige of an immense 
and invariable success. And yet the final mishap of 
his life is lying ready at hand. Certain marauders, a 
mongrel crew of pirates, penetrate to his settlement 
with bloodthirsty intent. They are surrounded, cut 
off from supplies, and could have been killed to a man, 
but on Jim's advice they are allowed to depart in 
peace to their ship at the mouth of the river. They go 
and Patusan rejoices. But in their descent, as a last 
revenge, they murder a body of resting warriors com- 
manded by the son of the chief, Doramin. And in a 
flash the power of Jim's reputation, of his unbounded 
prestige, crumbles into dust ; and from being revered 
almost as a god he is execrated almost as a devil. 
But in this material disaster he grasps the chance of 
a final spiritual rehabilitation. With unflinching and 
cruel courage (he leaves to her despair the girl he loves) 
he crosses the river to old Doramin, and allows him to 
shoot him dead. So he atones to himself for the lost 
rectitude of bygone years. " And that is the end. 
He passes away under a cloud, inscrutable at heart, 
forgotten, unforgiven, and excessively romantic." 

There can be little doubt that Conrad's fame as 
a novelist rests chiefly upon Lord Jim. And perhaps 
the main reason for this is that it raises a fierce moral 
issue in a very definite form and carries it through on 
a high level of creative intensity. But it would, I 
think, have been even more powerful had it been told 



36 JOSEPH CONRAD 

as a plain narrative rather than as a story recounted 
at second-hand. This is so partly because it would 
have conveyed still greater conviction, and partly 
because one is apt to get weary of viewing everything 
through the eyes of Marlow, who is a mixture of the 
ironic and sentimental philosopher. On the other 
hand one must admit that it gains something from 
this detached and organic treatment. We see the 
whole tragedy with a clearness that would have been 
impossible had the perspective been eliminated. For 
Jim, Mmself, though unusual and romantic, is, to a 
large extent, inarticulate. Conrd'd is too wise to make 
many of his heroes clever men. 

The character of Jim, rather than his adventures, 
is the mainspring of the book, but the story is told 
throughout with intense realism. Conrad has never 
written anything more sumptuous than the description 
of the passage of the pilgrim-ship across the Indian 
Ocean. 

Another curious thing to notice about Lord Jim is 
that it divides itself into two unofficial parts of very 
unequal length and merit. The first part, which ends 
with the remarks of the French officer about a third 
of the way through the book, is much the more perfect 
and satisfying. The second part reads almost like an 
after- thought. It introduces, too late in the novel, 
a new set of characters and it develops, too weari- 
somely, the philosophic problem of cowardice and its 
retribution. It is in this second part, especially, that 
one feels the mistake of telling the story through 
Marlow. In the first part he does serve a very real 
purpose, but in the second part he has become an 
aimless onlooker. 

Although, in my opinion. Lord Jim is not one of 
Conrad's greatest novels (its purpose is almost too 



CONRAD'S NOVELS AND STORIES 37 

didactic — and it is a purpose strained to the uttermost) , 
still it will ever remain one of his most widely known, 
for it is amongst his strongest, most readable, and 
most closely argued efforts. 

Nostromo (1903) is the next novel by Conrad. It is 
the history of g. South American revolution. But on 
this leading theme there hang such a multitude of 
side-issues and of individual experiences that it is 
certainly the hardest of Conrad's novels to summarise. 
In this story of vast riches, of unbridled passions, of 
patriotism, of greedy of barbaric cruelty, of the most 
debased and of the most noble impulses, the whole 
history of South America seems to be epitomised. 

In the republic of Costaguana, one of these hopeless, 
unsettled South American republics, there is one 
prosperous and contented province, the sea-board 
Occidental Province, whose capital Sulaco is the 
head-quarters of the famous " Gould Concession," 
owners of the San Tome silver mine, which has brought 
wealth and security to the whole district. The head 
of the concession is an English Costaguano of the 
third generation, Charles Gould — a taciturn man, 
hiding in his silence an inherited love of order and 
hatred of political unrest that make of him a formidable 
type of fanatic — the cold and reasonable type. His 
v/ife, the frail and compassionate Dona Emilia, is the 
most moving figure in the whole of Conrad's books. 
The slow evaporation of Charles Gould's love for her 
in his intense absorption in " material interests " is 
a tragic undercurrent to this story of visible terror 
and anarchy. For the wealth of Sulaco has attracted, 
at last, the politicians from beyond the mountains, 
and all the vilest riff-raff of the republic. In the 
revolution to upset the humane President-Dictator 



58 JOSEPH CONRAD 

Ribiera (the one hope of Costaguana), a wild rush 
is made for Sulaco both from the mountains and the 
sea. The whole social fabric, built up with such 
laborious care, falls to pieces at the breath of disaster. 
The Sulaco aristocracy, powerless in the hands of a 
mob who, fickle and cringing to success, welcome the 
victorious revolutionaries with orgies of disorder and 
joy, await the ruin of exile or shameful death. But 
in that gloom and horror is born anew the great idea 
of the Occidental Republic. It is the idea of the young 
Decoud, a mocker and a journalist, whose patriotic 
ardour appears more amatory than disinterested and 
who despises the evil fortune that has brought him 
home from the gaiety of his Parisian life. His plan, 
put shortly, is for the Occidental Province to cut 
itself off from the rest of Costaguana and become the 
Occidental Republic. And, in fact, that is what 
takes place. For at the height of the terror, when 
Charles Gould and others are expecting instant death 
(Gould has absolutely refused to play into the hands 
of the revolutionaries). General Barrios, one of the 
incorruptibles of the Ribiera regime, returns with his 
army and drives off the invaders. 

But I have not yet mentioned Nostromo himself, 
the man after whom the book is named. He is an 
Italian who has come to Sulaco on a sailing-vessel 
and has worked his way up to be Capataz de Carga- 
dores — the most reliable, the most useful, and the 
most feared man in Sulaco. (His very nickname 
of " Nostromo " gives the measure of his success.) 
He is a person of almost boundless vanity and resource, 
and the revelation of his curious, complex character 
makes, as it were, one of the discreet foundations of 
the book. For he is a man suffering from a grievance 
which he never reveals — a grievance against society 



CONRAD'S NOVELS AND STORIES 39 

that takes too much for granted, that cheats him of' 
his reward, that cannot adequately recognise all that 
he has done for it. On the night before the invasion 
of Sulaco he is told off to remove the silver treasure 
out to sea. This vogage of his, with Decoud who is 
fleeing for his life, is one of the wonderful things 
in Conrad. He hides the treasure, indeed, hides 
it safely and deep in a desert island of the Placid 
Gulf, but he never reveals its resting-place to mortal 
ears. For with Decoud' s death and the sinking of 
the lighter the treasure is supposed to be lost for ever 
at the bottom of the sea. And Nostromo, not so 
much out of greed as out of pique, keeps the secret 
in his breast and grows rich " very slowly," visiting 
the island at night to extract an occasional bar of 
the incorruptible metal. And it is there he meets 
his death by a tragic misunderstanding. For on the 
lonely Isabel a lighthouse has been erected now and 
it is guarded by old Giorgio Viola, a Garibaldino 
veteran, and his two daughters, the dark Linda and 
the fair Gizeile. To Linda Nostromo is betrothed, 
but it is Gizeile that he loves. The Garibaldino, 
knowing nothing of the treasure or of his other secret, 
shoots him as he skulks below, thinking he is some 
wastrel, philandering fellow come on shore to meet 
his daughter Gizeile. 

I have done no more than just touch upon the out- 
skirts of this extraordinary work. For it is a book 
containing so many threads of interest and so many 
individualities of the first order that to condense 
it with any realism is impossible. And how is one to 
recreate the romance of atmosphere ? To read 
Nostromo is like drinking from a cold spring on the 
mountain side — it thrills you to the very marrow of 
your bones with a gulp of breathless and exhilarating 



40 JOSEPH CONRAD 

life. Nostromo is Conrad's longest novel, and in my 
opinion, it is by far his greatest. It is a book singularly 
little known and one which many people find a difti- 
culty in reading (probably owing to the confused way 
in which time is indicated), but it is one of the most 
astounding tours de force in all literature. For sheer 
creative genius it overtops all Conrad's work. Its 
manner of narration is, perhaps, involved, but its 
intricacy is highly artistic, and the continuity of the 
whole is convincing. In dramatic vigour, in psycho- 
logical subtlety, and in the sustained feeling of a mood 
(an atmosphere at once physical and mental) Nostromo 
is a phenomenal masterpiece. It is Conrad's genius 
incarnate. 

In contrast to Nostromo, The Secret Agent (1907) 
is a comparatively simple book. It is a novel treating 
of the underworld of London life — the underworld 
of anarchists and spies. Verloc, " the secret agent," 
is ostensibly an anarchist, but in reality a spy of one 
of the big Embassies. He keeps a dim, disreputable 
shop in a side street of Soho, where he lives with his 
wife, Winnie, his wife's mother, and his half-witted 
brother-in-law, Stevie. Verloc in his heavy and 
slothful way is a domesticated man and well pleased 
with his comfortable existence. So that he is horribly 
upset when he gets a broad hint from the Embassy 
that he is not doing enough for his money. Either 
he must make himself felt or he will be sacked. Mr 
Vladimir is very explicit. In the days of the late 
Baron Stott-Wartenheim it was easy, he admits, to 
impose upon the Embassy, but now what they want 
are concrete proofs. Verloc must stir up public 
opinion against the anarchists — he must engineer a 
plot that will drive the police into drastic action. 



CONRAD'S NOVELS AND STORIES 41 

And it is with such words ringing in his ears that 
Verloc slowly returns home. For a month he broods 
in silence, miserably torn from side to side, plunged 
in bitter thoughts. But at last, in his cloudy and 
secretive mind, he evolves a plan. He plays upon 
the feeHngs of the merciful Stevie till he has worked 
that simple-minded youth into a speecliless fury of 
pity for the wrongs of mankind. And he suggests to 
him the remedy — the blowing up of Greenwich 
Observatory. Stevie, in the singleness of his heart, 
accepts every idea of Verloc's because he has always 
been brought up to believe that Mr Verloc is good. 
He is the willing and exultant victim of the cause of 
humanity. So far, all right — the only hitch to Verloc's 
plan is that Stevie, stumbling in the fog, gets blown 
up by his own bomb. 

Winnie Verloc, whose whole life, to the very fact of 
marrying the comfortably situated Verloc, is one long 
sacrifice for her beloved Stevie, knows nothing of 
all this plotting. She only knows that Stevie is in 
the country with Michaelis, an ex-convict and con- 
vinced humanitarian, for a few days of fresh air. 
She guesses nothing, but wonders vaguely at Verloc's 
curious air of depression. Even on the day of the 
explosion, not having seen an evening paper, she is 
completely ignorant of the very fact, till she is en- 
lightened by a detective who had found amidst the 
shattered fragments of the body a tape with Stevie' s 
name and address on it (the handiwork of his sister's 
ceaseless and tender forethought). Then, indeed, she 
realises all. 

The last part of the book is very dreadful. When 
the detective has left she remains motionless in the 
twilight of the shop. Verloc enters. She trembles 
and remains still. And all the while the reserve of 



42 JOSEPH CONRAD 



long years is slipping off her, and hatred and despair 
have filled her heart. All her violent maternal love 
for Stevie, all her outraged and defeated love, keep 
her, with their conflicting emotions, as composed as 
a woman of stone. But suddenly, in a moment of 
animal revenge, she seizes a knife and stabs Verloc to 
the heart. In the reaction of terror she staggers 
from the shop only to meet Comrade Ossipon, the 
swaggering and irresistible anarchist from whom she 
has always shrunk. Now, in her misery, she flings 
herself upon him, telling him all, and beseeching him 
to fly with her and protect her. Sick with fear and 
greed (he wants Verloc' s savings) he promises ; but 
on the platform of Waterloo Station, when the train 
is moving, he jumps out and leaves her to her fate. 
That night she drowns herself in mid-channel. 

The Secret Agent is a great book but it suffers, to 
some extent, from the improbability of its plot. It is 
founded, obviously, on the notorious explosion in 
Greenwich Park of twenty years ago, but in his imagin- 
ative effort to build a story around this episode Conrad 
has fallen into rather the same error that Meredith 
fell into in Diana of the Crossways. Meredith did 
not quite succeed in making Diana's betrayal of 
Dacier's secret credible, although it is simply the 
story of Mrs Norton and The Times, and Conrad does 
not quite succeed in making his explanation of the 
Greenwich explosion credible — although there must 
be some explanation. But though the main idea of 
the Secret Agent is far-fetched, its atmosphere and its 
characters are in his finest manner. Winnie and 
Stevie are people of the highest and most touching 
reality, and Verloc himself, the anarchist called " The 
Professor," Ossipon, and Winnie's mother, are indeed 
admirable. The secret air of the shop is produced with 



CONRAD'S NOVELS AND STORIES 43 



fidelity, and the whole tone of the book is strangely 
authentic. 

Put briefly, the plot of Under Western Eyes (1911) 
is as follows. One night the student Razumov, a 
silent, solitary, and ambitious man, returns home to 
his lodging in a poor quarter of St Petersburg to 
discover, awaiting liim there, another student called 
Haldin. This Haldin is a revolutionary of an extreme 
type who has that very morning assassinated an 
official with a bomb. As yet undiscovered, he has 
fled to Razumov for help. It is true that they have 
never spoken together of revolutionary matters, but 
he has conceived an exalted opinion of him on account 
of Ms reserved and austere character. Haldin's 
recital and request for help stagger and infuriate 
Razumov, not only because he considers him a criminal 
but because he realises the grave jeopardy into which 
his own future is thrown should this meeting ever 
be guessed at. He has always had a hatred of vision- 
aries, and his secret aim is to attain distinction in the 
government service. Being sent out by Haldin to 
arrange for his escape, he ends up, after a futile effort 
to do so, by denouncing him to the police. This 
midnight betrayal, while Haldin reposes trustfully 
in his bed, is the most tremendous thing in the book. 
And the only result of it all is that Razumov becomes 
convinced that he, himself, is suspected by the police. 
In a scene between him and Councillor Mikulin, who 
has charge of the enquiry, he endeavours to probe 
their intention concerning him. But Councillor 
Mikulin is not to be easily drawn. And caught 
thus in the web of suspicion, Razumov consents to go 
as a government spy to Geneva, where there is a large 
colony of Russian conspirators. Here, as fate would 



44 JOSEPH CONRAD 



have it, he meets Haldin's sister, who considers him 
a hero, as he is supposed to have been her brother's 
last associate and helper. On all hands, indeed, he 
is treated warmly, though as something of an enigma ; 
for he cannot hide the bitterness of his animosity 
and the gnawing of remorse. They have been fully 
roused in him by contact with Nathalie Haldin. She 
is presented as a beautiful and true nature whose 
trust in Ramuzov is unbounded. Slowly, under the 
awakening, this life of lies grows impossible to him. 
But it is not till all chances of his ever being discovered 
have disappeared, not till he finds that he is falling 
in love with Nathalie and that his love will be re- 
turned, that he resolves to confess. At midnight, in 
a room full of determined and reckless men, he makes 
his reparation. He is deafened for ever by having 
the drums of both his ears broken. Early that same 
morning, tottering on the road in the perfect silence 
of the surrounding world, he gets run over by a tramcar 
and severely hurt. He is tended by a Russian woman, 
who devotes her life to his misery, and at the close of 
the book he is living with her in the South of Russia, 
slowly dying. 

The story gets its name from the fact that it is told 
by an old English teacher of languages in Geneva, 
partly in his own words and partly from a diary left 
by Razumov. Under Western Eyes is really a one man 
book, and as such, all other figures are naturally 
subsidiary to the main one. Razumov, the believer 
in order and in the calm wisdom of organised reform, 
stands forth in the hard role of constant opposition. 
His is the psychology of a man in revolt against revolt. 
His appeal to one's sympathy lacks sentiment but 
is poignant all the same. The book is written with 
great precision and subtlety of language, and marks 



CONRAD'S NOVELS AND STORIES 45 

a step forward in Conrad's exactitude of style. The 
description of the winter night of Russia, of the 
Russian colony in Geneva, and of the sister and mother 
of Haldin are particularly striking. Personally I do 
not put Under Western Eyes on so lofty a pinnacle as, 
say. The Secret Agent (there is a certain bleakness 
about it), but I think it is a surer piece of art. 

Chance (1914) is Conrad's latest novel. As its name 
implies the iiony of chance is the leading link of the 
whole structure. The story is wanting in conventional 
plot and, though full of events and characters, concerns, 
in chief, two people— Flora de Barral, the daughter 
of a famous (and fraudulent) financier, and Captain 
Roderick Anthony, son of a poet and master of the 
Ferndale. The book is divided into two parts, named 
respectively " The Damsel " and " The Knight." 
The first concerns Flora de Barral's childhood and her 
miserable youth, and the second concerns Captain 
Anthony and his life with Flora aboard the Ferndale. 
After the crash which sent de Barral to penal servitude 
and herself to the horrors of abasing poverty. Miss de 
Barral's best friends proved to be a Mr and Mrs Fyne, 
whom she had known slightly in the days of her wealth. 
It is at their house that she meets Captain Anthony, 
Mrs Fyne's brother, home from sea on one of his rare 
visits. And it is in a sudden and overwhelming 
flash of intuition that Anthony sees into the depths of 
her forlorn and despairing soul. He carries her off 
with him by the sheer force of his boundless pity 
springing into love — thus offending mortally the 
correct and decorous Mrs Fyne. And it is on board 
the Ferndale that Flora, now Mrs Anthony, brings 
the ex-convict (and more than ever monomaniac) 
4e Barral. His insane hatred of the Captain, who has 



46 JOSEPH CONRAD 

come between his daughter and the brilliant marriage 
of his dreams, gives a sinister background to the 
misunderstanding sundering for so long Anthony and 
his wife. For she believes that his action is founded 
entirely upon magnanimity — a thing intolerable to 
her proud and embittered heart — and he believes 
that to her he is merely the means of freedom for 
herself and refuge for her father. It is in the crisis 
of old de Barral's attempt to poison Anthony that the 
barriers are swept away. 

These two people, the young and unhappy girl and 
the silent and really noble seaman, are drawn with 
Conrad's minutest and most thrilling insight. Captain 
Anthony is one of the most affecting characters in 
all his books — a sort of male counterpart to the Mrs 
Gould of Nostromo. And Flora de Barral is a tragic 
figure. The story of her youth, of her meeting with 
Anthony, and of their life on board ship has a quality 
of distress and pathos that is very powerful. 
Anthony's treatment of her is touching in the con- 
trolled passion of his pity and indignation. And 
besides Flora de Barral and Captain Anthony, Chance 
contains in the financier de Barral, in Mr and Mrs 
Fyne, in Powell (second mate of the Ferndale and 
one of the prominent people of the book), in Franldin 
(first mate of the Ferndale), in Flora's detestable 
governess, and in her manufacturer cousin, an enticing 
gallery of portraits. The breath of life is in these 
creations. Marlow, whom Conrad introduces into 
several of his tales, appears here once again in the 
guise of narrator — not so much of his own adventures 
as of other people's. 

This strange chronicle of passion and disaster has 
the reserve and elusive subtlety that are typical of 
Conrad'|S later manner — of Under Western Eyes, for 



CONRAD'S NOVELS AND STORIES 47 

instance. The air of romance is secret but in the 
twiUght of these sombre pages one feels the author's 
immense creative reahsm. The obscurity of such a 
book as Chance arises from the superabundance of 
atmosphere — of spiritual as opposed to physical 
atmosphere. Chance is probably the hardest of 
Conrad's books about which one can make any con- 
clusive judgment. Admirers of his earlier work may 
consider it almost arid, but that is simply to misunder- 
stand the recent development of Conrad's art. For 
the truth is that Chance is a work of the finest shades 
and of the highest tension. It is the most finished 
of all his books. 

With Chance we come to the end of the novels 
written solely by Conrad. There still remain to be 
considered the two novels he wrote in conjunction 
with Ford Hueffer, but before examining them I will 
say something about his five volumes of stories. 

The first of these is Tales of Unrest (1898). 
There are five stories in this book — " Karain," 
" The Idiots," " An Outpost of Progress," " The 
Return," and " The Lagoon." The first of them, 
" Karain," is a tale of adventure, of revenge, and of 
ghostly possession. It is recounted in the safe refuge 
of a schooner riding at anchor in an island bay of an 
Eastern Archipelago, by the chief of a war-like people. 
The audience are the young officers of the ship. 
Karain is a chief of mighty prestige in his tiny and 
obscure corner of the world but he is tormented by a 
ghost — by the ghost of Pata Matara, his friend. 
Pata Matara's sister had married Karain's brother 
but had left him to live with a white trader, who had 
taken her away with him when he left their land. 



48 JOSEPH CONRAD 



And thereupon Karain and Pata Matara swear 
vengeance and track them through all the East in 
a real Odyssey of painful and prolonged wanderings. 
But in the years of their journeying the vision of 
Pata Matara' s sister has risen before Karain in the 
guise of perfection, and when at last they find them 
in the flesh and Pata Matara is about to shoot, 
Karain, frenzied by the strength of his illusion, shoots 
Pata Matara and saves the woman's life. And now 
in the secure and honoured position of his new life he 
is tormented by the silent presence of his friend. 

" The Idiots," is a tale of Northern France. Jean 
Pierre Bacadou is a rich Breton farmer who loves his 
land with the deep affection of a French peasant. But 
by some tragic mischance all his four children prove 
to be idiots. His rage and despair drive him to the 
violence of drink and cruelty. He is determined to 
have an ordinary child who shall inherit his land. 
But Susan, his wife, dare not chance her malign fate 
again, and when he attempts to approach her she 
stabs him. Later, on that wild and stormy night, she 
flings herself into the sea amidst the rocks. But the 
poor idiots, in good health and in darkness of soul, 
survive and flourish. 

" An Outpost of Progress " is the story of a trading 
station in the wilds of Africa. Two white men, 
Kayerts and Carlier, incompetent and foolish people, 
are left in the wilderness to take charge of the station 
for six months. They begin by being friendly and full 
of trifling activity but gradually the lassitude and un- 
restraint of the wilds creep over their minds. They 
realise that their ivory is coming from the sale of slaves, 
and, though flaming with indignation at first, it is not 
long before they tacitly acquiesce. Moreover, a secret 
and growing irritation with one another begins to 



CONRAD'S NOVELS AND STORIES 49 



blacken their lives. The relief boat is late, they 
abandon hope, and the station work is neglected. 
Fever undermines them, and their irritation, long pent 
up, blazes out suddenly over the question of a few 
lumps of white sugar. Carlier threatens Kayerts, 
and Kayerts, in an agony of terror, shoots Carlier dead. 
Next morning, through the fog, the whistle of the 
relief steamer is heard. Kayerts, rousing himself 
from his lethargy, runs out and hangs himself. 

" The Return " tells how Alvan Hervey, a rich and 
conventional city man, arrives home one evening 
to find a note from his wife saying that she has left 
him to live with an editor of a paper owned by Alvan 
Hervey. He has not got over the shock of reading 
the scrawled lines when his wife reappears — she has 
found that she has not sufficient moral courage for 
the step. The mutiny in Hervey's mind fills most of 
the pages of this, the longest story in Tales of Unrest. 
He decides that all must go on as if nothing had 
happened, and his wife, cold, hostile, and half-remorse- 
ful, agrees. But late at night when she has retired 
to her room and he is left alone with his thoughts, he 
finds that this life of deception and uncertainty will 
be intolerable. He rushes upstairs and bursts into 
his wife's room. Then, before her icy woids and her 
look of hatred, he flies from the house, banging the 
door behind him. " He never returned." 

" The Lagoon " is another of those stories told to 
a white man by a native of the East. In the depth 
of the forest, darkness overtakes the white man and 
he determines to spend the night in Arsat's clearing. 
He has known Arsat long ago in a distant country. 
He finds him in his hut by the side of his dying 
wife, and through the long watches of the night he 
listens to the story of Arsat's passion and of his escape 

D 



60 JOSEPH CONRAD 



with his beloved. They had fled far from the revenge 
of a powerful rajah, and with them had fled Arsat's 
brother. But, alas, the brother had been killed by 
the enemy and Arsat had not dared to turn back to 
his rescue. It is a bitter regret to him, now that all 
his hopes are dissolving in death, and when she is no 
more he intends to return at last for one final fight. 
As they talk together the dawn rises over the forest 
and the lagoon. 

The most remarkable story in Tales of Unrest is 
" The Return," which is well seconded by " An 
Outpost of Progress." The most beautiful is certainly 
"The Lagoon" (it is particularly interesting from 
the fact that it is the first short story Conrad ever 
wrote), while " Karain " is the sunniest, and "The 
Idiots " the most realistic. These stories suffer from the 
defects of Conrad's early richness of style — the sonorous 
splendour of their language and emotion is almost 
cloying. But " The Return " is decidedly one of the 
most astonishing stories Conrad has written, and 
there are lyrical passages in " The Lagoon " of the 
purest loveliness. Tales of Unrest is not a mature 
book, not so mature as the novels of this period, but 
it is a book that cannot be ignored by any student 
of Conrad. Indeed its immaturity is, in my opinion, 
at least as valuable as some of his more finished work. 

Youth (1902) comes next in order amongst Conrad's 
volumes of stories. There are three tales in this 
book — "Youth," "Heart of Darkness," and "The 
End of the Tether." " Youth " itself is almost more 
a reminiscence than a story (see the previous chapter 
for a discussion of the autobiographical basis of many 
of Conrad's stories), and almost more a recapture of 
the emotions and glamour of youth than a reminis- 



CONRAD'S NOVELS AND STORIES 51 



cence. It is Marlow who tells the story and it is the 
story of his first voyage to the East, with its countless 
hardships, with its danger from storm, from fire, 
?.nd from shipwreck. The indomitable optimism and 
romance of youth reveal themselves in every line but 
a vein of profound melancholy runs through this tale 
of adventure and daring — the melancholy of fond 
recollection and of unappeasable desire. 

" Heart of Darkness " is a sombre story of the dark 
forests of the Congo and of the darker hearts of men. 
Once more Marlow is the narrator. He tells us how 
he got a post as Captain of a Congo steamer and how 
he went out to Africa and up into the blind interior. 
Like " Youth," this, too, reads as a reminiscence and 
is extraordinarily atmospheric. The Congo rises 
before us like an ominous and mystic spirit ; and Mr 
Kurtz, the energetic agent of the great Company, 
whose nam.e is on everyone's mouth and whose heart 
has been corrupted by the savage wilderness, is like 
the embodiment of that lawless and unhappy land. 
Marlow, on his first arrival, stays at a depot within two 
hundred miles of the coast, but afterwards he has to 
take his steamer up to the far outposts of the interior. 
It is there that the valued agent, Mr Kurtz, lives — 
that wonderful procurer of ivory and that eloquent 
exponent of unspeakable rites. Marlow is with him 
during his last days and has to break the news of his 
death to the girl who thought him the best and most 
enlightened of heroes. 

It is absurd to call " The End of the Tether " a 
short story, because it is nearly two hundred pages 
long. It is about a man whose great love for his 
daughter is the one thing remaining to him from 
the disastrous chances of his life. Captain Whalley 
has been rich, independent, and full of sober joy in 



5g JOSEPH CONRAD 



existence — but his wife has died, his daughter, Ivy, 
has married and settled in AustraHa, his money has 
neariy all been lost in a bank smash, and he is getting 
old. £500 remains to him from the sale of his barque. 
Fair Maid, and this he invests in a share of the So fala 
an East Indian coasting tramp, of which he becomes 
Captain. It is only after he has been in her for some 
time that he realises he is going blind. The Sojala 
is owned by the chief engineer, Mr Massy, who had 
won the money for her in a lottery and who is now 
again on the verge of ruin. Captain Whalley has told 
no one that he is going blind, but Mr Massy has guessed. 
His is a mean, ferreting, and avaricious nature, 
and he is as incapable of comprehending the lofty 
character of his Captain as he is of having an unselfish 
thought of his own. In the baseness of his heart he 
plots to make use of Captain Whalley's advancing 
blindness for his own purposes. If only he can cause 
lilm to run the ship aground on the rocks of the point 
he will get the insurance money ! He succeeds in 
diverting the compass by placing iron bars near it. It 
is a complete success. But Captain Whalley, groping 
on the bridge in the sudden complete darkness that 
has descended upon his eyes in the shock of striking, 
touches the iron and knows all. And then as he 
mutters passionately to Massy that he " will get 
fifteen years for this ' ' the other, choking with spite' 
and fear, whispers back that if he goes to prison for 
trying to cheat the insurance. Captain Whalley will 
lose his five hundred pounds. " Captain Whalley 
did not move. True ! Ivy's money ! Gone in the 
wreck. Again he had a flash of insight. He was 
indeed at the end of his tether." And filling his 
pocket with the iron bars, he allows himself to sink 
for ever with his ship. 



CONRAD'S NOVELS AND STORIES 53 



Youth is as famous amongst Conrad's volumes of 
stories as Lord Jim is amongst his novels — and more 
deservedly so. For it contains in " Youth " the most 
romantic, in " Heart of Darkness " the most terrible, 
and in " The End of the Tether " the most pathetic 
story Conrad has ever written. " Youth," itself, is 
certainly one of the very finest things in Conrad, 
a gorgeous dream, a vision of the rare and transient 
illusion of youth. It is a reminiscence tinged, as I 
say, with regret and made lyrical by the pov/er -of 
remembrance. " Heart of Darkness," like " The 
Return, ' ' suffers from exaggeration. It is an extremely 
impressive story but it is almost over-heavy. It is 
positively too rich. As a creation of atmosphere it 
is immense, as a work of art it leaves something to be 
desired. {Conrad has told me that it did not take him 
more than a month to write. This, considering its 
length of over 40,000 words, is quite enough to account 
for its air of haste and its comparative lack of finish.) 
" The End of the Tether " is a very beautiful and 
touching story. Captain Whalley, austere, upright, 
and tenderly thoughtful for his daughter, is one of 
the most moving of all Conrad's characters. The 
contrast 'twixt his self-contained and tragic aloofness 
and the petty spite of the other officers is presented 
in Conrad's grandest manner. 

Typhoon (1903) is Conrad's third volume of stories. 
It is made up of four tales : — " Typhoon," " Amy 
Foster," " Falk," " To-morrow." The first and 
longest of these is, as its name implies, the de- 
scription of a storm — a typhoon in the China Seas. 
In the very idea of such a story there is little in 
the way of plot. The steamship Nan-Shan, com- 
manded by the dense and stupid Captain MacWhirr, 



54 JOSEPH CONRAD 



is taking two hundred Chinese coolies to the treaty 
port of Fu-Chau when she runs into a typhoon. The 
story is one gigantic description of the fury of the sea 
and of the bravery of simple men. Captain Mac Whirr, 
who, in his unimaginative ignorance, disregards all 
the symptoms of the approaching storm, by the sheer 
force of his integrity and perseverance emerges 
triumphant not alone from the typhoon but from 
the ugly after-position with the two hundred China- 
men who believe that their money has been stolen 
from them. In the storm itself, his first-mate, the 
sprightly and talkative Jukes, has seconded him 
courageously, but in the affair of the coolies his 
livelier imagination makes him tremble at the pro- 
bable result. It is Captain Mac Whirr who is the 
victor throughout. 

" Amy Foster " is the story of a dull-witted but 
compassionate English girl who falls in love with a 
strange man from Eastern Europe. This ignorant, 
wild, and romantic peasant from the Carpathian 
Mountains has been cast up by the sea, the only 
survivor from an emigrant ship bound for America. 
Unable to speak a word of English and totally mystified 
as to where he is — it might have been America or Hell, 
itself — he leads a wretched and hunted existence till 
the chance kindness of Amy Foster opens his eyes. 
Afterwards he becomes a farm labourer and marries 
her. At first she loves him with fascination, but 
gradually, after her baby is born, her fascination turns 
into horror. He falls ill and speaks to their little son 
in his outlandish tongue, and as he speaks she gazes 
at him with hatred and fear. And then she flees 
with her child, whilst he, left alone, dies forlorn and 
broken-hearted. 

" Falk " is one of Conrad's Eastern Tales. 



CONRAD'S NOVELS AND STORIES 55 



(Bankok is known to be the setting though the 
name is not given.) It is a story within a 
story. Falk is a Scandinavian, a huge, silent man, 
fiercely and primitively devoted to life, who falls 
passionately in love with a young girl acting as 
companion to the wife of Captain Hermann, a German 
skipper. She is the Captain's niece, in point of fact. 
Falk is the owner of a tug that does all the towing 
up and down this Eastern river, and while Captain 
Hermann's boat, the Diana, is loading, he goes out 
every evening and sits on board of her, gazing at the 
girl and saying nothing. In everything he does his 
conduct is, by turns, hesitating and autocratic. He 
is a mysterious man, in truth, through the very 
simplicity of his absorption. In the eyes of Schom- 
berg, the hotel-keeper, however, he is only a contemp- 
tible miser. But, indeed, his secret is two-fold, a 
gnawing jealousy of a young captain (teller of the 
story), and the awful recollection that he was once 
compelled to eat human flesh. The jealousy is soon 
extinguished, but even so, before he can ease his 
conscience he has to relate the story of his misfortune. 
It is one of these savage and relentless records of the 
sea — the record of a broken down steamer, of drifting 
day after day, of shortage of food, of madness, of 
cannibalism, and of the survival of the strong. And 
to the hint of this story the niece, a girl silent as Falk 
himself, listens with pity. She marries him. 

" To-Morrow " (it was dramatised under the title 
"' One Day More " and acted several times in London 
in 1904, Chicago in 1914, and in Paris — this dramatised 
version appeared in The English Review of August 
1913) is a story of hope too long deferred. Old 
Captain Hagberd, retired from the coasting trade, 
lives in the little sea-port of Colebrook, passing his 



56 JOSEPH CONRAD 



life in the hope that he may see again his son, Harry. 
He advertises for him in the Sunday papers and he 
saves every penny against his return. He has even 
filled his house with furniture for his use, and has even 
chosen a wife for him — Bessie Carvil, daughter of 
Carvil, the blind boat-builder, whose house adjoins 
his own. And gradually this longing to see his son has 
changed into the mania of senile decay. He believes 
now that every to-morrow will bring him home. 
And when, at last, the real Harry does appear, the 
old man repudiates him with scorn — he is not the one 
to be taken in by imposters, his Harry is something 
very different from this " grinning, information 
fellow ! " Besides, it is to-morrow he is coming home — 
not to-day ! And so, with the obstinate assurance of 
insanity and hope, he locks himself securely from the 
importunities of a troublesome world. His Harry 
indeed ! But this is not only the story of Captain 
Hagberd's delusions, it is the story of Harry Hagberd, 
the wanderer, the lover of pretty women, the fascinat- 
ing and romantic scamp, and of Bessie Carvil, the 
patient daughter of an exacting and brutal father. 
Their swift love-making in the dusk, within sound of 
the sullen waves and of the voices of madness and 
anger, is the climax to this tale of tragic fate. 

Typhoon is a very remarkable book, not only on 
account of its merits but also for its great variety. 
" Typhoon," itself, is the most prodigious description 
of a storm in the whole of literature. As a piece of 
word-painting it is unrivalled, and it is at the same 
time a notable study in psychology and contains some 
of Conrad's cleverest character drawing on a small 
scale. " Amy Foster," on the other hand, has the 
sober atmosphere of Conrad's later method. It reads 
fijuch more like one of the stories in A Set of Six than 



CONRAD'S NOVELS AND STORIES 57 



like the other stories in Typhoon. It is a deUcatc, 
faithful, and precise picture. " Falk " has the fertile 
elaboration of Conrad's most expansive work. It is 
a study in personality and atmosphere that exhales 
the warm breath of a tropical Eastern river. Falk 
himself, is a curious figure, and his story remains 
pathetic in all its gruesomeness. " To-morrow " 
is a very poignant study, and one touched by the breath 
of symbolism. In that it resembles " Typhoon," 
though neither " To-morrow " nor " Typhoon " lack 
at all the substance of actuality. Their symbolism, 
though apparent, is kept under strict command, and 
the realism of their characters and of their situations 
is the first call upon the reader's attention. Of the 
four stories in Typhoon these two are the most 
effective, though both " Amy Foster " and " Falk " 
are true works of imagination. 

A Set of Six (1908) is Conrad's next collection of 
stories. As the name implies it consists of six tales — 
" Gaspar Ruiz," " The Informer," " The Brute," 
"An Anarchist," "The Duel," and "II Conde." 
The first, " Gaspar Ruiz," is a story of the South 
American wars of Independence at the beginning of 
the nineteenth century. Gaspar Ruiz is the son of a 
peasant. He is quite an illiterate, but a man of gentle 
nature and of great strength. Pressed into the 
army of liberation, he is captured b}'' the Spaniards 
and made to fight in their ranks. Falling again into 
the hands of the liberators he is condemned to death 
as a traitor, and only escapes by the merest of chances. 
He is nursed back to life by a Spanish girl, whose 
aristocratic father, ruined by the rebellion, has been 
driven crazy. He falls in love with her, and she 
instils into bis heart her undying hatred of the 



58 JOSEPH CONRAD 



liberators. For long he is successful, but at last 
he is overwhelmed. 

" The Informer " is an anarchist tale. It is related 
by Mr X, a famous epicurean and a coldly cynical 
hater of society. He explains how they (the anar- 
chists in London) became aware that in their secret 
meetings some spy must always have been present 
because their most guarded plans were constantly in 
the knowledge of the police. So, disguised as police- 
men, he and some comrades raid the house of their 
own associates, and in the excitement of the arrests 
discover the informer. He is a fanatic, a sincere 
man, and impervious to every outside emotion but 
that of passionate love. It is through this, in his 
desire to protect a girl who poses as an advanced 
anarchist (she is the real centre of the story), that 
he gives himself away. In the sudden discovery of 
the ruse he commits suicide. 

" The Brute " is a tragic tale of the sea — the tale 
of the ship Apse Family that kills a man on every 
voyage. It is the Apse Family that is " the brute," 
a ship deadly and comfortable. This is a story told 
in the tap-room of The Three Cows by a man who had 
sailed on her, and whose brother, Charley, had been 
her chief mate at the same time. On that voyage 
there had been no accident. In Sidney Charley gets 
engaged to the skipper's niece, Maggie Colchester, 
who is with them for the trip, and in his great 
happiness he takes the strictest care that no disaster 
shall spoil the homeward passage. And, indeed, all 
goes well till they are actually in the Thames. And 
then, in the hideous irony of fate, Maggie Colchester 
is pulled overboard by the anchor and drowned. 

" An Anarchist " recounts the experiences of a 
convict who has escaped on to the mainland from the 



CONRAD'S NOVELS AND STORIES 59 

French penal colony off the South American coast. 
The convict, now engaged in looking after a steam- 
launch, tells the story with the innocence and resig- 
nation of a simple peasant. As a workman in Paris, 
v\ath good wages, he gave a dinner to some of his 
friends to celebrate his twenty-fifth birthday. All 
of them drink and then two other men begin to suggest 
to him that the lives of poor people are unbearable. 
He listens with maudlin and violent sympathy. 
And the result of it is that he makes a disturbance 
and is imprisoned. When he comes out the anar- 
chists again throw around him their webs. Unable 
to make a living now, he falls in with their designs. 
He is caught with a bomb in his hand, and being 
considered a dangerous criminal, is deported to 
Cayenne. The story of his life there and of his escape in 
an open boat with two other wretches, his two original 
tempters, is graphically recited. When, at length, they 
are within hail of a ship, he shoots them both dead, and 
thus revenges himself upon them for all his sufferings. 
" The Duel " is much the longest story in the book, 
but it is one of the easiest to summarise. It is a tale 
of the Napoleonic wars, and concerns two men, 
D'Hubert and Feraud. When the story opens they 
are both lieutenants in the French army stationed in 
Strasbourg. A trifling disagreement, which is only 
the irritation of Feraud at being called out of a lady's 
presence by D'Hubert, who was but obeying superior 
orders, leads to a duel, and subsequently to a whole 
series of duels lasting over a period of fourteen years 
or so. The kindly and indulgent D'Hubert is ever- 
lastingly pursued by the challenges of the emotional 
Feraud. And, finally, D'Hubert, by a stratagem, 
when he has looked only for immediate death in the 
latest of the duels, brings it all to a close by giving 



60 JOSEPH CONRAD 



back to Feraud the life that he has forfeited. But this 
takes place when they are both generals, the hundred 
days a thing of the past, and the wars of Napoleon 
already a memory. 

" II Conde " is the last of the episodes in A Set of 
Six. It is the story of a foriegn Count, a refined, 
elderly aristocrat, who is driven out of Naples for ever 
by the brutal behaviour of a young man. II Conde, 
a man of cultured and sensitive mind, would sometimes 
go of an evening to listen to the band in the gardens 
of the Villa Nazionale. It was there, while wandering 
in the shady paths, that he is accosted by a young 
man who asks for a light. II Conde puts his hands 
into his pockets to find a match, and on glancing up he 
sees that the young man is holding a sharp knife to 
his stomach. In a grating and menacing voice he 
demands his money. II Conde has to disgorge. 
Later on that same evening he meets him again in a 
restaurant, and again the man threatens him with foul 
and insolent words. Such a pit of infamy, opening like 
this at his very feet and full of nameless horrors for 
the future, so undermines the old man's peace of mind 
that he leaves Naples, never to return — although 
he knows well enough that there alone can he find 
the climate in which he can survive the chills of 
winter. 

The six tales of this book present a striking change 
in Conrad's technique. Their atmosphere of romance 
tends to the inward contemplation of a mood rather 
than the piling up of substantial effect. They are, 
in many externals, very unlike this earlier work. For, 
of his previous tales, " Amy Foster," alone, is of the 
genre of A Set of Six. And, in fact, they do not gleam 
with the exuberance of poetical emotion — they are 
restrained, low-toned, and woven of a close mesh. 



CONRAD'S NOVELS AND STORIES 61 

They are the work of an artist who makes his points 
out of subtleties rather than out of romantic flights. 
Of the individual stories, " Caspar Ruiz " is hardly 
convincing — especially in its later phases ; " The 
Informer " is sardonically icy ; " The Brute," " An 
Anarchist," and " II Conde " are pathetic, exciting, 
and beautifully proportioned ; " The Duel " is a work 
of wide imaginative impulse — a wonderful reconstruc- 
tion of the Napoleonic atmosphere. This story is the 
most remarkable in the book — the comparison between 
D'Hubert and Feraud is capital, and the whole idea, 
if slightly fantastic, shows, at any rate, a grip of 
human foibles and jealousy which is really entertaining. 
As a sustained effort in Conrad's sardonic later style 
" The Duel " is unmatched. 

Conrad's most recent volume of stories is 'Twixt 
Land and Sea (1912), and it contains three tales — 
" A Smile of Fortune," " The Secret Sharer," and 
" Freya of the Seven Islands." " A Smile of Fortune " 
is a story of a tropical isle (obviously Mauritius), 
the story of a captain who brings his ship there and 
falls straightway into the web of a curious and sinister 
drama. He comes in contact with the two brothers 
Jacobus who are bitter enemies. The one who has 
disowned his illegitimate son is universally respected, 
the other who protects his illegitimate daughter is 
looked at askance. But stress is not laid upon this 
ironical position, and, apart from the intrigues of the 
outcast Jacobus (an inscrutable, sordid, and self- 
sacrificing man whose one ostensible motive in life 
is avarice, but of whom we half get a secret and quite 
different impression), the story relates, in main, 
the queer intimacy between the Captain and the 
daughter of Jacobus. This passionate and wild girl 



62 JOSEPH CONRAD 

suggests an underworld of emotions, whose shadows 
He darkly across the pages. 

" The Secret Sharer " tells how a Captain, anchored 
in his ship at the head of the Gulf of Siam, rescues 
a murderer from the water (the mate of another 
boat), and hides him in his cabin, and enables him to 
escape. It has all the excitement of a perilous adven- 
ture, and it is told with such exactitude of detail and 
in such a thrilling, secret manner (for the conversa- 
tions between the two men are invariably carried on in 
an undertone, and this comes to pervade the whole 
story as a kind of twilight) that it reads very like a 
genuine reminiscence. 

The third story, " Freya of the Seven Islands," 
is a tragic tale of the Malay Archipelago. It concerns 
four people. Captain Jasper Allen of the brig Bonito, 
Freya Nielsen, her father, and the Dutch lieutenant 
Heemskirk. Freya and Jasper adore one another 
with the silent intensity of confident and faithful 
natures, but grim destiny is lying in wait for them. 
Heemskirk is the devil of the piece. His jealousy 
evolves a plan by which the Bonito is wrecked, and 
with it all Jasper's chances of worldly success. And, 
in the despair of their lost hope, life swiftly loosens 
its hold upon the man and the girl. It is a story 
opening in light and closing in impenetrable darkness. 

In subject and technique these three stories are a 
return to Conrad's earlier work while they retain the 
finish of his later period. The style is extremely 
distinguished and the psychology subtle without 
being at all overdone. The first of them, " A Smile 
of Fortune," is a very uncommon study in the bizarre 
backwaters of character. Both Jacobus and his 
daughter are amongst Conrad's most original figures. 
His mumbling reserve and her futile and incoherent 



CONRAD'S NOVELS AND STORIES 63 



sorrow, seem to throw a heavy air of gloom into the 
very sunUght of the Tropics. As for " The Secret 
Sharer," that is certainly a marvellous creation in 
atmosphere and in the psychology of the hunted. It 
is convincing, as I have already said, so convincing 
that we feel we could hear the dropping of a pin in the 
whispered conversations of the two men. Moreover, 
it has a curious undercurrent. It develops, more and 
more strongly, a haunting idea of the discipline of 
the sea. The last and longest tale, " Freya of the 
Seven Islands," is, perhaps, the most painful Conrad has 
ever written. There is something deeply melancholy 
in this drama set amidst the treacherous splendour 
of Eastern Seas. But the nobility of such figures as 
Freya and Jasper makes the story of their defeated 
love not alone melancholy but in the fullest degree 
touching. 

I will say a few words now about the two novels 
in the writing of which Conrad collaborated with Ford 
Hueffer. (There is, if I may say so, something especially 
odd about this collaboration, because the abilities 
of Joseph Conrad and Ford Hueffer do lie so obviously 
in different lines. But perhaps it arose from their 
common interest in form.) The first of these is The 
Inheritors (1901) . As the work bears very little impress 
of the touch of Conrad and as it is, altogether, of small 
importance I will treat it as shortly as possible. 
It is a fantastic story about a new race of people, 
dwellers in a fourth dirnension, who mix indistinguish- 
ably with ordinary mortals and gradually oust them 
from all positions of supreme power. They are " the 
inheritors," and with their power, their will, and their 
disregard of feeling or honour, they are a ruthless and 
repulsive race. They scheme to ruin the Prime 



64 JOSEPH CONRAD 

Minister through ruining a German financier whom he 
is supporting in his plan for a Greenland railway, and 
of course they succeed. The book closes at the dawn 
of their inheritance of the earth. 

As I say, this is a work in a quite minor key. It is 
cleverl}'^ written, but it is without depth of thought 
or beauty of style. The internal evidence of Conrad's 
collaboration is slight — visible, indeed, only in the 
negative qualities of proportion and restraint. 

Romance (1903) stands on a very different footing. 
As far as I can judge Conrad must have had a great 
deal to do with the middle part of this book. It 
certainly glows with a vividness that is all his own. 
It is a novel of adventure of ninety years since, starting 
with an exploit amongst smugglers on the Kentish 
coast, and then taking the young hero, John Kemp, 
to Jamacia and on to Cuba where he undergoes 
incredible hardships and dangers, and gains the love 
of a Spanish girl of startling beauty and fabulous 
wealth. There are plots and counterplots on every 
page, there are murderous pirates and a still more 
murderous Irish judge of the Havana Supreme Court, 
there are deaths, and there is revenge, and always 
there is danger and passionate love. I do not attempt 
to tell the story in any detail because it is a sheer 
novel of adventure, and the glory of it lies in its colour 
and shifting lights. But I may say finally that John 
Kemp, who had to flee from the " runners " in the 
first instance, is brought home in irons on a charge of 
murder and piracy in Cuba. That he never com- 
mitted such atrocities comes out, at last, at his old 
Bailey trial ; and the end of it all is that he marries 
his lovely Seraphina and settles down to a safer and 
milder life in England. 



CONRAD'S NOVELS AND STORIES 65 



Romance is, indeed, a work of blazing imagination. 
It has all the paraphernalia of the sheer story of 
adventure, but its atmosphere, unlike most of its 
psychology, is not merely on the surface. It is a 
book dyed with colour to the very centre of its heart. 
Moreover, it is written in a very expansive and de- 
lightful style and contains many passages of true power 
and emotion. 

With Romance I finish my resumes of Conrad's 
novels and stories. In one sense they are like reviews 
and may serve a similar purpose, but in another 
way they are different. For in a review the plot 
should be told by implication rather than by direct 
description, whereas my idea here has been to outline 
the idea of the plot as simply and concisely as I could. 
And in a review one tries to say as much as one con- 
veniently can, but in these resumes 1 have purposely 
avoided the subtler points of criticism. And I have 
avoided them because I do not wish to be guilty 
of repetition. It is the future chapters that are the 
critical ones. 

With these words of self-defence, and with the 
warning I gave at the beginning against any assump- 
tion that this chapter is meant to be of critical value, 
I will close this unvarnished and lengthy examination 
of the novels and stories of Joseph Conrad. 



CHAPTER IV 

Conrad's atmosphere 

Conrad is one of the great masters of atmosphere — 
that thing so hard to define and so easy to perceive. 
For atmosphere is not simply a background, it is an 
essence vitally affecting the spirit of a work. When 
we say that Velasquez is a master of light oi Rembrandt 
a master of shadow we have something in mind 
more complex than mere light or shadow. For 
atmosphere is, at once, the unconscious touchstone 
of personality and a self-conscious effort to create 
a definite illusion. Think, for instance, of the poetry 
of Walt Whitman — a most impressive example. 
Indeed atmosphere permeates a work by the sheer 
might of imagination. And it is of both these 
conceptions I am thinking when I say that Conrad is 
one of the great masters of atmosphere. For with him 
atmosphere runs through the entire range of its 
possible import. His personality is for ever radiating 
itself through his work ; and, as for his conscious 
creation of an atmosphere, it can either be a de- 
scription of natural phenomena thrown upon the 
scene of a tropic setting to heighten the sense of beauty 
or corruption, or it can be a brooding spirit filling 
with terror, with pity, or with delight the whole 
nervous energy of a story. For the romantic mind 
is highly obscure and capable of all kinds of double 
experiences. The mournful philosophy of Conrad 
is stamped by him upon the wilds and upon men 



CONRAD'S ATMOSPHERE 67 

living in vain hope and constant endeavour. And 
how valuable an artistic background it is. This 
fatalism casts a glamour over these tropical forests, 
over these enormous rivers, over the unbroken silences 
of the wilderness. And it gives to human courage and 
endurance an almost sublime nobility. Look at 
Captain MacWhirr in Typhoon — a dense, unimaginative, 
stupid man, a man who would bore you to death in 
five minutes. And yet simply by the force of his 
dogged and unbending resistence to the storm he 
emerges an heroic figure. There is something epic 
about Captain MacWhirr. I often wonder whether 
Conrad's real intention in writing this story were not 
to show what unconquerable faithfulness can accom- 
plish, to show that man is, in a sense, superior to all 
the violence of the sea. ^ 

This interplay of mind and atmosphere (if I may 
so call it) is more noticeable in Conrad's earlier than 
in his later books. For in his later books his whole 
tone has become more impersonal — he has stepped 
back a little with his own emotions and has developed 
into an ironical observer rather than into a philosopher. 
But in his earlier work it grips you overpoweringly. 
His books and his characters are saturated with the 
sunlight and the gloom of tropical lands or flowing 
seas, and, conversely, the tropical lands, or the sea, 
or even Northern winter nights take on the beautiful 
or sinister aspect of the actors' minds. Consider, 
for instance, that strange story, " The Return," in 
which the very quietness of the house assumes a 
morbid and fateful aspect in the brain of Alvan 
Hervey. His chaotic emotions have invested the 
discreet respectabilit}'' of his home with all the name- 
less horrors of an Inferno. Let me give a typical 
quotation : — 



68 JOSEPH CONRAD 

He saw her come up gradually, as if ascending from a 
well. At every step the feeble flame of the candle swayed 
before her tired, young face, and the darkness of the hall 
seemed to cling to her black skirt, followed her, rising like 
a silent flood, as though the great night of the world had 
broken through the discreet reserve of walls, of closed doors, 
of curtained windows. It rose over the steps, it leaped up 
the walls like an angry wave, it flowed over the blue skies, 
over the yellow sands, over the sunshine of landscapes, and 
over the pretty pathos of ragged innocence and of meek 
starvation. It swallowed up the delicious idyll in a boat 
and the mutilated immortality of famous bas-reliefs. It 
flowed from outside — it rose higher, in a destructive silence. 
And, above it, the woman of marble, composed and blind on 
the high pedestal, seemed to ward off the devouring night 
with a cluster of lights. 

He watched the rising tide of impenetrable gloom with 
impatience, as if anxious for the coming of a darkness black 
enough to conceal a shameful surrender. It came nearer. 
The cluster of lights went out. The girl ascended facing him. 
Behind her the shadow of a colossal woman danced lightly 
on the wall. He held his breath while she passed by, noise- 
less and with heavy eyelids. And on her track the flowing 
tide of a tenebrous sea filled the house, seemed to swirl about 
his feet, and rising unchecked, closed silently above his head. 

The time had come but he did not open the door. All 
was still ; and instead of surrendering to the reasonable 
exigencies of life he stepped out, with a rebelling heart, into 
the darkness of the house. It was the abode of an im- 
penetrable night ; as though indeed the last day had come 
and gone, leaving him alone in a darkness that has no to- 
morrow. And looming vaguely below the woman of marble, 
livid and still like a patient phantom, held out in the night a 
cluster of extinguished lights. {Tales of Unrest, " The 
Return," pp. 264-5.) 

And in contrast to that, recall how Marlow in 
" Youth " lays upon the magic of the East the still 
more thrilling magic of youth and desire : — 

And this is how I see the East. I have seen its secret 



CONRAD'S ATMOSPHERE 69 



places and have looked into its very soul ; but now I see it 
always from a small boat, a high outline of mountains, blue 
and afar in the morning ; like faint mist at noon ; a jagged 
wall of purple at sunset. I have the feel of the oar in my 
hand, the vision of a scorching blue sea in my eyes. And 
I see a bay, a wide bay, smooth as glass and polished like ice, 
shimmering in the dark. A red light burns far off upon the 
gloom of the land, and the night is soft and warm. We drag 
at the oars with aching arms, and suddenly a puff of wind, 
a puff faint and tepid and laden with strange odours of 
blossoms, of aromatic wood, comes out of the still night — 
the first sigh of the East on my face. That I can never 
forget. It was impalpable and enslaving, like a charm, 
like a whispered promise of mysterious delight. (Youth, 
" Youth," pp. 41-2.) 

There, surely, is the very reaction of temperament 
and atmosphere. 

And Conrad, like many other great writers, like 
Shakespeare in The Merchant of Venice, Shelley in 
numerous lyrics, Whitman in prose and poetry, 
Meredith in The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, impresses 
this singular image of a sentient nature upon the 
intimate moments of passionate love or passionate 
regret. There is a wonderful instance of this in " To- 
morrow," where Bessie Carvil is talking in the dark 
to the stranger who has awakened in her so suddenly 
the stirrings of romance : — 

Again he stooped silently to hear better ; and the deep 
night buried everything of the whispering woman and the 
attentive man, except the familiar contiguity of their 
faces, with its air of secrecy and caress," (Typhoon, " To- 
morrow," p. 288.) 

In its suggestion of mysterious enticement this 
whole scene is thrilling. And, indeed, that is precisely 
what Conrad's atmosphere is — it is thrilling. That 



70 JOSEPH CONRAD 

is one of the main reasons why Nosiromo is so extra- 
ordinary. To me there is something almost terribly 
thrilling in the idea of the Placid Gulf with the three 
little islands lying on its fringe shutting in Sulaco from 
the sea-breezes, of the sierras capped by " the snows 
of Higuerota." And, almost more than in any of his 
books, is the atmosphere of Nostromo obtained by a 
cumulative effect — a sustained and subtle inter-action 
of the physical and the spiritual characteristics of the 
land and its people. In Nostromo Conrad hardly 
ever uses the obvious suggestions of fatalism presented 
by the exuberance or callousness of nature (partly, 
no doubt, because he is writing of an unfamiliar world) , 
and his touch is altogether lighter. The result is 
that, whereas his positive descriptions lack in their 
beautiful ease, a certain grandeur, the whole emotion 
of the book is intensely profound and thrilling. But 
let me give one example of Conrad's manner in 
Nostromo : — 

The declining sun had shifted the shadows from west 
to east amongst the houses of the town. It had shifted 
them upon the whole extent of the immense Campo, with 
the white walls of its haciendas on the knolls dominating 
the green distances ; with its grass-thatched ranchos crouch- 
ing in the folds of ground by the banks of streams ; with the 
dark islands of clustered trees on a clear sea of grass, and the 
precipitous range of the Cordillera, immense and motionless, 
emerging from the billows of the lower forests like the barren 
coast of a land of giants. The sunset rays striking the snow- 
slope of Higuerota from afar gave it an air of rosy youth, 
while the serrated mass of distant peaks remained black, 
as if calcined in the fiery radiance. The undulating surface 
of the forest seemed powdered with pale gold dust ; and 
away there, beyond Rincon, hidden from the town by two 
wooded spurs, the rocks of the San Tome gorge, with the flat 
wall of the mountain itself crowned by gigantic ferns, took 
on warm tones of brown and yellow, with red rusty streaks, 



CONRAD'S ATMOSPHERE 71 



and the dark green clumps of bushes in crevices. (Nos- 
tromo, p. 332.) 

Nosiromo, I repeat once more, is Conrad's most 
astonishing achievement. When we realise that he 
evolved this whole panorama, so complete and multi- 
fold, from the descriptions in an old book of his child- 
hood and from two flying visits to South American 
ports — visits extending, perhaps, to twelve hours in all 
— we feel how boundless are the limits of imagina- 
tion. For Costaguana lives before us in the very 
poetry of a marvellous realism. I know that Western 
coast slightly, from Panama down to Callao, and I 
can only assert that Costaguana is a perfect re-creation 
of the atmosphere of a South American Republic 
of the Ecquadorian kind (a cooler Equador, let us 
say), perfect in its delicate and just perception both 
of the character of the country and the character of 
the population. I call Nostromo one of the most 
tremendous books I have ever read. It is the great 
example of Conrad's vast capacity for building up 
the very illusion of reality out of practically nothing. 

And talking, as we were a moment ago, of thrilling 
descriptions, observe how he pictures the tropics of 
Africa and the East. They are like a hashish vision — 
a loveliness tinged with poison. Who could deny that 
such a story as " Youth " has the quality of a dream 
which, realised for an instant, departs for ever ? This 
is how Marlow sees the East for the first time : — 

The scented obscurity of the shore was grouped into 
vast masses, a density of colossal clumps of vegetation, 
probably — mute and fantastic shapes. And at their foot 
the semicircle of a beach gleamed faintly, like an illusion. 
There was not a light, not a stir, not a sound. The mysterious 
East faced me, perfumed like a flower, silent like death, dark 
like a grave. (Youth, " Youth," p. 42.) 



n JOSEPH CONRAD 

In " Heart of Darkness " Conrad portrays the might 
of the jungle. You can almost sniff the " primeval 
mud " of the Congo : — 

The great wall of vegetation, an exuberant and entangled 
mass of trunks, branches, leaves, boughs, festoons, motion- 
less in the moonlight, was like a rioting invasion of soundless 
life, a rolling wave of plants, piled up, crested, ready to 
topple over the creek, to sweep every little man of us out 
of his little existence. {Youth, " Heart of Darkness," 
p. 98.) 

The fact is, Conrad has an amazing command of 
language — very moving, fateful, and poetical. Just 
read a description like the following. I give it because 
it shows his power of words in full accord with his 
capability for creating an atmosphere : — 

Razumov stamped his foot — and under the soft carpet 
of snow felt the hard ground of Russia, inanimate, cold, 
inert, like a sullen and tragic mother hiding her face under a 
winding-sheet — his native soil ! — his very own — without a 
fireside, without a heart ! 

He cast his eyes upwards and stood amazed. The snow 
had ceased to fall, and now, as if by a miracle, he saw above 
his head the clear black sky of the northern winter, decorated 
with the sumptuous fires of the stars. It was a canopy fit 
for the resplendent purity of the snows. 

Razumov received an almost physical impression of end- 
less space and of countless millions. 

He responded to it with the readiness of a Russian who 
is born to an inheritance of space and numbers. Under the 
sumptuous immensity of the sky, the snow covered the endless 
forests, the frozen rivers, the plains of an immense country, 
obliterating the landmarks, the accidents of the ground, 
levelling everything under its uniform whiteness, like a 
monstrous blank page awaiting the record of an inconceivable 
history. {Under Western Eyes, pp. 30-1.) 

Very splendid. Indeed, there is no one who can 



CONRAD'S ATMOSPHERE 73 

write such prose-poetry, not the usual prose-poetry 
of word-painting alone, but descriptions of great 
beauty infused with a sort of melancholy — the 
melancholy of the wilds, of the sea-wastes, of the 
craving heart of man. I would like to give here 
two supreme instances of what I mean — both 
from Lord Jim. I cannot help thinking they must 
be the most magnificent things of their kind ever 
written : — 

A marvellous stillness pervaded the world, and the stars, 
together with the serenity of their rays, seemed to shed 
upon the earth the assurance of everlasting security. The 
young moon recurved, and shining low in the west, was like 
a slender shaving thrown up from a bar of gold, and the 
Arabian Sea, smooth and cool to the eye like a sheet of ice, 
extended its perfect level to the perfect circle of a dark horizon. 
The propeller turned without a check, as though its beat 
had been part of the scheme of a safe universe ; and on 
each side of the Patna two deep folds of water, permanent 
and sombre on the unwrinkled shimmer, enclosed within 
their straight and diverging ridges a few white swirls of 
foam bursting in a low hiss, a few wavelets, a few ripples, a 
few undulations that, left behind, agitated the surface of the 
sea for an instant after the passage of the ship, subsided 
splashing gently, calmed down at last into the circular 
stillness of water and sky with the black speck of the moving 
hull remaining everlastingly in its centre. {Lord Jim, 
pp. 16-7.) 

The thin gold shaving of the moon floating slowly down- 
wards had lost itself on the darkened surface of the waters, 
and the eternity beyond the sky seemed to come down 
nearer to the earth, with the augmented glitter of the stars, 
with the more profound sombreness in the lustre of the half- 
transparent dom_e covering the flat disc of an opaque sea. 
The ship moved so smoothly that her onward motion was 
imperceptible to the senses of men, as though she had been 
a crowded planet speeding through the dark spaces of ether 
behind the swarm of suns, in the appalling and calm solitudes 



74 JOSEPH CONRAD 

awaiting the breath of future creations. {Lord Jim, pp. 

21-2.) 

Conrad's astonishing power of visualisation is shown 
in such pictures, a power here used poetically, but 
always evident in his capacity for grasping an atmos- 
phere, and grasping it so strongly that he makes it not 
only real at the moment of description but pervasive 
all through the narrative. For his characters do seem 
to stand against a background that wields a charm 
over them. And they gain an added reality from it, 
because they justify so completely a sense of fitness. 
Their reality is precisely of the genre their setting 
demands. Thus, in Nostromo, a figure like Sotillo, 
the cruel, greedy, and cowardly colonel of the 
Esmeralda regiment, has a type of mind impossible 
outside of a certain class of debased and ignorant 
South American — a veneer of polish covering a bar- 
barous blackness of the heart. And thus, in The 
Secret Agent, the incoherent and troubled intelligence 
of Mr Verloc is like a shadow of his incoherent and 
troubled world. 

The Secret Agent is, indeed, one of Conrad's real 
triumphs in atmosphere. How exactly it suggests 
the squalid, the sordid neglect of Mr Verloc' s shop, 
and how well it gives at a glance the whole spirit of 
the underground and compromising life of the 
anarchists : — 

The window contained photographs of more or less un- 
dressed dancing girls ; nondescript packages in wrappers 
like patent medicines ; closed yellow paper envelopes, very 
flimsy, and marked two-and-six in heavy black figures ; 
a few numbers of ancient French comic publications hung 
across a string as if to dry ; a dingy blue china bowl, a casket 
of black wood, bottles of marking ink, and rubber stamps ; 
a few books, with titles hinting at impropriety ; a few 



CONRAD'S ATMOSPHERE 75 

apparently old copies of obscure newspapers, badly printed, 
with titles like The Torch, The Gong — rousing titles. And 
the two gas jets inside the panes were always turned low, 
either for economy's sake or for the sake of the customers. 
{The Secret Agent, pp. 1-2.) 

I may be blamed for giving so many specimens 
of Conrad's prose, but I give them because they are 
indeed significant. For they are the very emanation 
of his changing moods — the moods that enwrap 
with their filmy and invisible bonds the different 
novels and stories of Joseph Conrad. For to Conrad, 
the creation of an atmosphere, whether that atmos- 
phere be mainly physical as in his earlier work or 
mainly spiritual as in his later work, is his first and all- 
important care. For remember that every one of 
Conrad's characters is not only a personality but is 
definitely part of the structure of the book — part 
of tlie whole effect ; and as to the effect, Conrad is 
for ever paving the way to it — he is tireless in building 
up the semblance of an inevitable reality. In other 
words, his approach to our sympathies is largely 
through the medium of an intensely imagined atmos- 
phere. Indeed, Conrad's theory would seem to be 
this, that without atmosphere there can be no such 
thing as veritability. He imagines a definite scene 
and situation, a definite group of figures, and he has 
to make them as alive to us as they are to him. That 
is the whole object of his art. The surrounding air 
in which he envelops his stories is the reflection of his 
own clear and visionary grasp. His figures are as 
much part of his atmosphere as is the external world. 
The high beauty of his landscapes, the high reality 
of his characters, are, alike, the creation of one mood. 
And though his moods do vary enormously they always 
aim towards a similar effect — the fixing in the minds 



76 JOSEPH CONRAD 

of his readers of that illusion which he has in his own 
mind. It is because his imagination is profound that 
his atmosphere is arresting. It is the vessel into 
which he pours the detail of his idea — a metaphor 
which may be followed up by observing that if the vessel 
were so much as to crack then out it would slip. 
Conrad's victory is in the vividness and constant 
reality of his moods. Think, for instance, of a story 
like " The Secret Sharer." What could be more 
extraordinary than the whispering suspense that fills 
it ? It is so true, so unfaltering, that it grows into a 
heavy, breathless weight upon the life of the whole 
ship. His atmosphere is indeed at times so strong 
with the menace of disaster or the promise .of delight 
that it becomes acutely oppressive.', Think of " Heart 
of Darkness " where the repetition of Mr Kurtz's 
name echoing like a refrain through the savage heart 
of the wilderness gives a dream-like and legendary 
emotion to the whole experience, or of " To-morrow " 
where the defeat of love and hope is symbolic of all 
the lost romance of illusion, or of " Youth " where 
the reality of a gorgeous ideal is tinged by the glowing 
colours of adventure, or of "A Smile of Fortune " 
where the dark isolation of the garden throws its 
mantle of exotic perfume and desire over the seated 
figure of the girl, or of " The Return " where the 
disruption of a belief fills the house with the deadly 
whispers of despair and horror. And who has imagined 
the spirit of tragic fate more convincingly ? One 
reads " The End of the Tether " or " Freya of the 
Seven Islands " with a feeling of grave uneasiness. In 
fact, the uneasiness is almost too terrible in the second 
of these tales. One can just bear the pathos of " The 
End of the Tether " as one can just bear the pathos of 
Dostoievsky's Poor Folk but the anguish of " Freya 



CONRAD'S ATMOSPHERE 77 

of the Seven Islands " is like the anguish of Turgenev's 
The Torrents of Spring or of Shakespeare's Othello — 
inconsolable, agonising. Such stories lacerate within 
us the very roots of indignant pity. 

And then again, as I say later on in my chapter on 
irony, Conrad can invest a whole book with a spirit 
of irony, which is a very real atmosphere — an atmos- 
phere enclosing, as it were, another atmosphere. 
The Secret Agent, of course, is the classic example of 
this. 

And I should like to point out here a curious thing 
about writers whose sense of atmosphere is so tremen- 
dous — a thing exemplified very clearly in Conrad's 
work — and that is, not only that their realism is 
often touched by a symbolic significance but that 
this symbolic significance does not undermine their 
realism, but gives it, on the contrary, an added 
suppleness. Symbolic writing that has its founda- 
tions in symbolism rather than in atmosphere, 
produces, as every one knows, a dream-effect totally 
unrelated to realism, but symbolism arising from an 
overwhelming sense of atmosphere has the lyric 
quality of high reality. We can note this, as I will 
show in my chapter on Conrad's men, in such people 
as Captain MacWhirr (just imagine what Yeats or 
Maeterlinck would have made of Captain MacWhirr !), 
young Marlow, Harry Hagberd, old Singleton, and 
so on ; and in regard to places, things, events, it is 
equally visible. Consider, for instance, Conrad's 
attitude towards the sea and ships. No one could 
deny that it is an attitude fraught with symbolism. 
You may even call it the " pathetic fallacy " if you 
choose — names do not matter. For to Conrad the 
sea is the glorious, fickle, and relentless master of 
sailors' lives — a being at once immortal and change- 



78 JOSEPH CONRAD 

able ; while ships are trusty and enduring friends 
imbued with the faith, the weakness, and the charm 
of beautiful women. But what I want to emphasise 
here is that this symbolic view is not in the least 
divorced from realism. No one has created more 
convincingly the magic of the sea. His descriptions 
throb with the very sweep of its waves, with the very 
illusion of its calms. But his seas are real, his ships 
are real, and the whole life of sailors is portrayed with 
the uttermost depth of poetical reality. The august 
splendour of the sea is enshrined for ever in Conrad's 
stories. For if, in his descriptions of the hearts of 
men or the wilds of forests or the streets of cities, 
there creeps often a sense of weariness, of futility, 
and of discouragement, in his descriptions of the sea 
and of its life there shines a perennial freshness and 
joy. I cannot refrain from giving a few examples 
of this. And first I shall quote fiom The Mirror of 
the Sea, a comparatively little-known book of great 
beauty, into which Conrad has thrown all his passionate 
love of seas and ships. And the passage I shall 
quote does not praise the sea as noble in itself, but 
praises its nameless attraction and the faithful ships 
that gird it from pole to pole : — 

For all that has been said of the love that certain natures 
(on shore) have professed to feel for it, for all the celebrations 
it has been the object of in prose and song, the sea has never 
been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice 
of human restlessness, and playing the part of dangerous 
abettor of world-wide ambitions. Faithful to no race after 
the manner of the kindly earth, receiving no impress from 
valour and toil and self-sacrifice, recognising no finality of 
dominion, the sea has never adopted the cause of its masters 
like those lands where the victorious nations of mankind have 
taken root, rocking their cradles and setting up their grave- 
stones. He — man or people — who, putting his trust in the 



CONRAD'S ATMOSPHERE 79 

friendship of the sea, neglects the strength and cunning of 
his right hand, is a fool ! As if it were too great, too mighty 
for common virtues, the ocean has no compassion, no faith, 
no law, no memory. Its fickleness is to be held true to men's 
purposes only by an undaunted resolution and by a sleepless, 
armed, jealous vigilance, in which, perhaps, there has always 
been more hate than love. Odi et amo may well be the con- 
fession of those who consciously or blindly have surrendered 
their existence to the fascination of the sea. All the tem- 
pestuous passions of mankind's young days, the love of loot 
and the love of glory, the love of adventure and the love of 
danger, with the great love of the unknown and vast dreams 
of dominion and power, have passed like images reflected 
from a mirror, leaving no record upon the mysterious face 
of the sea. Impenetrable and heartless, the sea has given 
nothing of itself to the suitors for its precarious favours. 
Unlike the earth, it cannot be subjugated at any cost of 
patience or toil. For all its fascination that has lured so 
many to a violent death, its immensity has never been loved 
as the mountains, the plains, the desert itself, have been 
loved. Indeed, I suspect that, leaving aside the protestations 
and tributes of writers who, one is safe in saying, care for 
little else in the world than the rhythm of their lines and the 
cadence of their phrase, the love of the sea, to which some 
men and nations confess so readily, is a complex sentiment 
wherein pride enters for much, necessity for not a little, 
and the love of ships — the untiring servants of our hopes 
and our self-esteem — for the best and most genuine part. 
(The Mirror of the Sea, pp. 21 1-3.) 

And the next I shall quote from that sea-epic. 

The Nigger of the " Narcissus " : — 

The declining moon drooped sadly in the western board 
as if withered by the cold touch of a pale dawn. The ship 
slept. And the immortal sea stretched away, immense 
and hazy, like the image of life, with a glittering surface and 
lightless depths ; promising, empty, inspiring — terrible. 
(The Nigger of the " Narcissus," pp. 230-1.) 

And then from An Outcast of the Islands : — 



JOSEPH CONRAD 



The sea, perhaps because of its saltness, roughens the 
outside but keeps sweet the kernel of its servants' soul. The 
old sea ; the sea of many years ago, whose servants were 
devoted slaves and went from youth to age or to a sudden 
grave without needing to open the book of life, because they 
could look at eternity reflected on the element that gave the 
life and dealt the death. Like a beautiful and unscrupulous 
woman, the sea of the past was glorious in its smiles, irresistible 
in its anger, capricious, enticing, illogical, irresponsible ; a 
thing to love, a thing to fear. It cast a spell, it gave joy, it 
lulled gently into boundless faith ; then with quick and 
causeless anger it killed. But its cruelty was redeemed by 
the charm of its inscrutable mystery, by the immensity of 
its promise, by the supreme witchery of its possible favour. 
(An Outcast of the Islands, p. 13.) 

And for a picture of another kind — I think the 
following description is unapproachable : — 

Next morning, at daylight, the Narcissus went to sea. 

A slight haze blurred the horizon. Outside the harbour 
the measureless expanse of smooth water lay sparkling like 
a floor of jewels, and as empty as the sky. The short black 
tug gave a pluck to windward, in the usual way, then let go 
the rope, and hovered for a moment on the quarter with 
her engines stopped ; while the slim, long hull of the ship 
moved ahead slowly under lower topsails. The loose upper 
canvas blew out in the breeze with soft round contours, 
resembling small white clouds snared in the maze of ropes. 
Then the sheets were hauled home, the yards hoisted, and 
the ship became a high and lonely pyramid, gliding, all 
shining and white, through the sunlit mist. The tug turned 
short round and went away towards the land. Twenty-six 
pairs of eyes watched her low broad stern crawling languidly 
over the smooth swell between the two paddle-wheels that 
turned fast, beating the water with fierce hurry. She re- 
sembled an enormous and aquatic blackbeetle, surprised by 
the light, overwhelmed by the sunshine, trying to escape 
with ineffectual effort into the distant gloom of the land. 
She left a lingering smudge of smoke on the sky, and two 



CONRAD'S ATMOSPHERE 81 

vanishing trails of foam on the water. On the place where 
she had stopped a round black patch of soot remained, un- 
dulating on the swell — an unclean mark of the creature's 
rest. 

The Narcissus left alone, heading south, seemed to stand 
resplendent and still upon the restless sea, under the moving 
sun. Flakes of foam swept past her sides ; the water struck 
her with flashing blows ; the land glided away, slowly 
fading ; a few birds screamed on motionless wings over the 
swaying mastheads. But soon the land disappeared, the birds 
went away ; and to the west the pointed sail of an Arab 
dhow running for Bombay, rose triangular and upright 
above the sharp edge of the horizon, lingered, and vanished 
like an illusion. Then the ship's wake, long and straight, 
stretched itself out through a day of immense solitude. The 
setting sun, burning on the level of the water, flamed crimson 
below the blackness of heavy rain clouds. The sunset squall, 
coming up from behind, dissolved itself into the short deluge 
of a hissing shower. It left the ship glistening from trucks 
to waterline, and with darkened sails. She ran easily before 
a fair monsoon, with her decks cleared for the night ; and, 
moving along with her, was heard the sustained and mono- 
tonous swishing of the waves, mingled with the low whispers 
of men mustered aft for the setting of watches ; the short 
plaint of some block aloft ; or, now and then, a loud sigh of 
wind. {The Nigger of the " Narcissus," pp. 38-40.) 

But I must not let these grand passages lure me 
from the purpose of my book. I will give but one 
more quotation about ships — and in no other passage 
of Conrad is the alembic of their mysterious appeal 
more exquisitely embalmed : — 

The brig's business was on uncivilised coasts, with obscure 
rajahs dwelling in nearly unknown bays ; with native 
settlements up mysterious rivers opening their sombre, 
forest-lined estuaries among a welter of pale green reefs 
and dazzling sand-banks, in lonely straits of calm blue water 
all aghtter with sunshine. Alone, far from the beaten 
tracks, she glided, all white, round dark, frowning headlands. 



JOSEPH CONRAD 



stole out^ silent like a ghost, from behind points of land 
stretching out all black in the moonlight ; or lay hove-to, 
like a sleeping sea-bird, under the shadow of some nameless 
mountain waiting for a signal. She would be glimpsed 
suddenly on misty, squally days dashing disdainfully aside 
the short aggressive waves of the Java Sea ; or be seen far, 
far away, a tiny dazzling white speck flying across the brood- 
ing purple m.asses of thunderclouds piled up on the horizon. 
{Tivixt land and Sea, " Freya of the Seven Islands," p. 189.) 

And it is in such-wise, though indeed with a hundred 
variations, that the Hfe of the sea and of ships appears 
to Conrad. It is a passion which pulses in the very 
heart of his books, imparting to them, amidst the 
cynical aspects of his philosophy, a real fervour of 
remembrance. It is the rejuvenating atmosphere of 
the sea that gives to Conrad's most typical work its 
everlasting appeal. 

But, of course, we have to remember that Conrad 
has an intimate feeling for the sea, which must be 
accepted as such. It colours his work almost as a 
recognised bias colours the work of some historians. 
Its whole life is steeped for him in a glow of incom- 
municable romance and affection. In treating of 
it Conrad's critical sense is sometimes in abeyance 
before the delight of his generous enthusiasm. True, 
his melancholy philosophy does pervade his descrip- 
tions of the ocean, but it is more often the melancholy 
of memory than of disillusion. His inborn love of the 
sea has grown stronger from year to year. For this 
is the ideal passion, whose only reward is the know- 
ledge of toil and conquest. 

And, to follow up another train of the argument, 
we may note that Conrad invests his characters to 
a very marked degree with the atmosphere of their 
own personality. I am aware that, in a sense, this 



CONRAD'S ATMOSPHERE 83 

is only to say that his characters are very real ; but 
in a sense it also does imply something more. Tol- 
stoy's characters, for instance, are real, but they do 
not impress their own personality upon their surround- 
ings in the way Conrad's characters do. It may be 
thought that I am forcing a point in saying this, but 
I hardly think I am. For a long time past I have tried 
to account to myself for the special quality of vividness 
in Conrad's characters, and it is this explanation alone 
which reasonably satisfies my judgment. For even 
those characters of his which are quite untouched by 
any symbolic significance appear, as it were, steeped 
in the impalpable glow of their own personality. I 
daresay I do not make myself particularly plain — for, 
indeed it is a thing well-nigh impossible to make plain 
to anyone who does not know Conrad's books. But 
I believe that those who do know them will follow me. 
And here, perhaps, we may find one of the reasons 
for Conrad's comparative unpopularity. I will be 
explicit. We know that some novelists of marked 
ability possess so curiously wrought a style that reality 
is actually impossible to them (Conrad's own col- 
laborator. Ford Hueffer, is a striking instance of 
this) — their style seems to get not only between the 
reader and the book but even between the novelist and 
the book : and, conversely, some novelists are so real, 
that their reality overwhelms their readers. This is at 
once the danger and the glory of the atmospheric 
method. 

And applied, as Conrad also applies it, to the ex- 
ternal world of surroundings this intense discernment 
of characteristics gives his work that astonishing 
richness of atmosphere which is almost equally 
bewildering to some of his readers. For his forests, 
his rivers, his swamps exhale the very spirit of their 



M JOSEPH CONRAD 

wild and sombre appearance. Do you remember that 
scene in " Heart of Darkness " where the two plotters 
are overheard by Marlow in their vile agreement 
to trust to the wilderness : — 

" They die so quick, too, that I haven't the time to send 
them out of the country — it's incredible ! " " H'm. Just 
so," grunted the uncle. "Ah ! my boy, trust to this — I say, 
trust to this." I saw him extend his short flipper of an arm 
for a gesture that took in the forest, the creek, the mud, the 
river,- — seemed to beckon with a dishonouring flourish before 
the sunlit face of the land a treacherous appeal to the lurking 
death, to the hidden evil, to the profound darkness of its 
heart. It was so startling that I leaped to my feet and 
looked back at the edge of the forest, as though I had ex- 
pected an answer of some sort to that black display of con- 
fidence. You know the foolish notions that come to one 
sometimes. The high stillness confronted these two figures 
with its ominous patience, waiting for the passing away 
of a fantastic invasion. (Youth, " Heart of Darkness," 
pp. 103-4.) 

That is what I mean when I say that Conrad's 
atmosphere, itself, can arouse an uneasy and dis- 
concerting emotion in the reader — an antagonistic 
emotion arising from the deep inborn dread of darkness. 

People have complained that when Conrad writes 
of England and of Northern countries in general 
his atmosphere has the opulence of the tropics. There 
is certainly foundation for this complaint if one assumes 
that atmosphere is in the main a matter of climate — 
for instance, as I pointed out in my first chapter, the 
London of The Secret Agent is strangely exotic — 
but if one assumes that it is principally a matter of 
temperament, then the justice of the complaint is 
largely overborne, though the statement, as regards 
his earlier works, is, I repeat, accurate enough. Every 



CONRAD'S ATMOSPHERE 85 



one would agree that this Kentish landscape is 
exotic : — 

With the sun hanging low on its western limit, the expanse 
of the grass-lands framed in the counter-scarps of the rising 
ground took on a gorgeous and sombre aspect. A sense of 
penetrating sadness, like that inspired by a grave strain of 
music, disengaged itself from the silence of the fields. The 
men we met walked past, slow, unsmiling, with dovmcast 
eyes, as if the melancholy of an over-burdened earth had 
weighted their feet, bowed their shoulders, borne down their 
glances. {Typhoon, " Amy Foster," p. 121.) 

Yes, every one would agree that it is an exotic 
description, but to say that it is too far fetched is 
rather like saying that the descriptions in Keats' 
" The Eve of Saint Mark " are too far fetched. For 
both are animated by the same sort of imagination. 

But, in his later works, even that accusation does 
not hold altogether good. Let me give an example 
from " The Duel," in which the snowy Russia of the 
retreat from Moscow is presented more from a 
European standpoint, and presented, too, with 
powerful realism : — 

The only stragglers were those who fell out to give up to 
the frost their exhausted souls. They plodded on, and their 
passage did not disturb the mortal silence of the plains, 
shining with the livid light of snows under a sky the colour 
of ashes. Whirlwinds ran along the fields, broke against 
the dark column, enveloped it in a turmoil of flying icicles, 
and subsided, disclosing it creeping on its tragic way without 
the swing and rhythm of the military pace. It struggled 
onwards, the men exchanging neither words nor looks ; 
whole ranks marched touching elbow, day after day and 
never raising their eyes from the ground, as if lost in des- 
pairing reflections. In the dumb, black forests of pines the 
cracking of overloaded branches was the only sound they 
heard. Often from daybreak to dusk no one spoke in the 



86 JOSEPH CONRAD 

whole column. It was like a macabre march of struggling 
corpses towards a distant grave. (A Set of Six, " The Duel/' 
pp. 226-7.) 

But I will admit that one misses in Conrad the soft, 
dreamy atmosphere which confers such a charm on 
the Russians. In a writer like Turgenev the poetry 
of spring breathes upon the rhapsodies of first love 
so consummately as to create a beautiful illusion of 
the beneficence of nature. It is this atmosphere of 
still and passionate delight, this tender music of pearly 
summer evenings on the steppes, that the Russians 
have made all their own. 

Where Conrad's atmosphere does resemble that of 
the Russians is in its pervasive quality. It is not a 
series of crude, brilliant slashes, as it is, for instance, 
in some (though not all) of the work of Masefield, 
but it is an emotion sinking deep into the spirit of 
the book. It is, certainly, more marked in Conrad's 
earlier as compared to his later work, but it is always 
there as part of the whole substance of th6 story. 
I can explain more clearly what I mean by giving an 
illustration from Anatole France. In Thai's, which 
is early, the atmosphere is rich, voluptuous, and 
glowing; in the Bergeret series, which is late, the 
atmosphere is subdued and subtle — but in each case 
it enters into the very core of the work. That is 
somewhat the difference between, say, the earliest 
novel of Conrad, Almayer's Folly, and the latest. 
Chance. In Almayer's Folly he may describe a river 
in this way : — . 

Over the low river-mist hiding the boat with its freight 
of young passionate life and all-forgetful happiness, the 
stars paled, and a silvery-grey tint crept over the sky from 
the eastward. There was not a breath of wind, not a rustle 
of stirring leaf, not a splash of leaping fish to disturb the 



CONRAD'S ATMOSPHERE 87 

serene repose of all living things on the banks of the great 
river. Earth, river, and sky were wrapped up in a deep 
sleep, from which it seemed there would be no waking. All 
the seething life and movement of tropical nature seemed 
concentrated in the ardent eyes, in the tumultuously beating 
hearts of the two beings drifting in the canoe, under the 
white canopy of mist, over the smooth surface of the river. 

Suddenly a great sheaf of yellow rays shot upwards from 
behind the black curtain of trees lining the banks of the 
Pantai. The stars went out ; the little black clouds at the 
zenith glowed for a moment with crimson tints, and the 
thick mist, stirred by the gentle breeze, the sigh of waking 
nature, whirled round and broke into fantastically torn 
pieces, disclosing the wrinkled surface of the river sparkling 
in the broad light of day. Great flocks of white birds 
wheeled screaming above the swaying tree-tops. The sun 
had risen on the east coast. (Ahnayer's Folly, pp. 94-5.) 

and in Chance he may describe a river in this way : — 

As often happens after a grey daybreak the sun had risen 
in a warm and glorious splendour above the smooth immense 
gleam of the enlarged estuary. Whisps of mist floated like 
trails "of luminous dust, and in the dazzhng reflections of 
water and vapour, the shores had the murky semi-transparent 
darkriesff of shadows cast mysteriously from below. Powell, 
who had sailed out of London all his young seaman's life 
told me that it was then, in a moment of entranced vision 
an hour or so after sunrise, that the river was revealed to 
him for all time, like a fair face often seen before, which is 
suddenly perceived to be the expression of an inner and 
unsuspected beauty, of that something unique and only its 
own which arouses a passion of wonder and fidelity and an 
unappeasable memory of its charm. The hull of the Ferndale 
swung head to the eastward, caught the light, her tall spars 
and rigging steeped in a path of red-gold, from the water-line 
full of glitter to the trucks slight and gleaming against the 
delicate expanse of blue. (Chance, p. 251.) 

but in both these descriptions there is the typical 
atmosphere of the respective books, the atmosphere 



JOSEPH CONRAD 



illusive and universal which gives its special tone to 
the various stages of his work. For the difference 
between them is not simply that between north and 
south, between the Pantai and the Thames, it is the 
difference between Conrad's early and Conrad's late 
manner. I can only present it in concrete examples, 
of course — though with an atmosphere such as Conrad's 
a concrete example is but the visualisation of the whole 
spirit. For in Conrad's books atmosphere is always 
treated from the same standpoint, though it is 
developed in many different moods. 

But there is one thing about Conrad which, I fancy, 
is universally admitted, and that is his power of 
building up the atmosphere of romance — a romance 
often tinged, as I say, with the hue of vain regret, 
of useless desire, and of defeated hope. It falls upon 
his characters and his scenes, it dyes his stories with 
the sadness of vanished youth. For it is romance 
alone that makes memory poignant. An air of ex- 
pectancy hovers over his stories, but it is an expect- 
ancy that fades away into old age. For it is hope 
that is sweet but it is decay that is certain. As 
Conrad exclaims : — 

Oh the glamour of youth ! Oh the fire of it, more dazzling 
than the flames of the burning ship, throwing a magic light 
on the wide earth, leaping audaciously to the sky, presently 
to be quenched by time, more cruel, more pitiless, more 
bitter than the sea — and like the flames of the burning ship 
surrounded by an impenetrable night. {Youth, " Youth/' 
P- 33-) 

But he can also create the more ordinary glamour 
of romantic adventure. There is plenty of it in 
" Youth," in " The Duel " in " A Smile of Fortune," 
but nowhere is it more sustained than in the novel 



CONRAD'S ATMOSPHERE 89 

of Romance. In this book Conrad and Hueffer have 
achieved the very spirit of their title. It ghtters 
with the romance of danger, of love, of youth, of 
intrigue. And it creates with rare depth of imagina- 
tion the very soul of Spanish Cuba of a hundred years 
ago. Some of the descriptions in Romance are ex- 
tremely fine. Here is one which has been truly called 
Dantesque : — 

" I feel in me a greatness, an inspiration. , . ." 
These were his last words. The heavy dark lashes de- 
scended slowly upon the faint gleam of the eyeballs, like a 
lowered curtain. The deep folds of the ravine gathered the 
falling dusk into great pools of absolute blackness at the foot 
of the crags. 

Rising high above our littleness that watched, fascinated, 
the struggle of lights and shadows over the soul entangled 
in the wreck of a man's body, the rocks had a monumental 
indifference. And between their great stony faces, turning 
pale in the gloom, with the amazed peon as if standing guard, 
machete in hand, Manuel's greatness and his inspiration 
passed av/ay without as much as an exhaled sigh. {Romance, 
pp. 365-6.) 

Indeed, Romance is a book too often overlooked by 
students of Conrad. 

I have said little or nothing about the other side 
of atmosphere — the unconscious and ceaseless mani- 
festation of personality. And I have said little 
because, of course, the object of this whole book is 
to make that evident. Conrad has his flavour just 
as any other writer of any prominence has his. That 
it is visible in his conscious effects is naturally true, for 
such are the index to the inner self. And here are the 
chief points one may look for in Conrad's philosophy 
— romance tinged with the sense of fatalism and 
madness, cynicism touched by a deep regard for the 



90 JOSEPH CONRAD 



qualities of simplicity and compassion. He is im- 
patient of the futility of things, and fatalism is 
embedded in his theory of a pitiless scheme. And 
yet to all this is queerly joined a real zest for existence, 
and a sympathetic warmth for artless and beautiful 
lives. I feel inclined to say that to his general dis- 
illusionment about life there is added an almost naive 
belief in goodness. It is in the rough seamen of the 
Narcissus or in the frail figure of a Mrs Gould 
that Conrad finds an antidote for his disgust at 
human folly. 

And, arising out of this duality, we can notice in 
Conrad, overlaid, as it were, upon his pessimism, the 
strictest regard for integrity and an austere sense of 
honour. I do not mean that these things are neces- 
sarily antagonistic to a pessimistic conception of life, 
but I do mean that, in the way Conrad presents them, 
they might appear old fashioned to stupid persons. 
For, as I have stated previously, people in England 
expect original cleverness in their literary heroes — 
and expect it, I may add, even concerning the most 
straightforward emotions of life. They want mounte- 
banks to tell them that their integrity is a subject 
for derision, or that their honour is, strictly speaking, 
dishonourable ; or else, they want some one who will 
for ever be drawing the shades finer and finer. The 
simplicity of a man like Conrad, a simplicity hiding 
an immense subtlety of perception, is not easily 
understood. But, in contrast to Conrad's wide tone 
of sceptical aloofness, it is a note the unexpectedness 
of which is sure to strike home to every reader. 

But I will draw these rather desultory remarks on 
Conrad's atmosphere to a close. For I set out to do 
a thing which I find is beyond me. The secret of 
Conrad's atmosphere eludes me as a critic, though 



CONRAD'S ATMOSPHERE 91 

emotionally it is as clear as the day. That is one of 
the reasons why I have given so many extracts 
(though, of course, it is only the physical atmosphere 
that extracts adequately present) — because in them is 
demonstrated the very quality that escapes analysis. 
Moreover one cannot break up atmosphere into its 
component parts without destroying its magic. I 
can only point out again, what has been pointed out 
by so many other people, that atmosphere does exist 
potently in the very fibre of Conrad's books. It is 
this which, in its weakness alike as in its strength, 
gives to Conrad's work its chief claim to uniqueness. 



CHAPTER V 

CONRAD AS PSYCHOLOGIST 

In the two following chapters I mean to discuss some 
of the more prominent figures in Conrad's books — in 
the first of them the men ; in the second of them, the 
women. For, of course, that is the only satisfactory 
method of analysing the psychological powers of a 
novelist. A truism indeed ! But at the outset I 
propose to make a few remarks on Conrad's general 
conception of character and of his manner of ap- 
proaching the subject. And first of all I would point 
out that nowhere more decisively than in his drawing 
of character does Conrad reveal his tremendous grip 
on reality. Not only are his people drawn with rare 
imagination, but with a ceaseless detail which is ever 
awake to uphold, like Atlas, the structure of his vision- 
ary world. It is the conjunction of these two diverse 
and necessary forces that gives the high actuality 
to his creations. Such realism knows nothing of the 
eccentric or typical view of character so common 
amongst our English writers. The fresh gusts of 
vivacity that are ceaselessly flowing from some 
novelists into their puppets may serve to entertain 
the reader enormously but are quite useless for the 
purpose of realism. The figures of Conrad live because 
the fires of their existence burn inwardly. They are 
projected once and for all from the mind of their 
author and thereafter they have no need to call upon 
him for help. They don't require bolstering up, so 



CONRAD AS PSYCHOLOGIST 93 

to speak, by the sallies of their originator. That is 
the realistic gift — a thing as perfect in its illusion as 
is the perspective of a masterly painting. And no 
brilliance, no philosophic depth, no curious originality 
can take its place. 

And the next point I would insist on is that, although 
Conrad's psychology is always sane and unjaundiced, 
yet, in his male characters especially, he does draw a 
type of mind to whom the domination of one idea has 
a terrible attraction. I need not cite examples at 
the moment, but I mention it here because it is a thing 
which shows clearly enough Conrad's theory of people 
as a whole. And his theory is, I think, that beneath 
the usual level of sanity and good will there is an 
immense under-world of darkness and unrest. Our 
healthiness is snatched fearfully out of the madness 
of nature. His philosophy of character is often 
optimistic, his philosophy of life invariably pessimistic. 

And Conrad's view of character has, as I have 
pointed out elsewhere, an occasional touch of sym- 
bolism about it which is extraordinarily thrilling. 
But one must remember that it is thrilHng simply 
because the symbolism does not swallow up the 
reality. Captain Mac Whirr in " Typhoon " is a case 
in point. In my chapter on Conrad's atmosphere 
I speak of the excitement we experience when this 
stupid man faces with invulnerable endurance the 
fury of the storm. But the reason why he does 
interest one so intensely is just because he is a real 
person and not merely symbolic of man's fight with 
nature. I am a little afraid lest what I have said in 
the other chapter may be misunderstood. You see, 
there is this recondite duality in romantic minds, this 
capacity for creating one illusion within another. 
Captain MacWhirr is essentially real, but his reality 



94 JOSEPH CONRAD 

seems enhanced by his contact with the typhoon. 
That is Conrad's system of developing his characters. 
He Hkes to show us them battUng with some definite 
catastrophe or idea. " His people are faced with 
monstrous propositions. There is Lord Jim {Lofd 
Jim) with his problem of how to redeem his honour, 
there is Charles Gould {Nostromo) enslaved to his silver 
mine, there is Almayer [Almayer's Folly) with his hope 
of riches, there is Mr Verloc {The Secret Agent) haunted 
by his own endless scheming, there is Lieutenant 
Feraud ("The Duel") obsessed by his duel, there is 
Razumov {Under Western Eyes) fighting his conscience, 
there is old de Barral {Chance) with his monomania 
of hatred and ill-usage. I need not prolong such a 
list : it is what I spoke of in my former paragraph — 
the power of the idee fixe over Conrad's male portraits. 
Not always, of course, but quite frequently, this is 
how Conrad works, and it has led to some talk of his 
not being so much a profound psychologist as a 
profound describer of moods. I do not think there 
is much in that, for it only represents the incapacity 
of most normal people to realise the might of even 
slightly abnormal obsessions and it shows also that 
they have not grasped how Conrad arrives at his con- 
clusions. For he is not describing eccentric types, he 
is describing the victimisation of ordinary people by 
the madness of the world. Almost more than any 
other writer save Dostoievsky, has Conrad probed to 
its depths the duality of the mind. In my opinion 
he is truly one of the great imaginative creators. 
For me his portraits have an absorbing actuality. 
He builds up his figures by a hundred harmonious 
touches. Even assume that he is going to present 
us to a man driven by one mastering impulse — say 
Lord Jim. That does not prevent him very soon 



CONRAD AS PSYCHOLOGIST 95 

making us comprehend Lord Jim quite apart from 
that impulse. For not only is Jim's treatment of his 
own obsession a key to his whole character, but, with 
the sure instinct of an artist, Conrad finishes him off 
completely — him and all his other people, indeed — 
their gestures, their scraps of dialogue. He reads 
them subjectively and objectivelj'', he views them from 
all sorts of standpoints. His endeavour is to be 
universally consistent to reality. I do not say he is 
invariably successful — I do not think he is. I would 
not call such figures as Father Corbelan [Nostromo), 
or Gaspar Ruiz (" Gaspar Ruiz ") or even Mario w him- 
self (" Heart of Darkness," etc.) altogether successful 
— just to mention a few. But that is only to be ex- 
pected, it happens to every creator. Look at the 
Bulgarian in Turgenev's On the Eve — what a piece 
of wood ! But the answer to that is surely this — • 
Look at Helena in the same book. And as to Conrad, 
I have only to say, look at so and so, and so and so — 
fifty figures ! 

That is the worst of it. There are so many char- 
acters of the finest distinction in Conrad's works that 
I have no space to deal at all adequately with more 
than a few of them. Or rather, it is true of his men — 
his women are comparatively few in number. And 
yet, in a sense, Conrad's male portraits require subtler 
handling than his female portraits. For his women 
are more direct than his men and the beautiful deli- 
cacy of their construction requires, for right under- 
standing, only the talent of sympathy and observation, 
whereas some, at any rate, of his men are definitely 
obscure not, be it understood, in their psychology 
but in the reasons for their psychology. Male por- 
traits, elaborate, singular, very distinctive, crowd 
these pages. In Nostromo, alone, there must be a 



96 JOSEPH CONRAD 



dozen figures of unique consequence. The minds of 
his chief men are unrolled before us with a wealth 
and fullness recalling the huge monologues of Brown- 
ing. For instance Lord Jim is concerned, principally 
with one figure — ^Jim ; and Under Western Eyes 
principally with one figure — Razumov. 

But here let me point out a fundamental principle 
of Conrad's art. And it is a principle at once so 
alien to our English conception of the novel and so 
necessary in Conrad's conception of it that I must 
put it strongly. However important a character 
of Conrad's may be, that character is, nevertheless, 
subordinate to the unity of the book. Put thus it 
sounds neither a startling nor an unusual assertion 
but if the test be applied to the great characters of 
the great English novelists it would not stand. To 
take, what is perhaps an extreme example : Who 
ever thinks of Dickens' principal figures in relation 
to the plot ? G. K. Chesterton knocks the nail on 
that head acutely in his Charles Dickens, when he 
says : — 

Dickens' characters are perfect as long as he can keep 
them out of his stories (p. 148). 

The truth is, that the unity of the novel is an idea 
that has been, with the exception of Henry James 
and George Moore (writers much under Continental 
influence), upheld by few English-speaking novelists 
before Conrad. 

And I may add, further, that what most interests 
Conrad about people is, as a friend of mine calls it, 
" The changing complex of human relations," rather 
than the people as individuals. It is that, mainly, 
which differentiates his novels from the English 
novels of character. Just as he has the artistic 



CONRAD AS PSYCHOLOGIST 97 

balance of his whole work before him in every sen- 
tence, so does he have the subtle grouping of all 
his characters before him in every one of their 
actions. The conflict of antagonistic or sympathetic 
natures is what really " intrigues " Conrad's imagina- 
tion. That is why he is so fond of viewing his 
figures through the eyes of several different people, 
as in Chance, for instance (which almost follows the 
methods of The Ring and the Book), and of taking 
quite minor characters, such as the French officer in 
Lord Jim or the Brussels girl in " Heart of Darkness," 
and treating them as pivots on which he can turn 
his group of principal actors, thereby gaining new 
lights on them. 

But, returning for an instant to what I was saying 
about Conrad's tendency to make his men subject to 
the fascination of an idee fixe, and to his view of nature 
as a mass of wild forces, one should note absolutely 
that Conrad, himself, is not under the idee fixes from 
which his characters suffer (as, for instance, is Tol- 
stoy), nor are these characters of his at all insane 
(as, for instance, are the characters of Dostoievsky). 
To realise this truly is essential, because complete 
sanity is of the very nature of Conrad's genius. To 
say that his mental balance is unclouded is, after all, 
hardly more than to affirm that his psychology is 
rooted in reality. That seems obvious for, if it were 
not so, the obsessions of his people would not move 
us, they v/ould only bewilder us. (I admit that 
Dostoievsky's characters move us — but then they 
are not all insane and such as are, are generally 
advancing out of or into insanity ; they are still 
human). For though the dehumanised mind may be 
pathetic, it is actually without significance — it revolves 
in an unreal world. My meaning cannot be better 

G 



98 JOSEPH CONRAD 

expressed than in the words of A. C. Bradley in his 
Shakespearean Tragedy : — 

Shakespeare, occasionally and for reasons which need 
not be discussed here, represents abnormal conditions of 
mind ; insanity, for example, somnambulism, hallucinations. 
And deeds issuing from these are certainly not what are 
called deeds in the fullest sense, deeds expressive of char- 
acter. ... If Lear were really mad when he divided his 
kingdom, if Hamlet were really mad at any time in the story, 
they would cease to be tragic characters (pp. 13-4). 

It is just the assurance we feel that Conrad's char- 
acters, in spite of all their idee fixes, in spite of the mad 
world around them, are real, suffering people, that 
gives the dignity of tragedy to his creations. 

I daresay I shall be accused here of manipulating 
the facts of the case to suit my contention — of proving 
black to be white, in simpler terms — but I am not 
conscious of so doing. If people say that I am raising 
a bother about nothing at all, that I am, in fact, 
creating a philosophy for Conrad that he never created 
for himself, it may be that they are right — it is their 
criticism against mine — but if they say that once 
having admitted that Conrad's characters are subject 
to idee fixes springing from contact with an essentially 
mad world, I must then admit, logically, that such 
characters are actually mad themselves, I altogethei: 
disagree. My whole contention is that, to Conrad, 
humanity is the one sane thing in the universe — I 
mean sane in the sense of having an ordered develop- 
ment and not a mere blind repetition. I own that 
in human beings the line where responsibility merges 
into sheer insanity may not be strictly discernible, 
but, all the same, it is quite plain when it has not been 
overstepped. In other words, we know perfectly 
well when eccentricity is not madness. And it is 



CONRAD AS PSYCHOLOGIST 99 

with this knowledge one reahses that none of 
Conrad's subjective characters even approach insanity. 
Furthermore (though this is not really germane to 
Conrad as it is to Shakespeare) we should remember 
that literary madness is very seldom real madness. 
But, indeed, in connection with the whole subject, 
one might well venture the remark that so trans- 
parently sane a man as Conrad could not, if he 
tried, treat insanity subjectively. Poor old Captain 
Hagberd in " To-morrow " (a man whose idee fixe 
has degenerated into true insanity) is viewed entirely 
objectively. He claims our pity because we see him 
through the eyes of the other actors, and consequently 
in focus with our world of ideas. 

And just as one feels with entire certainty the 
sanity of men like Shakespeare and Conrad, so 
one feels doubtful about the sanity of men like 
Blake and Dostoievsky. Here, of course, I am on 
dangerous ground because, though the insanity of 
genius is so obviously a different thing from ordinary 
insanity, yet adverse critics will never admit that one 
is aware of that : but I bring it forward here to prove 
still more decisively the sanity of Conrad and his 
characters. You have only to study Blake's pictures 
or Dostoievsky's heroes to be convinced that there is 
something abnormal and disordered in their creators' 
minds. Blake is an extraordinarily dynamic artist 
and Dostoievsky the greatest novelist the world is ever 
likely to see, but I am quite sure that neither of them 
is sane in the sense that Conrad is sane — as sure as 
that their " insanity " is so subtle and indefinable that 
I will never be able to lay my finger on it. 

But my opinion remains that, as I said before, 
Conrad views nature as a mad, incoherent jumble. 
This philosophy of his is constantly peeping out both 



100 JOSEPH CONRAD 

in his melancholy atmosphere and in the sombre 
delusions of his figures. Sanity to him lies deeper than 
the beautiful face of the external world. He is no 
George Meredith to be beguiled into worship of what 
is inevitable. His idea of nature is founded upon a 
conception of destiny more rebellious than that of 
Meredith, and not only more rebellious but more 
tragic. And yet I would not say that Meredith's 
and Conrad's views of nature are so far apart as might 
appear. No doubt Conrad too, would echo Meredith's 
line : — 

Into the breast that gives the rose 
Shall I with shuddering fall ? 

{Ode to the Spirit of Earth in Autumn.) 

but then he would echo it because stoicism in regard 
to life must always be a quality of clear-headed 
thinkers. The rapture for Nature's loveliness is equally 
apparent in Meredith and in Conrad, but to one she is 
the fountain of man's sanity, whereas to the other she 
is the quagmire of man's unrest. I expect that I 
am putting the case crudely in my desire to make 
my point and my comparison, but I believe I have 
stated the general truth of the matter. 

But Conrad's own grasp of character shows a sense 
of proportion of the most valuable description. It 
shows it in his avoidance of those extravagances that 
might tend to diminish the individual reality of his 
creations just as well as in the sensitive poise and 
balance of his atmosphere. I speak of his finest work. 
I admit that he can sometimes be extravagant but, 
even so, it is an extravagance that is never really 
bizarre. His extravagances are those of over-im- 
agination and not those of false imagination. We 
seldom, if ever, feel that he has made a mistake in 



CONRAD AS PSYCHOLOGIST 101 

psychology, though we feel, often enough, that he 
has gone beyond due limits in its presentation. And 
this frequently arises from the too rich colours of his 
atmosphere. In his later books, where his atmosphere 
is toned down very considerably, the false notes in 
Conrad — I mean the positive false notes — occur hardly 
at all. 

And this suggests a fruitful topic— the influence 
of atmosphere on Conrad's figures. I have touched 
on this subject in the particular chapter that treats 
of Conrad's atmosphere and so I may, perhaps, be 
pardoned if I have to repeat myself. The truth is, 
Conrad's psychology is saturated in atmosphere and 
cannot very well be appreciated fully apart from it. 
It all hangs on what I was saying before — that Conrad's 
characters are as much a portion of an artistic whole 
(the story in which they appear) as they are individu- 
alities in themselves. I really do not see how that can 
be denied. His people take on, with artful gradations, 
the atmosphere of their surroundings. Indeed Conrad's 
chief aim is to pave the way for their reality 
by the creation of a tremendous and pervasive 
atmosphere. I mean by atmosphere (as much as 
anything else) that emotion which gives an under- 
current to the unity of a work of art. In this sense 
of the word his figures are obviously atmospheric. 

And, furthermore, Conrad has an endless curiosity 
in regard to character. He is always experimenting. 
For instance, he takes a shipful of unsophisticated 
sailors in The Nigger of the " Narcissus " and he con- 
fronts them with a knotty problem — the problem of 
the dying James Wait. What he wants to do is to 
discover the limits of their simplicity. The result is 
remarkable. The whole discipline of the ship is dis- 
integrated because these seamen cannot understand 



102 JOSEPH CONRAD 

the officers' attitude towards the nigger and it even 
results in an attempted mutiny against men for whom 
they have a genuine regard. 

Again, in Lord Jim, Conrad wants to find out what 
it is in man that makes him so often disregard the 
first law of his being — the law of self-preservation ; 
in other words, what bravery is. So, with his intense 
and apparently paradoxical curiosity, he burrows 
down into the secret places of the heart to analyse its 
converse — cowardice. Firstly, there is Jim, a man 
with a romantic vision of himself who must retain it 
or go under ; secondly, there is Brierly, a man with a 
professional pride, who must be at the top or nowhere ; 
thirdly, there is the French Lieutenant, a man with a 
spiritual sense of honour, who must keep it untarnished 
or cease to exist. Through comprehending what 
actual or possible cowardice means to these three men 
Conrad grasps the meaning of that elusive thing which 
is bravery and self-sacrifice. 

Again, the question of obedience and discipline is 
one that has exercised Conrad much. He voices it in 
" Heart of Darkness " when Marlow asks himself why 
it was that the miserable, half-starved natives on the 
boat going up the Congo didn't simply eat the " pil- 
grims " and have done with it instead of obeying all 
their weary and senseless behests ; and he voices it, 
too (though this time merely by implication) in " The 
Secret Sharer " where the question arises, why did the 
sailors and officers obey the captain whom they were 
certain was mad and obey him not only in ordinary 
things but when it was obvious that his orders were 
hkely to result in shipwreck ? And in both cases he is 
careful to cut from under our feet all the ordinary 
reasons — the natives were fond of human flesh, could 
easily have overpowered the " pilgrims," had no moral 



CONRAD AS PSYCHOLOGIST 10^ 



scruples, could never have been caught, and, at any 
rate, could not have been worse off than they were ; 
the sailors were not in the grip of habit (the captain 
was a new one), or impressed by his sense of superior 
knowledge (they had come to the conclusion that he 
was irresponsible) , or frightened of the law (men about 
to drown don't care a jot for that). The truth is, in 
both these cases we are in the presence of the thing- 
in-itself — a very real and a very incomprehensible 
power. 

Thus does Conrad probe into people's minds. 

I often think that the wonderful reality of Conrad's 
main figures must come from the fact that the majority 
of them are either actual people or built up of char- 
acteristics belonging to people Conrad has met. 
For their reality has a photographic fidelity seen, 
as it were, through the rosy light of remembrance. 
They stand before us in the intimate silence of ghostly 
friends. So it appears to me at any rate. I seem to 
know the characters of Conrad's people in the same 
way as, shutting my eyes, I know the characters of 
people I am constantly meeting. This, I repeat, is 
an effect which one would suppose could only have 
been aroused by his people being drawn from genuine 
types — though I bear in mind the ability of atmosphere 
to create figures strongly and convincingly in accord- 
ance with the author's own predilections. And, 
indeed, one notices that Conrad (especially in his 
portraits of women) is more successful the nearer he 
approaches to what is apparently his ideal. Probably 
that is a trait one could observe in most novelists — 
though, assuredly, some can only achieve reality 
in minor types. Such writers are so taken up with 
describing the remarkable qualities of their favourites 
that their actuality is positively choked in the 



104 JOSEPH CONRAD 

process, and it is the lesser figures that emerge 
triumphant. But Conrad's reahsm mounts with his 
enthusiasm. In all his novels what women are 
dearer to him than Mrs Gould [Nostromo) and Winnie 
Verloc [The Secret Agent) ? — and what women are 
more life-like ? 

The more I study Conrad's characters, men and 
women alike, the more astonished am I at the intuition 
and creative energy of their author. I think of a book 
like Nostromo, where a crowd of actors, defined and 
differentiated, passes ceaselessly before my eyes, or 
of a story like " The End of the Tether " where the 
few men on board the steamer are as alive to my 
intelligence as my closest friends, and I try to discover 
what I may call the intimate secret of their reality — 
that secret which yields so little to abstract explana- 
tion. And I believe the key to it all lies, fundament- 
ally, in a sympathetic presentation. I do not mean 
in the least that even the majority of Conrad's people 
are particularly sympathetic either to Conrad or 
Conrad's readers, but what I do mean is that Conrad 
puts himself, his readers, and his characters on an 
identical level. One feels oneself on the same plane 
as Conrad, and one is sure also that Conrad feels 
himself on the same plane as his readers and his figures. 
No doubt this is mainly true of people who happen 
to find themselves sympathetic to Conrad's personality, 
but I think Conrad always tries to make that impression 
— for those who are in sympathy with Conrad are 
sympathetic in a very special sense. 

And here I might say that what Conrad admires 
in character is more or less what every one admires 
whose mind is not given over to the false casuistry that 
lies behind so many modern revaluations. He admires 
courage, compassion, honour, endurance, and in the 



CONRAD AS PSYCHOLOGIST 105 

ordinary interpretation that all sensible persons 
allow them. But, indeed, I cannot express Conrad's 
own views more justly than in his own words. In 
the introductory chapter to Some Reminiscences he 
remarks : — 

Those who read me know my conviction that the world, 
the temporal world, rests on a few very simple ideas ; so 
simple that they must be as old as the hills. It rests notably, 
amongst others, on the idea of Fidelity. At a time when 
nothing which is not revolutionary in some way or other 
can expect to attract much attention I have not been revolu- 
tionary in my v/ritings. The revolutionary spirit is mighty 
convenient in this, that it frees one from all scruples as 
regards ideas. lis hard, absolute optimism is repulsive 
to my mind by the menace of fanaticism and intolerance it 
contains. No doubt one should smile at these things ; but, 
imperfect Esthete, I am no better Philosopher. All claim to 
special righteousness awakens in me that scorn and anger 
from which a philosophical mind should be free. (Some 
Reminiscences, pp. 20-1.) 

All Conrad's characters have, of course, some tinge 
of the complexion of Conrad's own personality. To 
deny that would be absurd — even a Blue Book has 
some sort of a tinge about it. And consequently, 
as with all writers, there are bound to be certain 
minds more in sympathy with his projections than 
others. It is a bond which has, directly, little to do 
with the characters themselves. But it is precisely on 
sympathies and antipathies of this subtle order that 
the ship of criticism gets wrecked. To many people 
the irony or the sombre romance of so much of 
Conrad's psychology is sure to give offence, just as 
to many it will be the very core of his achievement. 
For there are innumerable planes not only in people's 
outlook on life but actually in their realisation of 
personality. There are some, undoubtedly, who 



106 JOSEPH CONRAD 



would consider the compassionate and touching figures 
of Mrs Gould and Winnie Verloc as merely tiresome 
nonentities, just as some might suppose Tolstoy's Anna 
Karenina or Natasha Rostov to be merely profligate 
and troublesome fools. Well, let it be so. We know 
better. But, indeed, the " tinge " of an author goes 
still deeper. The creations of one mind may be 
presented without personal bias, but they must in- 
evitably bear the impress of their creator. And that 
is where the difficulty of comparing one author to 
another is so evident — for how can one adjudicate on 
the clash of temperaments ? True, the critic is only 
interested in the result, but that, again, arises from 
individual preference, and individual preference arises 
from natural sympathies or antipathies. I do not 
say that the wisest criticism has not stepped beyond 
this vicious circle to some extent, but I do say that the 
ideal critic has yet to be born. 

But from my own point of view, which is sympa- 
thetic, I would say that Conrad's powers of psy- 
chology are impressive, because, putting aside all 
questions of temperament, his characters do convince 
us that they are generally unaware that they exist 
only as figments of one brain. I daresay this may 
appear a fanciful and silly remark, but I cannot help 
thinking that the reality of any figure is in inverse 
ratio to its obvious dependence on outside assistance 
— which may be direct, as in the case of those clever 
writers whose characters merely reflect them or their 
opposites, or which may be oblique as in the case of 
those ingenious people who float their characters 
along on the tides of coincidence or improbable 
adventure, but which, in either event, is ruinous to 
the principles of fictional reality. Only books that 
appear to write themselves, only characters that appear 



CONRAD AS PSYCHOLOGIST 107 



to live naturally, can be truly effective. Here, no 
doubt, I am poaching on a subject developed in my 
chapter on Conrad's art, but I do so without regret. 
It is a point that has to be mentioned in this special 
connection. 

Where Conrad fails most as a psychologist (I am 
not talking about his individual failures, you under- 
stand) is, I think, in a certain aristocratic disregard 
for universal types with a popular appeal. Not one 
of his figures is ever likely to be even so limited a 
household word as, say, are the figures of Flaubert's 
Madame Bovary or Turgenev's Bazarov. There is 
something secluded about Conrad's mind, something 
aloof, which prevents him creating, with the widest 
sympathy, a representative figure. Lord Jim {Lord 
Jim) is his nearest approach to such a person, but 
Lord Jim is far from being one of his really successful 
men. You have only to read Conrad to feel, at once, 
that he will never be popular in the sense that some 
of the greatest novelists are popular. It is not that 
he lacks fire, beauty, subtlety — he has them all in 
marvellous profusion — but it is, I think, that he lacks 
those tremendous personal feelings on elemental ques- 
tions that lift the creations of the Russians to a 
pitch of epic grandeur. 

The truth is, Conrad is more concerned with the 
life-blood of his characters than with placing them 
in effective positions. He is, of course, a very moving 
writer, but to be moving is not his primary aim. 
His primary aim is fidelity to his original conception. 
It is that which attracts his main attention, and it 
is that which, in its logical result, tends to alienate 
the popular sympathy. It is over such a point one 
realises Conrad's very real affinity with Flaubert. For 
Conrad's interest in the psychology of his figures has 



108 JOSEPH CONRAD 



a passionate intensity that disdains all meretricious 
aid in its development or exposure. His is the mind 
of the true artist, the mind that never flags in its 
profound effort to keep the illusion it has created in 
the very forefront of the picture. Nor does he, in 
his best work, as is so often charged against him, 
achieve his results by redundancy. Quite the reverse. 
He achieves them by restraint, imagination, tireless 
care. And in achieving them he is quite content to 
miss the more striking effects of others. Even in 
Conrad's earlier works, where the physical aspect of 
the tropics is thrust so stridently upon the screen, it 
would be a mistake not to see that this is largely a de- 
vice for throwing into stronger relief the realism of the 
actors. I am not going so far as to say that Conrad 
has not often, very often, allowed his unrivalled pov/ers 
of description to carry him away on the swell of their 
own music, but I am going to say that the unity of his 
work is for ever at the back of his mind and that this 
unity revolves, primarily, round the realism of his 
characters. If he has, as I have asserted elsewhere, 
" a passion for his theme," he has also a passionate 
regard for the nuances of psychology. He is the 
most incorruptible of artists in that he cannot be lured 
from his aim by the promise of a great reward — the 
reward of universal esteem. 

But notwithstanding all that I have said about 
Conrad's inherent incapacity to become widely 
appreciated, I want to insist plainly that he has, as 
very few other people have, the ability to make his 
characters thrilling. This, again, is a subject which 
I discuss elsewhere, so I will only mention here that 
by thrilling I imply something almost indescribable, 
something intimate, like the familiar excitement of 
a dream. Who, for example, could be more thrilling 



CONRAD AS PSYCHOLOGIST 109 

in this strange way than Harry Hagberd (" To- 
morrow"), Mr Kurtz ("Heart of Darkness"), or 
Falk (" Falk "), with the shuddering motion of his 
hands, " the vague stir of the passionate and 
meaningless gesture " ? 

For Conrad's psychology is not alone painstak- 
ing, it is enlivened throughout by flashes of high 
genius — by these sudden revealing glimpses that 
explain more than do fifty laborious pages. His 
imagination has an insight which seems to pierce 
beyond that conventional depth which so few writers 
in the world have ever passed. This is no exaggera- 
tion. Conrad's originality is of the order that goes 
straight to bed-rock instead of dispersing itself in a 
thousand curious fancies. That is why any one of 
his great figures is worth the whole gallery of a Bernard 
Shaw, and that is w^hy almost any figure of a Bernard 
Shaw is more popular than the whole of Conrad. 
(And when I say " popular " I refer to another kind of 
popularity than I was referring to a moment ago — 
Shaw's figures are not popular in the same way that 
Tolstoy's are.) 

And we should observe that Conrad's psychology 
is inductive, and that that is one of the reasons why 
its very unexpectedness is yet perfectly natural. It 
is just as in real life, where people we are intimately 
acquainted with will often surprise us but seldom 
greatly bewilder us, for the reason that their unlooked- 
for actions have, at base, a familiar aspect when we 
think them over. That is about the nearest we can 
get to understand anyone. For no one in real life 
has the freedom from complexity of characters in 
fiction. It is in the comprehension of this that 
Conrad proves himself the most realistic of novelists. 
For the deductive is the usual attitude assumed by 



110 JOSEPH CONRAD 

novelists, and the deductive has always the snare of 
simplicity. 

And one must also remember that Conrad, from an 
artistic point of view, is at least as much interested 
in personality (which is the actual impression created 
by a figure on other people's minds), as in character 
(which is what a figure really is). The conception of 
personality is, of course, relative to the person who 
receives it, but character is absolute. Conrad's 
people affect different readers very differently and 
for this very reason. But all the same one can 
easily ascertain the author's own opinion (internal 
evidence shows it quite clearly, as a rule) , and that is 
the one we will be safest in accepting. 

But to know Conrad's finest figures as they 
should be known you must have tasted romance. 
For that vague and secret murmur is in their hearts as 
surely as the murmur of the sea is in the heart of a 
shell. It invests them with a something that is more 
than charm — that something which is romance itself. 
Such people as Hermann's niece (" Falk ") or Dain 
Maroola [Almayer's Folly) have no need to speaji — 
we know their hidden and romantic hearts by intui- 
tion. Conrad can impart a wonderful, rich glow to 
his figures. And in that light they seem close to 
us, without a word being spoken. Of course, it is 
another manifestation of atmosphere, but it is not 
only atmosphere — it is romance as well. For Conrad 
is the most romantic of writers. And if romance 
or rather the early romantic manner — for a book like 
Chance is deeply romantic in another way — is now 
fading before a purer psychology (as it is in his later 
books), there will always be people like myself who 
believe that his psychology has never been truer than 
in the instinctive insight of his romantic portraits. 



CONRAD AS PSYCHOLOGIST 111 

There is just one more thing I would Hke to 
emphasise about Conrad's psychology, and that is its 
modernity and the quality of its modernity. He 
has the Slav capacity for comprehending the minds 
of to-day without placing them, so to speak, in the 
problems of to-day. There is all the difference in 
the world. Writers like Ibsen and Strindberg perceive 
the unrest of the present, but they always seem 
to perceive it in a local setting. That, probably, is 
because they are really moralists at heart. But 
writers like Tolstoy and Dostoievsky read as fresh 
to-day as they did forty years ago — indeed, I have 
little doubt that they read fresher. And, as far as 
I can judge, the characters of a book like Nostromo 
or like The Nigger of the " Narcissus " will always 
be modern. It is the characters of a book such as 
Lord Jim, where the moralist has got a good hold, that 
will become old-fashioned, as the people in the plays 
of Ibsen and Strindberg (and many more) are already 
becoming old-fashioned. Perennial youth belongs to 
the great imaginative artists, and to them alone. 

So now I think I have covered most of the points 
that one has to remember in considering Conrad's 
men and women. I am conscious that I have not 
explained myself any too lucidly, and I am conscious, 
moreover, that I have dealt with some aspects that 
are more or less self-evident. But it is better to round 
the subject off. I need only add that this chapter 
can serve no purpose unless read in conjunction with 
the two that succeed it. The abstract views of a 
novelist may be interesting — must be interesting, 
one might say, in the case of a distinguished man — but 
they are not what we are really concerned with. 
What we are really concerned with is his power to 
" call spirits from the vasty deep." 



CHAPTER VI 

conrad's men 

I HAVE been making a list of the more important men 
in Conrad's books and I find that I have jotted down 
the names of about ninety individuals. I could 
continue it, no doubt, to one hundred and ninety — 
on each one of which something deserves to be said. 
But, of course, there is no room for that here, and I 
will have to content m^'self with picking and choosing. 
It is not satisfactor}.'. Far from it. For even so I 
am compelled to avoid any real analysis. I am not 
exaggerating in the least if I say that I could write 
a book of five hundred pages on Conrad's men. And 
some one will do it one of these days. For in them is 
the richest mine of psychology that our generation 
has known. With their endless variety, ^^ith their 
exotic atmosphere, with their individuality of high 
romance and imagination, they have quite altered 
the face of modern literature. 

And about Conrad's men as a class there is one 
thing that strikes me especially. Some of them are 
noble and some of them are vile, but all his men are 
men. They live in an actual world and not in a mere 
structure of fancy or conceit, they are faced with the 
problems of real life and not with the ridiculous 
problems that stand for life to a certain class of 
intellectual. Moreover, they are men in that their 
outlook is essentially male — the atmosphere of mascu- 
linity pervades Conrad's men convincingly. There is 



CONRAD'S illEN 11^ 



no such thing as a sexless person in Conrad, although 
sex itself is almost always treated from its romantic 
side. Conrad never creates a man simply to mouth 
advanced opinions. He never does, partly because 
it would be abhorrent to him and partly because his 
men do not belong to cliques of this order. Who- 
ever goes to Conrad's characters for pronouncements 
will come away disappointed. It is the problems 
of life that interest Conrad, not the problems of 
intellectualism. ! 

But what one does see in Conrad's finest men is a 
certain rare sensitiveness that, in the complete mascu- 
linity of their characters, shows a graceful, feminine 
touch — the touch of pity, self-sacrifice, and un- 
selfishness. Where Conrad reveals his really marvel- 
lous knowledge of the mental differences between 
men and women is just in these types in which the 
two sexes draw closer together. A man like Captain 
Anthony in Chance is as sensitive, as compassionate 
as a woman, but there is, at heart, nothing passive 
in him. He has the delicate temperament of a 
woman but he has the active temperament of a man. 
Indeed one can only call his feelings " feminine " 
because it is the word generally applied to such 
feelings — they are not feminine at all in the true 
meaning of the word. There is nothing remotely 
capricious about Captain Anthony. He is reason- 
able, so reasonable that he cannot bear to see suffer- 
ing which he believes he can and ought to remedy. 
Captain Anthony is certainly one of the most attractive 
men in Conrad's books — an unusual type, but a per- 
fectly real one — ^humble, chivalrous, extraordinarily 
vehement when once aroused. His is a nature capable 
of boundless pity, and consequently there is something 
bitterly tragic in the way in which he begins to realise 



114 JOSEPH CONRAD 

that what he believed to be irresistible — his capacity 
for suffering that others might not suffer — has its 
limitations : when he begins to see that all the might 
of his compassion is powerless to help Flora de Barral. 
(That it was a mistake softens for us the effect but 
does not alter the poignancy of the mood.) 

Another of the finest men in Conrad's books is 
Captain Whalley in " The End of the Tether." His is 
the mute self-sacrifice of parental love — a sacrifice as 
complete, as utterly without alloy as that of Balzac's 
Pere Goriot. In him, far more than in that other 
doting father, Almayer (of whom the words are spoken) , 
is the true " anguish of paternity." No portrait in 
Conrad is more vivid than the portrait of Whalley, 
the big, dignified, silent sea-captain. After long years 
of prosperity we see him at last on board the Sofala, 
like a superb old animal surrounded by yapping dogs. 
The more he is insulted by the mean sneers and 
innuendoes of Massy or Sterne, the more he is bowed 
down by the horror of advancing blindness and by 
the great desolation of his lonely old age, the more 
does he retire into himself, thanking God for his happy 
life, thinking of his loved ones, with the image of his 
daughter ever nearest his heart. His steadfast love 
covers with a warm and passionate glow the thought 
of that little girl (no longer young to anyone but him) 
living her hard life in Australia. Captain Whalley's 
end is, of course, a tragic and terrible end, but there 
is something so touching and beautiful in the quality 
of his devotion that it illumines the whole story with 
the soft atmosphere of triumphant love. 

And talking of Captain Whalley one may notice 
Conrad's admirable success in drawing old men. 
He has caught, better than anyone I know, the set 
attitude and the aloofness, that air of living 



CONRAD-S MEN 115 

in the past, which is the very breath of old age. 
Consider such a figure as that of the Garibaldino, 
Viola, in Nostromo. He resembles a prodigious relic 
of a time that is already forgotten, dreaming amidst 
the crash of revolution of a greatness that has died 
out of the world. The majestic calmness of his 
bearing, the austerity of his manner, is broken now 
and again by a fit of petulance, as though he were 
suddenly to wake from his memories to the stupid 
inanities of the present. In the last few pages of 
Nostromo, in that terrible climax of old Viola's failing 
powers, we are told that his daughter Linda did not 
dare to look at him because he " filled her with an 
almost unbearable feeling of pity " ; and I think that 
ever}' reader must experience the same emotion. There 
is something about him then at once so august and so 
pitiful that it is heartbreaking to watch the flicker of 
his life. Do you remember how, after he had shot 
his future son-in-law, supposing him to be " Rami- 
rez the vagabond," and Linda had suddenly laughed 
insanely in his face, " he joined her faintly in a deep- 
toned and distant echo of her peals " ? That touch, 
especially, always seems to me strangely pathetic. 
However, I will speak no more of this poor old 
man, but will give the eloquent description of his 
death — a description taken from a long passage I have 
quoted fully in another chapter : — 

Very upright^ white-haired, leonine, heroic in his absorbed 
quietness, he felt in the pocket of his red shirt for the spectacles 
given him by Dona Emilia. He put them on. After a long 
period of immobility he opened the book, and from on high 
looked through the glasses at the small print in double 
columns. A rigid, stern expression settled upon his features 
with a shght frown, as if in response to some gloomy thought 
or unpleasant sensation. But he never detached his eyes 



116 JOSEPH CONRAD 

from the book while he swayed forward, gently, gradually, 
till his snow-white head rested upon the open pages. A 
wooden clock ticked methodically on the white-washed 
wall, and growing slowly cold the Garibaldino lay alone, 
rugged, undecayed, like an old oak uprooted by a treacherous 
gust of wind. (Nostromo, p. 479.) 

Another old man whose portrait is extremely good 
is Don Balthasar Riego in Romance. He is simply 
aristocratic old age personified. He is as entirely 
out of the world as though he were dead. He lives 
in a mist of ancient courtesies and of memories of by- 
gone days. The present to him is as truly non-existent, 
in all the essentials of change and activity, as his 
illusionary world is real and important. In the 
mumblings of his weary voice a whole vanished order 
seems to live again. 

And Captain Beard in " Youth " gives us the sense 
of age very strongly. He is a great figure in his dogged 
resolve to bring his first command safe to her destina- 
tion. But he is seen through the cruel and romantic 
eyes of youth as a little old man who can actually 
fall asleep on the deck of his burning vessel. It is 
fond recollection, alone, which yields to him the grand 
aspect of hardihood and resolve. Captain Beard is a 
personality appearing before us in the subdued twilight 
of old age and of long subordination. 

And finally, in this connection, let me call your 
attention to Singleton {The Nigger of the " Narcissus "), 
the old sailor of the Narcissus. He is truly a magnifi- 
cent survival of the sea — a figure of epic size and 
compass, typifying with his aged, vacant mind and 
his habits of endurance and sagacity the very life of 
the ocean and of its voyagers. Singleton is a symbolic 
figure. He represents the eternal conflict of man and 
the elements. He is as immortal as the sea itself — as 



CONRAD'S MEN 117 

immortal, as empty, and as inscrutably wise. There 
are two descriptions of him in the earlier pages of The 
Nigger of the "Narcissus," which I shall quote here: — 

Singleton stood at the door with his face to the light and 
his back to the darkness. And alone in the dim emptiness 
of the sleeping forecastle he appeared- bigger, colossal, very 
old ; old as Father Time himself, who should have come 
there into this place as quiet as a sepulchre to contemplate 
with patient eyes the short victory of sleep, the consoler. 
Yet he was only a child of time, a lonely relic of a devoured 
and forgotten generation. He stood, still strong, as ever 
unthinking ; a ready man with a vast empty past and with 
no future, with his childlike impulses and his man's passions 
already dead within his tattooed breast (The Nigger of the 
''Narcissus," pp. 33-4.) 

Till then he had been standing meditative and unthinking, 
reposeful and hopeless, with a face grim and blank — a sixty- 
year-old child of the mysterious sea. The thoughts of all 
his lifetime could have been expressed in six words, but the 
stir of those things that were as much part of his existence as 
his beating heart called up a gleam of alert understanding 
upon the sternness of his aged face {The Nigger of the 
"Narcissus" p. 36.) 

The sea is, indeed, a strong agency in moulding the 
characters of many of Conrad's men. For its vigour 
enters into nearly all his books. The finest and the 
most typical men in Conrad's stories are seamen. 
It is a life that appeals to him through the qualities 
of courage, simplicity, and realism that it engenders. 
His true seamen are mostly men of character. There 
are exceptions, of course, but the exceptions seem to 
belong to a different breed. We feel, for instance, 
that Donkin {The Nigger of the " Narcissus ") is really 
a cockney guttersnipe, that the second mate of the 
Nan Shan {" Typhoon ") is really a hopeless bea.ch- 
comber, that Massy (" The End of the Tether ") is 



118 JOSEPH CONRAD 

really a gambler fallen into the wrong place. It is 
curious that Conrad should have left particularly 
expressive portraits of these men. Just let me 
repeat what he says of Donkin : — 

He stood with arms akimbo, a little fellow with white 
eyelashes. He looked as if he had known all the degradations 
and all the furies. He looked as if he had been cuffed, 
kicked, rolled in the mud ; he looked as if he had been 
scratched, spat upon, pelted with unmentionable filth . . . 
and he smiled with a sense of security at the faces around. 
His ears were bending dovm under the weight of his battered 
hard hat. The torn tails of his black coat flapped in fringes 
about the calves of his legs. He unbuttoned the only two 
buttons that remained and every one saw he had no shirt 
under it. It was his deserved misfortune that those rags 
which nobody could possibly be supposed to own looked on 
him as if they had been stolen. His neck was long and thin ; 
his eyelids were red ; rare hairs hung about his jaws ; his 
shoulders were peaked and drooped like the broken wings of 
a bird ; all his left side was caked with mud which showed 
that he had lately slept in a wet ditch. {The Nigger of the 
'^Narcissus," p. ii.) 

And here is what he says of the second mate in 
" Typhoon " :— 

With his sharp nose, red at the tip, and his thin pinched 
lips, he always looked as though he were raging inwardly ; 
and he was concise in his speech to the point of rudeness. 
All his time off duty he spent in his cabin with the door shut, 
keeping so still in there that he was supposed to fall asleep 
as soon as he had disappeared ; but the man who came in 
to wake him for his watch on deck would invariably find him 
with his eyes wide open, flat on his back in the bunk, and 
glaring irritably from a soiled pillow. He never wrote any 
letters, did not seem to hope for news from anywhere ; and 
though he had been heard once to mention West Hartlepool, 
it was with extreme bitterness, and only in connection with 
the extortionate charges of a boarding-house. He was one 
of those men who are picked up at need in the ports of the 



CONRAD'S MEN 119 

world. They are competent enough, appear hopelessly 
hard up, show no evidence of any sort of vice, and carry 
about them all the signs of manifest failure. They come on 
board on an emergency, care for no ship afloat, live in their 
own atmosphere of casual connection amongst their ship- 
mates, who know nothing of them, and make up their minds 
to leave at inconvenient times. They clear out with no 
words of leave-taking in some God-forsaken port other men 
would fear to be stranded in, and go ashore in company of a 
shabby sea-chest, corded like a treasure-box, and with an 
air of shaking the ship's dust off their feet. {Typhoon, 
" Typhoon," p. 31.) 

I have given these two rather long extracts, partly 
to prove my contention that Conrad's bad seamen 
are not really seamen at all, but mainly to give ex- 
amples of his graphic power of throwing a picture before 
our eyes. He creates his first impression of a figure 
at one touch, although the total impression is developed 
psychologically through the slow process of accumu- 
lative effect. I speak of his principal figures — there 
are others that live almost entirely in the physical 
glimpses we obtain of them. 

But to return to what I was saying — the sea, as 
I have remarked, has a profound influence on the lives 
of many of Conrad's men. It seems to enter into their 
fibre \N\ih the dim romance, with the incorruptible 
directness of its appeal. His true seamen are often 
childish, generally stupid in a worldly sense, and 
invariably artless. But their very immorality speaks 
of the healthiness of their minds, and their courage 
is a second nature to them. It is to them that Conrad 
turns joyfully from the feverish complexities of more 
intellectual types. One notices that again and again. 
And when he does draw a man of character who is 
a seaman, he draws the man, whom, of all others, 
he admires the niost. But it is in describing quite 



120 JOSEPH CONRAD 

plain seamen that Conrad's humour is most evident. 
There is no irony in his pictures of men Hke FrankUn 
{Chance), Baker, Creighton, Captain Allistoun [The 
Nigger of the "Narcissus"), Burns ("A Smile of 
Fortune"), Mahon ("Youth"), and many another of 
their kidney — at least no irony that is not essenti- 
ally kind-hearted. For to Conrad they are the really 
trustworthy and sincere men, these wandering sailors 
to whom the work of each day is the main problem of 
existence. 

But I do not want to raise the impression that 
Conrad has a stereotyped build of sailor that he 
duplicates from book to book. That is untrue, 
although I would admit readily enough that he is apt 
to give the seamen who play a more secondary part 
in his stories a rather similar point of view. 
But it is because they have all been salted with 
the same arduous life. No, Conrad, who, as I pointed 
out in the previous chapter, has a passion for develop- 
ing his personalities, creates for us the reality of each 
seaman, as of each other figure, with authentic effect. 
For instance, one may affirm that a certain romantic 
light covers, alike, all the seamen and the officers 
aboard the Narcissus — ^but where could one find 
a greater capacity for managing a crowd so that 
each member stood out as individual, as unforgettable 
as do the separate figures of the most powerful groups 
of sculpture ? Think of Donkin and Wait, of Singleton 
and Podmore, of " Belfast " and Wamibo, and of the 
three officers I mentioned above, and you realise at 
once the supreme mastery of Conrad's method. 

Let me speak more particularly of one of these men 
— of James Wait, " the nigger of the Narcissus." This 
picture of a dying man, supported in his horrible fear 
of death by the shadowy splendour of his own presence 



CONRAD'S MEN 121 

and by a sort of spurious dignity, is subtle and grimly 
pathetic. Wait has the arrogant superiority of an 
educated negro, and the sly cunning of a primeval 
race. He knows to the very last ounce how to make 
his own disease the object of pity and concession, 
and yet in making it he is terrified by the thought of 
extinction. He has a lofty grandeur of manner which 
is particularly disconcerting, but it mingles, fantasti- 
cally, with the whining of a slave. There is a thumb- 
nail description of him at the outset of the book which 
is very striking : — 

He held his head up in the glare of the lamp — a head 
vigorously modelled into deep shadows and shining lights — 
a head powerful and misshapen with a tormented and flattened 
face — a face pathetic and brutal : the tragic, the mysterious, 
the repulsive mask of a nigger's soul. {The Nigger of the 
" Narcissus," p. 24.) 

As I am speaking here of the negro it might be as 
well if I said som.ething now of Conrad's pictures of 
other non-European peoples. The East Indies have, 
of course, yielded him the fierce Malays and warlike 
races of those half-savage islands. Such men as 
Babalatchi {An Outcast of the Islands and Almayer's 
Folly), Dain Maroola {Almayer's Folly), Arsat ("The 
Lagoon"), Karain (" Karain "), Doramin and Dain 
Waris {Lord Jim), are representative types of East 
Indian dwellers. In considering such men Conrad 
neither dehumanises nor Europeanises the Oriental 
mind. It is true that they are swayed, as are all men, 
by love and hatred, by happiness and misery, by 
success and failure, but, with it all, they remain still 
in the twilight of certain preconceived ideas — their 
horizons seem to us bounded by the things which are 
merely part of our emotions. And they have a world 
of their own, hidden from our understanding — the 



122 JOSEPH CONRAD 

world of savage fears and beliefs that, in the excess 
of any excitement, may swamp that other world in 
which they think and act so much like ourselves. 
It is this alien and yet human mind which, as the 
foundation to all Eastern personality, Conrad portrays 
which such curious fidelity and insight. 

And Conrad understands the wild melancholy, 
the despairing resignation of the savage heart. In 
the overwhelming atmosphere of his tropical forests, 
the fatalistic spirit of the wilderness and the blind and 
patient silence of the woods seem to find their echo 
in the hearts of the aboriginal tribes. Such stories 
as " An Outpost of Progress " and " Heart of Dark- 
ness " resemble a vast cry of anguish and bewilder- 
ment. The whole sadness and dark unrest of savage 
minds — I mean the minds of real, untutored savages 
— is, as it were, summed up in these tremendous words 
from " Heart of Darkness " : — 

A great silence around and above. Perhaps on some quiet 
night the tremor of far-off drums, sinking, swelling, a tremor 
vast, faint ; a sound weird, appealing, suggestive, and wild — 
and perhaps with as profound a meaning as the sound of 
bells in a Christian country. (Youth, " Heart of Darkness," 
p. 80.) 

And Conrad can impart to his Easterns the high 
dignity of an ancient race. The Abdulla of Almayer's 
Folly passes onward in his career of deception and faith 
with the slow and measured step of a True Believer, 
In him is the very essence of Arab courtesy — the 
courtesy that hides the pliant subtlety of the Eastern 
mind but which knows no relaxation throughout life. 
And what natural dignity there is, too, in such a man 
as Doramin [Lord Jim). They are aristocrats, these 
Eastern chiefs and traders of Conrad's books. 

And let us glance now at a white man of the East 



CONRAD'S MEN 123 

U-at Jim] the principal figure in Lord Jim. In my 
previous chapter I mentioned a tendency in Conrad 
to make his men subject to the influence of an idee 
fixe, and I mentioned also that it was difficult to see 
the foundations for the psychology of some of them. 
Jim seems to me a case in point of both these things. 
It is hard to perceive precisely why Conrad should 
have made him take his dishonouring misfortune with 
such extreme and relentless despair, but it is certainly 
true that he does become the victim of an idee fixe — 
the idee fixe of recovering his honour. I cannot quite 
agree that Jim is as true to life as Conrad intended 
him to be — I can scarcely believe that a man of his 
rather ordinary calibre (for he is not a clever man) 
and his robust health would not have adjusted his 
outlook, after a time, to a more bearable view 
of life. Of course, we have to remember that 
Jim's character (as apart from his intellect) is a 
very unusual one, a character full of dramatic 
possibilities and an almost morbid craving to dis- 
tinguish itself ; but I think we must see that nature 
(for he had health and youth on his side) would have 
healed his wound in spite of himself. Whether he had 
wanted to or no he would have lived down his disgrace, 
just as one lives down the agony of unrequited love, 
of remorse, and of death itself — though I am not 
saying that disgrace may not be the worst evil of all. 
VConrad had to make Jim such as he is because the story 
demanded it, but, though there may be exceptions 
in which a picture like his may be true, they must be 
very rare. Indeed, Jim will only appear fully credible 
to us if we assume that he is not an Englishman at 
all but a passionate and melancholy Pole. Perhaps 
that is the way we should consider him. An English- 
man would have gone about for a few years with a 



lU JOSEPH CONRAD 

hang-dog look and would then have put his back into 
some solid work and have forgotten all about it, but 
a Pole would brood for ever on his lost honour. The 
unfortunate thing is that Jim is presented as an 
Englishman, and we are compelled to criticise him 
as such. But what Conrad does succeed in suggesting 
with great ability is the tiny, rotten spot in Jim's 
personality — the little canker which undermines the 
whole of his life, which keeps him inevitably from 
the healthiness of true sanity. It is, perhaps, just be- 
cause Jim realises his own character so clearly that 
his conflict with himself assumes these almost epic 
proportions — and in that light he becomes a much 
more real individual. But I cannot help thinking 
that Conrad was developing one of his own theories 
in Jim's case — the theory that (as the French Lieu- 
tenant says on p. 157) " when the honour is gone — 
ah ga ! " — meaning, of course, that when honour is 
gone life is no longer worth living. I call that a theory 
of Conrad's because he holds it in an especially French 
sense — a sense absolute, drastic, exalted. It is a 
thing one constantly notices throughout his books, 
and, as much as anything else does, it shows the foreign 
blood in Conrad. I feel all through Lord Jim that 
though Conrad regards Jim with pity, yet he regards 
him without hope. But our comfortable English 
minds would always hold out hope, or, in their more 
modern manifestations, would probably deny that 
dishonour, itself, was anything more than an anti- 
quated shibboleth. 

And now, while I am discussing Jim, it is a good 
opportunity to discuss Jim's friend, Marlow, Marlow 
appears not only in Lord Jim, but also in " Youth," 
in " Heart of Darkness," and in Chance. He is, as 
I have explained in another chapter, the sort of- 



CONRAD'S MEN 125 

familiar ghost of Conrad, i But though he echoes 
Conrad in many respects, in others he is totally 
different. For he is not only a philosopher as is 
Conrad (and a philosopher with much the same philo- 
sophy), but he is also a moralist, in a sense in which 
Conrad decidedly is not. To tell the truth, Marlow 
is one of the few bores in Conrad. I think it quite 
likely that it is because we see Jim almost entirely 
through his eyes that Jim does not greatly move us — 
the irritation of Marlow' s endless comments spoiling 
our finer appreciation of the other's character. In 
Lord Jim Marlow makes his worst and longest appear- 
ance, whereas in " Youth " he makes by far his best. 
For in " Youth " he speaks with a lyrical fervour 
which is marvellously beautiful. In " Heart of 
Darkness," too, he is impressive though long-winded, 
and in Chance he plays but a subsidiary part. On 
the whole, the creation of Marlow would seem a 
mistake, though I admit his use. His is the wisdom 
of experience, a wisdom void of illusions but cherishing 
still the might and glory of their charm. For at heart 
Marlow, with all his cynicism and sober melancholy, 
is a true sentimentalist. 

Of other white men living in out-of-the-way 
corners of Africa or the East Indies, Conrad has 
drawn many portraits. There are Kayerts and 
Carlier, the two foolish and inexperienced white agents 
of " An Outpost of Progress," the two men who begin 
with ever^^ good resolution and who end with every 
evil passion, the two men who are victims to the spirit 
of the wilderness. And there are all the white men 
of " Heart of Darkness " — the manager with his 
stony face and his more stony heart, the " pilgrims " 
with their greed, their shameless lust for ivory, their 
lost souls, and, most important of all, the extra- 



126 JOSEPH CONRAD 

ordinary Kurtz — a man of intellect, of eloquence, 
of imagination, and a man who has been utterly en- 
slaved by the mad darkness of a god-forsaken land. 
There is no doubt that there is an abominable depth 
of degradation about Kurtz, that there is something 
unspeakable about his surrender to base instincts and 
depraved delights, but somehow I can stand him better 
than I can stand his envious and criminal associates. 
He, at any rate, is not there solely for ivory. 

And there is Falk (" Falk "), a strange figure, a man 
repulsive and pathetic, a man throbbing with life and 
unable to express himself, a man solitary, self-centred, 
and romantic in spite of himself. To understand Falk 
we must realise that he stands for the male. That is 
his whole meaning, in his love and in his desire for 
life — and that is his attraction for the girl. And 
there is Stein in Lord Jim, whose distinction and wise 
tolerance strike one at first glance, and whose picture 
is perhaps the finest in the whole novel. Stein is, 
indeed, one of Conrad's most remarkable figures — a 
man of sensitiveness, of discernment, and of genuine 
ability. One can almost see him in his shaded study, 
surrounded by his books and his splendid entomo- 
logical collections, or walking slowly with a candle 
through the shadowy gloom of his empty reception 
chambers, or sitting in the deep solitude of his great 
garden. He is a living figure, a figure of romantic 
adventure and of absorbed solitude, a figure from the 
dim, savage past of a vanished epoch. 

And there is Captain Lingard oi An Outcast of the 
Islands, a bluff, domineering, tender-hearted old 
seaman, overwhelming in his affection and terrible 
in his revenge. His end is clouded in sadness and 
uncertainty. He melts away, a ruined and broken 
old man, into the haze of Europe, and is heard of no 



CONRAD'S MEN 12? 

more. And there is Willems in the same book, the 
conceited and fraudulent clerk, whom Captain Lingard 
has " made " and whom he rescues in the hour of his 
exposure. Willems belongs to the large class of 
utterly unmoral people whose only creed is their 
personal advantage. That he should behave treacher- 
ously to Captain Lingard is to be expected but that 
he should be capable of really passionate love is harder 
to credit. His love for Aissa is like the craving of 
a madman and into it he pours all the pent up forces 
of his selfish energy. The study of Willems is success- 
ful because Conrad makes us see exactly the type of 
man he is, but it is, I think, exaggerated in parts 
and it is too drawn out. But in An Outcast of the 
Islands and Almayer's Folly the most important man 
to appear in both is Almayer, himself — the fountain 
of Conrad's inspiration (see Some Reminiscences, 
p. 156). He is the white trader of Sambir, the slave 
of hope, the weary, weak, and sullen protege of Captain 
Lingard. (Curious it is to note the likeness, in their 
great dissimilarity (the one selfish, the other selfless), 
'twixt Almayer and the Markelov of Turgenev's 
On the Eve — drenched as they both are in futile irrita- 
bility). Almayer is the sort of man whose spirit, 
always peevish, has been fatally ruined by the mono- 
tony and dreariness of a tropical life. His hate and 
his love alike are tinged with unreal sentiment and 
his whole outlook is vitiated by his sense of wrongs 
and by his dreams of felicity. He is a fit subject for 
an idee fixe, a man without any grip on reality, a man 
incapable of a magnanimous view. Neither Almayer 
nor Willems are precisely what we mean by bad men 
but they are, in the truest sense of the word, worthless. 
Almayer stagnates and Willems pushes, but the world 
cold-shoulders them equally. 



1^8 JOSEPH CONRAD 

And there is Captain Mac Whirr of the Nan Shan 
(" Typhoon "), of whom I have had cause to speak 
in other chapters. It is this densely stupid man, with 
no quaHfications to attract us but his dogged courage 
and his sense of duty, that Conrad has chosen to 
exempHfy most strikingly his admiration for fidelity 
and endurance. The reason for that is obvious — 
the greater the contrast, the stronger the point. But 
I do wish to insist again that Captain MacWhirr is, 
above all things, a real man — if it were not so the 
story would lose its power. His figure rises before 
us as vividly as any figure in these books, the figure 
of an entirely proper and utterly unimaginative man, 
the sort of man whose mind is peifectly literal and who 
is enclosed in a wooden box of convention. 

And there is Jacobus (" A Smile of Fortune "), 
that curious ships'-dealer of Mauritius, a figure sinister 
and pitiable, a man of overpowering greed and of odd, 
compassionate impulses, a man who lives in a world 
of muffled innuendo and of clouded emotions. Cer- 
tainly Jacobus is a fascinating study. But he rouses 
an interest that is doomed to perpetual disappointment, 
because it really is impossible to grasp his motives. 
The only thing that can be definitely stated is that 
he is a more reputable figure than his respected 
brother. 

And then finally (to close this haphazard list) there 
are Jasper Allen and the Dutch Lieutenant Heemskirk 
in " Freya of the Seven Islands." Jasper is one of 
Conrad's fine figures of a man — clean-cut throughout, 
a capital and enthusiastic seaman, a man whose simple 
and straightforward nature has been fired with the 
passionate romance of a great love. His devotion 
to Freya is as much part of his existence as the very 
beat of his heart, and the tragic gloom of this story 



CONRAD'S MEN 1S9 

is darkened by the dreadful collapse of all his active 
faculties in the shock of irretrievable disaster. Unless 
we realise clearly that beneath that blow his sanity 
has actually given way we cannot but rebel against 
the last stages of his psychology. But, indeed, the 
truth is that when Heemskirk managed to run the 
Bonito on a reef, something vital snapped within the 
taut and eager brain of Jasper Allen. And as for 
Heemskirk himself I am inclined to think he is the 
vilest man in all Conrad — a blackguard as heartless as 
I ago. The very thought of him makes the gorge rise 
with an intolerable loathing. From jealousy and out- 
raged dignitj' he wrecked the lives of two happy lovers 
with no more compunction than he would have felt in 
squasliing a fly — indeed, with fiendish and oily pleasure. 
The soul of Heemskirk is one of unmitigated darkness. 
And now let me speak of some of the characters in 
Nostromo — the greatest romance of the Western world 
ever written. I have already mentioned old Viola, 
the Garibaldino, but he is only one out of a crowd of 
enthralling people. For not only in its general 
atmosphere but in the very characters that pass 
through its pages, Nostromo is the most imaginative 
and original of -all Conrad's books. There is, for 
instance, Charles Gould, the husband of Dona Emilia 
and the owner of the San Tome concession. Out- 
wardly taciturn, inwardly consumed by a passionate 
hatred of inefficiency, this silent man, so English 
amidst the excitable Costaguanos and yet so subtly 
a Costaguano himself, pursues his aim with the rigid 
inevitability of a fanatic. And, indeed, he is a fanatic, 
a man of one idea, a man intrepid, dangerous, incapable 
of turning back. His treatment of his wife is, of course, 
an integral part of his whole character — she is the 
slow victim of his consuming idea. 



130 JOSEPH CONRAD 



And then there is Nostromo (Gian' Battista, Captain 
Fidanza), a man with a genius for initiative and 
command, a man craving for the narrow romance of 
perpetual success and perpetual recognition, a man 
of strength and courage but of morbid sensibility, 
always brooding over imaginary slights, a man with 
a grievance which he could hardly have expressed 
in words but which leads him into deception and 
dishonour, a man of the people truly, but a man 
with an aristocratic aloofness of heart. I used to 
think that Nostromo was not a success but I now 
think quite otherwise. He is, perhaps, the one man 
of real genius in all Conrad's books. For he has the 
type of personality that amounts to genius. And, 
indeed, his grasp of a situation and his capacity for 
carrying out a scheme have genius in them. His 
whole actions during the revolution show an extra- 
ordinarily quick and fertile brain. Not only did 
he deal efficiently with the silver but it was really 
at his suggestion that Dr Monygham carried out the 
brilliant idea of making Sotillo drag for it in the bay — 
wasting precious time in the one manner that could 
have appeared genuine to that rapacious and gloomy 
rufhan. And then, again, his ride across country 
to warn Barrios was a feat of genuis. But the gnaw- 
ing worm of discontent follows hard upon these 
immense material successes. Unable to extract the 
last ounce of recognition — ^the delicate flattery of 
unqualified fame — he feels all the bitterness of failure. 
He has got nothing out of it, nothing at all, neither 
glory nor money ! Such thoughts open the path 
to his decline and fall. Brooding upon the injustice 
of society, upon their capacity to take all his abilities, 
his achievements, and his integrity as a matter of 
course, he comes to the slow conclusion that he will 



CONRAD'S MEN 131 

revenge himself by never revealing the fact that the 
silver is not really at the bottom of the sea, but hidden 
deep within the shelving sand of the Great Isabel — 
never revealing the fact but using his own knowledge 
to grow rich by stealth. Like Charles Gould, he, too, 
is the victim of an idee fixe. But our last glimpses of 
Nostromo are lighted for us by another flash of his 
former genius — the procuring of old Viola and his 
two daughters as keepers of the new lighthouse upon 
the Great Isabel. Betrothed to one daughter and 
secretly in love with the other, he can come there 
in future without comment — come to that lonely 
island on the border of the Placid Gulf, and abstract, 
one by one, the precious and haunting ingots of silver. 
Let me finish these words about Nostromo by giving 
this striking Dortrait of him : — 

Nostromo woke up from a fourteen hours' sleep, and arose 
full length from his lair in the long grass. He stood knee 
deep amongst the whispering undulations of the green blades 
with the lost air of a man just born into the world. Hand- 
some, robust, and supple, he threw back his head, flung his 
arms open, and stretched himself with a slow twist of the 
waist and a leisurely growling yawn of white teeth, as natural 
and free from evil in the moment of waking as a magnificent 
and unconscious wild beast. Then, in the suddenly steadied 
glance fixed upon nothing from under a forced frown, appeared 
the man. {Nostromo, p. 347.) 

And another very curious character is that of Dr 
Monygham. He is one of these strange men who have 
drifted through every form of bitter degradation 
into a hopeless view of life, relieved only from despair 
by cynical hatred of his fellow-men. His atrocious 
sufferings under Guzman Bento, wherein in a moment 
of tortured weakness he has revealed the secrets 
which mean disaster and death to his friends, have 



132 JOSEPH CONRAD 

filled his heart with an utter abasement of misery. 
He is like a lost soul wandering in the tonnents of 
hell. The biting sarcasm of his words conceals an 
agony of useless repentance. For Dr Monygham 
is a man whose nobility of spirit has suffered an outrage 
from which it cannot recover of its own accord. He 
is a man who has lost all belief in himself. There is 
nothing more touching in Conrad than the way in 
which Mrs Gould realises this in the exquisite tender- 
ness of her compassion, and the way in which Dr 
Monygham repays her by his pure devotion. To 
this outcast she has brought back the very breath of 
life. 

Decoud, the Parisian mocker, the airy lover of 
Antonio Avellanos, the flaneur of the Boulevards, 
is another interesting study. It is not quite apparent, 
I think, what final impression of him Conrad means us 
to retain, but I should say it was the impression of a 
sincere patriot, who, like so many patriots, only half 
believes that there is anything in it all. He is the 
type of universal scoffer whose feelings are stronger 
than the reason which opposes them. His death 
on the Great Isabel is certainly one of the most thrilling 
passages in Nostromo. The psychology it reveals 
is marvellously subtle. The demoralising, mysterious 
effect of silence and insomnia has never before been 
presented with such intolerable power. 

And then there is Captain Mitchell — the pompous, 
ineffectual, and lovable old port Captain of the O.S.N, 
at Sulaco. His is a chaiacter of guileless and upright 
simplicity — a character of the most absorbed self- 
importance and the most unconditional belief in 
authority. He is serenely ignorant of the real world, 
living, as he does, in a realm of pleasant illusions, 
but in his consequential fussiness and in his garrulous 



CONRAD'S MEN 13S 

good- nature he is a genuine character. Moreover, he 
has the qualities of personal courage and of faithfulness 
to a marked degree. 

And there is Don Jose Avellanos — 'the stately and 
aristocratic patriot of the old regime, a figure tragic 
in his unswerving idealism amidst the memories of 
suffering and the horrors of present disaster. There 
is something at once splendid and melancholy in the 
picture of this disinterested old man, struggling to 
keep alive his belief in the ultimate regeneration of 
his country through the blind chaos that seems to 
have swamped his life's work at the very hour of its 
triumph. 

And one of the most singular and vivid people in 
this book is Sotillo, the Colonel of the Esmeralda 
regiment, and a leader of the Montero revolution. 
In him is epitomised that spirit of cowardice, greed, 
and ruthless cruelty underlying a certain type of semi- 
educated vSouth American. He has the soul of all the 
furies, pent up for most of his career beneath the 
languishing and irresistible exterior of a notorious lady- 
killer but let loose at last in an appalling avalanche of 
vicious cupidity and savage anger. The picture in 
which Conrad describes the shocking blackness of his 
heart is so striking that I will give it here though it is 
part of a longer passage I have quoted elsewhere : — 

Every time he went in and came out with a slam of the 
door, the sentry on the landing presented arms, and got in 
return a black, venomous, unsteady glance, which, in reality, 
saw nothing at all, being merely the reflection of the soul 
within — a soul of gloomy hatred, irresolution, avarice, and 
fury. {Nostromo, p. 381.) 

Another monster is General Montero, brother of 
the great " deliverer," and, like him, devoid of any- 
thing but a brutal lust for power and an inordinate 



134 JOSEPH CONRAD 

vanity. Even while he is still supposed to belong 
to the Ribiera faction he shows all the storm 
signals of untrustworthiness and sullen contempt. 
This is how he appeared at the banquet to celebrate 
the building of the railway : — 

On one side, General Montero, his bald head covered now 
by a plumed cocked hat, remained motionless on a skylight 
seat, a pair of big gauntleted hands folded on the hilt of the 
sabre standing upright between his legs. The white plume, 
the coppery tint of his broad face, the blue-black of the 
moustaches under the curved beak, the mass of gold on 
sleeves and breast, the high shining boots with enormous 
spurs, the working nostrils, the imbecile and domineering 
stare of the glorious victor of Rio Seco had in them some- 
thing ominous and incredible ; the exaggeration of the cruel 
caricature, the fatuity of solemn masquerading, the atrocious 
grotesqueness of some military idol of Aztec conception and 
European bedecking, awaiting the homage of worshippers. 
{Nostromo, p. 103.) 

There are several other men in Nostromo of whom 
I should like to speak had I the space — Hirsch, for 
instance, (whose terror always strikes me as rather 
too melodramic), and Ribiera, the President-Dictator, 
a hero in an infirm body, and Barrios, the rough 
diamond, and Don Pepe, the old brave, and Father 
Corbelan (too melodramatic, also, I think), and the 
infamous Guzman Bento — who appears only as a 
memory and who is a sort of Dr Francia, without 
Francia's charm of manner. Yet I must pass them by 
with only a mention of their names. 

But I will turn now to another book of Conrad's 
that contains some exceptionally interesting people — 
The Secret Agent. And in regard to this book, it is 
necessary to note, as I have pointed out in my chapter 
on Conrad's irony, that the whole work is conceived 
in a spirit of irony. It does not affect the realitj^ of 



CONRAD'S MEN 135 

the figures, nor does it affect the feelings, whether of 
dishke or of pity, with which we regard them, but 
it does affect our perspective. This is a point to be 
remembeied. 

The principal character in The Secret Agent (and 
one of the most perfect characters in Conrad) is a 
woman, Winnie Verloc, and as such she does not enter 
into present consideration, but her brother Stevie, 
and her husband, Mr Verloc, are, next to her, of chief 
interest. Stevie is a young man, slightly " wanting " 
mentally, but overflowing with compassion for suffer- 
ing and full of a gentle pride in the integrity of all 
" good " people — a simple, unsophisticated nature, 
but capable of paroxysms of rage against cruelty or 
oppression and of a curiously stubborn resistance to 
the wiles of remonstrance or inquisitiveness. A very 
marked sympath}^ and intuition have been lavished 
on Stevie' s portrait — and lavished, I should suspect, 
not alone for his sake but for the sake of making us 
comprehend the relationship of Stevie and his sister. 
For her devotion to him is that of a boundless maternal 
pity for the innocent helplessness of a child, and in 
that emotion we see him as he really is — the pathetic 
fragment of a beautiful and trusting nature. For 
Stevie' s mind is only warped in its lack of growth, 
it is not warped at all in any quality of true humanity. 
Its secretiveness and its openness alike represent the 
temperament of a sensitive boy. 

Verloc, on the other hand, though not a vicious man, 
is a man almost entirely lacking in morality. His 
theory of life is contained in the word comfort — com- 
fort of mind and body. And the tragedy of his life 
is the impossibility of attaining this tantalising goal 
for any length of time. He is one of these sublimely 
slothful men who would be delighted just to live and 



136 JOSEPH CONRAD 



let live — provided he were well paid for it. Though 
no men could be more different than Nostromo and 
Verloc, yet they resemble one another in the single 
point that they both have a dumb grievance against 
society — for whom they have done so much and from 
whom they have received so little. (And, talking 
of comparisons, it is rather odd to contrast Jacobus 
of " A Smile of Fortune " with Verloc. They have 
a sort of external resemblance in their mumbling and 
secretive natures, though they are not, really, at all 
alike.) In the thick darkness of his muddled intelli- 
gence Verloc is for ever (since his meeting with the 
deadly Mr Vladimir) brooding upon his wrongs. That 
is why, throughout the book, we watch him through a 
kind of veil — the veil of his own bewildered uneasiness. 
But physically he is quite plain to us — an obese man, 
dirty, unkempt, solemnly unobservant, fond of his 
home, much moved at the thought of his own worth. 
Conrad has given an inimitable description of him : — 

His eyes were naturally heavy ; he had an air of having 
wallowed, fully dressed, all day on an unmade bed. {The 
Secret Agent, p. 3.) 

[What a master Conrad is of these thumb-nail 
pictures ! Think of his description of the small, 
skulking second mate of the " Nan Shan " : — 

The second mate was lying low, like a malignant little 
animal under a hedge. {Typhoon, " Typhoon," p. 65.) 

or of what he says of Dr Monygham : — 

. . . whose short, hopeless laugh expressed somehoAv an 
immense mistrust of mankind. {Nostromo, p. 36.) 

or, again, of what he says of Councillor Mikulin : — 
The bearded bureaucrat sat at his post, mysteriously self- 



CONRAD'S MEN 137 



possessed like an idol with dim, unreadable eyes. (Under 
Western Eyes, p. 93.)] 

The anarchists of The Secret Agent, such men as 
Michaelis, Ossipon, Carl Yundt, and the Professor, 
make a curious group, posed as they are in the ironic 
gravity of Conrad's setting. (One should contrast 
them, by the way, to Inspector Heat, the absolute 
type of the corrupt, competent, non-commissioned 
mind — a mind, in this instance, with something in 
it of Hugo's Javert and something of the con- 
temptuous licence and sheer pride of the subordinate.) 
Michaelis is the most pleasant of them — a man whose 
vitality has all oozed away into fat, an amiable 
sentimentalist of the universal brotherhood order. 
Ossipon is simply a fraud, and Karl Yundt a " horrid 
old man," but the Professor is really formidable — a 
man of one idea indeed, a fanatic untouched by 
compassion or doubt, an extremist who believes in 
destruction simply for itself. The little picture of 
him, which makes the last par^aph of The Secret 
Agent, sums up the whole philosophy of his life with 
striking effect : — 

And the incorruptible Professor walked too, averting his 
eyes from the odious multitude of mankind. He had no 
future. He disdained it. He was a force. His thoughts 
caressed the images of ruin and destruction. He walked 
frail, insignificant, shabby, miserable — and terrible in the 
simplicity of his idea calling madness and despair to the 
regeneration of the world. Nobody looked at him. He 
passed on unsuspected and deadly, like a pest in the street 
full of men. (The Secret Agent, pp. 441-2.) 

And we may glance now at the men in that other 
novel about lehels—^-Under Western Eyes. The book 
centres round the figure of Razumov, and it is of him 
we must speak first of all. This, really, is a study of 



138 JOSEPH CONRAD 

despair, for to understand Razumov one must realise 
the angry futility in his heart against all mankind 
and his constant savage efforts to justify his own 
actions to himself by considering the ruin that others 
have brought into his blameless life. Razumov is 
an egoist — his one aim is to make a success of his 
career ; and he is also fanatically averse to the 
fanaticism of extremists. His silence, which won for 
him the unenviable esteem of the idealist Haldin, 
is the cloak under which he hides his disdain and his 
ambition. But Razumov (like the Raskolnikof of 
Crime and Punishment) is more within the grip of 
his moral conscience than he knows himself, and 
therefore, though he can behave basely in the hour 
of panic (as he does in his betrayal of Haldin), yet 
he is bound to suffer for it a hundredfold later on. 
As a matter of fact the angry gnawing of his con- 
science never leaves him by night or day — he tries 
to stifle it by ceaseless explanations, by cynical con- 
tempt, by a view of society foreign to his Russian 
soul, but he cannot. There is no doubt that it would 
shortly have driven him mad — especially under the 
fearful strain of Haldin' s sister's exalted regard for her 
brother's last protector and friend — had he not burst 
out of his nightmare of silence into the relief and 
ignominy of confession. For Razumov has the endless 
introspection of the Slav. It is typical of him that he 
does not confess till all chances of his being unmasked 
are over, for it is typical of a certain order of Russians 
to lie while people suspect them but to tell the truth 
when they are no longer doubted. The power of this 
portrait rests in the fact that Razumov is, at once, 
convincing as an individual and convincing as a 
Russian. 

The other men in Under Western Eyes need not 



CONRAD'S MEN 139 

detain us long. The most interesting of them are, 
perhaps, Councillor Mikulin of the secret police, 
the revolutionary Haldin, and Peter Ivanovitch, the 
escaped convict and great pioneer of feminism. 
Mikulin is exciting because he represents the inscrut- 
able attitude of Russian officialdom, and is, himself, 
the embodiment of cunning reserve and deep perspi- 
cuity. In reading of his interview with Razumov 
we are forcibly reminded of Raskolnikof's interviews 
with Porphirius, the examining magistrate, in Crime 
and Punishment. We feel in both cases some- 
thing uneasy and thrilling, something that seems 
to lie just beneath the smooth surface of the spoken 
words. 

As for Haldin, his is the spirit of noble, disinterested, 
and perhaps fanatical idealism. I say " perhaps " 
because, though he murders a high official, the few 
glimpses we have of him give suggestion of a sweet 
and reasonable nature driven to desperation by the 
suffering around him. Haldin is the true type of 
martyr— gentle, faithful, uncomplaining. With his 
hands still red he first steps before us. But his simple 
and winning nature disarms with a word our horror 
at a useless and dreadful deed. 

As for Peter Ivanovitch, he is a veritable whited 
sepulchre — a man with a vast flow of words and an 
extreme smallness of heart — a booming and hollow 
drum. Nowhere does the underlying irony of this 
book appear more clearly than in the suggestion of 
Peter Ivanovitch's influence over the sincerest of the 
revolutionaries. For the curse of advanced causes 
is the power of words. The prestige of Peter Ivano- 
vitch is, apart from his Siberian escape, built up 
upon a mountain of sound. In reality he is a mean, 
a cruel, and a grossly conceited man. 



140 JOSEPH CONRAD 

I have not yet mentioned some of the most finished 
portraits in Conrad's books — such portraits as those 
of D'Hubert and Feraud in " The Duel," II Conde 
in "II Conde," Dominic and Cesar (both admittedly 
real) in The Mirror of the Sea, Conrad's own uncle 
in Some Reminiscences, Captain Hagberd and his 
son Harry in " To-morrow," O'Brien, Manuel del 
Popolo and Tomas Castro in Romance, the Due de 
Mersch in The Inheritors. 

I do not know how to describe Lieutenant (after- 
wards General) D'Hubert better than by saying that 
he is a kind of French Captain Anthony of the 
Napoleonic wars. He has the sane, sensitive, and 
compassionate gallantry of the English sea captain 
— a just and delightful personality. And Feraud, 
too, has charm — the charm of a fiery and irascible 
Gascon, whose true spirit has been oppressed by 
rancour and misfortune. The contrast between 
these two men gives us a brilliant picture of either. 
They have our affection because they are really 
presented sympathetically. 

II Conde, too, is presented sympathetically, though 
perhaps with a touch of irony. He comes before us 
a rather faded, rather solitary old man who has passed 
graciously through life an eternal gentleman and 
an eternal dilettante. We see him at the moment 
of his deepest perplexity and disturbance, quite 
unable to cope with his difficulty but remaining, as 
ever, a gentleman to his finger tips. II Conde is the 
portrait of a man whose only aim in life is to slip 
peacefully downhill, indulging a little his cultured 
and mature tastes, and treating the world with the 
benign friendliness of a philosopher. There is a 
tragic touch in this story but it moves us only faintly 
— as indeed II Conde, himself, would wish. Strong 



CONRAD'S MEN 141 

feelings would be out of place in regard to this refined 
and undemonstrative old aristocrat. 

As to Dominic, Cesar, and Conrad's own uncle, 
I will say but little of them as they hardly fall into 
my present scheme. They are characters clearly 
and, in regard to two of them, lovingly drawn, and 
they stand out of the pages as living people. Con- 
rad's uncle, particularly, must have been a man in 
a thousand — so warm-hearted, mde-minded, and 
comprehending. 

Of Captain Hagberd I have spoken elsewhere. 
He is a man who creates in us an emotion of true 
pity — though he himself, of course, is radiantly 
happy with the hopeful certainty of an insane ob- 
session. But if his illusion is tragic to us, his rare 
and fleeting moments of doubt are still more tragic. 
That is what Bessie Carvil knew when she set her- 
self, in her pity, to pacify the old man with a semblance 
of belief and interest. In Captain Hagberd Conrad 
has drawn, with great skill, the curious undercurrent 
of misgiving and shyness which lurks behind nearly 
every form of delusion. 

Harry Hagberd, his son, is a figure startling not 
only in the absolute contrast he presents to his father 
but in the strange glamour of his own personality. 
It is not without significance that he should appear 
out of the dusk of the night and should melt into 
it again to the mysterious sound of the swell break- 
ing on the sea wall. He reminds me somehow of 
a very different person, of Balzac's Vautrin. Both 
have that fascination of a strange, gigantic, and 
symbolic personality — a personality shrouded, as 
it were, in a conspiracy of silence and romance. 
That both have a certain melodramatic touch 
about them I admit — but then I doubt whether 



im JOSEPH CONRAD 

one could conceive of them at all \vithout melo- 
drama. 

O'Brien is a revolutionary Irishman who has 
fastened upon Cuba and has wormed his way to the 
top. It is a portrait with some curious, vivid touches 
and some obvious and romantic extravagances. 

Manuel del Popolo is a Cuban Lugareno of the 
lowest type — with the soul of a beast, a demagogue, 
and a poet. The vagaries of his conceit and the 
fluctuations of his wicked and impressible heart are 
portrayed, as it were, through a golden flood of at- 
mosphere. He lives for us in the setting of a tropical 
and lazy existence — and that setting is the secret 
of his vitality. But in it he is astonishingly real. 

But perhaps Tomas Castro is the most triumphant 
creation of Romance. This stumpy, saturnine, and 
dignified little man has the very instinct of Spanish 
pride in the reserve of his bearing. He is a quite 
amazing figure — with his humanity peeping out of 
his contempt, and his sufferings wringing from him 
the bitter confession of defeat. 

About the Due de Mersch I will only say that he 
is probably the most successful figure in that not 
very successful book. The Inheritors. He has a 
certain reality and a certain presence, but I should 
doubt whether Conrad had very much to do with 
his creation. 

In thinking of the men in Conrad's books I cannot 
help being struck at the insight and patience with 
which he develops quite secondary characters. Con- 
rad sees his people too clearly for his pictures ever 
to be slovenly. Just think, for instance, of men 
like the French naval lieutenant in Lord Jim, or of 
the cabman in The Secret Agent. How plainly, how 
dramatically they rise before us — and how incidentally. 



CONRAD'S MEN 143 



Some of the men in Conrad's stories whom one would 
have to call minor are complete through and through. 
There is Sterne in " The End of the Tether," that 
nasty, pushing, plausible scoundrel, that man with- 
out the glimmer of conscience but without any ill- 
will apart from what touches his own fortune ;' there 
is the Captain of the Patna, hideous in his gross and 
abounding vitality ; [do you remember this inimitable 
description of him near the beginning of the book ? : — 
His skipper had come up noiselessly, in pyjamas with his 
sleeping-jacket flung wide open. Red of face, only half 
awake, the left eye partly closed, the right staring stupid 
and glassy, he hung his big head over the chart and scratched 
his ribs sleepily. There was something obscene in the sight 
of his naked flesh. His bared breast glistened soft and 
greasy p,s though he had sweated out his fat in his sleep. He 
pronounced a professional remark in a voice harsh and dead, 
resembling the rasping sound of a wood-file on the edge of a 
plank ; the fold of his double chin hung like a bag triced up 
close under the hinge of his jaw. {Lord Jim, p. 20-1)] ; 

'there is Brown in Lord Jim, the freebooter with 
his malicious and evil passions ; there is Julius 
Laspara in Under Western Eyes, a man resembling 
some kind of ape ; there is Makola in " An Outpost 
of Progress," so respectable, so deeply cynical, and 
so terrified of devils. However, I will not continue 
a list which might cover pages. I only wish to 
demonstrate the range and quality of Conrad's 
psychology. I do not mean at all that he is equally 
successful in all his figures, nor, in fact, that there 
are not positive failures amongst them, but I do mean 
that in each one of his figures there is a similar in- 
tensity of effort. Conrad's whole idea of the unity 
of the novel would demand that, quite apart from 
his scrupulous observance of reality. It is easy to 
find fault with Conrad's figures, to pick holes in their 



144 JOSEPH CONRAD 

psychology ; but, indeed, as a creator rather than 
a mere observer Conrad must have laid himself 
particularly open to such attack. A creator like 
Conrad will always arouse undue antipathy, and 
perhaps undue praise, whereas an observer like 
Jane Austen may be universally accepted. 

In this chapter I have tried solely to present Con- 
rad's men as they present themselves to me. I 
daresay it is a biased view but I believe it is, in the 
main, a right one. Of course, as I have said before, 
one cannot follow out the individual psychology in 
the way one should. One has to give alone a general 
impression — that general impression which can only 
be gained, I may add, from a minute study. 

And my general impression is simply this — ^that 
Conrad is a very great psychologist. I admit that 
there is a good deal of melodrama in his earlier 
portraits, and a good deal of unnecessary irony in 
his later portraits, but the essentials of psychology 
— the realism, the creation, the detail, the compre- 
hension — are always there. And after all, such 
melodrama as Conrad's is but the overflow of romance, 
and such irony as Conrad's is but the wisdom of 
experience. Perfect balance is seldom indicative 
of the highest originahty. Though Conrad may 
do injustice to some types, yet to .others he has givf^n 
a reality which can never fade. His intolerance of 
certain people is the meed of his appreciation of 
others. We should remember these words of his 
about Dr Monygham : — 

What he lacked was the polished callousness of men of the 
world, the callousness from which springs an easy tolerance 
for oneself and others ; the tolerance wide as poles asunder 
from true sympathy and human compassion. (Nostromo, 

p. 441 •) 



CHAPTER VII 

Conrad's women 

To say, as it is sometimes said, that Conrad does 
not understand women is an observation revealing 
blindness. For, indeed, his women portraits are 
the most finished, delicate, and poignant of all his 
portraits. But the reason for its being said arises, 
probably, from the fact that Conrad does not make 
love the centre theme of all his stories and from the 
fact that his finest women are good women. They 
are of the charming and merciful order of Desdemona 
rather than of the ardent and fiery order of Cleo- 
patra. Of course, I do not mean that they are in- 
sipid — his great women figures have a marvellous 
and thrilling reality — but what I do mean is that 
they are not romantically inconstant, even if by that 
one merely implies that they are not instinctively 
passionate. For in the rarest and most exalted 
women the emotion of love is not only steadfast 
but it is maternal. It is just that, I think, which 
gives such pathetic beauty to the portraits of Mrs 
Gould in Nostro^no and of Winnie Verloc in The 
Secret Agent — portraits of which we must always 
speak first in considering Conrad's female characters. 
To Mrs Gould her husband has still something in 
him of a little boy, to Winnie Verloc her brother 
is always a little boy. In these childless women 
the might of their compassionate love has wrapped 
the husband and the brother in the invincible bonds 

145 



146 JOSEPH CONRAD 

of a maternal affection. They belong to the very 
choicest natures — the natures of devotion, singleness 
of heart, and exquisite sensitiveness of perception. 
And what is so wonderful about them both is their 
stillness. Mrs Gould seems to spread the light of 
her benign understanding over all the darkness of 
Nostromo, whereas Winnie Verloc concentrates the 
force of her protecting love upon Stevie alone, but 
in both cases the effect of stillness is the same. It 
is " the wisdom of the heart." One cannot exactly 
compare Mrs Gould and Winnie Verloc, it is true, 
for they are quite distinct, and moreover Conrad 
has subtly suggested in their portraits the difference 
between a refined and educated lady and an ignorant 
woman of the people, but one sees in them, very 
touchingly, the common basis of a great love and a 
deep pity. The words in which Conrad describes 
Mrs Gould can be used absolutely of them both : — 

It must not be supposed that Mrs Gould's mind was 
masculine. A woman with a masculine mind is not a being 
of superior efficiency ; she is simply a phenomenon of im- 
perfect differentiation— interestingly barren and without 
importance. Dona Emilia's intelligence being feminine led 
her to achieve the conquest of Sulaco, simply by lighting the 
way for her unselfishness and sympathy. She could con- 
verse charmingly^ but she was not talkative. The wisdom 
of the heart having no concern with the erection or demolition 
of theories any more than with the defence of prejudices, has 
no random words at its command. The words it pronounces 
have the value of acts of integrity, tolerance, and compassion, 
A woman's true tenderness, like the true virility of man, is 
expressed in action of a conquering kind. (Nostromo, p. 55.) 

It is because they are feminine in this still and 
perfect sense that the outrage to their love harrows 
us so acutely. For it is precisely this touch of femin- 
inity that gives the real beauty to their faithfulness 



CONRAD'S WOMEN 147 

and compassion — and femininity is always maternal 
in its instincts of unselfishness and protection. But, 
as I say, one can only compare to a slight extent Mrs 
Gould and Winnie Verloc ; and therefore I will 
consider them separately. 

And first to speak of Mrs Gould, " first lady of 
Sulaco," wife of the celebrated Charles Gould, and 
" rich beyond the dreams of avarice." What one 
notices about her at once is the atmosphere of intuitive 
understanding that seems to flow from her into the 
very heart of that strange society. She is one of those 
people who by the absolute power of tact and sympathy 
can touch all that is best in others. Not a hint of 
the ironic is to be found in Mrs Gould's compassion. 
It is the chief cause of her influence. There is some- 
thing profoundly beautiful in the way in which, by 
the sincere gentleness of her pitJ^ she heals the 
withered heart of Dr Monygham. And it is to her 
alone that Nostromo is willing to reveal the baleful 
secret of the hidden silver. In fact, she is universally 
beloved because, in the deep wisdom of her femininity, 
she has the precious gifts of unselfishness, of dignity, 
and of pity. There is a magnetic attraction about 
Mrs Gould. She inspires faith in goodness. And 
yet she is one of the most pathetic figures in all litera- 
ture. If Balzac had been a greater artist in words 
no doubt he would have made Pere Goriot extra- 
ordinarily pathetic, but, as it is, there is not the 
sustained finish about his portrait that there is about 
Mrs Gould's. I consider that this capacity for creat- 
ing a quite beautiful and tender figure, who passes 
through the book radiating gentleness and under- 
standing upon all the blind prejudice of life, reveals 
a very noble talent. In some respects Isabel Archer 
of The Portrait of a Lady is a similar type. But there 



148 JOSEPH CONRAD 

are lapses in Henry James' portrait, moments when 
he seems to nod (not in his style — he never nods there 
— but in his psychology) ; whereas Conrad's portrait 
of Mrs Gould is invariably fresh and exact. It is 
when Henry James is at his best that his Isabel Archer 
reminds me so strongly of Mrs Gould, Is there 
anything more heartbreaking in literature than that 
scene when Isabel Archer is sitting by the side of the 
dying Ralph Touchett, trying to tell him all her un- 
happiness, unburdening her heart at last in the bitter 
grief and solemn gladness of their parting. It is at 
such a moment, I repeat, that Isabel Archer reminds 
me of Mrs Gould. For there is, indeed, something 
intensely tragic about Mrs Gould. She is not only 
powerless to avert the great sorrow of her life — the 
slow fading of Charles Gould's love — but she is at 
last, this fragile and pathetic figure, invaded by the 
poison of doubt. She who has succoured every one, 
is unable to succour herself, is filled in her loneliness 
by an awful misgiving as to her own power. As Conrad 
says, towards the end of the book : — 

Mrs Gould leaned back in the shade of the big trees planted 
in a circle. She leaned back with her eyes closed and her 
white hands lying idle on the arms of her seat. The half- 
light under the thick mass of leaves brought out the youthful 
prettiness of her face ; made the clear light fabrics and white 
lace of her dress appear luminous. Small and dainty, as if 
radiating a light of her own in the deep shade of the inter- 
laced boughs, she resembled a good fairy, weary with a long 
career of well-doing, touched by the withering suspicion of 
the uselessness of her labours, the powerlessness of her magic. 
(Nosiromo, p. 442.) 

But even the bitterness of lost hope can but scratch 
the surface of her compassion, and that is why I am 
unable to believe that she would ever have used these 



CONRAD'S WOMEN 149 



words of biting cynicism to the fair Giselle, which 
Conrad puts into her mouth. I quote the scene here, 
not because it is striking in itself but because it seems 
to me the one false touch in this most beautiful of 
portraits : — 

" Console yourself, child. Very soon he would have 
forgotten you for his treasure." 

" Senora, he loved me. He loved me/' Giselle whispered, 
despairinglv. " He loved me as no one had ever been loved 
before." 

" I have been loved too," Mrs Gould said in a severe tone. 
(Nostromo, p. 476.) 

As Conrad remarks, it was " the first and only 
moment of cynical bitterness in her life " — but all 
the same I cannot bring myself to believe that she 
could have had such a moment : not even when I 
remember that she had just come from a last talk 
with Nostromo (Giselle's lover, wounded to death) 
about the silver — the silver that had wrecked his life 
and had wrecked hers^ — ^the accursed silver of the mine. 
No, Mrs Gould has cast her spell over me as she did, 
all unwittingly, over the characters in Nostromo, 
and I decline to believe that a word of cynicism ever 
escaped her lips. Her compassion was too genuine 
for her to have loosed from her heart the secret of her 
own unhappiness. As I said before, she is still — very 
still. She suffers deep within herself, keeping to the 
world her air of gentle wisdom and sympathy. It was 
Dr Monygham alone, who, in his unbounded reverence 
for her, guessed all the darkness of her secret. 

Now let us look at Winnie Verloc. It is easier, in 
a sense, to fathom her character than to fathom Mrs 
Gould's character, because it is concentrated in the 
one devouring passion of her maternal love for her 
brother. Winnie Verloc is tragic in the terrible 



150 JOSEPH CONRAD 

directness and intensity of her devotion — tragic, I 
mean, quite apart from the fate overhanging her and 
her beloved. She Uves only for Stevie, she has married 
for him, she has sacrificed everything for his happiness. 
She is not like Mrs Gould, spreading around her the 
instinctive and magnetic power of her sympathy, for 
she exists entirely in this one passion of her laborious 
and secluded days. She suppresses herself for Stevie ; 
she does not expand with the natural warmth of Mrs 
Gould. One of the truest touches about her is this 
suggestion of a reserve force of fierce passion and 
abandon. We are told that she never allowed herself 
to think of Comrade Ossipon — the man secretly 
attractive to her. Everything seems to be contained 
in that — a whole underworld of emotion damned by 
her pure and selfless love for the half-witted Stevie. 
Winnie Verloc is quite unconscious of herself ; her 
love is the natural outpouring of her compassion, a 
real maternal affection derived from the years when, 
as a little girl, she protected a still smaller brother 
from the brutal onslaughts of their father. And in 
this conception of Winnie Verloc one seems to see her 
physically from Conrad's description just as clearly 
as one sees Mrs Gould — the one dark, of a full build, 
with a steadfast expression, the other very fair, very 
slight, and with a face of active and tactful sympathy 
— so alike, somehow, in all their dissimilarity. And 
Winnie Verloc is still — even stiller than Mrs Gould — 
contained, wordless, not given to worrying over a 
world that didn't " bear looking into." Hers is the 
tragedy of a sublime self-suppression. That is why 
the breaking-down of her fortifications is so sudden 
and dreadful. She is a pent-up river, and in the shock- 
ing outrage to her love she loses the one thing that 
held her to conventional ties. The frenzy of Winnie 



CONRAD'S WOMEN 151 

Verloc's last hours is not alone terrible it is absolutely 
natural — as natural as Lear's frenzy. By losing Stevie 
she has not only lost all, but she has suffered an un- 
speakable injury. It is as though the heavens had 
fallen on her in the mad deluge of a final reckoning. 

But what we must specially bear in mind both in 
regard to Mrs Gould and Winnie Verloc and, indeed, 
in regard to Conrad's other principal figures, is their 
inner reality — a reality, as it were, rooted in their 
very fibres. I emphasise this obvious point simply 
because one cannot demonstrate it by examples. And, 
after all, it is the one thing that actually makes them 
important. On the puppets of a novelist every 
other gift may be showered profusely and yet they 
may remain as uninteresting as stones. For it is only 
when they have breath in them that the words which 
describe their qualities take on a hue of colour. Mrs 
Gould is affecting because she is so entirely human 
in her compassionate philosophy, Winnie Verloc is 
tragic because her devotion has the unconscious 
grandeur of a real woman's lack of an ordered sense 
of proportion. 

In the gallery of Conrad's finest women a number 
of faces come before me. I see Winnie Verloc's mother, 
a grotesque figure, but with a heart of gold — moving 
in the very strength of her humility and unselfishness. 
We do not even know her name — she is just Winnie 
Verloc's mother. Can this be a subtle touch, suggest- 
ing the utter effacement of her brave spirit ? But 
whether intentional or not it heightens the impression 
of her character. And I see the statuesque Antonia 
Avellanos, the Spanish foil to the English Mrs Gould 
in Nostromo. Her stillness is more the immobility 
of a proud and exalted spirit than the simple " wisdom 
of the heart " which made Mrs Gould so worshipped. 



152 JOSEPH CONRAD 

And I see Nathalie Haldin {Under Western Eyes) 
young, enthusiastic, full of high and shining thoughts, 
capable of devotion and suffering, and I see her 
mother, an unconsoled and tragic figure waiting in 
vain for the return of her son. The picture of this 
bereaved mother is one of the most piteous things in 
Conrad : — 

Away from the lamp, in the deeper dusk of the distant end, 
the profile of Mrs Haldin, her hands, her whole figure had the 
stillness of a sombre painting. Miss Haldin stopped, and 
pointed mournfully at the tragic immobility of her mother, 
who seemed to watch a beloved head lying in her lap. (Under 
Western Eyes, p. 350.) 

And in the same book, Under Western Eyes, I see 
the incorruptible, unworldly-wise, and fanatical Sophia 
Antonovna, and Tekla, the despised slave of freedom, 
whose tender pity for the outcast and the unfor- 
tunate, softens into loving devotion the eccentricity 
of her character. And looking at Tekla I remember 
a figure somewhat like hers — the figure of Amy Foster 
("Amy Foster"). There, too, you see a woman 
ennobled by pity, so ennobled that her whole 
nature seems to flower before your eyes. But Amv 
Foster has not the steadfast philosophy behind her 
compassionate devotion which enables Tekla to 
survive all the disillusionments of life — she is like 
a dumb creature unable to control her likes and fears. 
And of the same breed is Bessie Carvil (" To-morrow "), 
a true figure of tragedy. The whispers of romance 
and love sigh in her ear for a second and are gone for 
ever into the darkness of a night without hope. Her 
unsleeping care of her loathsome and tyrannical 
father show the full sweep of feminine renunciation, 
and her friendship with old Hagberd is touching in its 
abiding gentleness, in its delicate regard for the 



CONRAD'S WOMEN 153 



sensitiveness of an insane old man. But it is the 
adventurer Harry Hagberd, that lover of all pretty 
women, who with a word can pluck the very heart 
out of her body. Again, the tragedy of repression ! 

Another of Conrad's most moving figures is that 
of Freya Nielsen (" Freya of the Seven Islands "). 
Hers is a character of loyal and confident goodness, 
a staunch, straightforward, joyous character, sure 
of itself and of its powers. Her love for Jasper Allen 
is without alloy and just sufficiently domineering to 
be maternal, but she has to manoeuvre to gain her end 
with her old father. And it is in this manoeuvring 
that she ruins not only her own life but her lover's 
as well. In this story of simplicity and deception 
there shows up something of the real, dark hand of 
fate. I cannot quite accept the later psychology of 
Freya Nielsen. Would such strength of character, 
such utter reliability, such resource, have collapsed 
so completely without a struggle ? And when at 
last she heard from her father of Jasper's desperate 
condition would she not have gone to him — she who 
had been planning to elope with him — in spite of all ? 
I think there is a certain error in accepting the develop- 
ments of her psychology unless one admits that fate 
does play tricks that can stagger even the constancy 
of a faithful heart. 

And one feels, to begin with, somewhat of the same 
misgiving, too, about Cornelius' daughter in Lord 
Jim. Would this true companion to Jim have failed, 
so tragically, to forgive him in the end ? One has 
to remember, of course, that she lacks all the subtlety 
of education, of experience, of knowledge of the world 
— but love generally supplies a profound, intuitive 
grasp of character. But in this case, although one 
has doubts at first, one comes to see, I think, that 



154 JOSEPH CONRAD 



Conrad's psychology is quite right. To an untutored 
mind like hers no act of reparation could pardon the 
callous treachery of this last desertion. (For such it 
must inevitably have appeared to her.) The concrete 
intelligence of primitive woman has little to do with 
the endless niceties of personal honour. Cornelius' 
daughter is the sort of woman who would never be 
comforted, and who, in her dumb misery, would revenge 
herself upon the memory of her faithless lover. Such 
women will forgive anything save an offence against 
their loyalty. 

The character of Flora de Barral in Chance, which I 
will now discuss, is a far more intricate one. This 
is amongst Conrad's greatest, although not amongst 
his most sympathetic, creations. (The real beauty 
of her mind is a thing developed, as it were, outside 
the story.) For her nature has been embittered as 
a girl, embittered by brutality, by poverty, by neglect ; 
and through nearly all the book we see her under the 
cloud of her suffering pride. It was this starved 
unhappiness that roused in Captain Anthony the 
chivalrous torrent of his pity. One feels that Flora 
de Barral has been warped and stunted in her mind — 
she has been so misused that she has ceased not alone 
to believe in, but almost to realise, such a thing as 
sympathetic kindness. That is why one understands 
so clearly that, though she is a woman in years, she 
is no more than a bewildered (and often disagreeable) 
child in feeling. It needed the rare compassion of 
a Captain Anthony to thrust aside the barriers of her 
mis-shapen intelligence and to read aright the miserable 
story of her life. 

And while we are discussing Flora de Barral we may 
consider her friend and protector Mrs Fyne. Conrad 
knew what he was about when he drew Mrs Fyne. 



CONRAD'S WOMEN 155 

Scarcely ever has his touch been surer. Foi Mrs 
Fyne is the epitome of the commonplace mind (in its 
strong form), with all its sterling merits and all its 
limitations. To Flora de Barral she is kindness itself 
up to a point and she even comprehends her up to a 
point ; but she is fatally wanting in imagination. 
Just so far, and no further, can she go. Few psy- 
chologists would have had the courage to make her 
veer round so abruptly in her opinion of Flora de 
Barral. It is Conrad, with his precise knowledge of 
the heart, who realises that a woman like Mrs Fyne 
can be truly compassionate as long as her convention- 
ality is not shocked, but that she can be hard and un- 
forgiving outside those limits. 

But, to return for a minute to more amiable types, 
we may consider another of Conrad's mysteriously 
attractive women — Hermann's niece in " Falk." She 
does very little throughout the story, but she dominates 
the scene at last by the sheer splendour of her physical 
attractions and the tranquil gentleness of her pity. 
She is a curiously alluring figure because there is 
something exciting and touching about her immobility, 
Falk, that lover of life, felt her spell upon him as 
an agonising fever. And, indeed, she is a very syren 
of attraction — an unconscious syren. She is as much 
the typical female as Falk is the typical male. There 
is, in particular, one splendid description of her 
which I will give here : — 

The girl alone in the cabin sat sewing at some distance 
from the table. Falk stopped short in the doorway. With- 
out a word, without a sign, without the slightest inclination 
of his bony head, by the silent intensity of his look alone, he 
seemed to lay his herculean frame at her feet. Her hands 
sank slowly on her lap, and raising her clear eyes, she let her 
soft, beaming glance enfold him from head to foot like a slow 
and pale caress. He was very hot when he sat down ; she, 



156 JOSEPH CONRAD 

with bowed head, went on with her sewing ; her neck was 
very white under the Hght of the lamp ; but Falk, hiding his 
face in the palms of his hands^ shuddered faintly. {Typhoon, 
"Falk," pp. 236-7.) 

She is strong because she is all unconscious of her 
strength. And it is that, in Nostromo, which renders 
the fair Giselle so much more fatal than the dark Linda, 
her sister. Giselle Viola, sitting always with downcast 
eyes, silently absorbed, secretly stealing away 
Nostromo's heart, resembles a lovely and deadly 
flower. The sleepy luxuriance of her triumph is 
hardly more to her than the yawn of a playful panther. 
But against that yielding softness the passionate love 
of the dark Linda counts for nothing. In the seductive 
innocence of her nature the fair Giselle has the charm 
of centuries of experience. 

Something of the same should, perhaps, be said 
of Nina Almayer [Ahnayer's Folly), of Aissa {An 
Outcast of the Islands), of Alice Jacobus (" A Smile of 
Fortune "), and even of that very shadowy lady, Miss 
Etchingham Granger {The Inheritors). Nina Almayer 
is certainly unconscious of her attraction for Dain 
Maroola, though she yields to love with the abandon 
of her wild and passionate nature. The glamour 
of mysterious romance hangs over Nina Almayer 
almost more than over any other character in Conrad. 
This girl, forsaking her white father to fly across the 
sea with her dark lover, suggests the very call of 
the wilderness in her blood. The fierce tenderness 
of her love throws a wonderful and reviving freshness 
across the sombre gloom of Sambir and over the 
weariness of her own past existence. It is interesting 
to note how the power of her white blood gives her 
an immensely greater attraction for us than a figure 
like Aissa — a woman equally passionate and untamed. 



CONRAD'S WOMEN 167 

For Aissa, too, is unconscious of her might, though, 
as soon as it arouses response in the breast of Willems, 
she uses it with all her barbaric cunning. As for 
Alice Jacobus (an even more desolate figure than 
Flora de Barral), her attraction is not only unknown 
to her but actually incomprehensible to the disgusted 
sulkiness of her mind. She is a very singular creation. 
Watching her is like watching the emergence of 
personality from the wilderness of feminine caprice. 
In regard to Miss Etchingham Granger (a figure of 
wood and not, I should suspect, Conrad's invention 
at all), she has the charm, so to speak, of the fourth 
dimension in her. She attracts men because she is 
the super-woman, I suppose — what one may call 
a fortuitous circumstance. 

In Almayer's Folly Conrad has drawn, in Taminah, 
the girl slave, a strange and tragic figure of voiceless 
grief — a. figure almost as strange, indeed, as that of 
Nina Almayer, and more tragic in her unrequited love. 
She is a true child of the patient wilderness, typifjdng 
impressively the speechless suffering of savage hearts. 

In Romance there are two delightful women — 
Seraphina Riego and Mrs Williams. There is nothing 
deep about them, for they are intended, after all, to 
be figures of pure romance ; but they have the fine 
traits of courage, of compassion, and of noble simpli- 
city — with enough of reality to make them lovable. 
In their inconceivable and hopeless difference (the one 
a young Cuban aristocrat, the other the puritanical 
and middle-aged wife of a Bristol sea captain), they 
show qualities of a similar spirited and delightful order. 

But though Conrad could imagine two very dis- 
similar women en rapport with one another he could 
also imagine a mother and daughter fundamentally 
estranged. There is the case of Susan Bacadou and 



158 JOSEPH CONRAD 

her mother, Madame Levaille, in " The Idiots." The 
ties of the flesh in this instance are almost the only 
ties that join the cowering daughter to the self-sufficient 
and strong-minded mother — although in her final 
act of rebellion the natural submissiveness of the 
younger seems to have been fired by the independent 
spirit of the elder — instinct asserting itself over 
personality. But I daresay this is a fanciful inter- 
pretation of a tragic occurrence. 

Conrad has drawn, at times, definitely offensive 

women. Madame de S , in Under Western Eyes, 

is an excellent example, so is the girl in " The 
Informer," and the governess in Chance (a person 
as sinister as Balzac's evil women) — but Mrs Hervey, 
in " The Return," though very unattractive for the 
most part, is in a rather different category. It is 
in such figures that Conrad instills all the venom of 
his hatred of insincerity and vapid pose. For it is 
only those who understand real women who can 
unmask frauds with such a degree of bitter con- 
tempt. I do think that is why, in certain people, 
great tenderness towards some is so often accom- 
panied by great dislike towards others. 

I have now considered most of the important women 
in Conrad's books. And if I should be blamed for 
devoting over much space to a few figures at the ex- 
pense of others, I can only reply that these are the 
figures that Conrad, himself, has elaborated most 
carefully. In such portraits as those of Mrs Gould 
and Winnie Verloc he has concentrated the very 
essence of his conclusions and of his sympathy. For, 
above everything else, he requires a subtle femininity 
in his women. As Marlow says : — 

Observe that I say " femininity," a privilege — not 
" feminism/' an attitude. (Chance, p, 133.) 



CONRAD'S WOMEN 159 

In Conrad's eyes all the graces of intuition and pity 
in women spring from this subtle femininity. His 
finest women, it is true, are women of character and 
resolve, but they have the feminine temperament. 
Not only is there no antagonism between the two, 
but they are in accord with one another. It is only the 
muddle-headed who would deny it. And Conrad's 
women do not trade on their sex — their femininity 
is unconscious. Meredith drew splendid women but 
they are splendid with the glitter of typically exalted 
characteristics. But Conrad's women are beautiful 
because they are unaware of their gifts and are 
pictured without the aid of heaped-up glories. In 
short, they are more individualised portraits than 
Meredith's, and, consequently, they possess that 
magnetic charm which, so often, is just lacking in 
his. Such is my opinion, though I will add that a 
lady I know assures me that it is the converse that 
is accurate — that, indeed, it is Meredith's women who 
are individual and Conrad's who are typical. She 
says that Meredith understands women from a 
woman's point of view whereas Conrad only under- 
stands them from a man's point of view. This does 
seem to me a very fallacious way of looking at the 
matter. (It is the question of "personality" as 
apart from " character," that I discussed in the last 
chapter.) If a woman has a charming and com- 
passionate nature it is ridiculous to say that that is 
a man's point of view — it is merely true. I quite 
admit that there are certain types more sympathetic 
to one sex than to the other, but in so far as these 
differences are accentuated the type is morbid. The 
fact is, that when a man talks about a woman's point 
of view or a woman talks about a man's point of view 
in relation to sex, they always have in mind the point 



160 JOSEPH CONRAD 

of view of the typical narrow-minded man or fanatical 
woman. I am not denying that it is possible that 
Meredith's women may be more individual than 
Conrad's. That, I presume, is a matter of opinion — 
and, in the sense that Meredith can, admittedly, probe 
into the nervous crises in women, I will even admit 
that there is, in appearance, quite a strong case for 
the contention — but I do hope that people will not 
found their arguments on this rigid conception of 
personality. The truth is, surely, that certain types 
of men understand certain types of women, and vice 
versa, better than members of their own sex do. 
But that is by the way. Reality is the chief considera- 
tion in character-drawing, and it is fanciful to suppose 
that what is individual in the eyes of one sex may be 
only typical in the eyes of the other. Such are the 
errors that build up the barriers of a mutual estrange- 
ment. 

But to return to something less polemical, I should 
remind the reader that when I speak in these high 
terms of Conrad's women, I am, of course, referring 
only to his finest creations. For some of the others 
are mere sketches, and some of them are not even 
convincing — Dona Erminia, for instance, in " Caspar 
Ruiz." No, I speak of the few who stand in the fore- 
front of his work. In such there is, indeed, a kind 
of deep, intense glow of life, reminding one, somehow, 
of Turner's sunsets or of that ruddy health which 
seems to lie under the skin of certain people. It 
is one of these things one feels very strongly but 
which eludes all description. It is the secret of 
creative realism. 



CHAPTER VIII 

Conrad's irony and sardonic humour 

It requires no particular astuteness to discover that 
the irony of contrast is often present in the works 
of Conrad. It is only the wideness and subtlety of its 
ramifications that may escape attention. Indeed, 
there is something elusive and elf-like about it. His 
irony ranges over a spacious field, from simple sarcasm 
to broad humour, from a mere breath to a pervasive 
atmosphere, from the kindliness of Anatole France 
to the savagery of William Beckford. But the root 
of it all is the melancholy of disillusionment rather 
than an actually sceptical view of existence. It is, 
perhaps, tliis northern and Slavonic melancholy 
which gives to his irony its singular quality. We know 
the brusque irony of Voltaire, the suave irony of Jane 
Austen — typical enough representatives of the Latin 
and the Anglo-Saxon mind — but an irony like Conrad's 
is bewildering not alone in its ceaseless variety but 
in its very foundations. For the ironic melancholy 
of Turgenev or Galsworthy is something quite apart 
from the ironic melancholy of Conrad. They are 
depressed because life, which is beautiful, is also 
futile, and their irony is a sort of shield for their own 
sensibility — but Conrad is untouched by artistic 
egoism of this description. His irony is the cause 
of his melancholy — he does not fall back upon irony 
as a shelter from pessimistic conclusions. 

But we must remember that with Conrad irony 



162 JOSEPH CONRAD 

is not solely a philosophic conception, but is also 
an artistic method of presenting a picture or even 
of creating an atmosphere. There is a certain unity, 
a certain perspective to be gained from viewing men 
from an ironical standpoint. And, indeed, Conrad is 
very fond of this method. In such tales as " Heart 
of Darkness," Lord Jun, and Chance, Marlow, who may 
be called Conrad's familiar devil — (there is a general 
idea that Marlow is Conrad himself, but, of course, 
Conrad is the shadowy person in the background who 
listens to Marlow) — serves to give us Conrad's own 
melancholy and ironical philosophy, but when we con- 
sider a book like The Secret Agent we are faced with a 
much more delicate use of the ironic method. For the 
whole fabric of The Secret Agent is ironic — no one 
can appreciate it who misses that — and ironic in a 
very impersonal way. In other words, the irony of 
The Secret Agent is more an artistic than a philosophic 
attitude. The Secret Agent, in its very idea, is studied 
irony, not cruel, not probing, but quite emotionless. 
It is satire minus the sting and the laugh. Meredith 
with his theory of the Comic Spirit might well have 
appreciated this book — though the Comic Spirit is, 
in essence, an inhuman invention. For, as far as 
I can judge, the Comic Spirit feeds its vitality upon 
imagining a state of things which positively does not 
exist. As often as not it is a mere paradox. More- 
over, by its creator's own definition it can breathe 
only in the rarified air of a universal culture. But 
true irony is not necessarily other than a form of 
aloofness. The Comic Spirit is a brilliant fancy, 
yielding occasional revelations but leaving dark 
an immense side of life ; whereas the ironic spirit, 
in all its branches, is but the wisdom of knowledge 
and often of bitter experience. In reading such a 



IRONY AND SARDONIC HUMOUR 163 

book as The Secret Agent, or, in a lesser degree, such 
a book as Under Western Eyes, we feel that Conrad 
is a mere watcher leaving his characters to fight out 
alone with fate the battle of good and evil, of purpose 
and futility. Not that Conrad exactly obtrudes 
himself in his earlier work but that he is always close 
at hand. One is conscious of the difference. This 
atmosphere surrounding The Secret Agent is un- 
ostentatious and may easily be missed. And the 
reason of that is that it is the idea of the book, as I 
say, that is ironic — much of the material is, in itself, 
essentially tragic. 

And so Conrad's irony may be impersonal as in 
The Secret Agent, may be melancholy as in Lord 
Jim, or may, indeed, be a thing outside himself alto- 
gether as in " The Informer." In The Secret Agent 
he is observing the world, in Lord Jim he is judging 
the world, in " The Informer " he is creating irony 
as an asset of character. Mr X in that story is not 
primarily a subject for irony, he is ironic himself — 
or, rather, he is ruthlessly sardonic. Nowhere does 
Conrad show his mastery of the sardonic more elo- 
quently than in Mr X. For to be ironic at the ex- 
pense of others is sometimes easy enough, but to form 
a person whose irony is sufficient, one might think, 
to make his very creator uncomfortable is a real 
feat of imagination. This is not the sort of point it is 
worth while dwelling on, of course, but it will serve 
to introduce a discussion as to the temper of Conrad's 
irony. Mr X, as I have observed, is ruthlessly sar- 
donic-— 1? shed, as it were, by a cold fury against con- 
ventional respectability ; and Conrad, himself, though 
far too balanced a mind to be an echo of Mr X's 
extravagances, can yet, on occasions, be as scathing 
as Swift himself. There are cruel moments in Conrad's 



164 JOSEPH CONRAD 

intellect, extraordinarily incompassionate and cruel 
moments. They pass and are gone, but they are ever 
ready to leap out upon the unwary. They resemble 
sudden and piercing stabs unbaring at one thrust 
the hideous nakedness of the heart. They are simply 
terrific. The sardonic spirit is more prevalent in 
Conrad's recent books than in his early ones. In his 
earlier books he can be violently sarcastic, as in his 
description in " The Return " of Alvan Hervey's 
reason for supporting a society publication or, as in 
his description in " Heart of Darkness," of the glorious 
and civilising activities of the Great Company ; but 
in his later work, such work as " An Anarchist " or 
" Freya of the Seven Islands " or Some Reminis- 
cences, the shafts aimed at rottenness have the biting, 
mordant, and sombre irony that eats into the very 
flesh. But that all this implies a change in Conrad's 
attitude to life, other than a development in his 
whole conception of the writer's art, is questionable. 
No doubt one change might reasonably imply the other, 
but, with Conrad, I am inclined to think that the 
balance of influence is artistic rather than philosophic. 
For it is with his later reserve of manner that the 
humour of his mind has grown more sardonic and the 
pessimism of his philosophy less prone to obvious 
revelation. We can notice this particularly in his 
last four books. 

However, I must take care what I say about the 
differences in his work or I shall find myself nailed 
down to a definition which can be made to refute me 
out of its own mouth. I don't deny for an instant 
that one could unearth examples, both in Conrad's 
earlier and in his later work, that would render a 
precisely different reading to my theories (for example, 
the irony of " A Smile of Fortune " is almost tender 



IRONY AND SARDONIC HUMOUR 165 



in regard to Jacobus and his daughter though it is 
sardonic in regard to the " smile " itself), but, after 
all, I am only trying to point out the tendency to change 
in Conrad's attitude. I only state that where he 
once was sarcastic he is now sardonic, and that the 
most probable reason for this is, in the main, an in- 
creased precision of style — and, roughly, I believe 
that to be the truth. There is every sign that Conrad 
has altered his style, not only in its form but in its 
method of presenting his opinions, but there is next 
to no proof that his philosophy to-day is different from 
what it was fifteen years ago. 

But all this is only one aspect of Conrad's irony. 
Incongruous association, for example, throws a touch 
of pensive and premeditated irony over all the four 
stories in Typhoon. This special aspect of the irony 
of contrast has a philosophic basis which acts as a 
telling, even if a risky, dramatic expedient. It is 
the unimaginative MacWhirr (" Typhoon ") who has 
to face the might of the storm, it is the dense Amy 
Foster ("Amy Foster") who is captivated by the 
brilliant Yanko Goorall, it is the respectable Falk 
(" Falk ") who is guilty of cannibalism, it is the 
doting Hagberd (" To-morrow "), a father who lives 
for his son alone, who fails to recognise him when he 
appears. Such irony takes on the colour of its sur- 
roundings — being, let us say, epic in " Typhoon " 
and pathetic in " To-morrow." It is true that in a 
practised and skilful hand like Conrad's it avoids 
the unreality that lurks in wait for every variety of 
coincidence, but, all the same, it is a medium that has 
to be manipulated with the nicest artistic balance. 
A more strictly legitimate use of this type of irony 
is in the contrast of character to character, arising 
from the concealed antagonisms of personality. For 



166 JOSEPH CONRAD 



in the latter case one avoids the danger (a true danger 
though a splendid one) of symbolism. When stupid 
Captain MacWhirr conquers the fury of the typhoon 
one feels instinctively that there is something sym- 
bolic here of the indomitable soul of man, but when, 
in Nostromo, Charles Gould's love fades imperceptibly 
into his passion for his mine, such symbolism as there 
is is swamped in contemplation of the tragic and all 
too common likelihood of the occurrence. Both 
situations are ironic and both situations are realistic, 
but the contrast in the first is overwhelming and, as 
it were, material, whilst in the second it is gradual 
and inevitable. Even in " To-morrow " it is the 
whole setting that is symbolic rather than the in- 
dividual relationships. However I have no wish to 
spin my threads too fine. 

Com ad's sense of irony derives, at times, its accumul- 
ative effect from the junction of numerous streams, flow- 
ing from his main impulses. In the pages of Nostromo, 
Decoud and Dr Monygham sum up in their caustic 
phrases the futility and meaninglessness of South 
American civilisation, but before ever they spoke an 
impersonal and subtly ironic voice had breathed the 
same message through every line. Melancholy and 
mockery often go hand in hand in an ironical mind. 
Here, in Nostromo (though Nostromo is not funda- 
mentally ironic at all as is The Secret Agent) Conrad's 
irony touches all the sides of life. It touches, as we 
have noticed, the Goulds, sundered for ever by the 
power of " material interests," it touches Nostromo, 
killed tragically with his two secrets on his lips, and 
it touches, in a grosser sense, a man like Senor Hirsch, 
throwing himself into the very arms of the one thing 
he fears most of all — death. Conrad has a striking 
method of picturing the irony of " now and then " 



IRONY AND SARDONIC HUMOUR 167 

in the case of such people as Sefior Hirsch. He does 
it by the poUtest reminder of their former state, 
repeated several times. So polite is it that it might 
be taken as a mere observation rather than as an 
ironical aside. I will give one instance, apropos of the 
abject Hirsch, which may be taken as typical of a 
very usual method of Conrad's : — 

A slight quiver passed up the taut rope from the racked 
limbs, but the body of Sefior Hirsch, enterprising business 
man from Esmeralda, hung under the heavy beam perpen- 
dicular and silent, facing the colonel awfully. (Nostromo, 
p. 381. This makes part of a longer passage I have quoted 
in another chapter.) 

It is as unassuming as it is trenchant. And some- 
times he will achieve the result by a single word as 
when, in The Secret Agent, he is describing that quite 
worthless person, Comrade Ossipon : — 

Alexander Ossipon, anarchist, nicknamed the Doctor, 
author of a medical (and improper) pamphlet, late lecturer 
on the social aspects of hygiene to working men's clubs, was 
free from the trammels of conventional morality. (The 
Secret Agent, p. 422.) 

and then the result is still more illuminating if 
possible. 

Conrad, I repeat, is addicted to this sort of ironical 
contrast, and occasionally he will present it in an even 
milder form of ironical comment. In Lord Jim, for 
instance, one of the assessors at Jim's examination 
sits there in his position of authority and tried integrity 
as though thoroughly bored with the weakness of 
humanity — but Conrad suddenly pauses to explain 
how Captain Brierly committed suicide a few weeks 
later. In Under Western Eyes there is Councillor 
Mikulin of the secret police who cross-examines 



168 JOSEPH CONRAD 



Razumov with a terrifying reserve of power and 
influence — but again, Conrad pauses to recount how 
Mikulin, himself, fell some years afterwards into the 
depths of suspicion and degradation. Here you have 
two commanding men, safe, feared, respected, facing 
two unhappy wretches, and it is just as if Conrad 
were all at once to whisper in your ear " Yes, but 
wait a moment — I'll show you something," and 
were to give you a glimpse into the mysterious workings 
of fate and of men's hearts. This, indeed, is the 
melancholy side of Conrad's irony — the realisation 
not only that life is obscure and fruitless but that 
people are, in truth, completely ignorant about it. 
As he says in " The Return " (talking of Alvan Hervey 
and his wife) : — 

They skimmed over the surface of life hand in hand, in a 
pure and frosty atmosphere — like two slcilful skaters cutting 
figures on thick ice for the admiration of the beholders, and 
disdainfully ignoring the hidden stream, the stream restless 
and dark ; the stream of life, profound and unfrozen. {Tales 
of Unrest, " The Return," pp. 178-9.) 

It is a remark ironical in its very intensity. 

Something of this blindness may be noted as the 
ironical background to Under Western Eyes. Conrad's 
view of the Genevan ciicle of Russian conspirators 
reminds one of Turgenev's view of the Baden-Baden 
circle in Smoke. The sardonic spirit in both writers 
hates the pretence so often sunning itself in the shelter 
of elevated causes, and is cynically amused at the 
gullibility of enthusiasts. Nevertheless both Tur- 
genev and Conrad show the sincerest admiration for 
nobility and singleness of heart. I need not quote 
from Turgenev, whose work is so widely known, and 
as to Conrad I will merely mention that there is no 
grander figure in Under Western Eyes than Haldin 



IRONY AND SARDONIC HUMOUR 169 



and no meaner figure than Peter Ivanovitch. Yet 
both, ostensibly, are in the vanguard of the same cause. 
But the first is genuine, whereas the second draws 
his sustenance from the credulous admiration of 
sincere fanatics. This unfounded and unseeing faith 
is a weakness from which no states of society have 
ever been immune. The last page of Under Western 
Eyes, in the light of knowledge, is a most ironical 
footnote upon the whole subject. 

Conrad's melancholy irony often reveals itself in 
dramatic climax — it might be called, then, the irony 
of pity. It is at the moment of his success that Jim 
{Lord Jim) meets his death, it is at the moment of 
relief that Kayerts and Carlier (" An Outpost of 
Progress ") break down completely, it is at the moment 
of safety that Charley (" The Brute ") loses his beloved, 
it is at the moment when their long wait is all but 
triumphantly surmounted that Jasper and Freya 
(" Freya of the Seven Islands ") are cheated of the very 
happiness over which their hands are closing. I need 
not continue such instances because, naturally, they 
must always abound in writers as dramatic as Conrad ; 
but I may point out that they do show conclusively 
how urgent in his mind is the ever-present idea of 
tragic fate. The worst of it is that, in the irony of 
climax as in the irony of symbolic contrast, there is 
a suggestion of coincidence which is apt to leave one 
uncomfortable in proportion as it is perfect. To deal 
in such thrilling crises is to play with fire — and to get 
singed now and again. 

There is another danger about irony and that is 
that, in the words of a writer in The New Age, " it ends 
by deceiving its author." I mention this here not 
because I think Conrad has fallen, to any extent, 
into this mistake (his irony is usually far too clear- 



170 JOSEPH CONRAD 



sighted and humane for that) but because it is so 
common in the EngUsh satirists of to-day. The 
constant, unreUeved, and often pointless irony of 
such men as Samuel Butler and Hilaire Belloc be- 
comes a weariness. The tables are turned with a 
vengeance and we end by disliking the authors more 
than their butts. Irony must have proportion or it 
loses its sting. And what could be more truly ironic 
than the blindness of irony itself ? 

And here I may add that, for the critic too, the 
whole subject of irony is a dangerous one. In every 
act of life there is a certain ironic significance, and 
unless the critic is very careful there is a real chance of 
his losing all sense of proportion in judging the bounds 
and purposes of intentional irony. One must not 
overdo it and yet, with a novelist like Conrad in whom 
irony has such distinct, individual, and subtle mani- 
festations, one must lay particular stress upon it. 
For the English mind has, I think, little of the -finesse 
of irony in its constitution and little of the bitterness 
or even the melancholy of irony, though, assuredly, 
it is rich in ironical resignation and revolt. And that, 
precisely, is not Conrad's type of irony. You will 
find it in thoroughly English writers like Dickens 
and Chesterton (it goes frequently with bursts of 
irritation), but you will not find it in a Slav writer 
such as Conrad. To Conrad humour is not a guise 
for resignation (or its converse, rebellion), although 
his humour is so often tinged with irony. But then 
it has no philosophic basis and is ironic without ulterior 
motive. In a nutshell, Conrad's humour is the humour 
of his special ironic realism. When Leonard, the 
half-caste, tells Willems [An Outcast of the Islands) 
that he must not be brutal to him because it is " un- 
becoming between white men " there is something 



IRONY AND SARDONIC HUMOUR 171 



not only ridiculously funny in the scene but obviously 
ironical. I will give it in full : — 

" Do not be brutal, Mr Willems/' said Leonard, hurriedly. 
" It is unbecoming between white men with all those natives 
looking on." Leonard's legs trembled very much, and his 
voice wavered between high and low tones without any 
attempt at control on his part. " Restrain your improper 
violence," he went on mumbling rapidly. " I am a respectable 
man of very good family, while you ... it is regrettable 
. . . they all say so. . . ." (An Outcast of the Islands, 
P- 3I-) 

And, again, in " Typhoon," when the second mate, 
who had lost his nerve in the storm, gets the sack 
at Fu-Chau and meets his seedy friend on shore, 
the picture of the two men is not only amusing in the 
highest degree but full of a contemptuous and ironical 
undercurrent. Let me quote : — 

Before she had been quite an hour at rest, a meagre little 
man, with a red-tipped nose and a face cast in an angry 
mould, landed from a sampan on the quay of the Foreign 
Concession, and incontinently turned to shake his fist at her. 

A tall individual, with legs much too thin for a rotund 
stomach, and with watery eyes, strolled up and remarked, 
" Just left her — eh ? Quick work." 

He wore a soiled suit of blue flannel with a pair of dirty 
cricketing shoes ; a dingy grey moustache dropped from his 
lip, and daylight could be seen in two places between the 
rim and the crown of his hat. 

" Hallo 1 what are you doing here ? " asked the ex-second- 
mate of the Nan-Shan, shaking hands hurriedly. 

" Standing by for a job — chance worth taking — got a 
quiet hint," explained the man with the broken hat, in 
jerky, apathetic wheezes. 

The second shook his fist again at the Nan-Shan. 

" There's a fellow there that ain't fit to have the command 
of a scow," he declared, quivering with passion, while the 
other looked about listlessly. 



m JOSEPH CONRAD 



" Is there ? " 

But he caught sight on the quay of a heavy seaman's 
chest, painted brown under a fringed sailcloth cover, and 
lashed with new manila line. He eyed it with awakened 
interest. 

" I would talk and raise trouble if it wasn't for that damned 
Siamese flag. Nobody to go to — or I would make it hot for 
him. The fraud ! Told his chief engineer — that's another 
fraud for you — I had lost my nerve. The greatest lot of 
ignorant fools that ever sailed the seas. No ! You can't 
think. . . ." 

" Got your money all right ? " inquired his seedy acquaint- 
ance suddenly. 

" Yes. Paid me off on board," raged the second mate. 
' Get your breakfast on shore,' says he." 

" Mean skunk ! " commented the tall man vaguely, and 
passed his tongue on his lips. " What about having a drink 
of some sort ? " 

" He struck me," hissed the second mate. 

" No ! Struck ! You don't say ? " The man in blue 
began to bustle about sympathetically. " Can't possibly 
talk here. I want to know all about it. Struck — eh ? Let's 
get a fellow to carry your chest. I know a quiet place 
where they have some bottled beer. . . ." 

Mr Jukes, who had been scanning the shore through a 
pair of glasses, informed the chief engineer afterwards that 
" our late second mate hasn't been long in finding a friend. 
A chap looking uncommonly like a bummer. I saw them 
walk away together from the quay." (Typhoon, " Typhoon " 

p. IOO-2.) 

[How many people, I wonder, have noticed what a 
marvellous piece of art this conversation is. It is 
one of the most finished things of its kind in Conrad's 
works, and, as a finale to the horrors of the typhoon, 
tremendously effective. The " soft spot " is as visible 
here as amongst the officers on board the Patna [Lord 
Jim)]. 

Conrad's whole sense of humour is, in fact, extra- 



IRONY AND SARDONIC HUMOUR 173 



ordinarily interesting. It is unique in a sense no less 
absolute than is the humour of Dostoievsky. It 
has that pathetic and realistic bizarreness which one 
connects with the Slavonic spirit. Think of all those 
quaint and startled stewards that flit through his 
tales, through such tales, for instance, as " Typhoon," 
" The Secret Sharerj" " A Smile of Fortune," Chance, 
and so forth ; or think of a figure like Captain Mitchell 
[Nostromo], sententiously (and quite falsely) imagining 
himself the centre of affairs, or of poor, deluded 
Feraud in "The Duel." Or just take a passage like 
the following : — 

The old major of the battalion, a stupid, suspicious man, 
who had never been afloat in his life, distinguished himself 
by putting out suddenly the binnacle light, the only one 
allowed on board for the necessities of navigation. He 
could not understand of what use it could be for finding the 
way. To the vehement protestations of the ship's captain, 
he stamped his foot and tapped the handle of his sword. 
" Aha ! I have unmasked you," he cried triumphantly. 
" You are tearing your hair from despair at my acuteness. 
Am I a child to believe that a light in that brass box can 
show you where the harbour is ? I am an old soldier, I am. 
I can smell a traitor a league off. You wanted that gleam 
to betray our approach to your friend the Englishman. A 
thing like that show you the way ! What a miserable lie ! 
Que picardia ! You Sulaco people are all in the pay of 
those foreigners." (Nostromo, p. 243.) 

But I will not give further examples for, after all, 
humour of this kind is only on the fringe of irony. 
Conrad's humour, at its easiest, has the keenness of 
a blade without its deadly suggestion. It is, in truth, 
simply a sense of humour dyed, instinctively, with 
the colour of Conrad's unusual and always slightly 
ironical personality. 

There is a trace of Dickens in Conrad's humour. 



174 JOSEPH CONRAD 

but a mere trace and nothing more. For it is mingled 
with a much rarer, a much subtler genius. Perhaps 
actually the most Dickens-like character in his books 
is Flora de Barral's manufacturer cousin. The 
passage I give here is my justification for this state- 
ment : — 

He gazed contemptuously round the prettily decorated 
dining-room. He wrinkled his nose in a puzzled way at the 
dishes offered to him by the waiter but refused none, devour- 
ing the food with a great appetite and drinking (" swilling " 
Fyne called it) gallons of ginger beer, which was procured for 
him (in stone bottles) at his request. The difficulty of 
keeping up a conversation with that being exhausted Mrs 
Fyne herself, who had come to the table armed with adaman- 
tine resolution. The only memorable thing he said was when, 
in a pause of gorging himself "with these French dishes " 
he deliberately let his eyes roam over the little tables occupied 
by parties of diners, and remarked that his wife did for a 
moment think of coming down with him, but that he was 
glad she didn't do so. " She wouldn't have been at all happy 
seeing all this alcohol about. Not at all happy," he declared 
weightily. {Chance, p. 120.) 

It is probable, as I said in my introductory chapter, 
that this omnipresent irony is one of the reasons for 
Conrad's comparative lack of popularity. Sophia 
Antonovna in Under Western Eyes sums it up per- 
fectly when she says : — 

" Remember, Razumov, that women, children, and 
revolutionists hate irony, which is the negation of all saving 
instincts, of all faith, of all devotion, of all action." {Under 
Western Eyes, p. 275.) 

I seem to discern a double irony in that remark — 
as though Conrad had been thinking to himself. 
" That's what people will be saying of me." But 
no doubt it is a purely fantastic notion on my part. 

Because irony is the foe of fanaticism and of the 



IRONY AND SARDONIC HUMOUR 175 



unruffled certitude of the idee fixe is, one may suppose, 
partly why Conrad conceived Voider Western Eyes 
and The Secret Agent (the two novels about extremists) 
as ironical entities — though, as I stated before, it 
appears to be more an artistic than a philosophic 
device — for only in such a spirit could the gravity 
of fanaticism be proportioned to its actual worth. 

But the great thing to grasp about Conrad's irony 
is this startling fact that, deep down in his heart, his 
irony is more tragic than comic — that is to say, more 
Slavonic than French. It is that wliich must differen- 
tiate his mind for ever from the mind of such men as 
Anatole France or Remy de Gourmont. I do believe 
that the reason for this is fundamentally one of 
realism. Conrad's grip on life is realistic to the utter- 
most, and consequently his irony cannot drown his 
faith in actuality. To say that he is more of a creator 
than a philosopher is only to say that he is concerned 
more with existence than with theories concerning it. 
Moreover the melancholy of his irony merges into a 
melancholy that is not ironic at all except in a kind 
of 'a cosmic sense which can hardly enter into our 
calculations. This is the sort of irony that pervades 
a book like An Outcast of the Islands, the irony of 
disillusionment and of vanished hope. I sometimes 
think that the last page or two of that strange book 
are the very epitome of his ironic melancholy — an 
irony more tragic than ironic. The quotation is 
rather long but I will give it here because it represents 
my meaning so perfectly : — 

He dozed off. Almayer stood by the balustrade looking 
out at the bluish sheen of the moonlit night. The forests, 
unchanged and sombre, seemed to hang over the water, 
listening to the unceasing whisper of the great river ; and 
above their dark wall the hill on which Lingard had buried 



176 JOSEPH CONRAD 

the body of his late prisoner rose in a black, rounded mass, 
upon the silver paleness of the sky. Almayer looked for a 
long time at the clean-cut outline of the summit, as if trying 
to make out through darkness and distance the shape of 
that expensive tombstone. When he turned round at last 
he saw his guest sleeping, his arms on the table, his head on 
his arms. 

" Now, look here ! " he shouted, slapping the table with 
the palm of his hand. 

The naturalist woke up, and sat all in a heap, staring 
owlishly. 

" Here ! " went on Almayer, speaking very loud and 
thumping the table, " I want to know. You, who say you 
have read all the books, just tell me . . . why such damned 
things are ever born. Here I am ! Done harm to nobody, 
lived an honest life . . . and a scoundrel like that is born in 
Rotterdam or some such damn'd place at the other end of 
the world somewhere, travels out here, robs his employer, 
runs away from his wife, and ruins me and my Nina — ^he 
ruined me, I tell you — and gets himself shot at last by a 
poor miserable savage, that knows nothing at all about him 
really. Where's the sense of all this ? Where's your 
Providence ? Where's the good for anybody in all this ? 
The world's a swindle ! A swindle ! Why should I suffer ? 
What have I done to be treated so ? " 

He howled out his string of questions, and suddenly became 
silent. The man who ought to have been a professor made 
a tremendous effort to articulate distinctly — 

" My dear fellow, don't — don't you see that the ba-bare 
fac — the fact of your existence is off — offensive, . . . I — I 
like you — like. . . ." 

He fell forward on the table, and ended his remarks by an 
unexpected and prolonged snore. 

Almayer shrugged his shoulders and walked back to the 
balustrade. He drank his own trade gin very seldom, but, 
when he did, a ridiculously small quantity of the stuff could 
induce him to assume a rebellious attitude towards the 
scheme of the universe. And now, throwing his body over 
the rail, he shouted impudently into the night, turning his 
face towards that far-off and invisible slab of imported granite 



IRONY AND SARDONIC HUMOUR 177 



upon which Lingard had thought fit to record God's mercy 
and Willem's escape. 

" Father was wrong — wrong ! " he yelled. " I want 
you to smart for it. You must smart for it ! Where are 
youj Willems ? Hey ? . . . Hey ? . . . Where there is 
no mercy for you — I hope ! " 

" Hope," repeated in a whispering echo the startled 
forests, the river and the hills ; but Almayer, who stood 
waiting with his head on one side and a smile of tipsy 
attention on his lips, heard no other answer. (An Outcast 
of the Islands, p. 390-1.) 

But to hark back, Conrad's irony is French in its 
clear-headed perception of motive. He is not to be 
deluded by grandiloquent phrases. And there is 
something tragically comic in the way he makes his 
exploited people (exploited in the name of progress) 
realise the utter vileness of the exploiters quite natur- 
ally, as though it were a matter of course. In " An 
Outpost of Progress " it is Makola, the devil- wor- 
shipping native, who understands the two white agents 
actually better than they understand themselves. 
Behind their backs he succeeds in exchanging their 
useless station men for some admirable tusks. The 
knowledge comes to their ears as follows : — 

He moved towards the store. Kayerts followed him 
mechanically, thinking about the incredible desertion of 
the men. On the ground before the door of the fetish lay 
six splendid tusks. 

" What did you give for it .? " asked Kayerts, after sur- 
veying the lot with satisfaction. 

" No regular trade," said Makola. " They brought the 
ivory and gave it to me. I told them to take what they 
most wanted in the station. It is a beautiful lot. No 
station can show such tusks. Those traders wanted carriers 
badly, and our men were no good here. No trade, no entry 
in books ; all correct." 

Kayerts nearly burst with indignation. " Why 1 " he 

M 



178 JOSEPH CONRAD 

shouted, " I believe you have sold our men for these tusks ! " 
Makola stood impassive and silent. " I — I — will — I — " 
stuttered Kayerts. " You fiend ! " he yelled out. 

" I did the best for you and the Company," said Makola 
imperturbably. " Why you shout so much ? Look at 
this tusk." 

" I dismiss you ! I will report you — I won't look at the 
tusk. I forbid you to touch them. I order you to throw 
them into the river. You — you ! " 

" You very red, Mr Kayerts. If you are so irritable in 
the sun, you will get fever and die — like the first chief ! " 
pronounced Makola impressively. [Tales of Unrest, " An 
Outpost of Progress," pp. 150-1.) 

But the result may be forseen — a beautiful resig- 
nation to evil (and profitable) fortune. There is 
something exquisitely and unconsciously sardonic 
in Makola's treatment of the v^hite men's feelings. 
He has gauged these two men, has reckoned the 
value of their sentimentalism against the value 
of their greed, not through any profound powers 
of psychology but simply through his ordinary know- 
ledge of the white men who have come to his 
country. That was what the blessings of civilisa- 
tion meant to his intelligence ! Could any fact be 
more withering ? 

And remember what Conrad says of the old Malay 
Sarang in " The End of the Tether " : — 

He was certain of his facts — but such a certitude counted 
for little against the doubt what answer would be pleasing. 
{Youth, " The End of the Tether," p. 252.) 

But, perhaps, the most sardonic remark in the whole 
of Conrad's works is put into the mouth of the black 
servant in " Heart of Darkness," who has to announce 
the death of Mr Kurtz, that great apostle of progress 
and enlightenment : — 



IRONY AND SARDONIC HUMOUR 179 



Suddenly the manager's boy put his insolent black head 
in the doorway, and said in a tone of scathing contempt — 

"Mistah Kurtz— he dead." {Youth, "Heart of Dark- 
ness," p. 169.) 

There is nothing more to be said after that. It is 
the last word of disillusionment, as surely the last 
word as is the end of An Outcast of the Islands. 



CHAPTER IX 



CONRAD S PROSE 



The thought of Conrad's style suggests at once a 
very curious speculation — how does a Pole come to 
write English of this nature ? Of course, there is 
no real answer ; but the fact of it is, after all, 
the most astonishing thing about Conrad's prose. 
And yet, in a sense, the very correctness of his prose 
(for, with the exception of an occasional tiny gram- 
matical error it is correct) militates against the recog- 
nition people yield to any extraordinary tour de 
force. Yoshio Markino's quaint English enraptures 
the critics, but you do not hear loud pseans of praise 
because Conrad's English is not quaint. The reason 
is simply this, that Markino is considered a foreigner 
whereas Conrad is considered an Englishman. It 
is a compliment paid to perfection. 

All the same, and quite outside the subject of 
technical proficiency, there is a foreign element in 
the spirit and substance of Conrad's prose which does 
require analysis. That strange, exotic manner of 
regarding our language which is so evident in his 
earlier books is an instance. His treatment of our 
tongue is one of the most exciting adventures in the 
long annals of English literature. And it is exciting 
because of its profound originality. His music is 
not the mere enlargement of older English strains, 
it is a new music altogether — the romantic, mysterious, 
and thrilling music of another race. There is a 

ISO 



CONRAD'S PROSE 181 



Latin, harp-like rhythm about Conrad's prose which 
is intensely individual. Few people, I think, have 
realised the fundamental difference between Conrad's 
prose and all the prose of the English schools. For 
it is Conrad's mastery of the details of our language 
that hides from us the deep originality of his method. 
But, as I say, all this is much easier to note in his 
earlier than in his later work. A revolutionary change 
has come over Conrad's prose — a change just visible 
in the " Amy Foster " of Typhoon, and in full force 
from Under Western Eyes onward — which, like all 
revolutions, alters the face while keeping the heart 
mainly untouched. This revolution (or, if you like, 
evolution) has smoothed away the cadence, has 
concentrated the manner, has toned down the style 
of Conrad's former exuberance. At first glance the 
later and the earlier Conrad appear two totally different 
men. The murky splendour of the one has given 
way to the subtle and elastic suavity of the other. 
Perhaps I can explain the difference better by a simile. 
It is as though Conrad's earlier work were a free 
swinging wire, with a glorious sweep and a deep 
booming note, and his later work, were the same wire, 
tightened up, and vibrating and humming with a 
tense, swift, and almost invisible action. There is 
no doubt that Conrad's earlier prose is more immedi- 
ately stimulating — and, indeed, there are individual 
passages in it which actually are his finest things — 
but his later prose is undoubtedly a subtler achieve- 
ment. It is fuller of nervous, concentrated energy. 
It is like breathing the rare atmosphere of the 
heights after walking the wooded valleys below. 
His earlier prose is sometimes uncertain, sometimes 
exaggerated, but his later prose has the uniform 
temper of absolute mastery. And it would be interest- 



182 JOSEPH CONRAD 



ing to know whether this change is not partly due to 
a more accurate conception of EngHsh. Of course, 
there are other influences obviously at work ; but 
whether this also may not count for something is the 
question. From its very nature it must be left un- 
answered, but internal evidence is in its favour. 
But we must remember, too, that his early work was 
tinged in a familiar sense by a recent association with 
the tropics and the sea, and that as the years gradually 
divide the present from the past such influence must 
necessarily be less strong. And then, again, is it not 
possible that Conrad is deliberately setting himself 
to become, as it were, more purely literary, more 
impersonal ? For in Conrad the artist is more and 
more predominant. But, indeed, the change is 
perhaps a natural development that could have been 
foretold from the beginning — a development inherent 
in the nature of the work. I wonder. The only 
certain thing is that there is a change, 

The more obvious idiosyncracies of Conrad's style 
appear, as one would expect, in his early work. Books 
like Tales of Unrest and Youth bristle with what is 
generally considered the typical Conradesque prose. 
The triolets of sound by which his most gorgeous 
effects are secured, the repetition of formidable words 
which instil the very breath of tropical forests in our 
lungs, the langorous roll of his sentences suggesting 
the motion of sluggish and steamy rivers, abound 
ever^'^where. 

Yes, it is very rich, this early style of Conrad's. 
It would be interesting to know to what extent his 
long association with the sea has helped to create not 
only its spirit in his books, but its very beats within 
the swell of his periods. For, at its typical, that 
is what it is like — a monotonous and golden rhythm. 



CONRAD'S PROSE 183 

a sonprous ebb and flow. He is a magician in the use 
of those dangerous things— adjectives. Just occasion- 
ally, as I say, this does result in a feeling of exaggera- 
tion, as in " Heart of Darkness " and " The Return," 
but generally it is extremely eloquent and has the 
effect of a symphony. 

Moreover his language is musical in another sense. 
As in a composition the same theme will occur every 
now and again, so it is at times with his stories, in 
which he will repeat at intervals the same sentence 
like a slow refrain. The repetition of such a clause 
as this out of "The Return" produces almost the 
illusion of sound : — 

The secret of hearts, too terrible for the timid eyes of men, 
shall return, veiled for ever, to the Inscrutable Creator of 
good and evil, to the Master of doubts and impulses. {Tales 
of Unrest, "The Return," pp. 268 and (slightly different) 
254-) 

This is just one instance. 

At its best this early style of Conrad's is unmatched 
for the sheer magnificence of its achievement. The 
false note dies away before the efforts of a glowing 
and romantic imagination. It is in descriptions of 
tropical nights and primeval forests, of nature vast 
and untamed, that the prose of Conrad rises to supreme 
heights. For it is endowed not alone with the poetry 
of beautiful language' but with a sort of melancholy 
and ironic philosophy which is strangely moving. I 
cannot do better than give a few examples. Look 
at this : — 

The far-off blackness ahead of the ship was like another 
night seen through the starry night of the earth — the star- 
less night of the immensities beyond the created universe, 
revealed in its appalling stillness through a low fissure 



184 JOSEPH CONRAD 

in the glittering sphere of which the earth is the kernel. 
{Typhoon, " Typhoon/' p. 32.) 

Or at this : — 

A multitude of stars coming out into the clear night 
peopled the emptiness of the sky. They glittered, as if alive 
above the sea ; they surrounded the running ship on all 
sides ; more intense than the eyes of a staring crov/d, and 
as inscrutable as the souls of men. (The Nigger of the 
"Narcissus/' p. 41.) 

Or at this : — 

She dropped her head, and as if her ears had been opened 
to the voices of the world, she heard beyond the rampart of 
sea wall the swell of yesterday's gale breaking on the beach 
with monotonous and solemn vibrations, as if all the earth 
had been a tolling bell. (Typhoon, " To-morrow," p. 294.) 

Or at this : — 

A murmur pov/erful and gentle, a murmur vast and faint ; 
the murmur of trembling leaves, of stirring boughs, ran 
through the tangled depths of the forests, ran over the 
starry smoothness of the lagoon, and the water between the 
piles lapped the slimy timber once with a sudden splash. A 
breath of warm air touched the two men's faces and passed 
on with a mournful sound — a breath loud and short like an 
uneasy sigh of the dreaming earth. (Tales of Unrest, " The 
Lagoon," p. 290.) 

Or at this : — 

She was headed between two small islets, crossed obHquely 
the anchoring-ground of sailing-ships, swung through half 
a circle in the shadow of a hill, then ranged close to a ledge 
of foaming reefs. The Arab, standing up aft, recited aloud 
the prayer of travellers by sea. He invoked the favour of 
the Most High upon that journey, implored His blessing on 
men's toil and on the secret purposes of their hearts ; the 
steamer pounded in the dusk the calm water of the Strait ; 
and far astern of the pilgrim ship a screw-pile lighthouse. 



CONRAD'S PROSE 185 

planted by unbelievers on a treacherous shoal, seemed to 
wink at her its eye of flame, as if in derision of her errand of 
faith. {Lord Jim, pp. 14-15.) 

Of course, prose like this is open to many objections 
and could only be used safely by a very great master. 
But where it is successful it is tremendous. That is 
my point. To write such descriptions is like creating 
a new use for language, like giving it the attributes 
of several senses. Perhaps it is not strictly proper, 
but that does not matter as long as the result is what 
it is. Where one does feel the strain of such a style 
is in its ordinary application to the purposes of a 
whole book and also in its tendency towards exaggera- 
tion and portentousness not only in itself but in 
the scenes and emotions it depicts. Conrad's later 
style is, in the main, a far more supple instrument. 
For it conceals a spirit of irony to whom the tragic 
sweep of his early sentences would appear forbidding. 
And it is wonderful to note how, in his descriptions of 
scenery, the darkness has slowly faded into light. 
The heavy gloom of the descriptions in " Heart of 
Darkness " has yielded to the tender fancy of the 
descriptions in " Freya of the Seven Islands." With 
the changing of the point of view the prose has become 
more delicate, more sustained, and more finely tuned. 

But I admit that in making a comparison one tends 
to overdo it at either end. It is not at all my opinion 
that Conrad's earlier prose is all of one genre or that 
it is not constantly altering in some way or other. At 
its choicest, which is in the recreation of lost illusions or 
vanished pictures, it has the flexibility of his latest work 
joined to the soft richness of his first period. But it is 
always somewhat monotonous by reason of the atmo- 
sphere which surrounds it. Conrad's prose has never 
been more imaginatively beautiful than in such stories 



186 JOSEPH CONRAD 

as " Youth," and The Nigger of the " Narcissus," but 
the shy notes of its beauty are drowned in the glamour 
and fragrance of the scene. That is why so many 
people fail to realise the sensitiveness of Conrad's 
early work while they do realise all the magic of its 
colour. But it is true that the general impression 
is one of overpowering imagery and wealth of language. 
His later work is quite different in its broad effect. 
And we begin to feel this difference in books that, 
properly speaking, form a middle period — Nostromo 
and The Secret Agent. The prose, in particular, in 
which Nostromo is written is almost perfect. Beautiful 
and full of nuance, it is not the ironic prose of Under 
Western Eyes any more than it is the purely romantic 
prose of Tales of Unrest. In fact, its prose is the least 
self-conscious in Conrad. It is designed to create, with 
potent veritability, the canvas of a huge panorama ; 
and it hardly falters in its stride. It is in Nostromo 
that the originality of Conrad's style appears most 
unique and most unapproachable. For it has neither 
the mannerism of the earlier books nor the attitude 
of the later ones. No, it is like a river flowing calmly, 
flowing assuredly into all the complicated interstices 
of the land. Let me give two quotations to represent 
my meaning : — 

At night the body of the clouds advancing higher up the 
sky smothers the whole quiet gulf below with an impenetrable 
darkness, in which the sound of the falling showers can be 
heard beginning and ceasing abruptly — now here, now there. 
Indeed, these cloudy nights are proverbial with the seamen 
along the whole west coast of a great continent. Sky, land, 
and sea disappear together out of the world when the Placido 
— as the saying is — ^goes to sleep under its black poncho. 
The few stars left below the seaward frown of the vault 
shine feebly as into the mouth of a black cavern. In its 
vastness your ship floats unseen under your feet, her sails 



CONRAD'S PROSE 187 



flutter invisible above your head. The eye of God Himself 
— they add with grim profanity — could not find out what 
work a man's hand is doing in there • and you would be free 
to call the devil to your aid with impunit)'^ if even his malice 
were not defeated by such a blind darkness. (Nostromo, p. 4.) 

Tints of purple, gold, and crimson were mirrored in the 
clear water of the harbour. A long tongue of land, straight 
as a wall, with the grass-grown ruins of the fort making a 
sort of rounded green mound, plainly visible from the inner 
shore, closed its circuit ; and beyond the Placid Gulf repeated 
those splendours of colouring on a greater scale with a more 
sombre magnificence. The great mass of cloud filling the 
head of the gulf had long red smears amongst its convoluted 
folds of grey and black, as of a floating mantle stained with 
blood. The three Isabels, overshadowed and clear cut in a 
great smoothness confounding the sea and sky, appeared 
suspended, purple-black, in the air. The little wavelets 
seemed to be tossing tiny red spai^ks upon the sandy beaches. 
The glassy bands of water along the horizon gave out a fiery 
red glow, as if fire and water had been mingled together in 
the vast bed of the ocean. 

At last the conflagration of sea and sky, lying embraced 
and asleep in a flaming contact upon the edge of the world, 
went out. The red sparks in the water vanished together 
with the stains of blood in the black mantle draping the 
sombre head of the Placid Gulf ; and a sudden breeze sprang 
up and died out after rustling heavily the growth of bushes 
on the ruined earthwork of the fort. (Nostromo, pp. 346-7.) 

Indeed, the influences which have helped to the 
formation of Conrad's style are few enough altogether. 
His work is not in the least like that of the Russians 
(where one might look for afhnities), and though it 
has points of resemblance to that of such Frenchmen 
as Flaubert and Maupassant, it is more in relation to 
the spirit than to the actual writing. There is, I 
think, little to be gained from comparing Conrad's 
prose to that of other people (his romantic use of 
language and, later, his ironical use of language — and 



188 JOSEPH CONRAD 



that language a foreign language — has given his prose 
a totally new significance) , though I would except from 
that the earlier part of The Nigger of the " Narcissus," 
which does seem to me to show definitely the 
influence of Flaubert. The sailors in the forecastle 
of the Narcissus are filled in with a similar touch to 
the barbarians in the garden of Hamilcar at the 
beginning of Salammho. These sharp little sentences 
remind one exactly of Flaubert in a certain mood. 
(To prove that this is not mere fancy on my part 
I will mention here that I made this very criticism 
in an article I wrote on Conrad in Rhythm, November 
1912, and that Conrad then informed me that just 
before writing The Nigger of the "Narcissus" he had 
finished reading Salam?nb6.) And, moreover, it is 
from Flaubert that Conrad has gained his knowledge 
of managing a crowd. Indeed, considering how 
much sympathy there is between Conrad's mind and 
Flaubert's mind (both so romantic, pessimistic, and 
sardonic) and considering how truly Conrad admires 
Flaubert (see Some Reminiscences), and considering 
that almost the only obvious resemblance in Conrad's 
prose is to the prose of Flaubert, it is not very far 
fetched to say that the influence of Flaubert is the 
strongest in Conrad. Not that Conrad's prose, on 
the whole, is at all like Flaubert's, but that their aims 
are, I do think, very much alike in their general 
tendency. 

Conrad's early prose is, of course, easier to quote 
from and easier to fix in the memory than his later 
prose. And that is, partly because its romantic 
quality is always tending towards the purple patch, 
partly because it is full of striking mannerisms, partly 
because its rhythm is more transparently musical, and 
partly because its appeal is altogether more to the 



CONRAD'S PROSE 189 



emotions than is the close-knit fabric of his later style. 
I have no doubt that in the various chapters of this 
book the majority of the quotations are from the 
earlier works. I regret it, because it does form a 
wrong impression, but I cannot help it. If one is to 
give quotations from Conrad (and I am sure that one 
must give quotations if one writes on Conrad) , one has 
to choose the most suitable. And the whole method, 
the whole aim of the later style is against that tempta- 
tion to be outstanding in patches. The sentences in 
such books as Under Western Eyes or Chance are too 
much part of the whole body to bear removal from 
their context. When I do quote from these late 
books I nearly always choose paragraphs that show, 
at least, the influence of the early ones. But the 
student of Conrad will understand that that is a form 
of praise — that Conrad's later prose reveals itself, 
in all its subtle beauty, only to the careful and the 
imaginative and mainly in relation to the whole book. 
However, as I have given quotations here from his 
early and middle periods, I will give one quotation 
from his latest. I will not give a description, for his 
descriptions, even though they do differ very much, 
all tend to be romantic, but I will give a conversation 
— the beginning of the first conversation between the 
Captain and the impure Jacobus in "A Smile of 
Fortune " : — 

By half-past seven in the morning, the ship being then 
inside the harbour at last and moored within a long stone's- 
throw from the quay, my stock of philosophy was nearly 
exhausted. I was dressing hurriedly in my cabin when the 
steward came tripping in with a morning suit over his arm. 

Hungry, tired, and depressed, with my head engaged 
inside a white shirt irritatingly stuck together by too much 
starch, I desired him peevishly to " heave round with that 
breakfast." I wanted to get ashore as soon as possible. 



190 JOSEPH CONRAD 



" Yes, Sir. Ready at eight, Sir. There's a gentleman 
from the shore waiting to speak to you, Sir," 

This statement was curiously slurred over. I dragged 
the shirt violently over my head and emerged staring. 

" So early ! " I cried. " Who's he .? What does he 
want ? " 

On coming in from the sea one has to pick up the con- 
ditions of an utterly unrelated existence. Every little event 
at first has the peculiar emphasis of novelty. I was greatly 
surprised by that early caller ; but there was no reason for 
my steward to look so particularly foolish. 

" Didn't you ask for the name ? " I inquired in a stern 
tone. 

" His name's Jacobus, I believe," he mumbled shame- 
facedly. 

" Mr Jacobus ! " I exclaimed loudly, more surprised than 
ever, but with a total change of feeling. " Why couldn't 
you say so at once ? " 

But the fellow had scuttled out of my room. Through 
the momentarily opened door I had a glimpse of a tall, 
stout man standing in the cuddy by the table on which the 
cloth was already laid ; a " harbour " table-cloth, stainless 
and dazzling white. So far good. 

I shouted courteously through the closed door, that I 
was dressing and would be with him in a moment. In return 
the assurance that there was no hurry reached me in the 
visitor's deep, quiet undertone. His time was my own. He 
dared say I would give him a cup of coffee presently. 

" I am afraid you will have a poor breakfast," I cried 
apologetically. " We have been sixty-one days at sea, you 
know." 

A quiet little laugh, with a " That'll be all right Captain," 
was his answer. All this, words, intonation, the glimpsed 
attitude of the man in the cuddy, had an unexpected char- 
acter, a something friendly in it — propitiatory. Andjmy 
surprise was not diminished thereby. What did this call 
mean ? Was it the sign of some dark design against my 
commercial innocence ? 

While we were taking our seats round the table some 



CONRAD'S PROSE 191 



disconnected words of an altercation going on in the com- 
panionway reached my ear. A stranger apparently wanted 
to come down to interview me, and the steward was opposing 
him. 

" You can't see him." 

" Why can't I ? " 

" The Captain is at breakfast, I tell you. He'll be going 
on shore presently, and you can speak to him on deck." 

" That's not fair. You let " 

" I've had nothing to do with that." 

" Oh, yes, you have. Everybody ought to have the same 
chance. You let that fellow " 

The rest I lost. The person having been repulsed suc- 
cessfully, the steward came down. I can't say he looked 
flushed — he was a mulatto — but he looked flustered. After 
putting the dishes on the table he remained by the sideboard 
with that lackadaisical air of indifference he used to assume 
when he had done something too clever by half and was 
afraid of getting into a scrape over it. The contemptuous 
expression of Mr Burns's face as he looked from him to me 
was really extraordinary. I couldn't imagine what new bee 
had stung the mate now. 

The Captain being silent, nobody else cared to speak, 
as is the way in ships. And I was saying nothing simply 
because I had been made dumb by the splendour of the 
entertainment. I had expected the usual sea-breakfast, 
whereas I beheld spread before us a veritable feast of shore 
provisions : eggs, sausages, butter which plainly did not 
come from a Danish tin, cutlets, and even a dish of potatoes. 
It was three weeks since I had seen a real, live potato. I 
contemplated them with interest, and Mr Jacobus disclosed 
himself as a man of human, homely sympathies, and some- 
thing of a thought-reader. 

" Try them. Captain," he encouraged me in a friendly 
undertone. " They are excellent. " 

" They look that," I admitted. " Grown on the island, 
I suppose." 

" Oh, no, imported. Those grown here would be more 
expensive." 

I was grieved at the ineptitude of the conversation. Were 



192 JOSEPH CONRAD 

these the topics for a prominent and wealthy merchant to 
discuss ? I thought the simpUcity with which he made 
himself at home rather attractive ; but what is one to talk 
about to a man who comes on one suddenly, after sixty-one 
days at sea, out of a totally unknown little town in an island 
one has never seen before ? What were (besides sugar) 
the interests of that crumb of the earth, its gossip, its topics 
of conversation ? 

" Of course, I would have made a point of caUing on you 
in a day or two," I concluded. 

He raised his eyelids distinctly at me, and somehow 
managed to look rather more sleepy than before. 

" In accordance with my owners' instructions," I ex- 
plained. " You have had their letter, of course ? " 

By that time he had raised his eyebrows too but without 
any particular emotion. On the contrary he struck me 
then as absolutely imperturbable. 

" Oh ! You must be thinking of my brother." 

It was for me, then, to say " Oh ! " But I hope that no 
more than civil surprise appeared in my voice when I asked 
him to what, then, I owed the pleasure. ... He was 
reaching for an inside pocket leisurely. 

" My brother's a very different person. But I am well 
known in this part of the world. You've probably 
heard " 

I took a card he extended to me. A thick business card, 
as I lived ! Alfred Jacobus — the other was Ernest — dealer 
in every description of ship's stores ! Provisions salt and 
fresh, oils, paints, rope, canvas, etc., etc. Ships in harbour 
victualled by contract on moderate terms 

" I've never heard of you," I said brusquely. 

His low-pitched assurance did not abandon him. 

" You will be very well satisfied," he breathed out quietly. 
('Twixi Land and Sea, "A Smile of Fortune," pp. 5-13.) 

Of necessity this is a long quotation — one of the 
longest I have given — for it is difficult to suggest the 
special quality of Conrad's later style in a short 
specimen. It may seem odd to say that the most 



CONRAD'S PROSE 193 



finished of Conrad's prose is the hardest to quote in 
snatches, but of course, its very finish gives it an 
impervious and uniform coating, welds it, so to speak, 
into the very substance of the story. The Conrad of 
the latest phase is a writer in whom all the constituents 
of art have only one final aspect — the aspect of perfect 
balance in the complete representation of the desired 
effect. That is why the undue emphasis of an impres- 
sive and original personality has matured into the 
ironic perspective of an aloof but ever powerful 
artist. 

«-^It is a singular thing to consider the remarkable 
changes which Conrad's prose has undergone. It 
is like a snake sloughing its skin and appearing, at 
each metamorphosis, with a covering of rarer texture. 
I see no reason to suppose that Chance is any more 
final in its style than was Almayer's Folly or Nostromo. 
Conrad is constantly shifting his ground— he is not 
like Flaubert in that. His prose is the servant of a 
more lively and unbiased imagination than Flaubert's. 
It has passed with it through all the phases of romance 
and sardonic philosophy, and it accompanies it always 
on a level equal to its swift, incalculable strides. For 
no one's prose more adequately represents the changes 
of its author's mind. It possesses, indeed, something 
equivalent to the changeless qualities of Conrad's 
art — his way of approaching a subject, his view of the 
purposes of prose, his fundamental reticence concealed 
within the eloquence of his phrases. But in other 
respects it has altered as Conrad has altered. The 
musical rhythm of the first books has died away into 
the finished precision of the latest. Of course, there 
is always a rhythm in Conrad's prose — but it is no 
longer the obvious rhythm of melody so much as the 
delicate rhythm of harmony. It is the same pen that 



194 JOSEPH CONRAD 

is writing, but it is a pen checked and schooled in 
mid-career. 

On thinking of the later Conrad I am filled with a 
certain regret — and yet I do see that a change was, 
perhaps, inevitable and has decidedly given us a more 
brilliant writer. For the early Conrad has more 
command over the cadence of language than over the 
subtleties of style. His vocabulary tends towards 
the repetition of such words as " immense," " mys- 
terious," " impenetrable," and the sombre music of 
the wilderness is echoed almost too frequently in the 
three rolls of sound in which he envisages the splendour 
and darkness of tropical lands. It is the later Conrad 
whose individuality, less apparent at first sight, is 
really more in harmony with a great tradition. For 
the later Conrad is a stylist in the very way in which 
Flaubert is a stylist — a man to whom every word has 
its value, to whom every sentence has its significance. 
Why people do not realise that more fully is simply 
because his prose is neither eccentric nor mannered. 
The crudity, which certainly lurks in his earlier prose, 
has entirely gone — there is no touch of the florid here. 
It is absolutely compressed and finished. And when, 
as in the three stories of 'Twixt Land and Sea, this is 
joined to the romantic spirit of his earlier work, the 
result is a prose of most delicious buoyancy and ease. 
It has the resiHency of the finest steel spring — the 
resiliency and the responsiveness. 

I think there can be no doubt that Conrad's early 
style has created a theory about his style in general 
that prevents people realising the extent to which his 
prose has altered. It is a pity, for it must keep a 
certain class of reader away. Those who take the 
prose of Swift or Thackeray as their model are not 
likely to admire the earUer Conrad but they might 



CONRAD'S PROSE 195 

very well admire the later. So it seems to me. For 
the later Conrad, though he is actually a harder 
writer to appreciate than the earlier Conrad, is 
apparently nearer to the classical ideal. A certain 
foreign, exotic element has disappeared, and, though 
it has been replaced by a precision which is not 
English at all, still there is no longer anything 
" outlandish " about it. What mysteries cannot 
be concealed by a sardonic simplicity ! 

But even in Conrad's latest work, in Chance itself, 
there are the slight traces of an alien nationality. 
For instance — it is quite unimportant — I have counted 
several split infinitives in Chance. Nevertheless, 
as far as English is concerned, Chance is Conrad's 
most perfect production. I do not assert that the 
language has the fire of The Nigger of the " Narcissus " 
or the serene beauty of Nostromo, but it has a surface 
of glistening and even polish. It presents to the 
critic an almost impregnable armour — though, of 
course, I am not saying that to be impregnable is to 
be everything. If perfection were to be synonymous 
with imagination, etching would probably be a greater 
art than painting. Chance is a very remarkable book 
but I do not think it is so remarkable as Nostromo, 
and I doubt whether it is so remarkable as 2 he Nigger 
of the " Narcissus " — but it is certainly more perfect 
than either. It is perfect in the sense of its complete 
unity and of the conscious mastery in every phrase. 
Less a work of imagination than, say. Lord Jim, it is 
more a work of art. You would not find a sentence 
like this in Chance — a sentence which occurs in Lord 
Jim : — 

The lumps of white coral shone round the dark mound 
like a chaplet of bleached skulls, and everything around was 
^0 quiet that when I stood still all sound and all inovement 



196 JOSEPH CONRAD 



in the world seemed to come to an end. {Lord Jim, p. 346 — 
the italics are mine.) 

but equally you would not find any passages like those 
describing the voyage of the pilgrim ship across the 
Indian Ocean. 

In the opening chapter of this book I had to 
speak shortly of Conrad's theory of style in relation 
to that of some of his contemporaries and recent pre- 
decessors, and I made a remark there which is really so 
applicable to his whole prose that I will repeat it here 
— " his work ... is essentially dignified and quite 
untinged by the pettiness of conscious self-approval." 
How absolutely true that is of his prose ! It is that, 
combined with his vast creative force, that puts him 
at one step in the front rank. This is not said with the 
vague optimism of a reviewer but with due responsi- 
bility. For I know that a distinguished sense of 
form is the rarest thing in current literature. In 
England, for instance, we have many living writers 
of high and excellent talent, but we have very few 
stylists — and such as we have are very little known. 
Some of them write only in obscure papers, others, like 
the Doughty of Arabia Dcse?ta, the Hudson of Green 
Mansions, the Douglas of Syren Land, are enthusi- 
astically admired by a few and ignored by every one 
else. No doubt Conrad, James, and Hardy are known 
(though Hardy, apart from his introductory chapters 
and his peasant conversations, is often a very bad 
stylist), but in so far as they are stylists and do under- 
stand the art of prose they are probably distrusted. 
To be a distinguished writer, as apart from being a 
fanciful or precious writer, is to be, in England, almost 
entirely unappreciated. That is really the tiuth of 
the matter. 

Though Conrad's individuality lies transparently 



CONRAD'S PROSE 197 

in every line of his prose yet it is (as his characters 
are) subordinate to the whole unity of the story. This 
is nearly always the case — for even in his earlier books 
he seldom obscures the picture, though the picture, 
itself, may be a heightened one. The ulterior motive, 
either of smartness or eccentricity, is lacking in 
Conrad's prose. It has the single-mindedness of the 
great artist — not the artist who looks upon style 
as an end in itself but of that rarer and truer artist 
who regards it as one step in the race. There is 
not a trace of preciosity in Conrad's prose. Its 
mannerisms are of a quite different order. For 
preciosity in the prose of fiction is generally mere 
prostitution, whereas mannerism may be a quite pure 
form of artistic egoism. Conrad's prose, and particu- 
larly his later prose, may not attract so much present 
attention for this very reason, but of course it will be 
appreciated at its extraordinary value later on, just 
as Flauhert's prose is now appreciated. 



CHAPTER X 

CONRAD AS ARTIST 

In the past chapters of this book I have had to discuss, 
now and then, the subject of Conrad as artist. It 
was inevitable. In this chapter I will gather up some 
of the threads. For instance, in regard both to his 
characters and his atmosphere I have had to impress 
on the reader the sense of artistic unity that underlies 
all Conrad's work — that sense which subordinates to 
the whole effect every individual part of the scheme. 
To understand properly any novel or story by Conrad 
we must see it in a perspective that encloses the entire 
thing. For it is the proportions of the completed 
structure that gives the final appeal to any work 
of art. There is neither a chapter nor a character in 
Conrad's books which does not have its proper value 
and which is not of less importance in itself than in its 
influence upon the total result. 

The question of what makes a writer an artist is 
too often obscured by an over-emphasis of individual 
points. It is, for instance, a good thing not to repeat 
words, but it is better to repeat words than to strain 
synonyms. Again, a writer may be perfect in the 
rhythm and balance of his prose but he may be in- 
artistic through his very redundancy. Moreover, art 
requires in a novelist a certain attitude towards his 
work. The artist must be distinguished not merely 
in his technique but in his vision. That is why, in 
my opinion, Conrad is a greater artist than, say, Henry 

198 



CONRAD AS ARTIST 199 

James. For Conrad is concerned with a more actual 
world than Henry James, and consequently his art 
falls into more natural channels. However skilful 
and artistic a novel by Henry James may be, it 
oppresses one through its air of boundless triviality. 
These eternal, subtle conversations, these storms in 
tea-cups, cannot be the end-all of art. And I think 
one does feel that it arises from an over-emphasis in 
Henry James' mind of the importance of shades of a 
peculiarly inexpressible and spiritual kind — well, not 
so much of their individual importance as of their 
importance in comparison to that of other emotions. 
It is as easy to miss the realistic effect through over- 
detail as through want of perception. If you look too 
closely at a picture it is as meaningless as if you look 
at it from too far away. Broadly speaking Conrad is 
an artist because he sees his work in focus and in rela- 
tion not alone to art but to life. Flaubert is, no doubt, 
more careful in his detail, but Conrad creates reality 
more effectively. For it is as a realist that Conrad 
is most impressive. All his artistic impersonality, all 
the co-ordination of his powers, has this in view. 

It is a point I have had to lay stress on more than 
once. For that is one of his fundamental, one of his 
invincible beliefs. The spirit of his work is realistic 
in a rare and curious manner. For it is a realism which 
includes romance as one of its chief assets but which 
has a positive horror of falsehood. This realism 
encloses all his writing with an air of sincerity and 
distinction which gives it a " tone " no other modern 
work seems quite to possess. Let me quote two short 
paragraphs from Some Reminiscences to show, in 
Conrad's own words, his idea of the true novelist : — 

. . . whose first virtue is the exact understanding of the 
limits traced by the reality of his time to the play of 



200 JOSEPH CONRAD 



his invention. Inspiration comes from the earth, which 
has a past, a history, a future, not from the cold and immut- 
able heaven. {Some Reminiscences, p. i68.) 

Even before the most seductive reveries I have remained 
mindful of that sobriety of interior life, that asceticism of 
sentiment, in which alone the naked form of truth, such 
as one conceives it, such as one feels it, can be rendered 
without shame. {Some Reminiscences, p. 194.) 

And leading out of this realism we notice a signifi- 
cant thing about his short stories. It is this, that 
they always are stories and never mere sketches. 
Even in so slight a tale as "II Conde " there is a 
realism at work to create convincingly the illusion of 
veracity. It works through imagination, upwards 
into an atmosphere, downwards into grasp of detail. 
For the realism of Conrad's art gives it that touch 
of life-like actuality without which art is so apt to 
degenerate into artifice. 

And arising, also, from Conrad's realism (a realism 
tinged by romance, as I have said) is his dramatic 
intensity — which, I most certainly think, is one of 
the secrets of his genius. By his dramatic intensity 
I mean his marvellous power of throwing his 
own vitality over his work, of making his descrip- 
tions, his crises, his whole picture, thrilling. This 
dramatic intensity is more the servant of tragedy 
than of irony. Conrad, indeed, must be placed 
amongst the great tragic writers. And in saying 
this, I am referring equally to his power of tragic 
climax and his grasp of tragic fate in relation to 
character. But it is his power of climax that I have 
here in my mind. Think, for an instant, of the murder 
of Willems in An Outcast of the Islands (pp. 383-4), 
of the murder of Verloc in The Secret Agent (pp. 372-3), 
of the deafening of Razumov in Under Western Eyes 



CONRAD AS ARTIST 201 



(pp. 359-65), of the torturing of Hirsch in Nosfromo 

(pp. 379-82), of the suicide of Decoud in Nostromo 

(pp. 423-5), and of those stupendous passages which 

close this latter book. I will quote the description 

of Hirsch and this last description from Nostromo in 

full though the}/' are not short. This is the first : — 

He was working himself up to the right pitch of ferocity. 

His fine eyes squinted slightly ; he clapped his hands ; a 

bare-footed orderly appeared noiselessly : a corporal, with 

his bayonet hanging on his thigh and a stick in his hand. 

The colonel gave his orders, and presently the miserable 
Hirsch, pushed in by several soldiers, found him frowning 
awfully in a broad armchair, hat on head, knees wide apart, 
arms akimbo, masterful, imposing, irresistible, haughty, 
subHme, terrible. 

Hirsch, with his arms tied behind his back, had been 
bundled violently into one of the smaller rooms. For many 
hours he remained apparently forgotten, stretched lifelessly 
on the floor. From that solitude, full of despair and terror, 
he was torn out brutally, with kicks and blows, passive, sunk 
in hebetude. He listened to threats and admonitions, and 
afterwards made his usual answers to questions, with his 
chin sunk on his breast, his hands tied behind his back, 
swaying a little in front of Sotillo, and never looking up. 
When he was forced to hold up his head, by means of a 
bayonet-point proddmg him under the chin, his eyes had a 
vacant, trance-like stare, and drops of perspiration as big 
as peas were seen hailing down the dirt, bruises, and scratches 
of his white face. Then they stopped suddenly. 

Sotillo looked at him in silence. " Will you depart from 
your obstinacy, you rogue ? " he asked. Already, a rope 
whose one end was fastened to Senor Hirsch's wrists, had 
been thrown over a beam, and three soldiers held the other 
end, waiting. He made no answer. His heavy lower lip 
hung stupidly. Sotillo made a sign. He was jerked up 
off his feet, and a yell of despair and agony burst out into 
the room, filled the passage of the great buildings, rent the 
air outside, caused every soldier of the camp along the shore 
to look up at the windows, started some of the officers in 



202 JOSEPH CONRAD 

the hall babbling excitedly, with shining eyes ; others, 
setting their lips, looked gloomily at the floor. 

Sotillo, followed by the soldiers, had left the room. The 
sentry on the landing presented arms. Hirsch went on 
screaming all alone behind the half -closed jalousies, while 
the sunshine, reflected from the water of the harbour, made 
an ever-running ripple of light high up on the wall. He 
screamed with uplifted eyebrows and a wide open mouth — 
incredibly wide, black, enormous, full of teeth — comical. 

In the still burning air of the windless afternoon he made 
the waves of his agony travel as far as the O.S.N. Company's 
offices. Captain Mitchell on the balcony, trying to make 
out what went on generally, had heard him faintly but 
distmctly, and the feeble and appalling sound lingered in his 
ears after he had retreated indoors with blanched cheeks. 
He had been driven off the balcony several times during 
that afternoon. 

Sotillo, irritable, moody, walked restlessly about, held 
consultations with his officers, gave contradictory orders in 
this shrill clamour pervading the whole empty edifice. Some- 
times there would be long and awful silences. Several times 
he had entered the torture-chamber, where his sword, horse- 
whip, revolver, and field-glass were lying on the table, to ask 
with forced calmness, " Will you speak the truth now ? 
No ? I can wait." But he could not afford to wait much 
longer. That was just it. Every time he went in and came 
out with a slam of the door, the sentry on the landing pre- 
sented arms, and got in return, a black, venomous, unsteady 
glance, which, in reality, saw nothing at all, being merely 
the reflection of the soul within — a soul of gloomy hatred, 
irresolution, avarice, and fury. 

The sun had set when he went in once more. A soldier 
carried in two lighted candles and slunk out, shutting the 
door without noise. 

" Speak, thou Jewish child of the devil ! The silver ! 
The silver, I say ! Where is it ? Where have you foreign 
rogues hidden it ? Confess or " 

A slight quiver passed up the taut rope from the racked 
limbs, but the body of Serior Hirsch, enterprising business 
man from Esmeralda, hung under the heavy beam per- 



CONRAD AS ARTIST 208 



pendicular and silent, facing the colonel awfully. The 
inflow of the night air, cooled by the snows of the Sierra, 
spread gradually a delicious freshness through the close 
heat of the room. 

" Speak — thief — scoundrel — picaro — or " 

Sotillo had seized the horsewhip, and stood with his arm 
lifted up. For a word, for one little word, he felt he would 
have knelt, cringed, grovelled on the floor before the drowsy, 
conscious stare of those fixed eyeballs starting out of the 
grimy, dishevelled head that drooped very still with its 
mouth closed askew. The colonel ground his teeth and 
struck. The rope vibrated leisurely to the blow, like the 
long string of a pendulum starting from a rest. But no 
swinging motion was imparted to the body of Sefior Hirsch, 
the well-known hide merchant on the coast. With a con- 
vulsive effort of the twisted arms it leaped up a few inches, 
curling upon itself like a fish on the end of a line. Senor 
Hirsch's head was flung back on his straining throat ; his 
chin trembled. For a moment the rattle of his chattering 
teeth pervaded the vast, shadowy room, where the candles 
made a patch of light round the two flames burning side by 
side. And as Sotillo, staying his raised hand, waited for 
him to speak, with a sudden flash of a grin and a straining 
forward of the wrenched shoulders, he spat violently into 
his face. 

The uplifted whip fell, and the colonel sprang back with 
a low cry of dismay, as if aspersed by a jet of deadly venom. 
Quick as thought he snatched up his revolver, and fired twice. 
The report and concusoion of the shots seemed to throw 
him at once from ungovernable rage into idiotic stupor. He 
stood with drooping jaw and stony eyes. What had he done, 
Sangre de Dios ! What had he done ? He was basely 
appalled at his impulsive act, sealing for ever these lips 
from which so much was to be extorted. What could he 
say ? How could he explain ? Ideas of headlong flight 
somewhere, anywhere, passed through his mind ; even the 
craven and absurd notion of hiding under the table occurred 
to his cowardice. It was too late ; his officers had rushed 
in tumultuously, in a great clatter of scabbards, clamouring 
with astonishment and wonder. But since they did not 



204 JOSEPH CONRAD 



immediately proceed to plunge their swords into his breast, 
the brazen side of his character asserted itself. Passing the 
sleeve of his uniform over his face he pulled himself together. 
His truculent glance turned slowly here and there, checked 
the noise where it fell ; and the stiff body of the late Sefior 
Hirsch, merchant, after swaying imperceptibly, made a 
half turn, and came tc a rest in the midst of awed murmurs 
and uneasy shuffling. (Nostromo, pp. 379-82.) 

And this is the second — the final paragraphs in 
Nostromo, perhaps the most thrilling paragraphs in 
the whole of Conrad : — 

From the moment he fired at the thief of his honour, 
Giorgio Viola had not stirred from the spot. He stood, his 
old gun grounded, his hand grasping the barrel near the 
muzzle. After the lancha carrying off Nostromo for ever 
from her had left the shore, Linda, coming up, stopped 
before him. He did not seem to be aware of her presence, 
but when, losing her forced calmness, she cried out 

" Do you know whom you have killed ? " he answered 

" Ramirez the vagabond." 

White, and staring insanely at her father, Linda laughed 
in his face. After a time he joined her faintly in a deep- 
toned and distant echo of her peals. Then she stopped, and 
the old man spoke as if startled 

" He cried out in son Gian' Battista's voice." 

The gun fell from his opened hand, but the arm remained 
extended for a moment as if still supported. Linda seized 
it roughly. 

" You are too old to understand. Come into the house." 

He let her lead him. On the threshold he stumbled heavily, 
nearly coming to the ground together with his daughter. His 
excitement, his activity of the last few days, had been like the 
flare of a dying lamp. He caught at the back of his chair. 

" In son Gian' Battista's voice," he repeated in a severe 
tone. " I heard him — Ramirez— the miserable " 

Linda helped him into the chair, and, bending low, cried 
into his ear 



CONRAD AS ARTIST 205 



" You have killed Gian' Battista." 

The old man smiled under hi thick moustache. Women 
had strange fancies. 

" Where is the child ? " he asked, surprised at the pene- 
trating chilliness of the air and the unwonted dimness of the 
lamp by which he used to sit up half the night with the open 
Bible before him. 

Linda hesitated a moment, then averted her e3''es. 

" She is asleep," she said. " We shall talk of her to- 
morrow." 

She could not bear to look at him. He filled her with 
terror and with an almost unbearable feeling of pity. She 
had observed the change that came over him. He would 
never understand what he had done ; and even to her the 
whole thing remained incomprehensible. He said with 
difficulty 

" Give me the book." 

Linda laid on the table the closed volume in its worn 
leather cover, the Bible given him ages ago by an Englishman 
in Palermo. 

" The child had to be protected," he said, in a strange, 
mournful voice. 

Behmd his chair Linda wrung her hands, crying without 
noise. Suddenly she started for the door. He heard her 
move. 

" Where are you going ? " he asked. 

" To the Hght," she answered, turning round to look at 
him balefuUy. 

" The light ! Si— duty." 

Very upright, white-haired, leonine, heroic in his absorbed 
quietness, he felt in the pocket of his red shirt for the spectacles 
given him by Doria Emilia. He put them on. After a long 
period of immobility he opened the book, and from on high 
looked through the glasses at the small print in double 
columns. A rigid, stern expression settled upcn his features 
with a slight frown, as if in response to some gloomy thought 
or unpleasant sensation. But he never detached his eyes 
from the book while he swayed forward, gently, gradually, 
till his snow-white head rested upon the open pages. A 
wooden clock ticked methodically on the white-washed wall, 



206 JOSEPH CONRAD 

and growing slowly cold, the Garibaldino lay alone, rugged, 
undecayed, like an old oak uprooted by a treacherous gust 
of wind. 

The light of the Great Isabel burned peacefully above 
the lost treasure of the San Tome mine. Into the bluish 
sheen of a night without stars, the lantern sent out a beam 
of yellow light towards the far horizon. Like a black speck 
upon the shining panes, Linda, crouching in the outer gallery, 
rested her head on the rail. The moon, drooping in the 
western board, looked at her radiantly. 

Below, at the foot of the cliff, the regular splash of oars 
from a passing boat ceased, and Dr Monygham stood up in 
the stern sheets. 

" Linda ! " he shouted, throwing back his head. " Linda ! " 
Linda stood up. She had recognised the voice. 
" Is he dead ? " she cried, bending over. 
" Yes, my poor girl. I am coming round," the doctor 
answered from below. " Pull to the beach," he said to the 
rowers. 

Linda's black figure detached itself upright on the light 
of the lantern with her arms raised above her head as though 
she were going to throw herself over. 

" It is I who loved you," she whispered, with a face as set 
and white as marble in the moonlight. " I ! Only I ! 
She will forget thee, killed miserably for her pretty face. 
I cannot understand. I cannot understand. But I shall 
never forget thee. Never ! " 

She stood silent and still, as if collecting her strength to 
throw all her fidelity, her pain, bewilderment and despair 
into one great cry. 

" Never ! Gian' Battista ! " 

Dr Monygham, pulling round in the police-galley, heard 
the name pass over his head. It was another of Nostromo's 
successes, the greatest, the most enviable, the most sinister 
of all. In that true cry of love and grief that seemed to 
ring aloud from Punta Mala to Azuera and away to the 
bright line of the horizon, overhung by a big white cloud 
shining like a mass of solid silver, the genius of the magnificent 
Capataz de Cargadores dominated the dark Gulf containing 
his conquests of treasure and love. (Nosiromo, pp. 477-80 . 



CONRAD AS ARTIST 207 

I would like to point out one thing that these two 
strange and moving descriptions have in common, 
and that is the effect produced on us in each instance 
by the contrast of the utter serenity of nature to the 
disastrous turmoil of human passions. When, upon 
the agony of Hirsch's torture darkness begins to fall, 
and " the inflow of the night air, cooled by the snows 
of the Sierra, spread gradually a delicious freshness 
through the close heat of the room " ; when, above 
the dead body of the old Garibaldino, above the despair 
of Linda, and the wreck of lives, we feel around us 
only the great peacefulness of the night, and " the 
moon, drooping in the western board, looked at her 
[Linda] radiantly," we experience an intense, dramatic 
emotion. These contrasts heighten for us the whole 
effect — make the night appear still calmer, softer, 
more immense, make the dramas more terrible, more 
vivid, and more absorbing. 

These last paragraphs of Nostromo do seem to me 
extraordinarily beautiful. Never throughout the 
whole book does the smooth and gloomy vastness of 
the Placid Gulf weigh heavier upon our senses, never 
does the " lost treasure of the San Tom6 mine " appear 
more enticing, more secret, more unobtainable. A 
wonderful and sombre eloquence vibrates through 
these sentences, an eloquence touched with mystery 
and with despair. The whole scene is muffled in the 
velvety darkness of a starless night. And the great 
cry that closes the book can almost be heard ringing 
out over the silence of the soundless gulf. 

Indeed, the details of Conrad's art can seldom be 
studied more satisfactorily than in his terminations. 
He has the capacity of ending up on a note of splendid 
contrast or in a final burst of eloquence or memory. 
The close of Almayer's Folly, of an Outcast of the 



208 JOSEPH CONRAD 



Islands, of The Nigger of the " Narcissus," of Lord Jim, 
of Nostromo, of The Secret Agent, amongst his novels, 
and of " An Outpost of Progress," of " The Return," 
of " Youth," of " Heart of Darkness," amongst his 
short stories are truly impressive. Throughout this 
book I have quoted a number of these passages, but 
I will give here two that I have not yet made use of — 
one from a novel, and one from a story. The first 
is from Lord Jim : — 

Stein has aged greatly of late. He feels it himself, and 
says often that he is " preparing to leave all this ; pre- 
paring to leave, ..." while he waves his hand sadly at 
his butterflies. {Lord Jim, p. 451.) 

And the second is from " Heart of Darkness ": — 

Marlow ceased, and sat apart, indistinct and silent, in the 
pose of a meditating Buddha. Nobody moved for a time. 
" We have lost the first of the ebb," said the Director, sud- 
denly. I raised my head. The offing was barred by a black 
bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the 
uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast 
sky — seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness. 
{Youth, " Heart of Darkness," p. 182.) 

The first of these quotations has the restful sadness 
that is typical of the Shakespearean ending of 
tragedy — a calm has settled upon the stormy sea, 
but such peace as it brings can never be what it was 
before. The second is the more modern form of a 
dramatic ending outside the drama of the story. 
Both alike are moving, more especially when we 
have the context clearly in mind. It is, indeed, 
very curious to study Conrad's art in regard to 
his manipulation of mood in a story. From the 
opening to the close, the march of events presses 
upon the emotion in exact ratio to the desired 



CONRAD AS ARTIST 209 



effect. It is like the rise and faU of a Beethoven 
symphony. 

And another form in which Conrad reveals his 
dramatic sense is in his short, swift pictures of 
states of feeling or of events. In such things he 
shows the eloquence of high prose-poetry. They are 
dramatic in the concentration of their imaginative 
appeal, and artistic in the choice splendour of their 
language. Let me give a few examples of what I 
mean : — 

The clock began to strike, and the deep-toned vibration 
filled the room as though with the sound of an enormous 
bell tolling far away. He counted the strokes. Twelve. 
Another day had begun. To-morrow had come ; the 
mysterious and lying to-morrow that lures men, disdainful 
of love and faith, on and on through the poignant futilities 
of life to the fitting reward of a grave. (Tales of Unrest, 
" The Return," p. 262.) 

. . . and she had about her the worn, weary air of ships 
coming from the far ends of the world — and indeed with 
truth, for in her short passage she had been very far ; sight- 
ing, verily, even the coast of the Great Beyond, whence no 
ship ever returns to give up her crew to the dust of the 
earth. (Typhoon, " Typhoon," p. 100.) 

He had not regained his freedom. The spectre of the 
unlawful treasure arose, standing by her side like a figure 
of silver, pitiless and secret with a finger upon its pale lips. 
(Nostronio, p. 460.) 

He was a little sleepy too, and felt a pleasurable lan- 
guor running through every limb as though all the blood 
in his body had turned to warm milk. (Lord Jim, p. 20.) 

The white Higuerota soared out of the shadows of rock and 
earth like a frozen bubble under the moon. (Nostromo, p. ^^.) 

Razumov stamped his foot — and under the soft carpet 
of snow felt the hard ground of Russia, inanimate, cold, 
inert, like a sullen and tragic mother hiding her face under a 



210 JOSEPH CONRAD 

winding-sheet. {Under Western Eyes, p. 30. I have already 
quoted this as part of a longer passage in a previous 
, chapter.) 

[And then, of course, Conrad can be extraordinarily 
thrilling in the kind of eloquent silences that precede 
a storm. He knows how to create the uneasy ex- 
citement of suspense. Just before the typhoon in 
" Typhoon," just before the climax in " Heart of Dark- 
ness," just before the debacle in " The Return " just 
before the confession in Under Western Eyes, there 
are pauses which remind one of the calm treachery of 
a whirlpool. These passages of Conrad's are amongst 
his most cunningly dramatic effects — the effects of a 
very great and daring artist. (In this view of Conrad's 
dramatic intensity I am, to some extent, putting my 
foot on ground already covered in my chapter on 
Conrad's atmosphere. But when I said there that 
his atmosphere was thrilling I had in mind his whole 
idea of atmosphere. Here I am thinking of the indi- 
vidual application of the dramatic instinct.) 

And let me point out that Conrad possesses a 
power which probably no other novelist possesses to 
the same degree — the capacity for marking a sharply- 
defined edge in a few words. We may call this his 
own particular " stroke," and it does separate him 
very effectively from other men. Indeed, it is an 
artist's " stroke " which moulds his ideals. For 
instance, you can see it, as a friend of mine observes, 
in the different ones held by metal-workers, wood- 
carvers, and stone-cutters who have gained their 
ideals, which are all quite distinct, from having to 
work with different strokes (you can use the word 
here in its actijal sense) in materials of varying pos- 
sibilities. But, with it all, Conrad retains his full 
measure of romantic sensibility, and therefore there 



CONRAD AS ARTIST 211 

is nothing harsh in his clear, precise imagination. I 
Perhaps no other man of facts and exactness ever 
had such a poetic vision, and perhaps no other poet 
ever had the concrete so constantly before his eyes. 

Complaint is often made of the long narrative 
conversations Conrad puts into the mouths of such 
people as Marlow in Lord Jim or Captain Mitchell 
in Nostromo, it being argued that the artistic reality 
of the work is injured by the impossibility of any one 
man being able to remember so much or to recount 
it with such finished and exact detail. But in regard 
to that I think we should bear three things in mind. 
The first is that Conrad, as I said before when dis- 
cussing Marlow, gains by this third person form of 
narrative a definite perspective which is valuable to 
him. 

And the second is that the introduction of a man 
like Marlow gives Conrad the opportunity of talking 
colloquially, which is more suitable for the purpose 
of a story like that of Lord Jim than the glowing 
prose of his own manner would be. Marlow is 
primarily there in virtue of Conrad's pursuit of 
reality. Though, even so, Marlow talks almost too 
well. His presence allows Conrad, himself, to take 
up a back seat and to write more closely to the 
actual matter in hand — the elucidation of a problem 
of character and environment. 

And the third is, that realism in art is not a 
substitute for photography. Within realism itself 
the artist has a licence of which he has full liberty to 
make use provided the effects he achieves are not in 
themselves unreal. Surely that is the very foundation 
of art. For instance, however true a realist a writer 
may be he must pick and choose, he must avoid point- 
less banality, he must be careful to make his scheme 



212 JOSEPH CONRAD 

coherent. (The only person I ever heard of who 
construed reahsm in a stricter sense was the author 
of Mr Bailey, Grocer, in Gissing's New Grub Street — 
and I have grave doubts as to whether he Uved up 
to his opinions.) But that careful selection is not like 
actual life, not at all like it. The truth is that a 
chronicle of life as it really is would be incomprehen- 
sible — it would be the production either of a God or 
of a lunatic. 

And it is from such a standpoint that I defend 
Conrad. When he chooses a narrative form to tell 
his story he does it because it suggests the reality he 
wishes to picture just as all art must suggest rather 
than assert. His effects are real and therefore his 
means are legitimate. Personally I do not like the 
means and I think that he does carry them too far, 
but it is only proper to explain his position. I daresay 
it is true that no one could recollect events so elo- 
quently or minutely as Marlow, but the result is not 
strained and so the method can be accepted. Conrad 
is no less a realist on account of this than, say, 
Maupassant is a realist on account of his marvellous 
judgment in knowing what to take and what to leave. 
No, in the result it is even proof of his great realistic 
power. For no one but a great realist could conjure 
reality from so obvious an exaggeration. 

Again, we know that Conrad (as in Chance) will 
sometimes narrate a story through the nwuth not 
only of one but of several people. This is a cuiious 
point in his technique, because it shows his close 
comprehension of actual life. Apparently misleading, 
this is, in reality, the very epitome of everyday 
experience. Any affair of complexity that comes 
under one's own notice generally impresses itself on 
one under a variety of shifting lights — affected, as' 



CONRAD AS ARTIST S13 



it must be, by the particular media of transmission. 
Just as in life, the sum total impression of an event 
is ordered and logical and yet may be derived in an 
inverted, piecemeal, and scrappy form, so is it in 
Conrad's books. This method of Conrad's is actually 
a cunning touch of vivid realism. 

Indeed, we have to admit, I think, that it is this 
overflowing vitality, dramatic force, and unexpected- 
ness that make Conrad so obviously remarkable, at 
the expense, perhaps, of real appreciation of his other 
qualities — the qualities of subtlety, balance, and 
perspective. For, after all, it is the creative which 
is really vital. That is why it is impossible to be a 
great artist without being a great imaginative creator. 
Otherwise art is a mere simulacrum. But though a 
great artist must be a great creator, a great creator 
need not be a great artist. For instance, Meredith is 
not a great artist (though he " could do the best 
things best "), whereas Conrad is. Meredith's self- 
consciousness often drove him towards a form of 
robust preciosity, while Conrad's self-consciousness is 
centred first of all upon artistic achievement. Of 
course, the question of personality does make com- 
parisons of this sort almost hopeless, but the general 
law holds good. And the general law is simply this, 
that there is no such thing as great art without great 
imagination, though the converse may not be true to 
the same degree. Indeed, I am tempted to say that 
it is very seldom true in England. Amongst well- 
known contemporary novelists, Henry James and 
George Moore are certainly artists, but, suffering, as 
they do, from a sort of anaemia of their imagination, 
their art is too transparently artistic — a thing still 
more obvious in their followers. 

In the previous chapter I pointed out that it was 



214 JOSEPH CONRAD 



from Flaubert Conrad learnt the art of handling a 
crowd. This is the stage-craft of novel-writing in 
which the amateur never succeeds. But Conrad's 
touch is the firm and suave one of a master. His 
grouping of people conceals the machinery behind. 
His pictures are never angular or gauche. That is 
the sort of gift whose whole merit lies in invisibility, 
and consequently it is apt to be overlooked. But 
the amateur in fiction reveals himself as surely as 
the amateur in play writing. The crudities of entrance 
and exit on the stage have their analogies in the novel 
as certainly as the more obvious crudities of falsity 
and bad taste. It is the fine handling of a crowd 
or of a group of people which gives a novelist that 
grasp of a situation which is always so telling. It is 
one of the chief glories of men like Scott, Balzac, 
Flaubert, Tolstoy, Meredith, and Conrad. 

Another point which I have made before is that, 
though Conrad's artistic methods are always changing 
and developing, his artistic aims are constant. Alike 
in his earliest as in his latest books, he has the same 
end in view — to create in the mind of his reader the 
sense of a definite situation and of a definite mood. 
Therefore it is very important to realise the artistic 
building and moulding process which takes place 
before our eyes, so to speak, in Conrad's work. Many 
people have complained of the structure of such novels 
as Lord Jim and Nostromo as being too roundabout, 
but they do not see that this arises partly from 
Conrad's intense desire to create a convincing atmos- 
phere and partly from his own graphic and enquiring 
imagination — that imagination which causes his 
powerfully subtle brain to follow up the winding 
clues of an idea into all sorts of bypaths and involved 
hypotheses, forgetting, as it were, the presence of the 



CONRAD AS ARTIST 215 



reader while he tries to discover the hint that will 
unbare " the secret baseness of motives." Perhaps, 
after all, none of his books exemplifies this better than 
Some Reminiscences — (though, in this direction, it is 
child's play compared to Henry James' A Small 
Boy and Others). There you have the ordinary facts 
of an adventurous life treated in such a curious and 
reflective manner that really one hardly ever knows 
tvhere one is. And so with some of his novels. They 
may be further advanced on page eight than on page 
eighty. 

[Conrad again shows his artistic realism in the fact 
that his works are not overweighted with mechanical 
plots or improbable coincidences. No character can 
appear actual, when it is obvious from the first that 
its life has to fit into a preconceived dovetailing. 
Look at the denouement of a book like Hardy's The 
Mayor of Casterhridge — it is too absurdly obvious 
that the author himself is pulling the strings of fate. 
Conrad can write a novel called Chance, he could never 
write one called Coincidence. There is all the difference 
in the world. 

Of course, this artistic realism, this dramatic in- 
tensity underlying all Conrad's work is largely due, 
no doubt, to the fact that much of his material is 
founded upon his own experiences. (This is a point I 
made previously in regard to his characters and his 
stories.) To recreate the scenes of yesterday re- 
quires an absolutely sure grip on the essentials of 
romantic verity. Why Conrad triumphs is that he 
never loses sight of his main effect. Other men can 
picture past events but it needs a true artist to 
thread his way through a maze of detail without 
losing his sense of proportion. 

But I want to express here my chief ground for 



216 JOSEPH CONRAD 



believing in Conrad's genius. And it is this. He 
has that power, very astonishing and very rare, of 
extracting from a thing already intensely dramatic a 
further and unimagined eloquence. In an existing 
scene, just as in a piece of music, one can nearly 
always foretell the next step. And that is why so 
much drama exhausts one's emotions — its pitch is too 
uniform and, as it were, too ordered. But at the very 
moment of crisis Conrad can extract just that some- 
thing more from the material which, in a flash, 
seems to create a new world at our feet. You see 
that in his passages of description, of tragedy, and 
of romance. It is the power of surprising out of 
itself the cynical and hlase imagination of the sophis- 
ticated reader. 

The originality of Conrad's art nowhere reveals 
itself more clearly than in his treatment of inanimate 
objects. They live for us in the emotion of the story 
with a kind of crooked vitality of their own. I will 
only instance the marble woman in " The Return," 
and the piano in The Secret Agent. They are not often 
mentioned, but by some means or other Conrad makes 
us feel their presence as though they had an almost 
formidable influence on the course of events. The 
aristocratic touch in Conrad's art (for in its fastidious- 
ness and mastery it is very aristocratic) is apparent 
in his treatment of all such things. And, of course, 
it is apt to be misunderstood. Look at the Fynes' 
dog in Chance if you would see Conrad's real per- 
spective. That excellent animal is presented with the 
greatest kindliness but without any of the anthropo- 
morphic sentiment with which Galsworthy would 
have pictured him. For the purposes of Conrad's 
art, a dog, however charming, is still a dog. It may 
play a significant part (in a sense a dog incident is 



CONRAD AS ARTIST 217 



the pivot of both Lord Jim and Chance) , as the piano 
in The Secret Agent does, but that is owing to its effect 
on the characters, not to any inherent capacity in 
itself. 

In his choice of titles Conrad has been, at times, 
singularly happy and at times singularly unfortunate. 
What could be better than Chance, Youth, " To- 
morrow." What could be worse than Lord Jim or 
Nostromo ! Nostromo is particularly bad. That this 
most unattractive title should cover this most extra- 
ordinary book is a real subject for ironical laughter. 
Nostromo — why, it conveys less than nothing ! A 
thrilling title should have been devised for this 
thrilling and beautiful romance. 

For, indeed, the more I study Conrad the more 
convinced am I that Nostromo is by far his greatest 
achievement. To read this book with understanding 
is to reach the highest pinnacle of Conrad's art — not 
perhaps the most perfect, but the highest, the most 
dazzling. Here aie the birth-throes of a vast creative 
energy, the flight of romance, and the inward vision 
of psychology. But, apart from Nostromo we can 
study the art of Conrad most suggestively in such 
novels as The Nigger of the " Narcissus," The Secret 
Agent, and Chance, and in such short stories as " The 
Return," " Youth," " Heart of Darkness," " The End 
of the Tether," " Typhoon," " Falk," " To-morrow," 
" The Duel," " A Smile of Fortune," and " The Secret 
Sharer." Roughly speaking, these are his most 
typical and most original achievements. 

Though the names of some of Conrad's books are 
unsuccessful, the names of his characters and of his 
imaginary places are astonishingly good. They carry 
that sort of conviction which is immediate and final. 
Think of such surnames as MacWhirr, Hagberd 



218 JOSEPH CONRAD 



Jacobus, Podmore, Singleton, Guzman Bento, 
Monygham, Verloc, de Barral, Roderick Anthony, 
such names of places as Costaguana, Sulaco, Higuerota, 
Azuera, Punta Mala, Pantai, Batu Beru. 

Indeed, it is the details of Conrad's art that show, 
as much as anything else does, his artistic rectitude. 
In the first chapter of this book I said a few words 
about Conrad's sense of duty and I would like to 
supplement them here in relation to his art. No one 
who studies Conrad's art can fail to see that behind 
it all there lies an austere and pitiless conscience. 
An agony of creation has gone to every line. In 
a work like Nostromo one is even aware of a huge 
unwritten volume — a volume enclosing the whole 
history of Costaguana. For books such as Nostromo 
are, merely the essence of a titanic imaginative effort. 
It is said that Turgenev wrote his novels at length 
and then cut them down to their present modest 
proportions, and, in a similar sense, we feel that 
Conrad's published works are but the gist of his 
profound conceptions. It is this tireless and earnest 
preoccupation, this ascetic faithfulness to an ideal, 
which is the root of artistic morality. We know 
from Some Reminiscences what Conrad underwent 
when, during the blind horror of creating Nostromo, 
a lady observed to him that " it must be perfectly 
delightful " to sit all day writing novels. It was as 
though the end of the world had come. And we 
can enter into his emotions if we have read his 
books. For, as Flaubert's books do, they give 
signs of a conflict as devastating and terrible as 
any conflict could be — not obviously, you understand, 
but beneath the surface of their romantic and ironical 
exterior. 

In his earlier books Conrad's imagination sometimes 



CONRAD AS ARTIST 219 



soars out of his grasp though it is for ever being brought 
back to earth by the magnetism of his art, but in his 
later books it is always under control. But all through 
Ms works he gives numerous hints of an exquisite 
nicety of artistic perception. That is why his few 
false steps do jar upon us so persistently. When, in 
" Heart of Darkness " the doctor requests Marlow 
to allow him to take the dimensions of his head because 
" he always asks leave, in the interests of science, 
to measure the crania of those going out there," we 
feel, at once, that it is too far-fetched, just as we feel 
that some of the dithyrambic passages in a story like 
" The Return " are too far-fetched. These are just 
instances, but, at any rate, they are instances neces- 
sarily drawn from his earlier work. 

As an artist, Conrad assumes a definite position^ 
between his characters and his readers, a position 
which, as I said before, puts all three parties on an 
equality. Though this position does, I think, vary 
in his different books (it is now more aloof than it 
was), still it never varies during a book. He does 
not bewilder us by a change of front. (The nearest 
approach to an exception is " Freya of the Seven 
Islands.") Nor does he bewilder us by revealing to 
us his style as a self-conscious mastery of technique. 
He never thrusts himself (this I have also said before) 
between the reader and the story. Unfortunately 
that is quite sufficient to prevent some from admitting 
that he is a styHst at all. And yet I own that most 
people who consider Stevenson a great stylist (who are 
the kind of persons to deny style to Conrad) acknow- 
ledge that, say, Turgenev was a great artist, but then 
they think, probably, that to be a stylist is the same 
thing as to be an artist (which it may or may not be), 
but to be an artist is, primarily, to be a writer of 



220 JOSEPH CONRAD 

beautiful simplicity (which is one kind of artist, 
certainly, but only one). You can always refute or 
substantiate such arguments by concrete examples. 
For instance, Ruskin is a stylist but no artist, Flaubert 
is a stylist and an artist, Hawthorne is an artist but 
not much of a stylist, Turgenev is an artist and a 
stylist. And my contention is, that Conrad is both 
stylist and artist — but more equally both in his later 
than in his earlier work. 

James Huneker says somewhere : — 

"Conrad takes an interest in everything except bad art." 

(And, of course, when one is speaking of Conrad's 
art one has to remember that, in its genuine meaning, 
it includes his whole work. I use it here largely in the 
narrower sense for the obvious reason that through all 
my book I have been discussing it in the broader sense.) 
That remark of Huneker's shows how vital is his craft 
to a man like Conrad. Bad art is the one thing which 
his sympathy cannot embrace. There is nothing com- 
placent about Conrad's attitude towards literature — 
whether his own or anyone else's. His aim is fixed 
upon the highest. However vexed may be the 
question of his achievement, there is no question at 
all as to his intention. That nemesis which awaits the 
satisfied can never overtake Conrad. The chief danger 
I can forsee will arise from his conscientiousness. In 
his desire to prepare the way, to create a con- 
vincing atmosphere, he tends to an over-elaboration 
of the foreground. But he has far too secure a hold 
on reality ever to become the victim of his own person- 
ality, as Henry James has become. Which is only to 
repeat once again that the true artist must be a true 
realist. 

It is necessary to have clearly in mind this broader 



CONRAD AS ARTIST m 

view of art in regard to any writer's work, or other- 
\vise we are only too likely to underestimate great 
writers who are not great artists in the narrower sense. 
For that is just as bad as the other popular extreme, 
which is to treat every writer as though he were a 
moral problem. It does seem to me that to worry 
over the incongruities of Shakespeare, the repetitions 
of Shelley, the longueurs of Dostoievsky, or the bad 
grammar of Whitman, is to miss the whole point. 
For in the bigger sense such men of genius are artists 
through the mighty power of their whole personality. 
And in that sense, too, as well as in the other sense, 
Conrad also is an artist. His ultimate appeal rests 
upon the unique force and subtlety of his imagination. 



CHAPTER XI 

Conrad's position in literature 

I WILL say a few final words about Conrad's place in 
literature. I have no wish to dogmatise — these 
estimates of living writers are, in their very essence, 
highly ]jtentative — nor is it my intention to try and 
" place " Conrad, thus undoing what I said in my 
opening chapter, but without going into prophetic 
extremes I can state a reasonable opinion. (There is 
all the difference in the world between a definite label 
and a comparative judgment.) I do not think I am 
exaggerating when I say that Conrad ranks with 
the great romantic realists of modern times. In 
a sense he is far easier to estimate justly than other 
English writers of his calibre because he does belong 
to a tradition, whereas most of the big English novelists 
start, so to speak, from the chaotic background of a 
hundred experiments. But, I repeat, only in a sense. 
For it depends to some extent on an appreciation of 
Continental literature. To anyone steeped entirely 
in English literature Conrad must be almost as obscure 
as Meredith would be to a Japanese — not transparently 
obscure like Meredith, but subtly obscure. For the 
difficulty in Conrad is not a verbal difficulty. It is 
quite possible to understand every word in Conrad 
and to miss the whole point. He puts up no danger 
signals, as it were. Meredith constantly wraps up 
a simple idea in complicated language, whereas Conrad 
develops his most delicate and profound psychology 

222 



CONRAD'S POSITION IN LITERATURE 



in sentences that no one could misunderstand. In 
other words, the difference between them is not just 
that which there must naturally be between two men 
of outstanding power, it is also a fundamental and 
racial difference in point of view. 

Meredith had the typical English qualities in so 
brilliant and excessive a form that one might almost 
believe he is not English at all instead of realising that 
he is, in truth, the most representative Englishman 
of his generation. On the other hand the very fact 
of Conrad's writing in English is obviously misleading. 
For he is no more completely English in his art than 
he is in his nationality. His tradition is largely the 
Franco-Slav tradition — and that is quite outside the 
venue of the English genius. The extraordinary 
versatility of the English mind has, in fiction, dissipated 
itself in innumerable eccentricities and originalities 
of the surface. There is no school in England which 
has general acceptance from the mature insight of 
the whole nation just because there is no school which 
is founded upon a national view of character. When 
Flaubert wrote Madame Bovary or when Tolstoy wrote 
Anna Karenina, France and Russia realised at once 
that here, without exaggeration, the typical life of 
their countries lay before them. But in England 
there is no such thing as high and serious realism. 
Our immense creative ability is rich in ideas, in 
lyricism, and in humour, but it lacks psychological 
intensity. And, in my opinion, that is the one abso- 
lutely needful thing to the making of a great novel. 
If one looks closely into it one sees, I think, that the 
Continental tradition (I mean the tradition started 
by Stendhal, continued by Balzac, and developed by 
Flaubert and the Russians) is not really a way of 
approacliing the novelist's art so much as the way. 



224 JOSEPH CONRAD 

It is getting down to the bedrock of imaginative life 
— and surely there is nothing beyond that. 

To the extent, then, that we admit this and have 
studied the forerunners we will find Conrad easy to 
understand — easy, that is to say, to get en rapport 
with. (The complete understanding of his characters 
is, of course, a matter of close individual sympathy — 
but, after all, that can only arise from close understand- 
ing of the point of view.) The more congenial Conrad 
is to one the more strangely familiar will his creations 
seem. For, as with all the artists of his class, the 
invincible reality of his figures is only enhanced by 
the innumerable subtle touches in which they are 
painted. We grasp them through their complexities, 
though the total result is simple and inevitable. 

On the other hand, if we are steeped in the English 
method, Conrad may appear either fruitlessly obvious 
or as one floundering in a morass of his own making. 
It is quite true that he is famous in England as a 
psychologist, but it is in the same way as such a writer 
as Meredith is famous — as a man who understands 
the principles of action rather than as a man who 
understands the principles of creation. Meredith 
could tell you exactly how a certain type of woman 
in a certain class of society in a certain era of the 
nineteenth century would be likely to act in certain 
circumstances, but his woman would not be a real 
woman (or rather, her reality would be faltering and 
uncertain), she would be a typical woman. But 
Conrad would create the woman herself. In his 
sparkling gallery of feminine portraits Meredith never 
came near achieving a Winnie Verloc. And in saying 
this I am not wishing to decry Meredith. Few would 
deny that he was one of the most gifted men of his 
century. But the fact is, he was simply too clever. 



CONRAD'S POSITION IN LITERATURE 225 

Jane Austen, who had no philosophy, will long outlast 
the creator of The Egoist, and Conrad, who has the 
artist's aloofness from problems, has imagined a few 
figures which will, I believe, be known when nearly 
all the novels of Meredith are mouldering on forgotten 
shelves. One could write a tragic essay on the 
futility of cleverness in art. It is the whisper of 
the devil in its most insidious form. And it is this 
scintillating obtrusion of personality that is the canker 
of modern English literature. I do not say that it 
cannot be defended from one point of view, but I do 
say that it cannot be defended from the point of view 
of realism in fiction. 

Moreover, Conrad seldom annoys us by expressing 
his own opinions, whether it be in the childish manner 
of Thackeray, the conceited manner of Shaw, or the 
irritable manner of Strindberg. When he does reveal 
himself he does it as Turgenev, himself, did it occasion- 
ally, with dignified and quick reserve. Of course, 
as all writers do, he shows likes and dislikes — 
but that is a different thing altogether. No one 
was less personal than Flaubert, no one was more 
biased. 

And thus it is I consider that Conrad's fame in 
England, really considerable as it is, is nothing to 
what it will be. It is astonishing to hear his name 
mentioned in the same breath as that of a dozen 
living English writers. Indeed, it is not only astonish- 
ing but it is so incongruous that it is laughable. For 
it is not so much that he is abler than his contem- 
poraries (I doubt whether he is so obviously clever 
as several of them) as that he is so immeasurably 
greater. And greatness in literature, as in any other 
art, is something beyond conscious ability. Who 
can summarise it ? It is, at the same time, ap- 
p 



JOSEPH CONRAD 



parent and elusive, and though its quaHties can be 
analysed, its vitalising force is as intangible as a 
perfume. 

But when we come to ask ourselves what Conrad's 
position in English literature, as apart from his position 
amongst his English contemporaries, really is, then 
we are face to face with a very difficult question. 
For instance, Meredith's name has cropped up in 
this chapter, and some minor comparisons between 
him and Conrad have been made, but how can one 
really compare two men whose aims are so divergent ? 
It seems to me that there is no common basis and that 
almost the only way to do it at all justly would be by 
a broad generalisation. And one could only estimate 
Conrad's position in English literature as a whole on 
such a system of generalising. We have no Sainte- 
Beuve in England not only because there is little 
scientific spirit in our criticism but also because there 
is little of the ordered spirit in our creative art. And 
this spirit of order, this " tradition," gains in depth of 
originality from what it loses in variety of treatment. 
It concentrates upon one end instead of spreading 
itself in a score of directions. It would be easier for 
a Frenchman to understand Conrad than it would be 
for an Englishman. For the Frenchman's intelligence, 
keen and subtle as it is, is fixed upon actuality in a 
way that would appear almost wooden to an English- 
man — the French have their " tradition " in their blood. 
I doubt whether in England Conrad will ever rank 
with the great masters. There is none of that queer 
national affinity between him and other English 
writers of his time that we see, let us say, between 
the great Victorians or, indeed, between almost all 
English writers. He is unique in an alien sense. 
That he will be appreciated more and more I am sure 



CONRAD'S POSITION IN LITERATURE m 



is the case, I only doubt whether he will ever take 
his place among the generally accepted masters. 

It is singular to reflect that Conrad, born a Slav, 
and knowing French perfectly, should finish by writing 
in English. For the Slavs, the English, and the French 
are the three races that have made modern fiction. 
Yes, the English as well as the French and the Slav, 
For, even though one believes that the English prodi- 
gality has resulted in mistaken ideals, one must not 
underestimate the richness of the vein. Insularity 
is not only a term of reproach, it is also a geographical 
expression. If we lose in one way, which is the best 
way, still we gain in many another. There is even a 
certain merit in our lack of perfection. For in the 
perfect there is a touch of weariness which is like the 
first breath of decay. One could discuss such a point 
back and forwards for ever, so I will not follow it up by 
bringing the names of Fielding, Scott, and Dickens 
into juxtaposition with those of the great European 
realists, but will leave the argument to the imagination. 
But to return — whatever one may mean by insular, 
one cannot get away from the fact that that is what 
the English are ; in other words they are a people 
apart. 

And yet I want to say something here which, though 
it may seem to contradict much that I have said before, 
is, nevertheless, perfectly true. And it is this, that 
although Conrad's " tradition " is more Franco-Slavish 
than English, yet he could never have written in 
any other language save the English language — could 
not have done it, in fact, any more than he could 
have been a sailor in any other service save the English 
service. To realise this clearly is essential and it is 
rather bewildering. It knocks a good many theories 
on the head. Conrad has long been a great student 



nS JOSEPH CONRAD 



and lover of the English novelists and though his 
novels are, essentially, not the English novel of 
character (which generally implies exaggeration) still 
they are quickened by a love of English life. And 
remember that Conrad's ideas and mind developed 
late and almost entirely under the influence of English 
seamen and English literature. He is imbued with 
the English atmosphere in a genuine sense. No, 
though Conrad is not English in his art he does belong 
definitely to English literature, for he would have been 
dumb in any other language but the English. This 
is not merely an argument to fit the facts, it is an 
absolute and incontrovertible truth. 

However, when we say that Conrad belongs to a 
Franco-Slav tradition we have not said sufficient. 
As a matter of truth there is a deal of misapprehension 
as to the Slavonic influence in Conrad's work — and 
the French influence, too, is not to be traced properly 
without care. Because Conrad is a Pole people 
immediately liken him to the Russians. But Poles 
are not Russians any more than Englishmen are 
Americans. There is a common bond but there is 
also a common antipathy. Conrad has the Slavonic 
realism but he has not the Russian mysticism. The 
one is as natural to him as the other is foreign. 
Observe, that the Russian he is nearest to in spirit, 
Turgenev, is, himself, the most French of the Russians. 
As to Gogol, Lermontov, Tolstoy, Dostoievsky, 
Tchekov, Gorky, etc., a great deal of their work would 
decidedly lie quite outside his sympathy. For, 
indeed, there is not only a natural antipathy between 
Poles and Russians but there is also a political anti- 
pathy, which tends, very naturally, to make every- 
thing Russian offensive to a Pole. An imaginative 
Englishman would be more likely to appreciate the 



CONRAD'S POSITION IN LITERATURE 229 



mysticism of a Dostoievsky on the one hand or of a 
Whitman on the other than would a Pole — who would 
look at such things more in the manner of a French- 
man. And yet Conrad is no more entirely French 
than is Turgenev. His romantic spirit has a passionate 
basis which is as far from the frothy lyricism of a 
Victor Hugo as it is from the sombre pessimism of a 
Gustave Flaubert. Hugo and Flaubert were both 
romantics but neither of them had that quality of 
Slavonic melancholy which is, at once, full of belief 
in goodness and full of despair at life. Hugo believed 
in goodness, Flaubert believed in despair, but neither 
of them believed in both. For that double belief, 
held without any of the fundamental mockery with 
which such a man as Anatole France might be said 
to hold it, is one of the secrets of the Slav mind. 
The dual personality is the heritage of the North. 

All the same, if one had to decide the question, I 
should be inclined to say that Conrad owes more to 
the French than he does to the Russians, and prob- 
ably more to one Frenchman, Flaubert, than to anyone 
else. Conrad's attitude to life resembles in several 
ways that of Flaubert and his attitude to art is almost 
identical. I have said in a former chapter that the 
most conscious influence in Conrad is the influence of 
Flaubert and I repeat it here. In both there is a 
tireless preoccupation with their subject and their 
style — a completeness which is, at once, fervid and rare. 
(I need hardly state again that this does not imply 
that they are alike — all it implies is a similarity of 
aim.) The difference is that Flaubert appears always 
to have been mature, whereas the phases of Conrad's 
progression are visible. Moreover, Conrad has a sense 
of humour and sympathy which would for ever keep 
him from Flaubert's hatred of a class qua class. In 



230 JOSEPH CONRAD 



Flaubert's first novel, Madame Bovary, dislike of the 
bourgeoisie is strongly marked, but in his last, Bouvard 
et Pecuchei, it has become a painful obsession. The 
futility of the world is an ever-present theme in both 
writers, but that men are universally stupid or vile 
might be accepted by Flaubert, the Frenchman, but 
could never be accepted by Conrad, the Slav. 

But, indeed, the Russian novelists had obsessions 
of their own, although they were obsessions of a 
different class. The use of the word obsession in 
regard to them has a wider meaning than it has in 
Flaubert's case. One feels a narrow blindness in 
Flaubert on the subject of the bourgeoisie, whereas 
the Russians were always supported by their philo- 
sophy. Still it often amounts to much the same. 
The omniscience and sadness of love obsessed 
Turgenev, the doctrine of forgiveness through suffer- 
ing obsessed Dostoievsky, the horrors of culture 
obsessed Tolstoy. But as to Conrad, he, essentially, 
is not a mystical Russian, but a man of the world 
untouched by fanaticism of any sort. That is one of 
the causes, probably, why he is not already more 
famous. The reason is easy to follow and even to 
sympathise with. Impartiality has the appearance 
of a negative asset and artistic perfection lacks the 
inspired glow of faith. In his own way Henry James 
is as great an artist as Turgenev, but his works will 
never live like Turgenev' s because he is too restrained 
and logical to be dominated by anything as Turgenev 
was dominated by the thought of love. In the long 
run it is Conrad's force rather than his sanity that 
will give him his final position. 

But to talk once more of Flaubert and Conrad. 
There is something national as well as personal in the 
Frenchman's influence, for, quite apart from Flaubert, 



CONRAD'S POSITION IN LITERATURE 231 

Conrad's work shows an inherent sympathy with 
the French position. In certain phases his sentences 
reveal a thoroughly Gallic impatience of the super- 
fluous word — it is much more often true of his later 
than of his earlier writings. Just as in the tiniest 
sketch by Maupassant there is an air of distinction 
which comes from a choice of words and an economy 
of language under exquisite control so is it with 
Conrad's most finished work. He has, in fact, the 
French lucidity of vision though, in expression, it is 
often clouded by the vehemence of his language or 
imagination. But, as I said before, Conrad has 
nothing of the Slavonic mysticism. In such a thing 
he is French to his finger tips. But though he is no 
mystic he has the French love and power over the 
mysterious. Who is more popular in France, the 
mystical Walt Whitman or the mysterious Edgar 
Poe ? (The answer is obvious. Bazalgette does not 
weigh in the balance beside Baudelaire and Mal- 
larme.) This fascination of the mysterious is pro- 
nounced in nearly all the French writers of the last 
hundred years, in Balzac, in Hugo, in Flaubert, in 
Maupassant, in Anatole France. And in the same 
way, curiously enough, we find it in the most 
cosmopolitan of English speaking writers — Henry 
James and Joseph Conrad. " The Turn of the Screw," 
and " Heart of Darkness," have that touch of the 
macabre dear to the Latin heart. 

And Conrad's work shows, too, the French pre- 
judices and the French sympathies — swift dislike, 
generous enthusiasm, hatred of cant or fanaticism, 
an intense regard for the nuances of honour. If 
Flaubert has actually affected Conrad more than 
any other French writer one must still allow for the 
influence of Maupassant (" The Idiots " shows that 



SB2 JOSEPH CONRAD 

demonstrably), whose unrivalled powers of observation 
are one of the artistic wonders of the world, and of 
Anatole France, (are not he and Conrad alike ex- 
quisitely ironical ?) whose consummate ease of expres- 
sion hides a real intellectual profundity. 

These three French writers, with the Russian 
Turgenev, and the American Henry James, have, I 
think, been of more immediate importance to Conrad 
than any other of the moderns. (The influence of 
the older writers is a question beyond my scope, but 
one can argue with some degree of certainty that any 
work belonging to a great tradition has its obvious 
roots in antiquity. There is nothing consciously 
archaic about Conrad, whose writings are as free from 
the literary affectations of another age as they are 
from its spirit, but they evince, nevertheless, the germ 
of continuity. It would probably be easier, for 
instance, to trace Conrad's indebtedness to the past 
than George Borrow's.) But, of course, the im- 
portance of these five people I have mentioned is not 
to be exaggerated. Originality such as Conrad's has 
an incalculable element in it that asks nothing of 
any outside influence. As Ford Hueffer observes in 
his recent study of Henry James : — 

Mr Henry James has, of course, his share of the talent 
which can't be defined. He has, that is to say, plenty of 
personality {Henry James, p. 14) — 

a remark which might equally be applied to Conrad. 
Genius may be direct 2d but it is primarily an ele- 
mental force. Conrad, it is true, owes much to 
Flaubert, but if Flaubert had been alive he might 
well have owed much to Conrad. The debt of genius 
is often immense but it is never basic. For the 
capacity of genius is the capacity of originality. 



CONRAD'S POSITION IN LITERATURE 23S 



With Conrad, strictly speaking, England first enters 
the " tradition " of Continental literature, although 
Henry James had prepared her for the change. But 
there is just that indefinable want of substance about 
the creations of Henry James which precludes him from 
ranking with the great French and Russian realists. 
But Conrad's finest creations have the inevitability 
of Tolstoy's figures. However, if Conrad is the first 
he will perhaps, also, be the last English realist of the 
Continental type. For it is doubtful whether he will 
found any school in England. You cannot go against 
the spirit of a country. The Continent will no more 
become English than England will become Continental. 
Daudet is supposed to be rather English, and Meredith 
is supposed to be rather French, but as they each retain 
about 99 per cent of their own nationality the idea 
of a literary'" revolution need not alarm us. If Conrad 
is really Continental it is because he actually is a 
Pole and not an Englishman. His English sympathies 
are personal and have only touched his art apparently 
in a superficial manner, though one must always 
remember that without England there would have 
been no Conrad. It is true that if he had written 
in French he would never have written so exuber- 
antly, but then the French language is a precise 
language whilst the English is a poetical lan- 
guage. And furthermore, this exuberance is to a 
large extent a personal idiosyncrasy, partly due 
to his life and mainly unaccountable, as are all 
idiosyncrasies. 

It is certainly the case that Conrad has many 
English sympathies (his love of the sea is, in its pas- 
sionate form, almost an exclusively English trait, 
and the very fact that he chose England as his home 
and English as his language are silently eloquent), 



^34 JOSEPH CONRAD 

but in deep conceptions one cannot change one's 
nationality. In artistic ideals the Slav is infinitely 
nearer the French point of view than the English. 
And so Conrad's French sympathies are not so much 
an appreciation as are his English sympathies, they 
are an instinctive reflection of himself. In such sharp 
division there is no doubt some exaggeration (for 
instance, a fierce love of the sea might, presumably, 
be inherent in anyone quite apart from an English 
inspiration), but in making divisions there must always 
be this danger. I am coining, merely, a sufficiently 
accurate generalisation. 

But, to sum up, it does seem to me, as I said at 
first, that Conrad must in future rank high amongst 
the creators of the modern fiction of romantic realism. 
There is no universal agreement as to the order of 
great men (artistic differences make as much bad 
blood as a war in the Balkans) and to discuss whether 
Conrad bulks more or less than others of his class 
would be fruitless. For, sooner or later, all such 
discussions leave the critical rails and merge into 
obscure personal opinions which are apt to be as 
assertive as a religious belief and are often quite as 
illogical. But that the author of Youth, of Nostromo, 
of Chance is securely with the really great artists, 
leaves, in my opinion, no matter for doubt. And 
yet this romantic and most thrilling writer will always 
be partially withheld from us because, beneath all the 
more obvious faults and qualities of his work, there 
is an unappeasable melancholy. His faith is too 
elusive for him ever to be popular. In such a thing 
he is nearer to Flaubert than to the Russians. And 
yet the subtlest creations of Conrad have a breath 
of life in them that is hardly to be found outside of 
Tolstoy or Dostoievsky. In that consideration he 



CONRAD'S POSITION IN LITERATURE 235 

comes closer to the Russians than to the French. 
So the ball is tossed from side to side. 

But all such comparisons are vain in the end if 
they lead us to minimise the creative genius of the 
writer himself. What do categories amount to after 
all ? They are only the dust of criticism. Greatness 
is something infinitely more precious and unanalysable 
than the qualities by which it is expressed. There 
are writers such as Meredith — to mention him once 
more — who lay themselves open to almost every 
critical objection and who are yet transparently great. 
(For no one who had such a power of grasping a situa- 
tion could be called anything else.) And, in whatso- 
ever guise it appears, genius is its own recommendation. 
Time alone can settle ultimate values, but extra- 
ordinary merit is discernible at once. To read Conrad 
and deny him that would seem to me like a con- 
tradiction in terms. For, in Conrad, it is easy, even 
for those who find most blemishes, to realise the 
unmistakable signs of distinction. In him England 
has helped to produce one of these unaccountable 
literary forces whose influence it is impossible to 
foresee. That is all that need concern us at the 
moment. 



LIST OF 
CONRAD'S PUBLISHED BOOKS 

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL 

The Mirror of the Sea : Memories and Impressions. (Methuen. 

1906. 
Some Reminiscences. (Nash.) 1912. 

NOVELS 

Almayer's Folly : A Story of an Eastern River. (Unwin.) 

1895. 
An Outcast of the Islands. (Unwin.) 1896. 
The Nigger of the " Narcissus " : a Tale of the Sea. (Heine- 

mann.) 1898. 
Lord Jim : a Tale. (Blackwood.) 1900. 
Nostromo : a Tale of the Seaboard. (Harper.) 1903. 
The Secret Agent : a Simple Tale. (Methuen.) 1907. 
Under Western Eyas. (Methuen.) 191 1. 
Chance : a Tale in Two Parts. (Methuen.) I9I4' 

SHORT STORIES 

Tales of Unrest. (Unwin.) i8g8. 

(" Karain : a Memory," " The Idiots," " An Outpost 
of Progress," " The Return," " The Lagoon.") 

237 



^58 JOSEPH CONRAD 

Youth : a Narrative : and two other Stories. (Blackwood.) 
1902. 

(" Youth : a Narrative," " Heart of Darkness," " The 

End of the Tether.") 
Typhoon : and other Stories. (Heinemann.) 1903. 

(" Typhoon," " Amy Foster," " Falk : a Reminiscence," 

" To-morrow.") 

A Set of Six. (Methuen.) 1908. 

(" Caspar Ruiz," " The Informer," " The Brute," " An 
Anarchist," " The Duel," " II Conde.") 

'Twixt Land and Sea : Tales. (Dent.) 191 2. 

(" A Smile of Fortune," " The Secret Sharer," " Freya 
of the Seven Islands.") 

NOVELS IN COLLABORATION WITH FORD 
MADOX HUEFFER 

The Inheritors : an Extravagant Story. (Heinemann.) 1901. 
Romance : a Novel. (Smith, Elder.) 1903. 



INDEX 



Almayer's Folly, 5, 18, 28-30, 32, 

86, 94, no, 121, 122, 127, 156, 

157. 193. 207 ; quoted, 86-7 

' Amy Foster," 53, 54, 56-7, 

152, 165, 181 ; quoted, 8~, 

Anarchist," " An, 57, 58-9, 61, 
164 

Anna Karenina, 223 

Arabia Desert a, 196 

Art, Conrad's, unity of, 75, 96, 
143, 197, 198 ; concerned 
with an actual world, 199, 
215 ; very realistic, 199-200 ; 
dramatic intensity of, 200-7 > 
can be studied in his ter- 
minations, 207-8 ; thrilling, 
210 ; its sharply-defined edges, 
210-11; reasons for long narra- 
tive conversations in, 210-13 ; 
its vitality and unexpected- 
ness, 213 ; finished, 214 ; its 
aims constant, 214 ; very 
eloquent, 216 ; treatment of 
inanimate objects and ani- 
mals, 216-7 ; good and bad 
in titles, 217 ; good in names, 
217-8 ; brilliant in details, 
218 ; balanced, 219 ; high 
ideal of, 220 

Atmosphere, Conrad's, masterly, 
66 ; romantic, 66-7, 8S-9 ; 
thrilling, 69-70 ; creative, 71 ; 
melancholy, 73 ; intensely 
imagined, 74-7 ; sometimes 
ironic, 77 ; symbolic, 77-8 ; 
magical in relation to the 
sea, 78-82 ; noticeable in his 
figures, 74, 82-3, loi ; opu- 
lent, 84-5 ; pervasive, 86 ; 
desire to create convincingly 
makes his novels roundabout, 

214-5 
Austen, Jane, 144, 161, 225 



Autobiographical basis in Con- 
rad's fiction, 25, 103, 215 

Balzac, 141, 147, 214, 223, 231 
Barclay, Florence, 7 
Baudelaire, 231 
Bazalgette, Leon, 231 
Beckford, William, 161 
Belloc, Hilaire, 170 
Bennett, Arnold, 9, 13 
Benson, E. F., 7 
Bergeret Series, The, 86 
Blake, William, 99 
Borrow, George, 232 
Boiivard et Piciichet, 230 
Bradley, A. C, 98 (quoted) 
Brute," " The, 57, 58, 61, 169 
Butler, Samuel, 170 

Caine, Hall, 7 

Carroll, Lewis, 21 

Chance, 17, 18, 45-7, 87, 88, 94, 
97, no, 113-4, 120, 124, 125, 
154-5. 158, 162, 173, 189, 193, 
195, 212, 215, 216, 217, 234 ; 
quoted, 87, 158, 174 

Characters in Conrad's books 
(apart generally from re- 
ferences in quotations) : 
Abdulla, 29, 30, 31, 122 ; 
Aissa, 31, 156-7; Allen, 
Captain Jasper, 62, 63, 128-9, 
153. 169 ; Almayer, 23, 28-9, 

30, 31, 127 ; Almayer, Mrs, 
30 ; Almayer, Nina, 29, 30, 
156 ; Anarchist," " An, 58-9 ; 
Anthony, Captain Roderick, 
45. 46. 113-4. 140. 154. 218 ; 
Arsat, 49-50, 121 ; Avel- 
lanos, Antonia, 151 ; Avel- 
lanos, Don Jose, 133; B., Mr 
Nicholas, 22 ; Babalatchi, 30, 

31, 121 ; Bacadou, Jean 
Pierre, 48 ; Bacadou, Susan, 



240 



JOSEPH CONRAD 



48, 157-8 ; Barral, De, 45, 
94, 218 ; Barral, Flora de, 
45. 46, 154. 155. 157 ; Bar- 
rios, General, 38, 134 ; Beard, 
Captain, 116; "Belfast," see 
Craig; Bento, Guzman, 134, 
218 ; Brierly, Captain, 102, 
167 ; Brown, 143 ; Brussels 
Girl in " Heart of Darkness," 
97 ; Cabman in The Secret 
Agent, 142 ; Captain of the 
Patna, 143 ; Carlier, 48-9, 
125, 169 ; Carvil, Bessie, 56, 
69, 152-3 ; Castro, Tomas, 
140, 142 ; Cesar, 140, 141 ; 
Charley, 58, 169 ; Colchester, 
Maggie, 58 ; Conde, II, 60, 
140 ; Conrad's Tutor, 16 ; 
Conrad's Uncle, 15, 22, 140, 
141 ; Corb^lan, Father, 95 ; 
Cornelius' Daughter, 153-4 •' 
Cousin in Chance, 1 74 ; Craig, 
33, 120; Decoud, 38, 39, 132, 
166, 2oi;LieutenantD'Hubert, 
59-60, 61, 140 ; Dominic, 
140, 141 ; Donkin, 32, 33, 
117, 118, 120 ; Doramin, 35, 
121,122; Etchingham Granger, 
Miss, 156, 157 ; Falk, 55, 
109, 126, 165; Lieutenant 
Feraud, 59, 60, 61, 94, 140, 
173 ; Fidanza, Captain, see 
Nostromo ; Foster, Amy, 54, 
152, 165 ; Franklin, 46 ; 
French Naval Lieutenant in 
Lord Jim, 97, 102, 142 ; ] 
Fyne, 45, 46 ; Fyne, Mrs, 45, 
46, 154-5 ; Gian' Battista, 
see Nostromo ; Goorall, 
Yanko, 54, 165 ; Gould, 
Charles, 37, 38, 94, 129, 131, 
166 ; Gould, Mrs, 37, 89, 
104, 106, 132, 145-9, 150. 
151, 158 ; Governess in 
Chance, 158 ; Hagberd, Cap- 
tain, 55-6, 99, 140, 141, 152, 
165, 217 ; Hagberd, Harry, 
56, 69, 77, 109 ; Haldin, 
43, 139 ; Haldin, Mrs, 152 ; 
Haldin, Nathalie, 44, 152 ; 
Heat, Inspector, 137 ; Heems- 
ku-k. Lieutenant, 62, 128, 
129 ; Hermann, Captain, 55 ; 



Hermann's Niece, 55, no, 
155-6 ; Hervey, Alvan, 49, 
67, 164, 168 ; Hervey, Mrs, 
49, 158 ; Hirsch, 166-7, 201, 
207 ; Hudig, 30 ; Jacobus, 
61, 62, 128, 136, 165, 218 ; 
Jacobus, Alice, 61, 62, 156, 
157. 165 ; Jim, Lord, 33-5, 
94. 95. 96, 102, 107, 123-4, 
125, 153; Jukes, 54; Kar- 
ain, 47-8 ; Kayerts, 48-9, 
125, 169 ; Kemp, John, 64 ; 
Kurtz, 51, 76, 109, 126, 178 ; 
Lakamba, 29, 31 ; Laspara, 
Julius, 143 ; Leonard, 170 ; 
Levaille, Madame, 158 ; Lin- 
gard. Captain, 30, 31, 126 ; 
MacWhirr, Captain, 53-4, 67, 
77, 93, 128, 165, 166, 217 ; 
Makola, 143, 177-8; Manager 
in " Heart of Darkness," 
125 ; Manuel del Popolo, 
140, 142 ; -Mario w, 34, 36, 
46, 51, 68, 71, 77, 84, 95, 
102, 124-5, 158, 162, 211, 
219; Maroola, Dain, 29, no, 
121 ; Massy, 52, 114, 117, 
1 1 8-9; Mersch, Due de, 64, 
140, 142 ; Michaelis, 41, 137 ; 
Mikulin, Councillor, 43, 139, 
167-8 ; Mitchell, Captain, 
132, 173, 211 ; Montero, 
General, 133-4; Monygham, 
Dr, 130, 131-2, 136, 144, 147, 
149, 166, 218 ; Nelson, see 
Nielsen ; Nielsen, 62 ; Niel- 
sen, Freya, 62, 63, 153, 169 ; 
Nostromo, 38-9, 130-1, 147, 
149, 156, 166; O'Brien, 140; 
Ossipon, 42, 137, 167 ; Pata 
Matara, 47, 48 ; Peter Ivano- 
vitch, 139, 169 ; Podmore 
33, 120, 218; Powell, 46 
Professor," " The, 42, 137 
Ramirez, 115; Razumov 
43-4. 94. 96, 137-8, 139. 200 
Ribiera, President-Dictator, 
38, 134; Riego, Don Bal- 
thasar, 116; Riego, Sera- 
phina, 64, 157 ; Ruiz, Er- 
minia, 57, 160 ; Ruiz, Gaspar, 

57, 95 ; S , Madame de, 

158 ; Second Mate of the 



INDEX 



241 



Nan-Shan, 171 ; Sharer," 
"The Secret, 62; Singleton, 
33, 77, 116, 120, 218 ; Sophia 
Antonovna, 152, 174 ; Sotillo, 
133 ; Stein, 126 ; Sterne, 
114, 143 ; Stevie, 40, 41, 42, 
135, 150, 151 ; Stott-Warten- 
heim, Baron, 40 ; Taminah, 
157 ; Tekla, 152 ; Verloc, 
40-1, 42, 74, 94, 135-6, 200, 
218 ; Verloc, Winnie, 41-2, 
104, 106, 135, 145-7. 149-51. 
158, 224 ; Verloc's, Winnie, 
Mother, 42, 151 ; Viola, 
Linda, 39. 115. 156, 207; 
Viola, Giorgio, 12, 39, 11 5-6, 
129, 207 ; Viola, Gizelle, 39, 
156; Vladimir, 40, 136; 
Wait, James, 17, 32, loi, 
120-1 ; Wamibo, 120; Waris, 
Dain, 121 ; Whalley, Cap- 
tain, 52, 114; Willems, 29, 
30, 31. 127, 157, 170, 200; 
Williams, Mrs, 157 ; X., Mr, 
58, 163 ; Yundt, Carl, 137 

Chesterton, G. K., 7, 96 
(quoted) , 1 70 

Conduct, Conrad's philosophy 
of, 12, 89-90, 104' 

Confessions, Rousseau's, 24 

Conrad, Joseph ; work marks 
a new epoch, i ; exceptionally 
difficult writer to discuss, 2 ; 
reasons for comparative un- 
popularity, 2-4 ; critics' atti- 
tude towards, 4-6 ; puzzles 
the English, 7 ; reasons 
mitigating against his popu- 
larity, 8-9 ; dignity of his 
work, 9 ; appeared at a 
fortunate epoch, 9-10 ; feel- 
ing for duty, 12 ; his type 
of realism, 13 ; aristocratic 
flavour about his work, 14 ; 
birth and upbringing, 15-6 ; 
goes to sea, 16 ; ships he sailed 
in, 17-8; leaves the sea, 18; first 
book published, 18 ; his auto- 
biographical works described, 
18-24 ; many of his stories 
founded on autobiography, 
25 ; his novels described, 
28-47 ; ^is short stories de- 



scribed, 47-63 ; the novels 
in which he collaborated de- 
scribed, 63-5 ; one of the 
great masters of atmosphere, 
66 ; instances of this, 67 et 
seq. ; his command of lan- 
guage, 72 ; creation of an 
atmosphere all-important to 
him, 75 ; his symbolism, 
77-8 ; his feeling for the 
sea, 82 ; intensity with which 
his characters live, 82-3 ; 
exotic nature of his atmo- 
sphere, 84-5 ; its pervasive- 
ness, 86 ; his grasp of ro- 
mance, 88 ; his sympathy 
for simple and good people, 
90 ; his general conception 
of character, 92 et seq. ; in- 
terested in people with idde 
fixes, 93 ; touches of sym- 
bolism in some figures, 93 ; 
his people faced with prob- 
lems, 94 ; his feeling for 
artistic unity, 96 ; his sanity, 
97-9 ; his sense of proportion, 
100 ; influence of atmosphere 
on his figures, loi ; his 
curiosity, 101-3 ; reality of 
his people, 103 ; his intui- 
tion and creative energy, 104 ; 
what he admires in character, 
104-5 ; where he triumphs 
psychologically, 106 ; where 
he fails psychologically, 107 ; 
his austerity of aim, 107-8 ; 
ability to make his people 
thrilling, 108-9 ; his origin- 
ality, 109 ; his psychology 
inductive, 109 ; very modern, 
III'; his men, 112 et seq. ; 
always very masculine, 112 ; 
the sensitiveness of the finest, 
113-4; his old men, 114-7 ; 
his seamen, 117-20; his 
negroes and Easterns, 120-2; 
his white men in the East, 
and Africa, 122-9; the char- 
acters in Nostromo, 129-34 '> 
other men, 134-43 ; his 
women, 144 et seq. ; Mrs 
Gould and Winnie Verloc, 
145-51 ; other good women, 



242 



JOSEPH CONRAD 



1 51-4 ; interesting types of 
women, 154-8 ; his idea of 
femininity, 158-9 ; his irony 
compared to that of other 
men, 161 ; often an artistic 
device, 162 ; instances of 
his irony, 163 et seq. ; the 
irony of incongruous associa- 
tion, 165-6 ; and of contrast, 
167 ; and of dramatic chmax, 
169 ; his humour, 170-4 ; 
his irony more tragic than 
comic, 175 ; French in its 
clear perception of motive, 
177-8 ; his prose, 180 et seq. ; 
EngUsh perfect and yet 
foreign, 180-1 ; change in 
his prose, 181-2 ; richness 
of his early style, 182-5 ; 
prose of his middle period, 
186-7 > originality of his 
style, 187-8; latest style, 
189-92 ; varieties in his style, 
193-5 ; its dignity, 196 ; style 
subordinate to the whole 
unity of the work, 197 ; as 
artist, 198 et seq. ; own 
conception of the novelist's 
art, 199-200 ; his stories 
never mere sketches, 200 ; 
his dramatic intensity, 200-6 ; 
his terminations, 207-8 ; his 
eloquent silences, 210 ; his 
sharply-defined edges, 210-11 ; 
reasons for his narrative form 
of relation, 211-13; power 
of handling a crowd, 214 ; 
artistic aims constant, 214 ; 
his plots natural, 215 ; his 
eloquence, 216 ; treatment 
of inanimate objects and 
animals, 216-7 '< ^^^ greatest 
achievements, 217 ; his titles 
and names, 217-8 ; his de- 
tails, 218 ; his false steps, 
219 ; his position towards 
readers and characters, 219 ; 
his attitude towards art, 220 ; 
a great romantic realist, 222 ; 
easier to understand for those 
who know continental litera- 
ture, 222 ; his tradition, 223 ; 
very reserved, 225 ; place 



in English literature, 226 ; 
could never have written in 
any language save the Eng- 
lish, 227-8 ; his Franco-Slav 
leanings, 228 9 ; French sym- 
pathies, 229, 231 ; five writers 
who have influenced him 
most, 232 ; Conrad and Eng- 
land, 233, 235 
Crime and Punishment, 139 
Criticism, business of, 1-2 ; in 
relation to Conrad, 4-6 ; 
mistakes of, 8, 11 ; pitfall 
of, 170 ; and categories, 235 

Daudet, 233 

Diana of the Crossways, 42 
Dickens, 13, 96, 170, 173-4, 227 
Dostoievsky, 2, 9, 94, 97, iii, 

138, 139, 173, 221, 228, 229, 

230. 234 
Doughty, C, 196 
Douglas, Norman, 196 
Duel," " The, 57, 59-60, 61, 85, 

88, 94, 140, 173, 217 ; quoted, 

85-6 

Egoist, The, 225 

End of the Tether," " The, 50. 
51-2, 53, 76, 114, 117, 143, 
178, 217; quoted, 178 

English literature, new move- 
ment in, lo-i ; lack of living 
stylists in, 196 ; versatility of, 
223 ; Conrad's position in, 
226 ; Conrad definitely an 
English writer, 227-8 ; with 
Conrad, first enters Euro- 
pean " tradition," 233 

English Review, The, 5, 55 

Evelyn, John, 25 

Eve of Saint Mark," " The, 85 

" Falk," 18, 53, 54-5, 57, 109, 
110,126, 155, 165,217; quoted, 
155-6 

Fielding, 227 

Flaubert, 2, 107, 187, 188, 193, 
194, 197, 199, 214, 218, 220, 
223, 225, 229, 230, 232, 234 

France, Anatole, 9, 86, 161, 175, 
229, 232 

Francia, Dr, 134 

French literature, Conrad in 



INDEX 



m 



■ relation to, 177, 187, 188, 223, 

228-9, 230-2, 234 
" Freya of the Seven Islands," 

9, 61, 62, 63, 76-7, 128-9, 

153, 164, 169. 185, 219; 

quoted, 81-2 

Galsworthy, John, 7, 161, 

216 
Garnett, Edward, 5, 18 
" Gaspar Ruiz," 57-8, 61, 95, 

160 
Gissing, George, 13, 212 
Gogol, 228 
Gorky, 228 

Gourmont, Remy de, 175 
Graham, Cunninghame, 10 
Green Mansions, 196 

Hardy, Thomas, 196, 215 

Hawthorne, N., 220 

" Heart of Darkness," 9, 18, 50, 
51. 53. 72. 76. 95, 97. 102, 
109, 122, 124, 125, 162, 164, 
178-9, 183, 185, 208, 210, 
217, 219; quoted, 72, 84, 122, 
179, 208 

Henley, W. H., 19 

Hichens, Robert, 7 

Hudson, W. H., 3, 196 

HueSer, Ford Madox, 5, 63, 83, 
89, 232 (quoted) 

Hugo, Victor, 2, 137, 229, 231 

Humour, Conrad's, Slavonic 
rather than English, 1 70 ; 
keen, 173 ; shows a trace of 
Dickens, 173-4 

Huneker, James, 220 (quoted) 

Ibsen, hi 

Idiots," " The, 47, 48, 158 

" II Conde," 57, 60, 61, 140, 200 

Informer," " The, 57, 58, 61 

Inheritors, The, 63-4, 140, 142, 

156, 157 
Irony, Conrad's, severe or pity- 
ing, 9 ; typical of later work, 
24 ; elusive and widespread, 
161 ; melancholy, 161, 175 ; 
different from that of the 
Comic Spirit, 162 ; various 
manifestations of , 163-5 ; in in- 
congruous association, 165-6; 
very delicate, 166 ; in contrast, 



166-9 ,' in dramatic climax, 
169 ; French influence in, 177 
Irony, Danger of, 169-70 ; foe 
of fanaticism, 174 

James, Henry, 10, 96, 148, 
196, 199, 213, 215, 220, 230, 
231, 232, 233 

' Karain," 47-8, 50, 121 
Keats, 85 

Kipling, Rudyard, 10, 14 
Korzeniowski, Teodor Jozef 
Konrad, 14 

Lagoon," " The, 47, 49-50, 121 ; 
quoted, 184 

Lawrence, D. H., 12 

Lermontov, 228 

Life, Conrad's philosophy of, 
90, 93, 230 

Locke, W. J., 7 

Lord Jim, 4, 33-7, 73-4, 94. 96, 
97, 102, 107, III, 121, 122, 
123-5, 126, 142, 143, 153-4, 
162, 163, 169, 172, 195, 208, 
211,214, 217 ; quoted, 73, 73-4, 
143, 184-5, 195-6, 208, 209 

Love in fiction, 9 ; Conrad's 
treatment of, 9, 113, 145 

Madame Bovary, 223, 230 
MaeterUnck, 77 
Mallarme, 231 
Markino, Yoshio, 180 
Masefield, John, 10, 86 
Maupassant, 13, 187, 231 
Mayor of Casterbridge, The, 215 
Men, Conrad's, importance of, 
112; always masculine, 112; 
sensitiveness of the finest, 
113 ; influence of old age 
on, 114-7; influence of the 
sea on, 1 17-20 ; in the Tropics, 
121-34 '• in various places, 

134-43 
Merchant of Venice, The, 69 
Meredith, 2, 7, 42, 69, 100 ; 

quoted, 159-60, 162, 213, 214, 

222-3, 224-5, 226, 233, 235 
Milton, 19 
Mirror of the Sea, The 15, 17, 18, 

19-22, 23, 24, 78, 140, 141 ; 

quoted, iii, 21, 21-2, 22, 78-9 
Moore, George, 10, 96, 213 - 



244 



JOSEPH CONRAD 



National Observer, The, ii 

Nelson, 21 

New Age, The, 169 

New Grub Street, 212 

New Review, The, 19 

Nigger of the " Narcissus," The, 

17, 18, 19, 32-3. 79, 101-2, 
III, 116-7, 120-1, 186, 188, 
195, 208, 217; quoted, 79, 
80-1, 117(2), 118, 121, 184 

Norton, Mrs, 42 

Nostromo, viii, 4, 12, 37-40, 46, 
70-1, 74, 94, 95, 104, III, 115, 
129-34. 145-9. 151. 156. 166-7, 
173, 186, 193, 195, 201-7, 

208, 211, 214, 217, 2.ii\ 234; 

quoted, 70-1, 115-6, 131, 133, 
134, 136, 144, 146, 148, 149, 
167, 173, 186-7, 187, 201-4, 
204-6, 209 (2) 

" One Day More," 55 

On the Eve, 95 

Ordeal of Richard Fever el, The, 69 

Outcast of the Islands, An, 29, 
30-2, 79, 121, 122, 126-7, 156, 
170-1, 175, 179, 200, 207; 
quoted, 80, 171, 175-7 

Outpost of Progress," " An, 

18, 47, 48-9, 50, 125, 169, 
177, 208; quoted, 177-8 

Paradise Lost, 19 

Pater, Walter, 8 

Pepys, Samuel, 25 

Personality in authors, 6, 89 

Poe, E. A., 231 

Portrait of a Lady, The, 147 

Prose, Conrad's, mannered but 
dignified, 10 ; shows foreign 
influence, 180, 195 ; changes 
in, 181-2, 185-6, 188-9, 193-9 ; 
idiosyncrasies of, 182-3 ; 
rich, 182, 186; musical, 
183-5 .' originaUty of, 187-8 ; 
indebtedness to Flaubert, 
188 ; dignity of, 196-7 

Psychology, Conrad's, idea of, 
developed in hints, 9 ; 
realistic, 92 ; tends to the 
study of the id&e fixe, 93 ; 
occasionally symbolic, 93-4 ; 
subjective and objective, 95 ; 



sane, 97-100 ; atmospheric, 
loi ; full of curiosity, 101-3 ; 
founded on actuality, 103 ; 
intuitive and creative, 104 ; 
all tinged by his own per- 
sonality, 105-6 ; impressive 
through its reality, 106 ; 
disregards universal types, 
107 ; concerned entirely with 
its characters, 107-8 ; thril- 
ling, 108-9 ; enlivened by 
flashes of genius, 109 ; in- 
ductive, no; as much in- 
terested in personality as 
character, no; romantic, 
no; modern, in 
Purple Land, The, 3 

REAnsM, Conrad's, absorbed 
with life, 10 ; his special 
kind of, 13 ; founded on 
actual experience, 25, 103 ; 
power of building from practi- 
cally nothing, 71 ; atmo- 
spheric, 75 ; sometimes sym- 
bolic, 77 ; exemplified in 
his figures, 92, 112, 151 ; 
gives the illusion of inevit- 
ability, 106 ; invincible belief 
in, 199-200 

Rembrandt, 66 

Return," " The, 47, 49, 50, 76, 
164, 168, 183, 208, 210, 216, 
217, 219; quoted, 68, 168, 
183, 209 

Rhythm, 188 

Romance, Conrad's, antipa- 
thetic to some, 3, 7 ; full 
of imagery in earlier work, 
24 ; power over, 88-9 ; must 
understand it to know his 
character, no; his melo- 
drama derived from, 144 ; 
includes realism, 1 99 ; its 
dramatic force, 216 ; its 
passionate basis, 229 

Romance, 64-5, 89, 116, 140, 
142, 157 ; quoted, 89 

Rousseau, 24 

Ruskin, 220 

Russian literature, Conrad in 
relation to, 9, 86, 173, 175, 
223, 228 



INDEX 



245 



Sainte-Beuve, 226 

Sanity, Conrad's, 98-9, 219 

Scott^ 214, 227 

Sea, The, Conrad's feeling for, 

19-20, 78-82, 117, 119, 182 
Secret Agent, The, 6, 9, 40-3, 45, 

74. 77. 84-5. 94. 104. 134-7. 
142, 145-6, 149-51, 162, 163, 
166, 167, 175, 186, 200, 208, 
216, 217; quoted, 74-5, 136, 
137. 167 

Secret Sharer," " The, 61, 62, 
63. 76. 173. 217 

Set of Six, A, 57-61 

Shakespeare, 13, 69, 98, 99, 
129, 151, 221 

Shaw, Bernard, 7, 109, 225 

Shelley, 69, 221 

Small Boy and Others, A, 215 

Smile of Fortune," " A, 61-2, 
76, 88, 120, 128, 156, 157, 
164-5, 173. 217 ; quoted, 
189-92 

Smoke, 168 

Some Reminiscences, 15, 16, 18, 
22-4, 127, 140, 141, 188, 199, 
215, 218; quoted, 20, 24, 105, 
199-200, 200 

Stendhal, 223 

Stevenson, R. L., 9, 11, 219 

Strindberg, iii, 225 

Style, Misconceptions regard- 
ing, 8 

Swift, 163, 194 

Sylvie and Bruno, 21 

Synge, J. M., 9 

Syren Land, 196 

Tagore, Rabindranath, 12 

Tales of Unrest, 47-50, 182, 18 

Tchekov, 228 

Thackeray, 194, 225 

Thais, 87 

Times, The, 42 

Tolstoy, 106, 109, III, 214, 
223, 228, 230, 234 

" To-morrow," 53, 55-6, 57, 
76, 99, 109, 140, 141, 152-3. 
165, 217; quoted, 69, 184 

Tragedy, Conrad's, romantic, 
66-7 ; its uneasy emotion, 
76-7 ; in a lover and in a 
parent, 11 3-4 ; in the savage. 



122 ; drives to madness and 
despair, 129, 138 ; its saddest 
exhibition, 146-8 ; its deepest 
exhibition, 150-1 ; in various 
women, 152-4 ; the basis of 
his irony, 175 ; its intensity, 
200-7 ; its pervasive melan- 
choly, 234 

TroUope, i^thony, 13 ■ "'••' F?'"-'^ 

Turgenev, 13, 86, 95, 107, 127, 
161, 168, 219, 220, 225, 229, 
I 230, 232 

'Twixt Land and Sea, 18, 61-3, 
194 

Typhoon, 53-7, 165 

" Typhoon," 18, 53-4, 56, 67, 

93, 117, 118, 128, 165, 171, 
173, 217; quoted, 118-9, 136, 
171-2, 183-4, 209 

Under Western Eyes, 43-5, 46, 

94, 96, 137-9. 143. 152, 158, 
163, 167-8, 168-9, 174, 175, 
181, 186,189,200,210; quoted, 
72, 136-7, 152, 174, 209-10 

Unity of a work of art, Conrad's 
insistence on, 75, 96, 143, 
197. 198 

Vanity Fair, 33 
Velasquez, 66 
Voltaire, 161 

Wells, H. G., 7, 12 

Whitman, Walt, 2, 66, 69, 221, 
229, 231 

Wilde, Oscar, 8 

Women, Conrad's, poignancy 
of his good, 145-54. 155 ; 
mysteriously attractive, 156-7; 
some offensive, 158; femi- 
ninity essential in, 158-9 ; 
compared with Meredith's, 
159-60 

Yeats, W. B., 12, 77 
Yellow Book, The, 1 1 
Youth, 50-1, 182, 217, 234 
" Youth," 3, 17, 50-1, 53, 68, 
71, 76, 88, 116, 120, 124, 125, 
186, 208, 217; quoted, 68-9, 
71, 88 

Zola, Emile, 13 



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