Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (881 page)
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Authors: JOSEPH CONRAD
INTRODUCTION
Most of the contents of this volume were written subsequent to the publication of “Notes on Life and Letters” in 1921 and these two books together may be said to contain practically all Conrad’s miscellaneous writings. There are, it is true, a few short prefaces and some interesting letters to newspapers which might have been included here, but they are of no particular importance, and twenty separate pieces gathered between these covers are indeed the last essays of Joseph Conrad. But there remains a chance that some of his early essays and reviews may still rest undiscovered in the files of old newspapers and weeklies. Conrad had a very uncertain memory for his own work, and I recall that when the material for “Notes on Life and Letters” was being collected, he was frequently quite vague as to what he had written and where it had appeared. In proof of this, it may be mentioned that the essay entitled “John Galsworthy” in this volume was omitted from the previous one only through Conrad’s forgetfulness of its existence. Therefore, as I say, discoveries may yet be made.
In the latter years of his life Conrad occasionally found relief from the toil and exhaustion of more creative work in writing of reminiscent essays, and some of these rank, decidedly, among his finest efforts in this direction. “Last Essays” is just as remarkable a book as “Notes on Life and Letters”; it contains passages of extraordinary charm, serenity, and eloquence. And particular care has been taken to avoid any respect of absolute completeness, as though a dead author’s desk had been ransacked for every fragment: all the articles included in this volume have been included for very definite reasons. Nothing has been printed merely for the purpose of adding to the bulk.
For some time Conrad had had the idea of writing a pendent volume to “The Mirror of the Sea,” and the unfinished article, “Legends,” on which he was at work the day before he died, was, he told me, to have formed part of such a book. And I suspect that ‘The Torrens,” “Christmas Day at Sea,” “Ocean Travel,” “Outside Literature.” and part, at least, of “Geography and Some Explorers,”
would also have been incorporated in this book, and therefore I have placed them all together at the beginning of the volume. They form, as it were, the shadowy nucleus of projected work.
“Geography and Some Explorers,” the second longest essay in this collection, was written as a general introduction to a serial work called “Countries of the World.” It appeared as ‘The Romance of Travel” in the first number, February, 1924, and was reprinted under its proper title in The National Geographic Magazine, March, 1924. In this fascinating essay, Conrad, after discussing the feats of some of the early navigators and explorers, gives a memorable account of a passage he made in 1888 (when in command of the Otago) through the Torres Straits on a voyage from Sydney to Mauritius.
“ The Torrens: A Personal Tribute,” was published in The Blue Peter, October, 1923. In the early ‘nineties Conrad had been chief officer of this ship — he joined her on November 2, 1891, and left her on October 15,1893 — and he made two journeys from England to Australia and back in that capacity. For her he always retained a warm affection, and when, in the September Blue Peter of 1923, there was issued a coloured illustration of the Torrens, he willingly consented to give a personal remembrance of her in the next number. The last words, in which he describes her end upon the shores of the Mediterranean, posses a rare and pensive beauty, which I recover in the following paragraphs:
“But in the end her body of iron and wood, so fair to look upon, had to be broken up — I hope with fitting reverence; and as I sit here, thirty years, almost to a day, since I last set eyes on her, I love to think that her perfect form found a merciful end on shores of the Sunlit Sea of my boyhood’s dreams, and that her fine spirit has returned to dwell in the regions of the great winds, the inspirers and companions of her swift, renowned, sea-tossed life which I, too, have been permitted to share for a little while.”
“Christmas Day at Sea” was published in the London Daily Mail on December 24,1923. It was concerned largely with an episode on one Christmas Day during Conrad’s first voyage to Australian in the Duke of Sutherland in 1879, where he served as an A.B.
“Ocean Travel” made its first appearance in the London Evening News of May 15,1923, where it was named “My Hotel in Mid-Atlantic.” It was written during Conrad’s voyage to America in the Tuseania in the spring of that year, and was posted to me the moment he arrived in New York. It compares the old and the new life at sea, and needless to say, the vote of affection in given for the old.
“Outside Literature,” short essay dealing with the subject of notices to mariners, appeared under the title “Notices to Mariners” in the Manchester Guardian of December 4, 1922, and under its proper title in the American Bookman of February, 1923.
“Legends,” as I have mentioned, was the last article Conrad ever wrote; it was left unfinished upon his desk. It tells, with a strain of melancholy, of the breed of seamen who have disappeared with the disappearance of sailing ships, and was printed, less than a fortnight after Conrad’s death, in the London Daily Mail of August 15, 1924.
Next follow two essays which have the war at sea as background. “The Unlighted Coasf recalls Conrad’s experiences in the North Sea during his ten days’ cruise in the Ready in 1917 — a full account of this cruise is to be found in Captain Sutherland’s “At Sea with Joseph Conrad” — and was written for the Admirably. For some reason or other they never used it and it first saw the light in the London Times of August 18,1925.
The Dover Patrol,” written at the request of the late Lord Northcliffe, was published in the London Timeso\ July 27,1921, the day on which the Prince of Wales unveiled the Dover Patrol Memorial. It is glowing tribute to “the physical endurance, the inborn seamanship, the matter-of-fact, industrious, indefatigable enthusiasm” of the men who guarded unsleepingly and at extreme hazard the entrance to the Channel.
The “Memorandum on the Scheme for Fitting Out a Sailing Ship” is here first printed. Written in 1919 for the Holt Steamship Company, who had proposed to fit out a sailing ship for the training of boys destined for the Mercantile Marine, it is an example of Conrad’s intense and practical interest in such subjects. It is exactly what it purports to be — a memorandum, precise, technical, full of
his accumulated experience and long-pondered ideas. Nothing came of the scheme: as Mr. Lawrence Holt wrote to me, it was “abandoned owing to the depression of trade which set in soon after my conversation with Mr. Conrad.” The document from then to now has been in Mr. Holt’s possession, and cordial thanks are due to him for his permission to use it here.
“The Loss of the Daigonaf is a further example of Conrad’s interest in questions of seamanship. Indeed, I print it solely for that reason, because, in itself, it but refers to the contents of an article from another pen. It appeared, as a letter to the editor, in the London Mercury of December, 1921, and was called forth by a paper in the September issue entitled “A True Story: Log and Record of the Wreck of the Snip Dalgonaro\ Liverpool, bound from Callao to Taltal.” This paper described the wreck of the barque Loire, which happened in October, 1913; and Conrad’s letter, while correcting some obvious mistakes in the narrative as printed, is a testimony to the gallantry and efficiency of the officers and crew.
The essay calied “Travel” was written, I am proud to think, out of friendship for myself and formed the preface to a book by me, “Into the East: Notes on Burma and Malaya,” 1923. The effort to finish “The Rover” held up the writing of this preface for about a year, but it seems to me that in its evocation of the great travellers of old and of times that have gone for ever it reaches the highest beauty and distinction. Let me quote one paragraph:
“And those things, which stand as if imperishable in the pages of old books of travel, are all blown away; have vanished as utterly as the smoke of the travellers’ camp fires in the icy night air of the Gobi Desert, as the smell of incense burned in the temples of strange gods, as the voices of Asiatic statesmen speculating with the cruel wisdom of past ages on matters of peace and war.”
“Stephen Crane,” the longest and most elaborate essay in the book, was written as an introduction to Mr. Thomas Beer’s “Stephen Crane, a Study in American Letters,” 1923. Conrad, as in generally known, was a close friend of Crane during the last years of that meteoric life, when Crane was frequently a neighbour of his in southern England. In all, he wrote three essays on Crane and his
work. One appeared in “Notes on Life and Letters,” two are printed in this volume, and all breathe a spirit of affectionate admiration. This essay is a study in biographical sidelights and is undoubtedly the most personal and the most delightful of all reminiscences of Crane.
The short essay. “His War Book,” which follows, was composed specifically as a preface to a new edition of Crane’s best-known work, “The Red Badge of Courage” — the new edition came out at last in 1925 — and it gives clear indication of Conrad’s feeling for the artist who could observe so truly and create with such economy.
“John Galsworthy,” as I have said, was only accidentally omitted from the previous volume of Conrad’s essays. It was composed as a review of “A Man of Property,” contained in a wider study of the author, and was published in the London outlookoi March 31,1906, under the title of “A Middle Class Family.” A few years before he died, Conrad rectified, as far as he could, his oversight by privately printing about fifty copies of this essay, and he would certainly have included it in any future volume of essays.
The next piece, “A Glance at Two Books,” dealing with Galsworthy’s “The Island Pharisees” and Hudson’s “Green Mansions,” dates from even earlier and was done in 1904. Written obviously in answer to an editorial request, it was, for reasons unknown, never used, and the typescript, being found among Conrad’s papers, was first printed in T.P.’s and Cassell’s Weekly of August 1, 1925.
A “Preface to his Shorter Tales” was written at the instigation of his American publishers to introduce “The Shorter Tales of Joseph Conrad,” and the essay, like the selection, has never appeared in England. It was one of his last completed pieces — the volume was issued after his death in 1924 — and it throws a reminiscent glance upon the ideas that animated his work and upon his writing life.
The little not, “Cookery” charming in its playful fancy, was a send-off to his wife’s book, “A Handbook of Cookery for a Small House,” 1922. I include it here for the sake of its association and for the unique quality of its tone.
The next two pieces, both of them letters, give glimpses of
Conrad’s abiding interest in international questions and the affairs of Europe. He was always a student of foreign politics, a student fortified by an impressive historical sense and by a great knowledge of continental problems throughout the centuries and these two letters, with their combined eloquence and hold upon reality, throw light upon an aspect of Conrad’s mind of which few people are aware.
The first letter, an appeal for a free Constantinople under the protection of the Powers, was published in the London Times of November 7,1912, when the Balkman States were at war with Turkey and their armies already within striking distance of her capital.
The second letter, written evidently a few days later to an untraceable correspondent — a typescript only was found — who had criticized his printed observations, is an amplification of the previous letter.
Finally comes ‘The Congo Diary,” a reprint of the diary kept by Conrad in the Congo in 1890, which was first published in The Blue Peter; October, 1925, and then in The Yale Review, January, 1926. This diary calls for its own introduction and a series of explanatory notes, and these will be found with it at the end of the book.
Here, then, are the twenty pieces which compose this volume of “Last Essays.” They show as clearly as did the contents of “Notes on Life and Letters” the rich diversity of Conrad’s mind, his powers of cogent argument, of found memory, and of noble expression. His mastery over his chosen material never flagged and these essays are a last witness to his consummate gifts.
RICHARD CURLE.
GEOGRAPHY AND SOME EXPLORERS
It is safe to say that for the majority of mankind the superiority of geography over geometry lies in the appeal of its figures. It may be an effect of the incorrigible frivolity inherent in human nature, but most of us will agree that a map is more fascinating to look at than a figure in a treatise on conic sections — at any rate for the simple minds which are all the equipment of the majority of the dwellers on this earth.
No doubt a trigonometrical survey may be a romantic undertaking, striding over deserts and leaping over valleys never before trodden by the foot of civilized man; but its accurate operations can never have for us the fascination of the first hazardous steps of a venturesome, often lonely, explorer jotting down by the light of his camp fire the thoughts, the impressions, and the toil of his day.
For a long time yet a few suggestive words grappling with things seen will have the advantage over a long array of precise, no doubt interesting, and even profitable figures. The earth is a stage, and though it may be an advantage, even to the right comprehension of the play, to know its exact configuration, it is the drama of human endeavour that will be the thing, with a ruling passion expressed by outward action marching perhaps blindly to success of failure, which themselves are often undistinguishable from each other at first.
