Joseph Conrad: Memories and Impressions - An Annotated Bibliography. (Conrad Studies)

Joseph Conrad Memories and Impressions An Annotated Bibliography

C O N R A D Studies

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General Editors:

Allan H. Simmons and J. H. Stape Advisory Editors:

Owen Knowles and Gene M. Moore

Joseph Conrad Memories and Impressions An Annotated Bibliography

by

Martin Ray

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007

Frontispiece: Sketch of Joseph Conrad by Walter Tittle ©Estate of Walter Tittle. By permission of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco Cover design: Pier Post The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents - Requirements for permanence”. ISBN: 978-90-420-2298-0 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007 Printed in the Netherlands

To SUSANNAH

Acknowledgements I am deeply grateful to Owen Knowles, J. H. Stape, and Allan H. Simmons for their invaluable comments, advice, and suggestions about this book, over a period of many years. Like so many people who have written about Joseph Conrad, I owe a special debt of gratitude to the late Hans van Marle for his magisterial erudition. The frontispiece is reproduced by courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. All efforts have been made to trace the Estate of Walter Tittle. This book is dedicated to my daughter, Susannah, without whose devoted care it could not have been completed.

Contents

Foreword

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Cue-titles

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Joseph Conrad: Memories and Impressions

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Index

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Foreword THIS BIBLIOGRAPHY aims to identify and annotate publications that record “memories and impressions” of Joseph Conrad by those who knew him or met him. This volume has its origin in my monograph Joseph Conrad and His Contemporaries (1988), published by The Joseph Conrad Society (UK). The present much revised version has been considerably expanded, especially by the addition of extensive annotation for virtually all entries, which has been made possible by the publication of The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad in recent years. It has also been updated by the inclusion of relevant letters and diaries that continue to come to light occasionally. In the selection of items for inclusion, preference has been given to recollections with literary or biographical interest. This criterion has determined both the kind of items selected and the degree of citation they receive. Recollections of Conrad offering merely a pen portrait of him are omitted, and such descriptions are not mentioned in items that are included. Priority throughout has been given to accounts of Conrad that record what he said about himself and his writing. Conrad’s friends and acquaintances are often recalling conversations that were quite casual and that occurred many years before, and they are not on oath. Some of the individual comments must thus be taken cum grano salis. A small handful of items seem to be entirely bogus, invented either by journalists in need of quick copy or by charlatans seeking a vicarious association with literary fame. Such spurious accounts are included only so that they can be clearly identified as such in the annotations. Letters to Conrad from his friends are excluded, the most pertinent of which are found in A Portrait in Letters: Correspondence to and about Joseph Conrad, edited by J. H. Stape and Owen Knowles (1996). Letters about him to a third party are annotated where their contents fall within the scope of this bibliography. Items in Polish are omitted, since most of these are available in Zdzisław Najder’s compilation Conrad Under Familial Eyes, translated by Halina Carroll-Najder (1983). Items in French are included. Theodore G. Ehrsam’s A Bibliography of Joseph Conrad (1969) lists many of the earlier items; a number of new items that it overlooked are recorded here. For the purposes of this work, Ehrsam’s bibliography was found to be more comprehensive than the well-known bibliographies of Lohf and Sheehy (1957) or Teets and Gerber (1971). I have not listed the other printings that some items have enjoyed, since they

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are readily found in Ehrsam. Reprints not listed in Ehrsam are recorded, and errors have been silently emended. Some articles on Conrad, such as Hugh Clifford’s North American Review article of 1904, are known to be based on an interview with Conrad, but are not presented in the form of a personal account and have therefore been excluded. Books of criticism devoted entirely to the study of Joseph Conrad have been omitted, as have all publications listed in Ehrsam by Richard Curle, Ford Madox Ford, G. Jean-Aubry, and Conrad’s wife and children. Such works are already familiar to most students of Conrad’s life, and their inclusion would have needlessly increased the length of the bibliography. Preference has been given instead to relatively unfamiliar or inaccessible items, especially those in newspapers and periodicals whose only location may be, for example, The British Library or The Bodleian Library. Articles in modern journals may not be inaccessible, but they do not usually have a subject index, and are therefore included to facilitate ease of reference. These criteria should not be regarded as mosaic decrees, and I have happily sacrificed them occasionally in the hope of making this work useful and interesting. For example, George T. Keating’s A Conrad Memorial Library (1929) is devoted entirely to the work of Conrad and therefore, strictly, ought to have been excluded; however, it is difficult to obtain in the United Kingdom (only one non-lending library in Scotland holds it, for instance), and not indexed, and I thus decided to annotate it. Articles by the same author may repeat some details, and such information is described only once, although substantial overlaps are indicated. Items of minor interest are included only to identify them as relatively unimportant and thus to save other scholars’ time. The numerous newspaper reports of Conrad’s visit to the United States in 1923 are inevitably repetitious, and therefore only the newspaper interview that gives the fullest account of a particular statement by Conrad is rewarded with citation of that comment. Entries for these reports of the American visit are best regarded as composite, forming an aggregate account of Conrad’s interviews during his trip. Page numbers following a book title indicate the location of information relevant to the aims of this bibliography; they do not imply that there are not other pages in that book that refer to Conrad. Items are listed in the alphabetical order of their authors’ surnames.

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Cue-Titles CL

The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad, ed. Frederick R. Karl, Laurence Davies, Owen Knowles, and J. H. Stape. 7 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983–

CUFE

Zdzisław Najder, Conrad Under Familial Eyes, trans. Halina Carroll-Najder. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983

JCA

A Joseph Conrad Archive: The Letters and Papers of Hans van Marle, ed. Gene M. Moore, The Conradian, 30.2 (2005)

LL

G. Jean-Aubry, Joseph Conrad: Life and Letters. 2 vols. London: Heinemann, 1927

Ehrsam

Theodore G. Ehrsam, comp. A Bibliography of Joseph Conrad. Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press, 1969

Najder

Zdzisław Najder, Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle. Trans. Halina Carroll-Najder. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983

Ray, ed.

Martin Ray, ed., Joseph Conrad: Interviews and Recollections. London: Macmillan, 1990

Abbott, Lawrence F.1 “Joseph Conrad.” Outlook (New York), 134 (23 May 1923): 14–15. Abbott was present at JC’s reading of Victory [10 May 1923, New York], which lasted about an hour. “The complete detachment with which he described his work” (5) was refreshing. JC speaks English with such a European accent that it is sometimes difficult to understand him.

Adams, Elbridge L. Joseph Conrad: The Man [and] Zelie, John Sheridan A Burial in Kent. 1925; rpt., New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1972. [All references are to Adams’s article.] Adams2 met JC in early September 1916, at Capel House. He spoke warmly of Walter Hines Page and Stephen Crane, and said of Fenimore Cooper that his artistic instinct was genuine and unerring, although his style had the beauties and defects of its age. He loved Henry James and read him repeatedly, for he was “the historian of fine consciences” (10). The Preface to The Nigger of the “Narcissus” was written to express “his intimate feelings about the aim of the art of fiction” (12). JC was delighted that Adams liked Some Reminiscences best, for “some of my literary friends have told me it was too unconventional and informal to be good autobiography, and too remote from English and American 1 Lawrence F(raser) Abbott (1859-1933) spent 32 years as the President of the Outlook Company, resigning in 1923 to become Contributing Editor. He edited Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt (1919) and wrote Twelve Great Modernists (1927). 2 Elbridge L(apham) Adams (1866–1934), New York bibliophile, publisher, and lawyer. JC stayed for a couple of days at Adams’s country house in the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts during his visit to the US. Adams’s article first appeared as “Joseph Conrad – The Man,” Outlook (New York), 18 April 1923: 708–12. On 20 November 1922, JC had written to him that “The idea of your writing an article, of a more intimate character than anything that has been written before on me in America, pleases me vastly; for I do really believe that you understand me better than anybody from your side that I ever met” (CL7 594).

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associations to be very interesting” (13). It was a faithful record of his “feelings and sensations” (13), and was a “human document which would, to those who can see eye to eye, reveal the personality behind the books” (13–14). JC never thought of writing in French: “When I began to write it came as natural for me to write English as if it had been my own native tongue. […] English seems to be a part of my blood and culture” (15). “I think I must have some talent for language” (14). He had read Dickens, Shakespeare, and much other English literature in Polish translation. JC hated the war-time restriction on the sale of alcohol; what would become of the boasted freedom of Englishmen if such paternalism became the accepted policy of the English Government, he asked. On a later visit [September 1921], JC outlined “my very early conviction that a representative government is but a poor guaranty of liberty. Yet I do not see what else we could put in the place of it. I am afraid that most human institutions are poor affairs at best, and that even a Heaven-sent constitution would not be safe from the distorting force of human passions, prejudices, hasty judgments, emotional impulses, or from mere plausible noise raised by an active and determined minority” (23–24). [Adams showed his MS of this article to JC before publication, and he includes in footnotes the marginal annotations JC made. JC explained that on leaving Poland he was “fit to take care of myself intellectually” (5), and he described his education and maritime examinations. Later, he said he preferred to be described as a “creative writer” rather than as a “writer of romance” (25). Finally, he repeated his dislike of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, to whom James Huneker had compared him (26). Adams’s article has February 1923 as the date of composition. This volume also prints Adams’s “The American Visit”: 27–38: JC stayed overnight with Adams in Massachusetts, following his trip to Boston in May 1923. He did not, contrary to newspaper reports, visit the homes of Herman Melville or the poet William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878). JC sat and listened to Brahms in a rapt mood.]

Alcorta, Gloria “Saint-John Perse en voyage de noces.” Nouvelle Revue Française, 47 (February 1976): 8–15.

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Perse1 told Alcorta that, for JC, “l’amitié était l’œuvre du destin. Il n’aimait pas mes écrits mais j’aurais pu commettre le plus crapuleux des méfaits, ses sentiments pour moi n’auraient pas changé” (13–14).

Allen, Vio “Memories of Joseph Conrad.” Review of English Literature, 8 (April 1967): 77–90. With an introduction from R. B. Cunninghame Graham, Allen first visited JC shortly after he had finished Chance (1912). Norman Douglas was also present. They later met in Corsica [February–April 1921]. JC told her that he was not going to write about Corsica, but was doing a play [The Secret Agent]. He was tired of writing novels, he explained, and wanted a new medium. In his speech, there were French words in nearly every sentence, and French vowels in English words. He frequently corrected himself, and would say, “I buyed – I bought it” (79). Jessie Conrad told Allen of someone trying to tell JC a frightfully improper spoonerism, but he could not understand it. It was Jessie who had suggested writing about the Marseilles incident [in The Arrow of Gold ] when he was searching for a plot. She was quite flustered, though, to read “A Smile of Fortune,” since JC had not told her about that experience. JC considered A Set of Six to be his most successful short stories “for writing” (83), but overall he liked ’Twixt Land and Sea best. He had always had to fight hard with his publishers about his choice of titles, except for Chance. He loved Australians, since they had been “the first to trust me with a ship” (83), and he had nearly settled in Australia, before he married.2 Lord Jim, he confided, had been written because some critic had said that 1 The poet Marie-René-Auguste-Alexis-Saint-Léger Léger (1887–1975), better known as Saint-John Perse, first visited JC in the summer of 1912, in the company of Agnes Tobin (see CL5 87). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1960. 2 On 9 April 1912, JC wrote to H. H. Champion that “Like all the sailors of the old wool fleet I have the warmest regard for Australians generally for New South Wales in particular and for charming Sydney especially. Moreover I am a fellow citizen. Haven’t I commanded an Australian ship for over two years?” (CL5 50). JC commanded the Otago, owned by Henry Simpson and Sons of Adelaide, for fourteen months, ending in March 1889.

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a novel should contain only a limited number of characters, so JC had said to himself, “Here now! I will write a novel and put into it all the people I know” (83). At the time of his marriage, he was neither a sailor nor a writer, but “a man entre les deux” (83), and he still felt he was “a most on literary man – most on literary” (84). He loved to read Charles Whibley,1 whom he regarded as an amusing reactionary, but “to try and teach the people! That I could not do! To force my opinions on others, that I could not do – but I am glad there is a Whibley and an Arnold Bennett!” (84). Back in England [Summer 1921], Allen visited JC in Kent and asked about Lord Jim. JC described how he had met Brierly only twice, and knew little about him. When Allen suggested a whole book on Marlow, JC commented, “Marlow, yes, perhaps – it would have to be rather on psychological lines. Not a novel – reflections” (86). Lord Jim himself had been based on a man called Williams, but he had used that name elsewhere so he called him Jim.2 Everyone in Singapore knew his story, and there was always “the shadow of that damn thing over him” (86). In writing “Freya of the Seven Isles,” he had initially wished to tell the story of a lost brig, but had then thought of Nelson, and then Freya. His best piece of writing, he believed, was “The Secret Sharer”: “I don’t think there is an unnecessary word in that thing” (86). He hated the Grand Guignol, and theatre in general, since it destroyed the imagination. He loathed movies and gramophones also. During her visit, JC was correcting proofs of his new book (at Pinker’s urgent request), which was to appear as a serial in Cosmopolitan.3 1 Editor, journalist, critic, and polemical essayist (1859–1930), Whibley had a monthly column in Blackwood’s Magazine for nearly thirty years. His twovolume Letters of an Englishman appeared in 1911 and 1915. Regarded as a champion of “traditional” British values, he vigorously denounced trade unionism, the popular press, women’s rights, and, especially, the extension of the franchise (see CL2 162). 2 The earlier character was Willems in An Outcast of the Islands. JC based the story of the desertion of the Patna on the affair of the Jeddah, which was deserted by her European crew in 1880. The young first mate, who took control of the incident, was Augustine Podmore Williams. A full account of the Jeddah affair is given in Norman Sherry, Conrad’s Eastern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966). 3 JC was correcting the typescript – not proofs – of Suspense (see, e.g., CL7 327, 329). Although he frequently mentioned plans for serialization, the novel remained unfinished at his death.

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Anonymous “Americans Kind, So Why Lecture?”. Christian Science Monitor, 19 May 1923: 2. [Ray, ed., 189–90] [Interviewed in Boston during 1923 visit to US] JC is not gathering material for new books with an American setting, for he writes in retrospect of what he saw and learned during his first thirty-six years. Although “I often write no words for weeks,” he does not regard this as a waste, since he is planning, thinking, and constructing. Nostromo, he thought, was his best book. He had to construct a whole republic while seeking to “maintain truthful descriptions throughout of life in such a country. […] When I write I build no Utopias, for I always keep a firm control of my imagination.”

“Conrad and Cowes.” Adelphi, 2 (September 1924): 354–58. JC became “a trifle petulant” (355) when reminded of Havelock Ellis’s1 description of him as a novelist of the sea in an unidentified review in the Nation. [The author of this Adelphi article is named as “The Journeyman.”]

“Conrad at work.” John O’London’s Weekly, 6 (17 December 1921): 376. [Account of visit by journalist’s friend to JC in Kent] JC was in full flight with a novel of the Napoleonic period [Suspense]. JC has a peculiar method of writing – he dictates, without any regard to form or style, a rough conspectus and outline of a book. He puts the manuscript away as it accumulates, and then takes it out again and recasts it, not once but several times. [1921]

“Conrad Boards Fishing Smack, Ignores Leviathan.” Sun (New York), 21 May 1923: 3.

1 For details on him, see the Ellis entry below.

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On a visit to Boston harbour, JC hardly glanced at the world’s largest passenger ship, but instead spent more than an hour talking with some fishermen. He wanted to throw a pound of tea from the wharf, but his friends dissuaded him.1

“Conrad Departs, Worn Out by our Killing Kindness.” World (New York), 3 June 1923: 14. JC looked tired, and seemed to be suffering severely from gout. He said he was not as hale and hearty for his age as he should be, and that he did not plan very far ahead. He had been familiar with US geography and history since boyhood. [Interviewed in America]

“Conrad Doesn’t Reach Wharf.” Boston Sunday Globe, 20 May 1923: 13. Describes JC’s visit to Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts, the sights he saw and the fishermen he talked to.

“Conrad for ‘movies’, but can’t sell one.” New York Times, 8 May 1923: 16. JC has a slight accent, and is rather reserved and shy. He admired Crane’s amazing feat of writing The Red Badge of Courage without having seen the war. Once, when Crane asked JC about Balzac, he wired his wife to say he would not be home and they spent the whole night talking. JC described one of his trips round Cape Horn and suggested that seamen were more like factory hands now. JC said, “I don’t remember everything about my books. I know much less about them than most people. You are asking me things about which I know nothing.” He denied discovering any new form, and, as for style, it was “something about which I never bother; it is enough to get 1 On 16 May 1923, JC and his party arrived in Boston, staying for five days at the Copley Plaza Hotel. Then the largest passenger ship in the world, the SS Leviathan (originally the Vaterland) was launched in 1913 and weighed 54,282 gross tonnes.

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the story forward without bothering about these side subjects.” Asked about his ironical treatment of life, JC laughingly replied, “What is an ironical?” In the typescript of Nostromo, he had found an ambiguous paragraph at the start of a chapter. He could not remember what he had tried to say in it, so he deleted it. He refused to say where his work on The Rescue had resumed. He likes movies. Novelists had long tried to put moving pictures of life into words, he said, and it was an essential of novels that they moved. He had once spent a month, bored to extinction, trying to write a film scenario, but it had been rejected. [JC interviewed by a score of reporters at F. N. Doubleday’s Long Island home, 7 May 1923.]

“Conrad in East Anglia.” Journal of the Joseph Conrad Society (UK), 4.3 (February 1979): 11–13. [Reprints several articles from local newspapers of the 1930s describing JC’s visits to Lowestoft in 1878, his experiences in the Skimmer of the Sea, his education in the English language, and recollections of him as “Polish Joe.”]

“Conrad Pays Tribute to Mark Twain.” Mentor, 12.4 (May 1924): 45. [JC interviewed during his visit to America, May 1923] JC said that Mark Twain must have been a good pilot to write of steamboat life as he did. He first read Twain in London in the late 80s. “Innocents Abroad was all the rage.1 But his descriptions of life in America – some of the short stories as well as the longer books – those are what count. They have life – American life. They are authentic.” Twain’s The Mississippi Pilot 2 came closest to JC’s own life (this was the original title of Life on the Mississippi, JC explained). JC says he often thought of Twain and this book in the Congo.

1 The Innocents Abroad (1869). 2 Life on the Mississippi (1883). JC quotes from this novel in a letter to Edward Garnett of 18 July 1897 (CL1 365).

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“Conrad, Sea Writer, Here for First Time.” New York Herald, 2 May 1923: 24. [Ray, ed., 175–77] JC had a leisurely enunciation of English. He admitted he was a Victorian, and that most of his reading was in nineteenth-century authors. He had not read John Burroughs,1 but had read Poe in French. He was fond of Emerson2 and Whitman,3 and had read Fenimore Cooper.4 In reply to a question about his possibly dual personality, he said that he suspected he had three – Pole, sailor, landsman. He had tried to return to the sea, but he had had to go back to writing. It was not until after The Nigger that he realized his vocation was to be writing.

“Conrad, Sea Writer, Here on First Visit.” New York Times, 2 May 1923: 21. JC arrived in New York yesterday aboard the Tuscania. He was more interested in a little three-masted schooner than in Manhattan’s skyline. He said that he had not read much fiction, “although, of course, I know the outstanding men.” Describing himself as a sailor, first and last, he explained that his life was not a literary one. In reply to a question, he said that of his own books the one he prefers is “It Depends on the Day” [!] His books were like children to him: “You like one better than the others some days, but love them all.” 1 John Burroughs (1837–1921), American naturalist, essayist, critic, and poet, best known as a nature writer. 2 Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82), American poet and philosopher. In a letter to Cunninghame Graham of 1897, JC referred to him as “the gentle Emerson” (CL1 423). 3 Walt Whitman (1819–92), American poet. 4 JC discusses his reading of James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) in “Tales of the Sea” (1898; rpt. in Notes on Life and Letters). JC told David Garnett, Edward’s son, in 1902 that “I would recommend you to begin with Last of the Mohicans – then go on with the Deerslayer and end with the Prairie. I read them at your age in that order; and I trust that you, of a much later generation, shall find in these pages some at least of the charm which delighted me then and has not evaporated even to this day. […] I believe that you shall respond – as I did in my time – to the genuine feeling of the descriptions and the heroic temper of the narrative” (CL2 467). In a letter to Arthur Symons in 1908, JC said that “F. Cooper is a rare artist. He has been one of my masters. He is my constant companion” (CL4 101).

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The war had prevented a planned visit to America in 1915.1 He laughingly outlined the three periods in his life, each of which offered novelties distinct from the others. The first was his departure from Poland and his life at sea. The second was his return to the land, and the third was his marriage and his plan to return to sea, which was abandoned because numerous “little schemes” obliged him to continue writing.

“Conrad Visits Boston.” New York Times, 21 May 1923: 15. JC showed most interest in the port, and wished to throw a pound of tea from the wharf. He spent an hour with the crew of a fishing schooner, and disputed their use of the term “trawls.” In Cambridge, he wished to see the houses of Lowell2 and Longfellow,3 who both appealed to him favourably. He laughed outright at the Germanic Museum,4 being amused that the Kaiser should give anything to Harvard. [Report of JC’s visit to Boston, 20 May 1923.]

“The Gossip Shop.” Bookman (New York), 57 (July 1923): 587–88. [Account of JC’s visit to Yale Univerity, May 1923] JC was much disturbed by the variety of questions tossed to him by the reporters [some of whom are identified], but he rose magnificently to the occasion. He dismissed angrily a question about technique, asserting that “I write to please myself” and “I hope that there are others like myself to read and to be pleased” (587). He said that he dictated his novels now, because “if 1 JC told John Quinn in July 1914 that “In October I may be in New York. […] The visit as a whole frightens me a little; but my literary agent Mr Pinker is coming over with me and that is comforting in a way” (CL5 403). 2 James Russell Lowell (1819–91), American poet and man of letters. Lowell lived his entire life in Elmwood, a mansion built in 1767 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that is now home to the president of Harvard University. 3 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82), American poet. Longfellow House, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was built in 1759 and was at one time the home of George Washington. Longfellow moved there in 1837, and his family continued to occupy it until 1950. 4 Now the Busch-Reisinger Museum (founded 1901) of Harvard University. In 1902, Kaiser Wilhelm II donated a large collection of plaster casts of art objects.

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he sits at a typewriter himself he wastes too much time in the choice of the individual word.”

“Jessie Conrad, Harold Frederic, and Kate Lyons: An Unpublished Letter.” Conradiana, 3.1 (1970–71): 6, 8. JC’s chief objection to Harold Frederic1 as a man was his exasperating habit, during dinner at Brede Place, of usurping Crane’s role as host and taking the head of his table. [Letter from Jessie Conrad to Paul Haines, April 1935.]

“Joseph Conrad.” New York Tribune, 3 May 1923: 12. [JC interviewed on arrival in US. Similar to many other such reports]

“Joseph Conrad Arrives; Calls Writing a Grind.” New York Evening Post, 1 May 1923: 1–2. JC talked of Henry James, whom he used to visit twice a year. He regretted that he had not answered James Huneker’s last letter to him before his death.2 [Typical account of JC’s interview on arrival at New York.]

“Joseph Conrad Here for Visit.” Sun (New York), 1 May 1923: 9. [Account of JC’s interview on arrival in New York. Nothing new.]

“Joseph Conrad Ill.” New York Times, 3 May 1923: 19. JC, suffering from gout, lumbago and fatigue, will rest for a week at the home of F. N. Doubleday at Oyster Bay. [JC’s visit to America.]

1 Harold Frederic (1856–1898), American author and journalist, a friend of Stephen Crane. 2 Huneker died in 1921; JC’s last surviving letter to him is dated 1913 (CL5 236).

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“Joseph Conrad Leaving.” New York Times, 2 June 1923: 14. JC departs from New York today aboard the Majestic, sailing to Southampton.

“Joseph Conrad Makes First Visit Here on Tuscania.” Evening World (New York), 1 May 1923: 2. JC said the Tuscania was “not a ship, it’s an art gallery.” He praised Walter Hines Page, Ambassador to Britain during the war.1 [Account of JC’s arrival in New York.]

“Majestic leaves for Europe with Record Passenger List. Joseph Conrad returning Home among more than 800 in Cabins.” New York Herald, 3 June 1923: 14. On departure from New York, JC remarked that everything in America was even greater than his boyhood imagination had pictured.

“Majestic took 800 in her First Cabin. Joseph Conrad, Novelist of the Sea, sails on Big Liner with Praise for America.” New York Times, 3 June 1923: 5, Section I, Pt. 2. JC, addressed as Captain, said he preferred to be called Mr Conrad. During his visit he had found everything much greater even than in his boyhood dreams of America. He had been surprised that his novels were so widely read. He had chosen the name “Concord” for the forthcoming edition of his works because of its connotations with British and American ideals, and because of the word’s beautiful sound.

1 Walter Hines Page (1855–1918). As the partner of F. N. Doubleday, he was one of JC’s American publishers. From 1913 to 1918, Page was the US Ambassador to Great Britain, and he and his colleagues helped to rescue the Conrads from their war-time difficulties in Vienna in 1914.

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“Mrs Adolph Korzeniowski.” Conradiana, 2.3 (1969–70): 147. According to Mrs Korzeniowski, a New York resident in her seventies, her husband’s grandfather and JC’s father would meet to talk with their uncle Zachary in Cracow. JC himself would deny cousin relationships and discourage talk about Poland to protect relatives in possible political danger. Korzeniowskis are “independent, rebellious, and very sensitive – they wear their nerves on the surface of their skin.”

“Personalities: Joseph Conrad.” Academy, 66 (20 February 1904): 198; rpt. in Norman Sherry, Conrad: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973, 162–63. [Ray, ed., 212–13] JC said to the anonymous interviewer, about criticism, that “praise and blame to my mind are of singularly small import, yet one cares for the recognition of a certain ampleness of purpose” (163).

“Press Notes.” Conradiana, 1.1 (1968–69): 89. Kurier Polski, 7 July 1967, reports that 75-year-old Mirosława Korzeniowska-Oleksińska, whose father was JC’s cousin, visited JC in her thirties, when her father was in London.

Arnold, Fred “Where Conrad Held Court.” Daily Telegraph, 8 January 1958: 6. [Letter to the Editor] JC’s favourite inn was the Fleur-de-lys in Canterbury.1 In late years, both before and after his trip to America in 1923, JC would arrive about nine o’clock. He had a seat reserved for him near the window, and would sit and chat for an hour in his forceful and staccato fashion. He drank gin and voiced robust opinions.

1 See John Conrad, Joseph Conrad: Times Remembered (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 156–57.

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Atherton, Gertrude Adventures of a Novelist. London: Cape, 1932, 452–53. Atherton1 recalls her frequent meetings with Sir Frank Swettenham,2 who knew JC well in Asia.3 He said that JC was obliged to write every book six times. First, he tumbles out a mass of words, incoherent but bristling with ideas. Then he laboriously “straightens them out,” and pulls them “this way and that” until his events are arranged in order. Then he “dives into his characters and brings them to life.” The last two revisions are devoted to “polishing up his style” (452).

Austin, Mary Earth Horizon: Autobiography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1932, 312–13, 342, 343. Mary Austin4 visited JC twice [ca. mid-1909 and 1922]. On her first visit, H. G. Wells introduced her to JC, who was not satisfied with his 1 Gertrude Franklin Atherton (née Horn, 1857–1948), American novelist best known for her social and historical fiction set in California (see CL4 62). 2 Frank Athelstane Swettenham (1850–1946; knighted 1897), colonial administrator, was largely responsible for the development of roads, railways, and social services in the Malay States, 1877–82. He initiated the Federated States and became their first Resident General, 1895; High Commissioner, Malay States, 1901–04; and author of several works on Malaya. See Swettenham’s “The Story of Lord Jim,” Times Literary Supplement, 6 September 1923: 588 (described below). 3 That Conrad knew Swettenham “well” is an exaggeration. His contacts with land were brief, and his close familiarity with a high-ranking civil servant is doubtful. 4 Mary Austin (née Hunter, 1868–1934) was an American nature-writer, journalist, and feminist, best known for The Land of Little Rain (1903), an account of the California Desert. Austin wrote to JC from New York on 21 September 1921, detailing her numerous ideas for publicizing his work in the US. JC told Pinker on 4 October 1921 that “When it comes to publicity anybody’s voluntary help may be accepted and in the case of Mrs A. she is much less noxious than she looks and talks; and that air of a very superior scarecrow she has doesn’t come through the print” (CL7 346).

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publishers’ returns: “I stand on the shore and make my cry into the dark, and only now and then a cry comes back to me” (313). On her second visit, JC kept telling Austin, who knew George Bernard Shaw, that “the Fabians were no longer the intellectual leaders, and that I was wasting my time on them” (342). JC felt that he might not have long to live, and had not provided sufficiently for his wife. He was immensely pleased to have sold The Rover to the Pictorial Review for a large sum.1

“Joseph Conrad tells what women don’t know about men.” Pictorial Review, 24.12 (September 1923): 17, 28, 30–31; abstr. in Ann Daghistany, “Mary Austin’s ‘Joseph Conrad Tells What Women Don’t Know About Men,’” Conradiana, 8 (1976): 183–84. [Austin interviewed JC at Bishopsbourne, Kent in 1922.] JC has no understanding of American women or their difficulties of social adjustment. “Why should there be any difficulty?” he asked (17). JC said of his wife that “she makes a kind of peace around me” (31).2

“Typhoon.” In George T. Keating, A Conrad Memorial Library. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1929, 103–10. When Austin first met JC,3 all he knew of America was that it was beginning to seek him out. They discussed the role of women in American society and literature. At their second meeting [Oswalds, 1922], JC praised the impersonal quality of man in adventure with the elements, and admitted that most of his stories “began in a sea mood, an aspect or motion of the sea in which somehow the sea participated, if not governing at least subtending the spirit and action of the piece” (109). JC thought that the immensity of the sea saved men like MacWhirr 1 The Pictorial Review (New York), a women’s monthly, had a circulation of 2,500,000. Its serialization of The Rover, begun in September 1923, netted Conrad £2,000 (CL7 629). 2 This interview coincided with the beginning of the serialization of The Rover (see previous footnote). See also Austin’s letter to JC of 21 September 1921 in A Portrait in Letters: Correspondence to and about Conrad, ed. J. H. Stape and Owen Knowles (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996), 184–85. 3 Austin gives the date of this first meeting as 1908 here, but in her Earth Horizon, she suggests 1909.

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in Typhoon from “the urge toward an impossible articulateness,” while its immutability saved men like himself from “the importunity of their own souls” (109).

Barker, Dudley G. K. Chesterton: A Biography. London: Constable, 1973. Chesterton’s wife, Frances, records in her diary a visit to the Colvins, where there were “too many clever people,” such as JC, Laurence Binyon, Maurice Hewlett, and Henry James (149). [No date given.]

Beer, Thomas “The Princess Far Away.” Saturday Review of Literature, 1 (25 April 1925): 701–02. [Beer1 recalls JC’s remark about Henry James’s view of Stephen Crane:] “‘Bah’, said Conrad across a shoulder to Alfred Knopf2 and me, ‘James did not know what Stevie was talking about! It was beyond his limitation.’”

Bennett, Arnold Arnold Bennett: The “Evening Standard” Years: “Books and Persons” 1926–1931, ed. Andrew Mylett. London: Chatto & Windus, 1974, 96–98. [Ray, ed., 112–15] [Reprints Bennett’s “Some Personal Memories of Conrad: ‘Cad’ as a New Word: His ‘Twilight,’” Evening Standard, 3 November 1927: 7.] Bennett3 recalls that he first met JC about 28 years ago, at H. G. Wells’s 1 JC had written a preface to Thomas Beer’s Stephen Crane: A Study in American Letters (New York: Knopf, 1923). 2 See the entry on Knopf below. 3 Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) published his first stories in 1890 and his first novel, A Man from the North, eight years later. Very popular and successful in his own time, he is best known now for Anna of the Five Towns (1902), The Old Wives’ Tale (1908), and Clayhanger (1910). JC’s first letter to Bennett is dated 10 March 1902; they probably met through their mutual friend, H. G. Wells.

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house. Even at the end of his life, JC could not speak ten words without betraying his foreign origin. He read English literature eagerly, but did not understand it; for instance, he called Milton “woolly” (97). Early in their friendship, Bennett used the word “cad,” and was astonished when JC asked what it meant: “‘I have never heard the word,’ he said” (97). Once, Bennett met a very melancholy JC at J. B. Pinker’s office. He needed, but did not want, a change of activity, and he merely said, “Le pli est pris” (97; equivalent to “The die is cast”). They last met at the home of Mme Alvar,1 when Bennett had not seen him for some years. At first, JC did not recognise him, but shortly he came over and said, “My dearrr Bennett, […] you have been my faithful friend for 25 years, and I do not recognise you! Forgive me” (98).

“Confessions of a Book-buyer.” New Age, NS 3 (5 September 1908): 370. Bennett says that the only living imaginative authors whose books he buys regularly as they appear are JC, George Moore, and W. B. Yeats.

The Journals of Arnold Bennett, 1896–1928, ed. Newman Flower. 3 vols. London: Cassell, 1932–33. Hueffer told Bennett that JC was still as late as ever with his copy (1: 316; 9 April 1909). Bennett dined with JC at the Chelsea Arts Club; Thomas Hardy was also present (1: 358; 11 February 1910). Hueffer told him that JC first had the idea of writing after seeing a Pseudonym Library book at Vevey Station.2 He chose English in preference to French because 1 Louisa (“Loulette”) Alvar Harding (née Beckman, 1883–1965) was a Swedish soprano who performed as “Louise Alvar.” Married to Charles Copely Harding, a wealthy English barrister, she held a musical and literary salon at her home at 14 Holland Park, Kensington. Her circle included T. S. Eliot, Maurice Ravel, and Paul Valéry. The dinner Bennett describes took place on 17 April 1923, as established by the menu, signed by JC, Bennett, and Ravel. 2 The Pseudonym Library series was published by T. Fisher Unwin, to whom JC sent Almayer’s Folly on 4 July 1894: as he explained to Marguerite Poradowska eight days later, “J’ai envoyé mon manuscript à Fisher Unwin & Co qui publient une serie des romans anonyms” (CL1 160). In 1918, JC told W. H. Chesson that, in those days, “I knew nothing about publishers and

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there were plenty of stylists in French but none in English (2: 1; 16 June 1911). Pinker told Bennett that they had just seen JC, returned from Poland. “C. had no opinion of Russian army, and had come to England to influence public opinion to get good terms for Austria!” (2: 108; 4 November 1914).1 James Bone2 heard him praise Bennett’s Riceyman Steps (1923): “It has always been Bennett militant; but this is Bennett victorious,” JC said (3: 23; 9 January 1924).

The Letters of Arnold Bennett, ed. James Hepburn. 3 vols. London: Oxford University Press, 1966–70. J. B. Pinker told Bennett that the three greatest writers he had known [presumably including JC] had always frankly expressed their wish to be popular (1: 192; 1 July 1913). Bennett remembers once acting as a judge in a literary competition, with JC and John Squire3 (3: 141; 12 March 1921), and he told Richard Curle,4 on JC’s death, that he had seen little

1

2 3 4

one name was very much like another to me. But at that period of his existence T. F[isher] U[nwin] had published some paper-bound books by various authors and I had bought one or two of them […]. My ignorance was so great and my judgment so poor that I imagined that Almayer’s Folly would be just suitable for that series. As a matter of fact it was much too long, as you know, but this was my motive in the choice of publisher” (CL6 212). Another version of Conrad’s seeing volumes of the Pseudonym Library is in the Garland entry below. Vevey is a small city in Switzerland, on the north shore of Lake Geneva; JC had stayed at Champel-les-Bains, on the outskirts of Geneva, in May and June 1894. At 2 p.m. on 2 November 1914, off Gravesend, JC wrote to Marian Biliński, a senior civil servant whom JC had recently met in Zakopane and with whom he had had lively discussions about the future of Poland; his brother Leon was the Chancellor of the Austro-Hungarian Exchequer. JC assured him that “In a few hours we shall land, and we shall immediately take a train for London. Tomorrow I shall straight away endeavour to meet some influential people in the world of journalism” (CL5 423). James Bone (1872–1962) was the London editor of The Manchester Guardian. He was the brother of Muirhead, the artist, and David, sailor and author of The Brassbounder. J(ohn) C(ollings) Squire (1884–1958; knighted 1933), journal editor and critic. Richard Curle (1883–1969), journalist, critic, and author. After writing an appreciation of JC’s works, Curle met him in November 1912 and, although Curle was many years JC’s junior, the two men became close friends. His

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of him recently, although they met about a year ago. Bennett did not think then that JC would live very long (3: 224; 5 August 1924).

Bester, Alfred “Conversation with Rex Stout.” Holiday, 46 (November 1969): 38– 39, 65–67. Stout,1 a novelist, once stayed for a week at JC’s home.

Blanche, Jacques-Émile2 Mes Modèles. Paris: Delamain et Boutelleau, 1928, 176. Bearing a manuscript, JC once called on Henry James, but was turned away by a servant.

Bojarski, Edmund A. “Conrad’s First Polish Interview.” Polish American Studies, 17.3–4 (July–December 1960): 65–71. [Translation of Marian Dąbrowski, “Rozmowa z J. Conradem,” Tygodnik Illustrowany, No. 16 (18 April 1914); also translated in CUFE, 196–201.]

“A Conversation with Kipling3 on Conrad.” Kipling Journal, 34/162 Joseph Conrad: A Study (London: Kegan Paul, 1914) was the first book-length criticism of JC’s fiction, and written with his approval. The Arrow of Gold (1919) was dedicated to him. 1 Rex Todhunter Stout (1886–1975), American writer of detective fiction best known for his Nero Wolfe novels. 2 Jacques-Émile Blanche (1861–1942), French portrait painter. 3 It is not known when JC and Kipling (1865–1936) first became acquainted, and any meetings were certainly never frequent. Although Kipling lived quite close by in Sussex, he had few dealings with his many neighbouring writers;

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(June 1967): 12–15; rpt. in Kipling: Interviews and Recollections, ed. Harold Orel, 2 vols. London: Macmillan, 1983, 2: 326–31. Kipling said to Jan Perłowski, whom he met in Madrid in 1928, that it was sometimes difficult to understand JC when he spoke English. [For a complete translation of Perłowski’s “O Conradzie i Kiplingu,” see CUFE, 150–70.]

“Joseph Conrad’s Sentimental Journey: A Fiftieth Anniversary Review.” Texas Quarterly (Austin), 7.4 (1964): 156–65. [Includes translations of parts of Aniela Zagórska’s “Kilka wspomnień o Conradzie,” Wiadomości Literackie (1929), which is wholly translated in CUFE, 210–23.]

Bone, David “Joseph Conrad.” In Landfall at Sunset: The Life of a Contented Sailor. London: Duckworth, 1955, 154–60. Bone1 first met JC in the winter of 1919, at a University Club dinner in Liverpool,2 during which JC spoke of the “resolute character of seamen” incidentally, JC knew that the distance between Capel House and Kipling’s home at Burwash was 28 miles (see CL5 383), which might indicate some familiarity. In 1898, JC wrote an article on Kipling that was never published (CL2 32). There appears to be no surviving correspondence between the two men aside from an “enthusiastic note” (CL3 365) about The Mirror of the Sea (1906) printed in A Portrait in Letters: Correspondence to and about Joseph Conrad, ed. J. H. Stape and Owen Knowles (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996), 55-56. 1 David William Bone (1874–1959; knighted 1946), elder brother of Muirhead, the painter, first went to sea in 1891, and rose to become Commodore of the Anchor Line, which owned the Tuscania. In 1916, he was commander of the Cameronia when it was sunk in the Mediterranean, with the loss of 130 troops. He wrote many books and articles about life at sea, and JC wrote to him after the publication of his first novel, the autobiographical The Brassbounder (1910). The two men met in Liverpool in 1919. 2 In 1919, the Conrad family travelled to Liverpool, where Jessie was to undergo an operation; they stayed from 30 November to 24 December. The

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(154) with whom he had sailed. They met again in Glasgow on 20 April 1923, the day before sailing in the Tuscania for New York. Bone, the ship’s captain, thought JC would be interested in recent developments in shipping; although he quickly understood the new mechanical devices, he was not at all impressed by their efficiency: “strangely, for one so understanding and cultured in himself, it was the ‘gentility’ and apparent confidence of the new ship manners that seemed to disquiet him the most” (157). Bone’s brother, Muirhead,1 made a drypoint etching of JC during the voyage; this was the first picture made of him at sea, although, he admitted with a disapproving grimace, there had been many photographs. Bone remarked to JC how extraordinary it was that a Polish aristocrat should sail in a merchant ship and become a British subject. JC replied, “Bone! I am more British than you are. You are only British because you could not help it” (160). [Incorporates most of Bone’s “Introduction” to Joseph Conrad: Four Tales (London: Oxford University Press, 1950), vii–xv.]

“Memories of Conrad.” Saturday Review of Literature, 2 (7 November 1925): 286. [Letter to the editor] Bone once wrote to JC, urging him to accept the offer of an honorary degree. Bone was told that, after receiving his letter, JC stood at his dressing-table for fifteen minutes, brushing his hair with both hands.2 JC’s decision to decline the degree is an example of what Bone calls his embarrassed consternation at honours.3 University Club persuaded JC to attend a banquet in honour of the Merchant Service, and he made a speech in praise of British sailors. In a letter to Sir T. Ashley Sparks of 22 September 1925, Bone recalled JC’s “affright” before giving this speech: “He had a feeling that his diction was not impeccable (a lovable distinction in speech I always thought it)” (J. H. Stape and Owen Knowles, ed., A Portrait in Letters: Correspondence to and about Conrad [Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996], 254). 1 For details on him, see his article below. 2 Jessie Conrad notes that “brushing his hair many times was a sure sign of irritation” (Joseph Conrad As I Knew Him [London: Heinemann, 1926], 140; see also Joseph Conrad and His Circle [London: Jarrolds, 1935], 256). 3 JC declined five honorary degrees in all.

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JC first wrote to Bone after the publication of his The Brassbounder (1910), which Edward Garnett had brought to his notice. They met eight years later, shortly after the end of the war, in Liverpool, at a University Club dinner in honour of the Merchant Service. It was difficult to induce JC to attend, for he feared a request to speak, since his diction was not impeccable. Bone, however, persuaded JC to speak in public for the first time, and in his speech he was positively boastful of his pride in the art of seamanship and of his great privilege in serving under the Union Jack.

Bone, Muirhead1 “The Soul of Conrad.” Manchester Guardian Weekly, 11.6 (8 August 1924): 124–25. [Ehrsam 138 wrong date and pagination] [Ray, ed., 164–68] JC admired Anatole France above all French writers,2 and had less interest in Russian writers. He had once ordered men working on deck to put a sail away, for he anticipated a change in the weather, and the Captain, overhearing him, growled to the mate, “That second officer knows the weather.”3 He knew then that he would win promotion. JC was called “Ulysses” in Marseilles: “They joked at me then, but I have made my voyage.”4 In JC’s estimation, Edward Garnett could do no wrong. [Account of conversation during JC’s voyage to America, May 1923.]

1 Muirhead Bone (1876–1953; knighted 1937), water-colour painter and etcher, was the first official war artist to be appointed during the war, and was a leading force behind the founding of the Imperial War Museum. He met JC in Glasgow on the day before their departure for New York on 21 April 1923. They sailed together in the Tuscania, captained by Bone’s brother, David. 2 Anatole France (1844–1924). JC’s two short pieces on him (1904 and 1908) are collected in Notes on Life and Letters (1921). In 1905, JC commented to H. G. Wells that “it cannot be denied that A F apart from being a great master of prose is one of the finest minds of our time” (CL3 288). 3 JC sailed in five ships as second officer, between 1881 and 1887. 4 JC was based in Marseilles for four years, between 1874 and 1878. “Ulysses” is the nickname of M. George in The Arrow of Gold (see Part 1).

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Brock, H. I. “Joseph Conrad, Able Seaman.” New York Times (Book Review), 10 August 1924: 1, 18. JC sat for a portrait by Oscar Edward Cesare,1 who said that “I never felt so much at home with a victim,” except, perhaps, when he drew Lenin. Brock met JC [in June 1911] at Capel House: “he was big enough to tell the truth to a stranger […] the attribution of greatness to him was easy” (18). Brock met JC again during the latter’s visit to America, May 1923.

Brugmans, Linette, ed. The Correspondence of André Gide and Edmund Gosse, 1904–1928. New York University Studies in Romance Languages and Literature, No. 2. Crestport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1959, 25, 167–70. JC attended a party in honour of Sir Edmund Gosse in September 1920, together with Hardy, Kipling, Bennett, George Moore and Chesterton. Gide [16 January 1921] wrote that JC thought Philippe Neel’s translation of Under Western Eyes was excellent.2 Gosse [25 August 1924] wrote that “we have lost Conrad, a beautiful figure. But he had said all he had to say, and went on writing in order to make money. He will live in half a dozen of his early books” (170). It was Paul Claudel3 who first spoke of JC to Gide, in 1905. 1 H(enry) I(rving) Brock (1876–1961) was assistant editor of The New York Times Book Review. (When Brock sailed from Liverpool to Boston in the Winifredian on 17 June 1911, he was described as being aged 34 years and employed as a journalist; Boston Passenger Lists, 1820–1943). Oscar Edward Cesare (1885–1948) was an American cartoonist, artist, and journalist. He painted JC in America in 1923, and had drawn Lenin in Russia in 1922. 2 Neel’s translation, Sous les yeux d’occident, appeared in 1920. Writing to Gide in November [?] 1920, JC commented that “Je suis très, mais très content de la traduction de Western Eyes” (CL7 212; see also 220, 321). 3 Paul Claudel (1868–1955), French poet, dramatist, and diplomat.

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Cadby, Carine1 “Conrad’s dislike of the camera and how it was conquered by Will Cadby.” Graphic, 110 (1 November 1924): 728. [Ray, ed., 147–48] Perceval Gibbon2 first persuaded JC to be photographed. He was delighted to hear the photographer’s assistant remark that she had enjoyed most in Typhoon the captain’s letters to his wife. JC said they had not been mentioned by reviewers or friends, and he confessed to a weakness for those letters himself.

Carabine, Keith, and J. H. Stape “Family Letters: Conrad to a Sister-in-Law and Jessie Conrad on Conrad’s Death.” The Conradian, 30.1 (2005): 127–31. Carabine and Stape print a previously unpublished letter from Jessie Conrad to her sister, Dolly Moor (née Alice Dora George, 1884-1949), 1 The Cadbys were professional photographers. In 1901, William Arthur Cadby (ca. 1868–1937) was living with his wife, Carine, at Platt Cottage, Wrotham, Kent, on his own means (born Hampstead). Carine was 30 years of age (born Brighton). The Cadbys photographed JC on two occasions, in 1912 and September 1913. The anecdotes recorded here relate to the 1912 sitting. In the September 1913 sitting, at Capel House, the Cadbys required two photographs of JC in formal pose. Alfred A. Knopf, a young assistant at JC’s American publishers, Doubleday, Page, had proposed making a publicity pamphlet that would include a formal portrait, together with some informal snapshots, to assist sales of the forthcoming Chance. JC described the Cadbys in a letter to Knopf as “a couple in great repute as photographers. Very artistic” (CL5 258–59; see also John S. Lewis, “‘Artless Photos’: Two Previously Unknown Photographs of Joseph Conrad,” Conradiana, 8 [1976]: 203–08). John Conrad gives an amusing account of the 1913 sitting in Joseph Conrad: Times Remembered (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 62–64. (Three of the photographs are reproduced.) 2 (Reginald) Perceval Gibbon (1879–1926), writer, war correspondent, and motorcycle enthusiast. The Gibbons lived at Trosley in Kent, and Jessie Conrad described Gibbon as “perhaps the closest and for both Joseph Conrad and for me, the most intimate,” of their friends. JC met him in 1909.

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dated 17 September 1924, giving a detailed and intimate account of her reactions and of the events surrounding and immediately following JC’s death.

Carroll, Eleanor “Conrad’s books hold his secrets.” New York Evening Post, 8 May 1923: 16. JC enjoys dictating his novels, for he is forced to speak and cannot “dream ahead by the hour about my tale, or write one phrase and revise it and re-revise it as I would do if I were alone.” On seamen: “Loneliness moulds them. They are without love and without children.” [Interviewed at the home of F. N. Doubleday, 7 May 1923, at Oyster Bay, Long Island]

Charpier, Jacques Saint-John Perse. Paris: Bibliothèque Idéale, 1962, 37. Charpier records that Perse visited JC in 1912, at Ashford, where he met W. H. Hudson and Arthur Symons.1

Chesson, W. H.2 “The Discovery of Joseph Conrad.” To-day, 5 (June 1919): 152. [Ray, ed., 83–84] 1 Perse seems to have been introduced to JC by Agnes Tobin, who accompanied him on a visit to Capel House (see CL5 87). W(illiam) H(enry) Hudson (1841–1922), naturalist and novelist. 2 W(ilfrid) H(ugh) Chesson (1870–1952) was a novelist, biographer, and critic, and at the time of receiving the MS of JC’s first novel was a reader for T. Fisher Unwin, the London publisher. JC had submitted the MS on 4 July 1894 for publication in the firm’s Pseudonym Library, although it eventually proved too lengthy for the series. Unwin wrote to JC accepting his novel on 4 October 1894, the first typewritten letter he had received. Almayer’s Folly was published on 29 April 1895.

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Chesson, a reader at T. Fisher Unwin, notes that it was he, not Edward Garnett, who made the first favourable report on Almayer’s Folly. He recorded the receipt of the novel on 5 July 1894, and, “when the author gently pressed for a decision,” he passed it on to Garnett, who wrote “Hold on to this” after reading it. [Letter to the Editor]

“Chronicle and Comment: Conrad’s First Ship.” Bookman (New York), 41 (April 1915): 128–30. [Ehrsam: 375] G. F. W. Hope’s1 drawing of the Otago,2 made according to a minute description given by JC, is reproduced. Hope says that, in the early days of their friendship, JC would visit his home and read portions of the manuscript of Almayer’s Folly.

Clemens, Cyril “A Chat with Joseph Conrad.” Hobbies, 70 (January 1966): 85, 88, 92; rpt. in Conradiana, 2.2 (1969–70): 97–103. [Clemens3 claims his article is an interview with JC in the early 1920s. Wholesale plagiarism of, for example, Gertrude Atherton’s Adventures of a Novelist and “Conrad pays tribute to Mark Twain,” Mentor (1924), q.v.]

1 G(eorge) F(ountaine) W(eare) Hope (né Hopps, 1854–1930) met JC in 1880 and became one of his first friends in England. He had been a sailor and had sought to make his fortune in mining. Currently a “Director of Companies,” he and JC used to go sailing in his yawl the Nellie, as recollected in “Heart of Darkness.” He lived in Essex. 2 The Otago was JC’s first command in 1888, when he was thirty. 3 Cyril Clemens (1902–99), a cousin of Mark Twain, founded the International Mark Twain Society in 1930.

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Clifford, Sir Hugh1 “Concerning Conrad and his Work.” Empire Review, 47 (May 1928): 287–94. JC’s account of his first meeting with Clifford, in the “Author’s Note” to A Personal Record,2 is amusing, apocryphal, and erroneous. They met in 1899 (not 1898, as JC says), and their conversation about the alternative use of French or English as JC’s medium of expression is said to have taken place on 22 May 1903, the month preceding Clifford’s article on JC in The North American Review [which appeared, in fact, in June 1904]. On 5 May 1903, Clifford brought JC to lunch with an American businessman to arrange serialization of Nostromo. A deal was arranged but it never appeared in the (unnamed) magazine.3 Clifford maintains the notion that JC exercised a choice between English and French. Although JC later denied strenuously that he had ever 1 Hugh Charles Clifford (1866–1941; knighted 1909), a colonial official and novelist, and essayist, was especially associated with Malaya. Arriving there in 1883, he became a cadet in Perak, and began a close association of more than twenty years with the Malay people. He learned the language and spent long periods living in remote parts of the country. Those experiences gave Clifford a romantic taste for the exotic that became the subject of his many essays, stories, and novels published from 1896. He was resident of Pahang from 1896 to 1903, with a brief interval as governor of North Borneo and Labuan. Leaving Malaya in 1903 to become colonial secretary in Trinidad, and later governor successively of Ceylon, the Gold Coast, and Nigeria, he continued to write about Malaya. His career closed with two years as Governor of the Straits Settlements and High Commissioner of the Malay States, from 1927 to 1929. The long-lasting friendship between JC and Clifford began in 1899, when the latter and his wife visited the Pent. There is an illustration of Clifford in CL6. 2 A Personal Record (London: Grant, 1925), v–viii. 3 Two days after this lunch, JC wrote to J. B. Pinker about Harper and Brothers: “it strikes me that they may yet be of some use for Nostromo […] Harvey asked me if that story was placed. He protested a great admiration etc etc for my work” (CL3 32–33). This is a reference to George Harvey (1864– 1928), President of Harper’s and editor of Harper’s Weekly. He had made a fortune in constructing electric railways and later became Ambassador to Great Britain (1921–23). Harper and Brothers published the book (not the serial) version of Nostromo in 1904.

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said this to Clifford, the latter notes that JC was “cursed by an unreliable memory” (294). JC spoke French with a purity of intonation, fluency and correctness, and English with a strong French, not Polish, accent.

“Joseph Conrad: Some Scattered Memories.” Bookman’s Journal and Print Collector, 11.37 (October 1924): 3–6. Clifford first met JC in summer 1899. On his next visit to England in 1903, Clifford invited JC to meet some ardent admirers of his work at a Wellington Club1 luncheon, such as Hardy, Clodd, Gosse, Swettenham, John Rodger, Arthur E. J. Legge and Maurice Cameron.2 A month or two later, Clifford dragged JC to lunch with George Harvey, the manager of Harper’s. At this meeting, a contract for a serial was concluded [Nostromo].3 In 1910, Clifford introduced Gordon Bennett4 to the works of JC, and Bennett telegraphed the New York Herald from Bombay to 1 An exclusive club in Piccadilly. 2 Thomas Hardy (1840–1928); Edward Clodd (1840–1930), banker and rationalist author; Edmund Gosse (1849–1928; knighted 1925), poet and man of letters; Swettenham (see note on Gertrude Atherton entry above); John Pickersgill Rodger (1851–1910; knighted 1899), later Resident in Perak; Arthur Edward John Legge (1863–1934), poet; Maurice Alexander Cameron (1855–1936; knighted 1900), Malayan administrator. This seems to have been the first meeting between Conrad and Hardy; see Martin Ray, “Hardy and Conrad,” Thomas Hardy Journal, 12.2 (May 1996): 82–84. 3 This is apparently the meeting described by Clifford in his Empire Review article noted above. 4 “James Gordon Bennett (1841–1918) inherited the New York Herald from his father and set up its first international edition. He financed various expeditions (including Stanley’s in search of Livingstone) and, a keen yachtsman himself, established prizes for international sailing and flying races” (CL4 365). JC wrote to John Galsworthy on 8 September 1910 that “Gordon Bennett made a long stay in Ceylon late last year and Hugh Clifford […] fired into him the whole, I believe, of my prose. He must have in addition preached not a little to that American citizen – but of that he does not boast. [… Clifford], good fellow, has been patting himself on the back ever since he heard of the offer from the N.Y. Herald” (CL4 365). The offer from the Herald came through in August 1910, but in the event a contract was not signed until a year later (see Najder, 366). Chance is dedicated to Clifford, “whose steadfast friendship is responsible for the existence of these pages.” The novel was serialized in The New York Herald, 21 January–30 June 1912.

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“buy a Conrad” for serialization in its Sunday edition: Chance’s dedication to Clifford is an acknowledgement of this help. JC had a strong foreign accent, and spoke somewhat brokenly when moved. Under the stress of excitement, he would frequently erupt into fluent and idiomatic French.

A Talk on Joseph Conrad and his Work. Colombo: The English Association, Ceylon Branch, 1927. At their first meeting in 1899, JC asked Clifford “if I could throw any light upon the authorship of certain reviews of his earlier books, which had reached him through his publishers, and which had appeared in a journal called the Singapore Free Press. I tried to recall the actual character of the various critical impertinences which I had perpetrated in those articles, but my mind was almost a blank on the subject. Accordingly I had nothing to say but that I was afraid that I had written them; and I well remember the relief I felt when I found how unreservedly Conrad accepted the fact that his knowledge of Malaya was not very extensive.” “I induced him on a few occasions to come to London and persuaded him to let me introduce him to Gosse, Thomas Hardy, and many other of the literary lights of the beginning of this century. Conrad did not greatly shine in this company. He was naturally extraordinarily reserved, very shy; and moreover he was embarrassed by a simplicity and lack of self-confidence which were quite astonishing in one who was already winning such very high praise from the best critics of the day.” Clifford repeats his account of JC arranging with George Harvey to publish Nostromo in Harper’s Weekly: “with this contract in his pocket I put [JC] into a hansom cab to see him to his train. All the way to the station he made not a single reference to the contract he had secured, but from time to time ejaculated in his markedly foreign accent, ‘Horréeble Personalitee! Horréeble Personalitee!’ patently referring to the American gentleman who had not attracted his favourable attention.” [This talk mentions all the principal points that Clifford discusses in his other work on JC.]

Clodd, Edward Memories. London: Chapman & Hall, 1916, 186.

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Clodd1 prints a letter he received from George Gissing,2 dated 30 November 1902, in which Gissing expresses the opinion that “no man at present writing fiction has such a grip at reality, such imaginative vigour, and such wonderful command of language, as Joseph Conrad. I think him a great writer – there’s no other word.”

Colvin, Sir Sidney Memories and Notes of Persons and Places, 1895–1912. New York: Scribner’s, 1921, 149. In a discussion of Robert Louis Stevenson’s works, Colvin3 mentions that JC “even prefers In the South Seas to Treasure Island,4 principally for the sake of what he regards as a very masterpiece of native portraiture in the character of Tembinok, King of Apemama.”

Conrad, Borys “‘Four Eyes’: Memories of H.M.S. Worcester.” The Conradian, 6.4 (December 1981): 26–31. JC gave his son a copy of Frederick Benton Williams’s On Many Seas: The Life and Exploits of a Yankee Sailor (1897),5 during the first year of Borys’s training on the Worcester.6 JC said of it, “You will like this – it is written by a Seaman” (26). JC cherished his son’s First Class Extra certificate, awarded at the end of his training.7 1 Edward Clodd (1840–1930), banker and rationalist author. 2 George Robert Gissing (1857–1903), novelist. 3 Sidney Colvin (1845–1927; knighted 1911), critic of art and literature. For more detail, see the Hart-Davis entry below. 4 In the South Seas (1896), a collection of Stevenson’s articles and essays on his travels in the Pacific, and Treasure Island (1883). 5 Frederick Benton Williams, pseudonym of Herbert Elliott Hamblen, civil engineer and author, born in New Hampshire in 1849. He went to sea and served as chief mate, 1864–78. 6 Borys was educated in the HMS Worcester, a training-ship moored at Greenhithe, from 1911 to 1913. 7 Borys noted elsewhere that his success “delighted my Father and he

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Conrad, Jessie “A Personal Tribute to the Late Percival [sic] Gibbon and Edward Thomas.” Bookman, 78 (September 1930): 323–24. Jessie Conrad first met Gibbon twenty years ago, at Someries, shortly after JC met him. JC told her, “I am sure you will like him, Jess, but be careful. He is well known for his repartee, he will give you as good as you send every time” (323). On the same occasion, she also met Edward Thomas, and he and Gibbon were usually together when she met them afterwards. On Thomas’s second visit to the Someries, he was awaiting the birth of his third child [August 1910]. She saw Thomas only a few days before his death [April 1917]. He was dressed in khaki, but, by mutual consent, no one mentioned the war or the future. Shortly afterwards, JC met Thomas for the last time fortuitously in London. His train was pulling out of the station when Thomas jumped in and said, “We meet, then, my dear Conrad, once more” (324). JC told Jessie of his strong impression that this had been their last meeting.

Conrad, John Joseph Conrad Today, 2.2 (January 1977): 44–45. [Two letters from John Conrad, the first dated 20 July 1976] JC enjoyed W. W. Jacobs’s Many Cargoes.1 He never discussed his work with his sons, preferring to keep his family and literary lives separate. He would occasionally show his wife a manuscript, however. John was aboard a Norwegian sailing ship with JC [September 1920], riding out a storm off Deal.2 The second, undated, letter recalls how JC told John’s tutor that the primary purpose of education was to teach “the young scamp” to think for himself.

cherished that piece of parchment to the end of his life” (My Father: Joseph Conrad [London: Calder & Boyars, 1970], 81). 1 W(illiam) W(ymark) Jacobs (1863–1943), author of popular maritime tales, including Many Cargoes (1896). See John Conrad, Times Remembered, 149, 167. 2 See also John Conrad, Times Remembered, 140–42, and Najder, 456.

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Cooper, Frederick George “Joseph Conrad: An Appreciation.” Blue Peter, 9.84 (March 1929): 128–32. JC, writes Cooper, “assured me that it had never been his object to write tales of the sea, although he found himself constantly referred to as a sea novelist” (129). [This comment is repeated, with slight changes, in Cooper’s “Some Aspects of Joseph Conrad,” Mariner’s Mirror, 26 (1940): 61–78.]

Corkill, Rachael A. “Conrad and Edmund Candler: A Neglected Correspondence.” Conradiana, 37 (2005): 11–22. In October 1918, Edmund Candler wrote to his brother Henry from London as follows: “I lunched with Conrad yesterday. He is a real friend. He knows and remembers every story in ‘The General Plan’!” (11; unpublished letter).1 In another unpublished letter to his brother of 5 July 1919, Candler described a visit to Spring Grove, Wye, on 28–29 June 1919: “I spent the weekend with Conrad at Wye, & on Sunday we motored to the new house he moves into – Bishopsbourne – in September,2 & back to Canterbury. . . . Richard Curle, the writer of a book on Conrad, was staying with him” (18).

Davidson, Jo Between Sittings: An Informal Autobiography of Jo Davidson. New York: Dial Press, 1951. Davidson was introduced to JC by Grace Willard.3 JC sat for his bust at 1 The General Plan was Candler’s collection of short stories, mainly with Indian themes, published by Blackwood in 1911. 2 The move to Oswalds in Bishopsbourne, Kent, began in early October 1919. 3 This meeting occurred in 1914. Jo Davidson (1883–1952), New York-born

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Davidson’s studio in Camden House Mews: “he spoke a curious English – his accent was entirely his own. As we talked, he would invariably break into French” (118). Davidson asked why he did not write in French: “‘to write French you have to know it. English is so plastic – if you haven’t got a word you need you can make it, but to write French you have to be an artist like Anatole France’” (118). Davidson took JC to lunch at the European Café and asked him whether he drew his characters from life “or whether they were purely children of his mind. His answer was: neither”: “Look,” said he, “see that man over there?” I looked up and saw an oldish man with a short straggly beard, a big nose and a gaunt face, bending over his plate, concentrating on his food. Conrad said, “You know, that man – he does so-and-so, and soand-so,” and he began spinning a yarn. Listening, I looked at the man, and was astonished at how true the story rang – I got to believing it. “I’ll go and ask him,” said I. “Don’t do that. It probably isn’t so, but it might be so” (119).

Davies, W. H. Later Days. London: Cape, 1925, 52–57, 60–62. Davies1 first met JC at the Mont Blanc Restaurant,2 and later visited him one Whitsuntide. A young Pole [Józef Retinger?], who had come over to discuss political matters relating to England’s attitude to Poland, was also sculptor, studied at Yale and in Paris. He was well-known for his portrait busts, including those of Einstein, Shaw, Wells, and Charlie Chaplin. JC told Pinker that he “looks like a southern Frenchman. As to his talent there’s no doubt about that” (CL5 565). He exhibited his bust of JC in 1916. 1 W(illiam) H(enry) Davies (1871–1940), working-class poet who lived as a tramp for some years. The Autobiography of a Super Tramp was published in 1908. On 18 May 1915, JC told Galsworthy that “I am so sorry we can’t come on Saturday. Some time ago, I invited, foolishly, a verse-writing man and I can’t put him off because he’s Davi[e]s the tramp-poet (!) and would think himself bitterly outraged if I were to do that” (CL5 477; Saturday was 22 May 1915). 2 In Gerrard St, Soho. Edward Garnett organized informal lunches there on Tuesdays.

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staying. Conrad and the other guest spoke in Polish. JC was distressed by Davies’s understanding that he had never actually commanded a ship. JC had recently signed a petition to obtain a Civil List pension for a certain writer whose work he did not like. He had wanted to be honest but had been “troubled by an overkind heart” (55). Davies and JC discussed the work of John Masefield, not as literary men but as sailors. JC seemed to suggest that the poems were not altogether true to life. Davies argued that a man like Dauber [in Dauber: A Poem (1913)], because of his unusual ability in drawing and painting, ought to have been one of the most respected men in the ship.1 JC agreed, “and said he had known cases of the same kind, where the life of a quiet dreamer like that would have been safer than any other life on the ship” (57). While discussing other authors, JC exclaimed that “Hudson is a giant!” (60).2

Davray, Henry-D.3 “Joseph Conrad.” Mercure de France (série moderne), 175 (1 octobre 1924) : 32–55. JC spoke English with a strong accent, and French with perfect ease and no accent. He seemed to have read everything in French literature; he could recite whole pages of Flaubert, knew Balzac well, and could quote poetry, but he judged realism to be insufficient in literature. He showed little inclination to discuss his travels, and direct, personal questions irritated him. Shortly after the war, JC said to Davray that “le romanesque est mort avec les chevaliers errants. Il n’y a plus de panache. II faut chercher ailleurs l’aventure, mais partout où l’homme la trouve, il la tue. Il en est de même sur la mer, ajoutait-il; il est plus utile à un commandant de transatlantique de bien danser, de présider une table avec distinction et de causer agréablement, que de savoir d’où souffle le vent” (47). JC often told Davray how much he owed to French culture, especially his “souci du style et de l’expression; sa recherche du mot juste, de 1 The main character is treated with contempt by his fellow sailors but falls to his death after an act of heroism. 2 W. H. Hudson. 3 Henry-D(urand) Davray (1873–1944), French translator and critic.

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l’équilibre de la phrase; son emploi des mots pour leur sonorité ou leur musique, leur force ou leur charme, leur puissance de signification ou de séduction” (55). When they first met, Davray expressed his regret that JC had not written in French, and JC “s’en excusa sous des prétextes un peu confus, et je vis bien que ma réflexion l’avait agacé” (55).

“Joseph Conrad.” La Semaine Littéraire (Geneva), 11.5 (1 août 1903): 361–63. Davray recalls his first meeting with JC in Sandling Station. H. G. Wells, who accompanied Davray, introduced them, and JC spoke “dans un français que j’aurais pu entendre la veille sur les boulevards.” Later, Davray met him at Wells’s home.1

“Lettres Anglaises.” Mercure de France (série moderne), 31 (1899): 265–66. Davray recalls several hours spent talking with JC, who had a communicative fervour and admiration for Flaubert, and could cite passages with accuracy, indicating an intimate knowledge.

“Lettres Anglaises.” Mercure de France (série moderne), 193 (1 janvier 1927) : 485–91. As an example of JC’s determination never to appear “en pantoufles” before public or friends, Davray cites a visit he once paid to JC, accompanied by H. G. Wells. JC was working when they arrived: “sans doute était-il en négligé, car il disparut en nous criant d’attendre, et il revint au bout d’un moment dans une tenue parfaitement correcte” (485). Davray’s first meeting with JC was some thirty years ago, at which Cunninghame Graham was also present. JC reduced the manuscript of Davray’s translation of “Karain” by a third, and he thought the story was improved in this form. “Ah! c’est en français que j’aurais dû écrire!” (491), he told Davray. 1 H. G. Wells lived at Sandgate, between Hythe and Folkestone, from 1898 to 1909. Sandling Station was JC’s local railway station at Pent Farm

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Dawson, Ernest1 “Some Recollections of Joseph Conrad.” Fortnightly Review, NS 124 (1 August 1928): 203–12. [Ray, ed., 213–15] W. E. Henley,2 who had never met JC, arranged for H. G. Wells to invite Dawson to Sandgate and have Conrad “on tap” [early 1901?]. There were certain words that JC, “so to speak, declined to learn” (206), such as “vowel,” which he pronounced (and, Dawson believed, wrote) as “wowvel,” and “used,” which became “usit.” He would often speak in French. “He spoke English with an un-English grace” (207). JC had read much English history, memoirs, and fiction, but not much poetry. He had not read Browning, he told Dawson, and “I don’t know my Stevenson at all well” (207). He praised the work of Wells and James, took delight in Dickens and had a whole-hearted admiration for Marryat3 and, especially, Fenimore Cooper. He had the highest reverence for Flaubert, and once declaimed a passage from Saint-Julien l’Hospitalier.4 JC admired Maupassant for his technique, and he ranked Stendhal very highly. The only book he ever lent Dawson was Le Rouge et le Noir. He never spoke of music or painting. JC said he began writing The Nigger, his favourite work, on honeymoon,5 and that Almayer’s Folly was written in Malaya, Rouen, London, the Congo, Geneva, etc. 1 Captain (later Major) Ernest Dawson (1884–1960) served in Burma as a magistrate and as an officer in the Rangoon Volunteer Rifles. JC’s first extant letter to him is dated 3 February 1903. 2 W(illiam) E(rnest) Henley (1849–1903), poet and highly influential editor, was the editor of the New Review when it published The Nigger of the “Narcissus” in 1897. He was reputedly the model for Long John Silver in R. L. Stevenson’s Treasure Island. 3 Captain Frederick Marryat (1792–1848), an early pioneer of the sea-story. He is now remembered for his autobiographical Mr Midshipman Easy (1836). See JC’s “Tales of the Sea” (1898) (rpt. Notes on Life and Letters). Marryat and Cooper had been his favourite boyhood reading. See also John Conrad, Times Remembered, 167. 4 In 1877, Flaubert published Trois contes, containing Un Cœur simple, La Légende de Saint-Julien l’Hospitalier, and Hérodias. 5 The Conrads departed for their honeymoon on 25 March 1896, the day after their wedding, renting a small house on Île-Grande. They returned to London in early September.

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One day, looking at Canterbury Cathedral, JC remarked that “I often forget that I am not an Englishman” (210). A year after the War, he advocated reconciliation with Germany: “It must be so, and it will be right” (211). On the day of his return from America [June 1923], JC met Dawson in London, and described his trip as a refreshing holiday, and a financially rewarding one. [A description of the funeral follows.]

Dent, J(oseph) M(allaby)1 The Memoirs of J. M. Dent, 1849–1926. London: Dent, [1921], 227– 28. Dent’s son, Hugh, comments in a footnote that JC, on his few visits to London, always visited Dent, and they would talk excitedly about literature or the war.

De Ternant, Andrew “An Unknown Episode of Conrad’s Life,” New Statesman, 31 (28 July 1928): 511. [Ray, ed., 73] JC worked in the early 1890s as a translator of Slavonic languages for a translating agency in New Oxford Street. De Ternant remembers JC showing to Edgar Lee, assistant editor of the St. Stephen’s Review, some translations of Polish short stories, but Lee regarded them as too “revolutionary” for his journal to print. [De Ternant does not specifically 1 In 1872, Dent (1849–1926) established a business as a bookbinder before moving to publishing in 1888. He realized the potential for cheap, uniform but high quality editions of classic texts and in 1906 began Everyman’s Library. Dent published ’ Twixt Land and Sea (1912), Within the Tides (1915), The Shadow-Line (1917), The Rescue (1920), Notes on Life and Letters (1921), and most of the Uniform Edition. Dent’s administrative headquarters were in Bedford St, London. Hugh R(ailton) Dent (1874–1938), son of J. M. Dent, joined the company in 1909 and worked initially as an editor for Everyman’s Library; he served as chairman from 1926 to 1938.

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state that JC himself translated these stories.] JC resigned from the translating agency after two months, because his earnings did not exceed ninepence per week. Most Slavonic firms doing business with English customers wrote in French or German.

Doubleday, Florence1 Episodes in the Life of a Publisher’s Wife. New York: Privately printed, 1937, 67–86. JC told Mrs F. N. Doubleday that his father’s papers entitled him to attend Court, and he described his life with Bobrowski, his uncle, and his schooling. The model for Lena in Victory was a girl he saw in Montpellier, playing the piano. After her recital, he gave her a five franc note to impress her. He was shocked to realize suddenly that the original of Rita in The Arrow of Gold would be an old woman now. JC explained how he “murdered” the Tremolino2 to escape capture by a blockade. In 1898, William Heinemann and Frank Doubleday each gave JC $100 a month, but at the end of the year JC apologised because he could not finish the book, which later became The Rescue.3 JC showed Mrs Doubleday where he resumed work on it, but she cannot remember the page number. At his expressed wish, she called him “Joseph.” Muirhead Bone made several portraits of JC at her house. 1 Florence Doubleday (née Van Wyck, 1866-1946) was the second wife of F(rank) N(elson) Doubleday (1862–1934), American publisher, whom she married in 1918. (His first wife died on their trip to China in February earlier in the same year.) She was active in various social causes. 2 In The Mirror of the Sea, JC explains how he and three other adventurers smuggled guns in the Tremolino for the supporters of Don Carlos, Pretender to the Spanish throne, from Marseilles to Spain. The ship had to be run on to the rocks and wrecked to escape the coastguard. There is no evidence to support this claim. 3 Sydney S. Pawling was a partner of William Heinemann. Doubleday was the partner of Samuel S. McClure. The book rights to The Rescue belonged to Heinemann. In February 1898, Pawling managed to sell serial rights to McClure for £250, £100 of which were to be payable in advance in monthly instalments (beginning March), with the completed book being delivered in July. At that point, McClure apparently postponed the deadline for delivery.

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She attended and describes JC’s reading from Victory and his address to the staff of Doubleday, Page. He presented her with his marked copy and notes for the reading. [Account of JC’s remarks during his visit to America, May 1923. At an earlier meeting, in February 1919, he told her husband that “The Rescue is finished at last” (74).]

Doubleday, Frank N. “Joseph Conrad as a Friend.” World Today, 52 (July 1928): 145–47. Doubleday lunched with JC at Brown’s Hotel, London [ca. 1914].1 In autumn 1922, he invited JC to America [visit in 1923 is described]. JC’s reading of Victory in New York “nearly killed him, because of his extreme nervousness” (147).

Douglas, Norman Looking Back: An Autobiographical Excursion. London: Chatto & Windus, 1934, 33, 405–06, 416–17. [Ray, ed., 121–22] All his friends being out of town, Douglas,2 in a delirious fever, went to stay with JC [August 1911]. Douglas and some friends had instituted an informal literary luncheon on Thursdays at the Mont Blanc restaurant in Soho. Those attending included Stephen Reynolds, Frederic Chapman, Thomas Seccombe, JC, and W. H. Hudson.3 [ca. 1912] 1 Doubleday was in London in May 1914, and JC reported to Pinker on 31 May that “I had a long talk with him at the lunch” (CL5 382). 2 (George) Norman Douglas (1868–1952) was living on Capri when the Conrads visited there in 1905. A former diplomat, Douglas was at that time pursuing his interest in botany. JC was later to help him with the beginning of his literary career. During school holidays, the Conrads looked after his son, Robin, who was four years older than John Conrad, and, indeed, they paid for his education. JC remained a loyal friend to Douglas until the latter’s sexual behaviour became a matter of public scandal; Douglas was arrested in 1916 on a charge of molestation, but jumped bail before the trial and took up residence overseas. 3 Stephen Reynolds (1881–1919) was a protégé of Edward Garnett. Reynolds

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Frank Harris1 one day suggested driving down to visit “his friend” JC at Orlestone [1914 or 1915]. Douglas was surprised that Harris, “with his reputation of a perfect immoralist, should be on terms of intimacy with Conrad who was the greatest stickler for uprightness I have ever known” (416). Harris in fact was simply using Douglas to meet JC again, with a view to future “copy.” Harris and JC had met only once before, in the company of Austin Harrison.2 On this second occasion, JC scraped up a polite greeting and then, after three minutes, went upstairs to sulk, pleading gout, and saying to Douglas, “I should like to know why you bring this brigand into my house. Am I never to see the last of him?” (417) JC stayed upstairs until Harris had left.3

had moved to Sidmouth in 1906 and became fascinated with the life of the Devon fishermen, writing several books about them; Frederic Chapman was a reader for John Lane; Thomas Seccombe (1866–1923) had been assistant editor of the DNB from 1891 to 1901, and became a Professor of English. 1 Frank Harris (1856–1931), author, and the editor of The Evening News (1882– 86), The Fortnightly Review (1886–94), and The Saturday Review (1894–98). A man of extrovert arrogance who made many enemies, he acquired a scandalous reputation as a rogue and a womanizer. His undoubted flair as an editor was obscured by his boastful self-aggrandisement. 2 Austin Harrison (1873–1928), son of Frederic Harrison, succeeded Ford Madox Ford as The English Review’s editor. This first meeting, which took place in October 1910 at Capel House, is described in Ray, ed., 108. JC described their visit in a letter to Galsworthy of 27 October 1910: “They patronised me immensely. It was funny but not very amusing” (CL4 381). 3 Jessie Conrad said of this visit that “it was one occasion on which Joseph Conrad went completely off the deep end, as the boys would say, without any warning, and sparks flew for some moments. These three men arrived early one Sunday afternoon, and coffee was brought at once. I stayed in the room some half-hour or so and Frank Harris, to everyone’s surprise, rose and without a word to either of us, coolly rang the bell for more coffee. The impertinence nearly took my breath away, and the air was tense for a few moments. Then some remark made by that extraordinary man, who must have forgotten he was in an English drawing-room, brought Norman Douglas to his feet with a bound. But consummate gentleman as he was always, in his dealings with a woman, he merely offered me his arm and led me to the door” (Joseph Conrad and His Circle [London: Jarrolds, 1935], 97).

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Douglas, Robin “My Boyhood with Conrad.” Cornhill Magazine, 66 (January 1929): 20–28. Robin,1 son of Norman Douglas, lived with the Conrads for several years [ca. 1913–16]. There were very few visitors to Capel House, although Douglas describes meeting Lord Northcliffe2 and Jane Taylor3 [née Anderson] there. JC loved music, such as his wife’s piano-playing or Jane Taylor’s negro spirituals. Douglas recalls JC telling him of his experience as a smuggler in Spain.

Draper, Muriel Gurdon Music at Midnight. London: Harper, 1929, 105. The author4 prints a letter to her from Norman Douglas, who explains that he must go to see JC who is ill. JC “has learned his dictionary and 1 Robert (“Robin”) Sholto Douglas was one of Norman Douglas’s two sons. JC described him in 1913 as John Conrad’s “bosom friend,” a “big Scot 10 years of age and a great favourite with us all” (CL5 287). JC contributed towards his school fees. Like Borys Conrad, he was educated in the trainingship, HMS Worcester . 2 The Press magnate, Alfred Charles William Harmsworth (1865–1922; Baron Northcliffe 1905; Viscount 1917). Among other newspapers, he bought The Daily Mail in 1896 and founded The Daily Mirror in 1903. He and his brother, Lord Rothermere, acquired a controlling interest in The Times in 1908. JC described one of his visits to Capel House in a letter of July 1916 to Pinker (CL5 614–15; see also 637–38). He was later a visitor to Oswalds. 3 Jane Foster Anderson was a journalist from Arizona (ca. 1888 or 1893– 1940s?). In 1916, when she first visited Capel House, she was working as a war correspondent, employed by Northcliffe, in England and France. She was married to the journalist Deems Taylor, later a composer. She seems to have been close to the Conrads for a couple of years. 4 Massachusetts-born Muriel Gurdon Draper (née Sanders, 1886-1952) moved in artistic and literary circles in London and the US. She worked as an interior decorator, and was later a lecturer on this and women’s issues. In the 1940s, she was politically active with respect to American friendship for Soviet Russia.

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has excellent whisky” [a reference to Douglas’s advice to Draper that she should learn a column of the English dictionary every day. Date: all three were on Capri in 1905].

Dukes, T. Archibald 1 “Memories of Joseph Conrad.” Spectator, 141 (20 October 1928): 526. [Ray, ed., 59–60] Dukes claims he was the medical officer when JC was first mate in “almost the last passenger sailing ship” [the Torrens, 1891–93].2 One day, JC astonished Dukes by asking him to correct the English of some writing he had done, to “get more money in port.” One MS had already been corrected. JC accepted Dukes’s alterations without question, and “he left me doubting if he cared for the subtle distinctions expressed by English; and supposing that he preferred those words which sounded best.” JC was curiously unemotional about important matters, and very little moved by right and wrong, but he would show much emotion about unimportant matters of taste. He expressed no indignation at his “expulsion” from Poland, and merely shrugged his shoulders. When Dukes assured him that Poland would one day welcome him back again, he only shook his head.

Dupré, Catherine John Galsworthy: A Biography. London: Collins, 1976. 1 T(homas) Archibald Dukes is listed in the 1881 Census for Epsom, Surrey, as a 15-year-old schoolboy, born in Enfield, Middlesex. Birth registered in Jan– Mar 1866 Edmonton 3a/185. In the 1901 Census, he is a General Medical Practitioner, unmarried, living at 16 Wellesley Road, Croydon. 2 Stape and Van Marle show that Dukes’s article is “not to be credited” because, although “Dukes had indeed signed on for the Torrens’s 1891–92 voyage he did not appear” (“‘Pleasant Memories’ and ‘Precious Friendships’: Conrad’s Torrens Connection and Unpublished Letters from the 1890s,” Conradiana, 27 [1995]: 23). They suggest that Dukes “may have been after some publicity and reflected glory when Conrad himself was no longer alive to correct the record.”

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Galsworthy1 noted in his diary, “Conrad looking v. worn” (203; 4 April 1913)2 and “[JC] wants me to be his executor. No joke” (203; 9 April 1913).3 Later, he visited the Conrads at Capel House: “found them all well, much talk with dear Conrad” (217; 6 October 1915).

Edel, Leon Henry James: The Master, 1901–1916. London: Hart-Davis, 1972. James’s nephew, William,4 told Edel of visits by JC and Ford to James’s house at Rye. James would walk ahead with JC, leaving Ford and his nephew behind. “Occasionally a word or two would drift back and what I always heard was – French!” (46).

Ellis, Havelock My Life. London: Heinemann, 1940. JC, on first meeting Ellis5 [ca. 1920], had recognized him, as he had seen a bust of Ellis in Jo Davidson’s6 studio (468). 1 John Galsworthy (1867–1944), novelist and playwright, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1933. 2 JC told Galsworthy on 25 March 1913, shortly before the visit, that “I feel more or less lame outwardly and queerish inwardly”; also, “my mind is like a burst paper bag – only fit for the gutter – just now” (CL5 196, 197). 3 Galsworthy’s diary entry makes clear several hitherto unexplained references in JC’s letters to him at this period. On 25 March 1913, inviting the Galsworthys to visit, JC said, “I have something to tell you – and even consult you about – if You don’t mind hearing a rather long rigmarole with a legal aspect” (CL5 197). Following the visit, on 12 April JC wrote to him that “both Jessie and I are very grateful to you for your consent accepting all the qualification[s] you mention” (CL5 211). 4 The nephew, William (“Billy,” born 1882), was the second son of Henry James’s brother, William. 5 (Henry) Havelock Ellis (1859–1939). Doctor and member of the Fabian Society. His six-volume Studies in the Psychology of Sex, published between 1897 and 1910, caused tremendous controversy and was banned for several years. 6 For details of Davidson, see M. K. Wisehart’s article below.

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Epstein, Jacob1 “Conrad as a Sitter.” Daily Dispatch (Manchester), 27 August 1924: 6. Even when dictating letters, JC would strive for perfection. “‘I am no literary man,’ he said.” He seemed preoccupied with the thought of death, and felt that the main body of his work was over. He remarked that literature, like sculpture, was a plastic art. [Epstein’s recollection of JC sitting for him in March–April 1924.]

Let There Be Sculpture: An Autobiography. London: Michael Joseph, 1940, 89–94. [Ray, ed., 168–72] [Epstein sculpted JC for three weeks at Oswalds, March–April 1924.] JC repeatedly used the word “responsibility” in conversation. He felt he was “played out” (74). During one sitting, he had a heart attack, but resumed posing after a whisky. He hated Oswalds, and longed to move; he also hated outdoors, and the beautiful tree outside the window was a misery to him. He said he knew nothing of the plastic arts or music, and had no interest in the latter, although he remembered being impressed by the 1 Jacob Epstein (1880–1959; knighted 1954) was the son of Jewish immigrants to New York, where he studied drawing and illustrating before his departure for Europe in 1902. Settling in London’s Camden Town in 1905, he was naturalized six years later. His early sculpture, such as his tomb of Oscar Wilde (1912), was the subject of much puritanical criticism. Between 1916 and 1929 he became established as a modeler of portrait bronzes and his works portray such figures as Einstein, Shaw, the Emperor Haile Selassie and, later, Winston Churchill. In his later years, he received numerous public commissions. JC sat for Epstein in late March and April 1924, and the sculpture is widely regarded as the most impressive portrait of him. On 26 March 1924, JC wrote to Elbridge L. Adams that “Epstein has been here for the last week doing my bust: just head and shoulders. It is really a magnificent piece of work. He will be done modelling this week and there will be five bronze copies cast. […] I was reluctant to sit, but I must say that now I am glad the thing has come off. It is nice to be passed to posterity in this monumental and impressive rendering” (LL2 341; see also Jessie Conrad, Joseph Conrad and His Circle, 236–38, and John Conrad, Times Remembered, 205–06).

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sound of African drums at night. He was very feudal in his ideas, and thought the villagers were happy being servile. His library was small, and he had few books. There was a complete edition of Turgenev in English. Melville, he said, “knows nothing of the sea” (76). Epstein suggested that Melville was symbolic and mystical, but JC derided this: “Mystical my eye! My old boots are mystical.” Meredith’s characters were, he felt, “ten feet high,” while D. H. Lawrence had started well but gone wrong: “Filth. Nothing but obscenities” (76). He had unqualified praise for Henry James. Of his own work, “he said it was a toss up at one time as to whether he would write in English or French” (76). He stressed the amount of labour that went into each of his novels. [Epstein: An Autobiography (London: Hulton Press, 1955), 73–77, contains a virtually identical version of this account.]

Evans, Robert O. “Dramatization of Conrad’s Victory: And a New Letter.” Notes & Queries, NS 8 (March 1961): 108–10. Miss Löhr,1 the producer of B. Macdonald Hastings’s adaptation of Victory in 1919,2 wrote to Evans that JC “never came to rehearsals, as he was not in England then, but he came to see it and spent a long time with us.3 An enchanting man. Spoke very little English!” (110).

1 Marie Löhr (1890–1975) directed and played Lena. Born in New South Wales, she made her London début at the age of eleven. After many years of acting in the West End, she acquired the licence of the Globe Theatre in 1918. 2 The three-act play opened on 26 March 1919 at the Globe Theatre, and enjoyed considerable success, running for eighty-three performances until 6 June 1919. 3 JC did not attend rehearsals, but because of illness, not because he was abroad (see CL6 393–95). Nor does he seem to have attended a performance, although he spent four hours with the actors during a reading on 3 March 1919 (CL6 378).

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Farjeon, Eleanor Edward Thomas: The Last Four Years. London: Oxford University Press, 1958. [Letter from Thomas1 to Farjeon,2 7 December 1916] “I shan’t come home this week end. I shall just walk over and see Conrad, who is only 12 miles away” (23l). [Letter from Thomas to Farjeon, 11 December 1916] “I saw Conrad and in fact I stayed the night. Then he drove me back [to Lydd] in the rain” (238).

Ford, Ford Madox “Literary Portraits – IV: Mr. Arnold Bennett and The Regent.” Outlook, 32 (4 October 1913): 463–64. Ford found in JC’s study many years ago a copy of Arnold Bennett’s A Man from the North,3 which H. G. Wells had left there.

“Preface” to René Béhaine’s The Survivors, trans. Edward Crankshaw. London: Allen & Unwin, 1938, i–xix. JC used to say that writing novels was the only occupation for a proper man, because one could do anything with the novel, provided always that 1 Edward Thomas (1878–1917), poet and critic, was the son of a Welsh railway clerk. He graduated from Oxford in 1900, and then earned his living by reviewing, criticism and studies of country life. He met JC at the Tuesday literary luncheons at the Mont Blanc Restaurant. In November 1916, Thomas had been posted as a Second Lieutenant to 244 Siege Battery at Lydd. On 10 December 1916, he came to say good-bye to the Conrads before being posted as a volunteer to front-line service in France, where he was killed four months later at Arras. See Najder, 422, and Jessie Conrad, Joseph Conrad and His Circle, 199–200. 2 Eleanor Farjeon (1881–1965), poet and children’s writer. For several years she had an intense friendship with Edward Thomas, who was married. 3 Bennett’s first novel (1898).

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“you had your New Form” (i). JC had a “smouldering and passionate contempt for the imbecilities of common humanity” (i).

“Ford Madox Ford a Visitor Here; Tells of His Work.” Chicago Tribune, 22 January 1927 [not seen]; rpt. in part in David Dow Harvey, Ford Madox Ford, 1873–1939: A Bibliography of Works and Criticism. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1962, 371. When JC showed Ford the first draft of Chance, the latter bet him that it would sell 14,000 copies. JC thought Ford was mad, but he later sent a telegram enclosing the £5 wager that Ford had won.1

Galsworthy, John Letters from John Galsworthy, 1900–1932, ed. Edward Garnett. London: Cape, 1934. Edward Garnett first met Galsworthy when JC brought him to lunch in the summer of 1900 (5).2 JC was fond of saying “Tempi Passati,” Garnett recalls (11).3 1 When JC showed him the beginning of Chance in 1905, Ford announced that it was “something magnificent,” adding that “it’s really like to do […] the trick of popularity this time” (see Thomas C. Moser below, 531). By November 1914, the American edition of Chance had sold 20,000 copies (CL5 427). Najder notes that Ford was very proud of his prophecy, although he had to wait eight years for its fulfilment (317). 2 Mid-September 1900; see CL2 291, 293. 3 Tempi passati: (Italian) “Times gone by.” E.g., The Mirror of the Sea, start of Chap. 16: “Often I turn with melancholy eagerness to the space reserved in the newspapers under the general heading of ‘Shipping Intelligence.’ I meet there the names of ships I have known. Every year some of these names disappear – the names of old friends. ‘Tempi passati!’” (The Mirror of the Sea [and] A Personal Record, ed. Zdzisław Najder [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988], 56–57). Also, see the letter to W. L. Courtney, dated 9 December 1897, about The Nigger: “I am most grateful to you for endorsing the words of the end. Twenty years of life went to the writing of these last few

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[Letters from Garnett to Galsworthy] Garnett attacked JC about the last two-fifths and the ending of Lord Jim: “He more than accepts what I have said: he goes too far in acceptance” (24; 15 November 1900).1 Garnett today saw JC, who praised Galsworthy’s The Pharisees (49; 20 May 1903).2 Garnett saw JC and W. H. Hudson yesterday; JC was especially well (94; 5 July 1905). [Letters from Galsworthy to Garnett] The Conrads, who left last Monday, enjoyed their visit (44; 5 November 1902).3 Galsworthy recalls seeing Garnett’s An Imaged World: Poems in Prose (1894) at JC’s house, years ago. JC is visiting him tonight (106; 4 February 1906). JC criticized an unidentified portrait: “He admires the work but quarrels with the pessimism of the artist’s point of view. This is rather amusing in Conrad” (116–17; July 1906).4 Galsworthy, knowing Garnett had visited JC, asks for news (177; 24 April 1910).5 Galsworthy has seen JC, and thought him looking better than for a long time (221; 15 October 1915).6

1 2 3

4

5 6

lines. ‘Tempi passati!’ The old time – the old time of youth and unperplexed life” (CL1 421). See also CL2 50, CL4 461. See JC’s letter to Garnett, dated 12 November 1900: “Yes! you’ve put your finger on the plague spot. The division of the book into two parts” (CL2 302). The Island Pharisees (1904) was Galsworthy’s first important book and the first to appear under his own name. JC read it in manuscript in April 1903 (see CL3 30). Conrad, Jessie, and Borys had a week-long break in London in 1902, ending by Monday, 3 November. They stayed at Galsworthy’s flat at 4 Lawrence Mansions, Chelsea Embankment (see CL2 447). The whole Conrad family wrote to Galsworthy on 4 November to express their enjoyment of the stay (CL2 449). The portrait is possibly of Ada Galsworthy, mentioned in a letter to her of 25 July 1906: “we live with your portrait pretty considerably. It is a remarkable piece of work. It presides silently at our meals and overlooks Borys’ studies. But we discuss it no longer. The last word has been said and it was my boy who said it after a period of contemplation: ‘How like Mrs. Jack this is, and I hope she will never look like that’” (CL3 342). On 7 April 1910, JC wrote from Aldington to Robert Garnett, Edward’s elder brother, that “I hear with great joy that Edward intends to come down here to see me” (CL4 323). Galsworthy visited JC shortly after Victory was published on 24 September 1915, and he was no doubt buoyed by its good reception.

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“Reminiscences of Conrad.” Castles in Spain. London: Heinemann, 1927, 74–95. [For reprints, see Ehrsam 638.] [Ray, ed., 62–64] Galsworthy first met JC in March 1893, on board the Torrens in Adelaide harbour. JC, the mate, was popular with the crew, and respectful, if faintly ironic, towards the captain. JC was serving as mate while convalescing from his trip to the Congo. Galsworthy once urged JC to make some money by “tale-telling in public” (76), for he was an incomparable raconteur, but he refused to do so. He always spoke of Dickens with affection. He liked Trollope, but he was not excessively keen on Thackeray, although he had a due regard for Major Pendennis.1 Meredith’s characters were, for JC, “seven feet high,” and described in an inflated style. He admired Hardy’s poetry2 and appreciated Howells, especially The Rise of Silas Lapham (90).3 He read Flaubert constantly and perhaps delighted most in Turgenev. The name Dostoevsky was a red rag to him, although “I am told that he once admitted that Dostoevsky was ‘deep as the sea’” (90). After the voyage in the Torrens, Galsworthy met JC a few months later when they went to hear Carmen4 at Covent Garden. JC had already seen it fourteen times and it was “a vice for us both” (82). He was unmoved by the blare of Wagner, but he had a curious fancy for Meyerbeer.5 He had a great liking for Balzac and Mérimée, and had read a great deal of philosophy, although he spoke of it little. “Schopenhauer 1 Thackeray’s Pendennis (1848) was his first great success. Major Pendennis is the snobbish uncle of the hero, a desperately poor old soldier who manages to mingle with all the best families of the aristocracy. 2 Thomas Hardy’s first volume of verse, Wessex Poems (1898). 3 William Dean Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885); see CL2 222. 4 Georges Bizet’s Carmen was first performed in Paris in 1875. JC’s nostalgic affection for the work, his favourite opera, dates from that year, when he heard it performed in the Grand Théâtre in Marseilles (as well as the works of Meyerbeer). Before departing from Champel-les-Bains, near Geneva, in May 1895, JC presented Emilie Briquel with a copy of the score. See Najder, 41, 179; Jeffrey Meyers, “Conrad and Music,” Conradiana, 23 (1991), 180–81; Jessie Conrad, Joseph Conrad and His Circle, 103, 226; Borys Conrad, My Father, 49–50. 5 Galsworthy is recalling JC’s remark to him on 18 June 1910 that “I suppose that I am now the only human being in these Isles who thinks Meyerbeer a great composer” (CL4 338). Meyerbeer’s enormous reputation declined in the late nineteenth century after savage and personal attacks by Wagner.

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used to give him satisfaction twenty years and more ago, and he liked both the personality and the writings of William James” (91). In the last month of his life, according to Jessie Conrad, JC had “a sort of homing instinct” and he wished sometimes to “drop everything and go back to Poland” (95).

“Tributes to Conrad.” Forsytes, Pendyces and Others. London: Heinemann, 1935, 221–32. In thirty-one years of friendship, JC and Galsworthy never had the slightest difference. In his “Preface to Conrad’s Plays,” Galsworthy describes how JC had “fitful longings to write for the stage” (226). The first of JC’s adaptations, One Day More, was written in Galsworthy’s studio workroom at Campden Hill. He would occasionally interrupt his writing to exclaim, “This is too horrible for words.” The play gave him a certain pleasure when he had finished it, and he was eager to see it performed.1

Garland, Hamlin Afternoon Neighbours. New York: Macmillan, 1934, 80–84. [Account of Garland’s2 last visit to Bishopsbourne, 5 August 1923] JC was disturbed by America’s commercial menace to England, and he disliked American cities. They had a heated argument about the US railways. 1 JC’s dramatic adaptation of his short story, “To-morrow,” as a one-act play, One Day More, occurred while the Conrads were taking a three-month break in a flat in Kensington, at 17 Gordon Place, at the start of 1904. Galsworthy had a flat at 16a Aubrey Walk, Campden Hill. There were three evening performances and two matinées of One Day More between 25 and 27 June 1905 at the Royal Theatre. 2 Hamlin Garland (1860–1940), novelist and chronicler of the Middle Border, was born in Wisconsin and grew up in Iowa. He was best known for his stories that give a realistic and sombre portrayal of frontier life with its unrewarding toil and ceaseless struggle for survival. This was his second meeting with JC. On Conrad’s friendship with him, see Owen Knowles and J. H. Stape, “Conrad and Hamlin Garland: A Correspondence Recovered,” The Conradian, 31.2 (2006): 62-78.

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JC as a writer lacked early discipline, and all of his later books came hard, he said. He now agonizes over every page, and 400 words is a good day’s work. The Nigger was “a page out of my own experience. I saw a black man die in just that way. Of course the psychology of the story is my own, but the storm was a reality. All the hardships and terrors of that voyage are understated rather than overstated” (82–83).1 Nostromo was “scientifically framed” (83). It began as the story of a mine, and JC then imagined Gould. Nostromo then “took to gun,” and the revolution began. “All that I knew of South American life gathered around this theme.” JC never laid out a scenario. The Rescue was suggested by the sight of a yacht. All his stories had a “nucleus of reality round which the incidents slowly cohere” (83). Twain’s Life on the Mississippi “taught me how to use my own life” (83).

My Friendly Contemporaries: A Literary Log. New York: Macmillan, 1932, 489–502, 531–35.2 [Ray, ed., 39–43] JC had a cockney accent, pronouncing “train” as “trine”; he knew little of South America, and wrote Nostromo from material acquired elsewhere. He began Almayer’s Folly with no thought of publication. One day, passing Fisher Unwin’s premises,3 he saw a set of small volumes on display, and thought that his novel would be suitable for their series. Three months later, Unwin wrote to accept his manuscript; it was the first typewritten letter JC had ever received. The writing of that novel gave him most pleasure. 1 In June 1924, JC told Jean-Aubry that “The voyage of the Narcissus was performed from Bombay to London in the manner I have described.” (The crew, in fact, signed off in France.) He did not remember the name of the man who had died on board. “Most of the personages I have portrayed actually belonged to the crew of the real Narcissus, including the admirable Singleton (whose real name was Sullivan), Archie, Belfast, and Donkin. I got the two Scandinavians from associations with another ship” (LL1 77). Najder notes that “The assumed Negro in the Narcissus was Joseph Barron; on the crew list he put a cross against his name; he died at the age of thirty-five, three weeks before the ship reached Dunkirk” (82). 2 This was Garland’s first meeting with JC. It occurred at Oswalds in August 1922, and Garland was accompanied by his daughter, Mary Isabel (1903-88). 3 In the entry on Bennett above, this event is placed in Vevey, Switzerland.

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When The Nigger was published in the US as “The Children of the Sea,” JC accepted the change: “I was in no situation to object” (493).1 He had no scruples about selling a serial to Hearst’s Magazine 2 – “I was spoiling the Egyptians” (493).3 He had two or three more books to write, for he needed the money, although he felt “worked out” (494). Even now, he did not feel absolutely sure of his English: “My writing is based on the dictionary” (494). On the subject of creativity, JC said that “when my subconscious self fails to work, I'm done.” He enjoyed the early stages of writing a novel, but “the frightful grind comes in working out the concept.” The years at sea “gave me my material” which he is still reshaping, for “I can’t use the life around me” (500). [Account of Garland’s conversations with JC, August 1922]. Wymark Jacobs4 told Garland that JC had engaged in a duel with a Frenchman as a youth, and he had suffered a rib injury. Shortly afterwards [4 October 1922], Garland asked JC about another duel, this time with sabres in the dark hold of a vessel. JC “refused to confirm or deny it. He laughed and replied, ‘It is not easy to recall those days. Forty-five years is a long time ago’” (533). [JC also mentioned Stephen Crane, F. N. Doubleday, his fear of falling ill in a hotel, and Munsey’s serialization of Victory,5 which gave him his first “wide reading” (533).] 1 The Nigger of the “Narcissus” was published by Heinemann in England on 2 December 1897 (the day before JC’s turned forty) and on 30 November by Dodd, Mead, and Co. in the US under the title of The Children of the Sea: A Tale of the Forecastle: as JC told Garland, “America would not buy a book about niggers.” 2 Hearst’s Magazine began as World Today (1901–12) but was renamed after its takeover by William Randolph Hearst. This puzzling remark is perhaps a reference to the serialization in 1912 of Chance in The New York Herald, owned by Harper’s. 3 See Exodus 3:22: “But every woman shall borrow of her neighbour, and of her that sojourneth in her house, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment: and ye shall put them upon your sons, and upon your daughters; and ye shall spoil the Egyptians.” The Children of Israel took some treasure from the Egyptians on their journey during their escape to the Promised Land (“spoil” here suggests “despoil”). 4 On Jacobs, see John Conrad entry above. 5 In February 1914, JC signed a lucrative contract with Munsey’s Magazine (New York) for the serialization of Victory. As he told Bertrand Russell, “I only returned last night from a rush to London during which I’ve sold my soul to the devil in the shape of a Yankee Editor” (CL5 345). Munsey’s “serial” version of Victory appeared in a single issue of the magazine in March 1915.

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Garnett, David The Golden Echo. London: Chatto & Windus, 1953, 22, 45, 57, 62– 64, 131. Stephen Crane and JC once visited Edward Garnett1 at the Cearne.2 Jessie Conrad’s story about a mad labourer besieging Pent Farm for two days was invented by her.3 Elsie Hueffer4 told Henry James that Ford and JC had just completed The Inheritors, and James remarked, “To me this is like a bad dream which one relates at breakfast! Their traditions and their gifts are so dissimilar. Collaboration between them is to me inconceivable” (64).5 Regular attenders at Edward Garnett’s Tuesday lunches at the Mont Blanc Restaurant6 included W. H. Hudson, Norman Douglas, Edward Thomas, and J. D. Beresford.7 Others, such as JC, W. H. Davies, John Galsworthy, and Hilaire Belloc,8 would come when in town, while H. M. Tomlinson, Muirhead Bone, Stephen Reynolds, and Perceval Gibbon were occasional visitors.

1 The son of Constance and Edward Garnett, David Garnett (1892–1981), a novelist is best known for Lady into Fox (1923). He moved in the Bloomsbury Group. 2 The Garnetts’ new house in the country, near Limpsfield, Surrey. It was here, at the beginning of September 1898, that Conrad for the first time met Ford Madox Ford, who was living next door. 3 This is probably a garbled reference to Jessie Conrad’s account of the deranged German who wanted to shoot JC; see Joseph Conrad and His Circle, 81–83. 4 Elsie Martindale (1876–1924) married Hueffer (later Ford) in 1894. She wrote several novels and in 1903 translated Maupassant. 5 An undated entry in Olive Garnett’s diary has a similar comment; see Leon Edel, Henry James: The Master, 1901–1916 (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1972), 47. 6 At 16 Gerrard St, Soho. 7 J(ohn) D(avys) Beresford (1873–1947), novelist, playwright, and poet, was born and raised in Castor, Cambridgeshire. The son of a clergyman, he was crippled by polio in his youth. He is best remembered for his early science fiction novels, The Hampdenshire Wonder (1911) and Goslings (1913), and his later Utopian novel What Dreams May Come (1941). 8 Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) was a novelist and controversialist for Christian orthodoxy. He acted as The Morning Post’s literary editor. In 1911, JC described him to Galsworthy as “that preposterous Papist Belloc” (CL4 486).

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Great Friends: Portraits of Seventeen Writers. London: Macmillan, 1979, 12–22. During a visit by the Conrads to Edward Garnett’s home, Jessie, who was prone to take offence, felt herself neglected and made a scene with Constance Garnett. Jessie never visited again. JC’s relationship with Constance was, because of her many Russian friends, rather like that of “a well-behaved, well-bred dog in the presence of the household cat” (17). Edward Garnett would often visit JC’s home in Kent, where their wives would not have to meet and where JC would be in no fear of meeting a Russian. David Garnett denies that his mother influenced JC’s portrayal of Mrs Fyne in Chance: “I think that the original may have been another Mrs Garnett – my uncle Robert Garnett’s wife, Mattie, whom Conrad would have met through Ford and Elsie Hueffer” (18).1 When David Garnett became a bookseller, JC would buy books from him, usually French ones such as Mémoires du Baron Marbot: “Conrad was always interested in everything to do with Napoleon” (20).2 Shortly before his death, JC presented Edward Garnett with a Polish translation of Almayer’s Folly, inscribed “To Edward Garnett, the first reader of Almayer’s Folly in the year 1894 and ever since the dear friend of all my writing life, never failing in encouragement – and inspiring criticism” (21). As a conscientious objector during the war, David Garnett felt that JC regarded him as a coward and a shirker. Shortly after the war, however, he hesitatingly decided to call on the Conrads, accompanied by Nicholas and Barbara Bagenal.3 JC was irritated by the intrusion, but greeted Garnett kindly and talked with Bagenal about his experiences in the Irish Guards. On one occasion, “Edward and Conrad were having a drink together, perhaps in Oddenino’s.4 At the next table was a heavily-painted prostitute who kept looking at them. ‘Look at the dirt in her nostril!’ said Conrad. Edward had not noticed it. If Conrad had wished to describe the woman 1 Robert Singleton Garnett (1866-1932) was a solicitor who married Martha Roscoe in 1896. Martha (1869–1946) was the author of The Infamous John Friend (1909), Amor Vincit (1912), and Unrecorded (1931). 2 Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Marcellin de Marbot (1782–1854), Mémoires du général baron de Marbot, 3 vols. (Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1891). 3 Nicholas Beauchamp Bagenal (born 1891) married Barbara Hiles (1891– 1984), a painter who moved in the circle of the Bloomsbury Group. He had served in the Suffolk and Irish Guards. 4 A fashionable restaurant and night club at 54–62 Regent St.

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in a book he would have begun with that” (21) [Also reprints some of Garnett’s reminiscences in The Golden Echo, q.v.]

Joseph Conrad Today, 7.1–2 (October 1981–April 1982): 188. [Letter from Garnett to Marcus Wheeler, dated September 1980] JC’s friendship, Garnett explains, was with his father, Edward, and not with his mother, Constance. He doubts whether JC ever discussed the Russian language with her. His parents took great pains to prevent JC meeting any of their Russian friends.

Garnett, Edward “The Danger of Idols.” Saturday Review, 140 (31 October 1925): 505. JC asked Garnett to read the first three chapters of Suspense in manuscript, and he criticized them severely, just as, in 1895, he had criticized the closing scene of An Outcast of the Islands.1 [Letter to the Editor]

“Instructive and Amusing.” Weekly Westminster, 14 February 1925: 473 [not seen]; rpt. in Ford Madox Ford: The Critical Heritage, ed. Frank MacShane. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972, 140–42. JC was extremely clear and direct in statements about his own life. Anything more unlike Ford’s rendering of his conversation cannot be imagined. Years ago, JC asked Garnett why he had not written a technical study of the novel. Garnett replied that it was too complicated for his brain: “So it is for mine. I have never understood it,” said JC (141). In matters of technique, JC followed his instinct, and had no sacrosanct 1 JC left the completed manuscript of An Outcast of the Islands for Edward Garnett at Unwin’s office on 18 September 1895. Garnett read the concluding chapters immediately, and found the scene of Willems’s death to be too prolonged and static. JC replied on 24 September, thanking Garnett for his “kind and truly friendly remarks” and agreeing with him that “the fact remains that the last chapter is simply abominable. Never did I see anything so clearly as the naked hideousness of that thing” (see CL1 245–48).

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plan: “if he had a framework, he chopped and changed it till it became something very different” (141). [Review of Ford Madox Ford’s Joseph Conrad: A Personal Remembrance (1924)]

“Joseph Conrad: I – Impressions and Beginnings” [and] “Joseph Conrad: II – The Long Hard Struggle for Success.” Century Magazine, 115 (February and March 1928): 385–92, 593–600. [Ray, ed., 74–83] [Incorporated in Garnett’s Introduction to his edition of Letters from Conrad: 1895–1924 (London: Nonesuch Press, 1928)]

“Romantic Biography.” Nation & Athenæum, 36 (6 December 1924): 366, 368 [not seen]; rpt. in Ford Madox Ford: The Critical Heritage, ed. Frank MacShane. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972, 133–36. Garnett introduced Ford to JC. The latter had “a passion for memoirs, personal and historical” (133). Ford’s version of his collaboration with JC is often “apocryphal” and “moonshine” (134). [Review of Ford Madox Ford’s Joseph Conrad: A Personal Remembrance (1924)]

Gerhardie, William Memoirs of a Polyglot. London: Duckworth, 1931, 269. During dinner with H. G. Wells and Arnold Bennett, Gerhardie1 compared JC’s work to cheap wood, poor in grain but with an expensive varnish. It 1 William Alexander Gerhardie (1895–1977), a British (Anglo-Russian) novelist and playwright, was one of the most critically acclaimed English novelists of the 1920s, with H. G. Wells an ardent champion of his work. His first novel, Futility (1922), was written while he was at Cambridge and drew on his experiences in Russia fighting the Bolsheviks, together with his childhood experiences in pre-revolutionary Russia. He is probably best remembered for his next novel, The Polyglots (1925), which also deals with Russia. He became unfashionable after the Second World War and published nothing.

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had a cloying and artificial melodiousness. “Wells looked baffled, while Bennett nodded approvingly. ‘Yes’, he said, ‘first-rate stuff is not like that – more simple.’” [No date given]

Gettman, Royal A., ed. George Gissing and H. G. Wells: Their Friendship and Correspondence. London: Hart-Davis, 1961, 146, 215. JC regularly reads Wells’s copy of the Fortnightly Review (October 1900). Gissing writes to Wells that JC had sent him Typhoon, and he was delighted with it: “He is a strong man” (215; dated 31 August 1903].

Gide, André “Joseph Conrad.” Nouvelle Revue Française, 23 (1 December 1924): 659–62; trans. Charles Owen in “Joseph Conrad.” Joseph Conrad: A Critical Symposium, ed. R. W. Stallman. East Lansing: Michigan University Press, 1960, 3–5. Gide, accompanied by Valery Larbaud1 and Agnes Tobin,2 visited JC at

1 Valery Larbaud (1881–1957), French writer and a friend of Gide and Jean-Aubry. 2 Agnes Tobin (1864–1939) came from California. “Although her parents were Irish by descent, both had lived in Chile, and her mother was born there. Her father had been bilingual secretary to the first Roman Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco. She knew Yeats (who called her the greatest American poet since Whitman), Alice Meynell, and many other literary people. Her own work included plays and translations from Petrarch and Racine” (CL5 lvi). Najder calls her a rich young Californian poetess and patron of writers, particularly of Arthur Symons, who lived at Orlestone: indeed, JC’s first letter to her in January 1909 concerns their mutual friend (Najder 371; CL4 184). She paid her first visit to JC in February 1911, and he dedicated Under Western Eyes to her as the person “who brought to our door her genius of friendship from the uttermost shore of the West.” In 1912, she also introduced him to John Quinn, the New York lawyer and collector, who purchased a number of JC’s manuscripts.

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Capel House1, and he returned the following year.2 JC did not like to speak of his past life and he was unskilful in direct narration. He admired Flaubert and Maupassant, and had a special taste for French critics, especially Jules Lemaître.3 He had only a moderate esteem for Maurice Barrès, and disliked his theories of expatriation.4 The very name of Dostoevsky made him pale. JC and Gide refused to praise the work of Georges Ohnet.5

“Joseph Conrad.” In Autumn Leaves, trans. Elsie Pell. New York: Philosophical Library, 1950, 70–75. [Listed in Ehrsam as a separate item, but in fact another translation of the previous article.]

1 André Gide, French author (1869–1951), was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1947. He first met JC in July 1911, when he visited him at Capel House. This was an important visit for JC: as Najder explains, Gide and Larbaud “were already quite well acquainted with Conrad’s works. Their visit, which marked the beginning of Conrad’s life-long friendship and correspondence with Gide, was one of the signs of recognition accorded Conrad by young French writers converging round the Nouvelle Revue Française: Copeau, Ghéon, Gide, Larbaud, Rivière, Schlumberger. They were all united by a dislike of literary modernism. This cult of Conrad fans had no equivalent in England” (372). 2 Gide visited the Conrads on Saturday and Sunday, 28–29 December 1912. He had spent Christmas Day with Henry James and Edmund Gosse; see CL5 152, and Jean Claude, ed., Correspondance André Gide/ Jacques Copeau, 2 vols. Cahiers André Gide nos. 12–13 (Paris: Gallimard, 1987–88). 3 Jules Lemaître (1853–1914), French critic and dramatist. 4 Maurice Barrès (1862–1923), French novelist and nationalist politician. Barrès turned to a nationalism that grew into vengeful hatred of Germany, fanned by strong racist feelings and a love for his native Lorraine. He was an antiSemite and advocated the voluntary expatriation of Jews and foreigners. In 1916, JC attended a lecture by him at the British Academy (CL5 617). 5 Georges Ohnet (1848–1918), French novelist bitterly opposed to the modern realistic novel.

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Gill, David “Joseph Conrad and the S.S. Adowa.” Notes & Queries, NS 25 (1978): 323–24. JC served with Gill’s grandfather, William Paramor, in the Adowa for six weeks (1893–94), as it lay in Rouen harbour. “Family tradition has it that my grandfather was privileged to read the first chapters of Almayer’s Folly at that time.”1

Glasgow, Ellen The Woman Within. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1954, 200–02, 204. Glasgow visited JC at Capel House in summer 1914,2 and he told Louise Willcox3 that Glasgow was doing better work than any other American woman novelist. JC also remarked that he had been the first person to see John and Ada Galsworthy after they had gone away together.4 1 See also Gill’s “Joseph Conrad, William Paramor, and the Guano Island: Links to A Personal Record and Lord Jim,” The Conradian, 23.2 (1998): 17–26. 2 Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow (1873–1945), the novelist from Richmond, Virginia. Beginning in 1897, she wrote twenty novels, mainly about life in Virginia. She visited the Conrads in June 1914. (A photograph of her in the garden at Capel House in CL5 Plate 3; see also Jessie Conrad, Joseph Conrad and His Circle, facing p. 112.) In England until just prior to the outbreak of the First World War, she also met Hardy, Galsworthy, Bennett, and Henry James. See also Dale B. J. Randall, ed., Joseph Conrad and Warrington Dawson: The Record of a Friendship (Durham: University of North Carolina Press, 1968), 84–86. 3 Louise Collier Willcox, a friend of Ellen Glasgow. The 1920 US Federal Census identifies her as 53-year-old writer, born in Illinois, and living with her husband in Norfolk, Virginia. 4 John and Ada Galsworthy had been together since 1895, but officially she remained married to John’s cousin, Arthur. The death of John’s father in 1904 eased the threat of family sanctions, and they made their liaison public. To escape scandal and ostracism, they went to the Continent in early 1905, and stayed with the Conrads for a week on Capri, before being seen off from Naples (March–April 1905). Following Ada’s divorce, she and John were married on 23 September 1905 (see CL3 206, 225, 280).

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JC wrote to her in 1923, during his “unhappy” American visit, which illness brought to an abrupt close. Unlike most British authors, he did not have an inherent condescension towards all things American, especially literature.

Goldring, Douglas “London Letter.” New York Herald, New York Tribune Magazine, 31 August 1924: 27. [“Fiction-Books” Section] JC told Goldring1 that he had no “bottom drawer” of manuscripts stockpiled.

Odd Man Out. London: Chapman & Hall, 1935. W. L. George,2 in a letter to Goldring dated 3 March 1920, attacked the cliqueism of modern reviewing, and added that JC had “expressed himself to me on the subject with characteristic violence” (278). JC thought that Goldring’s The Singer’s Journey was comparable to Keats (63). [Repeats some of the anecdotes of Goldring’s Reputations: see below for details.]

“Portrait of an Editor.” English Review, 53 (December 1931): 820– 29 [not seen]; rpt. in Ford Madox Ford: The Critical Heritage, ed. Frank MacShane. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972, 205–12. [Repeats some of the anecdotes of Goldring’s Reputations: see below for details.]

1 Douglas Goldring (1887–1960) began to work for Ford Madox Hueffer (Ford) on the English Review in 1908 as a sub-editor. He produced volumes of poems, memoirs, essays and, especially, travel books. He was also noted, in later years, as a radical journalist and prolific contributor to left-wing publications. 2 W(alter) L(ionel) George (1882–1926), an English writer born and brought up in Paris, was known for his novels and writings on feminism.

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Reputations. London: Chapman & Hall, 1920, 216–19. Goldring and Ford made a week-end visit to JC’s Luton house.1 Ford and JC talked endlessly about Flaubert’s technique, Emma Bovary’s drive through Rouen with her lover and the closing paragraphs of Un Cœur Simple.2 JC was fairly often present at Ford’s Holland Park Avenue flat3 during the early months of the English Review [1909]. On one such occasion, JC had a technical discussion with Ford about a new book he was writing [not specified]. During this conversation, JC would turn to Goldring and remind him that “this is strictly confidential. I know what journalists are! No paragraphs, please!” (219). [Goldring’s Life Interests (London: Chapman & Hall, 1948), 192–94, is virtually a reprint of this present item.]

Graham, R(obert) B(ontine) Cunninghame “Hudson’s Far Away and Long Ago.” Bookmark (London), 7 (Christmas 1931): 10–12. The author recalls that JC often envied W. H. Hudson’s “damned facility,” as he called it, and both Graham and JC were deceived by what seemed to be Hudson’s great simplicity and ease of style, which in fact concealed vast labour. [Review by Graham of Hudson’s book]

1 At the beginning of November 1908, JC invited the entire editorial group of the English Review to Someries (the Review’s first issue was scheduled to appear on 25 November). JC was publishing some of his reminiscences (later A Personal Record ) in the early issues. See JC’s letter to Ford of 23 October 1923, and Jessie Conrad’s domestic perspective on the visit in Joseph Conrad As I Knew Him, 57, and Joseph Conrad and His Circle, 131; see also Borys Conrad, My Father, 56–57. 2 By Gustave Flaubert, published in Trois Contes (1877). 3 The headquarters of the English Review were at 84 Holland Park Avenue, where Ford occupied some rooms over a fishmonger and poulterer’s.

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“Inveni Portum. Joseph Conrad.” Saturday Review, 138 (16 August 1924): 230–35.1 [Ray, ed., 230–35] JC never wore his heart on his sleeve for critics to peck at. He would pour scorn and contempt on writers who had pandered to bad taste. The author once invited JC to attend a meeting, but he declined, saying, “Non, il y aura des Russes,” and ground his teeth with rage. JC loved England fervently, and could not tolerate any tampering with anything with which he had once been familiar. To change that which had first attracted him seemed a flat blasphemy.

Halverson, John, and Ian Watt “Notes on Jane Anderson: 1955–1990.” Conradiana, 23 (1991): 59–87. [Halverson and Watt print a letter from Jane Anderson2 to her husband, Deems Taylor, describing her first meeting with JC at Capel House on Sunday, 19 April 1916]: His voice is very clear and fine in tone, but there is an accent which I have never heard before. It is an accent which affects every word, and gives the most extraordinary rhythm to phrases. And his verbs are never right. If they are in the place they should be – which is seldom – they are without tense; a new facet for the miracle. […] “We will talk,” he said suddenly, “but not of ze war.” Then he told the history of this war, and of other wars; told it with his gestures, and his shoulders, and those extraordinary flashes in his eyes. He said that his faith in the French, and all of his hope for them, had been fulfilled; that the signs of decay were not decay. They were but the imperfections that marked fine fruit; that in England there was the goodness which is the foundation of strength. “But for Russia,” he said, “there can be no hope. I came 1 Graham’s article was originally published with the title, “Inveni Partum” (“I have found the door”). Later reprintings usually title it “Inveni Portum” (“I have found the haven”), which, on internal evidence, is almost certainly correct. 2 Jane Foster Anderson (ca. 1888 or 1893–1940s?), journalist and socialite, born in Atlanta, Georgia. She obtained an introduction to the Conrads in April 1916. JC regarded her as “quite yum-yum” (CL5 637), and she possibly served, in part, as a model for Arlette in The Rover and Doña Rita in The Arrow of Gold.

62 to Russia many times. It is great but in numbers. It has grown, it has flowered. But it is rotten before it is ripe.” Then he said how, from all over the world, there had been requests for him to write about the war. But he said that he could not. The pain of it had come too close to him. […] We talked a bit about work. It seems that his faith was in Stephen Crane. He loved him. He grieves, now, over the talent that he took away with him, and complains that there should have been such waste. “Yes, there is writing, writing,” he said. “There is Wells, H. G. He is writing of his theoretical men and his theoretical women. Human nature he does not know. It would be well if he did.” And there was the great miscellany of small men who are pouring out the flood of words and sowing them for bad harvests. “I despair,” he said, and made eloquent motions with his hands. (62–63)

Halverson and Watt print a letter from Rebecca West1 of 19 May 1959: I have an enchanting memory of Conrad. When I was a [young] girl I went to lunch with Cunningham Grahame [sic] and Conrad was there, and he said to me, “Thank you for that good review you gave me. It is of course important to me what you think of me.” I thought he was being funny at my expense, I froze. I was a reviewer, I had to review, he need not make fun of me. After I left he said to Don Roberto, “Why did she look as if she was offended with me?” They had all understood, and told him so. He went to endless trouble to tell me that he had really meant it, that he thought I was very talented, and that of course it mattered to him that a young talented person thought well of his book. He really sweated with horror lest I should think he had been teasing me. (76)

Halverson and Watt quote from an interview with Richard Curle on 16 September 1955, in which he spoke cuttingly against Józef Retinger “for his endless loans of money from Joseph Conrad, which were apparently meant to be for the Polish cause, but, Conrad thought, were actually for his own personal use” (84).2 1 For ten years from 1913, she had a relationship with H. G. Wells, by whom she had a son. 2 J(ózef) H(ieronim) Retinger (1888–1960), a Polish scholar and political activist who met JC in 1912 through Arnold Bennett. The Conrads travelled with Retinger and his wife to Poland in 1914. During the War, Retinger worked to advance the cause of Polish independence.

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Halverson and Watt quote from a letter from Retinger, dated 15 May 1957: At the time I discussed Mark Twain with Conrad, he had a general dislike of Americans and the American mentality, which he knew only very slightly until his visit to America after the first war, when he completely changed his attitude. I suppose that was the reason why he neither understood nor liked Mark Twain. Richardson, Smollett and the English novelists of the Eighteenth Century pleased him because of the rambling way in which they wrote their novels. He liked details and anything which seemed to him to give a personal touch to the description of events. That is why he was so fond of diaries and memoirs. […] I am almost sure that he did not understand German, since I well remember having to interpret for him when addressing Germans on our way across Germany to Poland. (85)

Hamer, Douglas “Conrad: Two Biographical Episodes.” Review of English Studies, 18 (1967): 54–56. [Ray, ed., 57–59] Hamer knew Arthur Burroughs,1 who sailed as an apprentice in the Tilkhurst in 1885–86. JC, the second officer, was notable for “his courtesy and foreign manners” (55), said Burroughs. JC continued to visit Burroughs’s mother until about 1895. The carpenter of the Tilkhurst told Burroughs that, by going to sea, he would find only “a wooden box. […] Conrad rounded on the carpenter” (55). JC spent all his spare time aboard writing, and Burroughs remembers him as a good and kindhearted sailor with strong nerves.2

1 In the 1901 Census, Arthur Burroughs is described as aged 31, married, staying with his brother-in-law at 28 Glaserton Road, Hackney. Officer, Mercantile Marine. Born London. 2 Burroughs’s account of JC’s romantic involvements in the 1890s is repeated in Najder 180.

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Hamer also reports that John Sampson,1 Liverpool University Librarian, met JC just before his death and described him as “an old, querulous man, complaining of his digestion” (56).

Hammond, Percy “Oddments and Remainders.” New York Tribune, 15 May 1923: 10. JC was fascinated by Kentucky. Hammond2 later met JC and Paderewski at a luncheon.3 JC spoke of Lord Robert Cecil’s mission4 to the US (JC in US, May 1923).

Hand, Richard J. “Conrad and the Reviewers: The Secret Agent on Stage.” The Conradian, 26.2 (2001): 1–67. Hand quotes from a review of the play by Hannen Swaffer: “[JC] did not like discussing the drama with me when I met him. ‘I am a prose writer,’ he said. And that was that” (21).5 1 John Sampson (1862–1931), author of the monumental The Dialect of the Gypsies of Wales (1926) was Liverpool University’s Librarian, 1892–1928. In 1919, the Conrad family travelled to Liverpool, where Jessie was to undergo an operation; they stayed from 30 November to 24 December. The University Club persuaded JC to attend a banquet in honour of the Merchant Marine, and he made a speech in praise of British sailors: this was his first public speaking appearance (see Najder 447). 2 Percy Hammond (1873–1936), drama critic. 3 Najder writes that “On 9 May Conrad was entertained at lunch by Colonel E. M. House, the influential politician and former advisor to President Wilson. There he met Ignacy Paderewski, the famous pianist and Polish statesman, of whom he apparently said later, ‘What an outstanding man … in half an hour I learned from him more about my motherland than I had within the last fifteen years of my life’” (476). 4 Robert Cecil (1864–1958; 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, 1923), lawyer, politician, and diplomat, was one of the architects of the League of Nations, and in March–April 1923 made a five-week tour to the US to explain its aims. 5 Hannen Swaffer (1879–1962), popular drama critic and gossip columnist. His review appeared in The Daily Graphic, 3 November 1922: 4.

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Hardy, Thomas The Life and Work of Thomas Hardy, ed. Michael Millgate. London: Macmillan, 1984, 360. In May 1907, Hardy attended dinner at the home of Hagberg Wright [in Westminster].1 Other guests included JC, Maxim and Mme Gorky, H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and Richard Whiteing.2

Harkness, Bruce “Conrad’s Dictionary? Fenby’s Dictionary of English Synonyms.” Conradiana, 12 (1980): 156–58. John Conrad told Harkness that JC’s secretary, Miss Hallowes, gave Fenby’s Dictionary to JC, but he believed that JC never used a dictionary. John Conrad also remembered Hugh Walpole presenting a dictionary to JC, who said, “I never use a dictionary. If I want to know what a word means I read till I find out how it’s used. Then I know” (157).3

“Conrad’s The Secret Agent: Texts and Contexts.” Journal of the Joseph Conrad Society (UK), 4.3 (1979), 2–11. John Conrad confirmed Harkness’s view that, about 1905, JC increasingly turned to non-fiction for nearly all of his reading. Harkness prints a letter to him from Mrs E. L. Voynich,4 dated 1958 (8). She denies that her husband5 was the model for Vladimir in The Secret Agent. When her 1 Charles Theodore Hagberg Wright (1862–1940) was the Secretary and Librarian of the London Library, 1893–1940. See Martin Ray, “Hardy and Conrad,” Thomas Hardy Journal, 12.2 (May 1996): 82–84. 2 Richard Whiteing (1840–1928), journalist and novelist. 3 See also John Conrad, Times Remembered, 203. 4 Ethel Lilian Voynich (née Boole, 1864–1960), who was born in County Cork, Ireland, was a novelist and musician and a supporter of several revolutionary causes. The Gadfly (1897) describes an embittered Italian revolutionary who has to flee to South America. 5 Wilfred Michael Voynich (1865–1930), a Polish nationalist, ran a rare book shop in Soho.

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novel, The Gadfly, was published in 1897, Sydney Pawling1 of Heinemann’s wrote to her to say that JC wished to meet her. Later, Pawling wrote again to say that JC no longer wished to meet her, as he had decided that he did not like The Gadfly.2

Harris, Frank My Life and Loves, ed. John F. Gallagher. London: W. H. Allen, 1964, 704–05. [Ray, ed., 107–09] Harris and Austin Harrison visited JC.3 The Conrads were homely and hospitable. JC’s French was impeccable. He presented a copy of The Mirror of the Sea to Harris, and wrote in it the first and last verses of Baudelaire’s “L’Homme et la Mer,” from Les Fleurs du Mal (1857).4

1 Sydney S(outhgate) Pawling (1862–1923), partner of William Heinemann, the publisher, introduced JC to Stephen Crane and acquired The Nigger of the “Narcissus” for his firm in 1896. He tried, unsuccessfully, to place the unfinished The Rescue. 2 Pawling’s firm, Heinemann’s, published The Gadfly in September 1897. On 11 October 1897, JC wrote to Edward Garnett: What do you think of the Gadfly? I wrote what I thought to [Pawling], who rejoined gallantly. But it comes to this, if his point of view is accepted, that having suffered is sufficient excuse for the production of rubbish. Well! It may be true too. I may yet make my profit of that argument. However I am not “holloweyed” and the author of the Gadfly is. […] But the book is very delightful in a way. Look at the logic: He found his mutton-chop very tough therefore he arose and cursed his aunt. And the idea of that battered Gadfly in kid gloves finding his revenge in scolding, is – well – feminine, or I have lived all these bitter years in vain. It is perfectly delightful. I don’t remember ever reading a book I disliked so much (CL1 395). 3 This first meeting between JC and Harris took place in October 1910 at Capel House, and is described in Ray, ed., 108. JC described their visit in a letter to Galsworthy of 27 October 1910: “They patronised me immensely. It was funny but not very amusing” (CL4 381). 4 The first verse includes the reflection that “La mer est ton miroir.”

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Harris also recalls commissioning H. G. Wells to review Almayer’s Folly, and his eulogistic comments on the novel.1

Hart-Davis, Rupert Hugh Walpole: A Biography. London: Macmillan, 1952, 168, 171, 175, 176, 186, 187, 194–95, 215, 219, 236, 282, 286, 300, 377. [Ray, ed., 135–39] [In writing his biography, Hart-Davis used Hugh Walpole’s diaries very selectively, omitting some of his visits to JC, and not always providing precise dates. In addition, his transcription is not entirely accurate, and he introduces much punctuation not in the original. The entries in Walpole’s diaries relating to JC have been comprehensively and accurately edited by J. H. Stape in his “Sketches from the Life: The Conrads in The Diaries of Hugh Walpole” (The Conradian, forthcoming). Since that account of Walpole’s recollections will supersede that by Hart-Davis, the entries below give only a brief indication of the topics that Walpole and JC discussed, as recorded by Hart-Davis.] Hugh Walpole2 met JC in 1918, at a luncheon party arranged by Sidney Colvin3 at the Carlton Hotel. The following entries in Walpole’s 1 H. G. Wells, in an unsigned article for the Saturday Review on 15 June 1895, predicted that JC would attain a “high place among contemporary story-tellers.” 2 Hugh Seymour Walpole (1884–1941; knighted 1937), novelist, published his first novel in 1909, and went on to write some forty-two novels and volumes of short stories. The four parts of his Rogue Herries saga (early 1930s) were the most popular with his vast reading public. Walpole published one of the first critical books on JC in 1916, although he did not meet him until 1918. This first meeting, at a luncheon party in the Carlton Hotel, London, is described in the first extract from Walpole’s diary. In the following year, JC was to call the 35-year-old Walpole “the most intimate of my younger friends” (CL6 489). 3 Sidney Carlyle Colvin (1845–1927; knighted 1911) was a close friend of JC and earlier, Robert Louis Stevenson. He was Slade Professor of Fine Arts at Cambridge and director of the Fitzwilliam Museum. Later, from 1884 to 1912, he was Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum. He edited Stevenson’s works and letters and wrote biographies of Walter Savage Landor (1881) and John Keats (1917). JC first appears to have met Colvin in 1904. The first meeting between Walpole and JC took place on 23 January 1918, and was also attended by Walpole’s lover, Percy Anderson (1851–1928), the American costume- and stage-designer (CL6 174).

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diary and journals are quoted by Hart-Davis: JC resembled an “intellectual Corsair.” He talked eagerly, describing many things about his early life. He was delighted when Walpole said he liked Nostromo best, although he said The Nigger was “the book!” He cursed the public for not distinguishing between creation and photography. His final quarrel with H. G. Wells was over a fundamental difference: he believed that Wells did not care for humanity but thought they were to be improved, whereas he loved humanity but know they were not1 (168; 23 January 1918). JC praised Walpole’s The Green Mirror.2 He said that the end of The Secret Agent was an inspiration. He claimed that he wrote nearly all of Romance.3 He did not think the ending of Victory was anything but inevitable. He had wanted to put “everything” into Lord Jim (171; 2 June 1918).4 JC was in many ways like a child about his various diseases, groaning and even crying aloud. He recalled George Gissing5 turning over the manuscript of “Amy Foster” and saying in a melancholy voice, “Ah! I envy you that.” He said Romance was originally written by Hueffer and was called Seraphina. JC expanded it, writing the entire whole of “Casa Riego” and the “Guitar” book.6 He said that he could not read Wells, Bennett or Galsworthy – in fact, he read no one now. It was his ambition after the war to get a yacht and sail down the Thames. He had never studied any technique and did not think that one should (176; September 1918). JC praised Walpole’s The Secret City.7 He gave an account about his time with the drunken captain in the Riversdale.8 He said he got only £250 1 For a discussion of JC’s friendship with H. G. Wells, see Martin Ray, “Conrad, Wells and The Secret Agent: Paying Old Debts and Settling Old Scores,” Modern Language Review, 81 (1986): 560–73. 2 Walpole’s The Green Mirror (London: Macmillan, 1918). 3 During his collaboration with Ford Madox Ford on Romance (1903), JC’s role was chiefly to correct existing text and add fragments to the novel. 4 This visit took place at Capel House: as JC reported to Sir Sidney Colvin on 17 May 1918, “We shall have Walpole here on the 1st” (CL6 221). 5 George Gissing (1857–1903), novelist; JC met him by the end of 1899, at the latest. “Amy Foster” was written May–June 1901 and published in December of that year. 6 “Casa Riego” is Part Third and “Blade and Guitar” is Part Fourth of Romance. JC’s description here of his role in the novel’s writing is much more accurate than his earlier claim that Walpole cited. 7 Walpole’s The Secret City (London: Macmillan), published on 17 January 1919. 8 JC joined the Riversdale, a clipper, as second mate in September 1883, sailing

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for Under Western Eyes, and £750 apiece for the next three novels by Dent. He spoke of Harold Frederic as “a gross man who lived grossly and died abominably.”1 He said Verloc’s shop was where Leicester Galleries now were;2 he thought it was easier to have an intellectual friendship with a Chinaman than with an American (179; January 1919). JC said: “The damnation of our profession is that it has no artistic security. There’s not a masterpiece in the world but you can pick thousands of holes in it if your digestion’s out of order – but if a carpenter makes a good box it is a good box.” Also: “Journalists, like labour leaders, only shout up their professions in order to get out of them” (186; March 1919). JC was annoyed with the reviews of The Arrow of Gold, especially Robert Lynd’s.3 He said his favourite books to re-read were Hudson’s Patagonia and Wallace’s Malay Archipelago. He scoffed at Typee4 (187; 10 August 1919). JC had started Suspense. Cunninghame Graham and T. E. Lawrence came down (194–95; 18 July 1920). JC thought that all the talk about technique was absurd, but that you must write just as well as you could and take every kind of trouble. He said that F. M. Hueffer belittled everything he touched because he had a “small” soul. He became very angry as usual at the mere mention of Americans or Russians, both of whom he detested. He was delighted to be asked to advise some Liverpool ship men about a training-ship for boys.5 He spoke of Nostromo and one or two short stories as his best work (195; 19 July 1920). During Walpole’s weekend visit to Oswalds in January 1921, JC

1

2 3 4 5

from London to Madras, where he left the ship in April 1884. JC had quarrelled with the Captain, whom JC had accused of being drunk. Harold Frederic (1856–98), American author and journalist, a friend of Stephen Crane, worked in London. In 1898, he suffered a stroke of paralysis that proved fatal. A devout Christian Scientist, he refused medical attention. At the inquest into his death, his daughter testified that he was insane, but the jury did not agree. In The Secret Agent, Verloc’s shop is located in London’s Soho. Robert Lynd’s review of The Arrow of Gold had appeared four days earlier in The Daily News. W. H. Hudson, Idle Days in Patagonia (1893); Alfred R. Wallace, The Malay Archipelago (1869); Herman Melville, Typee (1846). In July 1920, JC was invited by the Ocean Steam Ship Company, a large Liverpool shipping business, to advise on the planned construction of a sailing ship to be used in training boys for the Merchant Marine.

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declared that “in selling his books in America he felt exactly like a merchant selling glass beads to African natives.” Walpole asked him why he didn’t write more of the England he loved so much, and JC “said he was afraid to” (203). On 20 October 1923, Walpole went down to spend what proved to be his last week-end with JC. Richard Curle and G. Jean-Aubry were of the party, and Paul Valéry1 came to luncheon. Walpole recorded that “Conrad’s eyes lit over Fenimore Cooper and over Proust,” who stirred him to “deep excitement.” Walpole felt that JC was certainly happier since his visit to America,2 where he had liked the praise. He remembered snubs like more mortal men (236) JC praised Walpole’s The Dark Forest (in January 1918),3 and told him that he had earned £20 for Almayer’s Folly, £100 for The Nigger, and £1,000 (both countries and serials) for Nostromo (175; ca. September 1918). Walpole took James Annand4 to meet JC, in summer 1919. The following year, JC remarked that the fundamental fact about human nature is that “people are not better or worse but simply different” (194; 6 June 1920).5 He also commented on this occasion that he was about to begin Suspense. JC gave vent to a sudden tirade about publishers (autumn 1921) and was generally “much odder” in his behaviour (215) at this time. He once flung his arms round Walpole and kissed him at a public meeting [ca. February 1922]. Walpole later came to feel [February 1928] that JC was “too mysterious” (282) ever to have been a close companion, and in his last years he had never said anything very interesting: “he was too preoccupied with money and gout. He was only thrilling when he lost his temper and chattered and screamed like a monkey” (286). JC had a “charming, unfeeling courtesy” (300), and a “Polish morbidity and antici1 Paul Valéry (1871–1945), French poet, had met JC in the previous year and visited him in October 1922. 2 JC visited America in 1923. 3 A novel (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1916) based on Walpole’s experiences during the war in Eastern Europe. On 20 January 1918, three days before he had arranged to meet Walpole for the first time, JC asked Pinker, “Pray get the publisher of the Dark Forest to send me a copy. I really must see it before I meet the man” (CL6 174). 4 James Annand, actor. 5 This visit occurred at Oswalds. On 8 June 1920, JC told Alfred A. Knopf that Walpole “was here yesterday” (CL6 106).

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pation of the worst”, which was offset by the times of “enchanting boyish gaiety and jokes” (377).

Hartman, Howard The Seas Were Mine, ed. George S. Hellman. London: Harrap, 1936, 15, 82–87, 95–96, 108–19, 120–21, 209–10, 225, 250, 251–52, 298; rpt. in part in Conradiana, 1.2 (1968) and 2.2 (1969), passim. [Hartman met JC in London when he was nineteen (i.e., 1887) and JC, by his own account, was nearly thirty-one (i.e., 1888) and living in lodgings in Pimlico (i.e., 1889). Hartman later met JC in the Highland Forest (i.e., 1887) in Singapore. Unreliable account of JC meeting models for Lord Jim, Jewel, Schomberg, Falk, et al.]

Hastings, B(asil) Macdonald Ladies Half-Way. London: Harrap, 1927, 264–69. [Ray, ed., 222–24] Hastings1 worked with JC on the dramatization of Victory [in 1916]. At

1 B(asil) Macdonald Hastings (1881–1928), a dramatist, had his first play produced in 1912. During the war, he enlisted in the army and was later commissioned into the Royal Air Force. Hastings approached JC about dramatizing his novel, Victory, in early 1916 and produced an adaptation in the following April. JC had reservations about it, but came to regard it as a sure commercial success and showed great interest in the casting. (He also planned to collaborate with Hastings on an original play, set in Italy with English characters, about a forged painting by an Old Master.) In a letter of 25 January 1917, JC wrote to Hastings that “you can have no conception of my ignorance in theatrical art. I can’t even imagine a scenic effect. But reading your adaptation I, even I, felt something, what I imagine to be the scenic emotion come through to me – get home” (CL6 16). Production of Victory was delayed by the conditions of war and the illness of a principal actor, but the three-act play eventually opened on 26 March 1919 at the Globe Theatre, London. (Illness prevented JC attending the opening night.) It enjoyed considerable success, running for eighty-three performances until 6 June 1919.

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rehearsals, JC said that Lena, “the grande amoureuse”1 should have “rhythm” (265). JC approved of the dramatization, and begged Hastings to collaborate on a new work, for which JC wrote many pages of vivid dialogue. JC was willing to write solely for money, and said that he had been “performing on a tight-rope – without a net”2 for years, and would now like to get down. He was happy to make drastic alterations to his novels for stage purposes. The happy ending of Victory was his idea. JC was very proud of One Day More, and believed it was perfect. Seeing it performed had been, he said, “a painful experience” (267), because of the bad acting.3 He was unwilling to visit the theatre to learn about drama: “I admit that I cannot even imagine a scenic effect, but I cannot learn anything from watching” (267). He would not watch actresses. He was once fed chocolates, he said, by a Madame Modjeska, “but that was in the Middle Ages” (267).4 Hastings persuaded him to see 1 See JC’s description of Lena in his letter to Hastings of 6 September 1916: “Lena (being what she is) is a grande amoureuse not only to death (which is but a trifle) but even to the terrible falsehood and risk of the Lena-Ricardo scene – the grapple with death itself” (CL6 655). 2 JC wrote to Hastings on 27 February 1917 that “I have been for 20 years performing on a tight rope (without net) and I am still at it, and I am 59 last birthday. One would like to see some prospect of getting down at last – if only on the brink of the grave, just for a moment” (CL6 38). 3 JC mentioned One Day More, his only dramatic effort, to Hastings in September 1918: “I would be glad to know whether you think it shows a hopeless incomprehension of the stage. I saw it performed by the S[tage] S[ociety] with Const[an]ce Collier and J. L’Estrange in the principal parts, and it was a painful experience – I assure you” (CL6 267). The Stage Society gave three performances of One Day More in June 1905; at the time, JC told John Galsworthy that “the reception of the play was not such as to encourage me to sacrifice 6 months to the stage” (CL3 272). The leads were Constance Collier (1878–1955) and Julian L’Estrange (1878–1918). 4 JC made this comment to Hastings on 27 February 1919. The editors query whether JC saw her in Warsaw or Lwów, and add: “Helena Modjeska was the American stage name of Helena Modrzejewska (née Opid, 1840–1909; Chłapowska in her second marriage). Born in Cracow, she became much loved for her performances of Polish drama. In 1868, she joined the company of the Imperial Theatre, Warsaw. A nationalist outspoken in her opinion of the Russian occupation, she left Warsaw in 1876 to try life in the United States. There she learned English and decided to settle, returning to Europe only for occasional tours of her homeland and one season in London. Her most admired roles in English were in Schiller, Dumas, Ibsen,

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Irving’s Hamlet, and JC praised the actors playing Horatio and Polonius.1 Hastings reluctantly declined to collaborate with JC because he thought One Day More hopeless, theatrically. JC defended a book that discussed him as one of six leading men of letters; one of the other authors “may not be read many years hence, but he has left a definite mark on his time” (265).2

Heilbrun, Carolyn G. The Garnett Family. London: Allen and Unwin, 1961, 65. On Christmas Day 1923, JC described his first meeting with Edward Garnett to Gertrude Bone,3 who transcribed JC’s account and sent a copy to Garnett. Part of her letter is used by Garnett in the Introduction to his Letters from Conrad: 1895–1924 (London: Nonesuch Press, 1928), vii. Another, omitted, part reads as follows: “Conrad, less than anyone I have ever met, had the home-making faculty. He, the voyager, sought his home here and there in the mind of a friend. No furniture contained him for long.” [Muirhead Bone and Jean-Aubry were also present at this Christmas visit.]

and above all Shakespeare” (CL6 375). Her husband was Karol Bodzenta Chłapowski, a friend of JC’s father and editor of Kraj. 1 On 4 June 1917, JC wrote to Hastings that “The other day I sneaked in to see Hamlet” (CL6 98). Polonius was played by E. Holman Clark (1868– 1925), famous for his Christmas performances as Captain Hook in Peter Pan, and JC said that “his Polonius was quite a conception and well realized too” (CL6 98). Hamlet was being performed at the Savoy Theatre. Henry Brodribb Irving (1870–1919), an actor-manager and lessee of the Savoy Theatre, had made the original connection between Hastings and JC. Both Irving and Clark were being considered for roles in Victory. Neither was eventually cast. 2 Some Modern Novelists: Appreciations and Estimates (New York: Henry Holt, 1917) by Helen Thomas Follett and Wilson Follett, who discuss JC, Galsworthy, Wells, Bennett, Wharton, and Eden Phillpotts as their six “Novelists of Today.” 3 Gertrude Helena Bone (née Dodd, 1876-1962), the daughter of a Wesleyan minister, was born in Holyhead, Anglesey. A writer, she married Muirhead Bone in 1903 in Chorlton, Lancashire.

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Hidaka, Tadaichi1 “A Visit to Conrad” (1929) in Yoko Okuda, trans., “East Meets West: Tadaichi Hidaka’s ‘A Visit to Conrad.’” The Conradian, 23.2 (1998): 73–87. JC mentioned that he had read “a few” (82) works by Lafcadio Hearn, such as The Heart (1896) and Out of the East (1895).2 Hidaka had recently visited Thomas Hardy, and JC recalled that “I used to see him quite often before, but I haven’t had a chance to see him recently,” adding that “In facing nature, Mr. Hardy faces static nature, whereas I face dynamic, active nature, so we are naturally different” (85). JC declared that his favourite poet was “Keats, I think.” Hidaka asked JC whom he considered to be the most promising among new writers in Britain, and JC replied that “it’s a rather difficult question to answer, but among novelists I would say Lawrence, May Sinclair, Clemence Dane, Maurice Hurd, and among poets Middleton Murry, John Freeman, Drinkwater, and as a poet and critic, Edward Shanks and John Squire” (86).3

Hind, C. L. “Joseph Conrad.” Authors and I. London: John Lane, 1921, 61–64. Hind met JC at H. G. Wells’s Sandgate home, a quarter of a century ago. JC said, “Ah, if only I could write zee English good, well. But you see, you will see!” (61). 1 Tadaichi Hidaka (1879–1955) was a Professor of English and American Literature at Tokyo’s Waseda University. He visited JC at Oswalds on Sunday, 3 September 1922. His account of the visit was originally published in Tadaichi Hidaka and Y. Shiraishi, trans., “Some Reminiscences” and “Amy Foster” by Joseph Conrad (Tokyo: Eibungakusha, 1929). JC wrote to Hidaka on 11 July 1911 (CL4 457–58). 2 Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904), an Irish-Greek writer who became a naturalized Japanese citizen. 3 May Sinclair (1863–1946); Clemence Dane (Winifred Ashton, 1888–1965); Middleton Murry (1889–1957); John Freeman (1880–1929); John Drinkwater (1882–1937); Edward Richard Buxton Shanks (1892–1953); John Collings Squire (1884–1958).

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Naphtali. London: John Lane, 1926. Hind last saw JC at rehearsals for The Secret Agent. JC could not understand why the company did not act at a rehearsal (74).1 [Repeats anecdote of previous item, 73.]

Holloway, Mark Norman Douglas: A Biography. London: Secker & Warburg, 1976, 156–58, 192, 330. Douglas wrote that the manuscript of his Fountains in the Sand (1912) originally contained “a story running through it: a kind of romance. I showed the thing in this form to Joseph Conrad, who read it carefully and then said: ‘What is that woman doing in here? Take her out!’ Out she went with all that belonged to her” (192) [ca. October 1910]. In a letter to Walter Lowenfels [1924], Douglas said that JC never wrote to him about his novels: “He always (as we were so often together) just handed them to me” (330). [Holloway reprints much of his letter to Muriel Draper on pp. 156–58: see description of Draper’s Music at Midnight above.]

Hope, G. F. W. “Friend of Conrad,” ed. Gene M. Moore. The Conradian, 25.2 (2000): 1–56. Hope’s memoir of his very long friendship with JC concentrates on the early years, when they would meet in London between JC’s voyages, and 1 C(harles) L(ewis) Hind (1862–1927), writer and journalist. JC attended all the rehearsals, which took place in late October, including the dress rehearsal: “At first Conrad was quite pleased with the rehearsals. In time, however, he became more and more uneasy: he argued with the director about the cuts, although later he maintained that he had introduced them himself […] and he was irritated by the acting of some roles” (Najder 470). See also JC’s letter to the director, J. Harry Benrimo on 27 October (CL6 554–5). The play opened on 2 November 1922 at the Ambassadors Theatre.

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their cruises in the Thames estuary in Hope’s yawl, the Nellie. Specifically literary references include the following: (1) Edward Frederick Knight’s The Cruise of the “Falcon” (1884) was “a book much enjoyed” by JC (26) (2) In 1882, JC travelled up to London while the Palestine lay in Falmouth: “He told me that he had only been able to draw a month’s pay, and decided to invest it in a book of Byron’s Poems and a new travelling bag” (36) (3) During a visit to Chatham in 1889, Hope “pointed out all the sights of interest, especially those mentioned by Dickens, because Conrad was an admirer of Dickens. One of these was the ‘Seven Travellers Inn’ and the Cathedral on the left, also ‘The Bull Inn’” (48; also 42; see especially the opening scenes of The Pickwick Papers). Hope’s daughter-in-law, Mrs Jean Hope,1 “recalled that Conrad had once kissed her hand at a Canterbury railway station” (1).

Huneker, James Gibbons Letters, ed. Josephine Huneker. London: T. Werner Laurie, 1922. Huneker2 tells John Quinn that he had sent JC a copy of his Ivory Apes and Peacocks, but since it contained an essay on him, JC obviously felt unable to acknowledge directly its receipt, so he has done so via Quinn (206; letter dated 26 March 1916).3 1 Jean Hope (d. 1978) was married to Herford Hope (1884–1941), G. F. W. Hope’s third child. 2 James Gibbons Huneker (1857–1921) wrote fiction and criticism of literature, art and modern music (he had also written a well-known book on Chopin). He was acquainted with French and Polish literature in particular and had known Stephen Crane in New York. JC invited him to Capel House in 1912 (CL5 111; see below). Huneker was the first American man of letters, apart from Crane, to establish a correspondence with JC. 3 Huneker’s Ivory Apes and Peacocks (1915) has more than a dozen chapters on

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“A Visit to Joseph Conrad, The Mirror of the Sea.” New York Times (Magazine), 17 November 1912: 4. [Ray, ed., 21–27] JC struck Huneker as a simple-mannered gentleman, whose ways were anything but bluff, or English, or “literary.” His slightly muffled voice is Slavic, and he speaks English with a rapid and clear enunciation. He frequently broke into pure and fluent French. He takes an interest in everything except bad art, which moves him to a vibrating indignation, and he speaks of his contemporary writers very sympathetically. He expressed his admiration for Poe, Whitman, Hawthorne, and James. Throughout his years at sea, the Bible and Flaubert were his companions. Huneker remarked to JC that he considered “The End of the Tether” to be in the same key as King Lear, Père Goriot, and a Turgenev tale, “A Lear of the Steppes.”1 JC was “pleased at the comparison, and then confessed that the love of a father for his son or daughter was very attractive to him as an artist.” If one speaks of him as a “literary” man, he emphatically denies it, yet he is far from being a practical man, and this worries him more than it worries his friends. He astonished Huneker later by transforming himself into an Englishman, sporting a monocle and driving with a haughty expression through the Kent countryside.2 [Huneker’s “With JC and other writers. JC told John Quinn on 27 February 1916 that “The Apes & Peacocks book is good and immensely characteristic of our extremely ‘alive’ friend. What mental agility! What a flexible liveliness of style! And of course he is very far from being shallow, very far; but the light of his intelligence has such wonderful surface-play that one is dazzled at first. It’s only after a while that one sees how deep he can go – when he likes” (CL5 559). 1 Le Père Goriot, a novel by Honoré de Balzac (1835), part of La Comédie Humaine. 2 Huneker’s introductory visit took place at Capel House on the afternoon of Saturday, 12 October 1912. Four days later, JC wrote to him that “you were no stranger for us. Ever since I first heard from You you have been one of the men who count in our existence, often thought of, frequently spoken about. I have had from the first the greatest respect for your attitude to life and art and a very sincere admiration for the expression of your penetrating intelligence and illuminating judgement of men and things. This is why I have prized highly your generous appreciation of my work” (CL5 117). JC told John Quinn in December 1912 that “We liked H[uneker] very much” (CL5 143). JC first corresponded with him in April 1914, when Huneker sent him a copy of his Egoists: A Book of Supermen (New York: Scribner’s, 1909), in which Huneker ranked him with Ibsen, Nietzsche, Stendhal, Flaubert, Baudelaire,

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Joseph Conrad” in Steeplejack (New York: Scribner’s, 1920), 2: 128–33, is virtually a reprint of this.]

Hunt, Violet1 The Flurried Years. London: Hurst & Blackett, 1926, 26–28, 31–39, 51–54. [Ray, ed., 122–24] The English Review, JC said, “may have to stop, but it must not fail” (27).2 He regarded Marwood as “un galant homme” (28).3 During their collaboration on Romance, JC and Ford met only in the intervals of what JC called “vile but indispensable sensual gorging of grey matter” (35). JC never “cared very much for the idea of America” (36), and regarded S. S. McClure as a “prestidigitous person” (37).4

1

2 3

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France, Huysmans, and Barrès (CL4 217–18). Huneker also praised him in Metropolitan Magazine (April 1905) and wrote to JC that he was “the English (and the Polish) Flaubert” (CL4 234). (Isobel) Violet Hunt (1866–1942), a novelist and short-story writer, was the eldest daughter of Alfred Hunt, the painter. Her parents were intimates of Browning, Ruskin, Rossetti, William Morris, and all the Pre-Raphaelites. Her first novel was published in 1894. She had a brief affair with H. G. Wells and, in 1908, had recently begun a long relationship with Ford Madox Ford, whose wife refused to grant him a divorce. All three members of this triangle tried to gain JC’s support and sympathy, and Ford’s messy personal life contributed greatly to the cooling of JC’s friendship with him. In a letter to Galsworthy in March 1912, JC mentions “the great F. M. H. [i.e. Hueffer, later Ford] who was here shortly after New Year with the somewhat less great V. H.” (CL5 37). Cf. JC’s letter to Ford, 28 May or 5 April 1909: “The ER. may have to stop but it mustn’t fail” (CL4 221). If Violet Hunt occasionally seems to be echoing JC’s letters, it is because many of his letters to Ford exist in copies made by her. Arthur Pierson Marwood (1868-1916), who came from a Yorkshire county family and read mathematics at Cambridge (though did not take a degree due to ill-health), met JC in 1905. The friendship was to prove of great value and importance to JC. The latter told Ford that Marwood “has always seemed to me a gallant-homme” (CL4 222). S(amuel) S(idney) McClure (1857–1949), American publisher. JC tells Ford that “I know and you know that McC. is nothing but a sort of farceur and a faiseur as well, and that no human being worthy of the name has been the better morally or even materially for any connection with him” (CL4 221).

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Ford always spoke of JC with the most reverent and humble affection, and even imitated him to the point of cultivating his phobias. On the subject of love, JC once asked Hunt, “What object, what purpose, could be served by the creation of equivocal situations – juggling with the realities of life?” (52). He never went in for love affairs, and he abhorred intrigue: “I can’t breathe in situations that are not clear. [...] They are neither in my nature, my tradition, or my experience. [...] I am not fine enough for them” (53).1

Janta, Aleksander “A Conrad Family Heirloom at Harvard.” In Joseph Conrad: Centennial Essays, ed. Ludwik Krzyżanowski. New York: Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America, 1960, 85–109. [Janta quotes an unpublished letter from Jessie Conrad to W. T. H. Howe] “Passion for burning MSS was shared by [JC’s] father who burned all his MSS before his son’s eyes while he lay on his death bed.”

Jean-Aubry, G. “Joseph Conrad and Music.” The Chesterian, 6.42 (November 1924): 37–42. JC often recalled the evenings he spent at the Marseilles Opera, about 1875, where he heard Meyerbeer’s and Verdi’s operas, and Offenbach’s operettas. He was eager to know about modern music, and read JeanAubry’s La Musique et les Nations (1922).2 He had no technical notion of 1 JC’s comments here echo his remarks to Ford about his relationship with his wife, Elsie, and their attempts to involve him in the complications (CL4 222). 2 On 27 May 1922, JC told Jean-Aubry that “J’ai reçu avec joie le vol La Musique et les Nations hier. J’ai lu Debussy tout de suite avec le plus grand plaisir. Que je suis content d’avoir un Volume de Vous” (CL7 473). The editors add that La Musique et les Nations “traces the influence of national idioms and nationalist ideas on European music. It has chapters on Spain (Albéniz, Granados, Falla), Italy (Malipiero), Britain (Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Bax, Bliss, Goossens, Lord Berners), Liszt, Chopin, and Debussy.”

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music. He spoke of Chopin with much spirit.1 Jean-Aubry arranged for him to meet Ravel, first in July 1922 and again, a year later, in Arnold Bennett’s company.2 The only other composer to leave such a strong impression as Ravel on JC was Charles Szymanowski,3 who visited him in 1920. Paderewski, who met JC in New York, told Jean-Aubry that they discussed not music but the Polish question.4 JC desired that one of his books should form the subject matter of a lyrical drama. He knew Mérimée’s Carmen, and he considered that Nostromo would be suitable for such lyrical adaptation. In Liverpool in 1919, JC attended Jean-Aubry’s lecture, “Verlaine et les Musiciens.”5

1 Frédéric Chopin (1810–49) was a fellow Pole. See Najder, 178, 387. 2 JC first met the French composer Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) through JeanAubry and Mme Alvar (CL7 611). In December 1922, he told André Gide that “J’ai eu dernièrement le très grand plaisir de faire la connaissance de Ravel et de Paul Valéry. Ils ont été charmants tous les deux pour moi” (CL7 629). The later meeting in the company of Bennett occurred on 17 April 1923 at Mme Alvar’s; see Arnold Bennett: The “Evening Standard” Years: “Books and Persons,” 1926–1931, ed. Andrew Mylett (London: Chatto & Windus, 1974), described above. 3 Karol Szymanowski (1882–1937), pianist and musician, was born on his family’s estate in Tymoszówka in the Ukraine. He became the director of the Warsaw Conservatory of Music in 1927. About 20 December 1920, JC received three Polish visitors: Szymanowski; Konstanty Skirmunt, the Polish chargé d’affaires in London; and another musician, Jan Effenberger-Śliwiński. JC and Szymanowski discovered that their families had known each other very well in the Ukraine; see Najder 457, and Karol Szymanowski, Z listów [From the Letters], ed. T. BronowiczChylińska (Cracow, 1958), 198–99. 4 Najder writes that “On 9 May [1923] Conrad was entertained at lunch by Colonel E. M. House, the influential politician and former advisor to President Wilson. There he met Ignacy Paderewski, the famous pianist and Polish statesman, of whom he apparently said later, ‘What an outstanding man … in half an hour I learned from him more about my motherland than I had within the last fifteen years of my life’” (476). 5 Jean-Aubry was speaking at the Royal Institution, Liverpool, on 12 December 1912 during the Conrads’ visit to the city to consult Jessie’s surgeon (see CL6 542).

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Jefferson, George Edward Garnett: A Life in Literature. London: Cape, 1982. Garnett’s son, David, told the author in 1980 that Ford’s account, in Ancient Lights, of Garnett showing him the MS of Almayer’s Folly was “pure invention. Constance [Garnett]’s story is that Edward handed her the MS of Almayer saying “Look at this and see if the English is good enough for it to be published” (299). Ford, in a letter to Edward Garnett dated 5 May 1928, described how “I was letting my own family go short in order to keep [JC]” during their collaboration. JC, he added, “never broke with me, or I with him” (264). Jessie Conrad, defending her Joseph Conrad and his Circle, told Garnett that she was a complete success as his wife (267).1 In a letter of 20 August 1935, Garnett told Cunninghame Graham that Jessie ought to have managed a home for barmaids: “I knew that from the first & Conrad having no knowledge of the social shades in Englishwomen & wanting a Housekeeper has had to pay at long last, for his experiment” (268) [i.e., by publication of her book].

Jepson, Edgar Memories of an Edwardian and Neo-Georgian. London: Richards, 1937. [Ray, ed., 216–17] Jepson2 first met JC at Perceval Gibbon’s house in Dymchurch. He 1 The complete text of Jessie’s letter to Garnett of 14 July 1935 is printed in A Portrait in Letters: Correspondence to and about Conrad, ed. J. H. Stape and Owen Knowles (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996), 257–58. 2 Edgar Alfred Jepson (1863–1938) was a popular English writer, principally of adventure and detective fiction, but also of some supernatural and fantasy stories. He published his first book at the age of thirty-two and proceeded to write fifty more. He is often considered one of the last of the Decadents, and was also one of the more senior of the New Bohemians drinking club. Jepson’s long and productive career spanned the Yellow Nineties through the Edwardian and Neo-Georgian periods of British letters, and he is immortalized in Ezra Pound’s Pisan Cantos, where he features in a roll-call of Edwardian luminaries as “Jepson lover of jade.” Jepson produced many

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seemed to find his family, who accompanied him, an oppression that kept him irritable. Gibbon and JC sat on Dymchurch1 wall and talked endlessly about the number and colour of the steamers’ funnels that they could see. Later, Jepson met JC once at the Square Club,2 and he looked very much on his guard. Ford is said by Jepson to dislike Victory (142–44, 150).

Johnstone, Will B. “‘I Do Nothing but Talk About Myself,’ Roars Joseph Conrad.” Evening World (New York), 2 May 1923: 23. JC liked The Rover “better than any of my other books. I always like my last book the best.” He said he had never been a martinet or a bully during his years at sea. He had never been seasick. He enjoyed humour, and praised Jacobs’s sea stories. [Interviewed at home of F. N. Doubleday, on arrival in New York]

articles, reviews, short stories, novels, and even wrote propaganda pieces during the war. His talents were employed on everything from lost-race novels to editing The Win the War Cookery Book and coining such slogans for the war effort as “Eat Less Bread!” He was the maternal grandfather of the novelist Fay Weldon (who, during a spell in advertising, created the slogan “Go to work on an egg”). 1 Dymchurch is a small village located on Kent’s south-east coast at the very edge of the Romney Marshes. The vast Dymchurch wall built by the Romans to protect their harbour at Port Lympne runs for about four miles and was about 20 feet high. From the top of the Dymchurch wall are fine views of the White Cliffs at Folkestone and Dover. 2 The Square Club was founded by G. K. Chesterton about 1908 in honour of Henry Fielding; its members included Ford Madox Ford, most of the English Review set, De La Mare, Galsworthy, and Edward Thomas. The Square Club was a monthly dining club that met in London, from about 1908 to about 1913–14, and it was perhaps the most substantial such grouping of its time, with a concentration of those enjoying professional success. Its name commemorated Mr Square, the philosopher in Tom Jones. Ezra Pound found it easy to make contacts through the club when he arrived in London.

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Jones, Edith R. “Stephen Crane at Brede.” Atlantic Monthly, 194 (July 1954): 57–61. The Cranes gave the Conrads a puppy, called Pizanner, which they renamed.1 Jones liked JC the most of any of the Brede guests, and he would discuss books with her as seriously as with his fellow writers.

Karrakis, S. “Joseph Conrad at Home in England.” Poland: The Journal of the American Polish Chamber of Commerce and Industry (New York), 5.4 (April 1924): 225–28, 247–48. [Ray, ed., 35–39] Karrakis2 visited JC at Oswalds in August [1921] to obtain JC’s approval of his dramatization of Under Western Eyes. JC refused, saying “I won’t have you taking the words of my book. I labored over those words until no other would fit the thought. It is as if the story and characters and the words were one, inseparable, indivisible” (228). JC was interested in American food, and thought America was a 1 “Crane, having decided that the boy needed a dog, presented him with one of his many puppies, ‘named Pizanner because he was black and utterly mongrel in shape.’ In honor of the toreador from Carmen – an opera Conrad was fond of whistling arias from – the puppy was renamed Escamillo and became a favourite of the entire family” (Najder 257; see also Borys Conrad, My Father, 31–32). 2 S. Karrakis, a Russo-American writer and journalist, visited JC in 1921. He had dramatized Under Western Eyes as a stage play and had sailed from America in David Bone’s ship, the Tuscania, to submit it to JC for his approval. Before Karrakis arrived, Bone wrote to JC about him, and Jessie later told Bone that his letter caused JC to continue “brushing his hair fiercely for at least ten minutes.” After the visit by Karrakis, JC wrote to Bone on 6 September 1919 that “I am very sorry that Mr K. should have taken this trouble. Of all my novels this, especially, is the one I do not want anybody to touch. If there is ever any adaptation it will be done by myself” (CL6 337). In late August, JC had reported on the adaptation to Pinker: “I return the play which is a very very poor sort of thing […] which I can’t even call bad. It is just nothing at all. No intelligence no characterisation no interest either in the situation or in the persons” (CL6 334).

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purposeful country. He expressed an interest in visiting it. He seldom went to the theatre, although he had seen several plays in Paris, where he had been to collect material for The Rover.1 He wished to write for the theatre one day, and thought that perhaps he would dramatize one of his novels. [JC was sitting for an etching by an unidentified artist during Karrakis’s visit.]

Keating, George T., comp. A Conrad Memorial Library. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1928. The quotation from Grimm’s Tales (1812–22) on the title page of Youth referred not to the text but to the dedication to his wife (94),2 who described her feelings for JC as “largely maternal” (202). The character of Fyne in Chance was suggested to JC by H. G. Wells and his interest in walking. Wells introduced Shaw, Gissing, Douglas and Jerrold3 to JC (224). There were many possible titles for Chance, but Perceval Gibbon cast the deciding vote, after JC told him of Hugh Clifford’s efforts on the novel’s behalf (224). Jessie Conrad described the completion of Victory (253–54). Early in 1918, shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution, JC said to Edward Garnett, “Well! this is the end, absolutely, of the society and culture Turgenev has chronicled in his novels” (310). Jessie Conrad described JC’s visit to Poland in 1914 and his conviction that “The Black Mate” was his first work (364–65).4 1 Possibly this refers to JC’s three-day stay in Marseilles in January 1921, during the writing of Suspense, but the bout of play-going there is improbable. 2 The epigraph reads “. . . but the Dwarf answered: ‘No, something human is dearer to me than the wealth of the world.’” See Claude-Nöel Thomas’s note to the Pléiade edition of Conrad: Œuvres (Paris: Gallimard, 1985), 2: 1248–49. See also Jessie Conrad, Joseph Conrad As I Knew Him, 49. 3 Walter Copeland Jerrold (1865–1929), friend of Ford Madox Ford, a prolific author of popular biographies, and an editor of standard authors. He was an employee of The Daily Telegraph. 4 JC wrote “The Black Mate” in January and February 1908. In 1922, JC told Pinker that he originally wrote it in 1886 for a prize competition in Tit-Bits (making it his first work), but Jessie insisted that she had been the one who suggested the story. As Najder notes, “Perhaps Conrad had in fact written something for Tit-Bits and later connected it with the artistically primitive tale suggested by his wife” (339).

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Knopf, Alfred A. “Joseph Conrad: A Footnote to Publishing History.” Atlantic Monthly, 201 (February 1958): 63–67. Knopf1 first met JC in 1921, at Bishopsbourne. Two years later, he took Thomas Beer2 to see him to discuss the introduction that JC was writing for Beer’s study of Crane. Knopf and Beer were trying to advance Crane’s reputation, and JC said, “Now we must do something for Robert [Cunninghame Graham].”

Lawrence, A. W., ed. T. E. Lawrence by His Friends. London: Cape, 1937. Sir Herbert Baker, the architect, records what his friend T. E. Lawrence appears to have told him about his conversation with JC in 1920: “when meeting Conrad he probed him on the methods of his craft; Conrad admitting but little conscious design” (250).

1 Alfred A(braham) Knopf (1892–1984) worked for Doubleday, Page in New York and he managed the very successful publicity campaign for Chance. He established his own firm in 1915, and he remained with it when it was eventually taken over by Random House. His list of authors over the years came to include Wallace Stevens, Willa Cather, Mann, Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Camus, Lessing, and Toni Morrison. 2 JC wrote his Preface to Thomas Beer’s Stephen Crane: A Study in American Letters (New York: Knopf, 1923) in March 1923.

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Lawrence, T. E. Letters, ed. David Garnett. London: Cape, 1938. [Ray, ed., 218] Lawrence1 said of JC that “What I shall always remember is his lame walk, with the stick to help him, and that sudden upturning of the lined face, with its eager eyes under their membrane of eyelid. They drooped over the eye-socket and the sun shone red through them, as we walked up and down the garden” (843; letter to Bruce Rogers, dated 26 January 1935).

Lenormand, H.-R. “II y a quatre ans, en Corse avec Joseph Conrad, coureur de mers.” transatlantic review, 2.3 (October 1924): 338–40. JC told Lenormand2 that he wrote The Nigger “en quelques mois, dans un état de complète hallucination” (338). JC knew Lenormand’s wife, Marie Kalff, who had appeared in a 1909 production of One Day More.3 JC was in Corsica to gather material on Napoleon, and he thought Suspense might be his last novel. He discussed Flaubert, Kipling, Hardy, and he disliked Russian writers, even Dostoevsky. He recounted an adventure with a Dutch ship in the East. [Lenormand met JC in Corsica, February–April 1921.] 1 T(homas) E(dward) Lawrence (1888–1935), “Lawrence of Arabia,” met JC once at the home of Hugh Walpole in July 1920. In 1919–21, Lawrence was a research fellow at All Souls, Oxford, and he was engaged in re-writing Seven Pillars of Wisdom, published posthumously in 1935. In 1922, he enlisted in the ranks of the RAF under the name of J. H. Ross in order to escape publicity. See Ton Hoenselaars and Gene M. Moore, “Joseph Conrad and T. E. Lawrence,” Conradiana, 27 (1995): 3–20. 2 Najder notes that H(enri)-R(ené) Lenormand (1882–1951) was “a young French playwright and enthusiastic admirer of Dostoyevsky and of psychoanalysis” (460) who was then staying on Corsica. He presented himself to JC with an introduction from Robert d’Humières. 3 Marie Kalff (1874–1959), comic actress. Lenormand would appear to be referring to the play’s 1909 French production. JC told Pinker in April 1909 that “My play of To Morrow is in rehearsal at the Theatre for Arts in Paris. I hear the cast is very hopeful. I let the translator have my share of the rights as in any case it was a trifle” (CL4 213). The translator was P.-H. RaymondDuval, and the play opened on 14 April.

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“Note sur un séjour de Conrad en Corse.” Nouvelle Revue Française, 12 (December 1924): 666–71; rpt. in part and trans. in R. W. Stallman, ed., The Art of Joseph Conrad: A Critical Symposium. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1960, 5–8. JC repeatedly expressed his fear that he could no longer work. He would alternate between exclaiming that “je ne suis qu’un conteur” and “je me trouve trop conscient; j’ai perdu toute innocence” (668). He said that he had always been obsessed by “les rapports de père à fille” (668). He had begun writing Almayer’s Folly “sans aucun but,” and he wrote it “d’un seul jet et comme malgré moi” (669). JC was obviously irritated by Lenormand’s suggestion that Almayer had an incestuous passion for his daughter. Lord Jim, JC declared, kept disappearing out of a “sens de l’honneur,” and when Lenormand proposed a profounder motivation, JC insisted that “je ne veux pas aller au fond [...]. Je veux considérer la réalité comme une chose rude et rugueuse sur laquelle je promène mes doigts. Rien de plus” (669). Lenormand lent JC two works by Freud,1 but he returned them unread. He spoke of Freud with “une ironie méprisante” (670). He praised Kipling, Hardy, and Bennett, but detested Meredith and Hichens.2 He was severe on Bret Harte, O. Henry, Frank T. Bullen,3 and even Hawthorne. He knew little of Strindberg. Dostoevsky’s work seemed for him to exhale “une mauvaise odeur insupportable” (670), but he admired Turgenev. [Account of conversations with JC in Corsica, February–April 1921]

“Rencontre avec Joseph Conrad.” Gazette des Lettres, 7 (15 March 1951): 30–32. [Partly reprints the previous two entries]

1 The Interpretation of Dreams (1911) and Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious (1916), both translated by A. A. Brill. 2 Robert Smythe Hichens (1864–1950), journalist and novelist. 3 Frank T(homas) Bullen (1857–1915), writer, perhaps best known for his The Cruise of the Cachalot Round the World after Sperm Whales (1899), an account of whaling in the South Seas.

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Lewis, John S. “Conrad in 1914.” Polish Review, 20. 2–3 (1975): 217–22. Arthur Rubinstein visited JC,1 and he told Lewis that JC was more correct than cordial: “he seemed stiff and formal [...]. He was trying to adapt to English ways – We had tea” (217). Rubinstein was accompanied by Norman Douglas.

Lewis, Tracy Hammond “News and Views: An Interview with Joseph Conrad.” New York Morning Telegraph, 31 May 1923: 4; rpt. in Dale B. J. Randall, “Conrad Interviews, No. 5: Tracy Hammond Lewis,” Conradiana, 3.2 (1971–72): 67–73. JC confided that the first Christmas he was away from home was raw and blustery, but he was not homesick, for he was in a new element which he loved.2 In the late 1880s, he read his first Mark Twain book, Innocents at Home,3 and he thought The Mississippi Pilot “the nicest of his books.” In the Congo, JC often “thought of him looking for snags.” 1 Artur Rubinstein (1887–1982), the Polish pianist, made his London début in 1912 and lived there during the war. He visited JC at Capel House in May 1914. Rubinstein knew Aniela Zagórska, JC’s cousin with whom he had stayed in 1914 at Zakopane in southern Poland. 2 JC’s first Christmas away from home was spent in the Mont Blanc. He had sailed from Marseilles on 15 December 1874 for Martinique and reached Saint-Pierre on 16 February 1875. This was his first sea voyage as a passenger. See The Mirror of the Sea: “The very first Christmas night I ever spent away from land was employed in running before a Gulf of Lions gale, which made the old ship groan in every timber as she skipped before it over the short seas until we brought her to, battered and out of breath, under the lee of Majorca” (ed. Zdzisław Najder [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988], 152–3). 3 That is, The Innocents Abroad (1869), a travel-book that chronicles Twain’s pleasure cruise in the Quaker City through Europe and Palestine with a group of religious pilgrims.

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Recalling his recent meeting with Paderewski, he described him as “a delightful man [who] told me more in fifteen minutes than I ever had any notion of.” JC thought it absurd to suggest that Paderewski had been in favour of the Jewish pogrom.1 A sailor, JC explained, “is called on to expend a great amount of nervous energy in a given space of time – often a time of danger. Turbines have removed the danger and the romance from the sea.” He had come to America not to make money, but simply to visit. [Interviewed by six reporters on 28 May 1923, at the office of Doubleday, Page and Co., Garden City, New York]

“News and Views: Conrad’s Last Interview.” New York Morning Telegraph, 6 August 1924: 6. [Lewis, in an obituary notice, recalls interviewing JC – see previous item.] JC was painfully self-conscious and embarrassed, which showed in his hurried speech and low voice. He consented to the interview only to oblige his publishers.

Lhombreaud, Roger Arthur Symons: A Critical Biography. London: Unicorn Press, 1963. Symons received a visit from Gide and Agnes Tobin, who had been to see JC [17 July 1911]. Symons was depressed after the excitement of this visit, noting in his diary that “I feel like Conrad who said how sickening it was to go on writing, writing: he himself having been incapable for I don’t know [how] many days” (275). Symons’s diary for 13 August 1911 records a conversation with JC: “CONRAD: ‘I shall write till I am buried.’ ‘I also.’ We shook hands” (322). Violet Markham,2 in a letter to Lhombreaud about Symons’s eccentricities, recalls one summer when Robert Hichens and John Little set off to visit JC, who was living nearby, but Symons threw his coat over the driver’s head and prevented the trip (276). 1 Possibly a reference to the massacre of eighty Jews in Vilnius in April 1919. 2 Violet Rosa Markham (1872–1959; Mrs James Carruthers; CH), Liberal activist and public servant, and biographer of her grandfather, the architect Joseph Paxton.

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Littell, Robert “Arriving with Joseph Conrad.” New Republic, 34 (16 May 1923): 319. [Ray, ed., 178–80] JC said that “My mind isn’t critical. I haven’t got enough general culture for criticism. A sea life doesn’t fit one for that.” He regarded writing as a “frightful grind.” He had great feeling for the Otago, and thought all of his ships had such good names, although the Duke of Sutherland was the most prosaic. He mentions the name of the Tremolino thoughtfully and tenderly. JC thought the past was “frightfully misty now” but “one doesn’t forget twenty-seven years. All that gets merged into one solitary impression.” Life on the sea is “altogether different now.” [Interviewed on arrival in New York, May 1923]

Lucas, Audrey E. V. Lucas: A Portrait. London: Methuen, 1939, 69. Lucas’s daughter1 recalls that the Conrads often used to dine at their home in 2 Gordon Place, and for a short time they lived only a few doors away.2 JC was always in and out of their house, and “he used to tease Borys about the number of calls he made on me, and accused him of carrying a cake of soap, by means of standing on which he acquired the extra height necessary to reach our doorbell.”

1 In the 1901 Census, Audrey Lucas is aged 3, living with her parents at 86 Great Portland St, Marylebone. Birth registered at Holborn, April–June 1898. 2 On 17 January 1904, the Conrads left The Pent and took a flat in Kensington at 17 Gordon Place, near the Fords. JC returned to The Pent in late March.

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Lucas, E. V. “Joseph Conrad.” English Life, 3:4 (September 1924): 247–48. [Ray, ed., 84–86] Lucas1 was introduced to JC by Garnett in 1895, in the Restaurant d’Italie in Old Compton Street. On the table were the galley proofs of Almayer’s Folly.2 JC visited Lucas occasionally: he “took an incredible number of lumps of sugar in his tea, and talked more of the English countryside than of books” (247). He rarely gave his real opinions of writers, but he described a certain publisher [T. Fisher Unwin?] as a “orri-ble per-son-al-i-ty” (248). The last time Lucas saw JC was at Canterbury Cricket Week, when JC arrived at the ground in a coach-and-four driven by J. B. Pinker.3 Watching cricket fed JC’s sense of ironical humour. He told Lucas that, but for his gout, he would be perfectly happy. [Mostly rpt. in Lucas’s Reading, Writing and Remembering: A Literary Record (London: Methuen, 1932), 145–48]

Lütken, Otto “Joseph Conrad in the Congo.” London Mercury, 22 (May 1930): 40–43. Lütken prints extracts from the records of Captain Duhst, a Dane, who knew JC in the Congo, e.g., “I am in company with an English captain Conrad from the Kinshassa Company: he is continually sick with dysentery and fever” (41) [entry for 23 October 1890]. Duhst told Lütken that JC was an agreeable and helpful travelling companion, during the few days they were together. 1 E(dward) V(errall) Lucas (1868–1938), journalist, essayist, and critic. In 1893, he joined the staff of The Globe. Later, after a long connection with the publishing firm of Methuen, he became its chairman. 2 JC received the first proofs of Almayer’s Folly on Christmas Eve 1894, and the book was published on 29 April 1895. 3 John Conrad dates this event to late July–August 1921 (Times Remembered, 178–85).

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Lutosławski, Wincenty “A Visit to Conrad in 1897.” Blue Peter, 10 (December 1930): 638– 40. [Ray, ed., 89–94] Lutosławski1 was introduced to JC by Henry James, who praised him with rare enthusiasm. JC did not believe that his own writing had lasting value, and he thought he simply repeated tales from hearsay. He disparaged his work, saying he was unworthy to write in Polish. He felt that the great Polish writers were far superior to Scott, Dickens, or Thackeray. JC continued to regard seamanship as his vocation. It would be, he said, the most splendid destiny to become a great Polish writer, but he could not give up British nationality and the right to command British ships. “He did not acknowledge the duty to write in Polish, simply because he still looked upon himself as upon a mariner spending a spell of enforced unemployment in writing down his reminiscences” (639). Lutosławski includes a partial translation of his “Emigracja zdolności” [Emigration of Talents], Kraj (1899) (see CUFE, 178–81): “I asked him, ‘Why do you not write in Polish?’ He answered, ‘I value too much our beautiful Polish literature to introduce into it my worthless twaddle. But for Englishmen my capacities are just sufficient: they enable me to earn my living’” (640).2 1 Wincenty Lutosławski (1863–1954), Polish philosopher and nationalist, was a student in London in 1897. He later taught in Cracow, Geneva, Lausanne, London, Paris, and Vilnius, where he was Professor of Philosophy, 1919–28. He suffered several nervous breakdowns during his career. Having received JC’s address from Henry James, Lutosławski wrote to arrange the visit to Ivy Walls described here, which occurred on Sunday, 13 June 1897. His purpose, apparently, was to “win Conrad for Polish literature.” He arrived six hours late, dined, went straight to bed and left very early the next morning. JC wrote to him in 1911 to assure him that he had kept his 1897 visit a secret (CL4 455–56). Jessie Conrad recalls that JC described him as “A queer customer if ever there was one.” JC told Olivia Garnett in October 1911 that “really and truly I don’t know what he wants with me. I don’t understand him in the least. His illumination seems to me a very naïve and uninteresting thing. Does he imagine I am likely to become his disciple? He worries and bores me. […] I believe he is a good man – though confoundedly inquisitive” (CL4 490); see also Conradiana, 14 (1982): 12, and Jessie Conrad, Joseph Conrad and His Circle, 53–55. 2 Lutosławski’s article in Kraj gave a highly distorted and harmful account of

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MacCarthy, Desmond “Biography and Reminiscence.” Listener, 4 November 1931: 779. MacCarthy1 met JC only once, one spring day in 1922.2 There was no impress of his personality in the neat, white, quiet rooms of his home.

“Literary Causerie: To A Distant Friend (VIII).” Empire Review, 40 (September 1924): 291–99. [Ray, ed., 33–35] MacCarthy says he met JC in Kent, in spring 1920.3 “Very quiet in voice and gesture, somewhat elaborate in courtesies, his manner was easy without being reassuring. He had the kind of manners which improve fifty per cent those of a visitor, whoever he or she may be. He was very much the foreign gentleman” (291). He praised Henry James, and spoke partly in French (a French lady was present). MacCarthy felt that “originality of mind in an author counted for little with him if unaccompanied by an aesthetic sense” (292). JC expressed disgust at an eminent author who, on his first visit, told JC that his father had taken to drink, such a confession seeming to him a breach of good manners.4 [These recollections are repeated in MacCarthy’s “Conrad,” Portraits (London: Putnam, 1931), 68–78].

1

2 3

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JC’s reasons for writing in English, and led to Eliza Orzeszkowa’s denunciation of his “desertion.” Desmond MacCarthy (1877–1952; knighted 1951), literary journalist and drama critic. At the time of his visit to JC, he was literary editor of The New Statesman, and later became senior literary critic of The Sunday Times, writing weekly articles for the paper from 1928 until his death. A member of the Bloomsbury Group, he gained wider recognition through his journalism and broadcasting. One of the best conversationalists of his day, he described himself as a hero-worshipper by temperament, except when he was writing. For the likely date of this meeting, see the next item. The date of the meeting given here differs from that in the previous item. MacCarthy’s reference here to JC’s “new home” – Oswalds, where the Conrads had moved in October 1919 – suggests that 1920, not 1922, is the more likely date. The “eminent author” was George Bernard Shaw, and JC described the visit to Edward Garnett in August 1902: “Four or five months ago G. B. S. towed by Wells came to see me reluctantly and I nearly bit him” (CL2 440). See also Najder 285.

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MacDiarmid, Hugh1 “Joseph Conrad and his Scottish Friends” (1957). [MacDiarmid’s centenary talk for radio is published in Alan Riach, “Hugh MacDiarmid on Joseph Conrad: Two Hitherto Uncollected Items.” The Conradian, 21.2 (1996): 15–34] “It was Edward Garnett in 1920 or 21 who introduced me to Conrad. I was a young and quite undistinguished man in the presence of my famous elders but I remember the typical kindness with which they drew me into their talk. My contact with Conrad was brief, yet enough to give me a lasting impression of – and profound interest in – Conrad’s force of character, conversational excellence, and his really enigmatic or inscrutable personality” (32).

Mackenzie, Compton2 Literature in My Time. London: Rich & Cowan, 1933, 12, 142, 171. JC bit his nails. His work was not much read at Oxford [1901–04]. Henry James said to Mackenzie that Marlow was “that unending and remorseless old man of the sea” (171). JC was always dependent on French in conversation.

My Life and Times: Octave Five, 1915–1923. London: Chatto & Windus, 1965, 92. JC refused to stand bail for Norman Douglas in 1916.3 1 Hugh MacDiarmid (né Christopher Murray Grieve, 1892–1978), Scottish poet. 2 Compton Mackenzie (1883–1972; knighted 1952), novelist, best remembered for Sinister Street (1913) and Whisky Galore (1947). 3 In late 1916, Najder notes, “Norman Douglas got himself into trouble with the law: this sexually versatile Epicurean had been more and more openly breaking away from accepted norms of behavior. In December 1915, Conrad, who had been paying for his friend’s younger son’s education, had worried about Douglas’s situation and appealed to mutual friends for

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Marle, Hans van “Plucked and Passed on Tower Hill: Conrad’s Examination Ordeals.” Conradiana, 8 (1976): 99–109. John Conrad told Hans van Marle that JC was usually averse to making underlinings in books (109 n. 45).

Marrot, H. V. The Life and Letters of John Galsworthy. London: Heinemann, 1935, 83–84, 88, 97, 132, 308, 636. Galsworthy and Ted Sanderson met JC when he was a mate in the Torrens [1893]. Marrot quotes Sanderson’s testimony that JC was a courageous and resourceful sailor, and his romantic history and “wide reading in several languages” made him “a fascinating talker on almost any subject” (83–84). Galsworthy, in a letter to his parents [23 April 1893], notes that “the first mate is a Pole called Conrad and is a capital chap, though queer to look at.” He has “a fund of yarns on which I draw freely” and he had indulged in “a little smuggling in the days of his youth” (88). To Monica Sanderson, Galsworthy later wrote [8 September 1894], “I suppose you have heard that Conrad has been appointed first mate of the Torrens again; it is about the best thing that could happen to him, as the voyage suits him and the ship is a very comfortable and pleasant one” (97). When he began writing, Galsworthy had only one literary friend, JC, and he did not tell him of his wish to write. Galsworthy later came to regard JC [diary entry, 25 December 1910] as “an impressionist with a semi-impressionistic, semi-naturalistic technique” (308). JC was, he told a correspondent in 1931, “no influence whatever on my writing. He was a most kind and helpful critic of it, but in manner we were poles apart” (636). tolerance.” However, on 25 November 1916, Douglas was arrested on the charge of molesting a sixteen-year-old boy. On 4 December 1916, JC told Pinker that “bail was peremptorily refused” (CL5 684), and, as Najder comments, “this renders questionable Compton Mackenzie’s allegation that Conrad himself refused to put up bail for his friend” (421).

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Marshall, Archibald Out and About: Random Reminiscences. London: John Murray, 1933, 139, 142–46, 275. [Ray, ed., 64–65] Shortly before JC died, Marshall1 met him at the Arts Club, where he was lunching with Eric Pinker.2 The meeting gave Marshall an “imperishable memory” of JC, although, he adds enigmatically, “I won’t spoil that memory by recalling any of our talk that touched on Hueffer” (139). Marshall’s earlier memories of JC concern their conversations in the National Liberal Club, and they used to meet at literary lunches in the Mont Blanc Restaurant [ca. 1908]. Marshall was editor of The Daily Mail, and he recalls that a parcel of books, including a translation of one by Anatole France, was once sent to JC for review, but he declined the work [some time after 1910]. Crippen, the murderer,3 was arrested in Canada [1910], and Marshall had been sent a list of the books that he had read on his voyage over. He invited JC to write an article about Crippen’s “sea library,” but “poor dear Conrad exploded in epistolary fury at being asked to do such a thing and severed his connection with our journal” (145). Of Hueffer’s Preface to Stories from de Maupassant (1903), which had been translated by his wife (“E[lsie] M[artindale]”), JC said to Marshall that “as a criticism of Maupassant’s writing it was all quite mistaken, but that as it had been written by Hueffer of course it was well worth 1 Archibald Marshall (1866–1934) was well-known as a novelist and contributor to Punch. At the time he describes here, he was editor of The Daily Mail’s Literary Supplement. He had also been a special correspondent for that paper in Australia, returning to Britain in 1910. He was an amateur in music and painting, and wrote some thirty novels. Conrad used to meet Marshall occasionally at the Tuesday literary luncheons of the Mont Blanc Restaurant in Soho. 2 Eric S(eabrooke) Pinker (1891–1973) worked for his father, J. B. Pinker, JC’s literary agent. When the latter died in 1922, Eric became the firm’s senior partner. He immigrated to the US, where he ran a literary and theatrical agency in New York City. 3 “Dr” H. H. Crippen was arrested on board the Montrose on 31 July 1910, sailing from England to Canada. He had been sought for the previous three weeks for the murder of his wife earlier in the year, and was executed in November 1910. See Jessie Conrad, Joseph Conrad and His Circle, 158–59, and Borys Conrad, My Father, 65–66.

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reading” (146).1 There was a close intimacy between Arthur Marwood and JC, who gave him a “warm friendship towards the end of his life.” [Marwood died in 1916.]

Maxwell, Perriton “A First Meeting with Joseph Conrad.” New York Herald and New York Tribune (Magazine-Fiction-Books), 24 August 1924: 1; rpt. in Dale B. J. Randall, “Conrad Interviews, No.1: Perriton Maxwell.” Conradiana, 2.1 (1969–70): 17–22. [Ray, ed., 66–70] When acting as editor of Nash’s Magazine, Maxwell2 received a visit late one night from JC at his third-floor office at 69 Fleet Street. JC was preoccupied with the sinking of the Titanic, and he was certain that the ship had not collided with a visible iceberg, and that the crew had been heroic.3 He felt that “the ship probably had her bottom scraped clean off by a submerged piece of ice. Deity itself could not have made her float under such conditions.” He scoffed at the idea of an unsinkable ship of such a size, and at the “blind trust of men in material and appliances.” Maxwell explained to JC that his magazine appeared monthly, and he would not be able to print his article on the subject quickly. Instead, Maxwell cabled to a New York newspaper with which Nash’s was associated,4 and he assured JC that the editor would commission his article, which he could then write. Four hours later, however, the managing editor cabled in reply, “Do not want Conrad story.”5 While awaiting this 1 On 22 August 1903, JC told H.-D. Davray that “Hueffer a écrit une petite préface bien sentie, bien pesée” (CL3 52; see also 64–65). 2 Perriton Maxwell (1868–1947), editor, author, and artist, was born in New York. His working life was spent in journalism, and he was editor of Nash’s Magazine, 1910-13, living at the Waldorf Hotel, London, during this period abroad. Before the meeting with JC that he describes, Maxwell had on several occasions written to him unsuccessfully to request an option on forthcoming work. 3 Maxwell dates JC’s visit to his office as occurring on 16 April 1912. The Titanic had sunk only a few hours earlier, on the night of 14–15 April 1912. 4 Hearst’s New York American. 5 Caleb Marsh Van Hamm (1861–1919) was editor of The American, 1910–19. This first of two articles by JC on the sinking appeared as “Some Reflexions,

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reply, Maxwell and JC dined at the Cheshire Cheese Tavern and JC “told me many memorable things about his life, his ships, his difficulties in selecting good crews in the early days, and how much he delighted in his ‘farmhouse’ [Capel House] down in Kent and his quiet but productive life as a ‘landlubber.’” Maxwell saw JC a few months later: “he had developed something of the dandy. His beard was cropped close, the pot hat had given place to a more rakish ‘bowler’ and his coat had a note of Regent Street in its snugness and contours.” Maxwell prints an extract from an undated letter (December 1923?) to him from JC: I have been a stranger to Santa Claus all my life. You’ll understand how the Polish children did not need a Germanic fairy saint to give them the sense of sanctity and joy attached to the day of Nativity in the hearts of Roman Catholics. But I have no feelings against him personally, and if American children want him – why should not they have him? What’s the objection? … I want liberty for American men, women, children, for Santa Claus and for myself. “Give me liberty – or give me death!”1 … With my love and Xmas wishes to all free Americans, believe me, faithfully yours (but still violently protesting as the curtain falls).2

Maxwell also quotes from a letter that JC wrote to him on 23 June 1924 in response to Maxwell’s hypothetical question concerning “probable present-day conditions had America remained under the political domination of Great Britain.” JC replied that “the Canadian government is not subservient to the English Parliament” and that “the rule of the British monarch is not theoretical, it is symbolical.”

Seamanlike and Otherwise, on the Loss of the Titanic,” English Review, 11 (May 1912): 304–15 (rpt. in Notes on Life and Letters, 1921). 1 A quotation from a speech made by Patrick Henry to the Virginia House of Burgesses. The speech, given on 23 March 1775, is credited with having convinced the House to pass a resolution delivering the Virginia troops to the Revolutionary War. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were in attendance. 2 For the complete letter, see Collier’s Weekly, 15 December 1923: 10.

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“Turning down Conrad.” Sun (New York), 4 December 1936: 32. [Reprints much of the previous item, with minor changes. E.g., the date of the meeting is given as the night of 15 April 1912, and the New York editor cabled in reply, “Who is Conrad? Do not want his story.”] Prior to their first meeting, Maxwell had written to JC several times, asking for an option on some of his work, but he always replied that nothing was sufficiently advanced to offer. He never came to London in those days, he said, because he was “a prisoner to his job.” While awaiting the reply from New York, JC told Maxwell, with something of a sigh, that “I am sometimes tempted to chuck it all and sign on for just one more voyage.” Maxwell met JC several times after this first meeting, and contracted for a number of stories. JC “could be as simple as a child and as terrific as a hurricane. Like all seafaring men, his vocabulary included a rich store of profanity,” although he seldom used it.

Mee, Arthur “A New Novellist [sic] on Dickens.” Western Mail (Cardiff), 1 January 1897 [not seen]; rpt. in Edmund A. Bojarski, “Polish Secrets Shared: Joseph Conrad’s First Press Interview,” Conradiana, 9 (1977): 107–14, and in CUFE, 176–77. [Ray, ed., 87–88] JC praised Dickens for his simplicity and vividness of expression, which made him more accessible than Thackeray. Dickens had not given a new form to English, but had used it as it had never been used before. [JC, interviewed during a visit to Joseph Spiridion (aka Kliszczewski) in Cardiff, Christmas 1896, is discussing an unidentified article on Dickens in a recent issue of Westminster. Bojarski’s 1977 reprint is described as a transcript of the newspaper item, which is no longer extant. A Polish translation of the interview appeared in Witold Chwalewik’s “Józef Conrad w Kardyfie,” Ruch Literacki, 7.8 (August 1932): 225–29, and Bojarski gives an English re-translation of this Polish version in his “Conrad in Cardiff: Impressions 1885–1896,” Anglo-Welsh Review, 15.36 (Summer 1966): 57– 63. The gist of this 1966 version is largely the same as the 1977 reprint, except that it contains the following paragraph: “Asked what he is writing now, Mr. Conrad said that he is working on a sea novel of a

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completely new kind” [The Nigger]. This statement is not present in the 1977 reprint. Chwalewik’s article is translated in CUFE, 172–78, but CUFE substitutes, for his translation of the interview, the transcript as given in Bojarski’s 1977 article.]

“Meeting Conrad at the Ship.” Literary Digest, 77 (19 May 1923): 27–28. [Reprints extracts from a number of newspaper accounts of JC’s arrival in New York, especially Arthur Burton Rascoe’s interview, described below]

Mégroz, R.-L. “Books and their Authors: A London Causerie.” Hindustan Review, 48 (April 1925): 256–57. Mégroz1 recalls his first meeting with JC, on the opening night of his 1 The Papers of R. L. Mégroz (University of Reading) give the following information about him: Rodolphe Louis Mégroz was born in Pimlico on 2 August 1891, the eldest son of Rodolphe Frederick Mégroz, a valet, and his wife Alice. Before Mégroz was ten his father had died. In 1908, when he was 17, he joined a bank in London and became a cashier. He saw active service at Gallipoli in 1915. After spending more than two years in Egypt and Palestine Mégroz returned to England at the end of the war and became an Education Instructor and an officer before being discharged at the end of 1919. Mégroz’s first book Personal Poems had been published before he left the army and he now set out to become a journalist. Meanwhile he was always working on books at intervals, mostly literary criticism, poetry anthologies and biography. Mégroz’s output was prodigious and reflected his constant need to earn a living. At the end of the war Mégroz married and soon had three children but he and his wife separated in about 1926, and Mégroz went to live in lodgings, struggling to support himself and his family. During the Second World War he worked for the BBC

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play, The Secret Agent. JC said of Gladstone’s victory in 1892 that “at least political parties then did stand for recognizable principles” (257).1 He regarded The Mirror of the Sea as the soul of his work. In preparing a collected edition of his work he made no single alteration of importance. “‘I corrected,’ he told me, ‘one or two faults of grammar, of which there are always a certain quantity in my work – not faults that a foreigner would make but faults that a very careless Englishman would make. I am constantly worrying about the choice of a phrase, and deciding that “this will never do.” I do not consider myself a literary man, you know. Yes, I am quite serious [...] many people can hit on the exact word at once for some touch of description or shade of meaning, while I have to rake all round my poor head! I always write as well as I can. It is inconceivable that a man should compose less well than he is able to do. It is like walking lame when you can walk properly’” (257).

“Un Entretien avec Joseph Conrad,” trans. Jeanne Bourret. Revue Hebdomadaire (Paris), 8 (27 août 1927): 416–37. With his first wages, JC bought a volume of Shakespeare, and at sea he also read Mill’s Principles of Political Economy.2 He learned English by European News Service and then edited publications for the Overseas Food Corporation from 1949 until 1951. He died on 30 September 1968 at the age of 77. Mégroz wrote A Talk with Joseph Conrad and a Criticism of His Mind and Method (London: Elkin Mathews, 1926) and Joseph Conrad’s Mind and Method: A Study of Personality in Art (London: Faber & Faber, 1931). Mégroz interviewed JC in the lounge of the Curzon Hotel, London, on Thursday, 2 November 1922: on 30 October, JC had suggested meeting at “four o’clock at the Curzon Hotel, Curzon St. I will be in the lounge downstairs, which is generally empty at that hour. We will get into a corner and have a cup of tea” (CL7 561). JC was there for the opening of his play, The Secret Agent, at the Ambassadors Theatre that evening: he did not attend the first night, but remained at the hotel and impatiently awaited Jessie’s report. The play, which JC had dramatised from his novel, received a bad press and closed after nine days. 1 W. E. Gladstone formed a Liberal Government on 11 August 1892, following a General Election. 2 John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy (1848).

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reading The Standard, when Mudford edited it.1 English phonetics, he said, were difficult – all those words ending in “ough.” Language was not the main barrier between nations, and he was opposed to the idea of a universal language, since each tongue has its individual spirit. Cavemen were correct not to worry whether their neighbours could understand them or not. JC described how he wrote his article on the sinking of the Titanic. He praised Johnson’s Lives of the Poets,2 and Jeremy Taylor.3 He knew French well enough to write in it, in a very personal manner. His English, too, he supposed, was personal. Keats was his favourite poet, but he was usually in revolt against poets. When writing “The Unlighted Coast,”4 he had felt too close to events. His best descriptive passages, he thought, were in The Nigger, An Outcast, and Typhoon, rather than in Lord Jim. He had once experienced a typhoon in the Indian Ocean. Mrs Conrad told Mégroz that JC insisted that “The Black Mate” was his first work. JC loved England, and had never had a wish to return to sea, although he had occasionally been impatient when he first left the navy [sic]. He praised Perceval Gibbon’s ability for finding le mot juste, and he was much quicker than he was himself. Hueffer once gave him an old Bible, with a remarkable introduction. [Also incorporates substantial parts of Mégroz’s other articles]

“Joseph Conrad before breakfast....” T.P.’s & Cassell’s Weekly, 5 (6 March 1926): 680. JC had pronounced likes and dislikes. Either he could not stand people or would be utterly charming. His dislike of certain people would find vent in some nervous trick, such as throwing bread-pellets during a meal. He was especially prone to this if a party of American visitors came to 1 William Heseltine Mudford (1839–1916) began as Editor of The Standard in the early 1870s and retired in 1900. 2 Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the Poets (1781). 3 Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667), bishop and writer, is best known as a prose stylist, especially in his devotional manual, Holy Living and Holy Dying (The Rules and Exercises of Holy Living, 1650, and The Rules and Exercises of Holy Dying, 1651). 4 It was written for the Admiralty, probably in December 1916, but was not published during JC’s lifetime.

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lunch.1 He read little verse, but admired Keats. Of prose writers, he admired the seventeenth-century masters, and the sixteenth-century [sic] Jeremy Taylor. He had little sympathy with eighteenth-century writers like Addison. JC hated Dostoevsky, and any form of anti-loyalist creed, such as Communism. He was known to write in the bathroom, and at one time he would begin writing before breakfast and might not stop to eat, but have his food inserted in little pieces into his mouth while he continued writing. “Joseph Conrad: Man and Artist.” Bookman, 70 (August 1926): 238–41. Theatres, JC told Mégroz, frightened him, and he never saw plays. “I have not even seen my friend Mr. Galsworthy’s fine Loyalties,2 although of course I read him eagerly” (238). JC did not himself enjoy writing plays: “It is an exercise in ingenuity. I found the writing of The Secret Agent very trying; it meant cutting all the flesh off the book. And I realised then, as I had never done, what a gruesome story I had written” (239). JC spoke of his delight at first meeting Edmund Candler,3 and of his “dear friend” G. K. Chesterton, whom he used to meet occasionally, years ago. Chesterton, in JC’s view, had “expressed better than anyone my opinion about Dickens. [...] I have the greatest admiration of that

1 Jessie Conrad also described JC’s “bad habit (acquired at sea) of making bread pellets and flinging them about the room,” and she particularly recalls one instance of this when several American guests had come to lunch (Joseph Conrad As I Knew Him, 19–20; Mégroz’s article antedates Jessie Conrad’s book by six months). See also John Conrad, Times Remembered, 189–90. 2 Galsworthy’s play, Loyalties, opened on 8 March 1922 at St Martin’s Theatre. 3 Edmund Candler (1874–1926) read Classics at Cambridge. He was a traveller, war correspondent, and journalist in the Middle East and Tibet. After 1906 he was Principal of Patiala College in India, but his health forced him to return to Europe, and he lived in his later years in the French Basque country. JC’s earliest surviving letter to him is dated 12 November 1918, although they had met at least as early as 1914 (see Jessie Conrad, Joseph Conrad and His Circle, 191). They might possibly have known each other since the late 1890s; see Rachael A. Corkill, “Conrad and Edmund Candler: A Neglected Correspondence,” Conradiana, 37 (2005), 11–22.

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little piece of work” (239).1 [Includes Mégroz’s reminiscences of his conversation with JC on the opening night of The Secret Agent, 2 November 1922. Repeats some of the comments in Mégroz’s other articles, q.v.]

“Joseph Conrad and Poland.” Chambers’s Journal, Series 8, 9 (May 1940): 342–45. JC preferred to discuss topics of general interest, and he would treat personal subjects conversationally. He described his school in Cracow, St Anne’s, as “on the classical side,” and he was good at mathematics, and fairly good at history, but “Oh, what a grind I had when I tried to get hold of English grammar!” (344).2 He had always been a reading boy, and remained a reader at sea: “reading is the best way to pick up any language. But I still absolutely refused to learn grammar, and I picked up my first English by hearing it spoken on colliers along the East Coast” (344).3 He began to write simply as an occupation for his leisure: “It was not the need of self-expression” (344). The only English school he ever attended was Boult’s on Tower Hill, where he was coached for his Marine certificates. On the opening night of JC’s play The Secret Agent [2 November 1922], he and Mégroz sat together [in the Curzon Hotel]. JC refused to attend for he detested the theatre. He recalled Gladstone’s victory [in 1892], and how his maritime agent [in Fenchurch Street] had been exultant. “Of course, it was a stunning victory for Gladstone [...]. Parties did then seem to mean something. Mr. Gladstone’s prestige was wonderful; it stood for something real. But to-day” [referring to the Coalition Government in 1922] “what does all this noise mean?” (344–45). JC said he was watching the current political situation with intense interest, as one who loved humanity and who based all his hopes for Europe on England.

1 Charles Dickens (London: Methuen, 1906). 2 It is doubtful whether JC attended any school in Cracow, and there are no records of his attendance at St Anne’s Gymnasium. He probably received private lessons from a regular tutor. 3 On 10 June 1878, JC arrived at Lowestoft and set foot on English soil for the first time. In the next three months, he made three round trips between Lowestoft and Newcastle in the Skimmer of the Sea, a coastal coal schooner.

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“The Personality of Joseph Conrad.” Review of Reviews, 68 (September 1923): 120–22. JC began writing merely to “occupy a certain amount of my time” (120). He spoke of his admiration for the “fine types of English manhood” (120) that he had known on East coast barges. He had met John Burns1 when he was President of the Board of Trade, and he described him as “the sort of man I love talking to, [...] a man with a craftsman’s conscience” (121). [Mégroz’s reminiscences of a conversation with JC on The Secret Agent’s opening night. Includes much material reprinted in his other articles, q.v.]

Mérédac, Savinien “Joseph Conrad chez nous.” Le Radical (Port-Louis), 7 August 1931. [Prints a questionnaire that JC completed during his visit to Mauritius in 1888; reproduced in Najder 108–09]

“Joseph Conrad et nous.” L’Essor: Revue du Cercle Littéraire de PortLouis (Mauritius) 15 February 1931. [Cites recollections of Paul Langlois, who met JC in Mauritius, 1888, trans. in Najder 109–10] JC always dressed like a dandy, and his colleagues called him the Russian Count. He had a neurotic or neurasthenic personality. His English and French were equally pure and fluent, but he preferred the latter, and always spoke to Langlois in French.

Meyer, Mathilde H. G. Wells and his Family. Edinburgh: International Publishing, 1956 [not seen]; partly rpt. in H. G. Wells: Interviews and Recollections, ed. J. R. Hammond. London: Macmillan, 1980, 9–28. 1 John Burns (1858–1943), MP, engineer, socialist, and friend of Cunninghame Graham. He had worked as an engineer in West Africa, 1879–81. He was appointed President of the Board of Trade in 1914, but resigned from the Government later that year.

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Meyer remembers Wells and his wife visiting JC at Hythe, ca. spring 1909 (22).1

Meynell, Viola, ed. Friends of a Lifetime: Letters to Sydney Carlyle Cockerell. London: Cape, 1940. Cockerell2 recalled seeing JC hold a pen between his first and second fingers (34).

Meyrick, Kate Secrets of the 43: Reminiscences. London: John Long, 1933, 41–42. Meyrick3 describes JC, who frequented her fashionable night club: “he looked exactly what he was – an ex-sailor” [ca. 1921].

Mizener, Arthur The Saddest Story: A Biography of Ford Madox Ford. London: Bodley Head, 1971. 1 JC’s home at Aldington, Hythe, was ten miles from Wells. 2 Sydney Carlyle Cockerell (1867–1962; knighted 1934), director of The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and bibliophile. 3 Kate Meyrick (d. 1933), Irish-born, came to London just after the First World War to run nightclubs. She was frequently fined for breaches of the alcohol licensing laws, and in 1929 was successfully prosecuted for bribing policemen. This did not damage her career; she went back to running nightclubs. Her most famous venue, “The 43,” named after its address, 43 Gerrard St, was popular with the raffish end of the smart set. She appears in slightly disguised form as Ma Mayfield in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited (1945). She became London’s undoubted “night club queen,” sent her sons to Harrow School, and married her four daughters to peers.

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Letter from Ford to Elsie Hueffer, 22 April 1903, on JC’s reactions to reviews of Typhoon, published the previous day “with a great flourish of trumpets.” JC was “very kick-uppy” about it (83).

Moore, Gene M., ed. A Joseph Conrad Archive: The Letters and Papers of Hans van Marle. The Conradian, 30.2 (2005): 1-145. Van Marle notes that “Sir Christopher Cockerell1 (of Hovercraft fame) […] has come up with recollections of a lunch at Oswalds: even to the boy not yet in his teens he was at the time it became obvious that Jessie wasn’t really up to her husband’s standards. Mme Alvar’s son has treated me to an almost identical impression and he is somewhat younger than Sir Christopher” (75). Van Marle records that a grandson of Wiktor Chodźko2 named Michel (born 1916) “recalls accompanying Wiktor to Toulon harbour to meet Conrad when he was a young boy. Michel […] thinks it was a wintry day in 1922 or ’23. By my lights it can only have been 1921, when the Conrads were sojourning on Corsica. Michel remembers the visitor descending from an old ship […] for this obviously pre-arranged reunion” (100).

Morley, Christopher3 “Conrad and the Reporters.” New York Evening Post, 3 May 1923: 8.

1 Christopher Cockerell (1910–99; knighted 1969), the inventor of the hovercraft, was the son of Sydney Cockerell. 2 Wiktor Chodźko looked after the young Conrad in Marseilles in the 1870s. A Paris-born Pole, he sailed in French ships and lived in Toulon. 3 Christopher Morley (1890–1957), American journalist, novelist, poet, and author of more than fifty books. Born in Haverford, Pennsylvania, he was a Rhodes Scholar at New College, Oxford, 1910–13, and one of the founders and long-time staff member of The Saturday Review of Literature.

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JC said he wrote Chapter 10 of Almayer’s Folly in the Adowa.1 He had been delighted by his first view of the Clyde, and David Bone had read him John Burroughs’s essay about the river,2 as well as The Old Soak, which dealt with “a universal theme.”3 It was Henry James who first introduced JC to Burroughs’s work. JC’s sea life “merges, now, into one solid impression.” [Account of JC’s interview on arrival in New York]

“Conrad and the Reporters, II.” New York Evening Post, 4 May 1923: 10. JC had read Fenimore Cooper and Max Adeler.4 JC could smoke only Marylands cigarettes, and he had only three left. [Interviewed on arrival in New York]

“Conrad and the Reporters, IV.” New York Evening Post, 7 May 1923: 8. JC explained how he found the epigraph for The Nigger;5 he had called on Henry James and, while waiting for him to come down, he found a volume of Pepys and had just read the sentence that became the epigraph when James entered. He hurriedly replaced the book on the shelves. James was a lovely but formidable man. [Interviewed on arrival in New York]

1 Cf. the opening of A Personal Record, which describes “the decks of a 2,000ton steamer called the Adowa, on board of which, gripped by the inclement winter alongside a quay in Rouen, the tenth chapter of ‘Almayer’s Folly’ was begun.” This was the tenth of twelve chapters. JC served in the Adowa, a 2,097-ton passenger steamer, from 29 November 1893 to 17 January 1894; he was in port at Rouen from 4 December to 10 January. 2 John Burroughs, “Nature in England,” Fresh Fields (1885). 3 Don Marquis, The Old Soak (1916). 4 “Max Adeler” was the pseudonym of Charles Heber Clark (1841–1915), humorist; best known for his first novel, the bestseller Out of the Hurly-Burly (1874), which John Conrad mentions as being in JC’s bedroom at Oswalds (Times Remembered, 149). 5 “My Lord in his discourse discovered a great deal of love to this ship”: see the entry for 30 March 1660 in Samuel Pepys’s Diary (first published 1825).

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“Conrad and the Reporters, V.” New York Evening Post, 10 May 1923: 8. David Bone was fond of quoting JC’s comment to him on the publication of his novel, The Brassbounder (1910): “Stick to the ship. If I had known that writing would take me away from the sea, I would never have published a line.”

“Escaped into Print.” Ex Libris Carissimis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1932, 49–64. JC, among his occasional errors in English, would say “presumptious” (55).

“Granules from an Hour-glass.” Saturday Review of Literature, 10 (2 June 1934): 727. Morley met Jean Louis d’Esque at the opening of the Memorial Library in New York Seamen’s Institute. D’Esque, who claimed to be a carpenter in the Torrens during the last days of JC’s command, spoke of JC’s unusual length of arm, especially noticeable because he wore conspicuous paper cuffs. Whenever anyone, passenger or crew, used a word unfamiliar to JC, he swiftly noted it on his cuff and memorized it.1

Internal Revenue. New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1933, 192–93, 198. [Ray, ed., 61–62] [Reprints article on JC by “Ben Gun,” pseud., first published in Sydney’s Bulletin, 1927, and again in Morley’s “The Folder,” Saturday Review of Literature, 10 December 1927: 429. J. H. Stape and Hans van Marle explain 1 This is a spurious reminiscence: the carpenter on both of JC’s voyages in the Torrens was John Bruce, and JC was mate, not master: see J. H. Stape and Hans van Marle, “‘Pleasant Memories’ and ‘Precious Friendships’: Conrad’s Torrens Connection and Unpublished Letters from the 1890s,” Conradiana, 27 (1995): 22–23. Count Jean Louis d’Esque (1879–1956) was the author of A Count in the Fo’c’sle (London: Hurst & Blackett, 1933).

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the “number of outrightly false statements” in this item: see their “‘Pleasant Memories’ and ‘Precious Friendships’: Conrad’s Torrens Connection and Unpublished Letters from the 1890s,” Conradiana, 27 (1995): 23.] “Gun” sailed with JC in the Torrens, and he has a notion that JC at one time hoped to make a living as a black-and-white artist. He made a lot of drawings, and “he could turn out a pretty wench, with a fine leg on her” (192). JC hated passengers, and he always looked happy at the “many” funerals that occurred.1 “He was a capital ship’s officer, capable and courageous, but inclined to dream a little” (193). The skipper2 hated JC, who responded with a cold disdain. “Gun” has never seen an officer held in more respect by a crew than JC. Morley also recalls that “a remark by W. H. Chesson that struck Conrad sharply was ‘One almost regrets Donkin being one of the crew’ [in The Nigger]” (198).

“Storms and Calms.” Saturday Review of Literature, 1 (25 April 1925): 707. [For rpts., see Ehrsam 1323] JC, on arrival in New York [1 May 1923], gave a long and careful study of the skyline and then retreated to the bridge and averted his eyes. He had had all he could carry.

1 There were in fact only four funerals: see Stape and van Marle, 23. 2 Captain Walter H(enry) Cope; JC in fact enjoyed very good relations with Cope and held him in the highest respect.

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Morrell, Lady Ottoline1 “Joseph Conrad: An Impression.” Nation & Athenaeum, 35 (30 August 1924): 666. [All of this is repeated in her Early Memoirs, described below.]

Ottoline at Garsington: Memoirs of Lady Ottoline Morrell, 1915–1918. London: Faber & Faber, 1974, 116. JC described his first meeting with Roger Casement2 in the Congo: “When I saw him first he was dressed in very old clothes, white canvas 1 Lady Ottoline Violet Anne Morrell (née Cavendish-Bentinck, 1873–1938) was the leader and patroness of a bohemian and intellectual circle that included Bertrand Russell, D. H. Lawrence (who portrayed her as Hermione in Women in Love), W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Augustus John, and Virginia Woolf. Lord David Cecil wrote of her that “she was a character of Elizabethan extravagance and force, at once mystical and possessive, quixotic and tempestuous; . . . her own personality was, in its way, a considerable work of art, expressing alike in her conversation, her dress, and the decoration of her houses, a fantastic, individual, and creative imagination.” In 1902, she married Philip Morrell, Liberal MP (1906–18). Lady Ottoline’s first visit to JC occurred in early August 1913. 2 Roger David Casement (1864–1916; knighted 1911) travelled widely in Africa as a young man, and later served as British Consul in Mozambique, Angola, and the Congo Free State. In 1903, he produced a damning report on the atrocities in the Congo. JC met Casement in June 1890 during his trip to the Congo, where Casement was supervising the building of a railway. They shared a room for some days and made several expeditions into the nearby villages in search of porters. JC noted in his diary at the time that he had “Made the acquaintance of Mr. Roger Casement, which I should consider as a great pleasure under any circumstances and now it becomes a positive piece of luck. Thinks, speaks well, most intelligent and very sympathetic” (Zdzisław Najder, ed., Congo Diary and Other Uncollected Pieces [New York: Doubleday, 1978], 7). See also Jessie Conrad, Joseph Conrad As I Knew Him, 115. Born in Dublin of Protestant parents, Casement became an extreme Irish nationalist, and during the war sought the aid of Germany in his pursuit of Irish independence. After landing in Ireland from a German submarine in 1916, he was arrested, convicted of high treason, and executed.

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shoes, carrying a stick, accompanied by a native boy, emerging out of the forest, through which he had come on foot, a journey of many days. No one but he would have travelled so lightly, unarmed and unattended through so dangerous a jungle.”1

Ottoline: The Early Memoirs of Lady Ottoline Morrell, ed. Robert Gathorne-Hardy. London: Faber & Faber, 1963, 131, 240–45. [Ray, ed., 27–33] Henry James was horrified by Lady Ottoline’s proposal to visit JC: “But, dear lady . . . but dear lady . . . He has lived his life at sea – dear lady, he has never met ‘civilized’ women” (240). In fact, she found him to be a Polish nobleman. He said he had never recovered from the moral and physical shock of his trip to the Congo. He regarded “The Idiots” as too derivative from Maupassant. Writing was to him a most painful effort, and he felt no need of expression. Shortly after, she visited again, accompanied by Bertrand Russell,2 to whom JC said that he found it difficult to talk to his sons or young people for he disliked being insincere and yet did not wish to burden them with his experience and knowledge. In 1923,3 JC described how he first saw the sea at Venice,4 and it was 1 Cf. JC’s letter to Cunninghame Graham of 26 December 1903 in which he describes Casement: “I’ve seen him start off into an unspeakable wilderness swinging a crookhandled stick for all weapons, with two bull-dogs: Paddy (white) and Biddy (brindle) at his heels and a Loanda boy carrying a bundle for all company. A few months afterwards it so happened that I saw him come out again, a little leaner[,] a little browner, with his stick, dogs, and Loanda boy, and quietly serene as though he had been for a stroll in the park” (CL3 101–02). 2 This visit occurred in September 1913; Russell and Lady Ottoline were lovers at the time. For a discussion, see Owen Knowles, “Joseph Conrad and Bertrand Russell: New Light on their Relationship,” Journal of Modern Literature, 17 (1990): 139–52. 3 In autumn 1923, Lady Ottoline and her husband visited JC at Oswalds. They were accompanied by Bernard Henry Holland (1856–1926), barrister and man of letters, who lived nearby at Canterbury. 4 JC claimed to have seen the sea for the first time from the Lido in Venice in the summer of 1873, during a visit to Switzerland and Italy undertaken for the sake of his health.

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in Marseilles that “I sowed my wild oats” (243). In a little inn in Lowestoft,1 frequented by sailors, he had puzzled over the articles in The Standard, his first lessons in English. Lady Ottoline urged him to read T. S. Eliot, but he merely said, “Oh, I’m not caught by poetry” (244). His trip to Poland in 1914 was “a circus, a perfect circus.” [Also mentions JC’s admiration of Henry James and Roger Casement.]

Moser, Thomas C. “From Olive Garnett’s Diary: Impressions of Ford Madox Ford and his Friends, 1890–1906.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 16.3 (Fall 1974): 511–33. Olive Garnett2 records in her diary that “Conrad spoke very despondingly about his work, said he often had a mind to return to the sea & nearly did when in Liverpool, but he had gout in the foot, & it wd. not be honourable to engage. Afterwards he became more cheerful. We dined together . . . Conrad was most hospitable, most simple in a good mood, Elsie said. He told us we had wound him up” (524–25).3 Elsie Hueffer told her of JC’s efforts to finish “The End of the Tether,” and that “‘Youth’ is selling but he is despairing.”4 The Conrads spent the Christmas of 1902 with the Fords, and Henry James also visited (525; date of diary entry 5 January 1903).5 The Fords and Olive met the 1 JC arrived at Lowestoft in the Mavis, setting foot on English soil for the first time on 10 June 1878. 2 Olive (Olivia) Garnett (1871–1957), younger sister of Edward and a friend of Sergei Stepniak and other revolutionary exiles, published Petersburg Tales (1900). 3 Olive Garnett and Elsie Hueffer visited the Pent on 15 November 1901. Najder comments, “Already, then, Conrad was presenting what was actually the result of his inability to find a suitable berth as though it were the consequence of his own decision to give up the sea” (277). 4 On 23 June 1902, part of the manuscript of “The End of the Tether” had been destroyed by the fire from an exploding lamp; the story’s reconstruction was not completed until 15 October 1902. For sales of Youth, a volume including “Heart of Darkness” and “The End of the Tether” (published 13 November 1902), see, for example, CL3 4, 11, 45. 5 The Conrads stayed with Ford, Elsie, and their two daughters at Winchelsea, arriving on 23 December. They had planned to stay for a week or longer, but JC was feeling “very much so-so” (CL3 3) and returned home after a few days.

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Conrads in Hythe, and JC, who had seen Pinker the previous night, talked business with Ford (526; 31 March 1903). Olive met Ford and JC in Gatti’s Restaurant1 and in reply to Ford’s statement that “Romance is life seen as a scheme; realism is life seen without a scheme,” JC said, “Exactly” (526).2 At one of Ford’s parties, JC said, “I am at the top of the tree,” to which Henry James replied, “I am a crushed worm.” Galsworthy and W. H. Hudson were also present (528–29; 13 February 1904). Ford told Olive, probably referring to Chance, that JC was “writing something magnificent” (531; 2 November 1905). [Other significant entries relating to JC are annotated in the following item.]

The Life in the Fiction of Ford Madox Ford. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980. Olive Garnett recorded Elsie Hueffer’s visit to JC [ca. July 1904] during her husband’s nervous breakdown (56). An earlier entry in her diary noted that “We sat by the fire in Conrad’s room (old drawing-room), drank bovril, and tried to keep warm. I looked at Japanese books & discussed the legitimate in art. Conrad looked at Elsie” (73; entry dated 15 November 1901). Borys Conrad told Moser that his mother’s opinion of Ford was “unprintable” (43), and John Conrad described her wish to “hoof out Hueffer” (316). Borys remembered that JC and Marwood exchanged weekly visits, without fail, until the latter’s fatal illness (104). Rebecca West3 recalled that JC’s relations with Ford in 1909 were “very strained” (104). The descendants of Caroline Marwood, Arthur’s wife, have the impression that Caroline’s sisters regarded JC as a “sponge” (304). In her unpublished “A Bloomsbury Girlhood,” Anne Lee Michell4 1 Located at 399 Strand (closed 1939). 2 This meeting occurred on 24 April 1903, two days after the publication of Typhoon and Other Stories. Olive Garnett adds that JC was “genial” and they “drank the health of Typhoon in coffee.” 3 Dame Rebecca West (née Cecily Isabel Fairfield, 1892–1983), British-Irish feminist and writer. She had an affair with H. G. Wells for ten years, beginning in 1913. 4 One of the the five children of Robert and Martha Garnett, Anne Lee (1908–88; Mrs Robert Michell), a diarist, was married to a solicitor and lived in Somerset.

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quotes the following comment by Edward Garnett in a letter to her aunt, Olive Garnett, dated 9 December 1924: “You say ‘Considering what he [Ford] MIGHT have said about Conrad.’ I suppose you mean about household complications etc. etc. I knew that J.C. did confide in him about a certain delicate matter, and afterwards deeply regretted it” (306).1

Mottram, R. H. For Some We Loved: An Intimate Portrait of Ada and John Galsworthy. London: Hutchinson 1956, 21, 77, 82. Ada Galsworthy [1904] wrote to Mottram2 that “I am having great conclaves with J. Conrad lately, he is helping me with some translation from the French: he being Polish, French is quite second nature to him. I hate taking up his time, yet . . . it seems quite a relaxation to him, and he can’t do his own original writing all day long” (21).3 John Galsworthy was “no believer” in the kind of collaboration undertaken by JC and Ford, although his estimation of JC’s own work is seen in a letter he wrote to Mottram [4 August 1906]: “Conrad (a painter’s writer, whose chief admirers are painters) is perhaps the best specimen I can think of as a pure artist (there is practically nothing of the moralist in him) amongst moderns” (82). He considered Turgenev to be a greater artist, however.

1 This mysterious comment is perhaps a reference to Ford’s portrayal of JC as Brandson in The Simple Life Limited (1911), in which Brandson seduces, and later marries, his secretary. 2 R(alph) H(ale) Mottram (1883–1971) was a a novelist particularly known for the Spanish Farm books and a First World War poet. 3 JC wrote an introduction for Maupassant’s Yvette and Other Stories, translated by Ada Galsworthy, in May 1904 (rpt. in Notes on Life and Letters, 1921). He told Pinker on 17 May that “I am doing a preface to a vol of Maupassant translation which Duckworth is to publish; the translator, a lady, being a great friend. I think it is likely to be noticed (the preface I mean), by the press generally. Otherwise it[’]s done for love you understand” (CL3 139; see also 143). The volume appeared at the end of July 1904.

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Mroczkowski, Przemysław “Conrad the European.” In Studia Conradowskie, ed. Stefan Zabierowski. Katowice: Uniwersytet Sląski, 1976, 13–29. Both Jessie and Borys Conrad recalled JC’s meetings with, and respect for, G. K. Chesterton.

Munro, Neil1 The Brave Days: A Chronicle from the North. Edinburgh: The Porpoise Press, 1931, 113–14. [Ray, ed., 94–95] Dr John MacIntyre, nose and throat specialist, entertained JC to dinner at his home in Bath Street, Glasgow.2 Munro, who was also present, 1 Neil Munro (1863–1930), Scottish poet and journalist. JC met him on 27–28 September 1898 during a brief visit to Glasgow in a vain search for maritime employment. Munro’s work had appeared alongside JC’s in Blackwood’s Magazine, and JC remarked shortly after this meeting that “Munro is an artist – besides being an excellent fellow with a pretty weakness for my work” (CL2 130). Munro describes a visit to the home of Dr John MacIntyre (1859–1928), a pioneer of radiology and phonography and friend of Cunninghame Graham. 2 JC’s letter to Edward Garnett on 29 September 1898 gives the following account of his experiences in Glasgow: All day with the shipowners and in the evening dinner, phonograph, X rays, talk about the secret of the universe and the nonexistence of, so called, matter. The secret of the universe is in the existence of horizontal waves whose varied vibrations are at the bottom of all states of consciousness. […] But, don’t you see, there is nothing in the world to prevent the simultaneous existence of vertical waves […]. Therefore it follows that two universes may exist in the same place and in the same time – and not only two universes but an infinity of different universes – if by universe we mean a set of states of consciousness; and note, […] all matter being only that thing of inconceivable tenuity through which the various vibrations of waves […] are propagated, thus giving birth to our sensations – then – emotions then thought. Is that so? These things I said to the Dr while Neil Munro stood in front of a Röntgen machine and on the screen behind we con-

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recalls how MacIntyre displayed for JC’s benefit “all the wizardry of Röntgen rays.”1 Munro “stood in front of a fluorescent screen behind which Conrad and the Doctor contemplated my ribs and back-bone, the more opaque portions of my viscera, my Waterbury watch and what coins were in my pocket” (113). Both JC and Munro had their hands X-rayed, and MacIntyre produced photographic prints of JC’s “good right hand.” Another of MacIntyre’s interests was the phonograph,2 and he had made one of the first recordings of Paderewski3 when he visited him in Bath Street. All the best “celebrity” records in the doctor’s private collection were played to JC.

“The Rescue” in George T. Keating, A Conrad Memorial Library. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1929, 288–93. [JC’s visit to Glasgow, September 1898] Conrad stayed in St Enoch Square. He was anxious about The Rescue: “‘I sit for a whole day at my desk,’ he said, ‘and at the end I have produced only two or three sentences. My invention seems paralysed; I must get back to sea’” (289). Once he realized there were no vacancies for masters in Clyde clippers, he cheered up templated his backbone and his ribs. The rest of that promising youth was too diaphanous to be visible. (CL2 94–95) An X-ray photograph of JC’s hand is reproduced as Plate 1 in CL2. C. T. Watts has suggested that this experience provided the “scientific” mechanism of The Inheritors, which JC and Hueffer were to begin two months later and which describes the undermining of civilisation by the dispassionate “Fourth Dimensionists” who have always coexisted with human beings on a different plane (Notes & Queries, 212 [July 1967]: 245–47). 1 When Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovered X-rays in November 1895, he contacted Lord Kelvin in Glasgow, sending him a copy of his article and photographs of his radiograph images. Kelvin immediately understood the potential of this discovery for medical diagnosis. At this time in Glasgow only the Royal Infirmary had electricity, and therefore it was to John MacIntyre at the Royal that Kelvin took Röntgen’s discovery. MacIntyre did some brilliant pioneering work, and within six months of the discovery had the world’s first hospital X-ray department operating in 1896. 2 Edison’s phonograph was invented in 1877, “perfected” in 1888, and first widely available commercially in Britain in 1898. 3 Ignacy Jan Paderewski (1874–1936), Polish pianist and composer, became Prime Minister of Poland in 1919. JC met him in America in 1923 and admired him enormously.

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wonderfully. On his last evening, he attended a symposium at the Art Club, whose members (except for the absent Cunninghame Graham) deliberately turned his mind away from The Rescue and praised The Nigger and Youth, whose authentic qualities, as “Clyde-built men,” they could recognize.

Myers, Rollo H. Ravel: Life and Works. London: Duckworth, 1960. [Jean-Aubry introduced Ravel to JC in the summer of 1922, in London.] Ravel, in a letter to Jean-Aubry dated 26 July 1922, says he was touched by JC’s present of cigarettes and intends to write to him: “let me know whether one ought to call him ‘cher maître’” (63). [Rpt. in The Conradian, 11.1 (May 1986): 91]

Najder, Zdzisław, and Ian Watt “Writing about Conrad (Part Two).” The Conradian, 8.1 (1983): 30–38. [An unpublished comment by Jane Anderson who wrote in 1916 of her first visit to the Conrads] JC loved Crane, and grieved over the talent that his death took away. “‘Yes,’ he says, ‘now there is writing – writing. There is Wells, H. G. [sic] He is writing of his theoretical man and his theoretical woman. Human nature he does not know; it would be well if he did’” (36).

Newbolt, Sir Henry My World as in My Time: Memoirs of Sir Henry Newbolt, 1862–1932. London: Faber & Faber, 1932, 300–12. [Ray, ed., 115–20]

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Newbolt1 first met JC at the Savile Club in Piccadilly where a literary symposium of half-a-dozen writers was often held on Saturday afternoons. JC announced that he was leaving London after a stay of only two days because he was terrified by the crowds in the streets: “I see their personalities all leaping out at me like tigers!” (301). Newbolt gives a full account of the roles that he, William Rothenstein and Edmund Gosse2 played in securing a grant of £500 for JC from the Royal Bounty Fund [1904–05]. He prints a letter from Rothenstein, dated 9 June 1904, saying that he had seen JC “yesterday – he really is in a very bad state of mind, and, I learn, very hard pressed at the moment. [...] His nerves are in a terrible state, and his wife is pretty seriously ill with heart trouble” (301).3 Gosse had a long talk with Arthur Balfour, the Prime Minister,4 and reported to Newbolt that “the Chief is manifestly affected by the romance of Conrad’s life” (302). JC was informed of the award of the grant when he was in Capri5 and, Newbolt remembers, he “wired for some money – he was delighted with the grant, and wished to be able to use some of it immediately in order to get back to London at once. There was some prospect of the Stage Society producing a little play of his,6 and he thought it might lead to commis1 Henry John Newbolt (1862–1938; knighted 1915), barrister and poet, best known for rousing nautical and patriotic ballads such as “Drake’s Drum” in Admirals All and Other Verses (1897). He was devoted to public and honorary service, and he served on the committee of the Royal Literary Fund. He met JC in 1904, but they never became close friends. 2 Edmund William Gosse (1849–1928; knighted 1925), author of Father and Son (1907). In 1904, he was Librarian of the House of Lords and Secretary of the Royal Literary Fund. 3 At this time, JC was very concerned about his wife’s health; a valvular defect in her heart had recently been discovered, and she was still troubled by lameness and neuralgia, to the extent that JC feared that she would be a “helpless cripple. […] Half the time I feel on the verge of insanity. The difficulties are accumulating around me in a frightful manner” (CL3 128–29; letter of 5 April 1904). In addition to his family’s health and financial difficulties, JC was trying to concentrate on Nostromo, which he finished in August 1904. 4 Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930) became Prime Minister in July 1902, resigning in 1905. 5 JC received Gosse’s official notification of the £500 grant on 11 April 1905, and the money was paid out to the trustees on 3 May 1905. The Conrads had left for Capri in January 1905, partly for the benefit of Jessie’s health. 6 The date of JC’s departure from Capri had always been fixed for mid-May, so

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sioned stage work for himself” (303). On 25 May 1905, JC was back in London and spent the afternoon with Newbolt, discussing the arrangements for payment of the grant. Newbolt’s impression of JC was that “he knew his own powers and his value in the market, and yet so doubted their reality that he was anxious to hear repeated assurances [...]. He was not only a successful but a popular author: yet he was tortured by fears of malice and invidious criticism” (309).

“O., E. B.” “The Late Mr. Joseph Conrad.” Morning Post (London), 4 August 1924: 4. JC’s conversation was seldom bookish. He preferred above all to talk of the sea. [Obituary]

Osborne, Brian D. “Conrad and Neil Munro: Notes on a Literary Acquaintance.” The Conradian, 30.1 (2005): 81–87. Osborne quotes from an article Munro published in The Glasgow Evening News on 7 August 1924, recalling JC’s reluctance to visit America the previous year: “‘I don’t want to go,’ he said wearily, ‘but the Americans have been good to me, and I am told it will help the sale of my books there. That is a consideration an old man with a family can’t afford to treat with disdain. I wouldn’t go if it weren’t in a Glasgow ship, with a Glasgow master, David Bone, and if it did not give me the chance of seeing one or two old Clyde friends again’” (83). JC, Munro, and David Bone and his brother, Muirhead, dined together on 20 April 1923, on the eve of JC’s departure.

his urgent request for £150 indicates that he was seriously in debt. In June 1905, five performances of One Day More, a one-act play, were given at the Royal Theatre.

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Owen, Lyman B. “Conrad and A. Safroni-Middleton.” Conradiana, 8 (1976): 265–67. Arnold Safroni-Middleton wrote to Owen (29 March 1937) that he knew JC in London [ca. 1886]. He was on “rather rough times” (265), and stayed at Safroni-Middleton’s relatives’ home. JC was not musical, but he was partial to old French songs and Polish melodies. He was taciturn about his youth. JC read him some manuscript pages that eventually formed part of The Mirror of the Sea. [Remainder of the article is an abstract of Safroni-Middleton’s book, Tropic Shadows, q.v.]

“Recalling Joseph Conrad’s Shadow.” Journal of the Joseph Conrad Society (UK), 5.1 (November 1979): 4–7. [Owen, who knew Richard Curle, describes some of his recollections.] George T. Keating once tore up a letter that JC had sent him, because JC had told him to “mind his own business” about something. JC once said to Curle that “Hugh [Walpole], you know, is childish; you are childlike” (7).

Palffy, Eleanor1 “Drunk on Conrad.” Fortnightly Review, NS 126 (October 1929): 534–38. [Describes JC’s reading from Victory in New York, 10 May 1923] JC agreed to speak in public only to please his publisher. He spoke English with a guttural Polish twist (e.g., he pronounced “blood” as “blut”), and the recital lasted nearly two and a half hours.2

Parker, W. M. “With Joseph Conrad on the High Seas.” Blue Peter (13 May 1933): 221–23. 1 Countess Eleanor Palffy (1892–1952). 2 In fact, the reading was only half that length.

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Parker1 was manager of a bookshop in the Tuscania, in which JC sailed to America, April 1923. JC remarked that sailors now were like office staff. Recalling that a celebrity had once described him as the greatest writer of the sea, JC had replied that, if so, “I have not lived in vain” (222). Looking over the opening pages of The Arrow of Gold in the bookshop, JC had commented, “That seems a long time ago – past history now” (222). He frequently quoted Edward Garnett, who, he considered, had the best knowledge of Russian fiction.

Partington, Wilfred Forging Ahead. New York: Putnam, 1939, 207–16. Richard Curle, in a letter to Partington,2 says JC received a handsome fee from Thomas J. Wise3 for permission to print a second series of First Edition pamphlets.4 The whole relationship between JC and Wise was friendly (213). Partington wished to include JC’s play The Secret Agent in a series of unpublished works he was editing. JC suggested including Laughing Anne, and, on being told that Wise owned the manuscript,5 he stormed, “Wise! Wise!! he only owns the paper. The work is mine.”

1 Glasgow-born journalist William Mathie Parker (1891–1973) published books on Scottish literature and contributed frequently to the Fortnightly Review, Glasgow Herald, and John O’London’s. 2 Wilfred George Partington (1888–1955), author and editor, served in the war and then edited the Bookman’s Journal and Print Collector until 1931. He played a major role in exposing Thomas J. Wise as a forger of rare pamphlets. 3 Thomas J(ames) Wise (1859–1937), collector and forger of literary rarities. He began to purchase manuscripts and typescripts from JC in 1918. He was JC’s first bibliographer and published A Bibliography of the Writings of Joseph Conrad (1920) and A Conrad Library: A Catalogue of Printed Books, Manuscripts and Autograph Letters by Joseph Conrad (1928). He is not known to have forged anything by JC. 4 On 13 November 1919, JC wrote to Wise that “I am willing to agree to the publication of 10 booklets […] for the sum of £200” (CL6 526). This second series of Wise pamphlets included “Prince Roman” and “The Warrior’s Soul.” 5 JC sold the manuscript to Wise in 1921 (see CL7 238, 240).

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Calming down, JC added, “Of course I must have Laughing Anne now ... poor dear Anne.” JC said another copy was available (215–16).1

“The Literature of Travel.” Bookman’s Journal, 3rd series, 16.6 (1928): 342. JC “more than once expressed to me his admiration and deep regard for that brilliant Colonial Governor, Sir Hugh Clifford.”

Phelps, William Lyon2 As I Like It. New York: Scribner’s, 1924, 207–08. During JC’s visit to America in May 1923, it was a real sensation to hear him read his own writing with such a strong foreign accent. His extraordinary personality is even greater than his books.

Autobiography with Letters. London: Oxford University Press, 1939. JC clearly did not understand conversation in English, unless one spoke to him directly and carefully (430). Phelps attended JC’s reading of Victory in New York [10 May 1923], stayed with him the next night at the Doubledays’, and invited him to his own house in New Haven [15 May]. JC said, laughing, “This is the difference between H. G. Wells and me. Wells does not love humanity but thinks he can improve it; I love humanity but I know it is unimprovable” (753–54). He regarded Galsworthy as a “dear fellow” (754). J. M. Barrie told Phelps that, in his Adelphi Terrace flat in London during the war, he, JC, Hardy, Shaw, Galsworthy, and Bennett had sat on the floor around a lighted candle, during a Zeppelin raid. A bomb had fallen very close.3 1 Partington published a privately-printed edition of Laughing Anne in 1923. 2 William Lyon Phelps (1865–1943), American critic and university professor. 3 Thomas Hardy recollected the Zeppelin raid during a conversation with Virginia Woolf in 1926: “There was an air raid one night when we stayed with Barrie. We just heard a little pop in the distance – The searchlights were

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Plomer, William At Home. London: Cape, 1958), 93–94. [Ray, ed., 219–20] Plomer1 records Hugh Walpole’s story of an extraordinary visit paid to JC by Robert Hichens, accompanied by a large, male, Russian cook. “The radar-like sensitivity of Conrad to the intrusion into his domestic sphere of a Russian became even more agitated by what seemed to him the social solecism of causing it and by his instantaneous suspicion of what seemed to him an equivocal relationship; and the combustion set up in the great man by the duties of a host, the prejudices of a Pole, and the antipathy of a heterosexual almost caused him to explode” (93). Walpole also mentioned that he was once kissed in public by JC. [Partly rpt. in The Conradian, 10.1 (May 1985): 90.]

Powell, John “Conrad and Casement Hut Mates in Africa.” New York Evening Post, 11 May 1923: 16. Powell2 once asked JC to make a one-act libretto of “Heart of Darkness,” but he declined, saying that “it did not have enough dramatic incident and could not be condensed into operatic form. He suggested a symphonic poem.” JC told Powell of his first meeting with Roger Casement, who was accompanied by a servant and two black bulldogs.

beautiful. I thought if a bomb now were to fall on this flat how many writers would be lost” (The Diary of Virginia Woolf, ed. Anne Olivier Bell [London: Hogarth Press, 1980], 3: 98). 1 William Charles Franklyn Plomer (1903–73), a South African writer in diverse genres (poetry, short story, opera libretti) who settled in England. 2 John Powell (1882–1963) was an American pianist and composer. His career as a classical pianist began in Berlin in 1907. His composition for piano and orchestra, Rhapsodie nègre, first performed at Carnegie Hall in 1917, was inspired by “Heart of Darkness” and dedicated to JC. JC met him in 1912 (introduced through Warrington Dawson), and on one visit to Capel House Powell played Chopin for hours.

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Pugh, Edwin “Big Little H. G. Wells: Part II – In the Middle Distance.” New Witness, 1 August 1919: 290–94. Pugh1 first met JC at a literary dinner [ca. 1898], and JC humorously praised H. G. Wells as a “thundering good judge of literature” because “he likes my stuff” (292). Pugh stayed with JC at the Pent for a week.2 JC was stirred by Pugh’s tales of remote parts of London, by his knowledge of the Chinese in Limehouse and Poplar; JC had never before met a man who knew burglars. Very late one night, JC “concluded a description of a duel by tearing open his waistcoat and shirt and laying his breast bare” (292). On one occasion, Wells introduced JC to Bart Kennedy,3 remarking that the two men ought to know each other because they were both sailors. This inflamed the implacable resentment of each and “chilled their intercourse at its first inception” (292).

“Joseph Conrad as I Knew Him: Some Recollections of his Early Days.” T.P.’s & Cassell’s Weekly, 2 (23 August 1924): 575. [Ray, ed., 96–99] Even after JC had published six or seven novels, he was still puzzled by the correct use of such words as “like” and “as,” “who” and “whom,” “that” and “which.” They spent hours discussing the finer shades of meaning in such words, and JC would work over the examples that Pugh gave him “in agony and bloody sweat for days on end.”

1 Edwin William Pugh (1874–1930) was the son of a member of the Covent Garden Orchestra, his mother a wardrobe mistress at the theatre. He began work at thirteen in an iron factory and was later in a solicitor’s office. His first novel, A Street in Suburbia (1895) was followed the next year by The Man of Straw. His reputation was that of a realist, absorbed in the London scene’s sordid or grotesque characters. His first meeting with JC that he describes probably occurred in spring 1898. 2 This visit possibly occurred in late November 1898 (see CL2 123, 126). 3 Bart Kennedy (1861–1930) was an author and lecturer whose activities included being a sailor, labourer, and tramp in the US, and an actor and opera singer.

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JC was always pressed for money; he envied Pugh’s facility and wanted very much to do the kind of hackwork that Pugh performed. JC wrote to Pugh about “Youth”: “This story of mine for Blackwood’s […] that was meant to be just a short tale, lengthens out like an anaconda. It seems as if it would never leave off uncoiling itself.”1 [Also repeats reminiscences recorded in previous item.]

“Stephen Crane.” Bookman, 67 (December 1924): 162–64. Pugh, who knew both JC and Crane well, considers that “any impartial comparison between the two men, in their habit as they lived, must surely have given the verdict of greater strength of character to Crane rather than to Conrad.” While Crane was entirely self-sufficient, JC was “essentially gregarious, avid of advice and instruction, and though capricious easily swayed by others” (163).

Pugh, Mrs J. C. L. “Some Sidelights on Joseph Conrad.” Thurrock Historical Society Journal (Grays, Essex), No. 5 (Autumn 1960): 52–56. [An account of Ivy Walls, in Stanford-le-Hope, where the Conrads lived, 1897–98] Mrs Pugh prints verbatim some letters sent to her in 1949 by Mrs Muriel Dobree,2 daughter of G. F. W. Hope, who was JC’s friend and neighbour. Mrs Dobree recalls that Almayer’s Folly was finished in her father’s house. Hope and JC would often go yachting together. Mrs Dobree remembers JC’s disgust towards Ivy Walls, a horrible little villa. Her brother, named Conrad, met Walpole, Galsworthy and James there, and she herself recalls seeing Hueffer. JC was often asked to review 1 It would appear that JC’s letter to Pugh has not survived. 2 Muriel Dobree (née Hopps, later Hope, 1881–1960) married Hatherley Moor Dobree in 1911 in Orsett, Essex. Her brother, Conrad (1890–1963), named after JC, worked in the motor industry. Their mother, Frances Ellen Hope (née Mayer, born Burslem, Staffordshire; 1854–1941), married G. F. W. Hope in 1880 in Wandsworth. For further details of the Hope family, see JCA 133– 34, and J. H. Stape, “Conradiana in the 1901 Census and Other Sources of Record,” The Conradian (forthcoming 2008).

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books, and he generally passed them on to Mrs Hope, trusting entirely on her judgement.

Putnam, George “Conrad in Cracow.” Outlook (New York), 124 (3 March 1920): 382–83; rpt. in CUFE, 142–45. [Ray, ed., 205–07] Konstanty Buszczyński,1 JC’s childhood friend in Cracow, recalls JC’s ability as a boy to tell weird and fantastic tales about the sea. He gives an apocryphal account of JC’s first voyage from Trieste to Venice. When the two old friends met in Cracow in 1914, JC had not forgotten the injunction of Buszczyński’s father, Stefan,2 to “remember always you are a Pole and that you shall come back to Poland” (145).

Ransome, Arthur Autobiography, ed. Rupert Hart-Davis. London: Cape, 1976. Perceval Gibbon in November 1915 told Ransome3 a piece of advice about writing that JC had given him: “Let there be a definite incident in the life of each character which is known only to the author and is never mentioned or even indirectly referred to in the book” (187). The aim of this is to make the reader feel that the author knows more than he or she does, and to make the character three-dimensional.

1 Konstanty (“Kocio”) Buszczyński (1856–1921), a year older than JC, was his friend in Cracow from 1869 to 1873. He was to establish a renowned seed firm in Cracow. For their reunion, see Jessie Conrad, Joseph Conrad As I Knew Him, 70, and Joseph Conrad and His Circle, 167–68, 251 (photograph of Buszczyński facing 160); also Borys Conrad, My Father, 85–86. 2 Stefan Buszczyński (1821–92) was a friend and biographer of JC’s father. He was active in the 1863 Insurrection. 3 Arthur Ransome (1884–1967), author of the Swallows and Amazons series of children’s books.

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Rascoe, Arthur Burton1 A Bookman’s Day Book. New York: Horace Liveright, 1929, 101– 04, 105–11, 113–15. [Typical account of interview with JC on his arrival in New York, May 1923] JC stresses the last syllable in a word such as “contemplate” (106).

“Contemporary Reminiscences: A Remembered Interview with Conrad on the Occasion of his First Visit to America.” Arts & Decoration, 21, No. 5 (September 1924): 36, 63, 65. JC had more than a trace of a foreign accent, and tended to stress all words on the last syllable. He was very conscious of his accent, and was pained to have it noticed, Rascoe later learned. He was visibly frightened by interviewers. He said he was “not much up on American literature” (65) and did not read much fiction. He was ecstatic in contemplation of Lower Manhattan. [JC interviewed on arrival in New York, May 1923. Much of this is duplicated elsewhere.]

“Joseph Conrad comes to see us, not to chide or ‘uplift.’” New York Tribune, 2 May 1923: 1, 6. JC thought it was too aggressive to cull aphorisms from his work and call them wisdom. He described himself as a literary man, a creative artist, and not a wise man. It was Henry James who introduced him to the work of John Burroughs. [Typical account of JC’s interview on arrival in New York, May 1923, mostly rpt. in Rascoe’s A Bookman’s Day Book, described above.]

1 Burton Rascoe (1892–1957), American critic, editor, and journalist. In 1920, Rascoe moved to New York City, where he became the literary editor of The New York Tribune (later The New York Herald Tribune). There he started a column entitled “A Bookman’s Day Book,” which combined elements of biography, literary criticism, and society reporting.

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Reid, B(enjamin). L. The Man from New York: John Quinn and his Friends. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968, 569. F. N. Doubleday, JC’s host during his visit to America, wrote to John Quinn that JC was very frail: “I think the trip did him good, but how he ever had the nerve to leave England in his condition beats me. However, it didn’t seem to do him any harm in the end, but I had many anxious moments during his visit” [dated 26 July 1923].

Reynolds, Mabel E. Memories of John Galsworthy. London: Robert Hale, 1936, 25–26. The author, John Galsworthy’s sister,1 recalls the many stimulating discussions that JC and Galsworthy enjoyed at Ted Sanderson’s Elstree home. Sanderson and his mother2 “took a hand, and considerable trouble, in editing the already amazingly excellent English of their Polish friend’s ‘Almayer’ manuscript, and in generally screwing up Conrad’s courage to the sticking-point of publication” (26).

1 Mabel Edith Galsworthy (born 1872) was John Galsworthy’s younger sister. She married Thomas Blair Reynolds, a civil engineer and musician, in 1897. 2 Katherine Susan Oldfield Sanderson (née Warner, ca. 1843–1921). The Mirror of the Sea was dedicated to her and notes that her “warm welcome and gracious hospitality extended to the friend of her son cheered the first dark days of my parting with the sea.” Her husband, Lancelot, was headmaster of Elstree, a preparatory school in Edgware, Middlesex. JC spent ten days at Elstree in mid-April 1894 as he was completing Almayer’s Folly.

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Rhys, Ernest1 Everyman Remembers. London: Dent, 1931, 259–68. [Ray, ed., 131– 35] [Reprints much of Rhys’s Bookman interview, with minor alterations – see next item] JC had one decided bête noire, George Bernard Shaw. The antipathy perhaps arose out of their conflicting attitudes to the war. A mutual friend of Shaw and JC explained to Rhys, “Ah well, you see, Conrad had the strain of the Polish aristocrat in his blood, while Shaw is – well, Shaw is Shaw” (267). After his interview with JC, Rhys sent him a Hogarth print2 and requested permission to reprint a short story. JC replied cordially, but ignored the request. Rhys next met JC at a meeting to arrange a memorial to W. H. Hudson.3 JC said, “I hung up that Hogarth on my wall, and do you know what? It keeps me straight” (268).

“An Interview with Joseph Conrad.” Bookman (New York), 56 (December 1922): 402–08.

1 Ernest Rhys (1859–1946) was one of the first three members of the Rhymers’ Club, which was established at the Cheshire Cheese Tavern in 1889, and where he later met W. B. Yeats, Lionel Johnson, and Ernest Dowson. Rhys’s principal achievement was his founding of Everyman’s Library, the series of literary classics he produced with the support of the publisher, J. M. Dent. Rhys had met JC during the war. The visit recorded here occurred on 18 November 1920 (see CL7 206). Rhys had been commissioned to write an article on JC, which was later published in the Bookman in 1922 (see next item). 2 Rhys describes the print as one in which “the godless youth is putting off in a boat attended by a gaol chaplain and rowed by a boatman as ugly as sin.” This would appear to describe Hogarth’s “The Idle ’Prentice Turned Away and Sent to Sea,” Industry and Idleness (1747), Plate V. 3 This meeting was held on 28 November 1922 at the office of Hugh R. Dent, the publisher. A committee had been formed to erect a memorial to Hudson in Hyde Park. (Edward Garnett and Cunninghame Graham were also members.)

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When Rhys arrived, JC was reading Edith Wharton. He said of some new writers that “some of them do not seem to think you need to be kept fully engaged all the while. There are dull pages, the story drags. You have to whip up your interest. Now that does not do; every page must be alive.” Admitting that some people might find his work dull, he added, “I try to make every page tell – every page. When that fails ...” (403). “I have my psychological aim, first of all. That is quite distinct, and then I look out for some event, some personal adventure, some catastrophe if you like, to motiver my chief characters. But I never lose sight of my aim” (404). JC discussed Hogarth with vehement appreciation, but he disliked the attitude of the caricaturists, their mode of ridicule, their no-art. Dickens, above all, and Thackeray taught him most when he began to write. He had not read Turgenev early enough to be influenced. [Najder 433 mistakenly reads “Maupassant.”] He regarded George Moore’s work as too glittering for the naturalness required of the novel, too éblouissant.1 Of his own books, he declared that The Mirror was his favourite. Asked to say which of his short stories best satisfied his ideal of story telling, he replied, “I don’t quite know. Perhaps, on the whole, ‘The Secret Sharer’” (408). [Interviewed at home in Kent by Rhys and a M. Larigot.]

Roberts, Cecil2 “Beerbohm Remembered.” Books & Bookmen, 18 (May 1973): 40–45. Max Beerbohm once visited JC (44). 1 “Glaring, dazzling” (French). 2 Edric Cecil Mornington Roberts (1892–1976), a wealthy and well-connected poet, novelist, journalist, traveller, and wit, was born in Nottingham. After a brief spell in the civil service, he entered journalism as a special correspondent with the forces in the First World War. In 1920, he was appointed editor of The Nottingham Journal. His first volume of poems, with a preface by John Masefield, was published in 1913, and he won considerable critical acclaim when he began writing novels ten years later. He became an established bestseller in the 1930s with Pilgrim Cottage (1933) and Victoria Four-Thirty (1937). He later travelled extensively in the US on lecture tours and eventually settled in Italy, where he died. He met JC through Grace Willard in February 1918, when he was 25.

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The Bright Twenties: 1920–1929. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1970. Roberts recalls JC’s describing to him his sad childhood, his school work, his visits in the evening to his dying father’s bedroom, and the latter’s funeral (348).

Half Way: An Autobiography. London: Hutchinson, 1931, 213–20. [Mainly a summary of Roberts’s 1925 Bookman article] JC had the air of a member of the corps diplomatique. Roberts and JC discussed modern poetry. Garnett was pondering some point in JC’s manuscript when Roberts arrived [The Arrow of Gold?].1 In a discussion of writers, JC at last alluded to himself, a little despondently and in the third person. He said he would feel rewarded if only one of his books survived, so that his family should have cause to be proud of him. “Joseph Conrad.” The Times (London), 10 December 1957: 11. JC told Roberts that he was tortured by his limitations, and he thanked Roberts emotionally for assuring him that Nostromo would guarantee his immortality. “God bless you for that! [...] My poor Nostromo! They do not like it. Always this chatter about The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus,’ which is nothing!” [1918]

“Joseph Conrad: A Reminiscence.” Bookman (New York), 61 (July 1925): 536–42. [For reprints, see Ehrsam 1602.] [Ray, ed., 124–31] JC was wholly unmarked by experience, and was a figure of complete civilization. JC told Roberts that the war had overwhelmed his power of expression, and he had been unable to finish a series of articles on minesweepers: “I write with difficulty, with agony, in this hour of indecision” (538).2 1 This meeting with JC and Garnett possibly occurred in JC’s temporary flat at Hyde Park Mansions on Friday, 22 February 1918 (see CL6 188). 2 This conversation took place at their first meeting on one “dreary” February afternoon in 1918 in Grace Willard’s new flat off Bedford Square. In the last

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JC said he had known only the ardour and never the pleasure of writing: “Perhaps that is because I began late, when experience checked the singleness of youthful thought. I have never been fluent. Easy writing – and I do not say it cannot be good writing – is not possible to me. My success seems in proportion to my effort, to my striving. I feel that generalship has brought me whatever victories I may claim – if any” (539). “I could be content if I could think something of mine, something however small, might endure a while. One has expressions of immortality – there are my boys – but one’s writing is one’s own immortality, if it can be achieved” (539). In response to Roberts’s praise of Nostromo, JC said, “Nostromo is my best book, it is more Conrad than anything I have written, that is, in the sense that it embarks on my greatest imaginative adventure, and that it involved the severest struggle. No work cost me so much, and, achieved, gave me such satisfaction. I stand by Nostromo, out of the frailty of flesh, hoping it may last a while for a memorial. And yet it did not succeed with the public. They will not have my poor Nostromo. They prefer Lord Jim” (540).1

The Pleasant Years, 1947–1972. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1974. JC told Roberts that he was utterly incapable of writing a line of verse (231).

The Years of Promise, 1908–1919. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1968. On their first meeting [February 1918], JC told Roberts that he had never been able to write poetry, for it was a craft beyond him (167). Shortly afterwards, Roberts visited JC at his flat at Hyde Park Mansions, Marylebone Road, and met Garnett there. JC said, “Do you know that I am utterly exhausted if I manage three hundred words a day – that is good going for me. [...] Bennett says he writes four thousand words a day with ease. Wells also. Writing is always agony for me, sometimes I wonder why I write!” (168). Garnett was concerned about being called quarter of 1916, JC had made several North Sea voyages with the Royal Navy as an observer in the war effort. He subsequently wrote “The Unlighted Coast” for the Admiralty, probably in December 1916, but, lacking propaganda value, it was published only posthumously. JC did not keep his agreement to write more articles for the Admiralty. 1 This second conversation took place in the Conrads’ flat at Hyde Park Mansions on Friday, 22 February 1918 (see CL6 188). Edward Garnett had been present earlier in the evening.

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up for military service, and JC wrote to Roberts to ask him to try and obtain a post for Garnett in one of the War Ministries.1 Unfortunately, Roberts never received the letter, addressed to his club (168; 165–71 reprint much of Roberts’s Half Way, q.v.)

Roditi, Édouard “Trick Perspectives.” Virginia Quarterly Review, 20.4 (1944): 547–49. Roditi was a schoolboy when he met JC at Elstree School,2 of which Ted Sanderson was headmaster. Roditi was asked by Sanderson to entertain JC, for “Mr. Conrad always enjoys speaking French” (547). Roditi and JC talked for an hour, and JC spoke French “with a slight foreign accent and infinite care in the selection of his words” (548). He repeatedly told Roditi how fortunate he, Roditi, was to know three languages, and he recounted various experiences from his own “polyglot youth” (548). [Roditi’s recollection of summer 1920]

Rothenstein, John3 Summer’s Lease: Autobiography, 1901–1938. London: Hamilton, 1965, 17, 43–44, 115, 145. Rothenstein recalls JC’s admiration for his father, William, and his stories of remote, dramatic events.

[Private communication: letter dated 7 April 1989]

1 Garnett had been serving in the Friends’ Ambulance Unit in Italy, and he enlisted JC’s help in May 1918 to obtain “a Govt job of a civil nature” (CL6 218). JC approached Roberts, who was at the Ministry of Munitions. 2 Then in Edgware, Middlesex (now in Woolhampton, Reading, Berkshire). 3 John Knewstub Maurice Rothenstein (1901–97; knighted 1952), eldest son of William Rothenstein. An art historian, he was director of the Tate Gallery, 1938–64. In 1921, JC asked his father to “Remember me specially to John, whom I know better than all the others” (CL7 373).

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“Conrad treated very young friends as equals, so I had a particular affection for him, as well as profound admiration.”

Rothenstein, William1 Men and Memories: Recollections of William Rothenstein, 1872–1900. Vol. 1. London: Faber & Faber, 1931, 374. John Masefield2 “had a passionate admiration for Conrad. When later I got to know Conrad, I took him Masefield’s Salt Water Ballads [1902] and some of his stories; but Conrad had conceived one of his odd prejudices against Masefield, and indulged in a violent outburst against him.”

Men and Memories: Recollections of William Rothenstein, 1900–1922. Vol. 2. London: Faber & Faber, 1932, 38–44, 61–62, 86, 157–61, 163– 64, 167–68, 170, 278–79. [Ray, ed., 143–46] It was Ford who suggested that Rothenstein should paint JC, and he was invited to The Pent for a weekend [July 1903]. JC had met few painters and was curious about the painter’s outlook on life. Wells had been invited for Sunday lunch, but never came. JC also wished to introduce Rothenstein to Galsworthy, of whom he said that “our first meeting was when I ordered him out of the way; he was a passenger on my ship, you know; he is such a good friend; but insists on writing, poor fellow. 1 William Rothenstein (1872–1945; knighted 1931), painter and Principal of the Royal College of Art, was a Yorkshireman of Germanic extraction. He attended the Slade School of Fine Art at the age of sixteen. Between 1889 and 1925, he completed more than 750 portrait drawings (including Verlaine, Einstein, and T. E. Lawrence among many others) in his great series of contemporary portraits. He served as an official artist in the First World War, recording the Front in France, and was an unofficial artist for the RAF duing the Second World War. In the summer of 1903, he made his first visit to JC, and his work on that occasion is the earliest known portrait of him. It is now in the National Portrait Gallery, London. The visit was the beginning of a long friendship, and on several occasions he proved to be of great assistance to JC in his financial troubles. 2 John Masefield (1878–1967), Poet Laureate from 1930.

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Writing is a treadmill; he doesn’t know it yet.” J. B. Pinker, his agent, “believes in me – wants to pull me out of my difficulties – an idealist, you understand” (42). JC would often despair, and he worked himself into a fever during the writing of Nostromo [in 1903]: “I can’t get anything out of myself quickly,” he said, “it takes me a year of agony to make something like a book – generally longer. And, my dear fellow, when it is done there are not more than twenty people who understand pourquoi on se tue pour écrire quelques phrases pas trop mauvaises” (43). Rothenstein leaned more towards radicalism than JC did, and the latter often “brought me up sharply with a contemptuous remark.” Social idealists, pacifists, and the like roused his anger, and he could not abide Shaw. He knew though that Cunninghame Graham was more a cynic than an idealist, his Socialism a form of contempt for a feeble aristocracy (44). No one could be more charming than JC when he wished, but he had an aggressive side, too. He was prejudiced against Masefield’s work, even more hostile to Shaw, “and once when I told him that Max [Beerbohm] didn’t like Proust, he burst out against Max; yet, another time I heard him judge Proust sharply” (157). Rothenstein says of Galsworthy: “if there was a lame dog to be helped over a stile, one went straight to Galsworthy. ‘Jack’ was the name one heard most often during illness in the Conrad household” (164). JC had initially spoken of Galsworthy’s writing rather apologetically, as though it were the man who was most worthy of our acquaintance. [Rothenstein also recounts his efforts to obtain a grant for JC from the Royal Bounty Fund, in 1904–05, JC’s dislike of George Calderon (Slavonic Librarian at The British Museum and an authority on Russia), and his admiration of Roger Casement]

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Russell, Bertrand1 Autobiography, 1914–1944. London: Allen & Unwin, 1968, 75–76. Russell in a letter described how “the centre of me is always and eternally a terrible pain [...] a searching for something beyond what the world contains, something transfigured and infinite [...]. I have known others who had it – Conrad especially – but it is rare” [dated October 1916].

“Joseph Conrad.” Portraits from Memory and Other Essays. London: Allen & Unwin, 1956, 81–85. Russell was introduced to JC by Ottoline Morrell [September 1913]. He saw JC seldom, and not at all between 1914 and 1921. JC had little interest in political systems, although he had some strong political feelings, such as hatred of Russia. The only Russian novelist he admired was Turgenev. [Virtually identical to Russell’s Autobiography, 1872–1914 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1968), 207–10.]

Safroni-Middleton, Arnold Tropic Shadows: Memories of the South Seas, Together with Reminiscences of the Author’s Sea Meetings with Joseph Conrad. London: Richards, 1927, 35–59; abstracted in Lyman Owen, “Conrad and A. SafroniMiddleton,” Conradiana, 8 (1976): 265–67. [Accounts of undated meetings with JC in unidentified ships, ca. 1879– 81. Hans van Marle has demonstrated why Safroni-Middleton’s memoir is “so obviously unreliable,” with its “apocryphal details” and “demonstrable fantasies”: see JCA 45–46.] 1 The Hon. Bertrand Arthur William Russell (1872–1970; 3rd Earl Russell 1931) was a philosopher and mathematician, and a lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge, when he first met JC in 1913. Russell had a great admiration for JC and his work, and they were exceptionally close friends for about a year after their first meeting. Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950.

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JC knew a Russian called Youloff[?], and he fed some starving Englishmen on his ship. Describes JC’s visits to Sydney, Auckland[?], San Francisco [?] and the Tower Hill Shipping Offices in London. JC described the hot chestnuts one could buy in Valencia, Madrid, and Naples. JC praised Marryat, Dickens, and Balzac’s Wild Ass’s Skin (1831). JC’s lodgings near King’s Cross [i.e., Victoria] described.

Sargent, George H. “American Notes: Joseph Conrad and the American Newspaper Interviewers.” Bookman’s Journal & Print Collector, 8.22 (July 1923): 125. JC described the plot of his forthcoming The Rover to be issued in book form on 1 December. He wrote out the novel’s epigraph.1 [Typical of many such reports of JC’s interview at home of F. N. Doubleday, Long Island]

Saunders, A. T. “Joseph Conrad Korzeniowski.” Nautical Magazine, 105 (June 1921): 567–68; rpt. in Norman Sherry, Conrad’s Eastern World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966, 322. Saunders,2 who corresponded with JC, sent the latter’s good wishes to Mrs. James Simpson, widow of the owner of the Otago. She replied to him [2 May 1917]: “Your letter giving Joseph Conrad’s message and address reached me yesterday: thank you very much for it. We all remem-

1 Presumably this was the epigraph JC did not eventually use and described at this time to James Walter Smith (see below). 2 “Born in Queensland […], Alfred Thomas Saunders of Adelaide, South Australia, was an accountant and amateur historian who often published the results of his researches in the Adelaide Mail. In 1888, when Conrad commanded the Otago, Saunders had been working as a clerk for her owners, Henry Simpson and Co.” (CL6 18).

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ber with pleasure Captain Korzeniowski’s visits to us at Woodville.1 The boys used to enjoy them as much as my husband and I did” (567). [Sherry’s reprint contains substantial, unindicated omissions from Saunders’s text.]

Schwab, Arnold T. “Conrad’s American Speeches and his Reading from Victory.” Modern Philology, 62 (May 1965): 342–47. JC addressed the staff of his publishers (Doubleday, Page) in Garden City, New York, on 5 May 1923. One of the two stenographers assigned to transcribe JC’s speech recalls that JC “spoke softly and indistinctly, and we were hopelessly lost” (343).

Sée, Ida-R. “Joseph Conrad à Montpellier.” Le Petit Méridional (Montpellier), 6 September 1924. JC never mentioned his work. He said he read Flaubert religiously.2

Sherman, Thomas B. “Joseph Conrad and his Miraculous Career.” Atlanta Journal, 3 June 1923: 20 [not seen]; rpt. in Dale B. J. Randall, “Conrad Interviews, 1 Woodville is a suburb of Adelaide. 2 This is an account of JC’s visits to Montpellier, 1906–07, by Borys’s French teacher, whom Jessie Conrad described thus: “We discovered a charming French woman who readily undertook the boy’s French lessons. Mademoiselle Seé [sic] was lively and very amusing. Her pet name was ‘Madame Barb[e]-àBleu’; she boasted of a fictitious husband whenever her business took her out of her native town. We had a great regard for this dear lady, and many were the hours she spent with us, either on our various jaunts or sitting with me while I worked” (Joseph Conrad and His Circle, 111). Borys Conrad described her as “an elderly but very charming lady” (My Father, 48). See also Najder 321, 326.

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No. 3: Thomas B. Sherman.” Conradiana, 2.3 (1969–70): 122–27. [Account of JC’s interview at Long Island home of F. N. Doubleday, 7 May 1923.] JC said of Stephen Crane, “There was your impressionist for you.” Lord Jim was “a very defective book. I got into it with Marlow telling the story and simply had to go through with it.” JC used irony in The Secret Agent “to contain my fury and contempt for the sort of characters I was dealing with,” although, he added, “there is humor in irony.”

Shorter, C. K. 1 “Books Make the Best Furniture.” Sphere, 103 (31 October 1925): 157. [Repeats anecdote described in following item, with slight differences. E.g., Shorter proposed to publish a serial by JC in Illustrated London News (The Rescue). They never met again.] Shorter reports that JC told a friend he realized that Suspense was inferior.

“A Great Writer.” Sphere, 98 (9 August 1924): 155. [Obituary notice] Shorter recalls that it is nearly thirty years since he met JC: “He called at my office about a story I had asked him to write.” JC remembered that visit, because he had been asked to write at a time of depression and discouragement.

Sibley, Carroll “Mrs. Joseph Conrad.” Barrie and his Contemporaries: Cameo Portraits of Ten Living Authors. Webster Grove, Missouri: International Mark Twain Society, 1936, 48–51 [not seen]; rpt. in Conradiana, 2.2 (1969–70): 95–96. 1 C(lement) K(ing) Shorter (1859–1926), editor of the Illustrated London News and the English Illustrated Magazine. He later founded The Sphere and Tatler. In 1898, he accepted The Rescue for publication in the Illustrated London News, but it was not completed in time. JC called on Shorter in February 1899 (CL2 169).

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Mrs Conrad had “early literary ambitions, but Conrad [...] would invariably stick my stuff away in a drawer, and I would never see it again, although he’d promise to get to it sometime” (95). [Interviewed ca. 1935]

Smith, James Walter “Joseph Conrad – Master Mariner and Novelist.” Boston Evening Transcript, 12 May 1923: 2 [not seen]; rpt. in Dale B. J. Randall, “Conrad Interviews, No. 2: James Walter Smith.” Conradiana, 2.2 (1969–70): 83–93. [Ray, ed., 181–89] JC was interviewed by a score of reporters at the Long Island home of F. N. Doubleday, on 7 May 1923. Smith, who had met JC nearly thirty years before, records many of JC’s comments on Crane, such as “I was one of the first to know him when he came to London, and I had written something about ‘The Red Badge’” [“His War Book”]. Of his preface to Beer’s Stephen Crane, JC said, “You’ll find a great deal of new stuff in it, because I loved to put it down.”1 Replying to a question about Lord Jim’s indirect narrative method, JC asserted that “I say what my characters think. [...] If you are talking about what is called the novel of analysis, I know nothing about it.” He said later that “I got into ‘Lord Jim’ […] and I just had to get out. I had to invent Marlow to carry on the story. It seems the best way. The critics say that Marlow talks the way a man writes. They are right. That’s what he does. But when I did it that way, I didn’t create a new form of writing – there is no new form of writing novels. I have too much to think of when I am writing novels. I have too much to think of when I am writing to invent new forms.” JC agreed that The Secret Agent was ironical, and “it seemed to me that irony was the only thing to use with those fellows.” Irony may be truthful and loving, he added. Kurtz was a real character: “I saw him die.”2 1 JC had written his preface to Thomas Beer’s Stephen Crane: A Study in American Letters (New York: Knopf, 1923) in the preceding March. 2 During his stay in the Congo, JC took on board his steamer a young Frenchman, Georges-Antoine Klein, suffering from dysentery. Klein died during the journey down river. His name, later changed to Kurtz, may be found in the manuscript of “Heart of Darkness.” Apart from his presence and death aboard the steamer, there is no reason to link his character with that of Kurtz.

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Sidney Pawling of Heinemann induced W. E. Henley to publish The Nigger in the New Review. “It was my ‘Nigger’ that killed the ‘Review’ you know.” JC thought the cinema was miraculous, although it could never replace the novel: “The trouble with moving-pictures is that they don’t show, except in a superficial way, what the characters are thinking.” Finally, JC discussed The Rover, due to be published in December, and he wrote out the novel’s epigraph, describing the sailors who used to navigate the Indian Ocean. An old Breton sailor had told it to him: “They were of all nations/English French Dutch/Spaniards and even blackamoors/but they were all brothers.” JC said he always had trouble spelling “blackamoor.” [Smith reproduces JC’s handwriting. This epigraph was not eventually used.]

Stallman, R. W., and L(ilian). Gilkes, ed. Stephen Crane: Letters. London: Peter Owen, 1960, 170–71, 243, 283–84. Cora Crane, in her account of JC written on the reverse of a flyleaf, noted that he “speaks and acts like a Frenchman” [ca. 1899. Several biographical errors, e.g. “his father died in Siberia” and “he was educated in France”] (170). Stephen Crane invited JC to contribute to a play that would be presented at Christmas 1899.1 On 14 May 1900, Crane, who was seriously ill, wrote to Sanford Bennett that “I have Conrad on my mind very much just now. Garnett does not think it likely that his writing will ever be popular outside the ring of men who write. He is poor and a gentleman and proud. His wife is not strong and they have a kid. If Garnett should ask you to help pull wires for a place on the Civil List for Conrad please do me the last favor” (283–84).

1 “Crane decided to celebrate the end of 1899 with a big party open to the local population. The crowning attraction of the evening was to have been the staging of a burlesque, The Ghost, allegedly written by ten authors, including Conrad, James, Gissing, Wells, and the host himself. Conrad’s real contribution to the entertainment, which lasted three days, is unknown” (Najder 263).

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Stape, J. H., and Hans van Marle “‘Pleasant Memories’ and ‘Precious Friendships’: Conrad’s Torrens Connection and Unpublished Letters from the 1890s.” Conradiana, 27 (1995): 21–44. Stape and Van Marle (24) quote from an obituary of Walter Banks, whom JC met aboard the Torrens in 1891–92; the obituary noted that Banks, a civil engineer from Stockport, “corresponded for years with Conrad, and used to say of him: ‘He was a most lovable character, but he could be stern as a mate’” (from The Stockport Advertiser, 28 December 1951: 13). JC also met E(phraim) B(rownlow) Redmayne (ca. 1836–1914), a cotton-waste-dealer on his second voyage in the Torrens: “family legend has it that they became friendly during Conrad’s night watches when Redmayne, who suffered from insomnia, fell into talking with him” (25; Stape and van Marle cite private correspondence).

Stape, J. H., and Owen Knowles, ed. A Portrait in Letters: Correspondence to and about Conrad. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996. John Galsworthy recalled that, when he first met JC on board the Torrens in 1893, he was engaged in the hot and dirty work of stowing cargo and had “the air of a pirate.” “Conrad’s watches (he was first officer) were to me the gems of the voyage – if You know him as a raconteur You will understand” (53; letter from Galsworthy to William Archer, dated 29 September 1906). Max Beerbohm said of JC that “Our meetings were only three in all. The last was a few months ago, in Theodore Byard’s room at the office of the firm of Heinemann. He look [sic] so well in health; he was so vivacious; he was so immensely courteous (he always had lovely manners: everybody was agreed about that!)” (247; letter to Jessie Conrad, dated 6 August 1924).

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[Stark, Harold] “Young Boswell interviews Joseph Conrad.” New York Tribune, 31 May 1923: 11. [Stark interviewed JC in America, 30 May 1923] James Boswell had a fine Scotch mind, JC thought. Paderewski and John Powell had beautiful hands. JC explained that he had his little jokes, although some might think him a pessimist or a bore. [Rpt. in Stark’s People You Know (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1924), 332–35; see also Louis Weitzenkorn’s article, described below.]

Stein, Marian L. “John Conrad at Home.” Conradiana, 4.2 (1972–73): 67–71. [John Conrad’s recollections of Edward Garnett, Cunninghame Graham, Arthur Marwood, Ford, the blacksmith, the journey to Wales, JC’s drawings, sense of humour and modesty; they are mostly repeated in his Joseph Conrad: Times Remembered (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.)]

Stravinsky, Igor Themes and Conclusions. London: Faber & Faber, 1972, 71. In a conversation with Stravinsky in 1963, T. S. Eliot described JC as “a Grand Seigneur, the grandest I have ever met, but it was a terrible shock after reading him to hear him talk. He had a very guttural accent.” Eliot considered “Youth” and “The End of the Tether” to be the “finest stories of their kind that I know.”

Stravinsky, Igor, and Robert Craft Dialogues and A Diary. London: Faber & Faber, 1968, 249–50. [Ray, ed., 221]

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Saint-John Perse regarded JC as “the most perfect aristocrat and the truest friend I have ever known” (249). JC, he said to Craft, would never judge a friend morally or intellectually, for friendship was sacred to him. He did not love the sea but “man-against-the-sea,” and “he never understood me when I talked about the sea itself. I think he must have disliked my poems, though the only literature that I am certain he positively hated was Dostoevsky” (250). JC told Perse of a dinner he once attended, with Shaw, Bennett, and Wells, and they horrified JC by talking about writing as “action.” He pretended he had to catch an earlier train and left. “[JC] told me later, in épouvantable French,1 except for one English word I will never forget, ‘Writing, for me, is an act of faith. They all made me feel so dowdy.’” [Perse in conversation with Craft, 1962.]

Sutherland, J. G.2 “At Sea with Conrad.” Nautical Magazine, 105.5 (May 1921): 385–90. JC spoke of his early days at Cracow University [sic]. He did not show anxiety for his son Borys who was fighting in France, and he spoke of him with great pride and feeling. He loved to discuss the courts of Europe, who married whom, and why. He could talk for hours about the sea and had an infectious cheeriness.

Swettenham, Sir Frank “The Story of Lord Jim.” Times Literary Supplement, 6 September 1923: 588.

1 Saint-John Perse’s description of JC’s French as “dreadful” is a rare, perhaps unique, criticism of his command of the spoken language; it may partly reflect a disdain for Conrad’s distinctly Provençal accent. 2 J(ohn) G(eorgeson) Sutherland, (1871–?), Commander in the Royal Navy Reserve in charge of minesweeping vessels during the war at Granton Harbour, Scotland. He captained the HMS Ready, in which JC made a ten-day voyage in November 1916, putting ashore at Bridlington. Sutherland later wrote an entire 150-page book about the experience, At Sea with Joseph Conrad (London: Richards, 1922). JC described it as “that preposterous bosh” (CL7 484).

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Had JC known the full story of the sinking of the Jeddah, he would not have omitted to mention that the pilgrims came on deck in their graveclothes to await their doom. [This anecdote is also found in Gertrude Atherton’s book: see above.]

Swinnerton, Frank1 Authors I Never Met. London: Allen & Unwin, 1956, 25–32. JC was very concerned about being thought a fraud. H. G. Wells did excellent imitations of his accent.

Background with Chorus. London: Hutchinson, 1956, 125–29. Henry James was not “wholly approving” (125) of JC’s work. H. G. Wells gave “irresistible imitations of Conrad’s broken English” (125–26), while Arnold Bennett once exclaimed, about JC, “That poor tired old man!” Ford once mumbled some hardly intelligible words to Swinnerton about JC, in which “ridicule, patronage and enthusiasm were communicated” (126). One of JC’s favourite schemes, which he discussed with friends, was a plan to exploit his wife’s talent for cookery by opening a boarding-house.

Figures in the Foreground. London: Hutchinson, 1963, 95. In January 1920, Swinnerton received a letter from Hugh Walpole, in which he remarked that “what Conrad said in the summer, that ‘it is easier to have an intellectual friendship with a Chinaman than an American’ is perfectly true.”2

1 Frank Arthur Swinnerton (1884–1982), novelist and critic. 2 JC made this remark in January 1919; see Rupert Hart-Davis entry, above.

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Symons, Arthur1 Arthur Symons: Selected Letters, 1880–1935, ed. Karl Beckson and John M. Munro. London: Macmillan, 1989. [Rhoda Symons, wife, to James G. Huneker, 24 December 1910] “we go over and see Joseph Conrad occasionally – Arthur has a passionate admiration for him” (202). [Symons to Rhoda, 6 February 1911] “Yesterday was splendid. A[gnes Tobin] hired a car from Rye and we went to the Conrads.2 A. and C. talked at such a rate that I imagined how on earth I was to edge in words between them: about Poland, Polish, California, etc. Finally my triumph came. Exit all but C. and I. He said to A.: I must talk with A.! And such a talk we had. He said: How living you look. Your beard gives you un air distingué, a poetical distinction. Then I read him ‘Crimen Amoris.’3 He sat close beside me on the sofa, and listened, breathing hard. One or two interruptions came: up went C., door shut: back: then: magnificent! what a magnificent translation. So I read over in a sonorous voice the 1st stanza and then the last in its lovely nuances (adores; implores). Then C.: I am transported. Then money. He said: I have had £300 for the serial rights of my novel:4 think of those awful creatures who get thousands. I may get altogether £1,000 out of it. Mais, I am always under the water. (He was walking to and fro, smoking.) I am not content with my novel. It has no end. It sickens me when I have to sit down to my desk and write so many thousand words for a short story – for money. (He put his hand over his forehead: All is here!) But how can I go on?

1 Arthur William Symons (1865–1945), poet, critic, and author of The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1899). Symons suffered several severe nervous breakdowns, and JC met him quite regularly during the period 1909–12, offering his support and encouragement. Symons lived nearby at Wittersham, Kent. 2 On 7 February 1911, JC told Symons that “I was glad to see you more alert, more hopeful and altogether better this time,” adding that “Miss Tobin’s passage under our roof left a delightful scent of intelligence and charm of a finely humane quality” (CL4 411–12). 3 From Paul Verlaine’s Jadis et Naguère (1884). 4 Under Western Eyes.

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I reminded him of my thing on him1 and he said, with such curious emotion: When you publish another book, you won’t forget me? Certainly not, said I. Then, as we left, to return to Laurence’s,2 said C.: Au revoir, cher! and I answering him. Wasn’t it lovely?” (217) [Symons to Gordon Craig, April 1911] “how astonishing a creature is he – a Hamlet, if you like – with all his wisdom and nerves, and vision also. As the man (whom I have met continually) so are his works” (218). [Symons to John Quinn, 1 December 1911] “I have here the MSS. of my essay on Conrad3 (which extends to 80 pages, excessively revised and rewritten) which has a history. […] I rubbed out the pencil marks, sent the thing to Conrad, who wrote me an enormous letter,4 entirely approving (with all his foreign grace and using such words as gratitude) what I had written, advising me to omit two references to two American novelists (one Mark Twain). This I did. […] He, of course, is anxious for the publishing of the thing (which I have since revised) in some American magazine” (220). [Symons to Rhoda, 1 June 1912] “Conrad was caressingly kind. Vous avez l’air très bien, plus raffiné, plus jeune: et tout le reste. He was intensely absorbed in my Collected Edition: listened to every detail; gave me some wise hints; and never have we had such a conversation, so natural, so simple, and for several hours. He was 1 An essay by Symons on JC. 2 The Dutch-born English Classicist painter and Royal Academician Laurence Alma-Tadema (1836-1912; knighted 1899) had a house near Symons in Wittersham, Kent. 3 Symons’s essay appeared as “Joseph Conrad,” Forum, 53 (May 1915): 579–92. 4 For JC’s lengthy reply in August 1908, see CL4 99–101. He recognized, however, that Symons was mentally ill at the time, and told William Rothenstein on 4 November 1908 that the article was “wildly laudatory and I was simply appalled by it. I wrote as delicately as I could and he took my letter in very good part” (CL4 150).

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just the same, somewhat less nervous, but with all his vitality. He said a splendid thing: We overleap two centuries” (223). JC drove “the funniest little car I ever saw. He bought it or hired it for a year – awfully cheap. And his childish enjoyment at this new adventure was amusing” (224).1 “And he told me two strange affairs of his. He got £40 for the Titanic,2 which he wrote in 48 hours. Before then he had sold the MS of The Outcast of the Islands [sic] (of immense length, 800 pages or more) and for only £40” (224). “Conrad is most curious to see [Augustus] John3 when he comes here” (224). [Symons to John Quinn, 28 September 1913] “I spent most of yesterday at Conrad’s.4 He was in splendid form, and found me the same. I don’t think that either he nor I were ever so much our own selves. And I think both enjoyed it immensely” (228). [Symons to Rhoda, 29 September 1913] “Conrad was more himself than ever: proud of his work, praising my art as aesthetic, exactly like the prose of Flaubert: What a compliment! He got excited over The Secret Agent; told me lots about it. As I said entirely ironical. He: I showed an utter contempt for those Nihilists. The murder and the rest made it. My quality, as a foreigner, is that of the art of 1 In a letter to Sidney Colvin of 13 August 1912, JC said, “Yes. We have the little car. It’s a worthy and painstaking one-cylinder puffer which amuses us very much” (CL5 96; see also Borys Conrad, My Father, 67–68, and John Conrad, Times Remembered, 46). The car was a second-hand two-seater Cadillac with epicyclic gears. 2 This first of two articles by JC on the sinking appeared as “Some Reflexions, Seamanlike and Otherwise, on the Loss of the Titanic,” English Review, 11 (May 1912): 304–15. 3 Augustus Edwin John (1878–1961), the painter, had been introduced to JC by William Rothenstein. In 1912, JC told John Quinn that “I used to meet him some eight years ago at Rothenstein’s. A fascinating personality. A great artist. I admire him without restriction” (CL5 81–82; see also CL3 134, CL5 363). 4 On 27 September 1913, JC told Pinker that “To day Symons turned up for lunch” (CL5 286).

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narration, which distinguishes me from any other novelist. (Think of Lord Jim!) I write laboriously, go over my work. I write by images, which I have some trouble in putting into words. (Every poet also! but more by instinct.) Nor can I write without adventures. […] He showed then his hatred against women in general. He said: I don’t want praise from my wife nor any woman; with a great scowl. There, I can’t just fathom him” (229). [Symons to John Quinn, 4 August 1916] [3 August 1916, at Capel House] “His adventure in Poland took him more than an hour to relate; incredible – amazing – terrible. One: ‘There were 25,000 stinking Jews on the stairs up which I went to have my passport vised. I had to wait 5 hours in the corridor – thought I would never get in nor out. Finally I enter. The man flings up his hands and says: “I can’t! I can’t!”’ In Vienna he just escaped being arrested; ‘had I been (said he) I shouldn’t have been here.’ […] I never saw him in better spirits than on that afternoon” (240). [Symons to John Quinn, 15 September 1922] “We spent a day with Joseph Conrad. He was sinister, one mass of writhing nerves; irritable and impatient – yet always the man of genius” (252). [Symons to Warner Taylor, (late 1931?)] JC visited Symons on 1 April 1914 (231). “One day Conrad (a man of genius, whose fascination was unique, and whose own style was inimitable and often exasperating) standing in my study many years ago, having read these sentences, in an article of mine on Salammbô,1 looked up at me with surprise and expressed his delight in finding that I was the first to discover, what he had wondered at, the secret of Flaubert’s rhythm” (258).

“Joseph Conrad: A Personal Impression.” Queen, No. 4052 (20 August 1924): 5. 1 “Gustave Flaubert,” an introduction to Salammbô (1901).

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JC was incapable of rest. When not writing, he was elaborating a fine art of conversation. He told Symons that “I do not create, I invent.” JC was the proudest man Symons ever met, and the most lovable. He was inscrutable and impenetrable at times, and there was something almost inhuman in his aspect. He had a physical disquietude.

“A Set of Six” in George T. Keating, A Conrad Memorial Library. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1929, 170–81. JC said, “I always plot out my novels any amount of times before I begin them; [...] I just go on inventing; I let my people think and they do just as they like; they often escape from my control” (170). Asked whether his work was abnormal, JC replied, “Probably it is – not all of it, by any means. When I create monstrous images and monstrous beings it is because my imagination often works in two directions at once – in the Seen and in the Unseen Worlds” (170). All the details in “Heart of Darkness” were correct, he said. He saw the sacrilegious rites and naked dancing natives. “Kurtz looked like an animated image of death carved out of old ivory” (170–71). He saw Kurtz’s mistress in Singapore, moving past him “like the animal she was” (171). JC was proud of having written “Il Conde” in ten days; every incident of this adventure had been related to him at Capri in 1905 by Count Szembek.1 JC said of Victory that “I consider this one of my finest achievements, yet when I was writing it I felt tormented and feverish. I tried to write that novel simply, event following hard on event and always surprise, and to avoid as far as possible putting into it too much style and too much imagination” (173).

Temple, Frédéric-Jacques “Joseph Conrad à Montpellier.” Cahiers d’Études et de Recherches Victoriennes et Édouardiennes, No. 2: Studies in Joseph Conrad, ed. Claude Thomas (Montpellier: Université Paul-Valéry, 1975), 13–18. 1 The manuscript of “Il Conde” is dated as having been completed on 4 December 1906. In August 1908, JC told Ada Galsworthy that the writing of the story “took me ten days” (CL4 104). Count Zygmunt Szembek (1844– 1907) was a Pole whom JC met in Capri in early 1905. See also Jessie Conrad, Joseph Conrad As I Knew Him, 127, and Joseph Conrad and His Circle, 97.

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In 1942, Temple met Louis-Charles Eymar,1 a traveller and local painter who knew JC during his visits to Montpellier in 1906–07. JC would tell Eymar about the adventures described in Typhoon and The Nigger, but he never said he was a writer, and Eymar knew him only as an ancient mariner with “un nom difficile” [i.e., Korzeniowski]. It was only much later that Valery Larbaud explained to Eymar that he had been talking to Conrad. One evening, Eymar had suspected that his friend might be a writer. He had mentioned the work of Henri de Régnier,2 whom the sailor had appreciated, and he had offered to lend him one of de Régnier’s books, but JC had refused, saying that lending books deprived the author of his income. Eymar and JC frequented the Café Riche in Montpellier, where JC would sit very near the orchestra and observe a young girl musician [the model for Lena in Victory]. Eymar showed Temple a photograph of this “jeune personne, assez jolie femme” (17).

Thomas, Edward Letters from Edward Thomas to Gordon Bottomley, ed. R. G. Thomas. London: Oxford University Press, 1968. [Ray, ed., 217–18] Thomas3 says he has just spent a couple of days with the Conrads [letter of 26 August 1910]. JC “looks something like Sir Richard Burton in the head, black hair, and moustache and beard and a jutting out face, and pale thin lips extraordinarily mobile among the black hair, flashing eyes and astonishing eyebrows, and a way of throwing his head right back to laugh.” He was very friendly (206–07).

1 Louis-Charles Eymar (1882–1944). 2 Henri-François-Joseph de Régnier (1864–1936) was a leading French symbolist poet of the early twentieth century. 3 Edward Thomas (1878–1917), Anglo–Welsh poet who was killed in the First World War. On 13 July 1910, JC wrote to him from Capel House, saying “Do not forget your promise to come with your boy end August” (CL4 350). Thomas lived at Petersfield, Hampshire. His son, Merfyn, was born in 1900.

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The Letters of Edward Thomas to Jesse Berridge, ed. Anthony Berridge. London: Enitharmon Press, 1983. Writing from Lydd, Kent, Thomas mentioned that “Twice I have seen Conrad who lives 12 miles away,” at Capel House [82; letter dated 24 December 1916].1

Tittle, Walter2 “The Conrad Who Sat for Me.” Outlook (New York), 140 (1 and 8 July 1925): 333–35, 361–62. [Ray, ed., 153–63] In his last couple of years, JC was on the defensive against new acquaintances, for he had little surplus strength to expend. He also felt that he did not have long to live, and that there was something vitally wrong with his heart, although he concealed this from his family. He confided to Tittle that he wished to live longer, in order to try and excel 1 In November 1916, Thomas had been posted as a Second Lieutenant to 244 Siege Battery at Lydd. On 10 December 1916, Thomas came to say goodbye to Conrad before being posted as a volunteer to front-line service in France, where he was killed four months later at Arras (see Najder 422). 2 Ohio-born Walter Ernest Tittle (1883–1966) moved to New York and London as a magazine illustrator and later portrait painter. He first met JC in the Curzon Hotel, Mayfair, in July 1922. He did two oils, two lithographs, and a copper dry-point etching of JC. (One of the oils, painted on 6 January 1924, was acquired by the National Portrait Gallery in 1931, another presented to Yale University Library in 1948. The etching was undertaken on 12 November 1922.) JC appreciated Tittle’s portraits of him above all others, in part because Tittle represented him as “the rough old sea-dog that I am,” and he chose one of them as the frontispiece for Dent’s Collected Edition of his works. Although their friendship was not of long standing and they saw each other infrequently, Tittle would visit the Conrads when he was in England, and he was the first to greet JC on his arrival in New York in May 1923. JC told Eric S. Pinker on 26 July 1922 that “Yesterday I sat for a very successful sketch of my head in lithographic pencil by W Tittle an American artist working for Scribners & Century here. He’s very talented and has already done a lot of big-wigs here” (CL7 501). Other sitters included Walter de la Mare, Arnold Bennett, and G. K. Chesterton. See also CL7 580; John Conrad, Times Remembered, 206; and Richard P. Veler’s article, described below.

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his previous literary efforts and to provide for his family. His trouble, he was convinced, was not the result of overwork: “I really am able to achieve so little, and, besides, hard work never hurt anybody. It is something else. Sixty-five is a critical age for many men” (333). [1922] When Tittle suggested a visit to America, JC refused to believe that he was well known there, since he felt he was not a writer of great popularity and had a distinctly limited audience. His eventual trip to America quickly shattered his “unbelief in his fame” (334). JC agreed with Tittle’s view that much of the beauty that inspires creative work is omitted from the finished work; “I have estimated the proportion that can be captured at about thirty-five per cent,” he said (334). When JC was sitting for his portrait [6 January 1924?], Tittle asked him how he regarded The Rover [published 3 December 1923]. JC sat for a moment in an attitude of deepest dejection, and then replied: “I have not yet made up my mind about it. It worries me. It is going wonderfully well both here and in America, and the reviews have been excellent,1 but I cannot come to a satisfactory conclusion about it myself. I cannot decide if it is one of my best works. Perhaps I shall know later. It may be the best of the lot, but for the moment I am very much at sea about it. Which is my best book? Again, I don’t know. They are all so different. I can never resist the temptation to experiment, and can never write in the same way twice. ‘Nostromo’ is my biggest canvas, my most ambitious performance. Perhaps it is the best. I do not know. Dickens and Thackeray always wrote in a consistent style. They had established methods, and one book resembled another, so that comparison is possible. This is not the case with me. With each effort I want to try something new. This makes immediate comparison very difficult, almost impossible” (334). The Rover, he explained, was written at least eleven times, and he had to cease work repeatedly because of illness. He rarely used a stenographer, and the writing had to be done largely by hand. The first draft of a novel can be dictated, and then begins the endless re-writing: “I hate to write! I do it only when an idea comes to me so strongly that I cannot resist it. Otherwise it would be impossible for me. I write when a story demands telling so strongly that there is no further possibility of postponement. I am not a literary man. Literary men can write about 1 Reviews of The Rover, in fact, were usually respectful or valedictory at best, and JC himself, in a letter to his agent, acknowledged the “note of disappointment.” For Conrad’s view of the novel’s reception, see LL2 337.

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anything, often with equal facility. I am not one of those clever and accomplished people” (334–35). JC disagreed with Tittle’s idea that he should write a book on his impressions of America: “that sort of thing is not possible for me. I cannot sit down in cold blood and write for profit. I can produce only creative work, and that only when the desire to write is so strong that it takes complete possession of me and resistance is impossible” (335). He instructed Tittle to “paint me to look as I am – an old pirate with hooded eyes, like a snake! You laugh? Well, I was virtually a pirate once. I commanded that filibustering ship in The Arrow of Gold, you know, and was nearly captured many times.”1 He asked Tittle not to alter the length of his nose in the portrait: “That’s the Korzeniowski nose absolutely.” Even the posture was correct, he thought, for “My father used to sit like that” (335). James Barrie2 applauded Tittle’s portraits of JC: “It is so like him as he used to sit talking with me by the hour in my studio. [...] Always so nervous and intent on the subject in hand” (335). “Technique,” JC remarked to Tittle, may these days be “blatantly scoffed at by so-called modernism [but] I find a command of it indispensable in my own work; for, after all, my dear, technique comprises about sixty per cent of any art, doesn’t it?” Dickens, a “very great writer,” will live when his modern critics are long forgotten (361). JC had a deep aversion to cinema, and thought that Chaplin’s work was vulgar. Films, he said, are “stupid, and can never be of real value. [...] Shadowgraphs3 in pantomime are much better” (362). JC described himself as “a sailor, not a society man. I could sit on a wharf in Marseilles and talk to an old salt with pleasure, at any time. I can always get on with people like that, but not with everybody” (362). [Tittle’s recollections of JC, 1922–February 1924]

1 In The Mirror of the Sea, JC explains how he and three other adventurers smuggled guns in the Tremolino in 1877 for the supporters of Don Carlos, Pretender to the Spanish throne, from Marseilles to Spain. The ship had to be run onto the rocks and wrecked to escape the coastguard. However, there is very little evidence to support this claim. 2 J(ames) M(atthew) Barrie (1860–1937; knighted 1913), Scottish novelist and dramatist, author of The Admirable Crichton (1902) and Peter Pan (1904). JC met him in 1903, and Barrie provided moral and financial support, although the two men were not close friends. 3 Shadowgraphs are silhouettes made by casting a shadow, usually of the hands, on a lighted surface.

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“Mrs. Conrad was not eclipsed by her Husband.” New York Times [Book Review], 17 May 1925: 2. JC told Tittle that “Henry James said that no artist should ever marry. [...] I think he was right as this applied to his own case; certainly he was better off as a bachelor. He nearly excommunicated me when I married but soon became reconciled to the idea when he saw how beautifully it worked out.” JC was a rather refractory invalid; a new medicine would fill him with enthusiasm, and he would try to consume several days’ supply within the first few hours, after which he would exclaim in disgust, “Take it away. It is terrible stuff. I cannot stand it.” Tittle once heard JC remark, “Women are so silly! All except you, my dear Jessie.” Jessie related to Tittle one of her husband’s motoring adventures; their son, Borys, was driving with JC one day when, to avoid a collision, he drove into a ditch. Both were thrown out of the car, and Borys “cried out excitedly just as they were toppling over, ‘Are you hurt, Dad?’ He declares most solemnly that the answer came while his father was in midair, ‘All right so far!’”1

“Portraits in Pencil and Pen III: Joseph Conrad.” Strand Magazine, 67 (June 1924): 546–50. [Account of Tittle’s visits to Bishopsbourne in the 1920s] JC said, “Nearly everyone thinks of me as a writer of the South Seas, but, do you know, I have never even been there” (548). “Youth” was based on an actual experience: “the decks of our ship were blown up by an accumulation of coal-gas, and the fire smouldered for days before we made the port. It was a most unearthly thing to see the deck deliberately rise in the air to the accompaniment of a dull roar. One of the sailors was so frightened by it that he jumped overboard” (548).2 Twain is one of JC’s greatest idols, and he has additional sympathy for him because of the parallels in their lives. JC, at the beginning of his career, “loved to write. I was fascinated at being able to do it. So I tried 1 Borys appears to give another version of this story in My Father, 103. 2 “Youth” is closely based on JC’s experiences as second mate in the Palestine, a wooden barque that sank off Sumatra in 1883, following a lengthy and fraught voyage with a cargo of coal from Newcastle to Bangkok.

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again with great enthusiasm, and when my first book was published it had good notices from the best of the critics” (549). Shortly after the opening of his play, The Secret Agent [2 November 1922], JC said, “I cannot sit down and say ‘Now I will write a play’; a play or novel must germinate in my mind and demand to be written. I cannot force it. And I cannot knowingly make concessions to the popular taste. If I wrote a bad play it would not be because I willed it, but in spite of the fact that I was trying to do my best” (549). JC has a high estimate of Arnold Bennett, who, as a young writer, vowed to JC and Wells that, in ten years, he would be one of the most popular writers in Britain: “We exchanged a smile at this, but hanged if he did not go and do it!” (550). JC held Chesterton in the greatest admiration: “He will stand as one of the biggest literary figures of his time” (550).

Titus, Edward K.1 “Write and Burn, Conrad advises Yale Aspirants.” World (New York), 20 May 1923, 2nd News Section: 1, 3; rpt. in Dale B. J. Randall, “Conrad Interviews, No. 4: Edward K. Titus, Jr.” Conradiana, 3.1 (1970–71): 75–80. [JC interviewed in New Haven, 16 May 1923] “Self-expression succeeds only when the writer has lived through many experiences” (77), JC said. He admired what he would perhaps call the “poetic novels of Browning” (77). He praised Henry James, and was unenthusiastic about the influx of steamboats. He thought he had been a good captain. He had originally planned to enter the diplomatic service, and his eventual decision to become a sailor, he hinted, had not been well received in some quarters – “It seemed like becoming a Capuchin monk” (79).

1 Edward K. Titus, Jr, appears in the US Federal Census of 1920, aged 16 years and living with his parents in Newton City, Massachusetts. Born Massachusetts. His father, Edward K., was a journalist. His World War II Enlistment Record (1942) gives his date of birth as 1903, and he worked as a journalist and in the motion picture industry.

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Tomlinson, H. M.1 Gifts of Fortune. London: Heinemann, 1926, 84–89. JC would occasionally vouchsafe a closer glimpse of himself, only for it to fade away quickly. “He would utter such a word as Meddlers; meaning you and me, meaning all those Englishmen who, for example, are restive under the constraint of foolish men and statutes and plainly show it. He would exclaim Humanitarians in a way that implied, merely implied, that pitiful men are a nuisance. My own guess is that he desired to take part in English affairs, for he had strong antipathies, but that he repressed himself, doubting his right to – well, to meddle. [...] Mainly he was silent about the affairs that provoked the prejudice of the English, giving no more than an appraising and ironic glance” (85–86). Seamen sometimes wrote to JC to tell him that they “knew” Singleton [in The Nigger], and such letters gave JC much pleasure and assurance. Tomlinson once reviewed one of JC’s “books of the sea,” and a few weeks later met him for the first time at the offices of the English Review, in the company of Norman Douglas and Austin Harrison.2 JC thanked Tomlinson for his review and asked, to the latter’s shock, “You do think I am genuine, don’t you?” (88). Though modest, JC could be quick enough in attack when “folly or presumption was about,” and he was “not the man to suffer gladly the more ruinous absurdities of his fellows” (88).

“The Prelude: Almayer’s Folly” in George T. Keating, A Conrad Memorial Library. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1929, 3–7. 1 H(enry) M(ajor) Tomlinson (1873–1958), writer and journalist, grew up in London’s docklands (his father was a foreman in the West India Dock) and worked in a shipping-office before joining The Morning Leader. He made his reputation with a book about trawlermen; his first book, The Sea and the Jungle (1912) describes his journey to the Amazon as a ship’s purser. He often wrote for the English Review, and in 1917 became literary editor of The Nation. 2 This meeting might be the one that JC mentioned in his letter to Tomlinson of 17 February 1914: “I have seen your article before, and at the E[nglish] R[eview] offices I tried in my clumsy way to thank You for the pleasure it has given me” (CL5 356). Perhaps Tomlinson had contributed the unsigned notice of Chance in the English Review of February 1914 (443–45)

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JC regretted that Pará1 was a landfall that he had never made. His voyage in the Torrens was the one after she was dismasted in a blow and had put into a West Indian port for repairs. He had forgotten the name of her owner until Tomlinson reminded him (5).2

Tschiffely, A. F. Don Roberto: The Life of R. B. Cunninghame Graham. London: Heinemann, 1937, 391. In 1928, Graham wrote to H. W. Nevinson that, when Conrad and he first knew Roger Casement, the latter had “no words, but of contempt for Irish Catholics.” It was JC who informed Graham that Casement was homosexual.

“An Unusual Modern.” America (New York), 29 (19 May 1923): 111. There was no secret about his style, JC told a group of interviewers in America. “He wrote his thoughts and his style took care of itself.”

Unwin, (Sir) Stanley The Truth about a Publisher: An Autobiographical Record. London: Allen & Unwin, 1960.

1 Pará, also known as Belém, is a city in north-eastern Brazil, capital of Pará State, and the chief port of the lower Amazon River, near the equator, on the Pará River estuary. The port is accessible to ocean-going ships and includes a naval base. Founded in 1615 by the Portuguese, Belém owes its commercial importance to the opening of the Amazon to foreign trade in the late 19th century. Tomlinson himself had sailed 2,000 miles up the Amazon. 2 The Torrens was owned by A. L. Elder and Co. of London. JC made two return voyages to Australia in the Torrens as first mate, 1891–93.

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Unwin1 quotes the reminiscences of a colleague, A. D. Marks, that “an attempt between the late J. B. Pinker and myself to bring [T. Fisher Unwin] and Conrad together again after many years, resulted in Conrad threatening to throw him out of his own window” (111).2

Valéry, Paul “Sujet d’une conversation avec Conrad.” Nouvelle Revue Française, 12 (December 1924): 663–65. Valéry3 met JC in London and again, in Kent, shortly before his death. JC spoke French with “un bon accent provençal” and English with “un accent horrible” (663). JC recalled his memories of France, its navy and sailors, and they discussed at length the failure of the French navy to rule the waves. 1 Stanley Unwin (1885–1968; knighted 1946), publisher, founded George Allen and Unwin house in 1914. T. Fisher Unwin was his uncle. 2 The end of JC’s connection with T. Fisher Unwin, his publisher, had come on 26 March 1898, when Tales of Unrest was published. Their relationship had reached a crisis in 1896, following the completion of The Nigger; by this time, JC had begun to feel that Unwin was guilty of sharp business practices and meanness, and he began “the task of waging war – at Garnett’s instigation – against T. F. Unwin, his publisher. Conrad’s position was not easy, as he had been on friendly terms with the Unwins. But the need was pressing: he had already been compelled to borrow money from Galsworthy against future earnings. Thus, when Unwin suggested a £50 advance and a fairly low royalty from the sales, Conrad demanded an advance twice as large, and higher royalties” (Najder 202). Unwin refused, and JC opened negotiations with other publishers. In January 1898, JC told John Galsworthy that Fisher Unwin was a “scoundrel” who was “trying to play me a dirty trick”: “The man is unsafe and I am a fool when dealing with such a type for I can’t understand it” (CL2 11). 3 Paul-Ambroise Valéry (1871–1945), French poet. In October 1922, JeanAubry had invited him to London to lecture, and the pair lunched at Oswalds on 5 November. JC told Gide on 28 December 1922 that “J’ai eu dernièrement le très grand plaisir de faire la connaissance de Ravel et de Paul Valery. Ils ont été charmants tous les deux pour moi. Je me suis pris de réelle affection a première vue pour Valery” (CL7 629). Valéry visited JC again in late October 1923. (Hugh Walpole, Jean-Aubry, and Richard Curle were also present for Sunday lunch on 21 October: see Najder 483.)

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André Gide–Paul Valéry: Correspondance, 1890–1942, ed. Robert Mallet. Paris: Gallimard, 1955, 492–95. Valéry tells Gide that he spent yesterday with JC [October 1922]: “Je lui dis qu’il devrait écrire en français ses souvenirs marins de Marseille et de Cette. Il paraît assez alléché de l’idée, qu’il repousse en même temps” (493).1 Valéry to Gide [November 1922]: “Conrad charmant. Parle Cette et Montpellier et balancines et marchepieds” (494).2 Gide [October 1923] asks Valéry to send “mille souvenirs” to Arnold Bennett and, perhaps, to JC, who had called on him at his home in Cuverville recently when he was out.3

Veler, Richard P. “Walter Tittle and Joseph Conrad.” Conradiana, 12 (1980): 93–104. [Veler prints extracts from Tittle’s unpublished autobiography and diary, most of which are included in Tittle’s published articles on JC, q.v.] Tittle first met JC, ca. 7 July 1922, in London’s Curzon Hotel. He was the first person to welcome JC on his arrival in New York, May 1923; JC told him that the sailors in the Tuscania looked like “clerks in a counting house. Seafaring life is a sedentary life these days!” (96–97). He had spent much time during the crossing in the chartroom, fascinated by the maps.

Vidan, Ivo “Saint-John Perse’s Visit to Conrad: A Letter by Alexis Saint-Léger Léger to G. Jean-Aubry.” Conradiana, 2.3 (1969–70): 17–22. 1 JC first met him at the London salon of Lady Colefax in 1922 and promptly invited him to Oswalds in October of that year. 2 Valéry lunched at Oswalds on 5 November 1922 (see CL7 557). 3 André Gide, French author (1869–1951) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1947. He first met JC in July 1911, when he visited him at Capel House in the company of Agnes Tobin and Valery Larbaud. JC’s attempted visit to Gide in Cuverville, the country estate of his wife, accompanied by Jessie Conrad, son John, and G. Jean-Aubry, took place in September 1923; see John Conrad, Joseph Conrad: Times Remembered, 208.

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[Vidan prints and translates Perse’s letter, which recalls his visit to JC, summer 1912.1] JC and Perse discussed Melville, W. H. Hudson,2 and Edward Lear’s “The Jumblies.” JC had an unexpected taste for Molière and Zola, but had a strong dislike of Dostoevsky, to whom he preferred Turgenev. He declared that he loved, not the sea, but the boat, the triumph of skill and man against the sea. Perse was surprised by JC’s curiosity about the role of women behind the course of events. [This letter has also been published in Le Figaro, 18 November 1972, and in Roger Little, “Saint-John Perse and Joseph Conrad: Some Notes and an Uncollected Letter,” Modern Language Review, 72 (1977): 811–14. Another translation is given in Little’s “A Letter about Conrad by SaintJohn Perse,” Conradiana, 8 (1976): 263–64.]

Vidan, Ivo, and Gabrijela Vidan “Further Correspondence between Joseph Conrad and André Gide.” Studia Romanica et Anglica Zagrabiensia, 5.29–32 (1970–71): 523–36. In a long letter to Gide, dated 8 October 1924, Jean-Aubry expressed his dislike of permitting a woman to translate Youth: “A mon sens une femme, quelqu’elle soit, est incapable, par nature, de comprendre Conrad. D’ailleurs c’était également le sentiment de Conrad lui-même” (532 n. 18).

Walt, James “At Home with Jessie Conrad.” Conradiana, 8 (1976): 259–62. [Walt describes some notes, written in 1944 by Mrs Katherine Clemens, about her visit to Jessie Conrad in 1930. She was accompanied by her son, Cyril.3] JC, said his widow, found their last home, Oswalds, to be 1 Saint-John Perse first visited JC in the summer of 1912, in the company of Agnes Tobin (see CL5 87). 2 Hudson met Perse at Capel House during this visit: see Jacques Charpier, above. 3 Cyril Coniston Clemens (1902–99), a cousin of Mark Twain, had been introduced to JC at Oswalds in October 1923 by Hugh Walpole (Najder 484).

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claustrophobic. “His body as well as his mind was eternally restless,” she said; “I often wondered why he called this ‘home,’” although JC used to assure Jessie that “He had lost his love of roving” (260). JC lacked any taste or enthusiasm for good music. Jessie described him as, in essence, a Polish sailor. He held old-fashioned political principles, praised monarchs in general, and looked at great medieval ventures like the Crusades with nostalgia. She also remembered him saying that a story must contain living men and women situated in a “real, ambient background” (261).

Watson, Elliot L. Grant But To What Purpose: The Auto-Biography of a Contemporary. London: Cresset Press, 1946, 148–51. In [July?] 1913, Watson1 sent the manuscript of his first novel [Where Bonds Are Loosed (1914)] to JC, who, with Arthur Marwood, read it seven times and made thirty-one pages of notes. They wanted Watson to reduce it to a long short story of forty thousand words, and JC thought that Watson’s style mingled his own manner with that of Clark Russell.2 JC was pleased that Watson liked “The Secret Sharer” best of all his works, saying of it, “Ah, that story! [...] I wrote that just for myself. Yes, I am glad you like it” (150).

Watson, Frederick3 The Life of Sir Robert Jones. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1934.

1 E(lliot) L(ovegood) Grant Watson (1885–1970), biologist, writer, and mystic, took a First in Natural Sciences at Cambridge. A friend introduced him to JC, and he asked for an opinion of his first novel, which had an Australian setting (see CL5 265). 2 William Clark Russell (1844–1911), a novelist of maritime melodramas. 3 Frederick Watson (1885–1935), the husband of Sir Robert Jones’s daughter, Hilda, was a writer. In 1912, he invited JC to collaborate on an adventure story for boys (CL5 69–70).

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“Literary work always dismayed Robert Jones1 a good deal in prospect. When Joseph Conrad, to whom he turned at the time for counsel, said – though he rarely acted on the advice himself – that it was desirable to cover a couple of thousand words a day, Robert Jones pondered over such an achievement, and replied, with a touch of malice, ‘But I have to be accurate’” (268–69).2 “Joseph Conrad was taken by car on a most forbidding day3 to see the famous Beddgelert Pass. Unfortunately, to him it was not even a name once heard. And the whole valley was shrouded in a cold and drenching mist. Conrad – who had an attack of gout – shivered and peered and finally relapsed into what I presumed was a Polish resignation. But Robert Jones was unconquerable. He had a great and intense patriotism for the traditions of Welsh history. As we passed through swirling mist up the pass he spoke not without emotion of Gelert, and Conrad glowered and shivered and maintained a silence which seemed to descend into depths unplumbed by the English temperament. At last when we stopped at the summit where, in happier circumstances, a view could be obtained, he broke his silence. “‘Who was this Gelert?’ he asked rather sharply.4 1 “A leading British orthopædic surgeon, Sir Robert Armstrong Jones (1858– 1933; knighted 1917; baronet 1926) came from North Wales, and practised in Liverpool, where he was consulting surgeon to all the major hospitals. He was also a consultant at St Thomas’s Hospital, and a member of the War Office’s Medical Advisory Board. During the war, he held the rank of MajorGeneral and took on the immense task of organizing reconstructive surgery at home and in the field. From 1921 to 1924, he served as President of the British Orthopædic Association, and was frequently honoured overseas. His monographs and textbooks on the surgery of joints, military orthopædics, and general orthopædics were widely used. The professional relationship that began, in 1917, with the care of Jessie Conrad developed into a warm friendship with the Conrads” (CL7 44). 2 This conversation appears to have taken place around 1921, when Jones was editing Orthopædic Surgery of Injuries. 3 JC wrote to Jean-Aubry on 22 September 1922 that “I was away when your letter arrived. Jessie and I were in Liverpool (with John) visiting Sir Robert, who offered to take us on a three-day tour of North Wales. The weather was bad, but my wife was pleased with the novelty of the countryside and with travelling. John amused himself a good deal. As for myself, I had a frightful cough” (CL7 522). See also John Conrad, Times Remembered, 192–94. 4 Beddgelert’s most famous historical feature is “Gelert’s Grave.” According to legend, the stone monument in the fields marks the resting place of

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“There was a painful pause. And in an instant Conrad, realising he had disappointed the man for whom he had a deep admiration and affection, made handsome overtures. He had gout, it was a tragic day, he had seen nothing, but that his host should be even slightly hurt brought him instantly into anxious solicitation. And the reconciliation over some sloe gin at an isolated inn was, like all else in the life of Robert Jones, only a new instance of the charm and innocency of his personality” (283).

Watt, Ian “Conrad, James and Chance.” In Imagined Worlds: Essays on Some English Novels and Novelists in Honour of John Butt, eds. Maynard Mack and Ian Gregor. London: Methuen, 1968, 301–22. Olive Garnett, in her diary, records the following exchange between JC and Henry James: “Conrad, for once gleeful, exclaimed: ‘I am at the top of the tree.’ H. J. replied: ‘I am a crushed worm; I don’t even revolve now, I have ceased to turn’” (314; entry dated 13 February 1904). [See also article by Thomas C. Moser (1974) described above.]

Watts, Cedric, and Laurence Davies Cunninghame Graham: A Critical Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. Cunninghame Graham told Curle [letter dated 8 October 1924] that “Spain & the Spanish were an ignis fatuus, to dear Conrad. He understood them as little as I do the Slavs” (149). In June 1904, Graham and JC had read Le Chat Maigre, “& laughed by the clock for two hours” (269)1 [Graham’s letter to William Rothenstein, 2 July 1904]. JC’s sons told the authors how a visit by Graham would rejuvenate the ageing JC.

“Gelert,” the faithful hound of the medieval Welsh Prince, Llywelyn the Great, who was tragically killed by his master. 1 Anatole France, Jocaste et Le chat maigre (1879), his first collection of short stories.

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Weissman, Frida, ed. Valery Larbaud–G. Jean-Aubry: Correspondance, 1920–1935. Paris: Gallimard, 1971. JC told Jean-Aubry yesterday that he had lost his copy of Larbaud’s A. O. Barnabooth (1913) during a house removal and would like to re-read it (20; letter dated 7 January 1923). Jean-Aubry notes that JC told him he saw the model for Lena (Victory) in the Café Riche, Montpellier (64; letter dated March 1930). Jean-Aubry recalls staying with JC and his family in the Hôtel de L’Allier, Moulins, on 27 January 1921 (105; letter dated 30 September 1932). Jean-Aubry recalls JC seeing Arnold Bennett in 1923 (125; letter dated 19 May 1933).1 [All letters from Jean-Aubry to Larbaud]

Weitzenkorn, Louis “Conrad, in light and shadow, talks of Crane and Hardy and the paleness of words.” World (New York), 3 June 1923, 2nd News Section: 1S, 3S; rpt. in Dale B. J. Randall, “Conrad Interviews, No. 6: Louis Weitzenkorn.” Conradiana, 4.1 (1972): 25–32. [Ray, ed., 197–201] [Weitzenkorn2 interviewed JC in America, 30 May 1923] JC pronounced “very” as “vairy.” He praised Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, and said that Crane was the first person to call him Joseph. There was always a crowd around Crane, and JC used to sit in a corner and wait till he was free. JC regarded Thomas Hardy as the last of the Elizabethans, and a Victorian also. He thought the English were all Elizabethans, and that the sentence in “Heart of Darkness” about a gun-boat shelling a continent “sounds to me just like Conrad.” He discussed the origin of Dona Rita’s physical cowardice [in The Arrow of Gold]. 1 JC dined with Bennett and Maurice Ravel on 17 April 1923. 2 Louis Weitzenkorn (1894–1943), American journalist, newspaper editor, and playwright. He fought in France during the First World War. He was married five times and died in a fire. He interviewed JC on 30 May 1923 in the New York apartment of Frank N. Doubleday.

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JC does not like writing letters: “It uses me up.” On self-revelation in literature, he said that “It is impossible to reveal oneself,” for “the words lose their meaning – pale.” JC told another interviewer that “I get my hints from a passing face. I saw Lord Jim that way.” [This other interviewer was “Young Boswell” – see Harold Stark’s article, described above.]

Wells, H. G.1 Experiment in Autobiography: Discoveries and Conclusions of a Very Ordinary Brain (Since 1866). 2 vols. London: Gollancz, 1934. [Ray, ed., 109–12] JC pronounced the final e in “these” and “those,” and he would say “Wat shall we do with thesa things?”2 He was always unsure about the use of “shall” and “will.” “When he talked of seafaring his terminology was excellent but when he turned to less familiar topics he was often at a loss for phrases” (616). Wells and JC had a “long, fairly friendly but always rather strained acquaintance” (618). He was incredulous that Wells could take social and political issues seriously, and Wells’s indifference to stylistic matters irritated him. JC would ask, “What is this Love and Mr. Lewisham about?”3 (618), although he would ask the same about Jane Austen. One day, on Sandgate beach, JC asked Wells how he would describe a boat which they could see. Wells replied that he would simply use “the commonest phrases possible.” This was “all against Conrad’s over-sensitized recep1 H(erbert) G(eorge) Wells (1866–1946), novelist, critic, and sociologist, first met JC in 1896, and their friendship lasted for about a decade until a growing estrangement set in. Even at its height, it had always been an uneasy friendship, given their differences in politics and temperament. The breach seems to have begun in 1907, but the decisive episode might have been the publication of Wells’s Tono-Bungay (1909), which contains a vicious portrait of JC as a Romanian Jewish ship’s captain accused of bribery and incompetence. JC is recorded by Hugh Walpole as saying that “the difference between us, Wells, is fundamental. You don’t care for humanity but think they are to be improved. I love humanity but know they are not!” 2 Cf. John Conrad, Times Remembered, 84. 3 Love and Mr Lewisham was published in 1900.

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tivity that a boat could ever be just a boat. He wanted to see it with a definite vividness of his own” (619). JC first met Shaw at Wells’s house, and felt he had been insulted by him. Wells explained that it was merely Shaw’s humour: “one could always baffle Conrad by saying ‘humour.’ It was one of our damned English tricks he had never learnt to tackle” (622). On another occasion, JC wanted Ford to challenge Wells to a duel, after Wells had commented that an article Ford had written on Hall Caine sounded as if its author were a discharged valet. Ford told Wells, “I tried to explain to him that dueling isn’t done” (622).1 Ford and JC remain in Wells’s memory as “contrasted and inseparable” (617). Wells thought there was something ridiculous in JC’s “persona of a romantic adventurous un-mercenary intensely artistic European gentleman carrying an exquisite code of unblemished honour through a universe of baseness” (621).

“A Footnote to Hueffer.” English Review, 31 (August 1920), 178– 79 [not seen]; rpt. in Ford Madox Ford: The Critical Heritage, ed. Frank MacShane. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972, 128– 29. At their first meeting, Ford told Wells that he had persuaded JC to collaborate with him. Wells warned him that this was a “very mischievous enterprise” (128). [Letter to the Editor]

West, H. F. A Modern Conquistador: Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham: His Life and Works. London: Cranley & Day, 1932. Cunninghame Graham told West2 that JC was “the soul of honour” (111). [West prints verbatim some recollections of JC that Richard Curle 1 Najder comments that Wells “was taken in by the story that Conrad had tried to persuade Ford to call Wells to a duel; a typical Fordian fabrication” (285). Hall Caine (1832–1931), popular novelist. 2 H(erbert) F(aulkner) West (1898–1974), bibliophile and Professor of Comparative Literature at Dartmouth College.

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wrote especially for this book, 112–15.] JC, said Curle, never criticised Cunninghame Graham. Shortly before JC’s death, Graham and Mrs Dummett1 visited JC at Oswalds. JC praised his Mogreb-El-Acksa.2 They regarded each other as extraordinary personalities. Curle also told West in a conversation that JC would say to him, “We must collaborate on a novel,” or “Jack’s (John Galsworthy’s) book is ‘excellent’” (111). JC’s generosity to his friends influenced his judgement of their literary abilities.

[Willard, Grace] “Conrad, the Man.” New York Evening Post Literary Review, 9 August 1924: 952. [Ray, ed., 43–48] Willard3 saw JC at Oswalds, less than a fortnight ago. He praised Valéry (“un vrai”) and Chesterton, who had recently, for once, written a dull 1 Elizabeth (“Toppie”) Dummett (née Miéville, 1868–1940), Graham’s companion for many years. She had married Charles Henry Dummett in 1887; he died in 1891 at the age of 29. 2 Mogreb-El-Acksa: A Journey in Morocco (1898) recounts Graham’s attempt to cross the Atlas Mountains. 3 Grace Robinson Willard (née Cameron, 1877–1933), an American, was at one time London correspondent of Vanity Fair. The Conrads met her through Jo Davidson, the sculptor, and she helped to furnish and decorate their homes (apparently her professional occupation). Borys Conrad remembered her and her daughter Catherine thus: “It was during our tenancy of Spring Grove [1919] that an American lady and her daughter became frequent visitors. I have no knowledge of the circumstances under which they came to be included among our circle of friends and I think the first contact must have been made when I was in hospital or, possibly, still in France [1918]. Mrs. Grace Willard – she was a widow – and her daughter Catherine, then about seventeen were very charming, but I have never been able to understand why they were upon such intimate terms with my parents. Catherine always called her mother ‘Mama Grace’ and it was not long before she was so addressed by all of us […]. Mama Grace seemed to occupy most of her time in searching out various pieces of antique furniture, also old silver and cut glass, most of which she succeeded in selling to J.C. – he had a strain of the collector in him – and I am pretty certain that Mama Grace’s income depended to a considerable extent upon these transactions” (My Father: Joseph Conrad, 138–39; see also John Conrad, Times Remembered, 148).

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essay. He judiciously assessed Aldous Huxley’s poetry. Reading aloud from his work, in America, was “the most terrifying experience” of his life. JC always referred to Ibsen as “Papa Ibsen.” [Article signed “G. W.” The detailed description of furniture at Oswalds, which Willard chose for JC, confirms her authorship.]

“More about Conrad.” New York Evening Post Literary Review, 30 August 1924: 8. [Ray, ed., 48–53] Willard first met JC one January [1905] and they discussed James’s recently published The Golden Bowl [1904], Ellen Glasgow, and Dostoevsky. Of the latter, JC remarked: “How can Western minds hope to understand Dostoievsky [...]; he reverences things which they hold in contempt and treats with contempt much that they reverence.” His favourite port was Marseilles, he said, where he had been called “l’ami.” A Virginia farmer sent JC a box of apples every year, and JC sent him some books in return, inscribed “Art for apples is not a bad exchange.” Willard and JC once drove over to Rye to see Henry James. In his friends, JC looked above all for a “point of view.” He hated any kind of derivative work, and was dismayed to see himself once described in print as “the English Anatole France,” in spite of his admiration for the Frenchman. He had a great weakness for The Nigger, of which he said, “one can’t write a book like that twice.” He thought its title matchless, and disliked its American one, The Children of the Sea. JC advised a young actress [Catherine Willard?] not to consult or seek help from colleagues: “from within must come your success – if it is to come. Keep away from the theatre. Study life – and yourself.” JC did not care for theatre or cinema. During a conversation about the FrancoPrussian war, JC praised the literature of that period, such as Huysmans’s Sac au Dos (1880). In politics, JC disliked any popular tendencies towards control, such as village improvement societies in England. [Article signed “G. W.” A sequel to previous item]

Wilson, Harris, ed. Arnold Bennett and H. G. Wells: A Record of a Personal and a Literary Friendship. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1960.

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Wells asks Bennett to visit him because “something has arisen that might enable you to be of very great service to the Conrads” (69; 26 November 1901). Wells later describes JC’s financial difficulties to Bennett: “the Conrads are under an upset hay cart as usual, and God knows what is to be done. J. C. ought to be administered by trustees” (107; 29 March 1904).

Wisehart, M. K. “Joseph Conrad Described by Jo Davidson.” Sun (New York), 2 March 1919. [Ray, ed., 149–52] [Davidson1 tells Wisehart of his visit to JC in 1914.] JC told Davidson that he found his models for characters in The Secret Agent by sitting in restaurants in Greek Street, Dean Street, or Soho Square, where he watched the types, but did not talk to them. Davidson felt that Under Western Eyes was the novel that meant most to him. JC thought it was “more difficult” to write in French: “English is so plastic – you can do anything with it!” He was not distraught by the war, and did not talk excitedly about it. He could not say which was the best American book he had read in the previous year, for he had read so few. His room was full of special remedies for imaginary ills. There were three maids, but he would eat only his wife’s cooking.

Woolf, Virginia The Diary of Virginia Woolf: Volume V: 1936–41, ed. Anne Olivier Bell. London: Hogarth Press, 1984, 258. “Hugh [Walpole] told us the story of the Conrads, told it very well; about C. sizing up the sod. masseur at tea; withdrawing, shrieking; & Miss Hallow[e]s2 & Jessie, who wouldnt [sic] ask Miss Hallow[e]s for the salt; & C. shut up alone with her; & Jessie growing fat on the sofa with her bad leg” [entry for 19 January 1940]. 1 Jo Davidson (1883–1952), sculptor, was born in New York, and studied at Yale and Paris. For further details, see his autobiography above. 2 L(ilian) M(ary) Hallowes (1870–1950), JC’s secretary and typist for the last twenty years of his life.

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“Joseph Conrad.” The Common Reader: First Series, ed. Andrew McNeillie. London: Hogarth Press, 1984, 223–30. JC was far beyond the reach of hostesses, and for news of him one had to rely on casual visitors who reported that he had “the most perfect manners, the brightest eyes, and spoke English with a strong foreign accent” (223).

Zagórska, Aniela “Conrad’s Visit to Poland.” Poland: The Journal of the American Polish Chamber of Commerce and Industry (New York), 7.9 (September 1926): 545–47, 574–78, 580, 582. Describing JC’s 1914 visit to her in Zakopane, Zagórska1 recalls JC telling her that his strongest memory of his father’s imprisonment was of standing with his mother in a large prison yard and seeing his father’s face at a distance, looking through a barred window. Although sceptical of any improvement in Poland’s situation as a result of the current war, he did not attempt to weaken the hopes of others. JC devoured books by contemporary Polish writers during his stay. “Though charmed by Sieroszewski and Strug, his beloved authors were Wyspiański, Żeromski and Prus” (576).2 [All of the other recollections are described by Zagórska in her “Kilka wspomnień o Conradzie,” trans. in CUFE, 210–23.]

1 Aniela Zagórska (1881–1943) was the daughter of Karol Zagórski, JC’s second cousin once removed. During their 1914 visit to Poland, the Conrads stayed for nine weeks at the Zagórski family pension in Zakopane. Aniela and her sister, Karola, stayed in regular contact with JC in his later years. Aniela translated Almayer’s Folly into Polish; she later oversaw the first collected edition of JC’s works in translation, beginning in 1923, and the edition eventually comprised 22 volumes, at least ten of which she translated herself. 2 Wacław Sieroszewski (1858–1945); Andrzej Strug (1871–1937); Stanisław Wyspiański (1869–1907); Stefan Żeromski (1864–1925); Bolesław Prus (1847–1912).

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“Souvenirs sur Conrad.” Le Messager Polonais (Warsaw) (1928): No. 10 (898): 3; No. 11 (899): 3; No. 11 (903): 6. [All of these recollections of JC’s visit to Poland in 1914 are contained, in more detail, in her “Kilka wspomnień o Conradzie,” trans. in CUFE, 210– 23.]

Zelie, John Sheridan1 “An Evening with Joseph Conrad.” Christian Century, 42 (19 February 1925): 251–53. [Ray, ed., 191–97] JC said he was disappointed at his inability to speak English fluently. He admired the amiable and flexible local government in Britain. He said, Zelie thinks, that he had been invited to become a magistrate in Kent. JC recalled his only public speech, to the Lifeboat Service.2 He praised Keats and James Fenimore Cooper, but did not like Shelley. His experience at sea “was not a good equipment for a literary life” (253), although he hesitated to describe himself as a literary man. To an unliterary writer, he explained, the writing of the first book is an inexplicable event. He had never made a note in his life, as preparation for writing, which was for him “neither burden nor joy in a positive sense” (253). JC asked, “Why do people call me a writer of sea-stories? They do not call Mr. Hardy ‘a writer of land-stories’” (253).

1 Dr John Sheridan Zelie (1866–1942), clergyman, was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and graduated from Yale in 1890. He later served as an Army chaplain in France, 1918–19. At the time of his meeting with JC on 22–23 May 1923, Zelie was a clergyman at Troy, New York. The meeting occurred at the country home of Elbridge L. Adams in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Muirhead Bone was a fellow guest. 2 On 17 April 1923, JC gave a speech at the annual meeting of the Lifeboat Institution held at the Æolian Hall, London.

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INDEX Abbott, Lawrence F., 1 Adams, Elbridge L., 1–2, 43, 173 Addison, Joseph, 103 Adelaide, 3, 48, 138, 139 Adeler, Max, 108 Albéniz, Isaac, 79 Alcorta, Gloria, 2–3 Aldington, 47, 106 Allen, Vio, 3–4 Alma-Tadema, Laurence, 148 Alvar, Madame: see Harding, Louisa Amazon (river), 158 Anderson, Jane, 40, 61 Anderson, Percy, 67 Angola, 111 Annand, James, 70 Archer, William, 143 Arizona, 40 Arnold, Fred, 12 Arras, 45, 153 Ashford, 24 Atherton, Gertrude, 13, 25, 27, 146 Aubry, Jean: see Jean-Aubry Auckland, 138 Austen, Jane, 167 Austin, Mary, 13–15 Australia, 3, 96, 138, 159, 163 Austria, 17 Bagenal, Barbara, 53 Bagenal, Nicholas, 53 Baker, (Sir) Herbert, 85 Balfour, Arthur James, 119 Balzac, Honoré de, 6, 33, 48, 77, 138 Bangkok, 156 Banks, Walter, 143 Barker, Dudley, 15 Barrès, Maurice, 57, 78 Barrie, J. M., 123, 140, 155 Barron, Joseph, 50

Baudelaire, Charles, 66, 77 Bax, Arnold, 79 Beauvoir, Simone de, 85 Beckson, Karl, 147 Beddgelert Pass (Wales), 164 Beer, Thomas, 15, 85, 141 Beerbohm, Max, 131, 136, 143 Béhaine, René, 45 Bell, Anne Olivier, 124, 171 Belloc, Hilaire, 52 Bennett, Arnold, 4, 15–18, 22, 45, 50, 55–56, 58, 62, 68, 73, 80, 87, 123, 133, 145–46, 153, 157, 161, 166, 170–71 Bennett, James Gordon, 27 Bennett, Sanford, 142 Benrimo, J. Harry, 75 Beresford, J. D., 52 Berners, Lord Gerald, 79 Berridge, Anthony, 153 Berridge, Jesse, 153 Bester, Alfred, 18 Bible, 77, 102 Biliński, Leon, 17 Biliński, Marian, 17 Binyon, Laurence, 15 Bishopsbourne, 14, 31, 49, 85, 156 Bizet, Georges, 48, 83 Blanche, Jacques-Émile, 18 Bliss, (Sir) Arthur, 79 Bobrowski, Tadeusz, 37 Bojarski, Edmund A., 18–19, 99– 100 Bombay, 27, 50 Bone, David, 17, 19–21, 83, 108, 120 Bone, Gertrude, 73 Bone, James, 17 Bone, Muirhead, 17, 19–21, 37, 52, 73, 120, 173 Boston, 2, 5–6, 9, 22

175 Boswell, James, 144 Boult’s School, 104 Brahms, Johannes, 2 Brazil, 159 Bridlington, 145 Brighton, 23 Brill, A. A., 87 Briquel, Emilie, 48 British Academy, 57 Brock, H. I., 22 Bronowicz-Chylińska, T., 80 Browning, Robert, 35, 78, 157 Bruce, John, 109 Brugmans, Linette, 22 Bryant, William Cullen, 2 Bullen, Frank T., 87 Burma, 35 Burns, John, 105 Burroughs, Arthur, 63 Burroughs, John, 8, 108, 128 Burton, (Sir) Richard, 152 Buszczyński, Konstanty, 127 Buszczyński, Stefan, 127 Byard, Theodore, 143 Byron, Lord George, 76 Cadby, Carine, 23 Cadby, William, 23 Caine, Hall, 168 California, 13, 56, 147 Cambridge, 55, 67, 78, 103, 106, 137, 163 Cambridge (MA), 6, 9 Cameron, (Sir) Maurice, 27 Camus, Albert, 85 Canada, 96 Candler, Edmund, 31, 103 Candler, Henry, 31 Canterbury, 12, 31, 36, 76, 91, 112 Cape Horn, 6 Capel House, 1, 19, 22–24, 39–40, 42, 57–58, 61–62, 66, 68, 76–77, 88, 98, 124, 150, 152–53, 161–62 Capri, 38, 41, 58, 119, 151

Carabine, Keith, 23 Cardiff, 99 Carroll, Eleanor, 24 Casement, Roger, 111–12, 124, 136, 159 Castor, 52 Cather, Willa, 85 Cecil, Lord David, 111 Cecil, Viscount Robert, 64 Cesare, Oscar Edward, 22 Cette, 160 Champel-les-Bains, 17, 48 Champion, H. H., 3 Chaplin, Charles, 32, 155 Chapman, Frederic, 38 Charpier, Jacques, 24, 161 Chatham, 76 Chesson, W. H., 16, 24–25, 110 Chesterton, Frances, 15 Chesterton, G. K., 15, 22, 82, 103, 116, 153, 157, 169 Chile, 56 Chłapowski, Karol Bodzenta, 72 Chodźko, Wiktor, 107 Chopin, Frédéric, 76, 80, 124 Churchill, (Sir) Winston, 43 Chwalewik, Witold, 99 cinema, 7, 142, 155, 170 Civil List Pension, 33, 142 Clark, E. Holman, 73 Claude, Jean, 57 Claudel, Paul, 22 Clemens, Cyril, 25, 161 Clemens, Katherine, 161 Clifford, (Sir) Hugh, 26–28, 84, 123 Clodd, Edward, 27–29 Clyde (river), 108, 117, 120 Cockerell, Christopher, 107 Cockerell, (Sir) Sydney, 106–07 Collier, Constance, 72 Colvin, Frances, 15 Colvin, Sidney, 15, 29, 67–68, 149 Congo, 7, 35, 48, 88, 91, 111–12, 141

176 Conrad, Borys, 29, 40, 47–48, 60, 83, 90, 96, 114, 127, 139, 145, 149, 156, 169 Conrad, Jessie, 3, 10, 19–20, 23–24, 30, 39, 42–43, 45, 47–49, 52–53, 58, 60, 64, 79–81, 83–84, 92, 96, 101–03, 107, 111, 114, 119, 127, 139, 141–43, 151, 156, 161–64, 171 Conrad, John, 12, 23, 30, 35, 38, 40, 43, 65, 91, 95, 103, 108, 114, 144, 149, 153, 161, 164, 167, 169 Conrad, Joseph, WORKS BY TITLE Stories and Essays “Amy Foster”, 68, 74 “Black Mate, The”, 84, 102 “End of the Tether, The”, 77, 113, 144 “Falk”, 71 “Freya of the Seven Isles”, 4 “Idiots, The”, 112 “Il Conde”, 151 “Karain”, 34 “Prince Roman”, 122 “Secret Sharer, The”, 4, 131, 163 “Smile of Fortune, A”, 3 “Some Reflexions on the Loss of the Titanic”, 97–98, 149 “To-morrow”, 49 “Typhoon”, 14–15, 23, 56, 102, 107, 152 “Unlighted Coast, The”, 102, 133 “Warrior’s Soul, The”, 122 “Youth”, 118, 126, 144, 156 Novels and Others Almayer's Folly, 16–17, 24–25, 35, 50, 53, 58, 67, 70, 81, 87, 91, 108, 126, 129, 158, 172 Arrow of Gold, The, 3, 18, 21, 37, 61, 69, 122, 132, 155, 166 Chance, 3, 23, 27–28, 46, 51, 53, 84–85, 114, 158, 165 Heart of Darkness, 25, 113, 124,

141, 151, 166 Inheritors, The, 52, 117 Laughing Anne, 123 Lord Jim, 3–4, 13, 47, 58, 68, 71, 87, 102, 133, 140–41, 145, 150, 167 Mirror of the Sea, The, 19, 37, 46, 66, 77, 88, 101, 120, 129, 155 Nigger of the “Narcissus”, The, 1, 8, 35, 46, 50–51, 66, 68, 70, 86, 100, 102, 108, 110, 118, 132, 142, 152, 158, 160, 170 Nostromo, 5, 7, 26–28, 50, 68–70, 80, 119, 132–33, 136, 154 Notes on Life and Letters, 8, 21, 35–36, 98, 115 One Day More, 49, 72–73, 86, 120 Outcast of the Islands, An, 4, 54, 102, 149 Personal Record, A, 1, 26, 46, 58, 60, 108 Rescue, The, 7, 36–38, 50, 66, 117–18, 140 Romance, 68, 78 Rover, The, 14, 61, 82, 84, 138, 142, 154 Secret Agent, The, 65, 68–69, 103, 140–41, 149, 171 Secret Agent, The (play), 3, 64, 75, 101, 103–05, 122, 157 Seraphina: see Romance Set of Six, A, 3, 151 Shadow-Line, The, 36 Some Reminiscences: see A Personal Record Suspense, 4–5, 54, 69–70, 84, 86, 140 Tales of Unrest, 159 ’Twixt Land and Sea, 3, 36 Typhoon and Other Stories, 114 Under Western Eyes, 22, 56, 69, 83, 147, 171 Victory, 1, 37–38, 47, 51, 68, 82, 84, 123, 139, 151–52, 166

177 Victory (play), 44, 71–73 Within the Tides, 36 Youth, A Narrative, and Two Other Stories, 84, 113, 162 Cooper, Frederick George, 31 Cooper, James Fenimore, 1, 8, 35, 70, 108, 173 Cope, Walter H., 110 Copeau, Jacques, 57 Corkill, Rachael A., 31, 103 Corsica, 3, 86–87, 107 Courtney, W. L., 46 Cracow, 12, 72, 92, 104, 127, 145 Craft, Robert, 144–45 Craig, Gordon, 148 Crane, Cora, 142 Crane, Stephen, 1, 6, 10, 15, 51–52, 62, 66, 69, 76, 83, 85, 118, 126, 140–42, 166 Crankshaw, Edward, 45 Crippen, H. H., 96 Croydon, 41 Curle, Richard, 17, 31, 62, 70, 121– 22, 160, 165, 168–69 Cuverville, 161 Dąbrowski, Marian, 18 Daghistany, Ann, 14 Dane, Clemence (Winifred Ashton), 74 Davidson, Jo, 31–32, 42, 169, 171 Davies, Laurence, 165 Davies, W. H., 32–33, 52 Davray, Henry-Durand, 33–34, 97 Dawson, Ernest, 35–36 Dawson, F. Warrington, 58, 124 de la Mare, Walter, 82, 153 d’Esque, Jean-Louis, 109 d’Humières, Robert, 86 Deal, 30 Debussy, Claude, 79 Dent, H. R., 36, 130 Dent, J. M., 36, 69, 130 Dent’s Collected Edition, 153

De Ternant, Andrew, 36–37 Dickens, Charles, 2, 35, 48, 76, 92, 99, 103, 131, 138, 154–55 Dobree, Hatherley, 126 Dobree, Muriel, 126 Dodd, Mead and Co., 51 Dostoevsky, Fyodor , 2, 48, 57, 86– 87, 103, 145, 162, 170 Doubleday, Florence, 37–38, 123 Doubleday, F. N., 7, 10–11, 24, 37– 38, 51, 82, 123, 129, 138, 140–41, 166 Doubleday, Page and Co., 11, 23, 38, 85, 89, 139 Douglas, Norman, 3, 38–41, 52, 75, 84, 88, 94–95, 158 Douglas, Robert (Robin) Sholto, 38, 40 Dover, 82 Dowson, Ernest, 130 Draper, Muriel Gurdon, 40–41, 75 Drinkwater, John, 74 Duckworth & Co., 115 Duhst, Captain, 91 Dukes, T. Archibald, 41 Dummett, Charles, 169 Dummett, Elizabeth, 169 Dunkirk, 50 Dupré, Catherine, 41–42 Dymchurch, 81–82 Edel, Leon, 42, 52 Edgware, 129, 134 Edison, Thomas Alva, 117 education, 2, 7, 30, 38 Effenberger-Śliwiński, Jan, 80 Ehrsam, Theodore G., 21, 25, 48, 57, 110, 132 Einstein, Albert, 32, 43, 135 Elder and Co., A. L., 159 Elgar, (Sir) Edward, 79 Eliot, T. S., 16, 111, 113, 144 Ellis, Havelock, 5, 42 Elstree School, 129, 134

178 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 8 Enfield, 41 England, 4, 17, 25, 27, 32, 40, 44, 49, 51, 57–58, 61, 70, 83, 91, 96, 100, 102, 104, 108, 113, 124, 129, 153, 170 English language, 1–3, 7–8, 16–17, 19, 26–27, 32–33, 35, 37, 41, 44, 51, 72, 74, 77, 81, 92–93, 99, 101–02, 104–05, 109, 113, 121, 125, 129, 144–45, 160, 171–73 Epsom, 41 Epstein, Jacob, 43–44 Evans, Robert O., 44 Eymar, Louis-Charles, 151 Fabian Society, 14 Falla, Manuel de, 79 Falmouth, 76 Farjeon, Eleanor, 45 Fielding, Henry, 82 Flaubert, Gustave, 33–35, 48, 57, 60, 77–78, 86, 139, 149–50 Flower, Newman, 16 Folkestone, 34, 82 Follett, Helen Thomas, 73 Follett, Wilson, 73 Ford, Ford Madox, 16, 39, 42, 45– 46, 52–55, 59–60, 68, 78–79, 81– 82, 84, 90, 106, 113–15, 144, 146, 168 France, 40, 45, 50, 135, 142, 145, 153, 160, 166, 169, 173 France, Anatole, 21, 32, 78, 96, 165, 170 Franco-Prussian War, 169 Frederic, Harold, 10, 69 Freeman, John, 74 French language, 2–3, 8, 16–17, 26– 28, 32–35, 37, 42, 44, 53, 57, 66, 77, 93–94, 102, 105, 115, 121, 134, 139, 142, 145, 160, 171 Freud, Sigmund, 87

Gallagher, John F., 66 Galsworthy, Ada, 47, 58, 115, 151 Galsworthy, Arthur, 58 Galsworthy, John, 27, 32, 39, 41–42, 46–49, 52, 58, 66, 68, 72–73, 78, 82, 95, 103, 113–15, 123, 126, 129, 135–06, 143, 160, 169 Garland, Hamlin, 17, 49–51 Garland, Mary Isabel, 50 Garnett, Constance, 52–54, 81 Garnett, David, 8, 52–54, 81, 86 Garnett, Edward, 7–8, 21, 25, 32, 38, 46–47, 52–55, 66, 73, 81, 84, 91, 93–94, 114–15, 122, 132–34, 142, 144, 160 Garnett, Martha, 53, 114 Garnett, Olive (Olivia), 52, 92, 113– 15, 165 Garnett, Robert S., 47, 53, 114 Gathorne-Hardy, Robert, 112 Geneva, 17, 35, 48, 92 George, Dolly, 23 George, W. L., 59 Gerhardie, William Alexander, 55– 56 German language, 37, 63 Germany, 36, 57, 63, 111 Gettman, Royal A., 56 Ghéon, Henri, 57 Gibbon, Perceval, 23, 30, 52, 81–82, 84, 102, 127 Gide, André, 22, 56–57, 80, 89, 160–62 Gilkes, Lilian, 142 Gill, David, 58 Gissing, George, 29, 56, 68, 84, 141 Gladstone, W. E., 101, 104 Glasgow, 20–21, 116–18, 120 Glasgow, Ellen, 58–59, 170 Gold Coast, 26 Goldring, Douglas, 59–60 Goossens, Eugène, 79 Gorky, Maxim, 65

179 Gosse, Edmund, 22, 27–28, 57, 119 Graham, R. B. Cunninghame, 3, 8, 34, 60–61, 62, 69, 81, 85, 105, 112, 116, 118, 130, 136, 144, 159, 165, 168–69 Granados, Enrique, 79 Granton, 145 Gravesend, 17 Greenhithe, 29 Gregor, Ian, 164 Hackney, 63 Haines, Paul, 10 Hallowes, Lilian M., 65, 170 Halverson, John, 61–63 Hamer, Douglas, 63–64 Hammond, J. R., 105 Hammond, Percy, 64 Hampstead, 23 Hand, Richard J., 64 Harding, Charles Copely, 16 Harding, Louisa Alvar, 16, 80, 107 Hardy, Thomas, 16, 22, 27–28, 48, 58, 65, 74, 86–87, 123, 166, 173 Harkness, Bruce, 65–66 Harmsworth, Alfred: see Northcliffe Harper and Brothers, Messrs, 26– 28, 51 Harris, Frank, 39, 66–67 Harrison, Austin, 39, 66, 157 Harrison, Frederic, 39 Hart-Davis, Rupert, 29, 67–71, 127, 145 Harte, Bret, 87 Hartman, Howard, 71 Harvard University, 9, 79 Harvey, David Dow, 46 Harvey, George, 26–28 Hastings, B. Macdonald, 44, 71–73 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 77, 87 Hearn, Lafcadio, 74 Hearst, William Randolph, 51, 97 Heilbrun, Carolyn G., 73 Heinemann, William, 37, 51, 66, 142

Hellman, George S., 71 Henley, W. E., 35, 142 Henry Simpson & Sons, 3, 138 Henry, Patrick, 98 Hewlett, Maurice, 15 Hichens, Robert Smythe, 87, 89, 124 Hidaka, Tadaichi, 74 Hiles, Barbara, 53 Hind, C. L., 74–75 Hoenselaars, Ton, 86 Hogarth, William, 130–31 Holland, Bernard, 112 Holloway, Mark, 75 honorary degrees, 20 Hope, Conrad, 126 Hope, Frances Ellen, 126–27 Hope, G. F. W., 25, 75–76, 126 Hope, Herford, 76 Hope, Jean, 76 Hope, Muriel: see Dobree, Muriel House, Colonel E. M., 64, 80 Howe, W. T. H., 79 Howells, William Dean, 48 Hudson, W. H., 24, 33, 38, 47, 52, 60, 69, 114, 130, 162 Hueffer, Elsie, 52–53, 79, 106, 113– 14 Hueffer, Ford Madox: see Ford, Ford Madox Huneker, J. G., 2, 10, 76–78, 146 Huneker, Josephine, 76 Hunt, Alfred, 78 Hunt, Violet, 78–79 Hurd, Maurice, 74 Huxley, Aldous, 169 Huysmans, J.-K., 78, 170 Hythe, 34, 106, 114 Ibsen, Henrik, 72, 77, 170 Île-Grande, 35 India, 31, 103 Indian Ocean, 102, 142 Iowa, 49

180 Ireland, 65, 111 Irving, H. B., 73 Italy, 71, 79, 112, 131, 134 Ivy Walls, 92, 126 Jacobs, W. W., 30, 51, 82 James, Henry, 1, 10, 15, 18, 35, 42, 44, 52, 57–58, 77, 92–94, 108, 112–14, 126, 128, 141, 146, 156– 57, 165, 170 James, William (brother), 42, 49 James, William (nephew), 42 Janta, Aleksander, 79 Jean-Aubry, G., 50, 56, 70, 73, 79– 80, 118, 160, 161–62, 164, 166 Jefferson, George, 81 Jefferson, Thomas, 98 Jepson, Edgar, 81–82 Jerrold, W. C., 84 John, Augustus, 111, 149 Johnson, Samuel, 102 Johnstone, Will B., 82 Jones, Edith R., 83 Jones, Hilda, 162 Jones, (Sir) Robert, 163–65 Kalff, Marie, 86 Karrakis, S., 83–84 Keating, George T., 14, 84, 117, 121, 151, 158 Keats, John, 59, 67, 74, 102–03, 173 Kelvin, Lord (William Thomson), 117 Kennedy, Bart, 125 Kentucky, 64 Kinshassa, 91 Kipling, Rudyard, 18–19, 22, 86–87 Klein, Georges-Antoine, 141 Kliszczewski: see Spiridion Knight, Edward Frederick, 76 Knopf, Alfred A., 15, 23, 70, 85 Knowles, Owen, 14, 19, 20, 49, 81, 112, 143 Korzeniowska, Ewa, 172

Korzeniowska-Oleksińska, Mirosława, 12 Korzeniowski, Adolph, 12 Korzeniowski, Apollo, 12, 37, 73, 79, 127, 132, 142, 155, 172 Korzeniowski, Mrs Adolph, 12 Korzeniowski, Zachary, 12 Krzyżanowski, Ludwik, 79 Landor, Walter Savage, 67 Lane, John, 39 Langlois, Paul, 105 Larbaud, Valery, 56–57, 152, 161, 166 Larigot, M., 130 Lausanne, 92 Lawrence, A. W., 85 Lawrence, D. H., 44, 74, 111 Lawrence, T. E., 69, 85–86, 135 League of Nations, 64 Lear, Edward, 162 Lee, Edgar, 36 Legge, Arthur E. J., 27 Lemaître, Jules, 57 Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich, 22 Lenormand, H.-R., 86–87 Lessing, Doris, 85 L’Estrange, Julian, 72 Lewis, John S., 23, 88 Lewis, Tracy Hammond, 88–89 Lhombreaud, Roger, 89 Lifeboat Institution, 173 Limpsfield, 52 Liszt, Franz, 79 Littell, Robert, 90 Little, John, 89 Little, Roger, 162 Liverpool, 19, 21–22, 64, 69, 80, 113, 164 Liverpool University, 63–64 Löhr, Marie, 44 London (general), 7, 12, 17, 28, 30– 31, 35–36 “The 43”, 106

181 Adelphi Terrace, 123 Æolian Hall, 173 Ambassadors Theatre, 75, 101 Arts Club, 96 Bedford Square, 132 Bedford Street, 36 British Museum, 67, 135 Brown’s Hotel, 38 Camden House Mews, 32 Camden Town, 43 Campden Hill, 49 Carlton Hotel, 67 Chelsea Arts Club, 16 Cheshire Cheese Tavern, 98 Covent Garden, 48, 124 Curzon Hotel, 101, 104, 153, 161 Dean Street, 170 European Café, 32 Fenchurch Street, 104 Fleet Street, 97 Gatti’s Restaurant, 113 Gerrard Street, 32, 52, 106 Globe Theatre, 44, 71 Gordon Place, 49, 90 Greek Street, 170 Holland Park, 16 Holland Park Avenue, 60 Hyde Park, 130 Hyde Park Mansions, 132, 133 King’s Cross, 138 Lawrence Mansions, 47 Leicester Galleries, 69 Limehouse, 125 Marylebone Road, 133 Mont Blanc (restaurant), 32, 38, 45, 52, 96 National Liberal Club, 96 National Portrait Gallery, 135, 153 New Oxford Street, 36 Oddenino’s (restaurant), 53 Old Compton Street, 91 Piccadilly, 27, 119

Pimlico, 71, 100 Poplar, 125 Regent Street, 53, 98 Restaurant d’Italie, 91 Royal Theatre, 49, 120 Savile Club, 119 Savoy Theatre, 73 Soho, 32, 38, 52, 65, 69, 96 Soho Square, 171 Square Club, 82 Strand, 113 Tate Gallery, 134 Tower Hill, 95, 104, 138 Wellington Club, 27 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 9 Lowell, James Russell, 9 Lowenfels, Walter, 75 Lowestoft, 7, 104, 112 Lucas, Audrey, 90 Lucas, E. V., 90–91 Lütken, Otto, 91 Lutosławski, Wincenty, 92 Lwów, 72 Lydd, 45, 153 Lynd, Robert, 69 Lyons, Kate, 10 MacCarthy, (Sir) Desmond, 93 McClure, S. S., 37, 78 MacDiarmid, Hugh, 94 MacIntyre, John, 116–17 Mack, Maynard, 164 Mackenzie, Compton, 94 McNeillie, Andrew, 171 MacShane, Frank, 54–55, 59, 167 Madras, 69 Madrid, 19, 138 Malaya, 13, 26–28, 35 Malipiero, Gian Francesco, 79 Mann, Thomas, 85 Marbot, (Baron) Jean-Baptiste, 53 maritime career, 2–4, 8, 20–21, 25, 30, 33, 41, 63, 69, 88–89, 95, 104, 106, 110, 116, 126, 155–57, 160–

182 61, 163 Markham, Lady Violet, 89 Marks, A. D., 160 Marle, Hans van, 41, 95, 107, 109– 10, 135, 143 Marquis, Don, 108 Marrot, H. V., 95 Marryat, Frederick, 35, 138 Marseilles, 3, 21, 37, 48, 79, 84, 88, 107, 113, 155, 170 Marshall, Archibald, 96–97 Marwood, Arthur, 78, 97, 114, 144, 163 Marwood, Caroline, 114 Masefield, John, 33, 131, 135–36 Maupassant, Guy de, 35, 52, 57, 96, 112, 115, 131 Mauritius, 105 Maxwell, Perriton, 97–99 Mee, Arthur, 99–100 Mégroz, R.-L., 100–05 Melville, Herman, 2, 44, 69, 162 Mérédac, Savinien, 105 Meredith, George, 44, 48, 87 Mérimée, Prosper, 48, 80 Methuen & Co., 91 Meyer, Mathilde, 105–06 Meyerbeer, Giacomo, 48, 79 Meyers, Jeffrey, 48 Meynell, Alice, 56 Meynell, Viola, 106 Meyrick, Kate, 106 Mill, John Stuart, 101 Milton, John, 16 Mitchell, Anne Lee, 114–15 Mizener, Arthur, 106–07 Modjeska, Helena (Modrzejewska), 72–73 Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin), 162 Montpellier, 37, 139, 151–52, 161, 166 Moor, Dolly, 23–24 Moore, Gene M., 75, 86, 107

Moore, George, 16, 22, 131 Morley, Christopher, 107–10 Morrell, Lady Ottoline, 111–13, 137 Morrell, Philip, 111 Morris, William, 78 Morrison, Toni, 85 Moser, Thomas C., 46, 113–15, 165 Mottram, R. H., 115 Moulins, 166 Mozambique, 111 Mroczkowski, Przemysław, 116 Mudford, William, 102 Munro, John M., 147 Munro, Neil, 116–18, 120 Murry, J. M., 74 Myers, Rollo H., 118 Mylett, Andrew, 15, 80 Najder, Zdzisław, 27, 30, 45–46, 48, 50, 56–57, 63–64, 75, 80, 83, 84, 86, 88, 93–95, 105, 111, 113, 118, 131, 139, 142, 153, 160, 162, 168 Naples, 58, 138 Napoleon I (Emperor of the French), 5, 53, 86 Neel, Philippe, 22 Nevinson, H. W., 159 New Hampshire, 29 New Haven, 123, 157 New South Wales, 3, 44 New York, 1, 8–14, 20–22, 31, 38, 43, 56, 76, 80, 82, 85, 89–90, 96– 97, 99–100, 108–10, 121, 123, 127–28, 138, 153, 160, 166, 171, 173 Newbolt, (Sir) Henry, 118–20 Newcastle, 104, 156 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 77 Nigeria, 26 Northcliffe, Viscount Alfred, 40 “O., E. B.”, 120 Offenbach, Jacques, 79 “O. Henry” (William Sydney

183 Porter), 87 Ohnet, Georges, 57 Okuda, Yoko, 74 Orel, Harold, 19 Orlestone, 39, 56 Orzeszkowa, Eliza, 93 Osborne, Brian D., 120 Oswalds, 14, 31, 40, 43, 50, 69, 70, 74, 83, 93, 107–08, 112, 160–62, 169–70 Owen, Charles, 56 Owen, Lyman B., 121, 136 Oxford University, 45, 86, 94, 107 Paderewski, Ignacy, 64, 80, 89, 117, 144 Page, Walter Hines, 1, 11 Palestine, 88, 100 Palffy, Eleanor, 121 Pará, 158 Paramor, William, 58 Paris, 32, 48, 59, 84, 86, 92, 107, 171 Parker, W. M., 121–22 Partington, Wilfred, 122–23 Pawling, Sidney S., 37, 66, 141 Pell, Elsie, 57 Pent Farm, 26, 34, 52, 90, 113, 125, 135 Pepys, Samuel, 108 Periodicals Academy, 12 Adelaide Mail, 138 Adelphi, 5 America, 159 American, 97 Anglo-Welsh Review, 99 Arts & Decoration, 128 Atlanta Journal, 139 Atlantic Monthly, 83, 85 Blackwood’s Magazine, 4, 116, 126 Blue Peter, 31, 92, 121 Bookman, 9, 25, 30, 103, 126, 130, 132 Bookman’s Journal, 123

Bookman’s Journal & Print Collector, 27, 122, 138 Bookmark, 60 Books and Bookmen, 131 Boston Evening Transcript, 141 Boston Sunday Globe, 6 Bulletin (Sydney), 109 Cahiers d’Études et de Recherches Victoriennes et Édouardiennes, 151 Century Magazine, 55 Chambers’s Journal, 104 Chesterian, 79 Chicago Tribune, 46 Christian Century, 173 Christian Science Monitor, 5 Conradian, The, 23, 29, 49, 58, 64, 67, 74–75, 94, 107, 117–18, 120, 124, 126 Conradiana, 10, 12, 14, 23, 25, 31, 41, 48, 61, 65, 71, 86, 88, 92, 95, 97, 99, 103, 110, 121, 137, 140–41, 143–44, 157, 161–62, 166 Cornhill Magazine, 40 Cosmopolitan, 4 Daily Dispatch, 43 Daily Graphic, 64 Daily Mail, 40, 96 Daily Mirror, 40 Daily News, 69 Daily Telegraph, 12, 84 Empire Review, 26–27, 93 English Illustrated Magazine, 139 English Life, 91 English Review, 39, 59–60, 78, 82, 97–98, 149, 158, 168 Evening News, 39 Evening Standard, 15, 80, 102, 113 Evening World, 11, 82 Figaro, 161 Fortnightly Review, 35, 39, 56, 121 Forum, 148 Gazette des Lettres, 87

184 Glasgow Evening News, 120 Glasgow Herald, 121 Globe, 91 Graphic, 23 Harper’s Weekly, 26, 28 Hearst’s Magazine, 51 Hindustan Review, 100 Hobbies, 25 Holiday, 18 Illustrated London News, 140 John O’London’s, 122 John O’London’s Weekly, 5 Joseph Conrad Today, 30, 54 Journal of the Joseph Conrad Society, 7, 65, 120 Kipling Journal, 18 Kraj, 73, 92 Kurier Polski, 12 L’Essor: Revue du Cercle Littéraire de Port-Louis, 105 Listener, 93 Literary Digest, 100 London Mercury, 91 Manchester Guardian, 17 Manchester Guardian Weekly, 21 Mariner’s Mirror, 31 Mentor, 7, 25 Mercure de France, 33–34 Messager Polonais, 173 Metropolitan Magazine, 78 Modern Language Review, 68, 162 Modern Philology, 139 Morning Leader, 157 Morning Post, 52, 120 Munsey’s Magazine, 51 Nash’s Magazine, 97 Nation, 5, 158 Nation & Athenaeum, 55, 111 Nautical Magazine, 138, 144 New Age, 16 New Republic, 90 New Review, 35, 142 New Statesman, 36, 93 New Witness, 125

New York Evening Post, 10, 24, 107–08, 124 New York Evening Post Literary Review, 169–70 New York Herald, 8, 11, 27, 51 New York Herald and New York Tribune, 97 New York Herald Tribune, 128 New York Herald, New York Tribune Magazine, 59 New York Morning Telegraph, 88– 89 New York Times, 6, 8–11, 22, 77, 155 New York Tribune, 10, 64, 128, 144 New York Tribune Magazine, 59 North American Review, 26 Notes & Queries, 44, 58, 117 Nottingham Journal, 131 Nouvelle Revue Française, 2, 56–57, 87, 160 Outlook, 1, 45, 127, 153 Petit Méridional, 139 Pictorial Review, 14 Polish American Studies, 18 Polish Review, 88 Queen, 149 Radical (Port-Louis), 105 Review of English Literature, 3 Review of English Studies, 63 Review of Reviews, 105 Revue Hebdomadaire, 101 Ruch Literacki, 99 Saturday Review, 39, 54, 61, 67 Saturday Review of Literature, 15, 20, 107, 109–10 Semaine Littéraire, 34 Singapore Free Press, 28 Spectator, 41 Sphere, 139 St. Stephen’s Review, 36 Stockport Advertiser, 142 Strand Magazine, 155

185 Studia Romanica et Anglica Zagrabiensia, 161 Sun, 5, 10, 98, 170 Sunday Times, 93 T.P.’s & Cassell’s Weekly, 102, 125 Tatler, 140 Texas Quarterly, 19 Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 112 Thomas Hardy Journal, 27, 65 Thurrock Historical Society Journal, 126 Times, 40, 132 Times Literary Supplement, 13, 145 Tit-Bits, 84 To-day, 24 transatlantic review, 86 Tygodnik Illustrowany, 18 Vanity Fair, 169 Virginia Quarterly Review, 134 Weekly Westminster, 54 Western Mail, 99 Wiadomości Literackie, 19 World, 6, 157, 166 World Today, 38, 51 Perłowski, Jan, 19 Petersfield, 151 Petrarch, Francesco, 56 Phelps, William Lyon, 123 Phillpotts, Eden, 73 Pinker, Eric S., 96, 153 Pinker, J. B., 4, 9, 13, 16–17, 26, 32, 38, 40, 70, 83–84, 86, 91, 95–96, 114, 115, 136, 149, 160 Plomer, William, 124 Poe, Edgar Allan, 8, 77 Poland, 2, 9, 12, 17, 32, 41, 49, 62– 63, 84, 88, 104, 113, 117, 127, 147, 150, 172–73 Polish language, 2, 19, 27, 33, 36, 92, 121, 147, 172 Poradowska, Marguerite, 16 Pound, Ezra, 81–82

Powell, John, 124, 144 Proust, Marcel, 70, 136 Prus, Bolesław, 172 Pugh, Edwin, 125–26 Pugh, Mrs J. C. L., 126–27 Putnam, George, 127 Queensland, 138 Quinn, John, 9, 56, 76–77, 129, 148–50 Racine, Jean, 56 Randall, Dale B. J., 58, 88, 97, 139, 141, 157, 166 Ransome, Arthur, 127 Rascoe, Arthur Burton, 100, 128 Ravel, Maurice, 16, 80, 118, 160, 166 Ray, Martin, 27, 65, 68 Joseph Conrad: Interviews and Recollections, 5, 8, 12, 15, 21, 23–24, 35–36, 38–39, 41, 43, 48, 50, 55, 61, 63, 66–67, 71, 77–78, 81, 83, 86, 90–93, 96– 97, 99, 109, 112, 116, 118, 124, 125–26, 130, 132, 135, 141, 144, 152–53, 166–67, 169–71, 173 Raymond-Duval, P.-H., 86 Redmayne, E. B., 143 Régnier, Henri de, 152 Reid, Benjamin L., 129 Retinger, J. H., 32, 62 Retinger, Otolia, 62 Reynolds, Mabel E., 129 Reynolds, Stephen, 38, 52 Reynolds, Thomas Blair, 129 Rhymers’ Club, 130 Rhys, Ernest, 130–31 Riach, Alan, 94 Richardson, Samuel, 63 Rivière, Jacques, 57 Roberts, Cecil, 131–34 Rodger, (Sir) John Pickersgill, 27

186 Roditi, Édouard, 134 Rogers, Bruce, 86 Röntgen, Wilhelm, 117 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 78 Rothenstein, John, 134–35 Rothenstein, William, 119, 135–36, 148–49, 165 Rouen, 35, 58, 60, 108 Royal Bounty Fund, 119, 136 Royal College of Art, 135 Royal Literary Fund, 119 Royal Navy, 133, 145 Rubinstein, Artur, 88 Ruskin, John, 78 Russell, Bertrand, 51, 111, 112, 137 Russell, William Clark, 163 Russia, 17, 21–22, 40, 53–55, 61–62, 69, 72, 86 105, 122, 124, 136–38 Rye, 42, 147, 170 Safroni-Middleton, Arnold, 121, 137–38 Saint-John Perse (Marie-RenéAuguste-Alexis-Saint-Léger Léger), 2–3, 24, 145, 161–62 Sampson, John, 64 San Francisco, 56, 137 Sanderson, E. L. (Ted), 95, 129, 134 Sanderson, Katherine, 129 Sanderson, Lancelot, 129 Sanderson, Monica, 95 Sandgate, 34–35, 74, 167 Sandling, 34 Sargent, George H., 138 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 85 Saunders, A. T., 138–39 Schlumberger, Jean, 57 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 48–49 Schwab, Arnold T., 139 Scott, (Sir) Walter, 92 Seccombe, Thomas, 38 Sée, Ida-R., 139 Selassie, Haile (Emperor), 43 Shakespeare, William, 2, 73, 101

Shanks, Edward, 74 Shaw, George Bernard, 14, 32, 43, 65, 84, 93, 123, 130, 136, 145, 168 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 173 Sherman, Thomas B., 139–40 Sherry, Norman, 4, 12, 138–39 Ships Adowa, 58, 108 Cameronia, 19 Duke of Sutherland, 90 Highland Forest, 71 Jeddah, 4, 146 Leviathan, 6 Majestic, 11 Mavis, 113 Montrose, 96 Narcissus, 50 Nellie, 25, 76 Otago, 3, 25, 90, 138 Palestine, 76, 156 Ready, HMS , 144 Riversdale, 68–69 Skimmer of the Sea, 7, 104 Tilkhurst, 63 Titanic, 97, 149 Torrens, 41, 48, 95, 109–10, 143, 159 Tremolino, 37, 90, 155 Tuscania, 8, 11, 19–21, 83, 122, 161 Winifredian, 22 Worcester, 29, 40 Shiraishi, Y., 74 Shorter, C. K., 140 Siberia, 142 Sibley, Carroll, 140–41 Sidmouth, 39 Sieroszewski, Wacław, 171 Simpson, James, 137–38 Simpson, Mrs James, 137–38 Sinclair, May, 74 Singapore, 4, 71, 151 Skirmunt, Konstanty, 80 Smith, James Walter, 138, 141–42

187 Smollett, Tobias, 63 Someries, 30, 60 Spain, 37, 40, 48, 79, 155, 165 Sparks, T. Ashley, 20 Spiridion, Joseph, 99 Spring Grove, 31, 168 Squire, J. C., 17, 74 Stage Society, 72, 119 Stallman, R. W., 56, 87, 142 Stanford-le-Hope, 126 Stape, J. H., 14, 19, 20, 23, 41, 49, 67, 81, 109–10, 126, 143 Stark, Harold, 144, 167 Stein, Marian L., 144 Stendhal, Henri de, 35, 77 Stepniak, Sergei, 113 Stevens, Wallace, 85 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 29, 35, 67 Stockport, 142 Stout, Rex, 18 Stravinsky, Igor, 144–45 Strindberg, August, 87 Strug, Andrzej, 171 Sumatra, 155 Sutherland, J. G., 145 Swaffer, Hannen, 64 Swettenham, (Sir) Frank, 13, 27, 145–46 Swinnerton, Frank, 146 Switzerland, 17, 50, 112 Sydney, 3, 137 Symons, Arthur, 8, 24, 56, 89, 147– 51 Symons, Rhoda, 147–50 Szembek, Zygmunt, 151 Szymanowski, Karol, 80 Taylor, Deems, 40, 61 Taylor, Jeremy, 102–03 Taylor, Warner, 149 Temple, Frédéric-Jacques, 151–52 Thackeray, William Makepeace, 48, 92, 99, 131, 154 theatre, 4, 72, 83, 105, 125, 170

Thomas, Claude, 151 Thomas, Claude-Nöel, 84 Thomas, Edward, 30, 45, 52, 82, 152–53 Thomas, Merfyn, 151 Thomas, R. G., 151 Tibet, 103 Tittle, Walter, 153–57, 161 Titus, Edward K., 157 Tobin, Agnes, 3, 24, 56, 89, 147, 161–62 Tokyo, 74 Tolstoy, Leo, 2 Tomlinson, H. M., 52, 158–59 Toulon, 107 Trieste, 127 Trinidad, 26 Trollope, Anthony, 48 Trosley (Trottiscliffe), 23 Tschiffely, A. F., 159 Turgenev, Ivan, 44, 48, 77, 84, 87, 115, 131, 137, 162 Twain, Mark, 7, 25, 50, 63, 88, 140, 148, 156, 162 Ukraine, 80 United States of America, 1–2, 5– 12, 14, 21–22, 36, 38, 49, 51, 59, 63, 69–70, 78, 83–84, 89, 98, 102–03, 117, 120–22, 128, 138– 39, 144, 146, 154–55, 159, 166, 169–70 Unwin, (Sir) Stanley, 159–60 Unwin, T. Fisher, 16, 24–25, 50, 54, 91, 160 Valencia, 138 Valéry, Paul, 16, 70, 80, 160–61, 169 Van Hamm, Caleb, 97 Vaughan Williams, Ralph, 79 Veler, Richard P., 152, 161 Venice, 112, 127 Verdi, Giuseppe, 79 Verlaine, Paul, 80, 135, 147

188 Vevey, 16–17, 50 Vidan, Gabrijela, 162 Vidan, Ivo, 161–62 Vienna, 11, 150 Vilnius, 89, 92 Virginia, 58, 98, 169 Voynich, E. L., 65–66 Voynich, Wilfred Michael, 65 Wagner, Richard, 48 Wales, 64, 144, 164 Wallace, Alfred R., 69 Walpole, Hugh, 65, 67–70, 86, 121, 124, 126, 146, 160, 162, 167, 171 War, First World, 2, 9, 11, 21, 23, 30, 33, 36, 40, 53, 58, 61–63, 68, 70–71, 82, 88, 100, 103, 106, 111, 115, 122, 123, 130, 131–35, 145, 152, 164, 166, 171–72 War, Second World, 55, 100, 135, 157 Warsaw, 72, 80 Washington, George, 9, 98 Watson, E. L. Grant, 163 Watson, Frederick, 163–65 Watt, Ian, 61–63, 118, 165 Watts, Cedric, 117, 165 Waugh, Evelyn, 106 Weissman, Frida, 166 Weitzenkorn, Louis, 144, 166–67 Weldon, Fay, 82 Wells, Amy (Jane), 106 Wells, H. G., 13, 15, 21, 32, 34–35, 45, 55–56, 62, 65, 67–68, 73–74, 78, 84, 93, 105–06, 114, 118, 123–25, 133, 135, 142, 144–46, 157, 167–68, 170–71 West Indies, 159 West, Herbert Faulkner, 168–69 West, (Dame) Rebecca, 62, 114 Wharton, Edith, 73, 130 Wheeler, Marcus, 54 Whibley, Charles, 4 Whiteing, Richard, 65

Whitman, Walt, 8, 56, 77 Wilhelm II (Kaiser), 9 Willard, Catherine, 169–70 Willard, Grace, 31, 132–33, 169–70 Willcox, Louise Collier, 58 Williams, Augustine Podmore, 4 Williams, Frederick Benton, 29 Wilson, Harris, 170–71 Winchelsea, 113 Wisconsin, 49 Wise, Thomas J., 122–23 Wisehart, M. K., 42, 171 Wittersham, 147–48 Woodville (Australia), 139 Woolf, Virginia, 111, 123–24, 171– 72 Wright, Hagberg, 65 Wrotham, 23 Wye, 31 Yale University, 9, 32, 153, 157, 171, 173 Yeats, W. B., 16, 56, 111, 130 Youloff, 137 Zabierowski, Stefan, 116 Zagórska, Aniela, 19, 88, 172–73 Zagórska, Karola, 172 Zagórski, Karol, 172 Zakopane, 17, 88, 172 Zelie, John Sheridan, 1, 172 Żeromski, Stefan, 171 Zola, Émile, 162