Joseph Conrad

by Hugh Walpole

One of the distinctions between the modern English novel and the mid-Victorian English novel is that modern characters have but little of the robust vitality of their predecessors; the figures in the novel of to-day fade so easily from the page that endeavours to keep them.

In the novels of Mr Henry James we feel at times that the characters fade before the motives attributed to them, in those of Mr Wells before an idea, a curse, or a remedy, in those of Mr Bennett before a creeping wilderness of important insignificances, in those of Mr Galsworthy before the oppression of social inequalities, in those of Mrs Wharton before the shadow of Mr Henry James, even in those of Mr Hardy before the omnipotence of an inevitable God whom, in spite of his inevitability, Mr Hardy himself is arranging in the background; it may be claimed for the characters of Mr Conrad that they yield their solidity to no force, no power, not even to their author's own determination that they are doomed, in the end, to defeat.

This is not for a moment to say that Joseph Conrad is a finer novelist than these others, but this quality he has beyond his contemporaries—namely, the assurance that his characters have their lives and adventures both before and after the especial cases that he is describing to us.

The Russian Tchekov has, in his plays, this gift supremely, so that at the close of The Three Sisters or The Cherry Orchard we are left speculating deeply upon "what happened afterwards" to Gayef or Barbara, to Masha or Epikhadov; with Conrad's sea captains as with Tchekov's Russians we see at once that they are entirely independent of the incidents that we are told about them. This independence springs partly from the author's eager, almost naïve curiosity. It is impossible for him to introduce us to any officer on his ship without whispering to us in an aside details about his life, his wife and family on shore. By so doing he forges an extra link in his chain of circumstantial evidence, but we do not feel that here he is deliberately serving his art—it is only that quality already mentioned, his own astonished delight at the things that he is discovering. We learn, for instance, about Captain McWhirr that he wrote long letters home, beginning always with the words, "My darling Wife," and relating in minute detail each successive trip of the Nan-Shan. Mrs McWhirr, we learn, was "a pretentious person with a scraggy neck and a disdainful manner, admittedly lady-like and in the neighbourhood considered as 'quite superior.' The only secret of her life was her abject terror of the time when her husband would come home to stay for good." Also in Typhoon there is the second mate "who never wrote any letters, did not seem to hope for news from anywhere; and though he had been heard once to mention West Hartlepool, it was with extreme bitterness, and only in connection with the extortionate charges of a boarding-house." How conscious we are of Jim's English country parsonage, of Captain Anthony's loneliness, of Marlowe's isolation. By this simple thread of connection between the land and the ship the whole character stands, human and convincing, before us. Of the sailors on board the Narcissus there is not one about whom, after his landing, we are not curious. There is the skipper, whose wife comes on board, "A real lady, in a black dress and with a parasol."... "Very soon the captain, dressed very smartly and in a white shirt, went with her over the side. We didn't recognise him at all...." And Mr Baker, the chief mate! Is not this little farewell enough to make us his friends for life?

"No one waited for him ashore. Mother died; father and two brothers, Yarmouth fishermen, drowned together on the Dogger Bank; sister married and unfriendly. Quite a lady, married to the leading tailor of a little town, and its leading politician, who did not think his sailor brother-in-law quite respectable enough for him. Quite a lady, quite a lady, he thought, sitting down for a moment's rest on the quarter-hatch. Time enough to go ashore and get a bite, and sup, and a bed somewhere. He didn't like to part with a ship. No one to think about then. The darkness of a misty evening fell, cold and damp, upon the deserted deck; and Mr Baker sat smoking, thinking of all the successive ships to whom through many long years he had given the best of a seaman's care. And never a command in sight. Not once!"

There are others—the abominable Donkin for instance. "Donkin entered. They discussed the account ... Captain Allistoun paid. 'I give you a bad discharge,' he said quietly. Donkin raised his voice: 'I don't want your bloomin' discharge—keep it. I'm goin' ter 'ave a job hashore.' He turned to us. 'No more bloomin' sea for me,' he said, aloud. All looked at him. He had better clothes, had an easy air, appeared more at home than any of us; he stared with assurance, enjoying the effect of his declaration."

In how many novels would Donkin's life have been limited by the part that he was required to play in the adventures of the Narcissus? As it is our interest in his progress has been satisfied by a prologue only. Or there is Charley, the boy of the crew—"As I came up I saw a red-faced, blowzy woman, in a grey shawl, and with dusty, fluffy hair, fall on Charley's neck. It was his mother. She slobbered over him:—'Oh, my boy! my boy!'—'Leggo me,' said Charley, 'leggo, mother!' I was passing him at the time, and over the untidy head of the blubbering woman he gave me a humorous smile and a glance ironic, courageous, and profound, that seemed to put all my knowledge of life to shame. I nodded and passed on, but heard him say again, good-naturedly:—'If you leggo of me this minyt—ye shall 'ave a bob for a drink out of my pay.'"

But one passes from these men of the sea—from McWhirr and Baker, from Lingard and Captain Whalley, from Captain Anthony and Jim, with a suspicion that the author will not convince us quite so readily with his men of the land—and that suspicion is never entirely dismissed. About such men as McWhirr and Baker he can tell us nothing that we will not believe. He has such sympathy and understanding for them that they will, we are assured, deliver up to him their dearest secrets—those little details, McWhirr's wife, Mr Baker's proud sister, Charley's mother, are their dearest secrets. But with the citizens of the other world—with Stein, Decoud, Gould, Verloc, Kazumov, the sinister Nikita, the little Fynes, even the great Nostromo himself—we cannot be so confident, simply because their discoverer cannot yield them that same perfect sympathy.

His theory about these men is that they have, all of them, an idée fixe, that you must search for this patiently, honestly, unsparingly—having found it, the soul of the man is revealed to you. But is it? Is it not possible that Decoud or Verloc, feeling the probing finger, offer up instantly any idée fixe ready to hand because they wish to be left alone? Decoud himself, for instance—Decoud, the imaginative journalist in Nostromo, speculating with his ironic mind upon romantic features, at his heart, apparently cynical and reserved, the burning passion for the beautiful Antonia. He has yielded enough to suggest the truth, but the truth itself eludes us. With Verloc again we have a quite masterly presentation of the man as Conrad sees him. That first description of him is wonderful, both in its reality and its significance. "His eyes were naturally heavy, he had an air of having wallowed, fully dressed, all day on an unmade bed."

With many novelists that would be quite enough, that we should see the character as the author sees him, but because, in these histories, we have the convictions of the extension of the protagonists' lives beyond the stated episodes, it is not enough. Because they have lives independent of the covers of the book we feel that there can be no end to the things that we should be told about them, and they must be true things.