Joseph Conrad

by Hugh Walpole

With the coming of George Meredith and Thomas Hardy the Form of the novel, springing straight from the shores of France, where Madame Bovary and Une Vie showed what might be done by taking trouble, grew into a question of considerable import. Robert Louis Stevenson showed how important it was to say things agreeably, even when you had not very much to say. Henry James showed that there was so much to say about everything that you could not possibly get to the end of it, and Rudyard Kipling showed that the great thing was to see things as they were. At the beginning of the nineties everyone was immensely busied over the way that things were done. The Yellow Book sprang into a bright existence, flamed, and died. "Art for Art's sake" was slain by the trial of Oscar Wilde in 1895. Mr Wells, in addition to fantastic romances, wrote stories about shop assistants and knew something about biology. The Fabian Society made socialism entertaining. Mr Bernard Shaw foreshadowed a new period and the Boer War completed an old one.

Of the whole question of Conrad's place in the history of the English novel and his influence upon it I wish to speak in a later chapter. I would simply say here that if he was borne in upon the wind of the French influence he was himself, in later years, one of the chief agents in its destruction, but, beginning to write in English as he did in the time of The Yellow Book, passing through all the realistic reaction that followed the collapse of æstheticism, seeing the old period washed away by the storm of the Boer War, he had, especially prepared for him, a new stage upon which to labour. The time and the season were ideal for the work that he had to do.

II

The form in which Conrad has chosen to develop his narratives is the question which must always come first in any consideration of him as a novelist; the question of his form is the ground upon which he has been most frequently attacked.

His difficulties in this matter have all arisen, as I have already suggested, from his absorbing interest in life. Let us imagine, for an instant, an imaginary case. He has seen in some foreign port a quarrel between two seamen. One has "knifed" the other, and the quarrel has been watched, with complete indifference, by a young girl and a bibulous old wastrel who is obviously a relation both of hers and of the stricken seaman. The author sees here a case for his art and, wishing to give us the matter with the greatest possible truth and accuracy, he begins, oratio recta, by the narration of a little barber whose shop is just over the spot where the quarrel took place and whose lodgers the old man and the girl are. He describes the little barber and is, at once, amazed by the interesting facts that he discovers about the man. Seen standing in his doorway he is the most ordinary little figure, but once investigate his case and you find a strange contrast between his melancholy romanticism and the flashing fanaticism of his love for the young girl who lodges with him. That leads one back, through many years, to the moment of his first meeting with the bibulous old man, and for a witness of that we must hunt out a villainous old woman who keeps a drinking saloon in another part of the town. This old woman, now so drink-sodden and degraded, had once a history of her own. Once she was ...

And so the matter continues. It is not so much a deliberate evocation of the most difficult of methods, this manner of narration, as a poignant witness to Conrad's own breathless surprise at his discoveries. Mr Henry James, speaking of this enforced collection of oratorical witnesses, says: "It places Mr Conrad absolutely alone as a votary of the way to do a thing that shall make it undergo most doing," and his amazement at Conrad's patient pursuit of unneeded difficulties may seem to us the stranger if we consider that in What Maisie Knew and The Awkward Age he has practised almost precisely the same form himself. Indeed beside the intricate but masterly form of The Awkward Age the duplicate narration of Chance seems child's-play. Mr Henry James makes the mistake of speaking as though Conrad had quite deliberately chosen the form of narration that was most difficult to him, simply for the fun of overcoming the difficulties, the truth being that he has chosen the easiest, the form of narration brought straight from the sea and the ships that he adored, the form of narration used by the Ancient Mariner and all the seamen before and after him. Conrad must have his direct narrator, because that is the way in which stories in the past had generally come to him. He wishes to deny the effect of that direct and simple honesty that had always seemed so attractive to him. He must have it by word of mouth, because it is by word of mouth that he himself has always demanded it, and if one witness is not enough for the truth of it then must he have two or three.

Consider for a moment the form of three of his most important novels: Lord Jim, Nostromo and Chance. It is possible that Lord Jim was conceived originally as a sketch of character, derived by the author from one scene that was, in all probability, an actual reminiscence. Certainly, when the book is finished, one scene beyond all others remains with the reader; the scene of the inquiry into the loss of the Patna, or rather the vision of Jim and his appalling companions waiting outside for the inquiry to begin. Simply in the contemplation of these four men Conrad has his desired contrast; the skipper of the Patna: "He made me think of a trained baby elephant walking on hind-legs. He was extravagantly gorgeous too—got up in a soiled sleeping-suit, bright green and deep orange vertical stripes, with a pair of ragged straw slippers on his bare feet, and somebody's cast-off pith hat, very dirty and two sizes too small for him, tied up with a manilla rope-yarn on the top of his big head." There are also two other "no-account chaps with him"—a sallow-faced mean little chap with his arm in a sling, and a long individual in a blue flannel coat, as dry as a chip and no stouter than a broomstick, with drooping grey moustaches, who looked about him with an air of jaunty imbecility, and, with these three, Jim, "clean-limbed, clean-faced, firm on his feet, as promising a boy as the sun ever shone on." Here are these four, in the same box, condemned for ever by all right-thinking men. That boy in the same box as those obscene scoundrels! At once the artist has fastened on to his subject, it bristles with active, vital possibilities and discoveries. We, the observers, share the artist's thrill. We watch our author dart upon a subject with the excitement of adventurers discovering a gold mine. How much will it yield? How deep will it go? We are thrilled with the suspense.

Conrad, having discovered his subject, must, for the satisfaction of that honour which is his most deeply cherished virtue, prove to us his authenticity. "I was not there myself," he tells us, "but I can show you someone who was." He introduces us to a first-hand witness, Marlowe or another. "Now tell your story." He has at once the atmosphere in which he is happiest, and so, having his audience clustered about him, unlimited time at everyone's disposal, whiskies and cigars without stint, he lets himself go. He is bothered now by no question but the thorough investigation of his discovery. What had Jim done that he should be in such a case? We must have the story of the loss of the Patna, that marvellous journey across the waters, all the world of the pilgrims, the obscene captain and Jim's fine, chivalrous soul. Marlowe is inexhaustible. He has so much to say and so many fine words in which to say it. At present, so absorbed are we, so successful is he, that we are completely held. The illusion is perfect. We come to the inquiry. One of the judges is Captain Brierley. "What! not know Captain Brierley! Ah! but I must tell you! Most extraordinary thing!"