Mr. Ford has megalomania and glories in it. He has systematised delusions of grandeur to which his conduct conforms. He believes he is, and has been in his generation, the finest stylist in the English language and he expresses himself as if convinced that not only did he teach Joseph Conrad to write, but that the renown of the romancer was due in large measure to his collaboration. They are harmless delusions and do not interfere one jot or tittle with my enjoyment of his books. Indeed, as he grows older and fatter he writes better and better. Few contemporary English writers could excel Some Do Not ..., none save possibly Cunninghame Graham could equal Joseph Conrad: A Personal Remembrance. I am moved to that statement after reading Mr. Galsworthy’s tribute.
The Joseph Conrad that Mr. Ford presents may not be the Conrad that Mr. Galsworthy, Mr. Doubleday, Mrs. Jones, or Mrs. Smith knew, but I am convinced that he would be pleased that I should know him as his alleged friend depicts him.
“A biography should be a novel.” That seems fair, since most novels are biographies. Mr. Ford has written a novel about Joseph Conrad and he has achieved a work of art. It will have the same effect upon readers as Rodin’s sculptures have upon searchers for æsthetic stimulation or appeasement. Some will be moved to smash, others will be thrilled. All will admit merit. It is an informative, not a documented, book, informative of a soul, not a body; it tells not how many days he lived and where he lived, but how he lived and thought; how he dreamed and loved; how he interpreted men’s conduct and how he shaped his own. The work is a remembrance, a logical unfolding of Joseph Conrad as he appeared to Mr. Ford from the first days of their acquaintance to the last. We are told little about Conrad’s political, religious, and social ideas. Mr. Ford was no more curious to know what his friend’s past was than we are to know that an English dramatist made a shapeless play out of one of Mr. Ford’s novels. Yet the latter episode becomes important when we learn that this, and Mr. Ford’s interest in the publication of a review, were the cause of the only “scolding” he ever got from Conrad. Forbearing and forgiving Conrad, diffident and reticent Mr. Ford!
The life of a man is an open book for no one, not even for himself. The characteristics and peculiarities of Conrad intrigued his biographer from the beginning. He binds them with tenuous threads to Conrad’s hereditary traits and the influence of his environment, and finally presents the picture complete, allowing his readers to draw their own conclusions.
Joseph Conrad, according to the portrait, was not the sort of man about whom a conclusion could be readily reached; and when it was, you could not bank on it. He was of cosmopolitan appearance: considerable British insularity, but more Slav and Eastern in his make-up. He gave the impression of a Frenchman, born and brought up in Marseilles! His hatreds seem to have exceeded his loves, but his life was a contradiction of his tastes and he has more friends than enemies. Mr. Ford avows that Conrad hated the sea and disliked to write. “Un métier de chien,” he used to call it. When he had made up his mind to write for a living, he had his choice of three languages: he discarded Polish instantly, French with a sigh of regret which he never overcame, and decided on English. And he hated English as a medium of prose, even more than he hated the sea! He thought in French, sometimes in Polish, never in English, unless his thoughts were confined to the most common of everyday commonplaces; when they occupied a higher sphere they were always in French. It was because of the difficulty with which Conrad was constantly confronted that he first thought of collaborating with one who was reputed to be “the finest stylist in the English language.”
Mr. Ford does not marvel at Conrad’s desire to write in English, despite the fact that he knew French so much better. Ford himself writes French better than he does English, not that he knows it better—he does not—but because “in English, he can go gaily on, exulting in his absolute command of the tongue; he can write like Ruskin or like the late Charles Garvice, at will.” In writing, but not in speaking French, he must pause for a word; it is in pausing for a word that the salvation of all writers lies. The proof of prose is in the percentage of right words—not the precious word; not even the startlingly real word. That we might have a whole book on Mr. Ford without a word about any one else!
Mr. Ford bears heavily on their collaboration, and one unfamiliar with the writings of the two authors might gather that Mr. Ford was the fons et origo of much of Conrad’s work. I have no doubt that Conrad put an appreciative valuation on Mr. Ford’s assistance, but I have the same certainty that he did not evaluate it as did his biographer.
Some will think that Mr. Ford has lately had a bad quarter of an hour reading a recent number of La Nouvelle Revue Française which is devoted wholly to Conrad. There, his colleagues and admirers, French and English, tell of Conrad’s personality and his writings but never a word of his “collaborator.” Water enters a duck’s back a thousand times more penetratingly than failure to accord him what he believes to be his right penetrates the dura mater of Mr. Ford Madox Ford.
Stephen Crane said, “You must not be offended by Hueffer’s manner. He patronises Mr. James, he patronises Mr. Conrad. Of course, he patronises me, and he will patronise Almighty God when they meet, but God will get used to it, for Hueffer is all right.” We are ready to agree with Stephen Crane even after we read as an antithesis that the words in which Henry James always referred to Mr. Ford were “votre ami, le jeune homme modeste.”
Conrad’s life revolved around his books, he was constantly occupied with the best manner in which to introduce a character of fiction. It was necessary to get the character in with a strong impression, and then work backward and forward over his past; this theory was the result of thought and experiment on the part of the collaborators. In the same manner, they devised the best opening for each type of writing; their theory was that the opening paragraph of book or story should be of the tempo of the whole performance, so that the ideal novel should begin either with a dramatic scene or with a note that should suggest the entire book. They agreed that style has no other use than to make the work interesting. Hence, they sought to render their thought in the manner which appeared the most sincere and interesting, not to make a display of erudition or of cleverness, or of juggling with words.