THE COLLECTED LETTERS OF
JOSEPH CONRAD

GENERAL EDITOR
LAURENCE DAVIES

FOUNDING GENERAL EDITOR
FREDERICK R. KARL (1927–2004)

CONSULTING EDITOR
HANS van MARLE (1922–2001)

VOLUME 8

THE COLLECTED LETTERS OF
JOSEPH CONRAD

VOLUME 8
1923–1924

EDITED BY

LAURENCE DAVIES

AND

GENE M. MOORE

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo

Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521561976

© This Volume 8 of the Cambridge Edition of the Letters of Joseph Conrad first
published 2008. The text of the letters © The Estate of Joseph Conrad 2008.
The introductory material and editorial notes © The Press Syndicate of the
University of Cambridge.

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2008

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-0-521-56197-6 hardback

This volume is dedicated to
Cedric Watts, colleague, mentor,
scholar, and dear friend.

CONTENTS

PLATES

Between pages 152 and 153

These images appear by kind permission of: Corbis Images Ltd (1, 4a); British Library Newspapers (2); Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division (3); Princeton University Library Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Frank N. and Nelson Doubleday Collection (4b); the Hallowes Family and Mr David Miller (5a and b); Special Collections, Baker-Berry Library, Dartmouth College (6a); Estate of Jacob Epstein / Tate Picture Library (6b); Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations (7, 8).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The editors are grateful to holders of manuscripts, listed separately, for their co-operation.

   Special thanks are due to Dr J. H. Stape, Mr Owen Knowles, and the late Hans van Marle, whose gracious help and wise counsel greatly facilitated work on this volume.

   The editors are grateful to the following individuals for answering inquiries or otherwise facilitating their work: Professor Richard Ambrosini, Dr Olga Amsterdamska, Ms Wanda Bachmann, Dr Katherine Baxter, Professor David Benyon, M. Charles Bost (fils), Dr Grażyna Branny, Ms Laura Braunstein (Baker-Berry Library, Dartmouth College, NH), Dr Keith Carabine, Ms Rachel Corkill, Mr Phil Cronenwett (Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College), Mr Stephen Crook (Berg Collection, New York Public Library), Professor Mario Curreli, Ms Kate and Mr Tom Delaney, Dr Krystina Dietrich, Dr Stephen Donovan, Dr Linda Dryden, Dr Roger Eaton, Mr Simon Edsor (Director, The Fine Art Society, London), Ms Jill and Mr Aubrey Essery, M. Alexandre Fachard, Mr Steve Forbes, Mr Andrew Gaub (Lilly Library, Indiana University), Dr Rick Gekoski, Mr Israel Gewirz (Curator, Berg Collection, New York Public Library), Dr Robert Goldman, Ms Susan Guerrero, Ms Sarah Hartwell (Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College), Mrs Nina Hayward, Professor James Heffernan, Professor Virginia Jewiss, Professor Neill R. Joy, Ms Bonnie Kirchstein (Director, Forbes Collection, New York), Professor John Kopper, Ms Wendy Lamb, Dr Claes Lindskog, Mr Eric Lupfer (Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin), Dr Donald Mackenzie, Professor Claude Maisonnat, Dr Rob and Ms Kirstie Maslen, Ms Patricia McCaldin (Forbes Collection, London), Mr David Miller, Ms Mary Modeen, Professor Paul Moravec, Professor Zdzisɫaw Najder, Professor Josianne Paccaud-Huguet, Ms Pamela Painter, Ms Véronique Pauly, Dr Marcin Piechota, Mr Ben Primer (Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library), Professor John Rassias, Professor Sid Reid, Dr Hazel Rowley, Ms Naomi Saito (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University), Dr Allan H. Simmons, Dr Helen Smith, Dr Mariuccia G. R. Sprenger, Professor Ray Stevens, Ms Elizabeth Sudduth (Special Collections, University of South Carolina), Dr George Talbot, Mr Robert Voltz (Special Collections, Williams College), Professor Andrea White, the late John Ll. Williams, Captain A. D. Wood, Ms Joanne van der Woude, and Professor Melissa Zeiger.

   Volume Six of this edition was dedicated to ‘the doyen of French Conradians’, Sylvère Monod, who died in August 2006. As well as mourning the loss of a kind and brilliant man, we are deeply grateful for the continuing support he gave to this edition, even in the final months of his illness when he gallantly undertook research on Charles Chassé.

The dedication of Volume Eight to Cedric Watts is a small but heartfelt tribute to a great scholar and teacher.

HOLDERS OF LETTERS

PUBLISHED SOURCES OF LETTERS

Books cited without place of publication originated in London.

OTHER FREQUENTLY CITED WORKS

Unless otherwise noted, citations of Conrad’s work are from the Kent Edition, published by Doubleday, Page, in twenty-six volumes (Garden City, NY, 1925).

CHRONOLOGY, 1923–1924

Unless otherwise stated, dates are for book publication in Britain rather than the United States; dates and locations for essays in periodicals record only the first appearance.

INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME EIGHT

The company at Oswalds on Christmas Day 1923 included G. Jean-Aubry, the painter Muirhead Bone, the writer Gertrude Bone, and their two sons. John Conrad was home from France for the holidays, Jessie Conrad, suffering from an as yet undiagnosed bone infection, knew only that her leg ‘felt sick’ (to the Galsworthys, 15 June 1924), and Joseph Conrad had been bedridden for most of December. As he described events for Frank and Florence Doubleday: ‘It wasn’t a rowdy revel, the major part of the company drinking water steadily, but there were mince pies and a certain affectation of cheerfulness. Your munificent presents were displayed, and John was playing tunes (whether sacred or profane, I am not sure) on the heavenly gong’ (7 January 1924).

Looking back a year or two later, Gertrude Bone took a gentler view of this stoically domestic scene, gentler yet acutely observant:

It was Christmas day at Conrad’s house and his last Christmas Day, it transpired, though the shadow was not then upon us. Muirhead, the boys, Jean Aubry & Jessie & I sat around the fire, a soft wet mist drawing the curtain from outside the windows of the salon. 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. Seated on the other side of the fireplace from myself, he addressed me across it, his face winning & sweet.¹

She was writing ‘to amuse’ Edward Garnett, telling him how the conversation turned towards him, how both she and Conrad admired him and yet confessed to being frightened of him. Garnett, a resolute pacifist, was intimidating, so physically large and shaggy, so magisterial in his literary judgments, so – as Conrad put it on that misty day – ‘distinguished-looking’. His distinction, indeed, must have been vividly in Conrad’s mind that day, for, at the start of the month, Garnett had sent him one of those sympathetic but disconcertingly specific critiques, this time of The Rover, that had so often greeted Conrad’s latest work. Conrad was moved by it, and exhilarated:

The generosity of your criticism, my dear Edward, is great enough to put heart into a dead man. As I have not claimed to be more than only half-dead for the last month, I feel, after reading your letter, like a man with wings . . . My absolute belief in your sincerity in questions of literary art has relieved me of that load of weary doubt which I have not been able to shake off before . . . Your very prejudices are genuinely personal and, in a manner of speaking, can be thoroughly trusted.

This trust in Garnett meant that Conrad, too, wrote more openly about his problems as an author than he could to any prying journalist, or would-be novelist, or academic with a case to make: ‘That scene would have checked the movement and damaged the conception of Catherine. It would have been, and it would have looked, a thing “inserted”. I was feeling a little bit heart-sick then, too, and anxious also to demonstrate to myself as soon as possible that I could finish a piece of work. So I let it go’ (ibid.).

Ever since their first meeting in 1894, the frightening aspect notwithstanding, Garnett’s mind had been one of those where Conrad found a home. Not the only mind, and not the only spiritual home. He no more required ideological like-mindedness in his friends than he required ideological consistency in himself. Comforting Ted Sanderson, who felt unworthy to marry Helen Watson, he wrote ‘When we pray: “Lead us not into temptation” we pray really for the strenght^\ast and courage to resist the evil; for in the belief of God’s Sacrifice and Pity we must work our own salvation’ (28 October 1896).² Writing at an earlier Christmastide to Garnett, who railed against all orthodoxies, he brushed aside ‘the Bethle[h]em legend . . . that nobody – not a single Bishop of them – believes in’ (22 December 1902; Letters, 2, pp. 468–9). In both cases, though, and with other confidantes and confidants, he knew someone to whom he could listen as well as talk, someone with whom he was at home, or, as Gide or Jean-Aubry might have put it, comme chez soi.

One way or another, most of the principal happenings in the last year and a half of Conrad’s life touched on the idea of home. Even his experience of transatlantic crossings, for instance, made him think that ‘Formerly a man setting out on a sea voyage broke away from shore conditions and found in the ship a new kind of home’, whereas the modern liner’s comfort, regularity and speed had turned it into ‘a more or less luxurious prison’.³ His separations from Jessie Conrad, caused by illness or the visit to the United States, interrupted their domestic intimacy even though the often tender correspondence between them provides an enduring demonstration of that intimacy’s strength:

I miss you more and more. As a matter of fact I am on the edge of worrying tho’ I suppose there is no reason for it. It seems ages since I left you in that bedroom in the hotel.