The Common Reader
fate unique and their own; the capacity to bear it appeared to them the
privilege of the chosen! Their generation lived inarticulate and
indispensable, without knowing the sweetness of affections or the refuge
of a home—and died free from the dark menace of a narrow grave. They
were the everlasting children of the mysterious sea.
Such were the characters of the early books—_Lord Jim, Typhoon, The
Nigger of the “Narcissus”, Youth_; and these books, in spite of the
changes and fashions, are surely secure of their place among our
classics. But they reach this height by means of qualities which the
simple story of adventure, as Marryat told it, or Fenimore Cooper, has
no claim to possess. For it is clear that to admire and celebrate such
men and such deeds, romantically, wholeheartedly and with the fervour
of a lover, one must be possessed of the double vision; one must be at
once inside and out. To praise their silence one must possess a voice.
To appreciate their endurance one must be sensitive to fatigue. One must
be able to live on equal terms with the Whalleys and the Singletons and
yet hide from their suspicious eyes the very qualities which enable one
to understand them. Conrad alone was able to live that double life, for
Conrad was compound of two men; together with the sea captain dwelt that
subtle, refined, and fastidious analyst whom he called Marlow. “A most
discreet, understanding man”, he said of Marlow.
Marlow was one of those born observers who are happiest in retirement.
Marlow liked nothing better than to sit on deck, in some obscure creek
of the Thames, smoking and recollecting; smoking and speculating;
sending after his smoke beautiful rings of words until all the summer’s
night became a little clouded with tobacco smoke. Marlow, too, had a
profound respect for the men with whom he had sailed; but he saw the
humour of them. He nosed out and described in masterly fashion those
livid creatures who prey successfully upon the clumsy veterans. He had a
flair for human deformity; his humour was sardonic. Nor did Marlow live
entirely wreathed in the smoke of his own cigars. He had a habit of
opening his eyes suddenly and looking—at a rubbish heap, at a port, at
a shop counter—and then complete in its burning ring of light that
thing is flashed bright upon the mysterious background. Introspective
and analytical, Marlow was aware of this peculiarity. He said the power
came to him suddenly. He might, for instance, overhear a French officer
murmur “Mon Dieu, how the time passes!”
Nothing [he comments] could have been more commonplace than this remark;
but its utterance coincided for me with a moment of vision. It’s
extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull
ears, with dormant thoughts. . . . Nevertheless, there can be but few of
us who had never known one of these rare moments of awakening, when we
see, hear, understand, ever so much—everything—in a flash, before we
fall back again into our agreeable somnolence. I raised my eyes when he
spoke, and I saw him as though I had never seen him before.
Picture after picture he painted thus upon that dark background; ships
first and foremost, ships at anchor, ships flying before the storm,
ships in harbour; he painted sunsets and dawns; he painted the night; he
painted the sea in every aspect; he painted the gaudy brilliancy of
Eastern ports, and men and women, their houses and their attitudes. He
was an accurate and unflinching observer, schooled to that “absolute
loyalty towards his feelings and sensations”, which, Conrad wrote, “an
author should keep hold of in his most exalted moments of creation”. And
very quietly and compassionately Marlow sometimes lets fall a few words
of epitaph which remind us, with all that beauty and brilliancy before
our eyes, of the darkness of the background.
Thus a rough-and-ready distinction would make us say that it is Marlow
who comments, Conrad who creates. It would lead us, aware that we are on
dangerous ground, to account for that change which, Conrad tells us,
took place when he had finished the last story in the _Typhoon_
volume—“a subtle change in the nature of the inspiration”—by some
alteration in the relationship of the two old friends. “. . . it seemed
somehow that there was nothing more in the world to write about.” It was
Conrad, let us suppose, Conrad the creator, who said that, looking back
with sorrowful satisfaction upon the stories he had told; feeling as he
well might that he could never better the storm in _The Nigger of the
“Narcissus_”, or render more faithful tribute to the qualities of
British seamen than he had done already in _Youth_ and _Lord Jim_. It
was then that Marlow, the commentator, reminded him how, in the course
of nature, one must grow old, sit smoking on deck, and give up
sea-faring. But, he reminded him, those strenuous years had deposited
their memories; and he even went so far perhaps as to hint that, though
the last word might have been said about Captain Whalley and his
relation to the universe, there remained on shore a number of men and
women whose relationships, though of a more personal kind, might be
worth looking into. If we further suppose that there was a volume of
Henry James on board and that Marlow gave his friend the book to take to
bed with him, we may seek support in the fact that it was in 1905 that
Conrad wrote a very fine essay upon that master.
For some years, then, it was Marlow who was the dominant partner.
_Nostromo, Chance, The Arrow of Gold_ represent that stage of the
alliance which some will continue to find the richest of all. The human
heart is more intricate than the forest, they will say; it has its
storms; it has its creatures of the night; and if as novelist you wish
to test man in all his relationships, the proper antagonist is man; his
ordeal is in society, not solitude. For them there will always be a
peculiar fascination in the books where the light of those brilliant
eyes falls not only upon the waste of waters but upon the heart in its
perplexity. But it must be admitted that, if Marlow thus advised Conrad
to shift his angle of vision, the advice was bold. For the vision of a
novelist is both complex and specialised; complex, because behind his
characters and apart from them must stand something stable to which he
relates them; specialised because since he is a single person with one
sensibility the aspects of life in which he can believe with conviction
are strictly limited. So delicate a balance is easily disturbed. After
the middle period Conrad never again was able to bring his figures into
perfect relation with their background. He never believed in his later
and more highly sophisticated characters as he had believed in his early
seamen. When he had to indicate their relation to that other unseen
world of novelists, the world of values and convictions, he was far less
sure what those values were. Then, over and over again, a single phrase,
“He steered with care”, coming at the end of a storm, carried in it a
whole morality. But in this more crowded and complicated world such
terse phrases became less and less appropriate. Complex men and women of
many interests and relations would not submit to so summary a judgement;
or, if they did, much that was important in them escaped the verdict.
And yet it was very necessary to Conrad’s genius, with its luxuriant and
romantic power, to have some law by which its creations could be tried.
Essentially—such remained his creed—this world of civilised and
self-conscious people is based upon “a few very simple ideas”; but
where, in the world of thoughts and personal relations, are we to find
them? There are no masts in drawing-rooms; the typhoon does not test the
worth of politicians and business men. Seeking and not finding such
supports, the world of Conrad’s later period has about it an involuntary
obscurity, an inconclusiveness, almost a disillusionment which baffles
and fatigues. We lay hold in the dusk only of the old nobilities and
sonorities: fidelity, compassion, honour, service—beautiful always, but
now a little wearily reiterated, as if times had changed. Perhaps it was
Marlow who was at fault. His habit of mind was a trifle sedentary. He
had sat upon deck too long; splendid in soliloquy, he was less apt in
the give and take of conversation; and those “moments of vision”
flashing and fading, do not serve as well as steady lamplight to
illumine the ripple of life and its long, gradual years. Above all,
perhaps, he did not take into account how, if Conrad was to create, it
was essential first that he should believe.
Therefore, though we shall make expeditions into the later books and
bring back wonderful trophies, large tracts of them will remain by most
of us untrodden. It is the earlier books—_Youth, Lord Jim, Typhoon, The
Nigger of the “Narcissus”_—that we shall read in their entirety. For
when the question is asked, what of Conrad will survive and where in the
ranks of novelists we are to place him, these books, with their air of
telling us something very old and perfectly true, which had lain hidden
but is now revealed, will come to mind and make such questions and
comparisons seem a little futile. Complete and still, very chaste and
very beautiful, they rise in the memory as, on these hot summer nights,
in their slow and stately way first one star comes out and then another.
[Footnote 14: August, 1924.]
_How It Strikes a
Contemporary_
In the first place a contemporary can scarcely fail to be struck by the
fact that two critics at the same table at the same moment will
pronounce completely different opinions about the same book. Here, on
the right, it is declared a masterpiece of English prose; on the left,
simultaneously, a mere mass of waste-paper which, if the fire could
survive it, should be thrown upon the flames. Yet both critics are in
agreement about Milton and about Keats. They display an exquisite
sensibility and have undoubtedly a genuine enthusiasm. It is only when
they discuss the work of contemporary writers that they inevitably come
to blows. The book in question, which is at once a lasting contribution
to English literature and a mere farrago of pretentious mediocrity, was
published about two months ago. That is the explanation; that is why
they differ.
The explanation is a strange one. It is equally disconcerting to the
reader who wishes to take his bearings in the chaos of contemporary
literature and to the writer who has a natural desire to know whether
his own work, produced with infinite pains and in almost utter darkness,
is likely to burn for ever among the fixed luminaries of English letters
or, on the contrary, to put out the fire. But if we identify ourselves
with the reader and explore his dilemma first, our bewilderment is
short-lived enough. The same thing has happened so often before. We have
heard the doctors disagreeing about the new and agreeing about the old
twice a year on the average, in spring and autumn, ever since Robert
Elsmere, or was it Stephen Phillips, somehow pervaded the atmosphere,
and there was the same disagreement among grown-up people about them. It
would be much more marvellous, and indeed much more upsetting, if, for a
wonder, both gentlemen agreed, pronounced Blank’s book an undoubted
masterpiece, and thus faced us with the necessity of deciding whether we
should back their judgement to the extent of ten and sixpence. Both are
critics of reputation; the opinions tumbled out so spontaneously here
will be starched and stiffened into columns of sober prose which will
uphold the dignity of letters in England and America.
It must be some innate cynicism, then, some ungenerous distrust of
contemporary genius, which determines us automatically as the talk goes