Joseph Conrad

Memories and Impressions

An Annotated Bibliography

C O N R A D
Studies 1
General Editors:
Allan H. Simmons and J. H. Stape

Advisory Editors:
Owen Knowles and Gene M. Moore
 Joseph Conrad
Memories and Impressions
An Annotated Bibliography

by
Martin Ray

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007

Frontispiece: Sketch of Joseph Conrad by Walter Tittle
©Estate of Walter Tittle. By permission of the Fine Arts Museums
of San Francisco

Cover design: Pier Post

The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO
9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for
documents - Requirements for permanence”.

ISBN: 978-90-420-2298-0
©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007
Printed in the Netherlands
 To

SUSANNAH
 Acknowledgements

I am deeply grateful to Owen Knowles, J. H. Stape, and Allan H.

Simmons for their invaluable comments, advice, and suggestions
about this book, over a period of many years. Like so many people
who have written about Joseph Conrad, I owe a special debt of
gratitude to the late Hans van Marle for his magisterial erudition.
The frontispiece is reproduced by courtesy of the Fine Arts
Museums of San Francisco. All efforts have been made to trace the
Estate of Walter Tittle.
This book is dedicated to my daughter, Susannah, without whose
devoted care it could not have been completed.
Contents

Foreword viii

Cue-titles x

Joseph Conrad: Memories and Impressions 1

Index 174
Foreword
THIS BIBLIOGRAPHY aims to identify and annotate publications that
record “memories and impressions” of Joseph Conrad by those who
knew him or met him. This volume has its origin in my monograph
Joseph Conrad and His Contemporaries (1988), published by The Joseph
Conrad Society (UK). The present much revised version has been con-
siderably expanded, especially by the addition of extensive annotation
for virtually all entries, which has been made possible by the publica-
tion of The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad in recent years. It has also
been updated by the inclusion of relevant letters and diaries that
continue to come to light occasionally.
In the selection of items for inclusion, preference has been given to
recollections with literary or biographical interest. This criterion has
determined both the kind of items selected and the degree of citation
they receive. Recollections of Conrad offering merely a pen portrait of
him are omitted, and such descriptions are not mentioned in items that
are included. Priority throughout has been given to accounts of Conrad
that record what he said about himself and his writing. Conrad’s friends
and acquaintances are often recalling conversations that were quite
casual and that occurred many years before, and they are not on oath.
Some of the individual comments must thus be taken cum grano salis. A
small handful of items seem to be entirely bogus, invented either by
journalists in need of quick copy or by charlatans seeking a vicarious
association with literary fame. Such spurious accounts are included only
so that they can be clearly identified as such in the annotations.
Letters to Conrad from his friends are excluded, the most pertinent
of which are found in A Portrait in Letters: Correspondence to and about
Joseph Conrad, edited by J. H. Stape and Owen Knowles (1996). Letters
about him to a third party are annotated where their contents fall within
the scope of this bibliography. Items in Polish are omitted, since most
of these are available in Zdzisław Najder’s compilation Conrad Under
Familial Eyes, translated by Halina Carroll-Najder (1983). Items in French
are included.
Theodore G. Ehrsam’s A Bibliography of Joseph Conrad (1969) lists
many of the earlier items; a number of new items that it overlooked are
recorded here. For the purposes of this work, Ehrsam’s bibliography
was found to be more comprehensive than the well-known bibliog-
raphies of Lohf and Sheehy (1957) or Teets and Gerber (1971). I have
not listed the other printings that some items have enjoyed, since they
 ix

are readily found in Ehrsam. Reprints not listed in Ehrsam are recorded,
and errors have been silently emended. Some articles on Conrad, such
as Hugh Clifford’s North American Review article of 1904, are known to
be based on an interview with Conrad, but are not presented in the
form of a personal account and have therefore been excluded.
Books of criticism devoted entirely to the study of Joseph Conrad
have been omitted, as have all publications listed in Ehrsam by Richard
Curle, Ford Madox Ford, G. Jean-Aubry, and Conrad’s wife and chil-
dren. Such works are already familiar to most students of Conrad’s life,
and their inclusion would have needlessly increased the length of the
bibliography. Preference has been given instead to relatively unfamiliar
or inaccessible items, especially those in newspapers and periodicals
whose only location may be, for example, The British Library or The
Bodleian Library. Articles in modern journals may not be inaccessible,
but they do not usually have a subject index, and are therefore included
to facilitate ease of reference.
These criteria should not be regarded as mosaic decrees, and I have
happily sacrificed them occasionally in the hope of making this work
useful and interesting. For example, George T. Keating’s A Conrad
Memorial Library (1929) is devoted entirely to the work of Conrad and
therefore, strictly, ought to have been excluded; however, it is difficult
to obtain in the United Kingdom (only one non-lending library in Scot-
land holds it, for instance), and not indexed, and I thus decided to
annotate it.
Articles by the same author may repeat some details, and such
information is described only once, although substantial overlaps are
indicated. Items of minor interest are included only to identify them as
relatively unimportant and thus to save other scholars’ time. The
numerous newspaper reports of Conrad’s visit to the United States in
1923 are inevitably repetitious, and therefore only the newspaper inter-
view that gives the fullest account of a particular statement by Conrad
is rewarded with citation of that comment. Entries for these reports of
the American visit are best regarded as composite, forming an aggre-
gate account of Conrad’s interviews during his trip.
Page numbers following a book title indicate the location of infor-
mation relevant to the aims of this bibliography; they do not imply that
there are not other pages in that book that refer to Conrad. Items are
listed in the alphabetical order of their authors’ surnames.
x

Cue-Titles

CL The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad, ed. Frederick R. Karl,

Laurence Davies, Owen Knowles, and J. H. Stape. 7 vols.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983–

CUFE Zdzisław Najder, Conrad Under Familial Eyes, trans. Halina

Carroll-Najder. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1983

JCA A Joseph Conrad Archive: The Letters and Papers of Hans van Marle,
ed. Gene M. Moore, The Conradian, 30.2 (2005)

LL G. Jean-Aubry, Joseph Conrad: Life and Letters. 2 vols.

London: Heinemann, 1927

Ehrsam Theodore G. Ehrsam, comp. A Bibliography of Joseph Conrad.

Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press, 1969

Najder Zdzisław Najder, Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle. Trans. Halina

Carroll-Najder. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1983

Ray, ed. Martin Ray, ed., Joseph Conrad: Interviews and Recollections.
London: Macmillan, 1990
Abbott, Lawrence F.1

“Joseph Conrad.” Outlook (New York), 134 (23 May 1923): 14–15.

Abbott was present at JC’s reading of Victory [10 May 1923, New York],
which lasted about an hour. “The complete detachment with which he
described his work” (5) was refreshing. JC speaks English with such a
European accent that it is sometimes difficult to understand him.

Adams, Elbridge L. Joseph Conrad: The Man [and] Zelie, John

Sheridan A Burial in Kent. 1925; rpt., New York: Haskell House
Publishers, 1972.

[All references are to Adams’s article.] Adams2 met JC in early September

1916, at Capel House. He spoke warmly of Walter Hines Page and
Stephen Crane, and said of Fenimore Cooper that his artistic instinct was
genuine and unerring, although his style had the beauties and defects of
its age. He loved Henry James and read him repeatedly, for he was “the
historian of fine consciences” (10).
The Preface to The Nigger of the “Narcissus” was written to express
“his intimate feelings about the aim of the art of fiction” (12). JC was
delighted that Adams liked Some Reminiscences best, for “some of my
literary friends have told me it was too unconventional and informal to
be good autobiography, and too remote from English and American

1 Lawrence F(raser) Abbott (1859-1933) spent 32 years as the President of the

Outlook Company, resigning in 1923 to become Contributing Editor. He
edited Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt (1919) and wrote Twelve Great Modernists
(1927).
2 Elbridge L(apham) Adams (1866–1934), New York bibliophile, publisher,
and lawyer. JC stayed for a couple of days at Adams’s country house in the
Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts during his visit to the US. Adams’s article
first appeared as “Joseph Conrad – The Man,” Outlook (New York), 18 April
1923: 708–12. On 20 November 1922, JC had written to him that “The idea
of your writing an article, of a more intimate character than anything that has
been written before on me in America, pleases me vastly; for I do really
believe that you understand me better than anybody from your side that I
ever met” (CL7 594).
2

associations to be very interesting” (13). It was a faithful record of his

“feelings and sensations” (13), and was a “human document which
would, to those who can see eye to eye, reveal the personality behind the
books” (13–14).
JC never thought of writing in French: “When I began to write it
came as natural for me to write English as if it had been my own native
tongue. […] English seems to be a part of my blood and culture” (15). “I
think I must have some talent for language” (14). He had read Dickens,
Shakespeare, and much other English literature in Polish translation.
JC hated the war-time restriction on the sale of alcohol; what would
become of the boasted freedom of Englishmen if such paternalism
became the accepted policy of the English Government, he asked. On a
later visit [September 1921], JC outlined “my very early conviction that a
representative government is but a poor guaranty of liberty. Yet I do not
see what else we could put in the place of it. I am afraid that most hu-
man institutions are poor affairs at best, and that even a Heaven-sent
constitution would not be safe from the distorting force of human
passions, prejudices, hasty judgments, emotional impulses, or from mere
plausible noise raised by an active and determined minority” (23–24).
[Adams showed his MS of this article to JC before publication, and
he includes in footnotes the marginal annotations JC made. JC explained
that on leaving Poland he was “fit to take care of myself intellectually”
(5), and he described his education and maritime examinations. Later, he
said he preferred to be described as a “creative writer” rather than as a
“writer of romance” (25). Finally, he repeated his dislike of Tolstoy and
Dostoevsky, to whom James Huneker had compared him (26). Adams’s
article has February 1923 as the date of composition. This volume also
prints Adams’s “The American Visit”: 27–38: JC stayed overnight with
Adams in Massachusetts, following his trip to Boston in May 1923. He
did not, contrary to newspaper reports, visit the homes of Herman
Melville or the poet William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878). JC sat and
listened to Brahms in a rapt mood.]

Alcorta, Gloria

“Saint-John Perse en voyage de noces.” Nouvelle Revue Française, 47

(February 1976): 8–15.
 3

Perse1 told Alcorta that, for JC, “l’amitié était l’œuvre du destin. Il
n’aimait pas mes écrits mais j’aurais pu commettre le plus crapuleux des
méfaits, ses sentiments pour moi n’auraient pas changé” (13–14).

Allen, Vio

“Memories of Joseph Conrad.” Review of English Literature, 8 (April

1967): 77–90.
With an introduction from R. B. Cunninghame Graham, Allen first
visited JC shortly after he had finished Chance (1912). Norman Douglas
was also present. They later met in Corsica [February–April 1921]. JC
told her that he was not going to write about Corsica, but was doing a
play [The Secret Agent]. He was tired of writing novels, he explained, and
wanted a new medium. In his speech, there were French words in nearly
every sentence, and French vowels in English words. He frequently
corrected himself, and would say, “I buyed – I bought it” (79). Jessie
Conrad told Allen of someone trying to tell JC a frightfully improper
spoonerism, but he could not understand it.
It was Jessie who had suggested writing about the Marseilles incident
[in The Arrow of Gold ] when he was searching for a plot. She was quite
flustered, though, to read “A Smile of Fortune,” since JC had not told
her about that experience. JC considered A Set of Six to be his most
successful short stories “for writing” (83), but overall he liked ’Twixt
Land and Sea best. He had always had to fight hard with his publishers
about his choice of titles, except for Chance.
He loved Australians, since they had been “the first to trust me with
a ship” (83), and he had nearly settled in Australia, before he married.2
Lord Jim, he confided, had been written because some critic had said that

1 The poet Marie-René-Auguste-Alexis-Saint-Léger Léger (1887–1975), better

known as Saint-John Perse, first visited JC in the summer of 1912, in the
company of Agnes Tobin (see CL5 87). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in
Literature in 1960.
2 On 9 April 1912, JC wrote to H. H. Champion that “Like all the sailors of
the old wool fleet I have the warmest regard for Australians generally for
New South Wales in particular and for charming Sydney especially. Moreover
I am a fellow citizen. Haven’t I commanded an Australian ship for over two
years?” (CL5 50). JC commanded the Otago, owned by Henry Simpson and
Sons of Adelaide, for fourteen months, ending in March 1889.
4

a novel should contain only a limited number of characters, so JC had

said to himself, “Here now! I will write a novel and put into it all the
people I know” (83).
At the time of his marriage, he was neither a sailor nor a writer, but
“a man entre les deux” (83), and he still felt he was “a most on literary man
– most on literary” (84). He loved to read Charles Whibley,1 whom he
regarded as an amusing reactionary, but “to try and teach the people!
That I could not do! To force my opinions on others, that I could not do
– but I am glad there is a Whibley and an Arnold Bennett!” (84).
Back in England [Summer 1921], Allen visited JC in Kent and asked
about Lord Jim. JC described how he had met Brierly only twice, and
knew little about him. When Allen suggested a whole book on Marlow,
JC commented, “Marlow, yes, perhaps – it would have to be rather on
psychological lines. Not a novel – reflections” (86). Lord Jim himself had
been based on a man called Williams, but he had used that name else-
where so he called him Jim.2 Everyone in Singapore knew his story, and
there was always “the shadow of that damn thing over him” (86). In
writing “Freya of the Seven Isles,” he had initially wished to tell the story
of a lost brig, but had then thought of Nelson, and then Freya. His best
piece of writing, he believed, was “The Secret Sharer”: “I don’t think
there is an unnecessary word in that thing” (86). He hated the Grand
Guignol, and theatre in general, since it destroyed the imagination. He
loathed movies and gramophones also. During her visit, JC was cor-
recting proofs of his new book (at Pinker’s urgent request), which was to
appear as a serial in Cosmopolitan.3

1 Editor, journalist, critic, and polemical essayist (1859–1930), Whibley had a

monthly column in Blackwood’s Magazine for nearly thirty years. His two-
volume Letters of an Englishman appeared in 1911 and 1915. Regarded as a
champion of “traditional” British values, he vigorously denounced trade
unionism, the popular press, women’s rights, and, especially, the extension of
the franchise (see CL2 162).
2 The earlier character was Willems in An Outcast of the Islands. JC based the
story of the desertion of the Patna on the affair of the Jeddah, which was
deserted by her European crew in 1880. The young first mate, who took
control of the incident, was Augustine Podmore Williams. A full account of
the Jeddah affair is given in Norman Sherry, Conrad’s Eastern World (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1966).
3 JC was correcting the typescript – not proofs – of Suspense (see, e.g., CL7
327, 329). Although he frequently mentioned plans for serialization, the
novel remained unfinished at his death.
 5

Anonymous

“Americans Kind, So Why Lecture?”. Christian Science Monitor, 19

May 1923: 2. [Ray, ed., 189–90]
[Interviewed in Boston during 1923 visit to US] JC is not gathering
material for new books with an American setting, for he writes in
retrospect of what he saw and learned during his first thirty-six years.
Although “I often write no words for weeks,” he does not regard this as
a waste, since he is planning, thinking, and constructing. Nostromo, he
thought, was his best book. He had to construct a whole republic while
seeking to “maintain truthful descriptions throughout of life in such a
country. […] When I write I build no Utopias, for I always keep a firm
control of my imagination.”

“Conrad and Cowes.” Adelphi, 2 (September 1924): 354–58.

JC became “a trifle petulant” (355) when reminded of Havelock Ellis’s1
description of him as a novelist of the sea in an unidentified review in
the Nation. [The author of this Adelphi article is named as “The Journey-
man.”]

“Conrad at work.” John O’London’s Weekly, 6 (17 December 1921):

376.
[Account of visit by journalist’s friend to JC in Kent] JC was in full flight
with a novel of the Napoleonic period [Suspense]. JC has a peculiar
method of writing – he dictates, without any regard to form or style, a
rough conspectus and outline of a book. He puts the manuscript away as
it accumulates, and then takes it out again and recasts it, not once but
several times. [1921]

“Conrad Boards Fishing Smack, Ignores Leviathan.” Sun (New

York), 21 May 1923: 3.

1 For details on him, see the Ellis entry below.

6

On a visit to Boston harbour, JC hardly glanced at the world’s largest

passenger ship, but instead spent more than an hour talking with some
fishermen. He wanted to throw a pound of tea from the wharf, but his
friends dissuaded him.1

“Conrad Departs, Worn Out by our Killing Kindness.” World

(New York), 3 June 1923: 14.

JC looked tired, and seemed to be suffering severely from gout. He said

he was not as hale and hearty for his age as he should be, and that he did
not plan very far ahead. He had been familiar with US geography and
history since boyhood. [Interviewed in America]

“Conrad Doesn’t Reach Wharf.” Boston Sunday Globe, 20 May 1923:

13.

Describes JC’s visit to Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts, the sights

he saw and the fishermen he talked to.

“Conrad for ‘movies’, but can’t sell one.” New York Times, 8 May
1923: 16.

JC has a slight accent, and is rather reserved and shy. He admired Crane’s
amazing feat of writing The Red Badge of Courage without having seen the
war. Once, when Crane asked JC about Balzac, he wired his wife to say
he would not be home and they spent the whole night talking.
JC described one of his trips round Cape Horn and suggested that
seamen were more like factory hands now.
JC said, “I don’t remember everything about my books. I know
much less about them than most people. You are asking me things about
which I know nothing.” He denied discovering any new form, and, as for
style, it was “something about which I never bother; it is enough to get

1 On 16 May 1923, JC and his party arrived in Boston, staying for five days at
the Copley Plaza Hotel. Then the largest passenger ship in the world, the SS
Leviathan (originally the Vaterland) was launched in 1913 and weighed 54,282
gross tonnes.
 7

the story forward without bothering about these side subjects.” Asked
about his ironical treatment of life, JC laughingly replied, “What is an
ironical?”
In the typescript of Nostromo, he had found an ambiguous paragraph
at the start of a chapter. He could not remember what he had tried to say
in it, so he deleted it. He refused to say where his work on The Rescue had
resumed.
He likes movies. Novelists had long tried to put moving pictures of
life into words, he said, and it was an essential of novels that they moved.
He had once spent a month, bored to extinction, trying to write a film
scenario, but it had been rejected. [JC interviewed by a score of reporters
at F. N. Doubleday’s Long Island home, 7 May 1923.]

“Conrad in East Anglia.” Journal of the Joseph Conrad Society (UK),

4.3 (February 1979): 11–13.

[Reprints several articles from local newspapers of the 1930s describing

JC’s visits to Lowestoft in 1878, his experiences in the Skimmer of the Sea,
his education in the English language, and recollections of him as
“Polish Joe.”]

“Conrad Pays Tribute to Mark Twain.” Mentor, 12.4 (May 1924): 45.

[JC interviewed during his visit to America, May 1923] JC said that Mark
Twain must have been a good pilot to write of steamboat life as he did.
He first read Twain in London in the late 80s. “Innocents Abroad was all
the rage.1 But his descriptions of life in America – some of the short
stories as well as the longer books – those are what count. They have life
– American life. They are authentic.” Twain’s The Mississippi Pilot 2 came
closest to JC’s own life (this was the original title of Life on the Mississippi,
JC explained). JC says he often thought of Twain and this book in the
Congo.

1 The Innocents Abroad (1869).

2 Life on the Mississippi (1883). JC quotes from this novel in a letter to Edward
Garnett of 18 July 1897 (CL1 365).
8

“Conrad, Sea Writer, Here for First Time.” New York Herald, 2
May 1923: 24. [Ray, ed., 175–77]
JC had a leisurely enunciation of English. He admitted he was a
Victorian, and that most of his reading was in nineteenth-century
authors. He had not read John Burroughs,1 but had read Poe in French.
He was fond of Emerson2 and Whitman,3 and had read Fenimore
Cooper.4 In reply to a question about his possibly dual personality, he
said that he suspected he had three – Pole, sailor, landsman. He had tried
to return to the sea, but he had had to go back to writing. It was not until
after The Nigger that he realized his vocation was to be writing.

“Conrad, Sea Writer, Here on First Visit.” New York Times, 2 May
1923: 21.
JC arrived in New York yesterday aboard the Tuscania. He was more
interested in a little three-masted schooner than in Manhattan’s skyline.
He said that he had not read much fiction, “although, of course, I know
the outstanding men.” Describing himself as a sailor, first and last, he
explained that his life was not a literary one. In reply to a question, he
said that of his own books the one he prefers is “It Depends on the
Day” [!] His books were like children to him: “You like one better than
the others some days, but love them all.”

1 John Burroughs (1837–1921), American naturalist, essayist, critic, and poet,

best known as a nature writer.
2 Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82), American poet and philosopher. In a
letter to Cunninghame Graham of 1897, JC referred to him as “the gentle
Emerson” (CL1 423).
3 Walt Whitman (1819–92), American poet.
4 JC discusses his reading of James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) in “Tales of
the Sea” (1898; rpt. in Notes on Life and Letters). JC told David Garnett,
Edward’s son, in 1902 that “I would recommend you to begin with Last of the
Mohicans – then go on with the Deerslayer and end with the Prairie. I read
them at your age in that order; and I trust that you, of a much later gen-
eration, shall find in these pages some at least of the charm which delighted
me then and has not evaporated even to this day. […] I believe that you shall
respond – as I did in my time – to the genuine feeling of the descriptions and
the heroic temper of the narrative” (CL2 467). In a letter to Arthur Symons
in 1908, JC said that “F. Cooper is a rare artist. He has been one of my
masters. He is my constant companion” (CL4 101).
 9

The war had prevented a planned visit to America in 1915.1 He

laughingly outlined the three periods in his life, each of which offered
novelties distinct from the others. The first was his departure from
Poland and his life at sea. The second was his return to the land, and the
third was his marriage and his plan to return to sea, which was abandoned
because numerous “little schemes” obliged him to continue writing.

“Conrad Visits Boston.” New York Times, 21 May 1923: 15.

JC showed most interest in the port, and wished to throw a pound of tea
from the wharf. He spent an hour with the crew of a fishing schooner,
and disputed their use of the term “trawls.” In Cambridge, he wished to
see the houses of Lowell2 and Longfellow,3 who both appealed to him
favourably. He laughed outright at the Germanic Museum,4 being amused
that the Kaiser should give anything to Harvard. [Report of JC’s visit to
Boston, 20 May 1923.]

“The Gossip Shop.” Bookman (New York), 57 (July 1923): 587–88.

[Account of JC’s visit to Yale Univerity, May 1923] JC was much dis-
turbed by the variety of questions tossed to him by the reporters [some
of whom are identified], but he rose magnificently to the occasion. He
dismissed angrily a question about technique, asserting that “I write to
please myself” and “I hope that there are others like myself to read and
to be pleased” (587). He said that he dictated his novels now, because “if

1 JC told John Quinn in July 1914 that “In October I may be in New York.
[…] The visit as a whole frightens me a little; but my literary agent Mr Pinker
is coming over with me and that is comforting in a way” (CL5 403).
2 James Russell Lowell (1819–91), American poet and man of letters. Lowell
lived his entire life in Elmwood, a mansion built in 1767 in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, that is now home to the president of Harvard University.
3 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82), American poet. Longfellow
House, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was built in 1759 and was at one time
the home of George Washington. Longfellow moved there in 1837, and his
family continued to occupy it until 1950.
4 Now the Busch-Reisinger Museum (founded 1901) of Harvard University. In
1902, Kaiser Wilhelm II donated a large collection of plaster casts of art
objects.
10

he sits at a typewriter himself he wastes too much time in the choice of

the individual word.”

“Jessie Conrad, Harold Frederic, and Kate Lyons: An Unpublished

Letter.” Conradiana, 3.1 (1970–71): 6, 8.
JC’s chief objection to Harold Frederic1 as a man was his exasperating
habit, during dinner at Brede Place, of usurping Crane’s role as host and
taking the head of his table. [Letter from Jessie Conrad to Paul Haines,
April 1935.]

“Joseph Conrad.” New York Tribune, 3 May 1923: 12.

[JC interviewed on arrival in US. Similar to many other such reports]

“Joseph Conrad Arrives; Calls Writing a Grind.” New York Evening

Post, 1 May 1923: 1–2.
JC talked of Henry James, whom he used to visit twice a year. He regret-
ted that he had not answered James Huneker’s last letter to him before
his death.2 [Typical account of JC’s interview on arrival at New York.]

“Joseph Conrad Here for Visit.” Sun (New York), 1 May 1923: 9.

[Account of JC’s interview on arrival in New York. Nothing new.]

“Joseph Conrad Ill.” New York Times, 3 May 1923: 19.

JC, suffering from gout, lumbago and fatigue, will rest for a week at the
home of F. N. Doubleday at Oyster Bay. [JC’s visit to America.]

1 Harold Frederic (1856–1898), American author and journalist, a friend of

Stephen Crane.
2 Huneker died in 1921; JC’s last surviving letter to him is dated 1913 (CL5 236).
 11

“Joseph Conrad Leaving.” New York Times, 2 June 1923: 14.

JC departs from New York today aboard the Majestic, sailing to

Southampton.

“Joseph Conrad Makes First Visit Here on Tuscania.” Evening World

(New York), 1 May 1923: 2.

JC said the Tuscania was “not a ship, it’s an art gallery.” He praised Walter
Hines Page, Ambassador to Britain during the war.1 [Account of JC’s
arrival in New York.]

“Majestic leaves for Europe with Record Passenger List. Joseph

Conrad returning Home among more than 800 in Cabins.” New
York Herald, 3 June 1923: 14.

On departure from New York, JC remarked that everything in America

was even greater than his boyhood imagination had pictured.

“Majestic took 800 in her First Cabin. Joseph Conrad, Novelist of

the Sea, sails on Big Liner with Praise for America.” New York Times,
3 June 1923: 5, Section I, Pt. 2.

JC, addressed as Captain, said he preferred to be called Mr Conrad.

During his visit he had found everything much greater even than in his
boyhood dreams of America. He had been surprised that his novels were
so widely read. He had chosen the name “Concord” for the forthcoming
edition of his works because of its connotations with British and
American ideals, and because of the word’s beautiful sound.

1 Walter Hines Page (1855–1918). As the partner of F. N. Doubleday, he was

one of JC’s American publishers. From 1913 to 1918, Page was the US
Ambassador to Great Britain, and he and his colleagues helped to rescue the
Conrads from their war-time difficulties in Vienna in 1914.
12

“Mrs Adolph Korzeniowski.” Conradiana, 2.3 (1969–70): 147.

According to Mrs Korzeniowski, a New York resident in her seventies,

her husband’s grandfather and JC’s father would meet to talk with their
uncle Zachary in Cracow. JC himself would deny cousin relationships
and discourage talk about Poland to protect relatives in possible political
danger. Korzeniowskis are “independent, rebellious, and very sensitive –
they wear their nerves on the surface of their skin.”

“Personalities: Joseph Conrad.” Academy, 66 (20 February 1904):

198; rpt. in Norman Sherry, Conrad: The Critical Heritage. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973, 162–63. [Ray, ed., 212–13]

JC said to the anonymous interviewer, about criticism, that “praise and

blame to my mind are of singularly small import, yet one cares for the
recognition of a certain ampleness of purpose” (163).

“Press Notes.” Conradiana, 1.1 (1968–69): 89.

Kurier Polski, 7 July 1967, reports that 75-year-old Mirosława Korze-

niowska-Oleksińska, whose father was JC’s cousin, visited JC in her
thirties, when her father was in London.

Arnold, Fred

“Where Conrad Held Court.” Daily Telegraph, 8 January 1958: 6.

[Letter to the Editor] JC’s favourite inn was the Fleur-de-lys in Canterbury.1
In late years, both before and after his trip to America in 1923, JC would
arrive about nine o’clock. He had a seat reserved for him near the
window, and would sit and chat for an hour in his forceful and staccato
fashion. He drank gin and voiced robust opinions.

1 See John Conrad, Joseph Conrad: Times Remembered (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1981), 156–57.
 13

Atherton, Gertrude

Adventures of a Novelist. London: Cape, 1932, 452–53.

Atherton1 recalls her frequent meetings with Sir Frank Swettenham,2

who knew JC well in Asia.3 He said that JC was obliged to write every
book six times. First, he tumbles out a mass of words, incoherent but
bristling with ideas. Then he laboriously “straightens them out,” and
pulls them “this way and that” until his events are arranged in order.
Then he “dives into his characters and brings them to life.” The last two
revisions are devoted to “polishing up his style” (452).

Austin, Mary

Earth Horizon: Autobiography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1932,

312–13, 342, 343.

Mary Austin4 visited JC twice [ca. mid-1909 and 1922]. On her first visit,
H. G. Wells introduced her to JC, who was not satisfied with his

1 Gertrude Franklin Atherton (née Horn, 1857–1948), American novelist best

known for her social and historical fiction set in California (see CL4 62).
2 Frank Athelstane Swettenham (1850–1946; knighted 1897), colonial admin-
istrator, was largely responsible for the development of roads, railways, and
social services in the Malay States, 1877–82. He initiated the Federated States
and became their first Resident General, 1895; High Commissioner, Malay
States, 1901–04; and author of several works on Malaya. See Swettenham’s “The
Story of Lord Jim,” Times Literary Supplement, 6 September 1923: 588
(described below).
3 That Conrad knew Swettenham “well” is an exaggeration. His contacts with
land were brief, and his close familiarity with a high-ranking civil servant is
doubtful.
4 Mary Austin (née Hunter, 1868–1934) was an American nature-writer,
journalist, and feminist, best known for The Land of Little Rain (1903), an
account of the California Desert. Austin wrote to JC from New York on 21
September 1921, detailing her numerous ideas for publicizing his work in the
US. JC told Pinker on 4 October 1921 that “When it comes to publicity
anybody’s voluntary help may be accepted and in the case of Mrs A. she is
much less noxious than she looks and talks; and that air of a very superior
scarecrow she has doesn’t come through the print” (CL7 346).
14

publishers’ returns: “I stand on the shore and make my cry into the dark,
and only now and then a cry comes back to me” (313). On her second
visit, JC kept telling Austin, who knew George Bernard Shaw, that “the
Fabians were no longer the intellectual leaders, and that I was wasting
my time on them” (342). JC felt that he might not have long to live, and
had not provided sufficiently for his wife. He was immensely pleased to
have sold The Rover to the Pictorial Review for a large sum.1

“Joseph Conrad tells what women don’t know about men.”

Pictorial Review, 24.12 (September 1923): 17, 28, 30–31; abstr. in
Ann Daghistany, “Mary Austin’s ‘Joseph Conrad Tells What
Women Don’t Know About Men,’” Conradiana, 8 (1976): 183–84.
[Austin interviewed JC at Bishopsbourne, Kent in 1922.] JC has no
understanding of American women or their difficulties of social
adjustment. “Why should there be any difficulty?” he asked (17). JC said
of his wife that “she makes a kind of peace around me” (31).2

“Typhoon.” In George T. Keating, A Conrad Memorial Library.

Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1929, 103–10.
When Austin first met JC,3 all he knew of America was that it was
beginning to seek him out. They discussed the role of women in
American society and literature. At their second meeting [Oswalds,
1922], JC praised the impersonal quality of man in adventure with the
elements, and admitted that most of his stories “began in a sea mood, an
aspect or motion of the sea in which somehow the sea participated, if
not governing at least subtending the spirit and action of the piece”
(109). JC thought that the immensity of the sea saved men like MacWhirr

1 The Pictorial Review (New York), a women’s monthly, had a circulation of

2,500,000. Its serialization of The Rover, begun in September 1923, netted
Conrad £2,000 (CL7 629).
2 This interview coincided with the beginning of the serialization of The Rover
(see previous footnote). See also Austin’s letter to JC of 21 September 1921
in A Portrait in Letters: Correspondence to and about Conrad, ed. J. H. Stape and
Owen Knowles (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996), 184–85.
3 Austin gives the date of this first meeting as 1908 here, but in her Earth
Horizon, she suggests 1909.
 15

in Typhoon from “the urge toward an impossible articulateness,” while its

immutability saved men like himself from “the importunity of their own
souls” (109).

Barker, Dudley
G. K. Chesterton: A Biography. London: Constable, 1973.
Chesterton’s wife, Frances, records in her diary a visit to the Colvins,
where there were “too many clever people,” such as JC, Laurence
Binyon, Maurice Hewlett, and Henry James (149). [No date given.]

Beer, Thomas
“The Princess Far Away.” Saturday Review of Literature, 1 (25 April
1925): 701–02.
[Beer1 recalls JC’s remark about Henry James’s view of Stephen Crane:]
“‘Bah’, said Conrad across a shoulder to Alfred Knopf2 and me, ‘James
did not know what Stevie was talking about! It was beyond his limitation.’”

Bennett, Arnold
Arnold Bennett: The “Evening Standard” Years: “Books and Persons”
1926–1931, ed. Andrew Mylett. London: Chatto & Windus, 1974,
96–98. [Ray, ed., 112–15]
[Reprints Bennett’s “Some Personal Memories of Conrad: ‘Cad’ as a
New Word: His ‘Twilight,’” Evening Standard, 3 November 1927: 7.]
Bennett3 recalls that he first met JC about 28 years ago, at H. G. Wells’s

1 JC had written a preface to Thomas Beer’s Stephen Crane: A Study in American

Letters (New York: Knopf, 1923).
2 See the entry on Knopf below.
3 Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) published his first stories in 1890 and his first
novel, A Man from the North, eight years later. Very popular and successful in
his own time, he is best known now for Anna of the Five Towns (1902), The Old
Wives’ Tale (1908), and Clayhanger (1910). JC’s first letter to Bennett is dated
10 March 1902; they probably met through their mutual friend, H. G. Wells.
16

house. Even at the end of his life, JC could not speak ten words without
betraying his foreign origin. He read English literature eagerly, but did
not understand it; for instance, he called Milton “woolly” (97).
Early in their friendship, Bennett used the word “cad,” and was
astonished when JC asked what it meant: “‘I have never heard the word,’
he said” (97). Once, Bennett met a very melancholy JC at J. B. Pinker’s
office. He needed, but did not want, a change of activity, and he merely
said, “Le pli est pris” (97; equivalent to “The die is cast”). They last met at
the home of Mme Alvar,1 when Bennett had not seen him for some
years. At first, JC did not recognise him, but shortly he came over and
said, “My dearrr Bennett, […] you have been my faithful friend for 25
years, and I do not recognise you! Forgive me” (98).

“Confessions of a Book-buyer.” New Age, NS 3 (5 September

1908): 370.
Bennett says that the only living imaginative authors whose books he
buys regularly as they appear are JC, George Moore, and W. B. Yeats.

The Journals of Arnold Bennett, 1896–1928, ed. Newman Flower. 3

vols. London: Cassell, 1932–33.
Hueffer told Bennett that JC was still as late as ever with his copy (1:
316; 9 April 1909). Bennett dined with JC at the Chelsea Arts Club;
Thomas Hardy was also present (1: 358; 11 February 1910). Hueffer told
him that JC first had the idea of writing after seeing a Pseudonym Library
book at Vevey Station.2 He chose English in preference to French because

1 Louisa (“Loulette”) Alvar Harding (née Beckman, 1883–1965) was a Swedish

soprano who performed as “Louise Alvar.” Married to Charles Copely
Harding, a wealthy English barrister, she held a musical and literary salon at
her home at 14 Holland Park, Kensington. Her circle included T. S. Eliot,
Maurice Ravel, and Paul Valéry. The dinner Bennett describes took place on
17 April 1923, as established by the menu, signed by JC, Bennett, and Ravel.
2 The Pseudonym Library series was published by T. Fisher Unwin, to whom
JC sent Almayer’s Folly on 4 July 1894: as he explained to Marguerite
Poradowska eight days later, “J’ai envoyé mon manuscript à Fisher Unwin &
Co qui publient une serie des romans anonyms” (CL1 160). In 1918, JC told
W. H. Chesson that, in those days, “I knew nothing about publishers and
 17

there were plenty of stylists in French but none in English (2: 1; 16 June
1911). Pinker told Bennett that they had just seen JC, returned from
Poland. “C. had no opinion of Russian army, and had come to England
to influence public opinion to get good terms for Austria!” (2: 108; 4
November 1914).1 James Bone2 heard him praise Bennett’s Riceyman Steps
(1923): “It has always been Bennett militant; but this is Bennett
victorious,” JC said (3: 23; 9 January 1924).

The Letters of Arnold Bennett, ed. James Hepburn. 3 vols. London:

Oxford University Press, 1966–70.
J. B. Pinker told Bennett that the three greatest writers he had known
[presumably including JC] had always frankly expressed their wish to be
popular (1: 192; 1 July 1913). Bennett remembers once acting as a judge
in a literary competition, with JC and John Squire3 (3: 141; 12 March
1921), and he told Richard Curle,4 on JC’s death, that he had seen little

one name was very much like another to me. But at that period of his exist-
ence T. F[isher] U[nwin] had published some paper-bound books by various
authors and I had bought one or two of them […]. My ignorance was so
great and my judgment so poor that I imagined that Almayer’s Folly would
be just suitable for that series. As a matter of fact it was much too long, as
you know, but this was my motive in the choice of publisher” (CL6 212).
Another version of Conrad’s seeing volumes of the Pseudonym Library is in
the Garland entry below.
Vevey is a small city in Switzerland, on the north shore of Lake Geneva;
JC had stayed at Champel-les-Bains, on the outskirts of Geneva, in May and
June 1894.
1 At 2 p.m. on 2 November 1914, off Gravesend, JC wrote to Marian Biliński,
a senior civil servant whom JC had recently met in Zakopane and with whom
he had had lively discussions about the future of Poland; his brother Leon
was the Chancellor of the Austro-Hungarian Exchequer. JC assured him that
“In a few hours we shall land, and we shall immediately take a train for
London. Tomorrow I shall straight away endeavour to meet some influential
people in the world of journalism” (CL5 423).
2 James Bone (1872–1962) was the London editor of The Manchester Guardian.
He was the brother of Muirhead, the artist, and David, sailor and author of
The Brassbounder.
3 J(ohn) C(ollings) Squire (1884–1958; knighted 1933), journal editor and critic.
4 Richard Curle (1883–1969), journalist, critic, and author. After writing an
appreciation of JC’s works, Curle met him in November 1912 and, although
Curle was many years JC’s junior, the two men became close friends. His
18

of him recently, although they met about a year ago. Bennett did not
think then that JC would live very long (3: 224; 5 August 1924).

Bester, Alfred

“Conversation with Rex Stout.” Holiday, 46 (November 1969): 38–

39, 65–67.
Stout,1 a novelist, once stayed for a week at JC’s home.

Blanche, Jacques-Émile2

Mes Modèles. Paris: Delamain et Boutelleau, 1928, 176.

Bearing a manuscript, JC once called on Henry James, but was turned
away by a servant.

Bojarski, Edmund A.

“Conrad’s First Polish Interview.” Polish American Studies, 17.3–4

(July–December 1960): 65–71.
[Translation of Marian Dąbrowski, “Rozmowa z J. Conradem,” Tygodnik
Illustrowany, No. 16 (18 April 1914); also translated in CUFE, 196–201.]

“A Conversation with Kipling3 on Conrad.” Kipling Journal, 34/162

Joseph Conrad: A Study (London: Kegan Paul, 1914) was the first book-length
criticism of JC’s fiction, and written with his approval. The Arrow of Gold
(1919) was dedicated to him.
1 Rex Todhunter Stout (1886–1975), American writer of detective fiction best
known for his Nero Wolfe novels.
2 Jacques-Émile Blanche (1861–1942), French portrait painter.
3 It is not known when JC and Kipling (1865–1936) first became acquainted,
and any meetings were certainly never frequent. Although Kipling lived quite
close by in Sussex, he had few dealings with his many neighbouring writers;
 19

(June 1967): 12–15; rpt. in Kipling: Interviews and Recollections, ed.

Harold Orel, 2 vols. London: Macmillan, 1983, 2: 326–31.

Kipling said to Jan Perłowski, whom he met in Madrid in 1928, that it

was sometimes difficult to understand JC when he spoke English. [For a
complete translation of Perłowski’s “O Conradzie i Kiplingu,” see CUFE,
150–70.]

“Joseph Conrad’s Sentimental Journey: A Fiftieth Anniversary

Review.” Texas Quarterly (Austin), 7.4 (1964): 156–65.

[Includes translations of parts of Aniela Zagórska’s “Kilka wspomnień o

Conradzie,” Wiadomości Literackie (1929), which is wholly translated in
CUFE, 210–23.]

Bone, David

“Joseph Conrad.” In Landfall at Sunset: The Life of a Contented Sailor.

London: Duckworth, 1955, 154–60.

Bone1 first met JC in the winter of 1919, at a University Club dinner in

Liverpool,2 during which JC spoke of the “resolute character of seamen”

incidentally, JC knew that the distance between Capel House and Kipling’s
home at Burwash was 28 miles (see CL5 383), which might indicate some
familiarity. In 1898, JC wrote an article on Kipling that was never published
(CL2 32). There appears to be no surviving correspondence between the two
men aside from an “enthusiastic note” (CL3 365) about The Mirror of the Sea
(1906) printed in A Portrait in Letters: Correspondence to and about Joseph Conrad,
ed. J. H. Stape and Owen Knowles (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996), 55-56.
1 David William Bone (1874–1959; knighted 1946), elder brother of Muirhead,
the painter, first went to sea in 1891, and rose to become Commodore of the
Anchor Line, which owned the Tuscania. In 1916, he was commander of the
Cameronia when it was sunk in the Mediterranean, with the loss of 130 troops.
He wrote many books and articles about life at sea, and JC wrote to him after
the publication of his first novel, the autobiographical The Brassbounder (1910).
The two men met in Liverpool in 1919.
2 In 1919, the Conrad family travelled to Liverpool, where Jessie was to
undergo an operation; they stayed from 30 November to 24 December. The
20

(154) with whom he had sailed. They met again in Glasgow on 20 April
1923, the day before sailing in the Tuscania for New York. Bone, the ship’s
captain, thought JC would be interested in recent developments in
shipping; although he quickly understood the new mechanical devices, he
was not at all impressed by their efficiency: “strangely, for one so un-
derstanding and cultured in himself, it was the ‘gentility’ and apparent
confidence of the new ship manners that seemed to disquiet him the
most” (157).
Bone’s brother, Muirhead,1 made a drypoint etching of JC during the
voyage; this was the first picture made of him at sea, although, he
admitted with a disapproving grimace, there had been many photo-
graphs. Bone remarked to JC how extraordinary it was that a Polish
aristocrat should sail in a merchant ship and become a British subject. JC
replied, “Bone! I am more British than you are. You are only British
because you could not help it” (160). [Incorporates most of Bone’s
“Introduction” to Joseph Conrad: Four Tales (London: Oxford University
Press, 1950), vii–xv.]

“Memories of Conrad.” Saturday Review of Literature, 2 (7 November

1925): 286.
[Letter to the editor] Bone once wrote to JC, urging him to accept the
offer of an honorary degree. Bone was told that, after receiving his letter,
JC stood at his dressing-table for fifteen minutes, brushing his hair with
both hands.2 JC’s decision to decline the degree is an example of what
Bone calls his embarrassed consternation at honours.3

University Club persuaded JC to attend a banquet in honour of the Merchant

Service, and he made a speech in praise of British sailors. In a letter to Sir T.
Ashley Sparks of 22 September 1925, Bone recalled JC’s “affright” before
giving this speech: “He had a feeling that his diction was not impeccable (a
lovable distinction in speech I always thought it)” (J. H. Stape and Owen
Knowles, ed., A Portrait in Letters: Correspondence to and about Conrad [Amsterdam:
Rodopi, 1996], 254).
1 For details on him, see his article below.
2 Jessie Conrad notes that “brushing his hair many times was a sure sign of
irritation” (Joseph Conrad As I Knew Him [London: Heinemann, 1926], 140;
see also Joseph Conrad and His Circle [London: Jarrolds, 1935], 256).
3 JC declined five honorary degrees in all.
 21

JC first wrote to Bone after the publication of his The Brassbounder

(1910), which Edward Garnett had brought to his notice. They met eight
years later, shortly after the end of the war, in Liverpool, at a University
Club dinner in honour of the Merchant Service. It was difficult to induce
JC to attend, for he feared a request to speak, since his diction was not
impeccable. Bone, however, persuaded JC to speak in public for the first
time, and in his speech he was positively boastful of his pride in the art
of seamanship and of his great privilege in serving under the Union Jack.

Bone, Muirhead1

“The Soul of Conrad.” Manchester Guardian Weekly, 11.6 (8 August

1924): 124–25. [Ehrsam 138 wrong date and pagination] [Ray, ed.,
164–68]

JC admired Anatole France above all French writers,2 and had less
interest in Russian writers. He had once ordered men working on deck
to put a sail away, for he anticipated a change in the weather, and the
Captain, overhearing him, growled to the mate, “That second officer
knows the weather.”3 He knew then that he would win promotion. JC
was called “Ulysses” in Marseilles: “They joked at me then, but I have
made my voyage.”4 In JC’s estimation, Edward Garnett could do no
wrong. [Account of conversation during JC’s voyage to America, May
1923.]

1 Muirhead Bone (1876–1953; knighted 1937), water-colour painter and etcher,

was the first official war artist to be appointed during the war, and was a
leading force behind the founding of the Imperial War Museum. He met JC
in Glasgow on the day before their departure for New York on 21 April
1923. They sailed together in the Tuscania, captained by Bone’s brother, David.
2 Anatole France (1844–1924). JC’s two short pieces on him (1904 and 1908)
are collected in Notes on Life and Letters (1921). In 1905, JC commented to H.
G. Wells that “it cannot be denied that A F apart from being a great master
of prose is one of the finest minds of our time” (CL3 288).
3 JC sailed in five ships as second officer, between 1881 and 1887.
4 JC was based in Marseilles for four years, between 1874 and 1878. “Ulysses”
is the nickname of M. George in The Arrow of Gold (see Part 1).
22

Brock, H. I.

“Joseph Conrad, Able Seaman.” New York Times (Book Review),

10 August 1924: 1, 18.

JC sat for a portrait by Oscar Edward Cesare,1 who said that “I never felt
so much at home with a victim,” except, perhaps, when he drew Lenin.
Brock met JC [in June 1911] at Capel House: “he was big enough to
tell the truth to a stranger […] the attribution of greatness to him was
easy” (18). Brock met JC again during the latter’s visit to America, May
1923.

Brugmans, Linette, ed.

The Correspondence of André Gide and Edmund Gosse, 1904–1928. New

York University Studies in Romance Languages and Literature, No.
2. Crestport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1959, 25, 167–70.

JC attended a party in honour of Sir Edmund Gosse in September 1920,

together with Hardy, Kipling, Bennett, George Moore and Chesterton.
Gide [16 January 1921] wrote that JC thought Philippe Neel’s translation
of Under Western Eyes was excellent.2 Gosse [25 August 1924] wrote that
“we have lost Conrad, a beautiful figure. But he had said all he had to
say, and went on writing in order to make money. He will live in half a
dozen of his early books” (170). It was Paul Claudel3 who first spoke of
JC to Gide, in 1905.

1 H(enry) I(rving) Brock (1876–1961) was assistant editor of The New York
Times Book Review. (When Brock sailed from Liverpool to Boston in the
Winifredian on 17 June 1911, he was described as being aged 34 years and
employed as a journalist; Boston Passenger Lists, 1820–1943).
Oscar Edward Cesare (1885–1948) was an American cartoonist, artist, and
journalist. He painted JC in America in 1923, and had drawn Lenin in Russia
in 1922.
2 Neel’s translation, Sous les yeux d’occident, appeared in 1920. Writing to Gide in
November [?] 1920, JC commented that “Je suis très, mais très content de la
traduction de Western Eyes” (CL7 212; see also 220, 321).
3 Paul Claudel (1868–1955), French poet, dramatist, and diplomat.
 23

Cadby, Carine1

“Conrad’s dislike of the camera and how it was conquered by Will

Cadby.” Graphic, 110 (1 November 1924): 728. [Ray, ed., 147–48]

Perceval Gibbon2 first persuaded JC to be photographed. He was de-

lighted to hear the photographer’s assistant remark that she had enjoyed
most in Typhoon the captain’s letters to his wife. JC said they had not
been mentioned by reviewers or friends, and he confessed to a weakness
for those letters himself.

Carabine, Keith, and J. H. Stape

“Family Letters: Conrad to a Sister-in-Law and Jessie Conrad on

Conrad’s Death.” The Conradian, 30.1 (2005): 127–31.

Carabine and Stape print a previously unpublished letter from Jessie

Conrad to her sister, Dolly Moor (née Alice Dora George, 1884-1949),

1 The Cadbys were professional photographers. In 1901, William Arthur Cadby

(ca. 1868–1937) was living with his wife, Carine, at Platt Cottage, Wrotham,
Kent, on his own means (born Hampstead). Carine was 30 years of age (born
Brighton).
The Cadbys photographed JC on two occasions, in 1912 and September
1913. The anecdotes recorded here relate to the 1912 sitting. In the September
1913 sitting, at Capel House, the Cadbys required two photographs of JC in
formal pose. Alfred A. Knopf, a young assistant at JC’s American publishers,
Doubleday, Page, had proposed making a publicity pamphlet that would
include a formal portrait, together with some informal snapshots, to assist
sales of the forthcoming Chance. JC described the Cadbys in a letter to Knopf
as “a couple in great repute as photographers. Very artistic” (CL5 258–59;
see also John S. Lewis, “‘Artless Photos’: Two Previously Unknown Photo-
graphs of Joseph Conrad,” Conradiana, 8 [1976]: 203–08). John Conrad gives
an amusing account of the 1913 sitting in Joseph Conrad: Times Remembered
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 62–64. (Three of the photo-
graphs are reproduced.)
2 (Reginald) Perceval Gibbon (1879–1926), writer, war correspondent, and
motorcycle enthusiast. The Gibbons lived at Trosley in Kent, and Jessie
Conrad described Gibbon as “perhaps the closest and for both Joseph Conrad
and for me, the most intimate,” of their friends. JC met him in 1909.
24

dated 17 September 1924, giving a detailed and intimate account of her

reactions and of the events surrounding and immediately following JC’s
death.

Carroll, Eleanor

“Conrad’s books hold his secrets.” New York Evening Post, 8 May
1923: 16.
JC enjoys dictating his novels, for he is forced to speak and cannot
“dream ahead by the hour about my tale, or write one phrase and revise
it and re-revise it as I would do if I were alone.” On seamen: “Loneliness
moulds them. They are without love and without children.” [Interviewed
at the home of F. N. Doubleday, 7 May 1923, at Oyster Bay, Long Island]

Charpier, Jacques

Saint-John Perse. Paris: Bibliothèque Idéale, 1962, 37.

Charpier records that Perse visited JC in 1912, at Ashford, where he met
W. H. Hudson and Arthur Symons.1

Chesson, W. H.2

“The Discovery of Joseph Conrad.” To-day, 5 (June 1919): 152.

[Ray, ed., 83–84]

1 Perse seems to have been introduced to JC by Agnes Tobin, who accom-

panied him on a visit to Capel House (see CL5 87). W(illiam) H(enry)
Hudson (1841–1922), naturalist and novelist.
2 W(ilfrid) H(ugh) Chesson (1870–1952) was a novelist, biographer, and critic,
and at the time of receiving the MS of JC’s first novel was a reader for T.
Fisher Unwin, the London publisher. JC had submitted the MS on 4 July
1894 for publication in the firm’s Pseudonym Library, although it eventually
proved too lengthy for the series. Unwin wrote to JC accepting his novel on
4 October 1894, the first typewritten letter he had received. Almayer’s Folly
was published on 29 April 1895.
 25

Chesson, a reader at T. Fisher Unwin, notes that it was he, not Edward
Garnett, who made the first favourable report on Almayer’s Folly. He
recorded the receipt of the novel on 5 July 1894, and, “when the author
gently pressed for a decision,” he passed it on to Garnett, who wrote
“Hold on to this” after reading it. [Letter to the Editor]

“Chronicle and Comment: Conrad’s First Ship.” Bookman (New

York), 41 (April 1915): 128–30. [Ehrsam: 375]

G. F. W. Hope’s1 drawing of the Otago,2 made according to a minute

description given by JC, is reproduced. Hope says that, in the early days
of their friendship, JC would visit his home and read portions of the
manuscript of Almayer’s Folly.

Clemens, Cyril

“A Chat with Joseph Conrad.” Hobbies, 70 (January 1966): 85, 88,

92; rpt. in Conradiana, 2.2 (1969–70): 97–103.

[Clemens3 claims his article is an interview with JC in the early 1920s.

Wholesale plagiarism of, for example, Gertrude Atherton’s Adventures of
a Novelist and “Conrad pays tribute to Mark Twain,” Mentor (1924), q.v.]

1 G(eorge) F(ountaine) W(eare) Hope (né Hopps, 1854–1930) met JC in 1880

and became one of his first friends in England. He had been a sailor and had
sought to make his fortune in mining. Currently a “Director of Companies,”
he and JC used to go sailing in his yawl the Nellie, as recollected in “Heart of
Darkness.” He lived in Essex.
2 The Otago was JC’s first command in 1888, when he was thirty.
3 Cyril Clemens (1902–99), a cousin of Mark Twain, founded the International
Mark Twain Society in 1930.
26

Clifford, Sir Hugh1

“Concerning Conrad and his Work.” Empire Review, 47 (May 1928):

287–94.

JC’s account of his first meeting with Clifford, in the “Author’s Note” to
A Personal Record,2 is amusing, apocryphal, and erroneous. They met in
1899 (not 1898, as JC says), and their conversation about the alternative
use of French or English as JC’s medium of expression is said to have
taken place on 22 May 1903, the month preceding Clifford’s article on JC
in The North American Review [which appeared, in fact, in June 1904]. On
5 May 1903, Clifford brought JC to lunch with an American business-
man to arrange serialization of Nostromo. A deal was arranged but it never
appeared in the (unnamed) magazine.3
Clifford maintains the notion that JC exercised a choice between
English and French. Although JC later denied strenuously that he had ever

1 Hugh Charles Clifford (1866–1941; knighted 1909), a colonial official and

novelist, and essayist, was especially associated with Malaya. Arriving there in
1883, he became a cadet in Perak, and began a close association of more than
twenty years with the Malay people. He learned the language and spent long
periods living in remote parts of the country. Those experiences gave
Clifford a romantic taste for the exotic that became the subject of his many
essays, stories, and novels published from 1896. He was resident of Pahang
from 1896 to 1903, with a brief interval as governor of North Borneo and
Labuan. Leaving Malaya in 1903 to become colonial secretary in Trinidad,
and later governor successively of Ceylon, the Gold Coast, and Nigeria, he
continued to write about Malaya. His career closed with two years as Governor
of the Straits Settlements and High Commissioner of the Malay States, from
1927 to 1929. The long-lasting friendship between JC and Clifford began in
1899, when the latter and his wife visited the Pent. There is an illustration of
Clifford in CL6.
2 A Personal Record (London: Grant, 1925), v–viii.
3 Two days after this lunch, JC wrote to J. B. Pinker about Harper and
Brothers: “it strikes me that they may yet be of some use for Nostromo […]
Harvey asked me if that story was placed. He protested a great admiration etc
etc for my work” (CL3 32–33). This is a reference to George Harvey (1864–
1928), President of Harper’s and editor of Harper’s Weekly. He had made a
fortune in constructing electric railways and later became Ambassador to
Great Britain (1921–23). Harper and Brothers published the book (not the
serial) version of Nostromo in 1904.
 27

said this to Clifford, the latter notes that JC was “cursed by an unreliable
memory” (294). JC spoke French with a purity of intonation, fluency and
correctness, and English with a strong French, not Polish, accent.

“Joseph Conrad: Some Scattered Memories.” Bookman’s Journal and

Print Collector, 11.37 (October 1924): 3–6.

Clifford first met JC in summer 1899. On his next visit to England in

1903, Clifford invited JC to meet some ardent admirers of his work at a
Wellington Club1 luncheon, such as Hardy, Clodd, Gosse, Swettenham,
John Rodger, Arthur E. J. Legge and Maurice Cameron.2 A month or
two later, Clifford dragged JC to lunch with George Harvey, the manager
of Harper’s. At this meeting, a contract for a serial was concluded
[Nostromo].3 In 1910, Clifford introduced Gordon Bennett4 to the works
of JC, and Bennett telegraphed the New York Herald from Bombay to

1 An exclusive club in Piccadilly.

2 Thomas Hardy (1840–1928); Edward Clodd (1840–1930), banker and
rationalist author; Edmund Gosse (1849–1928; knighted 1925), poet and man
of letters; Swettenham (see note on Gertrude Atherton entry above); John
Pickersgill Rodger (1851–1910; knighted 1899), later Resident in Perak;
Arthur Edward John Legge (1863–1934), poet; Maurice Alexander Cameron
(1855–1936; knighted 1900), Malayan administrator. This seems to have been
the first meeting between Conrad and Hardy; see Martin Ray, “Hardy and
Conrad,” Thomas Hardy Journal, 12.2 (May 1996): 82–84.
3 This is apparently the meeting described by Clifford in his Empire Review
article noted above.
4 “James Gordon Bennett (1841–1918) inherited the New York Herald from his
father and set up its first international edition. He financed various
expeditions (including Stanley’s in search of Livingstone) and, a keen yachts-
man himself, established prizes for international sailing and flying races”
(CL4 365). JC wrote to John Galsworthy on 8 September 1910 that “Gordon
Bennett made a long stay in Ceylon late last year and Hugh Clifford […] fired
into him the whole, I believe, of my prose. He must have in addition
preached not a little to that American citizen – but of that he does not boast.
[… Clifford], good fellow, has been patting himself on the back ever since he
heard of the offer from the N.Y. Herald” (CL4 365). The offer from the
Herald came through in August 1910, but in the event a contract was not
signed until a year later (see Najder, 366). Chance is dedicated to Clifford,
“whose steadfast friendship is responsible for the existence of these pages.”
The novel was serialized in The New York Herald, 21 January–30 June 1912.
28

“buy a Conrad” for serialization in its Sunday edition: Chance’s dedication

to Clifford is an acknowledgement of this help. JC had a strong foreign
accent, and spoke somewhat brokenly when moved. Under the stress of
excitement, he would frequently erupt into fluent and idiomatic French.

A Talk on Joseph Conrad and his Work. Colombo: The English

Association, Ceylon Branch, 1927.

At their first meeting in 1899, JC asked Clifford “if I could throw any
light upon the authorship of certain reviews of his earlier books, which
had reached him through his publishers, and which had appeared in a
journal called the Singapore Free Press. I tried to recall the actual character
of the various critical impertinences which I had perpetrated in those
articles, but my mind was almost a blank on the subject. Accordingly I
had nothing to say but that I was afraid that I had written them; and I
well remember the relief I felt when I found how unreservedly Conrad
accepted the fact that his knowledge of Malaya was not very extensive.”
“I induced him on a few occasions to come to London and per-
suaded him to let me introduce him to Gosse, Thomas Hardy, and many
other of the literary lights of the beginning of this century. Conrad did
not greatly shine in this company. He was naturally extraordinarily
reserved, very shy; and moreover he was embarrassed by a simplicity and
lack of self-confidence which were quite astonishing in one who was
already winning such very high praise from the best critics of the day.”
Clifford repeats his account of JC arranging with George Harvey to
publish Nostromo in Harper’s Weekly: “with this contract in his pocket I
put [JC] into a hansom cab to see him to his train. All the way to the
station he made not a single reference to the contract he had secured,
but from time to time ejaculated in his markedly foreign accent, ‘Horréeble
Personalitee! Horréeble Personalitee!’ patently referring to the American
gentleman who had not attracted his favourable attention.”
[This talk mentions all the principal points that Clifford discusses in
his other work on JC.]

Clodd, Edward

Memories. London: Chapman & Hall, 1916, 186.

 29

Clodd1 prints a letter he received from George Gissing,2 dated 30

November 1902, in which Gissing expresses the opinion that “no man at
present writing fiction has such a grip at reality, such imaginative vigour,
and such wonderful command of language, as Joseph Conrad. I think
him a great writer – there’s no other word.”

Colvin, Sir Sidney

Memories and Notes of Persons and Places, 1895–1912. New York:

Scribner’s, 1921, 149.
In a discussion of Robert Louis Stevenson’s works, Colvin3 mentions
that JC “even prefers In the South Seas to Treasure Island,4 principally for
the sake of what he regards as a very masterpiece of native portraiture in
the character of Tembinok, King of Apemama.”

Conrad, Borys

“‘Four Eyes’: Memories of H.M.S. Worcester.” The Conradian, 6.4

(December 1981): 26–31.

JC gave his son a copy of Frederick Benton Williams’s On Many Seas: The
Life and Exploits of a Yankee Sailor (1897),5 during the first year of Borys’s
training on the Worcester.6 JC said of it, “You will like this – it is written
by a Seaman” (26). JC cherished his son’s First Class Extra certificate,
awarded at the end of his training.7

1 Edward Clodd (1840–1930), banker and rationalist author.

2 George Robert Gissing (1857–1903), novelist.
3 Sidney Colvin (1845–1927; knighted 1911), critic of art and literature. For
more detail, see the Hart-Davis entry below.
4 In the South Seas (1896), a collection of Stevenson’s articles and essays on his
travels in the Pacific, and Treasure Island (1883).
5 Frederick Benton Williams, pseudonym of Herbert Elliott Hamblen, civil
engineer and author, born in New Hampshire in 1849. He went to sea and
served as chief mate, 1864–78.
6 Borys was educated in the HMS Worcester, a training-ship moored at
Greenhithe, from 1911 to 1913.
7 Borys noted elsewhere that his success “delighted my Father and he
30

Conrad, Jessie

“A Personal Tribute to the Late Percival [sic] Gibbon and Edward

Thomas.” Bookman, 78 (September 1930): 323–24.

Jessie Conrad first met Gibbon twenty years ago, at Someries, shortly
after JC met him. JC told her, “I am sure you will like him, Jess, but be
careful. He is well known for his repartee, he will give you as good as
you send every time” (323). On the same occasion, she also met Edward
Thomas, and he and Gibbon were usually together when she met them
afterwards. On Thomas’s second visit to the Someries, he was awaiting
the birth of his third child [August 1910]. She saw Thomas only a few
days before his death [April 1917]. He was dressed in khaki, but, by
mutual consent, no one mentioned the war or the future. Shortly after-
wards, JC met Thomas for the last time fortuitously in London. His train
was pulling out of the station when Thomas jumped in and said, “We
meet, then, my dear Conrad, once more” (324). JC told Jessie of his strong
impression that this had been their last meeting.

Conrad, John

Joseph Conrad Today, 2.2 (January 1977): 44–45.

[Two letters from John Conrad, the first dated 20 July 1976] JC enjoyed
W. W. Jacobs’s Many Cargoes.1 He never discussed his work with his
sons, preferring to keep his family and literary lives separate. He would
occasionally show his wife a manuscript, however. John was aboard a
Norwegian sailing ship with JC [September 1920], riding out a storm off
Deal.2 The second, undated, letter recalls how JC told John’s tutor that
the primary purpose of education was to teach “the young scamp” to
think for himself.

cherished that piece of parchment to the end of his life” (My Father: Joseph
Conrad [London: Calder & Boyars, 1970], 81).
1 W(illiam) W(ymark) Jacobs (1863–1943), author of popular maritime tales,
including Many Cargoes (1896). See John Conrad, Times Remembered, 149, 167.
2 See also John Conrad, Times Remembered, 140–42, and Najder, 456.
 31

Cooper, Frederick George

“Joseph Conrad: An Appreciation.” Blue Peter, 9.84 (March 1929):

128–32.

JC, writes Cooper, “assured me that it had never been his object to write
tales of the sea, although he found himself constantly referred to as a sea
novelist” (129). [This comment is repeated, with slight changes, in
Cooper’s “Some Aspects of Joseph Conrad,” Mariner’s Mirror, 26 (1940):
61–78.]

Corkill, Rachael A.

“Conrad and Edmund Candler: A Neglected Correspondence.”

Conradiana, 37 (2005): 11–22.

In October 1918, Edmund Candler wrote to his brother Henry from

London as follows: “I lunched with Conrad yesterday. He is a real friend.
He knows and remembers every story in ‘The General Plan’!” (11;
unpublished letter).1 In another unpublished letter to his brother of 5
July 1919, Candler described a visit to Spring Grove, Wye, on 28–29
June 1919: “I spent the weekend with Conrad at Wye, & on Sunday we
motored to the new house he moves into – Bishopsbourne – in
September,2 & back to Canterbury. . . . Richard Curle, the writer of a
book on Conrad, was staying with him” (18).

Davidson, Jo

Between Sittings: An Informal Autobiography of Jo Davidson. New York:

Dial Press, 1951.

Davidson was introduced to JC by Grace Willard.3 JC sat for his bust at

1 The General Plan was Candler’s collection of short stories, mainly with Indian
themes, published by Blackwood in 1911.
2 The move to Oswalds in Bishopsbourne, Kent, began in early October 1919.
3 This meeting occurred in 1914. Jo Davidson (1883–1952), New York-born
32

Davidson’s studio in Camden House Mews: “he spoke a curious English

– his accent was entirely his own. As we talked, he would invariably
break into French” (118). Davidson asked why he did not write in
French: “‘to write French you have to know it. English is so plastic – if
you haven’t got a word you need you can make it, but to write French
you have to be an artist like Anatole France’” (118).
Davidson took JC to lunch at the European Café and asked him
whether he drew his characters from life “or whether they were purely
children of his mind. His answer was: neither”:

“Look,” said he, “see that man over there?”

I looked up and saw an oldish man with a short straggly beard, a big
nose and a gaunt face, bending over his plate, concentrating on his food.
Conrad said, “You know, that man – he does so-and-so, and so-
and-so,” and he began spinning a yarn. Listening, I looked at the man,
and was astonished at how true the story rang – I got to believing it.
“I’ll go and ask him,” said I.
“Don’t do that. It probably isn’t so, but it might be so” (119).

Davies, W. H.

Later Days. London: Cape, 1925, 52–57, 60–62.

Davies1 first met JC at the Mont Blanc Restaurant,2 and later visited him
one Whitsuntide. A young Pole [Józef Retinger?], who had come over to
discuss political matters relating to England’s attitude to Poland, was also

sculptor, studied at Yale and in Paris. He was well-known for his portrait
busts, including those of Einstein, Shaw, Wells, and Charlie Chaplin. JC told
Pinker that he “looks like a southern Frenchman. As to his talent there’s no
doubt about that” (CL5 565). He exhibited his bust of JC in 1916.
1 W(illiam) H(enry) Davies (1871–1940), working-class poet who lived as a
tramp for some years. The Autobiography of a Super Tramp was published in
1908. On 18 May 1915, JC told Galsworthy that “I am so sorry we can’t
come on Saturday. Some time ago, I invited, foolishly, a verse-writing man
and I can’t put him off because he’s Davi[e]s the tramp-poet (!) and would
think himself bitterly outraged if I were to do that” (CL5 477; Saturday was
22 May 1915).
2 In Gerrard St, Soho. Edward Garnett organized informal lunches there on
Tuesdays.
 33

staying. Conrad and the other guest spoke in Polish. JC was distressed by
Davies’s understanding that he had never actually commanded a ship. JC
had recently signed a petition to obtain a Civil List pension for a certain
writer whose work he did not like. He had wanted to be honest but had
been “troubled by an overkind heart” (55).
Davies and JC discussed the work of John Masefield, not as literary
men but as sailors. JC seemed to suggest that the poems were not
altogether true to life. Davies argued that a man like Dauber [in Dauber:
A Poem (1913)], because of his unusual ability in drawing and painting,
ought to have been one of the most respected men in the ship.1 JC
agreed, “and said he had known cases of the same kind, where the life of
a quiet dreamer like that would have been safer than any other life on the
ship” (57). While discussing other authors, JC exclaimed that “Hudson is
a giant!” (60).2

Davray, Henry-D.3

“Joseph Conrad.” Mercure de France (série moderne), 175 (1 octobre

1924) : 32–55.

JC spoke English with a strong accent, and French with perfect ease and
no accent. He seemed to have read everything in French literature; he
could recite whole pages of Flaubert, knew Balzac well, and could quote
poetry, but he judged realism to be insufficient in literature. He showed
little inclination to discuss his travels, and direct, personal questions
irritated him.
Shortly after the war, JC said to Davray that “le romanesque est
mort avec les chevaliers errants. Il n’y a plus de panache. II faut chercher
ailleurs l’aventure, mais partout où l’homme la trouve, il la tue. Il en est
de même sur la mer, ajoutait-il; il est plus utile à un commandant de
transatlantique de bien danser, de présider une table avec distinction et
de causer agréablement, que de savoir d’où souffle le vent” (47).
JC often told Davray how much he owed to French culture, espe-
cially his “souci du style et de l’expression; sa recherche du mot juste, de

1 The main character is treated with contempt by his fellow sailors but falls to
his death after an act of heroism.
2 W. H. Hudson.
3 Henry-D(urand) Davray (1873–1944), French translator and critic.
34

l’équilibre de la phrase; son emploi des mots pour leur sonorité ou leur
musique, leur force ou leur charme, leur puissance de signification ou de
séduction” (55). When they first met, Davray expressed his regret that JC
had not written in French, and JC “s’en excusa sous des prétextes un peu
confus, et je vis bien que ma réflexion l’avait agacé” (55).

“Joseph Conrad.” La Semaine Littéraire (Geneva), 11.5 (1 août

1903): 361–63.
Davray recalls his first meeting with JC in Sandling Station. H. G. Wells,
who accompanied Davray, introduced them, and JC spoke “dans un
français que j’aurais pu entendre la veille sur les boulevards.” Later,
Davray met him at Wells’s home.1

“Lettres Anglaises.” Mercure de France (série moderne), 31 (1899):

265–66.
Davray recalls several hours spent talking with JC, who had a communi-
cative fervour and admiration for Flaubert, and could cite passages with
accuracy, indicating an intimate knowledge.

“Lettres Anglaises.” Mercure de France (série moderne), 193 (1

janvier 1927) : 485–91.
As an example of JC’s determination never to appear “en pantoufles”
before public or friends, Davray cites a visit he once paid to JC, accom-
panied by H. G. Wells. JC was working when they arrived: “sans doute
était-il en négligé, car il disparut en nous criant d’attendre, et il revint au
bout d’un moment dans une tenue parfaitement correcte” (485).
Davray’s first meeting with JC was some thirty years ago, at which
Cunninghame Graham was also present. JC reduced the manuscript of
Davray’s translation of “Karain” by a third, and he thought the story was
improved in this form. “Ah! c’est en français que j’aurais dû écrire!”
(491), he told Davray.

1 H. G. Wells lived at Sandgate, between Hythe and Folkestone, from 1898 to

1909. Sandling Station was JC’s local railway station at Pent Farm
 35

Dawson, Ernest1

“Some Recollections of Joseph Conrad.” Fortnightly Review, NS 124

(1 August 1928): 203–12. [Ray, ed., 213–15]

W. E. Henley,2 who had never met JC, arranged for H. G. Wells to invite
Dawson to Sandgate and have Conrad “on tap” [early 1901?].
There were certain words that JC, “so to speak, declined to learn”
(206), such as “vowel,” which he pronounced (and, Dawson believed,
wrote) as “wowvel,” and “used,” which became “usit.” He would often
speak in French. “He spoke English with an un-English grace” (207). JC
had read much English history, memoirs, and fiction, but not much
poetry. He had not read Browning, he told Dawson, and “I don’t know
my Stevenson at all well” (207). He praised the work of Wells and James,
took delight in Dickens and had a whole-hearted admiration for Marryat3
and, especially, Fenimore Cooper. He had the highest reverence for
Flaubert, and once declaimed a passage from Saint-Julien l’Hospitalier.4 JC
admired Maupassant for his technique, and he ranked Stendhal very
highly. The only book he ever lent Dawson was Le Rouge et le Noir. He
never spoke of music or painting.
JC said he began writing The Nigger, his favourite work, on honey-
moon,5 and that Almayer’s Folly was written in Malaya, Rouen, London,
the Congo, Geneva, etc.

1 Captain (later Major) Ernest Dawson (1884–1960) served in Burma as a

magistrate and as an officer in the Rangoon Volunteer Rifles. JC’s first extant
letter to him is dated 3 February 1903.
2 W(illiam) E(rnest) Henley (1849–1903), poet and highly influential editor,
was the editor of the New Review when it published The Nigger of the
“Narcissus” in 1897. He was reputedly the model for Long John Silver in R.
L. Stevenson’s Treasure Island.
3 Captain Frederick Marryat (1792–1848), an early pioneer of the sea-story. He
is now remembered for his autobiographical Mr Midshipman Easy (1836). See
JC’s “Tales of the Sea” (1898) (rpt. Notes on Life and Letters). Marryat and
Cooper had been his favourite boyhood reading. See also John Conrad, Times
Remembered, 167.
4 In 1877, Flaubert published Trois contes, containing Un Cœur simple, La Légende
de Saint-Julien l’Hospitalier, and Hérodias.
5 The Conrads departed for their honeymoon on 25 March 1896, the day after
their wedding, renting a small house on Île-Grande. They returned to London
in early September.
36

One day, looking at Canterbury Cathedral, JC remarked that “I often

forget that I am not an Englishman” (210). A year after the War, he
advocated reconciliation with Germany: “It must be so, and it will be
right” (211). On the day of his return from America [June 1923], JC met
Dawson in London, and described his trip as a refreshing holiday, and a
financially rewarding one. [A description of the funeral follows.]

Dent, J(oseph) M(allaby)1

The Memoirs of J. M. Dent, 1849–1926. London: Dent, [1921], 227–

28.

Dent’s son, Hugh, comments in a footnote that JC, on his few visits to
London, always visited Dent, and they would talk excitedly about
literature or the war.

De Ternant, Andrew

“An Unknown Episode of Conrad’s Life,” New Statesman, 31 (28

July 1928): 511. [Ray, ed., 73]

JC worked in the early 1890s as a translator of Slavonic languages for a

translating agency in New Oxford Street. De Ternant remembers JC
showing to Edgar Lee, assistant editor of the St. Stephen’s Review, some
translations of Polish short stories, but Lee regarded them as too
“revolutionary” for his journal to print. [De Ternant does not specifically

1 In 1872, Dent (1849–1926) established a business as a bookbinder before

moving to publishing in 1888. He realized the potential for cheap, uniform
but high quality editions of classic texts and in 1906 began Everyman’s
Library. Dent published ’ Twixt Land and Sea (1912), Within the Tides (1915),
The Shadow-Line (1917), The Rescue (1920), Notes on Life and Letters (1921), and
most of the Uniform Edition. Dent’s administrative headquarters were in
Bedford St, London.
Hugh R(ailton) Dent (1874–1938), son of J. M. Dent, joined the company
in 1909 and worked initially as an editor for Everyman’s Library; he served as
chairman from 1926 to 1938.
 37

state that JC himself translated these stories.] JC resigned from the

translating agency after two months, because his earnings did not exceed
ninepence per week. Most Slavonic firms doing business with English
customers wrote in French or German.

Doubleday, Florence1

Episodes in the Life of a Publisher’s Wife. New York: Privately printed,

1937, 67–86.

JC told Mrs F. N. Doubleday that his father’s papers entitled him to

attend Court, and he described his life with Bobrowski, his uncle, and his
schooling. The model for Lena in Victory was a girl he saw in Mont-
pellier, playing the piano. After her recital, he gave her a five franc note
to impress her. He was shocked to realize suddenly that the original of
Rita in The Arrow of Gold would be an old woman now.
JC explained how he “murdered” the Tremolino2 to escape capture by
a blockade.
In 1898, William Heinemann and Frank Doubleday each gave JC
$100 a month, but at the end of the year JC apologised because he could
not finish the book, which later became The Rescue.3 JC showed Mrs
Doubleday where he resumed work on it, but she cannot remember the
page number. At his expressed wish, she called him “Joseph.” Muirhead
Bone made several portraits of JC at her house.

1 Florence Doubleday (née Van Wyck, 1866-1946) was the second wife of
F(rank) N(elson) Doubleday (1862–1934), American publisher, whom she
married in 1918. (His first wife died on their trip to China in February earlier
in the same year.) She was active in various social causes.
2 In The Mirror of the Sea, JC explains how he and three other adventurers
smuggled guns in the Tremolino for the supporters of Don Carlos, Pretender
to the Spanish throne, from Marseilles to Spain. The ship had to be run on to
the rocks and wrecked to escape the coastguard. There is no evidence to
support this claim.
3 Sydney S. Pawling was a partner of William Heinemann. Doubleday was the
partner of Samuel S. McClure. The book rights to The Rescue belonged to
Heinemann. In February 1898, Pawling managed to sell serial rights to
McClure for £250, £100 of which were to be payable in advance in monthly
instalments (beginning March), with the completed book being delivered in
July. At that point, McClure apparently postponed the deadline for delivery.
38

She attended and describes JC’s reading from Victory and his address
to the staff of Doubleday, Page. He presented her with his marked copy
and notes for the reading. [Account of JC’s remarks during his visit to
America, May 1923. At an earlier meeting, in February 1919, he told her
husband that “The Rescue is finished at last” (74).]

Doubleday, Frank N.

“Joseph Conrad as a Friend.” World Today, 52 (July 1928): 145–47.

Doubleday lunched with JC at Brown’s Hotel, London [ca. 1914].1 In
autumn 1922, he invited JC to America [visit in 1923 is described]. JC’s
reading of Victory in New York “nearly killed him, because of his extreme
nervousness” (147).

Douglas, Norman

Looking Back: An Autobiographical Excursion. London: Chatto &

Windus, 1934, 33, 405–06, 416–17. [Ray, ed., 121–22]
All his friends being out of town, Douglas,2 in a delirious fever, went to
stay with JC [August 1911].
Douglas and some friends had instituted an informal literary luncheon
on Thursdays at the Mont Blanc restaurant in Soho. Those attending
included Stephen Reynolds, Frederic Chapman, Thomas Seccombe, JC,
and W. H. Hudson.3 [ca. 1912]

1 Doubleday was in London in May 1914, and JC reported to Pinker on 31

May that “I had a long talk with him at the lunch” (CL5 382).
2 (George) Norman Douglas (1868–1952) was living on Capri when the
Conrads visited there in 1905. A former diplomat, Douglas was at that time
pursuing his interest in botany. JC was later to help him with the beginning
of his literary career. During school holidays, the Conrads looked after his
son, Robin, who was four years older than John Conrad, and, indeed, they
paid for his education. JC remained a loyal friend to Douglas until the latter’s
sexual behaviour became a matter of public scandal; Douglas was arrested in
1916 on a charge of molestation, but jumped bail before the trial and took up
residence overseas.
3 Stephen Reynolds (1881–1919) was a protégé of Edward Garnett. Reynolds
 39

Frank Harris1 one day suggested driving down to visit “his friend”
JC at Orlestone [1914 or 1915]. Douglas was surprised that Harris, “with
his reputation of a perfect immoralist, should be on terms of intimacy
with Conrad who was the greatest stickler for uprightness I have ever
known” (416). Harris in fact was simply using Douglas to meet JC again,
with a view to future “copy.” Harris and JC had met only once before, in
the company of Austin Harrison.2 On this second occasion, JC scraped
up a polite greeting and then, after three minutes, went upstairs to sulk,
pleading gout, and saying to Douglas, “I should like to know why you
bring this brigand into my house. Am I never to see the last of him?”
(417) JC stayed upstairs until Harris had left.3

had moved to Sidmouth in 1906 and became fascinated with the life of the
Devon fishermen, writing several books about them; Frederic Chapman was
a reader for John Lane; Thomas Seccombe (1866–1923) had been assistant
editor of the DNB from 1891 to 1901, and became a Professor of English.
1 Frank Harris (1856–1931), author, and the editor of The Evening News (1882–
86), The Fortnightly Review (1886–94), and The Saturday Review (1894–98). A man
of extrovert arrogance who made many enemies, he acquired a scandalous
reputation as a rogue and a womanizer. His undoubted flair as an editor was
obscured by his boastful self-aggrandisement.
2 Austin Harrison (1873–1928), son of Frederic Harrison, succeeded Ford
Madox Ford as The English Review’s editor. This first meeting, which took
place in October 1910 at Capel House, is described in Ray, ed., 108. JC
described their visit in a letter to Galsworthy of 27 October 1910: “They
patronised me immensely. It was funny but not very amusing” (CL4 381).
3 Jessie Conrad said of this visit that “it was one occasion on which Joseph
Conrad went completely off the deep end, as the boys would say, without
any warning, and sparks flew for some moments. These three men arrived
early one Sunday afternoon, and coffee was brought at once. I stayed in the
room some half-hour or so and Frank Harris, to everyone’s surprise, rose
and without a word to either of us, coolly rang the bell for more coffee. The
impertinence nearly took my breath away, and the air was tense for a few
moments. Then some remark made by that extraordinary man, who must
have forgotten he was in an English drawing-room, brought Norman
Douglas to his feet with a bound. But consummate gentleman as he was
always, in his dealings with a woman, he merely offered me his arm and led
me to the door” (Joseph Conrad and His Circle [London: Jarrolds, 1935], 97).
40

Douglas, Robin

“My Boyhood with Conrad.” Cornhill Magazine, 66 (January 1929):

20–28.

Robin,1 son of Norman Douglas, lived with the Conrads for several years
[ca. 1913–16]. There were very few visitors to Capel House, although
Douglas describes meeting Lord Northcliffe2 and Jane Taylor3 [née
Anderson] there. JC loved music, such as his wife’s piano-playing or Jane
Taylor’s negro spirituals. Douglas recalls JC telling him of his experience
as a smuggler in Spain.

Draper, Muriel Gurdon

Music at Midnight. London: Harper, 1929, 105.

The author4 prints a letter to her from Norman Douglas, who explains
that he must go to see JC who is ill. JC “has learned his dictionary and

1 Robert (“Robin”) Sholto Douglas was one of Norman Douglas’s two sons.
JC described him in 1913 as John Conrad’s “bosom friend,” a “big Scot 10
years of age and a great favourite with us all” (CL5 287). JC contributed
towards his school fees. Like Borys Conrad, he was educated in the training-
ship, HMS Worcester .
2 The Press magnate, Alfred Charles William Harmsworth (1865–1922; Baron
Northcliffe 1905; Viscount 1917). Among other newspapers, he bought The
Daily Mail in 1896 and founded The Daily Mirror in 1903. He and his brother,
Lord Rothermere, acquired a controlling interest in The Times in 1908. JC
described one of his visits to Capel House in a letter of July 1916 to Pinker
(CL5 614–15; see also 637–38). He was later a visitor to Oswalds.
3 Jane Foster Anderson was a journalist from Arizona (ca. 1888 or 1893–
1940s?). In 1916, when she first visited Capel House, she was working as a
war correspondent, employed by Northcliffe, in England and France. She
was married to the journalist Deems Taylor, later a composer. She seems to
have been close to the Conrads for a couple of years.
4 Massachusetts-born Muriel Gurdon Draper (née Sanders, 1886-1952) moved
in artistic and literary circles in London and the US. She worked as an
interior decorator, and was later a lecturer on this and women’s issues. In the
1940s, she was politically active with respect to American friendship for
Soviet Russia.
 41

has excellent whisky” [a reference to Douglas’s advice to Draper that she

should learn a column of the English dictionary every day. Date: all three
were on Capri in 1905].

Dukes, T. Archibald 1

“Memories of Joseph Conrad.” Spectator, 141 (20 October 1928):

526. [Ray, ed., 59–60]

Dukes claims he was the medical officer when JC was first mate in
“almost the last passenger sailing ship” [the Torrens, 1891–93].2 One day,
JC astonished Dukes by asking him to correct the English of some
writing he had done, to “get more money in port.” One MS had already
been corrected. JC accepted Dukes’s alterations without question, and
“he left me doubting if he cared for the subtle distinctions expressed by
English; and supposing that he preferred those words which sounded
best.” JC was curiously unemotional about important matters, and very
little moved by right and wrong, but he would show much emotion
about unimportant matters of taste. He expressed no indignation at his
“expulsion” from Poland, and merely shrugged his shoulders. When
Dukes assured him that Poland would one day welcome him back again,
he only shook his head.

Dupré, Catherine

John Galsworthy: A Biography. London: Collins, 1976.

1 T(homas) Archibald Dukes is listed in the 1881 Census for Epsom, Surrey, as
a 15-year-old schoolboy, born in Enfield, Middlesex. Birth registered in Jan–
Mar 1866 Edmonton 3a/185. In the 1901 Census, he is a General Medical
Practitioner, unmarried, living at 16 Wellesley Road, Croydon.
2 Stape and Van Marle show that Dukes’s article is “not to be credited”
because, although “Dukes had indeed signed on for the Torrens’s 1891–92
voyage he did not appear” (“‘Pleasant Memories’ and ‘Precious Friendships’:
Conrad’s Torrens Connection and Unpublished Letters from the 1890s,”
Conradiana, 27 [1995]: 23). They suggest that Dukes “may have been after
some publicity and reflected glory when Conrad himself was no longer alive
to correct the record.”
42

Galsworthy1 noted in his diary, “Conrad looking v. worn” (203; 4 April

1913)2 and “[JC] wants me to be his executor. No joke” (203; 9 April
1913).3 Later, he visited the Conrads at Capel House: “found them all
well, much talk with dear Conrad” (217; 6 October 1915).

Edel, Leon

Henry James: The Master, 1901–1916. London: Hart-Davis, 1972.

James’s nephew, William,4 told Edel of visits by JC and Ford to James’s

house at Rye. James would walk ahead with JC, leaving Ford and his
nephew behind. “Occasionally a word or two would drift back and what
I always heard was – French!” (46).

Ellis, Havelock

My Life. London: Heinemann, 1940.

JC, on first meeting Ellis5 [ca. 1920], had recognized him, as he had seen
a bust of Ellis in Jo Davidson’s6 studio (468).

1 John Galsworthy (1867–1944), novelist and playwright, was awarded the

Nobel Prize in Literature in 1933.
2 JC told Galsworthy on 25 March 1913, shortly before the visit, that “I feel
more or less lame outwardly and queerish inwardly”; also, “my mind is like a
burst paper bag – only fit for the gutter – just now” (CL5 196, 197).
3 Galsworthy’s diary entry makes clear several hitherto unexplained references
in JC’s letters to him at this period. On 25 March 1913, inviting the
Galsworthys to visit, JC said, “I have something to tell you – and even
consult you about – if You don’t mind hearing a rather long rigmarole with a
legal aspect” (CL5 197). Following the visit, on 12 April JC wrote to him that
“both Jessie and I are very grateful to you for your consent accepting all the
qualification[s] you mention” (CL5 211).
4 The nephew, William (“Billy,” born 1882), was the second son of Henry
James’s brother, William.
5 (Henry) Havelock Ellis (1859–1939). Doctor and member of the Fabian
Society. His six-volume Studies in the Psychology of Sex, published between 1897
and 1910, caused tremendous controversy and was banned for several years.
6 For details of Davidson, see M. K. Wisehart’s article below.
 43

Epstein, Jacob1

“Conrad as a Sitter.” Daily Dispatch (Manchester), 27 August 1924: 6.

Even when dictating letters, JC would strive for perfection. “‘I am no

literary man,’ he said.” He seemed preoccupied with the thought of
death, and felt that the main body of his work was over. He remarked
that literature, like sculpture, was a plastic art. [Epstein’s recollection of
JC sitting for him in March–April 1924.]

Let There Be Sculpture: An Autobiography. London: Michael Joseph,

1940, 89–94. [Ray, ed., 168–72]

[Epstein sculpted JC for three weeks at Oswalds, March–April 1924.] JC

repeatedly used the word “responsibility” in conversation. He felt he was
“played out” (74). During one sitting, he had a heart attack, but resumed
posing after a whisky. He hated Oswalds, and longed to move; he also
hated outdoors, and the beautiful tree outside the window was a misery
to him.
He said he knew nothing of the plastic arts or music, and had no
interest in the latter, although he remembered being impressed by the

1 Jacob Epstein (1880–1959; knighted 1954) was the son of Jewish immigrants
to New York, where he studied drawing and illustrating before his departure
for Europe in 1902. Settling in London’s Camden Town in 1905, he was
naturalized six years later. His early sculpture, such as his tomb of Oscar Wilde
(1912), was the subject of much puritanical criticism. Between 1916 and 1929
he became established as a modeler of portrait bronzes and his works portray
such figures as Einstein, Shaw, the Emperor Haile Selassie and, later, Winston
Churchill. In his later years, he received numerous public commissions.
JC sat for Epstein in late March and April 1924, and the sculpture is
widely regarded as the most impressive portrait of him. On 26 March 1924,
JC wrote to Elbridge L. Adams that “Epstein has been here for the last week
doing my bust: just head and shoulders. It is really a magnificent piece of
work. He will be done modelling this week and there will be five bronze
copies cast. […] I was reluctant to sit, but I must say that now I am glad the
thing has come off. It is nice to be passed to posterity in this monumental
and impressive rendering” (LL2 341; see also Jessie Conrad, Joseph Conrad
and His Circle, 236–38, and John Conrad, Times Remembered, 205–06).
44

sound of African drums at night. He was very feudal in his ideas, and
thought the villagers were happy being servile.
His library was small, and he had few books. There was a complete
edition of Turgenev in English. Melville, he said, “knows nothing of the
sea” (76). Epstein suggested that Melville was symbolic and mystical, but
JC derided this: “Mystical my eye! My old boots are mystical.” Meredith’s
characters were, he felt, “ten feet high,” while D. H. Lawrence had
started well but gone wrong: “Filth. Nothing but obscenities” (76). He
had unqualified praise for Henry James. Of his own work, “he said it was
a toss up at one time as to whether he would write in English or French”
(76). He stressed the amount of labour that went into each of his novels.
[Epstein: An Autobiography (London: Hulton Press, 1955), 73–77, contains
a virtually identical version of this account.]

Evans, Robert O.

“Dramatization of Conrad’s Victory: And a New Letter.” Notes &

Queries, NS 8 (March 1961): 108–10.

Miss Löhr,1 the producer of B. Macdonald Hastings’s adaptation of

Victory in 1919,2 wrote to Evans that JC “never came to rehearsals, as he
was not in England then, but he came to see it and spent a long time
with us.3 An enchanting man. Spoke very little English!” (110).

1 Marie Löhr (1890–1975) directed and played Lena. Born in New South Wales,
she made her London début at the age of eleven. After many years of acting
in the West End, she acquired the licence of the Globe Theatre in 1918.
2 The three-act play opened on 26 March 1919 at the Globe Theatre, and
enjoyed considerable success, running for eighty-three performances until 6
June 1919.
3 JC did not attend rehearsals, but because of illness, not because he was abroad
(see CL6 393–95). Nor does he seem to have attended a performance,
although he spent four hours with the actors during a reading on 3 March
1919 (CL6 378).
 45

Farjeon, Eleanor

Edward Thomas: The Last Four Years. London: Oxford University

Press, 1958.

[Letter from Thomas1 to Farjeon,2 7 December 1916] “I shan’t come

home this week end. I shall just walk over and see Conrad, who is only
12 miles away” (23l).
[Letter from Thomas to Farjeon, 11 December 1916] “I saw Conrad
and in fact I stayed the night. Then he drove me back [to Lydd] in the
rain” (238).

Ford, Ford Madox

“Literary Portraits – IV: Mr. Arnold Bennett and The Regent.”

Outlook, 32 (4 October 1913): 463–64.

Ford found in JC’s study many years ago a copy of Arnold Bennett’s A
Man from the North,3 which H. G. Wells had left there.

“Preface” to René Béhaine’s The Survivors, trans. Edward Crankshaw.

London: Allen & Unwin, 1938, i–xix.

JC used to say that writing novels was the only occupation for a proper
man, because one could do anything with the novel, provided always that

1 Edward Thomas (1878–1917), poet and critic, was the son of a Welsh railway
clerk. He graduated from Oxford in 1900, and then earned his living by
reviewing, criticism and studies of country life. He met JC at the Tuesday
literary luncheons at the Mont Blanc Restaurant. In November 1916, Thomas
had been posted as a Second Lieutenant to 244 Siege Battery at Lydd. On 10
December 1916, he came to say good-bye to the Conrads before being
posted as a volunteer to front-line service in France, where he was killed four
months later at Arras. See Najder, 422, and Jessie Conrad, Joseph Conrad and
His Circle, 199–200.
2 Eleanor Farjeon (1881–1965), poet and children’s writer. For several years
she had an intense friendship with Edward Thomas, who was married.
3 Bennett’s first novel (1898).
46

“you had your New Form” (i). JC had a “smouldering and passionate
contempt for the imbecilities of common humanity” (i).

“Ford Madox Ford a Visitor Here; Tells of His Work.” Chicago

Tribune, 22 January 1927 [not seen]; rpt. in part in David Dow
Harvey, Ford Madox Ford, 1873–1939: A Bibliography of Works and
Criticism. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1962,
371.

When JC showed Ford the first draft of Chance, the latter bet him that it
would sell 14,000 copies. JC thought Ford was mad, but he later sent a
telegram enclosing the £5 wager that Ford had won.1

Galsworthy, John

Letters from John Galsworthy, 1900–1932, ed. Edward Garnett.

London: Cape, 1934.

Edward Garnett first met Galsworthy when JC brought him to lunch in

the summer of 1900 (5).2 JC was fond of saying “Tempi Passati,”
Garnett recalls (11).3

1 When JC showed him the beginning of Chance in 1905, Ford announced that
it was “something magnificent,” adding that “it’s really like to do […] the
trick of popularity this time” (see Thomas C. Moser below, 531). By
November 1914, the American edition of Chance had sold 20,000 copies
(CL5 427). Najder notes that Ford was very proud of his prophecy, although
he had to wait eight years for its fulfilment (317).
2 Mid-September 1900; see CL2 291, 293.
3 Tempi passati: (Italian) “Times gone by.” E.g., The Mirror of the Sea, start of
Chap. 16: “Often I turn with melancholy eagerness to the space reserved in
the newspapers under the general heading of ‘Shipping Intelligence.’ I meet
there the names of ships I have known. Every year some of these names
disappear – the names of old friends. ‘Tempi passati!’” (The Mirror of the Sea
[and] A Personal Record, ed. Zdzisław Najder [Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1988], 56–57). Also, see the letter to W. L. Courtney, dated 9 Decem-
ber 1897, about The Nigger: “I am most grateful to you for endorsing the
words of the end. Twenty years of life went to the writing of these last few
 47

[Letters from Garnett to Galsworthy] Garnett attacked JC about the

last two-fifths and the ending of Lord Jim: “He more than accepts what I
have said: he goes too far in acceptance” (24; 15 November 1900).1
Garnett today saw JC, who praised Galsworthy’s The Pharisees (49; 20
May 1903).2 Garnett saw JC and W. H. Hudson yesterday; JC was
especially well (94; 5 July 1905).
[Letters from Galsworthy to Garnett] The Conrads, who left last
Monday, enjoyed their visit (44; 5 November 1902).3 Galsworthy recalls
seeing Garnett’s An Imaged World: Poems in Prose (1894) at JC’s house,
years ago. JC is visiting him tonight (106; 4 February 1906). JC criticized
an unidentified portrait: “He admires the work but quarrels with the
pessimism of the artist’s point of view. This is rather amusing in
Conrad” (116–17; July 1906).4 Galsworthy, knowing Garnett had visited
JC, asks for news (177; 24 April 1910).5 Galsworthy has seen JC, and
thought him looking better than for a long time (221; 15 October 1915).6

lines. ‘Tempi passati!’ The old time – the old time of youth and unperplexed
life” (CL1 421). See also CL2 50, CL4 461.
1 See JC’s letter to Garnett, dated 12 November 1900: “Yes! you’ve put your finger
on the plague spot. The division of the book into two parts” (CL2 302).
2 The Island Pharisees (1904) was Galsworthy’s first important book and the first
to appear under his own name. JC read it in manuscript in April 1903 (see
CL3 30).
3 Conrad, Jessie, and Borys had a week-long break in London in 1902, ending
by Monday, 3 November. They stayed at Galsworthy’s flat at 4 Lawrence
Mansions, Chelsea Embankment (see CL2 447). The whole Conrad family
wrote to Galsworthy on 4 November to express their enjoyment of the stay
(CL2 449).
4 The portrait is possibly of Ada Galsworthy, mentioned in a letter to her of 25
July 1906: “we live with your portrait pretty considerably. It is a remarkable
piece of work. It presides silently at our meals and overlooks Borys’ studies.
But we discuss it no longer. The last word has been said and it was my boy
who said it after a period of contemplation: ‘How like Mrs. Jack this is, and I
hope she will never look like that’” (CL3 342).
5 On 7 April 1910, JC wrote from Aldington to Robert Garnett, Edward’s
elder brother, that “I hear with great joy that Edward intends to come down
here to see me” (CL4 323).
6 Galsworthy visited JC shortly after Victory was published on 24 September
1915, and he was no doubt buoyed by its good reception.
48

“Reminiscences of Conrad.” Castles in Spain. London: Heinemann,

1927, 74–95. [For reprints, see Ehrsam 638.] [Ray, ed., 62–64]

Galsworthy first met JC in March 1893, on board the Torrens in Adelaide

harbour. JC, the mate, was popular with the crew, and respectful, if faintly
ironic, towards the captain. JC was serving as mate while convalescing
from his trip to the Congo.
Galsworthy once urged JC to make some money by “tale-telling in
public” (76), for he was an incomparable raconteur, but he refused to do
so. He always spoke of Dickens with affection. He liked Trollope, but he
was not excessively keen on Thackeray, although he had a due regard for
Major Pendennis.1 Meredith’s characters were, for JC, “seven feet high,”
and described in an inflated style. He admired Hardy’s poetry2 and
appreciated Howells, especially The Rise of Silas Lapham (90).3 He read
Flaubert constantly and perhaps delighted most in Turgenev. The name
Dostoevsky was a red rag to him, although “I am told that he once
admitted that Dostoevsky was ‘deep as the sea’” (90).
After the voyage in the Torrens, Galsworthy met JC a few months
later when they went to hear Carmen4 at Covent Garden. JC had already
seen it fourteen times and it was “a vice for us both” (82). He was
unmoved by the blare of Wagner, but he had a curious fancy for
Meyerbeer.5 He had a great liking for Balzac and Mérimée, and had read
a great deal of philosophy, although he spoke of it little. “Schopenhauer

1 Thackeray’s Pendennis (1848) was his first great success. Major Pendennis is
the snobbish uncle of the hero, a desperately poor old soldier who manages
to mingle with all the best families of the aristocracy.
2 Thomas Hardy’s first volume of verse, Wessex Poems (1898).
3 William Dean Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885); see CL2 222.
4 Georges Bizet’s Carmen was first performed in Paris in 1875. JC’s nostalgic
affection for the work, his favourite opera, dates from that year, when he
heard it performed in the Grand Théâtre in Marseilles (as well as the works
of Meyerbeer). Before departing from Champel-les-Bains, near Geneva, in
May 1895, JC presented Emilie Briquel with a copy of the score. See Najder,
41, 179; Jeffrey Meyers, “Conrad and Music,” Conradiana, 23 (1991), 180–81;
Jessie Conrad, Joseph Conrad and His Circle, 103, 226; Borys Conrad, My Father,
49–50.
5 Galsworthy is recalling JC’s remark to him on 18 June 1910 that “I suppose
that I am now the only human being in these Isles who thinks Meyerbeer a
great composer” (CL4 338). Meyerbeer’s enormous reputation declined in
the late nineteenth century after savage and personal attacks by Wagner.
 49

used to give him satisfaction twenty years and more ago, and he liked
both the personality and the writings of William James” (91).
In the last month of his life, according to Jessie Conrad, JC had “a
sort of homing instinct” and he wished sometimes to “drop everything
and go back to Poland” (95).

“Tributes to Conrad.” Forsytes, Pendyces and Others. London:

Heinemann, 1935, 221–32.
In thirty-one years of friendship, JC and Galsworthy never had the
slightest difference. In his “Preface to Conrad’s Plays,” Galsworthy
describes how JC had “fitful longings to write for the stage” (226). The
first of JC’s adaptations, One Day More, was written in Galsworthy’s
studio workroom at Campden Hill. He would occasionally interrupt his
writing to exclaim, “This is too horrible for words.” The play gave him a
certain pleasure when he had finished it, and he was eager to see it
performed.1

Garland, Hamlin

Afternoon Neighbours. New York: Macmillan, 1934, 80–84.

[Account of Garland’s2 last visit to Bishopsbourne, 5 August 1923] JC
was disturbed by America’s commercial menace to England, and he
disliked American cities. They had a heated argument about the US railways.

1 JC’s dramatic adaptation of his short story, “To-morrow,” as a one-act play,

One Day More, occurred while the Conrads were taking a three-month break
in a flat in Kensington, at 17 Gordon Place, at the start of 1904. Galsworthy
had a flat at 16a Aubrey Walk, Campden Hill. There were three evening
performances and two matinées of One Day More between 25 and 27 June
1905 at the Royal Theatre.
2 Hamlin Garland (1860–1940), novelist and chronicler of the Middle Border,
was born in Wisconsin and grew up in Iowa. He was best known for his
stories that give a realistic and sombre portrayal of frontier life with its unre-
warding toil and ceaseless struggle for survival. This was his second meeting
with JC. On Conrad’s friendship with him, see Owen Knowles and J. H.
Stape, “Conrad and Hamlin Garland: A Correspondence Recovered,” The
Conradian, 31.2 (2006): 62-78.
50

JC as a writer lacked early discipline, and all of his later books came
hard, he said. He now agonizes over every page, and 400 words is a good
day’s work. The Nigger was “a page out of my own experience. I saw a
black man die in just that way. Of course the psychology of the story is
my own, but the storm was a reality. All the hardships and terrors of that
voyage are understated rather than overstated” (82–83).1
Nostromo was “scientifically framed” (83). It began as the story of a
mine, and JC then imagined Gould. Nostromo then “took to gun,” and
the revolution began. “All that I knew of South American life gathered
around this theme.”
JC never laid out a scenario. The Rescue was suggested by the sight of
a yacht. All his stories had a “nucleus of reality round which the inci-
dents slowly cohere” (83).
Twain’s Life on the Mississippi “taught me how to use my own life” (83).

My Friendly Contemporaries: A Literary Log. New York: Macmillan,

1932, 489–502, 531–35.2 [Ray, ed., 39–43]

JC had a cockney accent, pronouncing “train” as “trine”; he knew little

of South America, and wrote Nostromo from material acquired elsewhere.
He began Almayer’s Folly with no thought of publication. One day,
passing Fisher Unwin’s premises,3 he saw a set of small volumes on
display, and thought that his novel would be suitable for their series.
Three months later, Unwin wrote to accept his manuscript; it was the
first typewritten letter JC had ever received. The writing of that novel
gave him most pleasure.

1 In June 1924, JC told Jean-Aubry that “The voyage of the Narcissus was
performed from Bombay to London in the manner I have described.” (The
crew, in fact, signed off in France.) He did not remember the name of the
man who had died on board. “Most of the personages I have portrayed
actually belonged to the crew of the real Narcissus, including the admirable
Singleton (whose real name was Sullivan), Archie, Belfast, and Donkin. I got
the two Scandinavians from associations with another ship” (LL1 77).
Najder notes that “The assumed Negro in the Narcissus was Joseph
Barron; on the crew list he put a cross against his name; he died at the age of
thirty-five, three weeks before the ship reached Dunkirk” (82).
2 This was Garland’s first meeting with JC. It occurred at Oswalds in August
1922, and Garland was accompanied by his daughter, Mary Isabel (1903-88).
3 In the entry on Bennett above, this event is placed in Vevey, Switzerland.
 51

When The Nigger was published in the US as “The Children of the

Sea,” JC accepted the change: “I was in no situation to object” (493).1 He
had no scruples about selling a serial to Hearst’s Magazine 2 – “I was
spoiling the Egyptians” (493).3 He had two or three more books to write,
for he needed the money, although he felt “worked out” (494). Even
now, he did not feel absolutely sure of his English: “My writing is based
on the dictionary” (494). On the subject of creativity, JC said that “when
my subconscious self fails to work, I'm done.” He enjoyed the early
stages of writing a novel, but “the frightful grind comes in working out
the concept.” The years at sea “gave me my material” which he is still re-
shaping, for “I can’t use the life around me” (500). [Account of Garland’s
conversations with JC, August 1922].
Wymark Jacobs4 told Garland that JC had engaged in a duel with a
Frenchman as a youth, and he had suffered a rib injury. Shortly after-
wards [4 October 1922], Garland asked JC about another duel, this time
with sabres in the dark hold of a vessel. JC “refused to confirm or deny
it. He laughed and replied, ‘It is not easy to recall those days. Forty-five
years is a long time ago’” (533). [JC also mentioned Stephen Crane, F. N.
Doubleday, his fear of falling ill in a hotel, and Munsey’s serialization of
Victory,5 which gave him his first “wide reading” (533).]

1 The Nigger of the “Narcissus” was published by Heinemann in England on 2

December 1897 (the day before JC’s turned forty) and on 30 November by
Dodd, Mead, and Co. in the US under the title of The Children of the Sea: A
Tale of the Forecastle: as JC told Garland, “America would not buy a book
about niggers.”
2 Hearst’s Magazine began as World Today (1901–12) but was renamed after its
takeover by William Randolph Hearst. This puzzling remark is perhaps a
reference to the serialization in 1912 of Chance in The New York Herald,
owned by Harper’s.
3 See Exodus 3:22: “But every woman shall borrow of her neighbour, and of
her that sojourneth in her house, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and
raiment: and ye shall put them upon your sons, and upon your daughters;
and ye shall spoil the Egyptians.” The Children of Israel took some treasure
from the Egyptians on their journey during their escape to the Promised
Land (“spoil” here suggests “despoil”).
4 On Jacobs, see John Conrad entry above.
5 In February 1914, JC signed a lucrative contract with Munsey’s Magazine (New
York) for the serialization of Victory. As he told Bertrand Russell, “I only
returned last night from a rush to London during which I’ve sold my soul to the
devil in the shape of a Yankee Editor” (CL5 345). Munsey’s “serial” version
of Victory appeared in a single issue of the magazine in March 1915.
52

Garnett, David

The Golden Echo. London: Chatto & Windus, 1953, 22, 45, 57, 62–
64, 131.

Stephen Crane and JC once visited Edward Garnett1 at the Cearne.2

Jessie Conrad’s story about a mad labourer besieging Pent Farm for two
days was invented by her.3 Elsie Hueffer4 told Henry James that Ford
and JC had just completed The Inheritors, and James remarked, “To me
this is like a bad dream which one relates at breakfast! Their traditions
and their gifts are so dissimilar. Collaboration between them is to me
inconceivable” (64).5
Regular attenders at Edward Garnett’s Tuesday lunches at the Mont
Blanc Restaurant6 included W. H. Hudson, Norman Douglas, Edward
Thomas, and J. D. Beresford.7 Others, such as JC, W. H. Davies, John
Galsworthy, and Hilaire Belloc,8 would come when in town, while H. M.
Tomlinson, Muirhead Bone, Stephen Reynolds, and Perceval Gibbon
were occasional visitors.

1 The son of Constance and Edward Garnett, David Garnett (1892–1981), a

novelist is best known for Lady into Fox (1923). He moved in the Bloomsbury
Group.
2 The Garnetts’ new house in the country, near Limpsfield, Surrey. It was here,
at the beginning of September 1898, that Conrad for the first time met Ford
Madox Ford, who was living next door.
3 This is probably a garbled reference to Jessie Conrad’s account of the deranged
German who wanted to shoot JC; see Joseph Conrad and His Circle, 81–83.
4 Elsie Martindale (1876–1924) married Hueffer (later Ford) in 1894. She
wrote several novels and in 1903 translated Maupassant.
5 An undated entry in Olive Garnett’s diary has a similar comment; see Leon Edel,
Henry James: The Master, 1901–1916 (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1972), 47.
6 At 16 Gerrard St, Soho.
7 J(ohn) D(avys) Beresford (1873–1947), novelist, playwright, and poet, was
born and raised in Castor, Cambridgeshire. The son of a clergyman, he was
crippled by polio in his youth. He is best remembered for his early science
fiction novels, The Hampdenshire Wonder (1911) and Goslings (1913), and his
later Utopian novel What Dreams May Come (1941).
8 Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) was a novelist and controversialist for Christian
orthodoxy. He acted as The Morning Post’s literary editor. In 1911, JC de-
scribed him to Galsworthy as “that preposterous Papist Belloc” (CL4 486).
 53

Great Friends: Portraits of Seventeen Writers. London: Macmillan, 1979,

12–22.

During a visit by the Conrads to Edward Garnett’s home, Jessie, who

was prone to take offence, felt herself neglected and made a scene with
Constance Garnett. Jessie never visited again. JC’s relationship with
Constance was, because of her many Russian friends, rather like that of
“a well-behaved, well-bred dog in the presence of the household cat”
(17). Edward Garnett would often visit JC’s home in Kent, where their
wives would not have to meet and where JC would be in no fear of
meeting a Russian. David Garnett denies that his mother influenced JC’s
portrayal of Mrs Fyne in Chance: “I think that the original may have been
another Mrs Garnett – my uncle Robert Garnett’s wife, Mattie, whom
Conrad would have met through Ford and Elsie Hueffer” (18).1 When
David Garnett became a bookseller, JC would buy books from him,
usually French ones such as Mémoires du Baron Marbot: “Conrad was
always interested in everything to do with Napoleon” (20).2
Shortly before his death, JC presented Edward Garnett with a Polish
translation of Almayer’s Folly, inscribed “To Edward Garnett, the first reader
of Almayer’s Folly in the year 1894 and ever since the dear friend of all my
writing life, never failing in encouragement – and inspiring criticism” (21).
As a conscientious objector during the war, David Garnett felt that
JC regarded him as a coward and a shirker. Shortly after the war, how-
ever, he hesitatingly decided to call on the Conrads, accompanied by
Nicholas and Barbara Bagenal.3 JC was irritated by the intrusion, but
greeted Garnett kindly and talked with Bagenal about his experiences in
the Irish Guards.
On one occasion, “Edward and Conrad were having a drink together,
perhaps in Oddenino’s.4 At the next table was a heavily-painted prostitute
who kept looking at them. ‘Look at the dirt in her nostril!’ said Conrad.
Edward had not noticed it. If Conrad had wished to describe the woman

1 Robert Singleton Garnett (1866-1932) was a solicitor who married Martha

Roscoe in 1896. Martha (1869–1946) was the author of The Infamous John
Friend (1909), Amor Vincit (1912), and Unrecorded (1931).
2 Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Marcellin de Marbot (1782–1854), Mémoires du général
baron de Marbot, 3 vols. (Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1891).
3 Nicholas Beauchamp Bagenal (born 1891) married Barbara Hiles (1891–
1984), a painter who moved in the circle of the Bloomsbury Group. He had
served in the Suffolk and Irish Guards.
4 A fashionable restaurant and night club at 54–62 Regent St.
54

in a book he would have begun with that” (21) [Also reprints some of
Garnett’s reminiscences in The Golden Echo, q.v.]

Joseph Conrad Today, 7.1–2 (October 1981–April 1982): 188.

[Letter from Garnett to Marcus Wheeler, dated September 1980] JC’s
friendship, Garnett explains, was with his father, Edward, and not with
his mother, Constance. He doubts whether JC ever discussed the
Russian language with her. His parents took great pains to prevent JC
meeting any of their Russian friends.

Garnett, Edward

“The Danger of Idols.” Saturday Review, 140 (31 October 1925): 505.

JC asked Garnett to read the first three chapters of Suspense in manu-

script, and he criticized them severely, just as, in 1895, he had criticized
the closing scene of An Outcast of the Islands.1 [Letter to the Editor]

“Instructive and Amusing.” Weekly Westminster, 14 February 1925:

473 [not seen]; rpt. in Ford Madox Ford: The Critical Heritage, ed. Frank
MacShane. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972, 140–42.

JC was extremely clear and direct in statements about his own life.
Anything more unlike Ford’s rendering of his conversation cannot be
imagined. Years ago, JC asked Garnett why he had not written a tech-
nical study of the novel. Garnett replied that it was too complicated for
his brain: “So it is for mine. I have never understood it,” said JC (141).
In matters of technique, JC followed his instinct, and had no sacrosanct

1 JC left the completed manuscript of An Outcast of the Islands for Edward Garnett
at Unwin’s office on 18 September 1895. Garnett read the concluding chapters
immediately, and found the scene of Willems’s death to be too prolonged
and static. JC replied on 24 September, thanking Garnett for his “kind and
truly friendly remarks” and agreeing with him that “the fact remains that the
last chapter is simply abominable. Never did I see anything so clearly as the
naked hideousness of that thing” (see CL1 245–48).
 55

plan: “if he had a framework, he chopped and changed it till it became

something very different” (141). [Review of Ford Madox Ford’s Joseph
Conrad: A Personal Remembrance (1924)]

“Joseph Conrad: I – Impressions and Beginnings” [and] “Joseph

Conrad: II – The Long Hard Struggle for Success.” Century
Magazine, 115 (February and March 1928): 385–92, 593–600. [Ray,
ed., 74–83]
[Incorporated in Garnett’s Introduction to his edition of Letters from
Conrad: 1895–1924 (London: Nonesuch Press, 1928)]

“Romantic Biography.” Nation & Athenæum, 36 (6 December

1924): 366, 368 [not seen]; rpt. in Ford Madox Ford: The Critical
Heritage, ed. Frank MacShane. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1972, 133–36.
Garnett introduced Ford to JC. The latter had “a passion for memoirs,
personal and historical” (133). Ford’s version of his collaboration with
JC is often “apocryphal” and “moonshine” (134). [Review of Ford Madox
Ford’s Joseph Conrad: A Personal Remembrance (1924)]

Gerhardie, William

Memoirs of a Polyglot. London: Duckworth, 1931, 269.

During dinner with H. G. Wells and Arnold Bennett, Gerhardie1 compared
JC’s work to cheap wood, poor in grain but with an expensive varnish. It

1 William Alexander Gerhardie (1895–1977), a British (Anglo-Russian) novelist

and playwright, was one of the most critically acclaimed English novelists of
the 1920s, with H. G. Wells an ardent champion of his work. His first novel,
Futility (1922), was written while he was at Cambridge and drew on his ex-
periences in Russia fighting the Bolsheviks, together with his childhood
experiences in pre-revolutionary Russia. He is probably best remembered for
his next novel, The Polyglots (1925), which also deals with Russia. He became
unfashionable after the Second World War and published nothing.
56

had a cloying and artificial melodiousness. “Wells looked baffled, while

Bennett nodded approvingly. ‘Yes’, he said, ‘first-rate stuff is not like that
– more simple.’” [No date given]

Gettman, Royal A., ed.

George Gissing and H. G. Wells: Their Friendship and Correspondence.

London: Hart-Davis, 1961, 146, 215.

JC regularly reads Wells’s copy of the Fortnightly Review (October 1900).

Gissing writes to Wells that JC had sent him Typhoon, and he was
delighted with it: “He is a strong man” (215; dated 31 August 1903].

Gide, André

“Joseph Conrad.” Nouvelle Revue Française, 23 (1 December 1924):

659–62; trans. Charles Owen in “Joseph Conrad.” Joseph Conrad: A
Critical Symposium, ed. R. W. Stallman. East Lansing: Michigan
University Press, 1960, 3–5.

Gide, accompanied by Valery Larbaud1 and Agnes Tobin,2 visited JC at

1 Valery Larbaud (1881–1957), French writer and a friend of Gide and Jean-Aubry.
2 Agnes Tobin (1864–1939) came from California. “Although her parents were
Irish by descent, both had lived in Chile, and her mother was born there. Her
father had been bilingual secretary to the first Roman Catholic Archbishop
of San Francisco. She knew Yeats (who called her the greatest American poet
since Whitman), Alice Meynell, and many other literary people. Her own
work included plays and translations from Petrarch and Racine” (CL5 lvi).
Najder calls her a rich young Californian poetess and patron of writers,
particularly of Arthur Symons, who lived at Orlestone: indeed, JC’s first letter
to her in January 1909 concerns their mutual friend (Najder 371; CL4 184).
She paid her first visit to JC in February 1911, and he dedicated Under Western
Eyes to her as the person “who brought to our door her genius of friendship
from the uttermost shore of the West.” In 1912, she also introduced him to
John Quinn, the New York lawyer and collector, who purchased a number
of JC’s manuscripts.
 57

Capel House1, and he returned the following year.2 JC did not like to
speak of his past life and he was unskilful in direct narration. He admired
Flaubert and Maupassant, and had a special taste for French critics,
especially Jules Lemaître.3 He had only a moderate esteem for Maurice
Barrès, and disliked his theories of expatriation.4 The very name of
Dostoevsky made him pale. JC and Gide refused to praise the work of
Georges Ohnet.5

“Joseph Conrad.” In Autumn Leaves, trans. Elsie Pell. New York:

Philosophical Library, 1950, 70–75.

[Listed in Ehrsam as a separate item, but in fact another translation of

the previous article.]

1 André Gide, French author (1869–1951), was awarded the Nobel Prize in
Literature in 1947. He first met JC in July 1911, when he visited him at Capel
House. This was an important visit for JC: as Najder explains, Gide and
Larbaud “were already quite well acquainted with Conrad’s works. Their visit,
which marked the beginning of Conrad’s life-long friendship and corre-
spondence with Gide, was one of the signs of recognition accorded Conrad
by young French writers converging round the Nouvelle Revue Française:
Copeau, Ghéon, Gide, Larbaud, Rivière, Schlumberger. They were all united
by a dislike of literary modernism. This cult of Conrad fans had no equivalent
in England” (372).
2 Gide visited the Conrads on Saturday and Sunday, 28–29 December 1912.
He had spent Christmas Day with Henry James and Edmund Gosse; see
CL5 152, and Jean Claude, ed., Correspondance André Gide/ Jacques Copeau, 2
vols. Cahiers André Gide nos. 12–13 (Paris: Gallimard, 1987–88).
3 Jules Lemaître (1853–1914), French critic and dramatist.
4 Maurice Barrès (1862–1923), French novelist and nationalist politician. Barrès
turned to a nationalism that grew into vengeful hatred of Germany, fanned
by strong racist feelings and a love for his native Lorraine. He was an anti-
Semite and advocated the voluntary expatriation of Jews and foreigners. In
1916, JC attended a lecture by him at the British Academy (CL5 617).
5 Georges Ohnet (1848–1918), French novelist bitterly opposed to the modern
realistic novel.
58

Gill, David

“Joseph Conrad and the S.S. Adowa.” Notes & Queries, NS 25

(1978): 323–24.

JC served with Gill’s grandfather, William Paramor, in the Adowa for six
weeks (1893–94), as it lay in Rouen harbour. “Family tradition has it that
my grandfather was privileged to read the first chapters of Almayer’s Folly
at that time.”1

Glasgow, Ellen

The Woman Within. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1954, 200–02, 204.

Glasgow visited JC at Capel House in summer 1914,2 and he told Louise

Willcox3 that Glasgow was doing better work than any other American
woman novelist. JC also remarked that he had been the first person to
see John and Ada Galsworthy after they had gone away together.4

1 See also Gill’s “Joseph Conrad, William Paramor, and the Guano Island:
Links to A Personal Record and Lord Jim,” The Conradian, 23.2 (1998): 17–26.
2 Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow (1873–1945), the novelist from Richmond,
Virginia. Beginning in 1897, she wrote twenty novels, mainly about life in
Virginia. She visited the Conrads in June 1914. (A photograph of her in the
garden at Capel House in CL5 Plate 3; see also Jessie Conrad, Joseph Conrad
and His Circle, facing p. 112.) In England until just prior to the outbreak of
the First World War, she also met Hardy, Galsworthy, Bennett, and Henry
James. See also Dale B. J. Randall, ed., Joseph Conrad and Warrington Dawson:
The Record of a Friendship (Durham: University of North Carolina Press, 1968),
84–86.
3 Louise Collier Willcox, a friend of Ellen Glasgow. The 1920 US Federal
Census identifies her as 53-year-old writer, born in Illinois, and living with
her husband in Norfolk, Virginia.
4 John and Ada Galsworthy had been together since 1895, but officially she
remained married to John’s cousin, Arthur. The death of John’s father in
1904 eased the threat of family sanctions, and they made their liaison public.
To escape scandal and ostracism, they went to the Continent in early 1905,
and stayed with the Conrads for a week on Capri, before being seen off from
Naples (March–April 1905). Following Ada’s divorce, she and John were
married on 23 September 1905 (see CL3 206, 225, 280).
 59

JC wrote to her in 1923, during his “unhappy” American visit, which

illness brought to an abrupt close. Unlike most British authors, he did not
have an inherent condescension towards all things American, especially
literature.

Goldring, Douglas

“London Letter.” New York Herald, New York Tribune Magazine, 31

August 1924: 27. [“Fiction-Books” Section]

JC told Goldring1 that he had no “bottom drawer” of manuscripts

stockpiled.

Odd Man Out. London: Chapman & Hall, 1935.

W. L. George,2 in a letter to Goldring dated 3 March 1920, attacked the

cliqueism of modern reviewing, and added that JC had “expressed himself
to me on the subject with characteristic violence” (278). JC thought that
Goldring’s The Singer’s Journey was comparable to Keats (63). [Repeats
some of the anecdotes of Goldring’s Reputations: see below for details.]

“Portrait of an Editor.” English Review, 53 (December 1931): 820–

29 [not seen]; rpt. in Ford Madox Ford: The Critical Heritage, ed. Frank
MacShane. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972, 205–12.

[Repeats some of the anecdotes of Goldring’s Reputations: see below for

details.]

1 Douglas Goldring (1887–1960) began to work for Ford Madox Hueffer

(Ford) on the English Review in 1908 as a sub-editor. He produced volumes of
poems, memoirs, essays and, especially, travel books. He was also noted, in
later years, as a radical journalist and prolific contributor to left-wing
publications.
2 W(alter) L(ionel) George (1882–1926), an English writer born and brought
up in Paris, was known for his novels and writings on feminism.
60

Reputations. London: Chapman & Hall, 1920, 216–19.

Goldring and Ford made a week-end visit to JC’s Luton house.1 Ford and
JC talked endlessly about Flaubert’s technique, Emma Bovary’s drive
through Rouen with her lover and the closing paragraphs of Un Cœur
Simple.2 JC was fairly often present at Ford’s Holland Park Avenue flat3
during the early months of the English Review [1909]. On one such occa-
sion, JC had a technical discussion with Ford about a new book he was
writing [not specified]. During this conversation, JC would turn to Goldring
and remind him that “this is strictly confidential. I know what journalists are!
No paragraphs, please!” (219). [Goldring’s Life Interests (London: Chapman
& Hall, 1948), 192–94, is virtually a reprint of this present item.]

Graham, R(obert) B(ontine) Cunninghame

“Hudson’s Far Away and Long Ago.” Bookmark (London), 7

(Christmas 1931): 10–12.

The author recalls that JC often envied W. H. Hudson’s “damned

facility,” as he called it, and both Graham and JC were deceived by what
seemed to be Hudson’s great simplicity and ease of style, which in fact
concealed vast labour. [Review by Graham of Hudson’s book]

1 At the beginning of November 1908, JC invited the entire editorial group of

the English Review to Someries (the Review’s first issue was scheduled to appear
on 25 November). JC was publishing some of his reminiscences (later A
Personal Record ) in the early issues. See JC’s letter to Ford of 23 October
1923, and Jessie Conrad’s domestic perspective on the visit in Joseph Conrad
As I Knew Him, 57, and Joseph Conrad and His Circle, 131; see also Borys
Conrad, My Father, 56–57.
2 By Gustave Flaubert, published in Trois Contes (1877).
3 The headquarters of the English Review were at 84 Holland Park Avenue,
where Ford occupied some rooms over a fishmonger and poulterer’s.
 61

“Inveni Portum. Joseph Conrad.” Saturday Review, 138 (16 August

1924): 230–35.1 [Ray, ed., 230–35]

JC never wore his heart on his sleeve for critics to peck at. He would
pour scorn and contempt on writers who had pandered to bad taste.
The author once invited JC to attend a meeting, but he declined,
saying, “Non, il y aura des Russes,” and ground his teeth with rage. JC
loved England fervently, and could not tolerate any tampering with
anything with which he had once been familiar. To change that which
had first attracted him seemed a flat blasphemy.

Halverson, John, and Ian Watt

“Notes on Jane Anderson: 1955–1990.” Conradiana, 23 (1991): 59–87.

[Halverson and Watt print a letter from Jane Anderson2 to her husband,
Deems Taylor, describing her first meeting with JC at Capel House on
Sunday, 19 April 1916]:

His voice is very clear and fine in tone, but there is an accent
which I have never heard before. It is an accent which affects every
word, and gives the most extraordinary rhythm to phrases. And his
verbs are never right. If they are in the place they should be – which
is seldom – they are without tense; a new facet for the miracle. […]
“We will talk,” he said suddenly, “but not of ze war.” Then he
told the history of this war, and of other wars; told it with his
gestures, and his shoulders, and those extraordinary flashes in his
eyes. He said that his faith in the French, and all of his hope for
them, had been fulfilled; that the signs of decay were not decay.
They were but the imperfections that marked fine fruit; that in
England there was the goodness which is the foundation of
strength. “But for Russia,” he said, “there can be no hope. I came

1 Graham’s article was originally published with the title, “Inveni Partum” (“I
have found the door”). Later reprintings usually title it “Inveni Portum” (“I have
found the haven”), which, on internal evidence, is almost certainly correct.
2 Jane Foster Anderson (ca. 1888 or 1893–1940s?), journalist and socialite, born
in Atlanta, Georgia. She obtained an introduction to the Conrads in April 1916.
JC regarded her as “quite yum-yum” (CL5 637), and she possibly served, in
part, as a model for Arlette in The Rover and Doña Rita in The Arrow of Gold.
62

to Russia many times. It is great but in numbers. It has grown, it

has flowered. But it is rotten before it is ripe.”
Then he said how, from all over the world, there had been
requests for him to write about the war. But he said that he could
not. The pain of it had come too close to him. […]
We talked a bit about work. It seems that his faith was in
Stephen Crane. He loved him. He grieves, now, over the talent that
he took away with him, and complains that there should have been
such waste. “Yes, there is writing, writing,” he said. “There is Wells,
H. G. He is writing of his theoretical men and his theoretical
women. Human nature he does not know. It would be well if he
did.” And there was the great miscellany of small men who are
pouring out the flood of words and sowing them for bad harvests. “I
despair,” he said, and made eloquent motions with his hands. (62–63)

Halverson and Watt print a letter from Rebecca West1 of 19 May 1959:

I have an enchanting memory of Conrad. When I was a [young] girl

I went to lunch with Cunningham Grahame [sic] and Conrad was
there, and he said to me, “Thank you for that good review you gave
me. It is of course important to me what you think of me.” I
thought he was being funny at my expense, I froze. I was a re-
viewer, I had to review, he need not make fun of me. After I left he
said to Don Roberto, “Why did she look as if she was offended
with me?” They had all understood, and told him so. He went to
endless trouble to tell me that he had really meant it, that he
thought I was very talented, and that of course it mattered to him
that a young talented person thought well of his book. He really
sweated with horror lest I should think he had been teasing me. (76)

Halverson and Watt quote from an interview with Richard Curle on

16 September 1955, in which he spoke cuttingly against Józef Retinger
“for his endless loans of money from Joseph Conrad, which were
apparently meant to be for the Polish cause, but, Conrad thought, were
actually for his own personal use” (84).2

1 For ten years from 1913, she had a relationship with H. G. Wells, by whom
she had a son.
2 J(ózef) H(ieronim) Retinger (1888–1960), a Polish scholar and political
activist who met JC in 1912 through Arnold Bennett. The Conrads travelled
with Retinger and his wife to Poland in 1914. During the War, Retinger
worked to advance the cause of Polish independence.
 63

Halverson and Watt quote from a letter from Retinger, dated 15 May
1957:

At the time I discussed Mark Twain with Conrad, he had a

general dislike of Americans and the American mentality, which he
knew only very slightly until his visit to America after the first war,
when he completely changed his attitude. I suppose that was the
reason why he neither understood nor liked Mark Twain.
Richardson, Smollett and the English novelists of the Eighteenth
Century pleased him because of the rambling way in which they
wrote their novels. He liked details and anything which seemed to
him to give a personal touch to the description of events. That is
why he was so fond of diaries and memoirs.
[…] I am almost sure that he did not understand German, since
I well remember having to interpret for him when addressing
Germans on our way across Germany to Poland. (85)

Hamer, Douglas

“Conrad: Two Biographical Episodes.” Review of English Studies, 18

(1967): 54–56. [Ray, ed., 57–59]
Hamer knew Arthur Burroughs,1 who sailed as an apprentice in the
Tilkhurst in 1885–86. JC, the second officer, was notable for “his courtesy
and foreign manners” (55), said Burroughs. JC continued to visit Bur-
roughs’s mother until about 1895. The carpenter of the Tilkhurst told
Burroughs that, by going to sea, he would find only “a wooden box. […]
Conrad rounded on the carpenter” (55). JC spent all his spare time
aboard writing, and Burroughs remembers him as a good and kind-
hearted sailor with strong nerves.2

1 In the 1901 Census, Arthur Burroughs is described as aged 31, married,

staying with his brother-in-law at 28 Glaserton Road, Hackney. Officer,
Mercantile Marine. Born London.
2 Burroughs’s account of JC’s romantic involvements in the 1890s is repeated
in Najder 180.
64

Hamer also reports that John Sampson,1 Liverpool University

Librarian, met JC just before his death and described him as “an old,
querulous man, complaining of his digestion” (56).

Hammond, Percy
“Oddments and Remainders.” New York Tribune, 15 May 1923: 10.
JC was fascinated by Kentucky. Hammond2 later met JC and Paderewski
at a luncheon.3 JC spoke of Lord Robert Cecil’s mission4 to the US (JC
in US, May 1923).

Hand, Richard J.

“Conrad and the Reviewers: The Secret Agent on Stage.” The Conradian,
26.2 (2001): 1–67.
Hand quotes from a review of the play by Hannen Swaffer: “[JC] did not
like discussing the drama with me when I met him. ‘I am a prose writer,’
he said. And that was that” (21).5

1 John Sampson (1862–1931), author of the monumental The Dialect of the

Gypsies of Wales (1926) was Liverpool University’s Librarian, 1892–1928. In
1919, the Conrad family travelled to Liverpool, where Jessie was to undergo
an operation; they stayed from 30 November to 24 December. The
University Club persuaded JC to attend a banquet in honour of the Merchant
Marine, and he made a speech in praise of British sailors: this was his first
public speaking appearance (see Najder 447).
2 Percy Hammond (1873–1936), drama critic.
3 Najder writes that “On 9 May Conrad was entertained at lunch by Colonel E.
M. House, the influential politician and former advisor to President Wilson.
There he met Ignacy Paderewski, the famous pianist and Polish statesman, of
whom he apparently said later, ‘What an outstanding man … in half an hour
I learned from him more about my motherland than I had within the last
fifteen years of my life’” (476).
4 Robert Cecil (1864–1958; 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, 1923), lawyer,
politician, and diplomat, was one of the architects of the League of Nations,
and in March–April 1923 made a five-week tour to the US to explain its aims.
5 Hannen Swaffer (1879–1962), popular drama critic and gossip columnist. His
review appeared in The Daily Graphic, 3 November 1922: 4.
 65

Hardy, Thomas

The Life and Work of Thomas Hardy, ed. Michael Millgate. London:
Macmillan, 1984, 360.
In May 1907, Hardy attended dinner at the home of Hagberg Wright [in
Westminster].1 Other guests included JC, Maxim and Mme Gorky, H. G.
Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and Richard Whiteing.2

Harkness, Bruce

“Conrad’s Dictionary? Fenby’s Dictionary of English Synonyms.”

Conradiana, 12 (1980): 156–58.
John Conrad told Harkness that JC’s secretary, Miss Hallowes, gave
Fenby’s Dictionary to JC, but he believed that JC never used a dictionary.
John Conrad also remembered Hugh Walpole presenting a dictionary to
JC, who said, “I never use a dictionary. If I want to know what a word
means I read till I find out how it’s used. Then I know” (157).3

“Conrad’s The Secret Agent: Texts and Contexts.” Journal of the Joseph
Conrad Society (UK), 4.3 (1979), 2–11.
John Conrad confirmed Harkness’s view that, about 1905, JC increas-
ingly turned to non-fiction for nearly all of his reading. Harkness prints a
letter to him from Mrs E. L. Voynich,4 dated 1958 (8). She denies that
her husband5 was the model for Vladimir in The Secret Agent. When her

1 Charles Theodore Hagberg Wright (1862–1940) was the Secretary and

Librarian of the London Library, 1893–1940. See Martin Ray, “Hardy and
Conrad,” Thomas Hardy Journal, 12.2 (May 1996): 82–84.
2 Richard Whiteing (1840–1928), journalist and novelist.
3 See also John Conrad, Times Remembered, 203.
4 Ethel Lilian Voynich (née Boole, 1864–1960), who was born in County Cork,
Ireland, was a novelist and musician and a supporter of several revolutionary
causes. The Gadfly (1897) describes an embittered Italian revolutionary who
has to flee to South America.
5 Wilfred Michael Voynich (1865–1930), a Polish nationalist, ran a rare book
shop in Soho.
66

novel, The Gadfly, was published in 1897, Sydney Pawling1 of Heinemann’s

wrote to her to say that JC wished to meet her. Later, Pawling wrote
again to say that JC no longer wished to meet her, as he had decided that
he did not like The Gadfly.2

Harris, Frank

My Life and Loves, ed. John F. Gallagher. London: W. H. Allen,

1964, 704–05. [Ray, ed., 107–09]
Harris and Austin Harrison visited JC.3 The Conrads were homely and
hospitable. JC’s French was impeccable. He presented a copy of The
Mirror of the Sea to Harris, and wrote in it the first and last verses of
Baudelaire’s “L’Homme et la Mer,” from Les Fleurs du Mal (1857).4

1 Sydney S(outhgate) Pawling (1862–1923), partner of William Heinemann, the

publisher, introduced JC to Stephen Crane and acquired The Nigger of the
“Narcissus” for his firm in 1896. He tried, unsuccessfully, to place the unfin-
ished The Rescue.
2 Pawling’s firm, Heinemann’s, published The Gadfly in September 1897. On 11
October 1897, JC wrote to Edward Garnett:
What do you think of the Gadfly? I wrote what I thought to
[Pawling], who rejoined gallantly. But it comes to this, if his point
of view is accepted, that having suffered is sufficient excuse for
the production of rubbish. Well! It may be true too. I may yet
make my profit of that argument. However I am not “hollow-
eyed” and the author of the Gadfly is. […] But the book is very
delightful in a way. Look at the logic: He found his mutton-chop
very tough therefore he arose and cursed his aunt. And the idea of
that battered Gadfly in kid gloves finding his revenge in scolding,
is – well – feminine, or I have lived all these bitter years in vain. It
is perfectly delightful. I don’t remember ever reading a book I
disliked so much (CL1 395).
3 This first meeting between JC and Harris took place in October 1910 at
Capel House, and is described in Ray, ed., 108. JC described their visit in a
letter to Galsworthy of 27 October 1910: “They patronised me immensely. It
was funny but not very amusing” (CL4 381).
4 The first verse includes the reflection that “La mer est ton miroir.”
 67

Harris also recalls commissioning H. G. Wells to review Almayer’s Folly,

and his eulogistic comments on the novel.1

Hart-Davis, Rupert
Hugh Walpole: A Biography. London: Macmillan, 1952, 168, 171,
175, 176, 186, 187, 194–95, 215, 219, 236, 282, 286, 300, 377. [Ray,
ed., 135–39]
[In writing his biography, Hart-Davis used Hugh Walpole’s diaries very
selectively, omitting some of his visits to JC, and not always providing
precise dates. In addition, his transcription is not entirely accurate, and
he introduces much punctuation not in the original. The entries in
Walpole’s diaries relating to JC have been comprehensively and accurately
edited by J. H. Stape in his “Sketches from the Life: The Conrads in The
Diaries of Hugh Walpole” (The Conradian, forthcoming). Since that ac-
count of Walpole’s recollections will supersede that by Hart-Davis, the
entries below give only a brief indication of the topics that Walpole and
JC discussed, as recorded by Hart-Davis.]
Hugh Walpole2 met JC in 1918, at a luncheon party arranged by
Sidney Colvin3 at the Carlton Hotel. The following entries in Walpole’s

1 H. G. Wells, in an unsigned article for the Saturday Review on 15 June 1895,

predicted that JC would attain a “high place among contemporary story-tellers.”
2 Hugh Seymour Walpole (1884–1941; knighted 1937), novelist, published his
first novel in 1909, and went on to write some forty-two novels and volumes
of short stories. The four parts of his Rogue Herries saga (early 1930s) were
the most popular with his vast reading public. Walpole published one of the
first critical books on JC in 1916, although he did not meet him until 1918.
This first meeting, at a luncheon party in the Carlton Hotel, London, is described
in the first extract from Walpole’s diary. In the following year, JC was to call
the 35-year-old Walpole “the most intimate of my younger friends” (CL6 489).
3 Sidney Carlyle Colvin (1845–1927; knighted 1911) was a close friend of JC and
earlier, Robert Louis Stevenson. He was Slade Professor of Fine Arts at
Cambridge and director of the Fitzwilliam Museum. Later, from 1884 to 1912,
he was Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum. He edited
Stevenson’s works and letters and wrote biographies of Walter Savage Landor
(1881) and John Keats (1917). JC first appears to have met Colvin in 1904.
The first meeting between Walpole and JC took place on 23 January 1918, and
was also attended by Walpole’s lover, Percy Anderson (1851–1928), the
American costume- and stage-designer (CL6 174).
68

diary and journals are quoted by Hart-Davis:

JC resembled an “intellectual Corsair.” He talked eagerly, describing
many things about his early life. He was delighted when Walpole said he
liked Nostromo best, although he said The Nigger was “the book!” He cursed
the public for not distinguishing between creation and photography. His
final quarrel with H. G. Wells was over a fundamental difference: he
believed that Wells did not care for humanity but thought they were to
be improved, whereas he loved humanity but know they were not1 (168;
23 January 1918).
JC praised Walpole’s The Green Mirror.2 He said that the end of The
Secret Agent was an inspiration. He claimed that he wrote nearly all of
Romance.3 He did not think the ending of Victory was anything but inevitable.
He had wanted to put “everything” into Lord Jim (171; 2 June 1918).4
JC was in many ways like a child about his various diseases, groaning
and even crying aloud. He recalled George Gissing5 turning over the
manuscript of “Amy Foster” and saying in a melancholy voice, “Ah! I
envy you that.” He said Romance was originally written by Hueffer and
was called Seraphina. JC expanded it, writing the entire whole of “Casa
Riego” and the “Guitar” book.6 He said that he could not read Wells,
Bennett or Galsworthy – in fact, he read no one now. It was his ambition
after the war to get a yacht and sail down the Thames. He had never studied
any technique and did not think that one should (176; September 1918).
JC praised Walpole’s The Secret City.7 He gave an account about his
time with the drunken captain in the Riversdale.8 He said he got only £250

1 For a discussion of JC’s friendship with H. G. Wells, see Martin Ray, “Conrad,
Wells and The Secret Agent: Paying Old Debts and Settling Old Scores,” Modern
Language Review, 81 (1986): 560–73.
2 Walpole’s The Green Mirror (London: Macmillan, 1918).
3 During his collaboration with Ford Madox Ford on Romance (1903), JC’s role
was chiefly to correct existing text and add fragments to the novel.
4 This visit took place at Capel House: as JC reported to Sir Sidney Colvin on 17
May 1918, “We shall have Walpole here on the 1st” (CL6 221).
5 George Gissing (1857–1903), novelist; JC met him by the end of 1899, at the
latest. “Amy Foster” was written May–June 1901 and published in December
of that year.
6 “Casa Riego” is Part Third and “Blade and Guitar” is Part Fourth of Romance.
JC’s description here of his role in the novel’s writing is much more accurate
than his earlier claim that Walpole cited.
7 Walpole’s The Secret City (London: Macmillan), published on 17 January 1919.
8 JC joined the Riversdale, a clipper, as second mate in September 1883, sailing
 69

for Under Western Eyes, and £750 apiece for the next three novels by
Dent. He spoke of Harold Frederic as “a gross man who lived grossly
and died abominably.”1 He said Verloc’s shop was where Leicester
Galleries now were;2 he thought it was easier to have an intellectual
friendship with a Chinaman than with an American (179; January 1919).
JC said: “The damnation of our profession is that it has no artistic
security. There’s not a masterpiece in the world but you can pick thousands
of holes in it if your digestion’s out of order – but if a carpenter makes a
good box it is a good box.” Also: “Journalists, like labour leaders, only shout
up their professions in order to get out of them” (186; March 1919).
JC was annoyed with the reviews of The Arrow of Gold, especially
Robert Lynd’s.3 He said his favourite books to re-read were Hudson’s
Patagonia and Wallace’s Malay Archipelago. He scoffed at Typee4 (187; 10
August 1919).
JC had started Suspense. Cunninghame Graham and T. E. Lawrence
came down (194–95; 18 July 1920).
JC thought that all the talk about technique was absurd, but that you
must write just as well as you could and take every kind of trouble. He
said that F. M. Hueffer belittled everything he touched because he had a
“small” soul. He became very angry as usual at the mere mention of
Americans or Russians, both of whom he detested. He was delighted to
be asked to advise some Liverpool ship men about a training-ship for
boys.5 He spoke of Nostromo and one or two short stories as his best
work (195; 19 July 1920).
During Walpole’s weekend visit to Oswalds in January 1921, JC

from London to Madras, where he left the ship in April 1884. JC had
quarrelled with the Captain, whom JC had accused of being drunk.
1 Harold Frederic (1856–98), American author and journalist, a friend of
Stephen Crane, worked in London. In 1898, he suffered a stroke of paralysis
that proved fatal. A devout Christian Scientist, he refused medical attention.
At the inquest into his death, his daughter testified that he was insane, but
the jury did not agree.
2 In The Secret Agent, Verloc’s shop is located in London’s Soho.
3 Robert Lynd’s review of The Arrow of Gold had appeared four days earlier in
The Daily News.
4 W. H. Hudson, Idle Days in Patagonia (1893); Alfred R. Wallace, The Malay
Archipelago (1869); Herman Melville, Typee (1846).
5 In July 1920, JC was invited by the Ocean Steam Ship Company, a large
Liverpool shipping business, to advise on the planned construction of a
sailing ship to be used in training boys for the Merchant Marine.
70

declared that “in selling his books in America he felt exactly like a
merchant selling glass beads to African natives.” Walpole asked him why
he didn’t write more of the England he loved so much, and JC “said he
was afraid to” (203).
On 20 October 1923, Walpole went down to spend what proved to
be his last week-end with JC. Richard Curle and G. Jean-Aubry were of
the party, and Paul Valéry1 came to luncheon. Walpole recorded that
“Conrad’s eyes lit over Fenimore Cooper and over Proust,” who stirred
him to “deep excitement.” Walpole felt that JC was certainly happier
since his visit to America,2 where he had liked the praise. He remem-
bered snubs like more mortal men (236)
JC praised Walpole’s The Dark Forest (in January 1918),3 and told him
that he had earned £20 for Almayer’s Folly, £100 for The Nigger, and
£1,000 (both countries and serials) for Nostromo (175; ca. September
1918). Walpole took James Annand4 to meet JC, in summer 1919. The
following year, JC remarked that the fundamental fact about human
nature is that “people are not better or worse but simply different” (194;
6 June 1920).5 He also commented on this occasion that he was about to
begin Suspense.
JC gave vent to a sudden tirade about publishers (autumn 1921) and
was generally “much odder” in his behaviour (215) at this time. He once
flung his arms round Walpole and kissed him at a public meeting [ca.
February 1922].
Walpole later came to feel [February 1928] that JC was “too
mysterious” (282) ever to have been a close companion, and in his last
years he had never said anything very interesting: “he was too preoc-
cupied with money and gout. He was only thrilling when he lost his
temper and chattered and screamed like a monkey” (286). JC had a
“charming, unfeeling courtesy” (300), and a “Polish morbidity and antici-

1 Paul Valéry (1871–1945), French poet, had met JC in the previous year and
visited him in October 1922.
2 JC visited America in 1923.
3 A novel (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1916) based on Walpole’s experiences during
the war in Eastern Europe. On 20 January 1918, three days before he had
arranged to meet Walpole for the first time, JC asked Pinker, “Pray get the
publisher of the Dark Forest to send me a copy. I really must see it before I
meet the man” (CL6 174).
4 James Annand, actor.
5 This visit occurred at Oswalds. On 8 June 1920, JC told Alfred A. Knopf
that Walpole “was here yesterday” (CL6 106).
 71

pation of the worst”, which was offset by the times of “enchanting

boyish gaiety and jokes” (377).

Hartman, Howard

The Seas Were Mine, ed. George S. Hellman. London: Harrap, 1936,
15, 82–87, 95–96, 108–19, 120–21, 209–10, 225, 250, 251–52, 298;
rpt. in part in Conradiana, 1.2 (1968) and 2.2 (1969), passim.

[Hartman met JC in London when he was nineteen (i.e., 1887) and JC,
by his own account, was nearly thirty-one (i.e., 1888) and living in
lodgings in Pimlico (i.e., 1889). Hartman later met JC in the Highland
Forest (i.e., 1887) in Singapore. Unreliable account of JC meeting models
for Lord Jim, Jewel, Schomberg, Falk, et al.]

Hastings, B(asil) Macdonald

Ladies Half-Way. London: Harrap, 1927, 264–69. [Ray, ed., 222–24]

Hastings1 worked with JC on the dramatization of Victory [in 1916]. At

1 B(asil) Macdonald Hastings (1881–1928), a dramatist, had his first play pro-
duced in 1912. During the war, he enlisted in the army and was later
commissioned into the Royal Air Force. Hastings approached JC about
dramatizing his novel, Victory, in early 1916 and produced an adaptation in
the following April. JC had reservations about it, but came to regard it as a
sure commercial success and showed great interest in the casting. (He also
planned to collaborate with Hastings on an original play, set in Italy with
English characters, about a forged painting by an Old Master.) In a letter of
25 January 1917, JC wrote to Hastings that “you can have no conception of
my ignorance in theatrical art. I can’t even imagine a scenic effect. But reading
your adaptation I, even I, felt something, what I imagine to be the scenic
emotion come through to me – get home” (CL6 16). Production of Victory
was delayed by the conditions of war and the illness of a principal actor, but
the three-act play eventually opened on 26 March 1919 at the Globe Theatre,
London. (Illness prevented JC attending the opening night.) It enjoyed con-
siderable success, running for eighty-three performances until 6 June 1919.
72

rehearsals, JC said that Lena, “the grande amoureuse”1 should have

“rhythm” (265). JC approved of the dramatization, and begged Hastings
to collaborate on a new work, for which JC wrote many pages of vivid
dialogue. JC was willing to write solely for money, and said that he had
been “performing on a tight-rope – without a net”2 for years, and would
now like to get down. He was happy to make drastic alterations to his
novels for stage purposes. The happy ending of Victory was his idea.
JC was very proud of One Day More, and believed it was perfect.
Seeing it performed had been, he said, “a painful experience” (267),
because of the bad acting.3 He was unwilling to visit the theatre to learn
about drama: “I admit that I cannot even imagine a scenic effect, but I
cannot learn anything from watching” (267). He would not watch
actresses. He was once fed chocolates, he said, by a Madame Modjeska,
“but that was in the Middle Ages” (267).4 Hastings persuaded him to see

1 See JC’s description of Lena in his letter to Hastings of 6 September 1916:

“Lena (being what she is) is a grande amoureuse not only to death (which is but
a trifle) but even to the terrible falsehood and risk of the Lena-Ricardo scene
– the grapple with death itself” (CL6 655).
2 JC wrote to Hastings on 27 February 1917 that “I have been for 20 years
performing on a tight rope (without net) and I am still at it, and I am 59 last
birthday. One would like to see some prospect of getting down at last – if
only on the brink of the grave, just for a moment” (CL6 38).
3 JC mentioned One Day More, his only dramatic effort, to Hastings in
September 1918: “I would be glad to know whether you think it shows a
hopeless incomprehension of the stage. I saw it performed by the S[tage]
S[ociety] with Const[an]ce Collier and J. L’Estrange in the principal parts,
and it was a painful experience – I assure you” (CL6 267). The Stage Society
gave three performances of One Day More in June 1905; at the time, JC told
John Galsworthy that “the reception of the play was not such as to
encourage me to sacrifice 6 months to the stage” (CL3 272). The leads were
Constance Collier (1878–1955) and Julian L’Estrange (1878–1918).
4 JC made this comment to Hastings on 27 February 1919. The editors query
whether JC saw her in Warsaw or Lwów, and add: “Helena Modjeska was the
American stage name of Helena Modrzejewska (née Opid, 1840–1909;
Chłapowska in her second marriage). Born in Cracow, she became much
loved for her performances of Polish drama. In 1868, she joined the
company of the Imperial Theatre, Warsaw. A nationalist outspoken in her
opinion of the Russian occupation, she left Warsaw in 1876 to try life in the
United States. There she learned English and decided to settle, returning to
Europe only for occasional tours of her homeland and one season in
London. Her most admired roles in English were in Schiller, Dumas, Ibsen,
 73

Irving’s Hamlet, and JC praised the actors playing Horatio and Polonius.1
Hastings reluctantly declined to collaborate with JC because he thought
One Day More hopeless, theatrically.
JC defended a book that discussed him as one of six leading men of
letters; one of the other authors “may not be read many years hence, but
he has left a definite mark on his time” (265).2

Heilbrun, Carolyn G.

The Garnett Family. London: Allen and Unwin, 1961, 65.

On Christmas Day 1923, JC described his first meeting with Edward

Garnett to Gertrude Bone,3 who transcribed JC’s account and sent a
copy to Garnett. Part of her letter is used by Garnett in the Introduction
to his Letters from Conrad: 1895–1924 (London: Nonesuch Press, 1928),
vii. Another, omitted, part reads as follows: “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.” [Muirhead Bone and Jean-Aubry were also present at this
Christmas visit.]

and above all Shakespeare” (CL6 375). Her husband was Karol Bodzenta
Chłapowski, a friend of JC’s father and editor of Kraj.
1 On 4 June 1917, JC wrote to Hastings that “The other day I sneaked in to
see Hamlet” (CL6 98). Polonius was played by E. Holman Clark (1868–
1925), famous for his Christmas performances as Captain Hook in Peter Pan,
and JC said that “his Polonius was quite a conception and well realized too”
(CL6 98). Hamlet was being performed at the Savoy Theatre. Henry Brodribb
Irving (1870–1919), an actor-manager and lessee of the Savoy Theatre, had
made the original connection between Hastings and JC. Both Irving and
Clark were being considered for roles in Victory. Neither was eventually cast.
2 Some Modern Novelists: Appreciations and Estimates (New York: Henry Holt,
1917) by Helen Thomas Follett and Wilson Follett, who discuss JC,
Galsworthy, Wells, Bennett, Wharton, and Eden Phillpotts as their six
“Novelists of Today.”
3 Gertrude Helena Bone (née Dodd, 1876-1962), the daughter of a Wesleyan
minister, was born in Holyhead, Anglesey. A writer, she married Muirhead
Bone in 1903 in Chorlton, Lancashire.
74

Hidaka, Tadaichi1

“A Visit to Conrad” (1929) in Yoko Okuda, trans., “East Meets

West: Tadaichi Hidaka’s ‘A Visit to Conrad.’” The Conradian, 23.2
(1998): 73–87.
JC mentioned that he had read “a few” (82) works by Lafcadio Hearn,
such as The Heart (1896) and Out of the East (1895).2 Hidaka had recently
visited Thomas Hardy, and JC recalled that “I used to see him quite
often before, but I haven’t had a chance to see him recently,” adding that
“In facing nature, Mr. Hardy faces static nature, whereas I face dynamic,
active nature, so we are naturally different” (85). JC declared that his
favourite poet was “Keats, I think.”
Hidaka asked JC whom he considered to be the most promising
among new writers in Britain, and JC replied that “it’s a rather difficult
question to answer, but among novelists I would say Lawrence, May
Sinclair, Clemence Dane, Maurice Hurd, and among poets Middleton
Murry, John Freeman, Drinkwater, and as a poet and critic, Edward
Shanks and John Squire” (86).3

Hind, C. L.

“Joseph Conrad.” Authors and I. London: John Lane, 1921, 61–64.

Hind met JC at H. G. Wells’s Sandgate home, a quarter of a century ago.
JC said, “Ah, if only I could write zee English good, well. But you see,
you will see!” (61).

1 Tadaichi Hidaka (1879–1955) was a Professor of English and American

Literature at Tokyo’s Waseda University. He visited JC at Oswalds on Sunday,
3 September 1922. His account of the visit was originally published in
Tadaichi Hidaka and Y. Shiraishi, trans., “Some Reminiscences” and “Amy Foster”
by Joseph Conrad (Tokyo: Eibungakusha, 1929). JC wrote to Hidaka on 11 July
1911 (CL4 457–58).
2 Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904), an Irish-Greek writer who became a naturalized
Japanese citizen.
3 May Sinclair (1863–1946); Clemence Dane (Winifred Ashton, 1888–1965);
Middleton Murry (1889–1957); John Freeman (1880–1929); John Drinkwater
(1882–1937); Edward Richard Buxton Shanks (1892–1953); John Collings
Squire (1884–1958).
 75

Naphtali. London: John Lane, 1926.

Hind last saw JC at rehearsals for The Secret Agent. JC could not
understand why the company did not act at a rehearsal (74).1 [Repeats
anecdote of previous item, 73.]

Holloway, Mark

Norman Douglas: A Biography. London: Secker & Warburg, 1976,

156–58, 192, 330.
Douglas wrote that the manuscript of his Fountains in the Sand (1912)
originally contained “a story running through it: a kind of romance. I
showed the thing in this form to Joseph Conrad, who read it carefully
and then said: ‘What is that woman doing in here? Take her out!’ Out
she went with all that belonged to her” (192) [ca. October 1910].
In a letter to Walter Lowenfels [1924], Douglas said that JC never
wrote to him about his novels: “He always (as we were so often together)
just handed them to me” (330). [Holloway reprints much of his letter to
Muriel Draper on pp. 156–58: see description of Draper’s Music at
Midnight above.]

Hope, G. F. W.

“Friend of Conrad,” ed. Gene M. Moore. The Conradian, 25.2

(2000): 1–56.

Hope’s memoir of his very long friendship with JC concentrates on the

early years, when they would meet in London between JC’s voyages, and

1 C(harles) L(ewis) Hind (1862–1927), writer and journalist. JC attended all the
rehearsals, which took place in late October, including the dress rehearsal:
“At first Conrad was quite pleased with the rehearsals. In time, however, he
became more and more uneasy: he argued with the director about the cuts,
although later he maintained that he had introduced them himself […] and
he was irritated by the acting of some roles” (Najder 470). See also JC’s letter
to the director, J. Harry Benrimo on 27 October (CL6 554–5). The play
opened on 2 November 1922 at the Ambassadors Theatre.
76

their cruises in the Thames estuary in Hope’s yawl, the Nellie.

Specifically literary references include the following:

(1) Edward Frederick Knight’s The Cruise of the “Falcon”

(1884) was “a book much enjoyed” by JC (26)

(2) In 1882, JC travelled up to London while the Palestine

lay in Falmouth: “He told me that he had only been able to
draw a month’s pay, and decided to invest it in a book of
Byron’s Poems and a new travelling bag” (36)

(3) During a visit to Chatham in 1889, Hope “pointed out

all the sights of interest, especially those mentioned by
Dickens, because Conrad was an admirer of Dickens. One
of these was the ‘Seven Travellers Inn’ and the Cathedral
on the left, also ‘The Bull Inn’” (48; also 42; see especially
the opening scenes of The Pickwick Papers).

Hope’s daughter-in-law, Mrs Jean Hope,1 “recalled that Conrad had

once kissed her hand at a Canterbury railway station” (1).

Huneker, James Gibbons

Letters, ed. Josephine Huneker. London: T. Werner Laurie, 1922.

Huneker2 tells John Quinn that he had sent JC a copy of his Ivory Apes
and Peacocks, but since it contained an essay on him, JC obviously felt
unable to acknowledge directly its receipt, so he has done so via Quinn
(206; letter dated 26 March 1916).3

1 Jean Hope (d. 1978) was married to Herford Hope (1884–1941), G. F. W.

Hope’s third child.
2 James Gibbons Huneker (1857–1921) wrote fiction and criticism of
literature, art and modern music (he had also written a well-known book on
Chopin). He was acquainted with French and Polish literature in particular
and had known Stephen Crane in New York. JC invited him to Capel House
in 1912 (CL5 111; see below). Huneker was the first American man of
letters, apart from Crane, to establish a correspondence with JC.
3 Huneker’s Ivory Apes and Peacocks (1915) has more than a dozen chapters on
 77

“A Visit to Joseph Conrad, The Mirror of the Sea.” New York

Times (Magazine), 17 November 1912: 4. [Ray, ed., 21–27]

JC struck Huneker as a simple-mannered gentleman, whose ways were

anything but bluff, or English, or “literary.” His slightly muffled voice is
Slavic, and he speaks English with a rapid and clear enunciation. He
frequently broke into pure and fluent French. He takes an interest in
everything except bad art, which moves him to a vibrating indignation,
and he speaks of his contemporary writers very sympathetically. He
expressed his admiration for Poe, Whitman, Hawthorne, and James.
Throughout his years at sea, the Bible and Flaubert were his companions.
Huneker remarked to JC that he considered “The End of the Tether”
to be in the same key as King Lear, Père Goriot, and a Turgenev tale, “A
Lear of the Steppes.”1 JC was “pleased at the comparison, and then con-
fessed that the love of a father for his son or daughter was very attractive
to him as an artist.”
If one speaks of him as a “literary” man, he emphatically denies it,
yet he is far from being a practical man, and this worries him more than
it worries his friends. He astonished Huneker later by transforming
himself into an Englishman, sporting a monocle and driving with a
haughty expression through the Kent countryside.2 [Huneker’s “With

JC and other writers. JC told John Quinn on 27 February 1916 that “The Apes
& Peacocks book is good and immensely characteristic of our extremely
‘alive’ friend. What mental agility! What a flexible liveliness of style! And of
course he is very far from being shallow, very far; but the light of his intel-
ligence has such wonderful surface-play that one is dazzled at first. It’s only
after a while that one sees how deep he can go – when he likes” (CL5 559).
1 Le Père Goriot, a novel by Honoré de Balzac (1835), part of La Comédie Humaine.
2 Huneker’s introductory visit took place at Capel House on the afternoon of
Saturday, 12 October 1912. Four days later, JC wrote to him that “you were
no stranger for us. Ever since I first heard from You you have been one of
the men who count in our existence, often thought of, frequently spoken
about. I have had from the first the greatest respect for your attitude to life
and art and a very sincere admiration for the expression of your penetrating
intelligence and illuminating judgement of men and things. This is why I have
prized highly your generous appreciation of my work” (CL5 117). JC told
John Quinn in December 1912 that “We liked H[uneker] very much” (CL5
143).
JC first corresponded with him in April 1914, when Huneker sent him a
copy of his Egoists: A Book of Supermen (New York: Scribner’s, 1909), in which
Huneker ranked him with Ibsen, Nietzsche, Stendhal, Flaubert, Baudelaire,
78

Joseph Conrad” in Steeplejack (New York: Scribner’s, 1920), 2: 128–33, is

virtually a reprint of this.]

Hunt, Violet1

The Flurried Years. London: Hurst & Blackett, 1926, 26–28, 31–39,
51–54. [Ray, ed., 122–24]
The English Review, JC said, “may have to stop, but it must not fail” (27).2
He regarded Marwood as “un galant homme” (28).3 During their collabo-
ration on Romance, JC and Ford met only in the intervals of what JC
called “vile but indispensable sensual gorging of grey matter” (35).
JC never “cared very much for the idea of America” (36), and
regarded S. S. McClure as a “prestidigitous person” (37).4

France, Huysmans, and Barrès (CL4 217–18). Huneker also praised him in
Metropolitan Magazine (April 1905) and wrote to JC that he was “the English
(and the Polish) Flaubert” (CL4 234).
1 (Isobel) Violet Hunt (1866–1942), a novelist and short-story writer, was the
eldest daughter of Alfred Hunt, the painter. Her parents were intimates of
Browning, Ruskin, Rossetti, William Morris, and all the Pre-Raphaelites. Her
first novel was published in 1894. She had a brief affair with H. G. Wells and,
in 1908, had recently begun a long relationship with Ford Madox Ford,
whose wife refused to grant him a divorce. All three members of this triangle
tried to gain JC’s support and sympathy, and Ford’s messy personal life
contributed greatly to the cooling of JC’s friendship with him. In a letter to
Galsworthy in March 1912, JC mentions “the great F. M. H. [i.e. Hueffer,
later Ford] who was here shortly after New Year with the somewhat less
great V. H.” (CL5 37).
2 Cf. JC’s letter to Ford, 28 May or 5 April 1909: “The ER. may have to stop but
it mustn’t fail” (CL4 221). If Violet Hunt occasionally seems to be echoing JC’s
letters, it is because many of his letters to Ford exist in copies made by her.
3 Arthur Pierson Marwood (1868-1916), who came from a Yorkshire county
family and read mathematics at Cambridge (though did not take a degree due
to ill-health), met JC in 1905. The friendship was to prove of great value and
importance to JC. The latter told Ford that Marwood “has always seemed to
me a gallant-homme” (CL4 222).
4 S(amuel) S(idney) McClure (1857–1949), American publisher. JC tells Ford
that “I know and you know that McC. is nothing but a sort of farceur and a
faiseur as well, and that no human being worthy of the name has been the
better morally or even materially for any connection with him” (CL4 221).
 79

Ford always spoke of JC with the most reverent and humble

affection, and even imitated him to the point of cultivating his phobias.
On the subject of love, JC once asked Hunt, “What object, what
purpose, could be served by the creation of equivocal situations –
juggling with the realities of life?” (52). He never went in for love affairs,
and he abhorred intrigue: “I can’t breathe in situations that are not clear.
[...] They are neither in my nature, my tradition, or my experience. [...] I
am not fine enough for them” (53).1

Janta, Aleksander

“A Conrad Family Heirloom at Harvard.” In Joseph Conrad: Centennial

Essays, ed. Ludwik Krzyżanowski. New York: Polish Institute of
Arts and Sciences in America, 1960, 85–109.

[Janta quotes an unpublished letter from Jessie Conrad to W. T. H.

Howe] “Passion for burning MSS was shared by [JC’s] father who
burned all his MSS before his son’s eyes while he lay on his death bed.”

Jean-Aubry, G.

“Joseph Conrad and Music.” The Chesterian, 6.42 (November 1924):

37–42.

JC often recalled the evenings he spent at the Marseilles Opera, about

1875, where he heard Meyerbeer’s and Verdi’s operas, and Offenbach’s
operettas. He was eager to know about modern music, and read Jean-
Aubry’s La Musique et les Nations (1922).2 He had no technical notion of

1 JC’s comments here echo his remarks to Ford about his relationship with his
wife, Elsie, and their attempts to involve him in the complications (CL4 222).
2 On 27 May 1922, JC told Jean-Aubry that “J’ai reçu avec joie le vol La
Musique et les Nations hier. J’ai lu Debussy tout de suite avec le plus grand
plaisir. Que je suis content d’avoir un Volume de Vous” (CL7 473). The
editors add that La Musique et les Nations “traces the influence of national
idioms and nationalist ideas on European music. It has chapters on Spain
(Albéniz, Granados, Falla), Italy (Malipiero), Britain (Elgar, Vaughan Williams,
Bax, Bliss, Goossens, Lord Berners), Liszt, Chopin, and Debussy.”
80

music. He spoke of Chopin with much spirit.1 Jean-Aubry arranged for

him to meet Ravel, first in July 1922 and again, a year later, in Arnold
Bennett’s company.2 The only other composer to leave such a strong
impression as Ravel on JC was Charles Szymanowski,3 who visited him
in 1920. Paderewski, who met JC in New York, told Jean-Aubry that
they discussed not music but the Polish question.4
JC desired that one of his books should form the subject matter of a
lyrical drama. He knew Mérimée’s Carmen, and he considered that
Nostromo would be suitable for such lyrical adaptation. In Liverpool in
1919, JC attended Jean-Aubry’s lecture, “Verlaine et les Musiciens.”5

1 Frédéric Chopin (1810–49) was a fellow Pole. See Najder, 178, 387.
2 JC first met the French composer Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) through Jean-
Aubry and Mme Alvar (CL7 611). In December 1922, he told André Gide
that “J’ai eu dernièrement le très grand plaisir de faire la connaissance de
Ravel et de Paul Valéry. Ils ont été charmants tous les deux pour moi” (CL7
629). The later meeting in the company of Bennett occurred on 17 April
1923 at Mme Alvar’s; see Arnold Bennett: The “Evening Standard” Years: “Books
and Persons,” 1926–1931, ed. Andrew Mylett (London: Chatto & Windus,
1974), described above.
3 Karol Szymanowski (1882–1937), pianist and musician, was born on his
family’s estate in Tymoszówka in the Ukraine. He became the director of the
Warsaw Conservatory of Music in 1927.
About 20 December 1920, JC received three Polish visitors: Szymanowski;
Konstanty Skirmunt, the Polish chargé d’affaires in London; and another
musician, Jan Effenberger-Śliwiński. JC and Szymanowski discovered that
their families had known each other very well in the Ukraine; see Najder 457,
and Karol Szymanowski, Z listów [From the Letters], ed. T. Bronowicz-
Chylińska (Cracow, 1958), 198–99.
4 Najder writes that “On 9 May [1923] Conrad was entertained at lunch by
Colonel E. M. House, the influential politician and former advisor to
President Wilson. There he met Ignacy Paderewski, the famous pianist and
Polish statesman, of whom he apparently said later, ‘What an outstanding
man … in half an hour I learned from him more about my motherland than
I had within the last fifteen years of my life’” (476).
5 Jean-Aubry was speaking at the Royal Institution, Liverpool, on 12 Decem-
ber 1912 during the Conrads’ visit to the city to consult Jessie’s surgeon (see
CL6 542).
 81

Jefferson, George

Edward Garnett: A Life in Literature. London: Cape, 1982.

Garnett’s son, David, told the author in 1980 that Ford’s account, in
Ancient Lights, of Garnett showing him the MS of Almayer’s Folly was
“pure invention. Constance [Garnett]’s story is that Edward handed her
the MS of Almayer saying “Look at this and see if the English is good
enough for it to be published” (299).
Ford, in a letter to Edward Garnett dated 5 May 1928, described how
“I was letting my own family go short in order to keep [JC]” during their
collaboration. JC, he added, “never broke with me, or I with him” (264).
Jessie Conrad, defending her Joseph Conrad and his Circle, told Garnett
that she was a complete success as his wife (267).1 In a letter of 20
August 1935, Garnett told Cunninghame Graham that Jessie ought to
have managed a home for barmaids: “I knew that from the first &
Conrad having no knowledge of the social shades in Englishwomen &
wanting a Housekeeper has had to pay at long last, for his experiment”
(268) [i.e., by publication of her book].

Jepson, Edgar

Memories of an Edwardian and Neo-Georgian. London: Richards, 1937.

[Ray, ed., 216–17]

Jepson2 first met JC at Perceval Gibbon’s house in Dymchurch. He

1 The complete text of Jessie’s letter to Garnett of 14 July 1935 is printed in A

Portrait in Letters: Correspondence to and about Conrad, ed. J. H. Stape and Owen
Knowles (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996), 257–58.
2 Edgar Alfred Jepson (1863–1938) was a popular English writer, principally of
adventure and detective fiction, but also of some supernatural and fantasy
stories. He published his first book at the age of thirty-two and proceeded to
write fifty more. He is often considered one of the last of the Decadents, and
was also one of the more senior of the New Bohemians drinking club.
Jepson’s long and productive career spanned the Yellow Nineties through
the Edwardian and Neo-Georgian periods of British letters, and he is
immortalized in Ezra Pound’s Pisan Cantos, where he features in a roll-call of
Edwardian luminaries as “Jepson lover of jade.” Jepson produced many
82

seemed to find his family, who accompanied him, an oppression that kept
him irritable. Gibbon and JC sat on Dymchurch1 wall and talked endlessly
about the number and colour of the steamers’ funnels that they could see.
Later, Jepson met JC once at the Square Club,2 and he looked very much
on his guard. Ford is said by Jepson to dislike Victory (142–44, 150).

Johnstone, Will B.

“‘I Do Nothing but Talk About Myself,’ Roars Joseph Conrad.”

Evening World (New York), 2 May 1923: 23.

JC liked The Rover “better than any of my other books. I always like my
last book the best.” He said he had never been a martinet or a bully
during his years at sea. He had never been seasick. He enjoyed humour,
and praised Jacobs’s sea stories. [Interviewed at home of F. N. Doubleday,
on arrival in New York]

articles, reviews, short stories, novels, and even wrote propaganda pieces
during the war. His talents were employed on everything from lost-race
novels to editing The Win the War Cookery Book and coining such slogans for
the war effort as “Eat Less Bread!” He was the maternal grandfather of the
novelist Fay Weldon (who, during a spell in advertising, created the slogan
“Go to work on an egg”).
1 Dymchurch is a small village located on Kent’s south-east coast at the very
edge of the Romney Marshes. The vast Dymchurch wall built by the Romans
to protect their harbour at Port Lympne runs for about four miles and was
about 20 feet high. From the top of the Dymchurch wall are fine views of
the White Cliffs at Folkestone and Dover.
2 The Square Club was founded by G. K. Chesterton about 1908 in honour of
Henry Fielding; its members included Ford Madox Ford, most of the English
Review set, De La Mare, Galsworthy, and Edward Thomas. The Square Club
was a monthly dining club that met in London, from about 1908 to about
1913–14, and it was perhaps the most substantial such grouping of its time,
with a concentration of those enjoying professional success. Its name
commemorated Mr Square, the philosopher in Tom Jones. Ezra Pound found
it easy to make contacts through the club when he arrived in London.
 83

Jones, Edith R.

“Stephen Crane at Brede.” Atlantic Monthly, 194 (July 1954): 57–61.

The Cranes gave the Conrads a puppy, called Pizanner, which they re-
named.1 Jones liked JC the most of any of the Brede guests, and he
would discuss books with her as seriously as with his fellow writers.

Karrakis, S.

“Joseph Conrad at Home in England.” Poland: The Journal of the

American Polish Chamber of Commerce and Industry (New York), 5.4
(April 1924): 225–28, 247–48. [Ray, ed., 35–39]

Karrakis2 visited JC at Oswalds in August [1921] to obtain JC’s approval

of his dramatization of Under Western Eyes. JC refused, saying “I won’t
have you taking the words of my book. I labored over those words until
no other would fit the thought. It is as if the story and characters and the
words were one, inseparable, indivisible” (228).
JC was interested in American food, and thought America was a

1 “Crane, having decided that the boy needed a dog, presented him with one
of his many puppies, ‘named Pizanner because he was black and utterly
mongrel in shape.’ In honor of the toreador from Carmen – an opera Conrad
was fond of whistling arias from – the puppy was renamed Escamillo and
became a favourite of the entire family” (Najder 257; see also Borys Conrad,
My Father, 31–32).
2 S. Karrakis, a Russo-American writer and journalist, visited JC in 1921. He
had dramatized Under Western Eyes as a stage play and had sailed from
America in David Bone’s ship, the Tuscania, to submit it to JC for his
approval. Before Karrakis arrived, Bone wrote to JC about him, and Jessie
later told Bone that his letter caused JC to continue “brushing his hair fiercely
for at least ten minutes.” After the visit by Karrakis, JC wrote to Bone on 6
September 1919 that “I am very sorry that Mr K. should have taken this
trouble. Of all my novels this, especially, is the one I do not want anybody to
touch. If there is ever any adaptation it will be done by myself” (CL6 337). In
late August, JC had reported on the adaptation to Pinker: “I return the play
which is a very very poor sort of thing […] which I can’t even call bad. It is
just nothing at all. No intelligence no characterisation no interest either in the
situation or in the persons” (CL6 334).
84

purposeful country. He expressed an interest in visiting it. He seldom

went to the theatre, although he had seen several plays in Paris, where he
had been to collect material for The Rover.1 He wished to write for the
theatre one day, and thought that perhaps he would dramatize one of his
novels. [JC was sitting for an etching by an unidentified artist during
Karrakis’s visit.]

Keating, George T., comp.

A Conrad Memorial Library. Garden City, New York: Doubleday,

Doran, 1928.
The quotation from Grimm’s Tales (1812–22) on the title page of Youth
referred not to the text but to the dedication to his wife (94),2 who
described her feelings for JC as “largely maternal” (202). The character
of Fyne in Chance was suggested to JC by H. G. Wells and his interest in
walking. Wells introduced Shaw, Gissing, Douglas and Jerrold3 to JC
(224). There were many possible titles for Chance, but Perceval Gibbon
cast the deciding vote, after JC told him of Hugh Clifford’s efforts on
the novel’s behalf (224). Jessie Conrad described the completion of
Victory (253–54). Early in 1918, shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution,
JC said to Edward Garnett, “Well! this is the end, absolutely, of the
society and culture Turgenev has chronicled in his novels” (310). Jessie
Conrad described JC’s visit to Poland in 1914 and his conviction that
“The Black Mate” was his first work (364–65).4

1 Possibly this refers to JC’s three-day stay in Marseilles in January 1921,

during the writing of Suspense, but the bout of play-going there is improbable.
2 The epigraph reads “. . . but the Dwarf answered: ‘No, something human is
dearer to me than the wealth of the world.’” See Claude-Nöel Thomas’s note
to the Pléiade edition of Conrad: Œuvres (Paris: Gallimard, 1985), 2: 1248–49.
See also Jessie Conrad, Joseph Conrad As I Knew Him, 49.
3 Walter Copeland Jerrold (1865–1929), friend of Ford Madox Ford, a prolific
author of popular biographies, and an editor of standard authors. He was an
employee of The Daily Telegraph.
4 JC wrote “The Black Mate” in January and February 1908. In 1922, JC told
Pinker that he originally wrote it in 1886 for a prize competition in Tit-Bits
(making it his first work), but Jessie insisted that she had been the one who
suggested the story. As Najder notes, “Perhaps Conrad had in fact written
something for Tit-Bits and later connected it with the artistically primitive tale
suggested by his wife” (339).
 85

Knopf, Alfred A.

“Joseph Conrad: A Footnote to Publishing History.” Atlantic

Monthly, 201 (February 1958): 63–67.

Knopf1 first met JC in 1921, at Bishopsbourne. Two years later, he took

Thomas Beer2 to see him to discuss the introduction that JC was writing
for Beer’s study of Crane. Knopf and Beer were trying to advance
Crane’s reputation, and JC said, “Now we must do something for Robert
[Cunninghame Graham].”

Lawrence, A. W., ed.

T. E. Lawrence by His Friends. London: Cape, 1937.

Sir Herbert Baker, the architect, records what his friend T. E. Lawrence
appears to have told him about his conversation with JC in 1920: “when
meeting Conrad he probed him on the methods of his craft; Conrad
admitting but little conscious design” (250).

1 Alfred A(braham) Knopf (1892–1984) worked for Doubleday, Page in New

York and he managed the very successful publicity campaign for Chance. He
established his own firm in 1915, and he remained with it when it was even-
tually taken over by Random House. His list of authors over the years came
to include Wallace Stevens, Willa Cather, Mann, Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir,
Camus, Lessing, and Toni Morrison.
2 JC wrote his Preface to Thomas Beer’s Stephen Crane: A Study in American
Letters (New York: Knopf, 1923) in March 1923.
86

Lawrence, T. E.

Letters, ed. David Garnett. London: Cape, 1938. [Ray, ed., 218]
Lawrence1 said of JC that “What I shall always remember is his lame walk,
with the stick to help him, and that sudden upturning of the lined face,
with its eager eyes under their membrane of eyelid. They drooped over
the eye-socket and the sun shone red through them, as we walked up and
down the garden” (843; letter to Bruce Rogers, dated 26 January 1935).

Lenormand, H.-R.

“II y a quatre ans, en Corse avec Joseph Conrad, coureur de

mers.” transatlantic review, 2.3 (October 1924): 338–40.
JC told Lenormand2 that he wrote The Nigger “en quelques mois, dans un
état de complète hallucination” (338). JC knew Lenormand’s wife, Marie
Kalff, who had appeared in a 1909 production of One Day More.3 JC was
in Corsica to gather material on Napoleon, and he thought Suspense might
be his last novel. He discussed Flaubert, Kipling, Hardy, and he disliked
Russian writers, even Dostoevsky. He recounted an adventure with a Dutch
ship in the East. [Lenormand met JC in Corsica, February–April 1921.]

1 T(homas) E(dward) Lawrence (1888–1935), “Lawrence of Arabia,” met JC

once at the home of Hugh Walpole in July 1920. In 1919–21, Lawrence was a
research fellow at All Souls, Oxford, and he was engaged in re-writing Seven
Pillars of Wisdom, published posthumously in 1935. In 1922, he enlisted in the
ranks of the RAF under the name of J. H. Ross in order to escape publicity.
See Ton Hoenselaars and Gene M. Moore, “Joseph Conrad and T. E.
Lawrence,” Conradiana, 27 (1995): 3–20.
2 Najder notes that H(enri)-R(ené) Lenormand (1882–1951) was “a young
French playwright and enthusiastic admirer of Dostoyevsky and of psycho-
analysis” (460) who was then staying on Corsica. He presented himself to JC
with an introduction from Robert d’Humières.
3 Marie Kalff (1874–1959), comic actress. Lenormand would appear to be
referring to the play’s 1909 French production. JC told Pinker in April 1909
that “My play of To Morrow is in rehearsal at the Theatre for Arts in Paris. I
hear the cast is very hopeful. I let the translator have my share of the rights
as in any case it was a trifle” (CL4 213). The translator was P.-H. Raymond-
Duval, and the play opened on 14 April.
 87

“Note sur un séjour de Conrad en Corse.” Nouvelle Revue Française,

12 (December 1924): 666–71; rpt. in part and trans. in R. W.
Stallman, ed., The Art of Joseph Conrad: A Critical Symposium. East
Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1960, 5–8.

JC repeatedly expressed his fear that he could no longer work. He would

alternate between exclaiming that “je ne suis qu’un conteur” and “je me
trouve trop conscient; j’ai perdu toute innocence” (668). He said that he
had always been obsessed by “les rapports de père à fille” (668). He had
begun writing Almayer’s Folly “sans aucun but,” and he wrote it “d’un seul
jet et comme malgré moi” (669). JC was obviously irritated by Lenormand’s
suggestion that Almayer had an incestuous passion for his daughter.
Lord Jim, JC declared, kept disappearing out of a “sens de l’honneur,”
and when Lenormand proposed a profounder motivation, JC insisted
that “je ne veux pas aller au fond [...]. Je veux considérer la réalité comme
une chose rude et rugueuse sur laquelle je promène mes doigts. Rien de
plus” (669).
Lenormand lent JC two works by Freud,1 but he returned them
unread. He spoke of Freud with “une ironie méprisante” (670). He praised
Kipling, Hardy, and Bennett, but detested Meredith and Hichens.2 He
was severe on Bret Harte, O. Henry, Frank T. Bullen,3 and even
Hawthorne. He knew little of Strindberg. Dostoevsky’s work seemed for
him to exhale “une mauvaise odeur insupportable” (670), but he admired
Turgenev. [Account of conversations with JC in Corsica, February–April
1921]

“Rencontre avec Joseph Conrad.” Gazette des Lettres, 7 (15 March

1951): 30–32.

[Partly reprints the previous two entries]

1 The Interpretation of Dreams (1911) and Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious
(1916), both translated by A. A. Brill.
2 Robert Smythe Hichens (1864–1950), journalist and novelist.
3 Frank T(homas) Bullen (1857–1915), writer, perhaps best known for his The
Cruise of the Cachalot Round the World after Sperm Whales (1899), an account of
whaling in the South Seas.
88

Lewis, John S.

“Conrad in 1914.” Polish Review, 20. 2–3 (1975): 217–22.

Arthur Rubinstein visited JC,1 and he told Lewis that JC was more
correct than cordial: “he seemed stiff and formal [...]. He was trying to
adapt to English ways – We had tea” (217). Rubinstein was accompanied
by Norman Douglas.

Lewis, Tracy Hammond

“News and Views: An Interview with Joseph Conrad.” New York

Morning Telegraph, 31 May 1923: 4; rpt. in Dale B. J. Randall,
“Conrad Interviews, No. 5: Tracy Hammond Lewis,” Conradiana,
3.2 (1971–72): 67–73.

JC confided that the first Christmas he was away from home was raw
and blustery, but he was not homesick, for he was in a new element
which he loved.2
In the late 1880s, he read his first Mark Twain book, Innocents at
Home,3 and he thought The Mississippi Pilot “the nicest of his books.” In
the Congo, JC often “thought of him looking for snags.”

1 Artur Rubinstein (1887–1982), the Polish pianist, made his London début in
1912 and lived there during the war. He visited JC at Capel House in May
1914. Rubinstein knew Aniela Zagórska, JC’s cousin with whom he had
stayed in 1914 at Zakopane in southern Poland.
2 JC’s first Christmas away from home was spent in the Mont Blanc. He had
sailed from Marseilles on 15 December 1874 for Martinique and reached
Saint-Pierre on 16 February 1875. This was his first sea voyage as a passen-
ger. See The Mirror of the Sea: “The very first Christmas night I ever spent
away from land was employed in running before a Gulf of Lions gale, which
made the old ship groan in every timber as she skipped before it over the
short seas until we brought her to, battered and out of breath, under the lee
of Majorca” (ed. Zdzisław Najder [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988],
152–3).
3 That is, The Innocents Abroad (1869), a travel-book that chronicles Twain’s
pleasure cruise in the Quaker City through Europe and Palestine with a group
of religious pilgrims.
 89

Recalling his recent meeting with Paderewski, he described him as “a

delightful man [who] told me more in fifteen minutes than I ever had
any notion of.” JC thought it absurd to suggest that Paderewski had been
in favour of the Jewish pogrom.1
A sailor, JC explained, “is called on to expend a great amount of
nervous energy in a given space of time – often a time of danger. Turbines
have removed the danger and the romance from the sea.”
He had come to America not to make money, but simply to visit.
[Interviewed by six reporters on 28 May 1923, at the office of Doubleday,
Page and Co., Garden City, New York]

“News and Views: Conrad’s Last Interview.” New York Morning

Telegraph, 6 August 1924: 6.
[Lewis, in an obituary notice, recalls interviewing JC – see previous item.]
JC was painfully self-conscious and embarrassed, which showed in his
hurried speech and low voice. He consented to the interview only to
oblige his publishers.

Lhombreaud, Roger

Arthur Symons: A Critical Biography. London: Unicorn Press, 1963.

Symons received a visit from Gide and Agnes Tobin, who had been to
see JC [17 July 1911]. Symons was depressed after the excitement of this
visit, noting in his diary that “I feel like Conrad who said how sickening
it was to go on writing, writing: he himself having been incapable for I
don’t know [how] many days” (275).
Symons’s diary for 13 August 1911 records a conversation with JC:
“CONRAD: ‘I shall write till I am buried.’ ‘I also.’ We shook hands” (322).
Violet Markham,2 in a letter to Lhombreaud about Symons’s eccen-
tricities, recalls one summer when Robert Hichens and John Little set off
to visit JC, who was living nearby, but Symons threw his coat over the
driver’s head and prevented the trip (276).

1 Possibly a reference to the massacre of eighty Jews in Vilnius in April 1919.

2 Violet Rosa Markham (1872–1959; Mrs James Carruthers; CH), Liberal
activist and public servant, and biographer of her grandfather, the architect
Joseph Paxton.
90

Littell, Robert

“Arriving with Joseph Conrad.” New Republic, 34 (16 May 1923):

319. [Ray, ed., 178–80]

JC said that “My mind isn’t critical. I haven’t got enough general culture
for criticism. A sea life doesn’t fit one for that.” He regarded writing as a
“frightful grind.” He had great feeling for the Otago, and thought all of
his ships had such good names, although the Duke of Sutherland was the
most prosaic. He mentions the name of the Tremolino thoughtfully and
tenderly. JC thought the past was “frightfully misty now” but “one
doesn’t forget twenty-seven years. All that gets merged into one solitary
impression.” Life on the sea is “altogether different now.” [Interviewed
on arrival in New York, May 1923]

Lucas, Audrey

E. V. Lucas: A Portrait. London: Methuen, 1939, 69.

Lucas’s daughter1 recalls that the Conrads often used to dine at their
home in 2 Gordon Place, and for a short time they lived only a few
doors away.2 JC was always in and out of their house, and “he used to
tease Borys about the number of calls he made on me, and accused him
of carrying a cake of soap, by means of standing on which he acquired
the extra height necessary to reach our doorbell.”

1 In the 1901 Census, Audrey Lucas is aged 3, living with her parents at 86
Great Portland St, Marylebone. Birth registered at Holborn, April–June 1898.
2 On 17 January 1904, the Conrads left The Pent and took a flat in Kensington
at 17 Gordon Place, near the Fords. JC returned to The Pent in late March.
 91

Lucas, E. V.

“Joseph Conrad.” English Life, 3:4 (September 1924): 247–48. [Ray,

ed., 84–86]

Lucas1 was introduced to JC by Garnett in 1895, in the Restaurant

d’Italie in Old Compton Street. On the table were the galley proofs of
Almayer’s Folly.2 JC visited Lucas occasionally: he “took an incredible
number of lumps of sugar in his tea, and talked more of the English
countryside than of books” (247). He rarely gave his real opinions of
writers, but he described a certain publisher [T. Fisher Unwin?] as a “or-
ri-ble per-son-al-i-ty” (248).
The last time Lucas saw JC was at Canterbury Cricket Week, when
JC arrived at the ground in a coach-and-four driven by J. B. Pinker.3
Watching cricket fed JC’s sense of ironical humour. He told Lucas that,
but for his gout, he would be perfectly happy. [Mostly rpt. in Lucas’s
Reading, Writing and Remembering: A Literary Record (London: Methuen,
1932), 145–48]

Lütken, Otto

“Joseph Conrad in the Congo.” London Mercury, 22 (May 1930):

40–43.

Lütken prints extracts from the records of Captain Duhst, a Dane, who
knew JC in the Congo, e.g., “I am in company with an English captain
Conrad from the Kinshassa Company: he is continually sick with
dysentery and fever” (41) [entry for 23 October 1890]. Duhst told
Lütken that JC was an agreeable and helpful travelling companion,
during the few days they were together.

1 E(dward) V(errall) Lucas (1868–1938), journalist, essayist, and critic. In 1893,

he joined the staff of The Globe. Later, after a long connection with the
publishing firm of Methuen, he became its chairman.
2 JC received the first proofs of Almayer’s Folly on Christmas Eve 1894, and the
book was published on 29 April 1895.
3 John Conrad dates this event to late July–August 1921 (Times Remembered,
178–85).
92

Lutosławski, Wincenty

“A Visit to Conrad in 1897.” Blue Peter, 10 (December 1930): 638–

40. [Ray, ed., 89–94]

Lutosławski1 was introduced to JC by Henry James, who praised him

with rare enthusiasm. JC did not believe that his own writing had lasting
value, and he thought he simply repeated tales from hearsay. He disparaged
his work, saying he was unworthy to write in Polish. He felt that the
great Polish writers were far superior to Scott, Dickens, or Thackeray.
JC continued to regard seamanship as his vocation. It would be, he
said, the most splendid destiny to become a great Polish writer, but he
could not give up British nationality and the right to command British
ships. “He did not acknowledge the duty to write in Polish, simply
because he still looked upon himself as upon a mariner spending a spell
of enforced unemployment in writing down his reminiscences” (639).
Lutosławski includes a partial translation of his “Emigracja zdolności”
[Emigration of Talents], Kraj (1899) (see CUFE, 178–81): “I asked him,
‘Why do you not write in Polish?’ He answered, ‘I value too much our
beautiful Polish literature to introduce into it my worthless twaddle. But
for Englishmen my capacities are just sufficient: they enable me to earn
my living’” (640).2

1 Wincenty Lutosławski (1863–1954), Polish philosopher and nationalist, was a

student in London in 1897. He later taught in Cracow, Geneva, Lausanne,
London, Paris, and Vilnius, where he was Professor of Philosophy, 1919–28.
He suffered several nervous breakdowns during his career.
Having received JC’s address from Henry James, Lutosławski wrote to
arrange the visit to Ivy Walls described here, which occurred on Sunday, 13
June 1897. His purpose, apparently, was to “win Conrad for Polish literature.”
He arrived six hours late, dined, went straight to bed and left very early the
next morning. JC wrote to him in 1911 to assure him that he had kept his
1897 visit a secret (CL4 455–56). Jessie Conrad recalls that JC described him
as “A queer customer if ever there was one.” JC told Olivia Garnett in
October 1911 that “really and truly I don’t know what he wants with me. I
don’t understand him in the least. His illumination seems to me a very naïve
and uninteresting thing. Does he imagine I am likely to become his disciple?
He worries and bores me. […] I believe he is a good man – though
confoundedly inquisitive” (CL4 490); see also Conradiana, 14 (1982): 12, and
Jessie Conrad, Joseph Conrad and His Circle, 53–55.
2 Lutosławski’s article in Kraj gave a highly distorted and harmful account of
 93

MacCarthy, Desmond

“Biography and Reminiscence.” Listener, 4 November 1931: 779.

MacCarthy1 met JC only once, one spring day in 1922.2 There was no
impress of his personality in the neat, white, quiet rooms of his home.

“Literary Causerie: To A Distant Friend (VIII).” Empire Review, 40

(September 1924): 291–99. [Ray, ed., 33–35]
MacCarthy says he met JC in Kent, in spring 1920.3 “Very quiet in voice
and gesture, somewhat elaborate in courtesies, his manner was easy
without being reassuring. He had the kind of manners which improve
fifty per cent those of a visitor, whoever he or she may be. He was very
much the foreign gentleman” (291). He praised Henry James, and spoke
partly in French (a French lady was present). MacCarthy felt that “origin-
ality of mind in an author counted for little with him if unaccompanied
by an aesthetic sense” (292). JC expressed disgust at an eminent author
who, on his first visit, told JC that his father had taken to drink, such a
confession seeming to him a breach of good manners.4 [These
recollections are repeated in MacCarthy’s “Conrad,” Portraits (London:
Putnam, 1931), 68–78].

JC’s reasons for writing in English, and led to Eliza Orzeszkowa’s denunci-
ation of his “desertion.”
1 Desmond MacCarthy (1877–1952; knighted 1951), literary journalist and
drama critic. At the time of his visit to JC, he was literary editor of The New
Statesman, and later became senior literary critic of The Sunday Times, writing
weekly articles for the paper from 1928 until his death. A member of the
Bloomsbury Group, he gained wider recognition through his journalism and
broadcasting. One of the best conversationalists of his day, he described
himself as a hero-worshipper by temperament, except when he was writing.
2 For the likely date of this meeting, see the next item.
3 The date of the meeting given here differs from that in the previous item.
MacCarthy’s reference here to JC’s “new home” – Oswalds, where the
Conrads had moved in October 1919 – suggests that 1920, not 1922, is the
more likely date.
4 The “eminent author” was George Bernard Shaw, and JC described the visit
to Edward Garnett in August 1902: “Four or five months ago G. B. S. towed
by Wells came to see me reluctantly and I nearly bit him” (CL2 440). See
also Najder 285.
94

MacDiarmid, Hugh1

“Joseph Conrad and his Scottish Friends” (1957). [MacDiarmid’s

centenary talk for radio is published in Alan Riach, “Hugh Mac-
Diarmid on Joseph Conrad: Two Hitherto Uncollected Items.” The
Conradian, 21.2 (1996): 15–34]

“It was Edward Garnett in 1920 or 21 who introduced me to Conrad. I

was a young and quite undistinguished man in the presence of my
famous elders but I remember the typical kindness with which they drew
me into their talk. My contact with Conrad was brief, yet enough to give
me a lasting impression of – and profound interest in – Conrad’s force
of character, conversational excellence, and his really enigmatic or
inscrutable personality” (32).

Mackenzie, Compton2

Literature in My Time. London: Rich & Cowan, 1933, 12, 142, 171.

JC bit his nails. His work was not much read at Oxford [1901–04].
Henry James said to Mackenzie that Marlow was “that unending and
remorseless old man of the sea” (171). JC was always dependent on
French in conversation.

My Life and Times: Octave Five, 1915–1923. London: Chatto &

Windus, 1965, 92.

JC refused to stand bail for Norman Douglas in 1916.3

1 Hugh MacDiarmid (né Christopher Murray Grieve, 1892–1978), Scottish poet.

2 Compton Mackenzie (1883–1972; knighted 1952), novelist, best remembered
for Sinister Street (1913) and Whisky Galore (1947).
3 In late 1916, Najder notes, “Norman Douglas got himself into trouble with
the law: this sexually versatile Epicurean had been more and more openly
breaking away from accepted norms of behavior. In December 1915,
Conrad, who had been paying for his friend’s younger son’s education, had
worried about Douglas’s situation and appealed to mutual friends for
 95

Marle, Hans van

“Plucked and Passed on Tower Hill: Conrad’s Examination

Ordeals.” Conradiana, 8 (1976): 99–109.

John Conrad told Hans van Marle that JC was usually averse to making
underlinings in books (109 n. 45).

Marrot, H. V.

The Life and Letters of John Galsworthy. London: Heinemann, 1935,

83–84, 88, 97, 132, 308, 636.

Galsworthy and Ted Sanderson met JC when he was a mate in the

Torrens [1893]. Marrot quotes Sanderson’s testimony that JC was a
courageous and resourceful sailor, and his romantic history and “wide
reading in several languages” made him “a fascinating talker on almost
any subject” (83–84). Galsworthy, in a letter to his parents [23 April
1893], notes that “the first mate is a Pole called Conrad and is a capital
chap, though queer to look at.” He has “a fund of yarns on which I draw
freely” and he had indulged in “a little smuggling in the days of his
youth” (88). To Monica Sanderson, Galsworthy later wrote [8 September
1894], “I suppose you have heard that Conrad has been appointed first
mate of the Torrens again; it is about the best thing that could happen to
him, as the voyage suits him and the ship is a very comfortable and
pleasant one” (97).
When he began writing, Galsworthy had only one literary friend, JC,
and he did not tell him of his wish to write. Galsworthy later came to
regard JC [diary entry, 25 December 1910] as “an impressionist with a
semi-impressionistic, semi-naturalistic technique” (308). JC was, he told a
correspondent in 1931, “no influence whatever on my writing. He was a
most kind and helpful critic of it, but in manner we were poles apart”
(636).

tolerance.” However, on 25 November 1916, Douglas was arrested on the

charge of molesting a sixteen-year-old boy. On 4 December 1916, JC told
Pinker that “bail was peremptorily refused” (CL5 684), and, as Najder
comments, “this renders questionable Compton Mackenzie’s allegation that
Conrad himself refused to put up bail for his friend” (421).
96

Marshall, Archibald

Out and About: Random Reminiscences. London: John Murray, 1933,

139, 142–46, 275. [Ray, ed., 64–65]

Shortly before JC died, Marshall1 met him at the Arts Club, where he was
lunching with Eric Pinker.2 The meeting gave Marshall an “imperishable
memory” of JC, although, he adds enigmatically, “I won’t spoil that
memory by recalling any of our talk that touched on Hueffer” (139).
Marshall’s earlier memories of JC concern their conversations in the
National Liberal Club, and they used to meet at literary lunches in the
Mont Blanc Restaurant [ca. 1908]. Marshall was editor of The Daily Mail,
and he recalls that a parcel of books, including a translation of one by
Anatole France, was once sent to JC for review, but he declined the work
[some time after 1910].
Crippen, the murderer,3 was arrested in Canada [1910], and Marshall
had been sent a list of the books that he had read on his voyage over. He
invited JC to write an article about Crippen’s “sea library,” but “poor
dear Conrad exploded in epistolary fury at being asked to do such a thing
and severed his connection with our journal” (145).
Of Hueffer’s Preface to Stories from de Maupassant (1903), which had
been translated by his wife (“E[lsie] M[artindale]”), JC said to Marshall
that “as a criticism of Maupassant’s writing it was all quite mistaken, but
that as it had been written by Hueffer of course it was well worth

1 Archibald Marshall (1866–1934) was well-known as a novelist and

contributor to Punch. At the time he describes here, he was editor of The Daily
Mail’s Literary Supplement. He had also been a special correspondent for
that paper in Australia, returning to Britain in 1910. He was an amateur in
music and painting, and wrote some thirty novels. Conrad used to meet
Marshall occasionally at the Tuesday literary luncheons of the Mont Blanc
Restaurant in Soho.
2 Eric S(eabrooke) Pinker (1891–1973) worked for his father, J. B. Pinker, JC’s
literary agent. When the latter died in 1922, Eric became the firm’s senior
partner. He immigrated to the US, where he ran a literary and theatrical
agency in New York City.
3 “Dr” H. H. Crippen was arrested on board the Montrose on 31 July 1910,
sailing from England to Canada. He had been sought for the previous three
weeks for the murder of his wife earlier in the year, and was executed in
November 1910. See Jessie Conrad, Joseph Conrad and His Circle, 158–59, and
Borys Conrad, My Father, 65–66.
 97

reading” (146).1
There was a close intimacy between Arthur Marwood and JC, who
gave him a “warm friendship towards the end of his life.” [Marwood
died in 1916.]

Maxwell, Perriton

“A First Meeting with Joseph Conrad.” New York Herald and New
York Tribune (Magazine-Fiction-Books), 24 August 1924: 1; rpt. in
Dale B. J. Randall, “Conrad Interviews, No.1: Perriton Maxwell.”
Conradiana, 2.1 (1969–70): 17–22. [Ray, ed., 66–70]

When acting as editor of Nash’s Magazine, Maxwell2 received a visit late

one night from JC at his third-floor office at 69 Fleet Street. JC was
preoccupied with the sinking of the Titanic, and he was certain that the
ship had not collided with a visible iceberg, and that the crew had been
heroic.3 He felt that “the ship probably had her bottom scraped clean off
by a submerged piece of ice. Deity itself could not have made her float
under such conditions.” He scoffed at the idea of an unsinkable ship of
such a size, and at the “blind trust of men in material and appliances.”
Maxwell explained to JC that his magazine appeared monthly, and he
would not be able to print his article on the subject quickly. Instead,
Maxwell cabled to a New York newspaper with which Nash’s was asso-
ciated,4 and he assured JC that the editor would commission his article,
which he could then write. Four hours later, however, the managing
editor cabled in reply, “Do not want Conrad story.”5 While awaiting this

1 On 22 August 1903, JC told H.-D. Davray that “Hueffer a écrit une petite
préface bien sentie, bien pesée” (CL3 52; see also 64–65).
2 Perriton Maxwell (1868–1947), editor, author, and artist, was born in New York.
His working life was spent in journalism, and he was editor of Nash’s Magazine,
1910-13, living at the Waldorf Hotel, London, during this period abroad.
Before the meeting with JC that he describes, Maxwell had on several occa-
sions written to him unsuccessfully to request an option on forthcoming work.
3 Maxwell dates JC’s visit to his office as occurring on 16 April 1912. The
Titanic had sunk only a few hours earlier, on the night of 14–15 April 1912.
4 Hearst’s New York American.
5 Caleb Marsh Van Hamm (1861–1919) was editor of The American, 1910–19.
This first of two articles by JC on the sinking appeared as “Some Reflexions,
98

reply, Maxwell and JC dined at the Cheshire Cheese Tavern and JC “told
me many memorable things about his life, his ships, his difficulties in
selecting good crews in the early days, and how much he delighted in his
‘farmhouse’ [Capel House] down in Kent and his quiet but productive
life as a ‘landlubber.’”
Maxwell saw JC a few months later: “he had developed something of
the dandy. His beard was cropped close, the pot hat had given place to a
more rakish ‘bowler’ and his coat had a note of Regent Street in its
snugness and contours.”
Maxwell prints an extract from an undated letter (December 1923?) to
him from JC:
I have been a stranger to Santa Claus all my life. You’ll under-
stand how the Polish children did not need a Germanic fairy saint
to give them the sense of sanctity and joy attached to the day of
Nativity in the hearts of Roman Catholics. But I have no feelings
against him personally, and if American children want him – why
should not they have him? What’s the objection? … I want liberty
for American men, women, children, for Santa Claus and for
myself. “Give me liberty – or give me death!”1 … With my love
and Xmas wishes to all free Americans, believe me, faithfully
yours (but still violently protesting as the curtain falls).2

Maxwell also quotes from a letter that JC wrote to him on 23 June 1924
in response to Maxwell’s hypothetical question concerning “probable
present-day conditions had America remained under the political
domination of Great Britain.” JC replied that “the Canadian government
is not subservient to the English Parliament” and that “the rule of the
British monarch is not theoretical, it is symbolical.”

Seamanlike and Otherwise, on the Loss of the Titanic,” English Review, 11

(May 1912): 304–15 (rpt. in Notes on Life and Letters, 1921).
1 A quotation from a speech made by Patrick Henry to the Virginia House of
Burgesses. The speech, given on 23 March 1775, is credited with having
convinced the House to pass a resolution delivering the Virginia troops to
the Revolutionary War. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were in
attendance.
2 For the complete letter, see Collier’s Weekly, 15 December 1923: 10.
 99

“Turning down Conrad.” Sun (New York), 4 December 1936: 32.

[Reprints much of the previous item, with minor changes. E.g., the date
of the meeting is given as the night of 15 April 1912, and the New York
editor cabled in reply, “Who is Conrad? Do not want his story.”]
Prior to their first meeting, Maxwell had written to JC several times,
asking for an option on some of his work, but he always replied that
nothing was sufficiently advanced to offer. He never came to London in
those days, he said, because he was “a prisoner to his job.” While
awaiting the reply from New York, JC told Maxwell, with something of a
sigh, that “I am sometimes tempted to chuck it all and sign on for just
one more voyage.”
Maxwell met JC several times after this first meeting, and contracted
for a number of stories. JC “could be as simple as a child and as terrific
as a hurricane. Like all seafaring men, his vocabulary included a rich store
of profanity,” although he seldom used it.

Mee, Arthur

“A New Novellist [sic] on Dickens.” Western Mail (Cardiff), 1

January 1897 [not seen]; rpt. in Edmund A. Bojarski, “Polish
Secrets Shared: Joseph Conrad’s First Press Interview,” Conradiana,
9 (1977): 107–14, and in CUFE, 176–77. [Ray, ed., 87–88]

JC praised Dickens for his simplicity and vividness of expression, which

made him more accessible than Thackeray. Dickens had not given a new
form to English, but had used it as it had never been used before. [JC,
interviewed during a visit to Joseph Spiridion (aka Kliszczewski) in
Cardiff, Christmas 1896, is discussing an unidentified article on Dickens
in a recent issue of Westminster. Bojarski’s 1977 reprint is described as a
transcript of the newspaper item, which is no longer extant. A Polish
translation of the interview appeared in Witold Chwalewik’s “Józef Conrad
w Kardyfie,” Ruch Literacki, 7.8 (August 1932): 225–29, and Bojarski gives
an English re-translation of this Polish version in his “Conrad in Cardiff:
Impressions 1885–1896,” Anglo-Welsh Review, 15.36 (Summer 1966): 57–
63. The gist of this 1966 version is largely the same as the 1977 reprint,
except that it contains the following paragraph: “Asked what he is
writing now, Mr. Conrad said that he is working on a sea novel of a
100

completely new kind” [The Nigger]. This statement is not present in the
1977 reprint. Chwalewik’s article is translated in CUFE, 172–78, but
CUFE substitutes, for his translation of the interview, the transcript as
given in Bojarski’s 1977 article.]

“Meeting Conrad at the Ship.” Literary Digest, 77 (19 May 1923):

27–28.
[Reprints extracts from a number of newspaper accounts of JC’s arrival
in New York, especially Arthur Burton Rascoe’s interview, described
below]

Mégroz, R.-L.

“Books and their Authors: A London Causerie.” Hindustan Review,

48 (April 1925): 256–57.
Mégroz1 recalls his first meeting with JC, on the opening night of his

1 The Papers of R. L. Mégroz (University of Reading) give the following

information about him:

Rodolphe Louis Mégroz was born in Pimlico on 2 August

1891, the eldest son of Rodolphe Frederick Mégroz, a valet, and
his wife Alice. Before Mégroz was ten his father had died. In 1908,
when he was 17, he joined a bank in London and became a cashier.
He saw active service at Gallipoli in 1915. After spending more
than two years in Egypt and Palestine Mégroz returned to
England at the end of the war and became an Education Instructor
and an officer before being discharged at the end of 1919.
Mégroz’s first book Personal Poems had been published before he
left the army and he now set out to become a journalist.
Meanwhile he was always working on books at intervals, mostly
literary criticism, poetry anthologies and biography.
Mégroz’s output was prodigious and reflected his constant
need to earn a living. At the end of the war Mégroz married and
soon had three children but he and his wife separated in about
1926, and Mégroz went to live in lodgings, struggling to support
himself and his family.
During the Second World War he worked for the BBC
 101

play, The Secret Agent. JC said of Gladstone’s victory in 1892 that “at least
political parties then did stand for recognizable principles” (257).1 He
regarded The Mirror of the Sea as the soul of his work.
In preparing a collected edition of his work he made no single
alteration of importance. “‘I corrected,’ he told me, ‘one or two faults of
grammar, of which there are always a certain quantity in my work – not
faults that a foreigner would make but faults that a very careless Eng-
lishman would make. I am constantly worrying about the choice of a
phrase, and deciding that “this will never do.” I do not consider myself a
literary man, you know. Yes, I am quite serious [...] many people can hit
on the exact word at once for some touch of description or shade of
meaning, while I have to rake all round my poor head! I always write as
well as I can. It is inconceivable that a man should compose less well
than he is able to do. It is like walking lame when you can walk properly’”
(257).

“Un Entretien avec Joseph Conrad,” trans. Jeanne Bourret. Revue

Hebdomadaire (Paris), 8 (27 août 1927): 416–37.

With his first wages, JC bought a volume of Shakespeare, and at sea he

also read Mill’s Principles of Political Economy.2 He learned English by

European News Service and then edited publications for the

Overseas Food Corporation from 1949 until 1951. He died on 30
September 1968 at the age of 77.

Mégroz wrote A Talk with Joseph Conrad and a Criticism of His Mind and Method
(London: Elkin Mathews, 1926) and Joseph Conrad’s Mind and Method: A Study
of Personality in Art (London: Faber & Faber, 1931).
Mégroz interviewed JC in the lounge of the Curzon Hotel, London, on
Thursday, 2 November 1922: on 30 October, JC had suggested meeting at
“four o’clock at the Curzon Hotel, Curzon St. I will be in the lounge down-
stairs, which is generally empty at that hour. We will get into a corner and
have a cup of tea” (CL7 561). JC was there for the opening of his play, The
Secret Agent, at the Ambassadors Theatre that evening: he did not attend the
first night, but remained at the hotel and impatiently awaited Jessie’s report.
The play, which JC had dramatised from his novel, received a bad press and
closed after nine days.
1 W. E. Gladstone formed a Liberal Government on 11 August 1892,
following a General Election.
2 John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy (1848).
102

reading The Standard, when Mudford edited it.1 English phonetics, he

said, were difficult – all those words ending in “ough.” Language was not
the main barrier between nations, and he was opposed to the idea of a
universal language, since each tongue has its individual spirit. Cavemen
were correct not to worry whether their neighbours could understand
them or not.
JC described how he wrote his article on the sinking of the Titanic.
He praised Johnson’s Lives of the Poets,2 and Jeremy Taylor.3 He knew
French well enough to write in it, in a very personal manner. His
English, too, he supposed, was personal. Keats was his favourite poet,
but he was usually in revolt against poets. When writing “The Unlighted
Coast,”4 he had felt too close to events. His best descriptive passages, he
thought, were in The Nigger, An Outcast, and Typhoon, rather than in Lord
Jim. He had once experienced a typhoon in the Indian Ocean. Mrs
Conrad told Mégroz that JC insisted that “The Black Mate” was his first
work.
JC loved England, and had never had a wish to return to sea,
although he had occasionally been impatient when he first left the navy
[sic]. He praised Perceval Gibbon’s ability for finding le mot juste, and he
was much quicker than he was himself. Hueffer once gave him an old
Bible, with a remarkable introduction. [Also incorporates substantial
parts of Mégroz’s other articles]

“Joseph Conrad before breakfast....” T.P.’s & Cassell’s Weekly, 5 (6

March 1926): 680.
JC had pronounced likes and dislikes. Either he could not stand people
or would be utterly charming. His dislike of certain people would find
vent in some nervous trick, such as throwing bread-pellets during a meal.
He was especially prone to this if a party of American visitors came to

1 William Heseltine Mudford (1839–1916) began as Editor of The Standard in

the early 1870s and retired in 1900.
2 Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the Poets (1781).
3 Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667), bishop and writer, is best known as a prose
stylist, especially in his devotional manual, Holy Living and Holy Dying (The
Rules and Exercises of Holy Living, 1650, and The Rules and Exercises of Holy Dying,
1651).
4 It was written for the Admiralty, probably in December 1916, but was not
published during JC’s lifetime.
 103

lunch.1
He read little verse, but admired Keats. Of prose writers, he admired
the seventeenth-century masters, and the sixteenth-century [sic] Jeremy
Taylor. He had little sympathy with eighteenth-century writers like
Addison. JC hated Dostoevsky, and any form of anti-loyalist creed, such
as Communism.
He was known to write in the bathroom, and at one time he would
begin writing before breakfast and might not stop to eat, but have his
food inserted in little pieces into his mouth while he continued writing.

“Joseph Conrad: Man and Artist.” Bookman, 70 (August 1926): 238–41.

Theatres, JC told Mégroz, frightened him, and he never saw plays. “I

have not even seen my friend Mr. Galsworthy’s fine Loyalties,2 although
of course I read him eagerly” (238). JC did not himself enjoy writing
plays: “It is an exercise in ingenuity. I found the writing of The Secret
Agent very trying; it meant cutting all the flesh off the book. And I
realised then, as I had never done, what a gruesome story I had written”
(239).
JC spoke of his delight at first meeting Edmund Candler,3 and of his
“dear friend” G. K. Chesterton, whom he used to meet occasionally,
years ago. Chesterton, in JC’s view, had “expressed better than anyone
my opinion about Dickens. [...] I have the greatest admiration of that

1 Jessie Conrad also described JC’s “bad habit (acquired at sea) of making
bread pellets and flinging them about the room,” and she particularly recalls
one instance of this when several American guests had come to lunch (Joseph
Conrad As I Knew Him, 19–20; Mégroz’s article antedates Jessie Conrad’s
book by six months). See also John Conrad, Times Remembered, 189–90.
2 Galsworthy’s play, Loyalties, opened on 8 March 1922 at St Martin’s Theatre.
3 Edmund Candler (1874–1926) read Classics at Cambridge. He was a travel-
ler, war correspondent, and journalist in the Middle East and Tibet. After
1906 he was Principal of Patiala College in India, but his health forced him to
return to Europe, and he lived in his later years in the French Basque coun-
try. JC’s earliest surviving letter to him is dated 12 November 1918, although
they had met at least as early as 1914 (see Jessie Conrad, Joseph Conrad and His
Circle, 191). They might possibly have known each other since the late 1890s;
see Rachael A. Corkill, “Conrad and Edmund Candler: A Neglected Corre-
spondence,” Conradiana, 37 (2005), 11–22.
104

little piece of work” (239).1 [Includes Mégroz’s reminiscences of his

conversation with JC on the opening night of The Secret Agent, 2 November
1922. Repeats some of the comments in Mégroz’s other articles, q.v.]

“Joseph Conrad and Poland.” Chambers’s Journal, Series 8, 9 (May

1940): 342–45.
JC preferred to discuss topics of general interest, and he would treat
personal subjects conversationally. He described his school in Cracow, St
Anne’s, as “on the classical side,” and he was good at mathematics, and
fairly good at history, but “Oh, what a grind I had when I tried to get
hold of English grammar!” (344).2 He had always been a reading boy,
and remained a reader at sea: “reading is the best way to pick up any
language. But I still absolutely refused to learn grammar, and I picked up
my first English by hearing it spoken on colliers along the East Coast”
(344).3 He began to write simply as an occupation for his leisure: “It was
not the need of self-expression” (344). The only English school he ever
attended was Boult’s on Tower Hill, where he was coached for his
Marine certificates.
On the opening night of JC’s play The Secret Agent [2 November
1922], he and Mégroz sat together [in the Curzon Hotel]. JC refused to
attend for he detested the theatre. He recalled Gladstone’s victory [in
1892], and how his maritime agent [in Fenchurch Street] had been
exultant. “Of course, it was a stunning victory for Gladstone [...]. Parties
did then seem to mean something. Mr. Gladstone’s prestige was wonder-
ful; it stood for something real. But to-day” [referring to the Coalition
Government in 1922] “what does all this noise mean?” (344–45). JC said
he was watching the current political situation with intense interest, as one
who loved humanity and who based all his hopes for Europe on England.

1 Charles Dickens (London: Methuen, 1906).

2 It is doubtful whether JC attended any school in Cracow, and there are no
records of his attendance at St Anne’s Gymnasium. He probably received
private lessons from a regular tutor.
3 On 10 June 1878, JC arrived at Lowestoft and set foot on English soil for the
first time. In the next three months, he made three round trips between
Lowestoft and Newcastle in the Skimmer of the Sea, a coastal coal schooner.
 105

“The Personality of Joseph Conrad.” Review of Reviews, 68 (September

1923): 120–22.

JC began writing merely to “occupy a certain amount of my time” (120).

He spoke of his admiration for the “fine types of English manhood”
(120) that he had known on East coast barges. He had met John Burns1
when he was President of the Board of Trade, and he described him as
“the sort of man I love talking to, [...] a man with a craftsman’s con-
science” (121). [Mégroz’s reminiscences of a conversation with JC on The
Secret Agent’s opening night. Includes much material reprinted in his
other articles, q.v.]

Mérédac, Savinien
“Joseph Conrad chez nous.” Le Radical (Port-Louis), 7 August 1931.
[Prints a questionnaire that JC completed during his visit to Mauritius in
1888; reproduced in Najder 108–09]

“Joseph Conrad et nous.” L’Essor: Revue du Cercle Littéraire de Port-

Louis (Mauritius) 15 February 1931.
[Cites recollections of Paul Langlois, who met JC in Mauritius, 1888, trans.
in Najder 109–10] JC always dressed like a dandy, and his colleagues called
him the Russian Count. He had a neurotic or neurasthenic personality.
His English and French were equally pure and fluent, but he preferred
the latter, and always spoke to Langlois in French.

Meyer, Mathilde

H. G. Wells and his Family. Edinburgh: International Publishing,

1956 [not seen]; partly rpt. in H. G. Wells: Interviews and Recollections,
ed. J. R. Hammond. London: Macmillan, 1980, 9–28.

1 John Burns (1858–1943), MP, engineer, socialist, and friend of Cunninghame

Graham. He had worked as an engineer in West Africa, 1879–81. He was
appointed President of the Board of Trade in 1914, but resigned from the
Government later that year.
106

Meyer remembers Wells and his wife visiting JC at Hythe, ca. spring
1909 (22).1

Meynell, Viola, ed.

Friends of a Lifetime: Letters to Sydney Carlyle Cockerell. London: Cape,

1940.

Cockerell2 recalled seeing JC hold a pen between his first and second
fingers (34).

Meyrick, Kate

Secrets of the 43: Reminiscences. London: John Long, 1933, 41–42.

Meyrick3 describes JC, who frequented her fashionable night club: “he
looked exactly what he was – an ex-sailor” [ca. 1921].

Mizener, Arthur

The Saddest Story: A Biography of Ford Madox Ford. London: Bodley

Head, 1971.

1 JC’s home at Aldington, Hythe, was ten miles from Wells.

2 Sydney Carlyle Cockerell (1867–1962; knighted 1934), director of The Fitz-
william Museum, Cambridge, and bibliophile.
3 Kate Meyrick (d. 1933), Irish-born, came to London just after the First World
War to run nightclubs. She was frequently fined for breaches of the alcohol
licensing laws, and in 1929 was successfully prosecuted for bribing police-
men. This did not damage her career; she went back to running nightclubs.
Her most famous venue, “The 43,” named after its address, 43 Gerrard St,
was popular with the raffish end of the smart set. She appears in slightly dis-
guised form as Ma Mayfield in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited (1945). She
became London’s undoubted “night club queen,” sent her sons to Harrow
School, and married her four daughters to peers.
 107

Letter from Ford to Elsie Hueffer, 22 April 1903, on JC’s reactions to

reviews of Typhoon, published the previous day “with a great flourish of
trumpets.” JC was “very kick-uppy” about it (83).

Moore, Gene M., ed.

A Joseph Conrad Archive: The Letters and Papers of Hans van Marle.
The Conradian, 30.2 (2005): 1-145.

Van Marle notes that “Sir Christopher Cockerell1 (of Hovercraft fame)
[…] has come up with recollections of a lunch at Oswalds: even to the
boy not yet in his teens he was at the time it became obvious that Jessie
wasn’t really up to her husband’s standards. Mme Alvar’s son has treated
me to an almost identical impression and he is somewhat younger than
Sir Christopher” (75).
Van Marle records that a grandson of Wiktor Chodźko2 named
Michel (born 1916) “recalls accompanying Wiktor to Toulon harbour to
meet Conrad when he was a young boy. Michel […] thinks it was a wintry
day in 1922 or ’23. By my lights it can only have been 1921, when the
Conrads were sojourning on Corsica. Michel remembers the visitor de-
scending from an old ship […] for this obviously pre-arranged reunion”
(100).

Morley, Christopher3

“Conrad and the Reporters.” New York Evening Post, 3 May 1923: 8.

1 Christopher Cockerell (1910–99; knighted 1969), the inventor of the

hovercraft, was the son of Sydney Cockerell.
2 Wiktor Chodźko looked after the young Conrad in Marseilles in the 1870s. A
Paris-born Pole, he sailed in French ships and lived in Toulon.
3 Christopher Morley (1890–1957), American journalist, novelist, poet, and
author of more than fifty books. Born in Haverford, Pennsylvania, he was a
Rhodes Scholar at New College, Oxford, 1910–13, and one of the founders
and long-time staff member of The Saturday Review of Literature.
108

JC said he wrote Chapter 10 of Almayer’s Folly in the Adowa.1 He had

been delighted by his first view of the Clyde, and David Bone had read
him John Burroughs’s essay about the river,2 as well as The Old Soak,
which dealt with “a universal theme.”3 It was Henry James who first
introduced JC to Burroughs’s work. JC’s sea life “merges, now, into one
solid impression.” [Account of JC’s interview on arrival in New York]

“Conrad and the Reporters, II.” New York Evening Post, 4 May
1923: 10.
JC had read Fenimore Cooper and Max Adeler.4 JC could smoke only
Marylands cigarettes, and he had only three left. [Interviewed on arrival in
New York]

“Conrad and the Reporters, IV.” New York Evening Post, 7 May 1923: 8.
JC explained how he found the epigraph for The Nigger;5 he had called on
Henry James and, while waiting for him to come down, he found a
volume of Pepys and had just read the sentence that became the
epigraph when James entered. He hurriedly replaced the book on the
shelves. James was a lovely but formidable man. [Interviewed on arrival
in New York]

1 Cf. the opening of A Personal Record, which describes “the decks of a 2,000-
ton steamer called the Adowa, on board of which, gripped by the inclement
winter alongside a quay in Rouen, the tenth chapter of ‘Almayer’s Folly’ was
begun.” This was the tenth of twelve chapters. JC served in the Adowa, a
2,097-ton passenger steamer, from 29 November 1893 to 17 January 1894;
he was in port at Rouen from 4 December to 10 January.
2 John Burroughs, “Nature in England,” Fresh Fields (1885).
3 Don Marquis, The Old Soak (1916).
4 “Max Adeler” was the pseudonym of Charles Heber Clark (1841–1915),
humorist; best known for his first novel, the bestseller Out of the Hurly-Burly
(1874), which John Conrad mentions as being in JC’s bedroom at Oswalds
(Times Remembered, 149).
5 “My Lord in his discourse discovered a great deal of love to this ship”: see
the entry for 30 March 1660 in Samuel Pepys’s Diary (first published 1825).
 109

“Conrad and the Reporters, V.” New York Evening Post, 10 May
1923: 8.
David Bone was fond of quoting JC’s comment to him on the
publication of his novel, The Brassbounder (1910): “Stick to the ship. If I
had known that writing would take me away from the sea, I would never
have published a line.”

“Escaped into Print.” Ex Libris Carissimis. Philadelphia: University

of Pennsylvania Press, 1932, 49–64.

JC, among his occasional errors in English, would say “presumptious” (55).

“Granules from an Hour-glass.” Saturday Review of Literature, 10 (2

June 1934): 727.

Morley met Jean Louis d’Esque at the opening of the Memorial Library
in New York Seamen’s Institute. D’Esque, who claimed to be a carpenter
in the Torrens during the last days of JC’s command, spoke of JC’s
unusual length of arm, especially noticeable because he wore conspicuous
paper cuffs. Whenever anyone, passenger or crew, used a word un-
familiar to JC, he swiftly noted it on his cuff and memorized it.1

Internal Revenue. New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1933, 192–93, 198.

[Ray, ed., 61–62]

[Reprints article on JC by “Ben Gun,” pseud., first published in Sydney’s

Bulletin, 1927, and again in Morley’s “The Folder,” Saturday Review of
Literature, 10 December 1927: 429. J. H. Stape and Hans van Marle explain

1 This is a spurious reminiscence: the carpenter on both of JC’s voyages in the

Torrens was John Bruce, and JC was mate, not master: see J. H. Stape and
Hans van Marle, “‘Pleasant Memories’ and ‘Precious Friendships’: Conrad’s
Torrens Connection and Unpublished Letters from the 1890s,” Conradiana, 27
(1995): 22–23. Count Jean Louis d’Esque (1879–1956) was the author of A
Count in the Fo’c’sle (London: Hurst & Blackett, 1933).
110

the “number of outrightly false statements” in this item: see their

“‘Pleasant Memories’ and ‘Precious Friendships’: Conrad’s Torrens Con-
nection and Unpublished Letters from the 1890s,” Conradiana, 27 (1995):
23.]
“Gun” sailed with JC in the Torrens, and he has a notion that JC at
one time hoped to make a living as a black-and-white artist. He made a
lot of drawings, and “he could turn out a pretty wench, with a fine leg on
her” (192). JC hated passengers, and he always looked happy at the
“many” funerals that occurred.1 “He was a capital ship’s officer, capable
and courageous, but inclined to dream a little” (193). The skipper2 hated
JC, who responded with a cold disdain. “Gun” has never seen an officer
held in more respect by a crew than JC.
Morley also recalls that “a remark by W. H. Chesson that struck
Conrad sharply was ‘One almost regrets Donkin being one of the crew’
[in The Nigger]” (198).

“Storms and Calms.” Saturday Review of Literature, 1 (25 April 1925):

707. [For rpts., see Ehrsam 1323]

JC, on arrival in New York [1 May 1923], gave a long and careful study
of the skyline and then retreated to the bridge and averted his eyes. He
had had all he could carry.

1 There were in fact only four funerals: see Stape and van Marle, 23.
2 Captain Walter H(enry) Cope; JC in fact enjoyed very good relations with
Cope and held him in the highest respect.
 111

Morrell, Lady Ottoline1

“Joseph Conrad: An Impression.” Nation & Athenaeum, 35 (30

August 1924): 666.
[All of this is repeated in her Early Memoirs, described below.]

Ottoline at Garsington: Memoirs of Lady Ottoline Morrell, 1915–1918.

London: Faber & Faber, 1974, 116.
JC described his first meeting with Roger Casement2 in the Congo:
“When I saw him first he was dressed in very old clothes, white canvas

1 Lady Ottoline Violet Anne Morrell (née Cavendish-Bentinck, 1873–1938)

was the leader and patroness of a bohemian and intellectual circle that
included Bertrand Russell, D. H. Lawrence (who portrayed her as Hermione
in Women in Love), W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Augustus John, and Virginia
Woolf. Lord David Cecil wrote of her that “she was a character of Eliza-
bethan extravagance and force, at once mystical and possessive, quixotic and
tempestuous; . . . her own personality was, in its way, a considerable work of
art, expressing alike in her conversation, her dress, and the decoration of her
houses, a fantastic, individual, and creative imagination.” In 1902, she
married Philip Morrell, Liberal MP (1906–18). Lady Ottoline’s first visit to JC
occurred in early August 1913.
2 Roger David Casement (1864–1916; knighted 1911) travelled widely in Africa
as a young man, and later served as British Consul in Mozambique, Angola,
and the Congo Free State. In 1903, he produced a damning report on the
atrocities in the Congo.
JC met Casement in June 1890 during his trip to the Congo, where
Casement was supervising the building of a railway. They shared a room for
some days and made several expeditions into the nearby villages in search of
porters. JC noted in his diary at the time that he had “Made the acquaintance
of Mr. Roger Casement, which I should consider as a great pleasure under
any circumstances and now it becomes a positive piece of luck. Thinks,
speaks well, most intelligent and very sympathetic” (Zdzisław Najder, ed.,
Congo Diary and Other Uncollected Pieces [New York: Doubleday, 1978], 7). See
also Jessie Conrad, Joseph Conrad As I Knew Him, 115.
Born in Dublin of Protestant parents, Casement became an extreme Irish
nationalist, and during the war sought the aid of Germany in his pursuit of
Irish independence. After landing in Ireland from a German submarine in
1916, he was arrested, convicted of high treason, and executed.
112

shoes, carrying a stick, accompanied by a native boy, emerging out of the

forest, through which he had come on foot, a journey of many days. No
one but he would have travelled so lightly, unarmed and unattended
through so dangerous a jungle.”1

Ottoline: The Early Memoirs of Lady Ottoline Morrell, ed. Robert

Gathorne-Hardy. London: Faber & Faber, 1963, 131, 240–45.
[Ray, ed., 27–33]

Henry James was horrified by Lady Ottoline’s proposal to visit JC: “But,
dear lady . . . but dear lady . . . He has lived his life at sea – dear lady, he
has never met ‘civilized’ women” (240). In fact, she found him to be a
Polish nobleman. He said he had never recovered from the moral and
physical shock of his trip to the Congo. He regarded “The Idiots” as too
derivative from Maupassant. Writing was to him a most painful effort,
and he felt no need of expression.
Shortly after, she visited again, accompanied by Bertrand Russell,2 to
whom JC said that he found it difficult to talk to his sons or young
people for he disliked being insincere and yet did not wish to burden
them with his experience and knowledge.
In 1923,3 JC described how he first saw the sea at Venice,4 and it was

1 Cf. JC’s letter to Cunninghame Graham of 26 December 1903 in which he

describes Casement: “I’ve seen him start off into an unspeakable wilderness
swinging a crookhandled stick for all weapons, with two bull-dogs: Paddy
(white) and Biddy (brindle) at his heels and a Loanda boy carrying a bundle
for all company. A few months afterwards it so happened that I saw him
come out again, a little leaner[,] a little browner, with his stick, dogs, and
Loanda boy, and quietly serene as though he had been for a stroll in the
park” (CL3 101–02).
2 This visit occurred in September 1913; Russell and Lady Ottoline were lovers
at the time. For a discussion, see Owen Knowles, “Joseph Conrad and Bertrand
Russell: New Light on their Relationship,” Journal of Modern Literature, 17
(1990): 139–52.
3 In autumn 1923, Lady Ottoline and her husband visited JC at Oswalds. They
were accompanied by Bernard Henry Holland (1856–1926), barrister and
man of letters, who lived nearby at Canterbury.
4 JC claimed to have seen the sea for the first time from the Lido in Venice in
the summer of 1873, during a visit to Switzerland and Italy undertaken for
the sake of his health.
 113

in Marseilles that “I sowed my wild oats” (243). In a little inn in

Lowestoft,1 frequented by sailors, he had puzzled over the articles in The
Standard, his first lessons in English. Lady Ottoline urged him to read T.
S. Eliot, but he merely said, “Oh, I’m not caught by poetry” (244). His
trip to Poland in 1914 was “a circus, a perfect circus.”
[Also mentions JC’s admiration of Henry James and Roger Casement.]

Moser, Thomas C.

“From Olive Garnett’s Diary: Impressions of Ford Madox Ford

and his Friends, 1890–1906.” Texas Studies in Literature and
Language, 16.3 (Fall 1974): 511–33.

Olive Garnett2 records in her diary that “Conrad spoke very despond-
ingly about his work, said he often had a mind to return to the sea &
nearly did when in Liverpool, but he had gout in the foot, & it wd. not
be honourable to engage. Afterwards he became more cheerful. We
dined together . . . Conrad was most hospitable, most simple in a good
mood, Elsie said. He told us we had wound him up” (524–25).3 Elsie
Hueffer told her of JC’s efforts to finish “The End of the Tether,” and
that “‘Youth’ is selling but he is despairing.”4 The Conrads spent the
Christmas of 1902 with the Fords, and Henry James also visited (525;
date of diary entry 5 January 1903).5 The Fords and Olive met the

1 JC arrived at Lowestoft in the Mavis, setting foot on English soil for the first
time on 10 June 1878.
2 Olive (Olivia) Garnett (1871–1957), younger sister of Edward and a friend of
Sergei Stepniak and other revolutionary exiles, published Petersburg Tales (1900).
3 Olive Garnett and Elsie Hueffer visited the Pent on 15 November 1901.
Najder comments, “Already, then, Conrad was presenting what was actually
the result of his inability to find a suitable berth as though it were the
consequence of his own decision to give up the sea” (277).
4 On 23 June 1902, part of the manuscript of “The End of the Tether” had
been destroyed by the fire from an exploding lamp; the story’s reconstruction
was not completed until 15 October 1902. For sales of Youth, a volume
including “Heart of Darkness” and “The End of the Tether” (published 13
November 1902), see, for example, CL3 4, 11, 45.
5 The Conrads stayed with Ford, Elsie, and their two daughters at Winchelsea,
arriving on 23 December. They had planned to stay for a week or longer, but
JC was feeling “very much so-so” (CL3 3) and returned home after a few days.
114

Conrads in Hythe, and JC, who had seen Pinker the previous night,
talked business with Ford (526; 31 March 1903).
Olive met Ford and JC in Gatti’s Restaurant1 and in reply to Ford’s
statement that “Romance is life seen as a scheme; realism is life seen
without a scheme,” JC said, “Exactly” (526).2 At one of Ford’s parties,
JC said, “I am at the top of the tree,” to which Henry James replied, “I
am a crushed worm.” Galsworthy and W. H. Hudson were also present
(528–29; 13 February 1904). Ford told Olive, probably referring to Chance,
that JC was “writing something magnificent” (531; 2 November 1905).
[Other significant entries relating to JC are annotated in the following
item.]

The Life in the Fiction of Ford Madox Ford. Princeton, New Jersey:
Princeton University Press, 1980.
Olive Garnett recorded Elsie Hueffer’s visit to JC [ca. July 1904] during
her husband’s nervous breakdown (56). An earlier entry in her diary
noted that “We sat by the fire in Conrad’s room (old drawing-room),
drank bovril, and tried to keep warm. I looked at Japanese books &
discussed the legitimate in art. Conrad looked at Elsie” (73; entry dated
15 November 1901).
Borys Conrad told Moser that his mother’s opinion of Ford was
“unprintable” (43), and John Conrad described her wish to “hoof out
Hueffer” (316). Borys remembered that JC and Marwood exchanged
weekly visits, without fail, until the latter’s fatal illness (104). Rebecca
West3 recalled that JC’s relations with Ford in 1909 were “very strained”
(104). The descendants of Caroline Marwood, Arthur’s wife, have the
impression that Caroline’s sisters regarded JC as a “sponge” (304).
In her unpublished “A Bloomsbury Girlhood,” Anne Lee Michell4

1 Located at 399 Strand (closed 1939).

2 This meeting occurred on 24 April 1903, two days after the publication of
Typhoon and Other Stories. Olive Garnett adds that JC was “genial” and they
“drank the health of Typhoon in coffee.”
3 Dame Rebecca West (née Cecily Isabel Fairfield, 1892–1983), British-Irish
feminist and writer. She had an affair with H. G. Wells for ten years,
beginning in 1913.
4 One of the the five children of Robert and Martha Garnett, Anne Lee (1908–88;
Mrs Robert Michell), a diarist, was married to a solicitor and lived in Somerset.
 115

quotes the following comment by Edward Garnett in a letter to her aunt,

Olive Garnett, dated 9 December 1924: “You say ‘Considering what he
[Ford] MIGHT have said about Conrad.’ I suppose you mean about
household complications etc. etc. I knew that J.C. did confide in him about a
certain delicate matter, and afterwards deeply regretted it” (306).1

Mottram, R. H.

For Some We Loved: An Intimate Portrait of Ada and John Galsworthy.

London: Hutchinson 1956, 21, 77, 82.
Ada Galsworthy [1904] wrote to Mottram2 that “I am having great
conclaves with J. Conrad lately, he is helping me with some translation
from the French: he being Polish, French is quite second nature to him. I
hate taking up his time, yet . . . it seems quite a relaxation to him, and he
can’t do his own original writing all day long” (21).3
John Galsworthy was “no believer” in the kind of collaboration
undertaken by JC and Ford, although his estimation of JC’s own work is
seen in a letter he wrote to Mottram [4 August 1906]: “Conrad (a
painter’s writer, whose chief admirers are painters) is perhaps the best
specimen I can think of as a pure artist (there is practically nothing of the
moralist in him) amongst moderns” (82). He considered Turgenev to be
a greater artist, however.

1 This mysterious comment is perhaps a reference to Ford’s portrayal of JC as

Brandson in The Simple Life Limited (1911), in which Brandson seduces, and
later marries, his secretary.
2 R(alph) H(ale) Mottram (1883–1971) was a a novelist particularly known for
the Spanish Farm books and a First World War poet.
3 JC wrote an introduction for Maupassant’s Yvette and Other Stories, translated
by Ada Galsworthy, in May 1904 (rpt. in Notes on Life and Letters, 1921). He
told Pinker on 17 May that “I am doing a preface to a vol of Maupassant
translation which Duckworth is to publish; the translator, a lady, being a
great friend. I think it is likely to be noticed (the preface I mean), by the press
generally. Otherwise it[’]s done for love you understand” (CL3 139; see also
143). The volume appeared at the end of July 1904.
116

Mroczkowski, Przemysław

“Conrad the European.” In Studia Conradowskie, ed. Stefan

Zabierowski. Katowice: Uniwersytet Sląski, 1976, 13–29.
Both Jessie and Borys Conrad recalled JC’s meetings with, and respect
for, G. K. Chesterton.

Munro, Neil1

The Brave Days: A Chronicle from the North. Edinburgh: The Porpoise
Press, 1931, 113–14. [Ray, ed., 94–95]
Dr John MacIntyre, nose and throat specialist, entertained JC to dinner
at his home in Bath Street, Glasgow.2 Munro, who was also present,

1 Neil Munro (1863–1930), Scottish poet and journalist. JC met him on 27–28
September 1898 during a brief visit to Glasgow in a vain search for maritime
employment. Munro’s work had appeared alongside JC’s in Blackwood’s Magazine,
and JC remarked shortly after this meeting that “Munro is an artist – besides
being an excellent fellow with a pretty weakness for my work” (CL2 130).
Munro describes a visit to the home of Dr John MacIntyre (1859–1928), a
pioneer of radiology and phonography and friend of Cunninghame Graham.
2 JC’s letter to Edward Garnett on 29 September 1898 gives the following
account of his experiences in Glasgow:
All day with the shipowners and in the evening dinner, phono-
graph, X rays, talk about the secret of the universe and the non-
existence of, so called, matter. The secret of the universe is in
the existence of horizontal waves whose varied vibrations are
at the bottom of all states of consciousness. […] But, don’t you
see, there is nothing in the world to prevent the simultaneous
existence of vertical waves […]. Therefore it follows that two
universes may exist in the same place and in the same time –
and not only two universes but an infinity of different universes
– if by universe we mean a set of states of consciousness; and
note, […] all matter being only that thing of inconceivable
tenuity through which the various vibrations of waves […] are
propagated, thus giving birth to our sensations – then –
emotions then thought. Is that so?
These things I said to the Dr while Neil Munro stood in
front of a Röntgen machine and on the screen behind we con-
 117

recalls how MacIntyre displayed for JC’s benefit “all the wizardry of
Röntgen rays.”1 Munro “stood in front of a fluorescent screen behind
which Conrad and the Doctor contemplated my ribs and back-bone, the
more opaque portions of my viscera, my Waterbury watch and what coins
were in my pocket” (113). Both JC and Munro had their hands X-rayed,
and MacIntyre produced photographic prints of JC’s “good right hand.”
Another of MacIntyre’s interests was the phonograph,2 and he had
made one of the first recordings of Paderewski3 when he visited him in
Bath Street. All the best “celebrity” records in the doctor’s private
collection were played to JC.

“The Rescue” in George T. Keating, A Conrad Memorial Library.

Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1929, 288–93.

[JC’s visit to Glasgow, September 1898] Conrad stayed in St Enoch Square.

He was anxious about The Rescue: “‘I sit for a whole day at my desk,’ he
said, ‘and at the end I have produced only two or three sentences. My
invention seems paralysed; I must get back to sea’” (289). Once he realized
there were no vacancies for masters in Clyde clippers, he cheered up

templated his backbone and his ribs. The rest of that promising
youth was too diaphanous to be visible. (CL2 94–95)
An X-ray photograph of JC’s hand is reproduced as Plate 1 in CL2. C. T.
Watts has suggested that this experience provided the “scientific” mechanism
of The Inheritors, which JC and Hueffer were to begin two months later and
which describes the undermining of civilisation by the dispassionate “Fourth
Dimensionists” who have always coexisted with human beings on a different
plane (Notes & Queries, 212 [July 1967]: 245–47).
1 When Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovered X-rays in November 1895, he
contacted Lord Kelvin in Glasgow, sending him a copy of his article and
photographs of his radiograph images. Kelvin immediately understood the
potential of this discovery for medical diagnosis. At this time in Glasgow
only the Royal Infirmary had electricity, and therefore it was to John
MacIntyre at the Royal that Kelvin took Röntgen’s discovery. MacIntyre did
some brilliant pioneering work, and within six months of the discovery had
the world’s first hospital X-ray department operating in 1896.
2 Edison’s phonograph was invented in 1877, “perfected” in 1888, and first
widely available commercially in Britain in 1898.
3 Ignacy Jan Paderewski (1874–1936), Polish pianist and composer, became
Prime Minister of Poland in 1919. JC met him in America in 1923 and
admired him enormously.
118

wonderfully. On his last evening, he attended a symposium at the Art

Club, whose members (except for the absent Cunninghame Graham)
deliberately turned his mind away from The Rescue and praised The Nigger
and Youth, whose authentic qualities, as “Clyde-built men,” they could
recognize.

Myers, Rollo H.

Ravel: Life and Works. London: Duckworth, 1960.

[Jean-Aubry introduced Ravel to JC in the summer of 1922, in London.]

Ravel, in a letter to Jean-Aubry dated 26 July 1922, says he was touched
by JC’s present of cigarettes and intends to write to him: “let me know
whether one ought to call him ‘cher maître’” (63). [Rpt. in The Conradian,
11.1 (May 1986): 91]

Najder, Zdzisław, and Ian Watt

“Writing about Conrad (Part Two).” The Conradian, 8.1 (1983): 30–38.

[An unpublished comment by Jane Anderson who wrote in 1916 of her

first visit to the Conrads] JC loved Crane, and grieved over the talent
that his death took away. “‘Yes,’ he says, ‘now there is writing – writing.
There is Wells, H. G. [sic] He is writing of his theoretical man and his
theoretical woman. Human nature he does not know; it would be well if
he did’” (36).

Newbolt, Sir Henry

My World as in My Time: Memoirs of Sir Henry Newbolt, 1862–1932.

London: Faber & Faber, 1932, 300–12. [Ray, ed., 115–20]
 119

Newbolt1 first met JC at the Savile Club in Piccadilly where a literary

symposium of half-a-dozen writers was often held on Saturday
afternoons. JC announced that he was leaving London after a stay of
only two days because he was terrified by the crowds in the streets: “I
see their personalities all leaping out at me like tigers!” (301).
Newbolt gives a full account of the roles that he, William Rothenstein
and Edmund Gosse2 played in securing a grant of £500 for JC from the
Royal Bounty Fund [1904–05]. He prints a letter from Rothenstein,
dated 9 June 1904, saying that he had seen JC “yesterday – he really is in
a very bad state of mind, and, I learn, very hard pressed at the moment.
[...] His nerves are in a terrible state, and his wife is pretty seriously ill
with heart trouble” (301).3 Gosse had a long talk with Arthur Balfour,
the Prime Minister,4 and reported to Newbolt that “the Chief is
manifestly affected by the romance of Conrad’s life” (302). JC was
informed of the award of the grant when he was in Capri5 and, Newbolt
remembers, he “wired for some money – he was delighted with the
grant, and wished to be able to use some of it immediately in order to get
back to London at once. There was some prospect of the Stage Society
producing a little play of his,6 and he thought it might lead to commis-

1 Henry John Newbolt (1862–1938; knighted 1915), barrister and poet, best
known for rousing nautical and patriotic ballads such as “Drake’s Drum” in
Admirals All and Other Verses (1897). He was devoted to public and honorary
service, and he served on the committee of the Royal Literary Fund. He met
JC in 1904, but they never became close friends.
2 Edmund William Gosse (1849–1928; knighted 1925), author of Father and
Son (1907). In 1904, he was Librarian of the House of Lords and Secretary of
the Royal Literary Fund.
3 At this time, JC was very concerned about his wife’s health; a valvular defect
in her heart had recently been discovered, and she was still troubled by
lameness and neuralgia, to the extent that JC feared that she would be a
“helpless cripple. […] Half the time I feel on the verge of insanity. The
difficulties are accumulating around me in a frightful manner” (CL3 128–29;
letter of 5 April 1904). In addition to his family’s health and financial
difficulties, JC was trying to concentrate on Nostromo, which he finished in
August 1904.
4 Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930) became Prime Minister in July 1902,
resigning in 1905.
5 JC received Gosse’s official notification of the £500 grant on 11 April 1905,
and the money was paid out to the trustees on 3 May 1905. The Conrads had
left for Capri in January 1905, partly for the benefit of Jessie’s health.
6 The date of JC’s departure from Capri had always been fixed for mid-May, so
120

sioned stage work for himself” (303). On 25 May 1905, JC was back in
London and spent the afternoon with Newbolt, discussing the arrange-
ments for payment of the grant.
Newbolt’s impression of JC was that “he knew his own powers and
his value in the market, and yet so doubted their reality that he was
anxious to hear repeated assurances [...]. He was not only a successful
but a popular author: yet he was tortured by fears of malice and
invidious criticism” (309).

“O., E. B.”

“The Late Mr. Joseph Conrad.” Morning Post (London), 4 August 1924: 4.

JC’s conversation was seldom bookish. He preferred above all to talk of

the sea. [Obituary]

Osborne, Brian D.

“Conrad and Neil Munro: Notes on a Literary Acquaintance.” The

Conradian, 30.1 (2005): 81–87.

Osborne quotes from an article Munro published in The Glasgow Evening

News on 7 August 1924, recalling JC’s reluctance to visit America the
previous year: “‘I don’t want to go,’ he said wearily, ‘but the Americans
have been good to me, and I am told it will help the sale of my books
there. That is a consideration an old man with a family can’t afford to
treat with disdain. I wouldn’t go if it weren’t in a Glasgow ship, with a
Glasgow master, David Bone, and if it did not give me the chance of
seeing one or two old Clyde friends again’” (83). JC, Munro, and David
Bone and his brother, Muirhead, dined together on 20 April 1923, on the
eve of JC’s departure.

his urgent request for £150 indicates that he was seriously in debt. In June
1905, five performances of One Day More, a one-act play, were given at the
Royal Theatre.
 121

Owen, Lyman B.

“Conrad and A. Safroni-Middleton.” Conradiana, 8 (1976): 265–67.

Arnold Safroni-Middleton wrote to Owen (29 March 1937) that he knew
JC in London [ca. 1886]. He was on “rather rough times” (265), and
stayed at Safroni-Middleton’s relatives’ home. JC was not musical, but he
was partial to old French songs and Polish melodies. He was taciturn
about his youth. JC read him some manuscript pages that eventually
formed part of The Mirror of the Sea. [Remainder of the article is an
abstract of Safroni-Middleton’s book, Tropic Shadows, q.v.]

“Recalling Joseph Conrad’s Shadow.” Journal of the Joseph Conrad

Society (UK), 5.1 (November 1979): 4–7.
[Owen, who knew Richard Curle, describes some of his recollections.]
George T. Keating once tore up a letter that JC had sent him, because JC
had told him to “mind his own business” about something. JC once said
to Curle that “Hugh [Walpole], you know, is childish; you are childlike” (7).

Palffy, Eleanor1

“Drunk on Conrad.” Fortnightly Review, NS 126 (October 1929):

534–38.
[Describes JC’s reading from Victory in New York, 10 May 1923] JC
agreed to speak in public only to please his publisher. He spoke English
with a guttural Polish twist (e.g., he pronounced “blood” as “blut”), and
the recital lasted nearly two and a half hours.2

Parker, W. M.

“With Joseph Conrad on the High Seas.” Blue Peter (13 May 1933):
221–23.

1 Countess Eleanor Palffy (1892–1952).

2 In fact, the reading was only half that length.
122

Parker1 was manager of a bookshop in the Tuscania, in which JC sailed to

America, April 1923. JC remarked that sailors now were like office staff.
Recalling that a celebrity had once described him as the greatest writer of
the sea, JC had replied that, if so, “I have not lived in vain” (222).
Looking over the opening pages of The Arrow of Gold in the bookshop,
JC had commented, “That seems a long time ago – past history now”
(222). He frequently quoted Edward Garnett, who, he considered, had
the best knowledge of Russian fiction.

Partington, Wilfred

Forging Ahead. New York: Putnam, 1939, 207–16.

Richard Curle, in a letter to Partington,2 says JC received a handsome fee

from Thomas J. Wise3 for permission to print a second series of First
Edition pamphlets.4 The whole relationship between JC and Wise was
friendly (213). Partington wished to include JC’s play The Secret Agent in a
series of unpublished works he was editing. JC suggested including
Laughing Anne, and, on being told that Wise owned the manuscript,5
he stormed, “Wise! Wise!! he only owns the paper. The work is mine.”

1 Glasgow-born journalist William Mathie Parker (1891–1973) published books

on Scottish literature and contributed frequently to the Fortnightly Review,
Glasgow Herald, and John O’London’s.
2 Wilfred George Partington (1888–1955), author and editor, served in the war
and then edited the Bookman’s Journal and Print Collector until 1931. He played a
major role in exposing Thomas J. Wise as a forger of rare pamphlets.
3 Thomas J(ames) Wise (1859–1937), collector and forger of literary rarities.
He began to purchase manuscripts and typescripts from JC in 1918. He was
JC’s first bibliographer and published A Bibliography of the Writings of Joseph
Conrad (1920) and A Conrad Library: A Catalogue of Printed Books, Manuscripts
and Autograph Letters by Joseph Conrad (1928). He is not known to have forged
anything by JC.
4 On 13 November 1919, JC wrote to Wise that “I am willing to agree to the
publication of 10 booklets […] for the sum of £200” (CL6 526). This second
series of Wise pamphlets included “Prince Roman” and “The Warrior’s Soul.”
5 JC sold the manuscript to Wise in 1921 (see CL7 238, 240).
 123

Calming down, JC added, “Of course I must have Laughing Anne now ...
poor dear Anne.” JC said another copy was available (215–16).1

“The Literature of Travel.” Bookman’s Journal, 3rd series, 16.6 (1928):

342.

JC “more than once expressed to me his admiration and deep regard for
that brilliant Colonial Governor, Sir Hugh Clifford.”

Phelps, William Lyon2

As I Like It. New York: Scribner’s, 1924, 207–08.

During JC’s visit to America in May 1923, it was a real sensation to hear
him read his own writing with such a strong foreign accent. His
extraordinary personality is even greater than his books.

Autobiography with Letters. London: Oxford University Press, 1939.

JC clearly did not understand conversation in English, unless one spoke

to him directly and carefully (430). Phelps attended JC’s reading of
Victory in New York [10 May 1923], stayed with him the next night at the
Doubledays’, and invited him to his own house in New Haven [15 May].
JC said, laughing, “This is the difference between H. G. Wells and me.
Wells does not love humanity but thinks he can improve it; I love human-
ity but I know it is unimprovable” (753–54). He regarded Galsworthy as
a “dear fellow” (754).
J. M. Barrie told Phelps that, in his Adelphi Terrace flat in London
during the war, he, JC, Hardy, Shaw, Galsworthy, and Bennett had sat on
the floor around a lighted candle, during a Zeppelin raid. A bomb had
fallen very close.3

1 Partington published a privately-printed edition of Laughing Anne in 1923.

2 William Lyon Phelps (1865–1943), American critic and university professor.
3 Thomas Hardy recollected the Zeppelin raid during a conversation with
Virginia Woolf in 1926: “There was an air raid one night when we stayed
with Barrie. We just heard a little pop in the distance – The searchlights were
124

Plomer, William

At Home. London: Cape, 1958), 93–94. [Ray, ed., 219–20]

Plomer1 records Hugh Walpole’s story of an extraordinary visit paid to

JC by Robert Hichens, accompanied by a large, male, Russian cook.
“The radar-like sensitivity of Conrad to the intrusion into his domestic
sphere of a Russian became even more agitated by what seemed to him
the social solecism of causing it and by his instantaneous suspicion of
what seemed to him an equivocal relationship; and the combustion set
up in the great man by the duties of a host, the prejudices of a Pole, and
the antipathy of a heterosexual almost caused him to explode” (93).
Walpole also mentioned that he was once kissed in public by JC. [Partly
rpt. in The Conradian, 10.1 (May 1985): 90.]

Powell, John

“Conrad and Casement Hut Mates in Africa.” New York Evening

Post, 11 May 1923: 16.
Powell2 once asked JC to make a one-act libretto of “Heart of Darkness,”
but he declined, saying that “it did not have enough dramatic incident
and could not be condensed into operatic form. He suggested a sym-
phonic poem.” JC told Powell of his first meeting with Roger Casement,
who was accompanied by a servant and two black bulldogs.

beautiful. I thought if a bomb now were to fall on this flat how many writers
would be lost” (The Diary of Virginia Woolf, ed. Anne Olivier Bell [London:
Hogarth Press, 1980], 3: 98).
1 William Charles Franklyn Plomer (1903–73), a South African writer in
diverse genres (poetry, short story, opera libretti) who settled in England.
2 John Powell (1882–1963) was an American pianist and composer. His career
as a classical pianist began in Berlin in 1907. His composition for piano and
orchestra, Rhapsodie nègre, first performed at Carnegie Hall in 1917, was
inspired by “Heart of Darkness” and dedicated to JC. JC met him in 1912
(introduced through Warrington Dawson), and on one visit to Capel House
Powell played Chopin for hours.
 125

Pugh, Edwin

“Big Little H. G. Wells: Part II – In the Middle Distance.” New

Witness, 1 August 1919: 290–94.
Pugh1 first met JC at a literary dinner [ca. 1898], and JC humorously
praised H. G. Wells as a “thundering good judge of literature” because
“he likes my stuff” (292). Pugh stayed with JC at the Pent for a week.2 JC
was stirred by Pugh’s tales of remote parts of London, by his knowledge
of the Chinese in Limehouse and Poplar; JC had never before met a man
who knew burglars.
Very late one night, JC “concluded a description of a duel by tearing
open his waistcoat and shirt and laying his breast bare” (292). On one
occasion, Wells introduced JC to Bart Kennedy,3 remarking that the two
men ought to know each other because they were both sailors. This in-
flamed the implacable resentment of each and “chilled their intercourse
at its first inception” (292).

“Joseph Conrad as I Knew Him: Some Recollections of his Early

Days.” T.P.’s & Cassell’s Weekly, 2 (23 August 1924): 575. [Ray, ed.,
96–99]
Even after JC had published six or seven novels, he was still puzzled by
the correct use of such words as “like” and “as,” “who” and “whom,”
“that” and “which.” They spent hours discussing the finer shades of
meaning in such words, and JC would work over the examples that Pugh
gave him “in agony and bloody sweat for days on end.”

1 Edwin William Pugh (1874–1930) was the son of a member of the Covent
Garden Orchestra, his mother a wardrobe mistress at the theatre. He began
work at thirteen in an iron factory and was later in a solicitor’s office. His
first novel, A Street in Suburbia (1895) was followed the next year by The Man
of Straw. His reputation was that of a realist, absorbed in the London scene’s
sordid or grotesque characters. His first meeting with JC that he describes
probably occurred in spring 1898.
2 This visit possibly occurred in late November 1898 (see CL2 123, 126).
3 Bart Kennedy (1861–1930) was an author and lecturer whose activities in-
cluded being a sailor, labourer, and tramp in the US, and an actor and opera
singer.
126

JC was always pressed for money; he envied Pugh’s facility and

wanted very much to do the kind of hackwork that Pugh performed.
JC wrote to Pugh about “Youth”: “This story of mine for Blackwood’s
[…] that was meant to be just a short tale, lengthens out like an
anaconda. It seems as if it would never leave off uncoiling itself.”1
[Also repeats reminiscences recorded in previous item.]

“Stephen Crane.” Bookman, 67 (December 1924): 162–64.

Pugh, who knew both JC and Crane well, considers that “any impartial
comparison between the two men, in their habit as they lived, must
surely have given the verdict of greater strength of character to Crane
rather than to Conrad.” While Crane was entirely self-sufficient, JC was
“essentially gregarious, avid of advice and instruction, and though
capricious easily swayed by others” (163).

Pugh, Mrs J. C. L.

“Some Sidelights on Joseph Conrad.” Thurrock Historical Society

Journal (Grays, Essex), No. 5 (Autumn 1960): 52–56.

[An account of Ivy Walls, in Stanford-le-Hope, where the Conrads lived,

1897–98] Mrs Pugh prints verbatim some letters sent to her in 1949 by
Mrs Muriel Dobree,2 daughter of G. F. W. Hope, who was JC’s friend
and neighbour. Mrs Dobree recalls that Almayer’s Folly was finished in
her father’s house. Hope and JC would often go yachting together. Mrs
Dobree remembers JC’s disgust towards Ivy Walls, a horrible little villa.
Her brother, named Conrad, met Walpole, Galsworthy and James there,
and she herself recalls seeing Hueffer. JC was often asked to review

1 It would appear that JC’s letter to Pugh has not survived.

2 Muriel Dobree (née Hopps, later Hope, 1881–1960) married Hatherley Moor
Dobree in 1911 in Orsett, Essex. Her brother, Conrad (1890–1963), named
after JC, worked in the motor industry. Their mother, Frances Ellen Hope
(née Mayer, born Burslem, Staffordshire; 1854–1941), married G. F. W. Hope
in 1880 in Wandsworth. For further details of the Hope family, see JCA 133–
34, and J. H. Stape, “Conradiana in the 1901 Census and Other Sources of
Record,” The Conradian (forthcoming 2008).
 127

books, and he generally passed them on to Mrs Hope, trusting entirely

on her judgement.

Putnam, George

“Conrad in Cracow.” Outlook (New York), 124 (3 March 1920):

382–83; rpt. in CUFE, 142–45. [Ray, ed., 205–07]

Konstanty Buszczyński,1 JC’s childhood friend in Cracow, recalls JC’s

ability as a boy to tell weird and fantastic tales about the sea. He gives an
apocryphal account of JC’s first voyage from Trieste to Venice. When
the two old friends met in Cracow in 1914, JC had not forgotten the
injunction of Buszczyński’s father, Stefan,2 to “remember always you are
a Pole and that you shall come back to Poland” (145).

Ransome, Arthur

Autobiography, ed. Rupert Hart-Davis. London: Cape, 1976.

Perceval Gibbon in November 1915 told Ransome3 a piece of advice

about writing that JC had given him: “Let there be a definite incident in
the life of each character which is known only to the author and is never
mentioned or even indirectly referred to in the book” (187). The aim of
this is to make the reader feel that the author knows more than he or she
does, and to make the character three-dimensional.

1 Konstanty (“Kocio”) Buszczyński (1856–1921), a year older than JC, was his
friend in Cracow from 1869 to 1873. He was to establish a renowned seed
firm in Cracow. For their reunion, see Jessie Conrad, Joseph Conrad As I Knew
Him, 70, and Joseph Conrad and His Circle, 167–68, 251 (photograph of
Buszczyński facing 160); also Borys Conrad, My Father, 85–86.
2 Stefan Buszczyński (1821–92) was a friend and biographer of JC’s father. He
was active in the 1863 Insurrection.
3 Arthur Ransome (1884–1967), author of the Swallows and Amazons series of
children’s books.
128

Rascoe, Arthur Burton1

A Bookman’s Day Book. New York: Horace Liveright, 1929, 101–

04, 105–11, 113–15.

[Typical account of interview with JC on his arrival in New York, May

1923] JC stresses the last syllable in a word such as “contemplate” (106).

“Contemporary Reminiscences: A Remembered Interview with

Conrad on the Occasion of his First Visit to America.” Arts &
Decoration, 21, No. 5 (September 1924): 36, 63, 65.
JC had more than a trace of a foreign accent, and tended to stress all
words on the last syllable. He was very conscious of his accent, and was
pained to have it noticed, Rascoe later learned. He was visibly frightened
by interviewers. He said he was “not much up on American literature”
(65) and did not read much fiction. He was ecstatic in contemplation of
Lower Manhattan. [JC interviewed on arrival in New York, May 1923.
Much of this is duplicated elsewhere.]

“Joseph Conrad comes to see us, not to chide or ‘uplift.’” New

York Tribune, 2 May 1923: 1, 6.
JC thought it was too aggressive to cull aphorisms from his work and call
them wisdom. He described himself as a literary man, a creative artist,
and not a wise man. It was Henry James who introduced him to the
work of John Burroughs. [Typical account of JC’s interview on arrival in
New York, May 1923, mostly rpt. in Rascoe’s A Bookman’s Day Book,
described above.]

1 Burton Rascoe (1892–1957), American critic, editor, and journalist. In 1920,

Rascoe moved to New York City, where he became the literary editor of The
New York Tribune (later The New York Herald Tribune). There he started a
column entitled “A Bookman’s Day Book,” which combined elements of
biography, literary criticism, and society reporting.
 129

Reid, B(enjamin). L.

The Man from New York: John Quinn and his Friends. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1968, 569.
F. N. Doubleday, JC’s host during his visit to America, wrote to John
Quinn that JC was very frail: “I think the trip did him good, but how he
ever had the nerve to leave England in his condition beats me. However,
it didn’t seem to do him any harm in the end, but I had many anxious
moments during his visit” [dated 26 July 1923].

Reynolds, Mabel E.

Memories of John Galsworthy. London: Robert Hale, 1936, 25–26.

The author, John Galsworthy’s sister,1 recalls the many stimulating
discussions that JC and Galsworthy enjoyed at Ted Sanderson’s Elstree
home. Sanderson and his mother2 “took a hand, and considerable
trouble, in editing the already amazingly excellent English of their Polish
friend’s ‘Almayer’ manuscript, and in generally screwing up Conrad’s
courage to the sticking-point of publication” (26).

1 Mabel Edith Galsworthy (born 1872) was John Galsworthy’s younger sister.
She married Thomas Blair Reynolds, a civil engineer and musician, in 1897.
2 Katherine Susan Oldfield Sanderson (née Warner, ca. 1843–1921). The Mirror
of the Sea was dedicated to her and notes that her “warm welcome and
gracious hospitality extended to the friend of her son cheered the first dark
days of my parting with the sea.” Her husband, Lancelot, was headmaster of
Elstree, a preparatory school in Edgware, Middlesex. JC spent ten days at
Elstree in mid-April 1894 as he was completing Almayer’s Folly.
130

Rhys, Ernest1

Everyman Remembers. London: Dent, 1931, 259–68. [Ray, ed., 131–

35]

[Reprints much of Rhys’s Bookman interview, with minor alterations – see

next item] JC had one decided bête noire, George Bernard Shaw. The
antipathy perhaps arose out of their conflicting attitudes to the war. A
mutual friend of Shaw and JC explained to Rhys, “Ah well, you see,
Conrad had the strain of the Polish aristocrat in his blood, while Shaw is
– well, Shaw is Shaw” (267).

After his interview with JC, Rhys sent him a Hogarth print2 and
requested permission to reprint a short story. JC replied cordially, but
ignored the request. Rhys next met JC at a meeting to arrange a
memorial to W. H. Hudson.3 JC said, “I hung up that Hogarth on my
wall, and do you know what? It keeps me straight” (268).

“An Interview with Joseph Conrad.” Bookman (New York), 56

(December 1922): 402–08.

1 Ernest Rhys (1859–1946) was one of the first three members of the
Rhymers’ Club, which was established at the Cheshire Cheese Tavern in
1889, and where he later met W. B. Yeats, Lionel Johnson, and Ernest
Dowson. Rhys’s principal achievement was his founding of Everyman’s
Library, the series of literary classics he produced with the support of the
publisher, J. M. Dent. Rhys had met JC during the war. The visit recorded
here occurred on 18 November 1920 (see CL7 206). Rhys had been
commissioned to write an article on JC, which was later published in the
Bookman in 1922 (see next item).
2 Rhys describes the print as one in which “the godless youth is putting off in a
boat attended by a gaol chaplain and rowed by a boatman as ugly as sin.”
This would appear to describe Hogarth’s “The Idle ’Prentice Turned Away
and Sent to Sea,” Industry and Idleness (1747), Plate V.
3 This meeting was held on 28 November 1922 at the office of Hugh R. Dent,
the publisher. A committee had been formed to erect a memorial to Hudson
in Hyde Park. (Edward Garnett and Cunninghame Graham were also
members.)
 131

When Rhys arrived, JC was reading Edith Wharton. He said of some

new writers that “some of them do not seem to think you need to be kept
fully engaged all the while. There are dull pages, the story drags. You have
to whip up your interest. Now that does not do; every page must be
alive.” Admitting that some people might find his work dull, he added, “I
try to make every page tell – every page. When that fails ...” (403). “I
have my psychological aim, first of all. That is quite distinct, and then I
look out for some event, some personal adventure, some catastrophe if
you like, to motiver my chief characters. But I never lose sight of my aim”
(404).
JC discussed Hogarth with vehement appreciation, but he disliked
the attitude of the caricaturists, their mode of ridicule, their no-art.
Dickens, above all, and Thackeray taught him most when he began to
write. He had not read Turgenev early enough to be influenced. [Najder
433 mistakenly reads “Maupassant.”] He regarded George Moore’s work
as too glittering for the naturalness required of the novel, too éblouissant.1
Of his own books, he declared that The Mirror was his favourite.
Asked to say which of his short stories best satisfied his ideal of story
telling, he replied, “I don’t quite know. Perhaps, on the whole, ‘The
Secret Sharer’” (408). [Interviewed at home in Kent by Rhys and a M.
Larigot.]

Roberts, Cecil2

“Beerbohm Remembered.” Books & Bookmen, 18 (May 1973): 40–45.

Max Beerbohm once visited JC (44).

1 “Glaring, dazzling” (French).

2 Edric Cecil Mornington Roberts (1892–1976), a wealthy and well-connected
poet, novelist, journalist, traveller, and wit, was born in Nottingham. After a
brief spell in the civil service, he entered journalism as a special corre-
spondent with the forces in the First World War. In 1920, he was appointed
editor of The Nottingham Journal. His first volume of poems, with a preface by
John Masefield, was published in 1913, and he won considerable critical
acclaim when he began writing novels ten years later. He became an
established bestseller in the 1930s with Pilgrim Cottage (1933) and Victoria
Four-Thirty (1937). He later travelled extensively in the US on lecture tours
and eventually settled in Italy, where he died. He met JC through Grace
Willard in February 1918, when he was 25.
132

The Bright Twenties: 1920–1929. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1970.

Roberts recalls JC’s describing to him his sad childhood, his school
work, his visits in the evening to his dying father’s bedroom, and the
latter’s funeral (348).

Half Way: An Autobiography. London: Hutchinson, 1931, 213–20.

[Mainly a summary of Roberts’s 1925 Bookman article] JC had the air of a

member of the corps diplomatique. Roberts and JC discussed modern
poetry. Garnett was pondering some point in JC’s manuscript when
Roberts arrived [The Arrow of Gold?].1 In a discussion of writers, JC at last
alluded to himself, a little despondently and in the third person. He said
he would feel rewarded if only one of his books survived, so that his
family should have cause to be proud of him.

“Joseph Conrad.” The Times (London), 10 December 1957: 11.

JC told Roberts that he was tortured by his limitations, and he thanked

Roberts emotionally for assuring him that Nostromo would guarantee his
immortality. “God bless you for that! [...] My poor Nostromo! They do not
like it. Always this chatter about The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus,’ which is
nothing!” [1918]

“Joseph Conrad: A Reminiscence.” Bookman (New York), 61 (July

1925): 536–42. [For reprints, see Ehrsam 1602.] [Ray, ed., 124–31]
JC was wholly unmarked by experience, and was a figure of complete
civilization. JC told Roberts that the war had overwhelmed his power of
expression, and he had been unable to finish a series of articles on mine-
sweepers: “I write with difficulty, with agony, in this hour of indecision”
(538).2

1 This meeting with JC and Garnett possibly occurred in JC’s temporary flat at
Hyde Park Mansions on Friday, 22 February 1918 (see CL6 188).
2 This conversation took place at their first meeting on one “dreary” February
afternoon in 1918 in Grace Willard’s new flat off Bedford Square. In the last
 133

JC said he had known only the ardour and never the pleasure of
writing: “Perhaps that is because I began late, when experience checked
the singleness of youthful thought. I have never been fluent. Easy writing
– and I do not say it cannot be good writing – is not possible to me. My
success seems in proportion to my effort, to my striving. I feel that
generalship has brought me whatever victories I may claim – if any”
(539). “I could be content if I could think something of mine, something
however small, might endure a while. One has expressions of immor-
tality – there are my boys – but one’s writing is one’s own immortality, if
it can be achieved” (539). In response to Roberts’s praise of Nostromo, JC
said, “Nostromo is my best book, it is more Conrad than anything I have
written, that is, in the sense that it embarks on my greatest imaginative
adventure, and that it involved the severest struggle. No work cost me so
much, and, achieved, gave me such satisfaction. I stand by Nostromo, out
of the frailty of flesh, hoping it may last a while for a memorial. And yet
it did not succeed with the public. They will not have my poor Nostromo.
They prefer Lord Jim” (540).1

The Pleasant Years, 1947–1972. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1974.

JC told Roberts that he was utterly incapable of writing a line of verse (231).

The Years of Promise, 1908–1919. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1968.

On their first meeting [February 1918], JC told Roberts that he had never
been able to write poetry, for it was a craft beyond him (167). Shortly
afterwards, Roberts visited JC at his flat at Hyde Park Mansions,
Marylebone Road, and met Garnett there. JC said, “Do you know that I
am utterly exhausted if I manage three hundred words a day – that is
good going for me. [...] Bennett says he writes four thousand words a day
with ease. Wells also. Writing is always agony for me, sometimes I
wonder why I write!” (168). Garnett was concerned about being called

quarter of 1916, JC had made several North Sea voyages with the Royal Navy
as an observer in the war effort. He subsequently wrote “The Unlighted
Coast” for the Admiralty, probably in December 1916, but, lacking propa-
ganda value, it was published only posthumously. JC did not keep his
agreement to write more articles for the Admiralty.
1 This second conversation took place in the Conrads’ flat at Hyde Park
Mansions on Friday, 22 February 1918 (see CL6 188). Edward Garnett had
been present earlier in the evening.
134

up for military service, and JC wrote to Roberts to ask him to try and
obtain a post for Garnett in one of the War Ministries.1 Unfortunately,
Roberts never received the letter, addressed to his club (168; 165–71
reprint much of Roberts’s Half Way, q.v.)

Roditi, Édouard

“Trick Perspectives.” Virginia Quarterly Review, 20.4 (1944): 547–49.

Roditi was a schoolboy when he met JC at Elstree School,2 of which Ted
Sanderson was headmaster. Roditi was asked by Sanderson to entertain
JC, for “Mr. Conrad always enjoys speaking French” (547). Roditi and JC
talked for an hour, and JC spoke French “with a slight foreign accent
and infinite care in the selection of his words” (548). He repeatedly told
Roditi how fortunate he, Roditi, was to know three languages, and he
recounted various experiences from his own “polyglot youth” (548).
[Roditi’s recollection of summer 1920]

Rothenstein, John3

Summer’s Lease: Autobiography, 1901–1938. London: Hamilton, 1965,

17, 43–44, 115, 145.
Rothenstein recalls JC’s admiration for his father, William, and his stories
of remote, dramatic events.

[Private communication: letter dated 7 April 1989]

1 Garnett had been serving in the Friends’ Ambulance Unit in Italy, and he
enlisted JC’s help in May 1918 to obtain “a Govt job of a civil nature” (CL6
218). JC approached Roberts, who was at the Ministry of Munitions.
2 Then in Edgware, Middlesex (now in Woolhampton, Reading, Berkshire).
3 John Knewstub Maurice Rothenstein (1901–97; knighted 1952), eldest son of
William Rothenstein. An art historian, he was director of the Tate Gallery,
1938–64. In 1921, JC asked his father to “Remember me specially to John,
whom I know better than all the others” (CL7 373).
 135

“Conrad treated very young friends as equals, so I had a particular

affection for him, as well as profound admiration.”

Rothenstein, William1

Men and Memories: Recollections of William Rothenstein, 1872–1900. Vol. 1.

London: Faber & Faber, 1931, 374.

John Masefield2 “had a passionate admiration for Conrad. When later I

got to know Conrad, I took him Masefield’s Salt Water Ballads [1902] and
some of his stories; but Conrad had conceived one of his odd prejudices
against Masefield, and indulged in a violent outburst against him.”

Men and Memories: Recollections of William Rothenstein, 1900–1922. Vol.

2. London: Faber & Faber, 1932, 38–44, 61–62, 86, 157–61, 163–
64, 167–68, 170, 278–79. [Ray, ed., 143–46]

It was Ford who suggested that Rothenstein should paint JC, and he was
invited to The Pent for a weekend [July 1903]. JC had met few painters
and was curious about the painter’s outlook on life. Wells had been
invited for Sunday lunch, but never came. JC also wished to introduce
Rothenstein to Galsworthy, of whom he said that “our first meeting was
when I ordered him out of the way; he was a passenger on my ship, you
know; he is such a good friend; but insists on writing, poor fellow.

1 William Rothenstein (1872–1945; knighted 1931), painter and Principal of

the Royal College of Art, was a Yorkshireman of Germanic extraction. He
attended the Slade School of Fine Art at the age of sixteen. Between 1889
and 1925, he completed more than 750 portrait drawings (including Verlaine,
Einstein, and T. E. Lawrence among many others) in his great series of
contemporary portraits. He served as an official artist in the First World War,
recording the Front in France, and was an unofficial artist for the RAF duing
the Second World War.
In the summer of 1903, he made his first visit to JC, and his work on that
occasion is the earliest known portrait of him. It is now in the National
Portrait Gallery, London. The visit was the beginning of a long friendship,
and on several occasions he proved to be of great assistance to JC in his
financial troubles.
2 John Masefield (1878–1967), Poet Laureate from 1930.
136

Writing is a treadmill; he doesn’t know it yet.” J. B. Pinker, his agent,

“believes in me – wants to pull me out of my difficulties – an idealist,
you understand” (42).
JC would often despair, and he worked himself into a fever during
the writing of Nostromo [in 1903]: “I can’t get anything out of myself
quickly,” he said, “it takes me a year of agony to make something like a
book – generally longer. And, my dear fellow, when it is done there are
not more than twenty people who understand pourquoi on se tue pour écrire
quelques phrases pas trop mauvaises” (43).
Rothenstein leaned more towards radicalism than JC did, and the
latter often “brought me up sharply with a contemptuous remark.” Social
idealists, pacifists, and the like roused his anger, and he could not abide
Shaw. He knew though that Cunninghame Graham was more a cynic than
an idealist, his Socialism a form of contempt for a feeble aristocracy (44).
No one could be more charming than JC when he wished, but he
had an aggressive side, too. He was prejudiced against Masefield’s work,
even more hostile to Shaw, “and once when I told him that Max
[Beerbohm] didn’t like Proust, he burst out against Max; yet, another
time I heard him judge Proust sharply” (157).
Rothenstein says of Galsworthy: “if there was a lame dog to be
helped over a stile, one went straight to Galsworthy. ‘Jack’ was the name
one heard most often during illness in the Conrad household” (164). JC
had initially spoken of Galsworthy’s writing rather apologetically, as
though it were the man who was most worthy of our acquaintance.
[Rothenstein also recounts his efforts to obtain a grant for JC from the
Royal Bounty Fund, in 1904–05, JC’s dislike of George Calderon
(Slavonic Librarian at The British Museum and an authority on Russia),
and his admiration of Roger Casement]
 137

Russell, Bertrand1

Autobiography, 1914–1944. London: Allen & Unwin, 1968, 75–76.

Russell in a letter described how “the centre of me is always and eternally

a terrible pain [...] a searching for something beyond what the world
contains, something transfigured and infinite [...]. I have known others
who had it – Conrad especially – but it is rare” [dated October 1916].

“Joseph Conrad.” Portraits from Memory and Other Essays. London:

Allen & Unwin, 1956, 81–85.

Russell was introduced to JC by Ottoline Morrell [September 1913]. He

saw JC seldom, and not at all between 1914 and 1921. JC had little
interest in political systems, although he had some strong political
feelings, such as hatred of Russia. The only Russian novelist he admired
was Turgenev. [Virtually identical to Russell’s Autobiography, 1872–1914
(London: Allen & Unwin, 1968), 207–10.]

Safroni-Middleton, Arnold

Tropic Shadows: Memories of the South Seas, Together with Reminiscences

of the Author’s Sea Meetings with Joseph Conrad. London: Richards,
1927, 35–59; abstracted in Lyman Owen, “Conrad and A. Safroni-
Middleton,” Conradiana, 8 (1976): 265–67.

[Accounts of undated meetings with JC in unidentified ships, ca. 1879–

81. Hans van Marle has demonstrated why Safroni-Middleton’s memoir is
“so obviously unreliable,” with its “apocryphal details” and “demon-
strable fantasies”: see JCA 45–46.]

1 The Hon. Bertrand Arthur William Russell (1872–1970; 3rd Earl Russell
1931) was a philosopher and mathematician, and a lecturer at Trinity College,
Cambridge, when he first met JC in 1913. Russell had a great admiration for
JC and his work, and they were exceptionally close friends for about a year
after their first meeting. Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in
1950.
138

JC knew a Russian called Youloff[?], and he fed some starving

Englishmen on his ship. Describes JC’s visits to Sydney, Auckland[?],
San Francisco [?] and the Tower Hill Shipping Offices in London. JC
described the hot chestnuts one could buy in Valencia, Madrid, and
Naples. JC praised Marryat, Dickens, and Balzac’s Wild Ass’s Skin (1831).
JC’s lodgings near King’s Cross [i.e., Victoria] described.

Sargent, George H.

“American Notes: Joseph Conrad and the American Newspaper

Interviewers.” Bookman’s Journal & Print Collector, 8.22 (July 1923):
125.

JC described the plot of his forthcoming The Rover to be issued in book

form on 1 December. He wrote out the novel’s epigraph.1 [Typical of
many such reports of JC’s interview at home of F. N. Doubleday, Long
Island]

Saunders, A. T.

“Joseph Conrad Korzeniowski.” Nautical Magazine, 105 (June 1921):

567–68; rpt. in Norman Sherry, Conrad’s Eastern World. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1966, 322.

Saunders,2 who corresponded with JC, sent the latter’s good wishes to
Mrs. James Simpson, widow of the owner of the Otago. She replied to
him [2 May 1917]: “Your letter giving Joseph Conrad’s message and
address reached me yesterday: thank you very much for it. We all remem-

1 Presumably this was the epigraph JC did not eventually use and described at
this time to James Walter Smith (see below).
2 “Born in Queensland […], Alfred Thomas Saunders of Adelaide, South
Australia, was an accountant and amateur historian who often published the
results of his researches in the Adelaide Mail. In 1888, when Conrad com-
manded the Otago, Saunders had been working as a clerk for her owners,
Henry Simpson and Co.” (CL6 18).
 139

ber with pleasure Captain Korzeniowski’s visits to us at Woodville.1 The

boys used to enjoy them as much as my husband and I did” (567). [Sherry’s
reprint contains substantial, unindicated omissions from Saunders’s text.]

Schwab, Arnold T.

“Conrad’s American Speeches and his Reading from Victory.”

Modern Philology, 62 (May 1965): 342–47.
JC addressed the staff of his publishers (Doubleday, Page) in Garden
City, New York, on 5 May 1923. One of the two stenographers assigned
to transcribe JC’s speech recalls that JC “spoke softly and indistinctly,
and we were hopelessly lost” (343).

Sée, Ida-R.

“Joseph Conrad à Montpellier.” Le Petit Méridional (Montpellier), 6

September 1924.
JC never mentioned his work. He said he read Flaubert religiously.2

Sherman, Thomas B.

“Joseph Conrad and his Miraculous Career.” Atlanta Journal, 3 June

1923: 20 [not seen]; rpt. in Dale B. J. Randall, “Conrad Interviews,

1 Woodville is a suburb of Adelaide.

2 This is an account of JC’s visits to Montpellier, 1906–07, by Borys’s French
teacher, whom Jessie Conrad described thus: “We discovered a charming
French woman who readily undertook the boy’s French lessons. Mademoiselle
Seé [sic] was lively and very amusing. Her pet name was ‘Madame Barb[e]-à-
Bleu’; she boasted of a fictitious husband whenever her business took her out
of her native town. We had a great regard for this dear lady, and many were
the hours she spent with us, either on our various jaunts or sitting with me
while I worked” (Joseph Conrad and His Circle, 111). Borys Conrad described
her as “an elderly but very charming lady” (My Father, 48). See also Najder 321,
326.
140

No. 3: Thomas B. Sherman.” Conradiana, 2.3 (1969–70): 122–27.

[Account of JC’s interview at Long Island home of F. N. Doubleday, 7

May 1923.] JC said of Stephen Crane, “There was your impressionist for
you.” Lord Jim was “a very defective book. I got into it with Marlow telling
the story and simply had to go through with it.” JC used irony in The
Secret Agent “to contain my fury and contempt for the sort of characters I
was dealing with,” although, he added, “there is humor in irony.”

Shorter, C. K. 1

“Books Make the Best Furniture.” Sphere, 103 (31 October 1925): 157.

[Repeats anecdote described in following item, with slight differences.

E.g., Shorter proposed to publish a serial by JC in Illustrated London News
(The Rescue). They never met again.] Shorter reports that JC told a friend
he realized that Suspense was inferior.

“A Great Writer.” Sphere, 98 (9 August 1924): 155.

[Obituary notice] Shorter recalls that it is nearly thirty years since he met
JC: “He called at my office about a story I had asked him to write.” JC
remembered that visit, because he had been asked to write at a time of
depression and discouragement.

Sibley, Carroll

“Mrs. Joseph Conrad.” Barrie and his Contemporaries: Cameo Portraits

of Ten Living Authors. Webster Grove, Missouri: International Mark
Twain Society, 1936, 48–51 [not seen]; rpt. in Conradiana, 2.2
(1969–70): 95–96.

1 C(lement) K(ing) Shorter (1859–1926), editor of the Illustrated London News

and the English Illustrated Magazine. He later founded The Sphere and Tatler. In
1898, he accepted The Rescue for publication in the Illustrated London News, but
it was not completed in time. JC called on Shorter in February 1899 (CL2
169).
 141

Mrs Conrad had “early literary ambitions, but Conrad [...] would
invariably stick my stuff away in a drawer, and I would never see it again,
although he’d promise to get to it sometime” (95). [Interviewed ca. 1935]

Smith, James Walter

“Joseph Conrad – Master Mariner and Novelist.” Boston Evening
Transcript, 12 May 1923: 2 [not seen]; rpt. in Dale B. J. Randall,
“Conrad Interviews, No. 2: James Walter Smith.” Conradiana, 2.2
(1969–70): 83–93. [Ray, ed., 181–89]
JC was interviewed by a score of reporters at the Long Island home of F.
N. Doubleday, on 7 May 1923. Smith, who had met JC nearly thirty years
before, records many of JC’s comments on Crane, such as “I was one of
the first to know him when he came to London, and I had written
something about ‘The Red Badge’” [“His War Book”]. Of his preface to
Beer’s Stephen Crane, JC said, “You’ll find a great deal of new stuff in it,
because I loved to put it down.”1
Replying to a question about Lord Jim’s indirect narrative method, JC
asserted that “I say what my characters think. [...] If you are talking about
what is called the novel of analysis, I know nothing about it.” He said
later that “I got into ‘Lord Jim’ […] and I just had to get out. I had to
invent Marlow to carry on the story. It seems the best way. The critics
say that Marlow talks the way a man writes. They are right. That’s what
he does. But when I did it that way, I didn’t create a new form of writing
– there is no new form of writing novels. I have too much to think of
when I am writing novels. I have too much to think of when I am
writing to invent new forms.”
JC agreed that The Secret Agent was ironical, and “it seemed to me
that irony was the only thing to use with those fellows.” Irony may be
truthful and loving, he added. Kurtz was a real character: “I saw him die.”2

1 JC had written his preface to Thomas Beer’s Stephen Crane: A Study in

American Letters (New York: Knopf, 1923) in the preceding March.
2 During his stay in the Congo, JC took on board his steamer a young French-
man, Georges-Antoine Klein, suffering from dysentery. Klein died during the
journey down river. His name, later changed to Kurtz, may be found in the
manuscript of “Heart of Darkness.” Apart from his presence and death
aboard the steamer, there is no reason to link his character with that of Kurtz.
142

Sidney Pawling of Heinemann induced W. E. Henley to publish The

Nigger in the New Review. “It was my ‘Nigger’ that killed the ‘Review’ you
know.” JC thought the cinema was miraculous, although it could never
replace the novel: “The trouble with moving-pictures is that they don’t
show, except in a superficial way, what the characters are thinking.”
Finally, JC discussed The Rover, due to be published in December, and he
wrote out the novel’s epigraph, describing the sailors who used to
navigate the Indian Ocean. An old Breton sailor had told it to him:
“They were of all nations/English French Dutch/Spaniards and even
blackamoors/but they were all brothers.” JC said he always had trouble
spelling “blackamoor.” [Smith reproduces JC’s handwriting. This epigraph
was not eventually used.]

Stallman, R. W., and L(ilian). Gilkes, ed.

Stephen Crane: Letters. London: Peter Owen, 1960, 170–71, 243,

283–84.

Cora Crane, in her account of JC written on the reverse of a flyleaf,

noted that he “speaks and acts like a Frenchman” [ca. 1899. Several
biographical errors, e.g. “his father died in Siberia” and “he was educated
in France”] (170). Stephen Crane invited JC to contribute to a play that
would be presented at Christmas 1899.1 On 14 May 1900, Crane, who
was seriously ill, wrote to Sanford Bennett that “I have Conrad on my
mind very much just now. Garnett does not think it likely that his writing
will ever be popular outside the ring of men who write. He is poor and a
gentleman and proud. His wife is not strong and they have a kid. If
Garnett should ask you to help pull wires for a place on the Civil List for
Conrad please do me the last favor” (283–84).

1 “Crane decided to celebrate the end of 1899 with a big party open to the
local population. The crowning attraction of the evening was to have been
the staging of a burlesque, The Ghost, allegedly written by ten authors,
including Conrad, James, Gissing, Wells, and the host himself. Conrad’s real
contribution to the entertainment, which lasted three days, is unknown”
(Najder 263).
 143

Stape, J. H., and Hans van Marle

“‘Pleasant Memories’ and ‘Precious Friendships’: Conrad’s Torrens

Connection and Unpublished Letters from the 1890s.” Conradiana,
27 (1995): 21–44.

Stape and Van Marle (24) quote from an obituary of Walter Banks,
whom JC met aboard the Torrens in 1891–92; the obituary noted that
Banks, a civil engineer from Stockport, “corresponded for years with
Conrad, and used to say of him: ‘He was a most lovable character, but he
could be stern as a mate’” (from The Stockport Advertiser, 28 December
1951: 13).
JC also met E(phraim) B(rownlow) Redmayne (ca. 1836–1914), a
cotton-waste-dealer on his second voyage in the Torrens: “family legend
has it that they became friendly during Conrad’s night watches when
Redmayne, who suffered from insomnia, fell into talking with him” (25;
Stape and van Marle cite private correspondence).

Stape, J. H., and Owen Knowles, ed.

A Portrait in Letters: Correspondence to and about Conrad. Amsterdam:

Rodopi, 1996.

John Galsworthy recalled that, when he first met JC on board the Torrens
in 1893, he was engaged in the hot and dirty work of stowing cargo and
had “the air of a pirate.” “Conrad’s watches (he was first officer) were to
me the gems of the voyage – if You know him as a raconteur You will
understand” (53; letter from Galsworthy to William Archer, dated 29
September 1906).
Max Beerbohm said of JC that “Our meetings were only three in all.
The last was a few months ago, in Theodore Byard’s room at the office
of the firm of Heinemann. He look [sic] so well in health; he was so
vivacious; he was so immensely courteous (he always had lovely manners:
everybody was agreed about that!)” (247; letter to Jessie Conrad, dated 6
August 1924).
144

[Stark, Harold]

“Young Boswell interviews Joseph Conrad.” New York Tribune, 31

May 1923: 11.

[Stark interviewed JC in America, 30 May 1923] James Boswell had a fine

Scotch mind, JC thought. Paderewski and John Powell had beautiful hands.
JC explained that he had his little jokes, although some might think him
a pessimist or a bore. [Rpt. in Stark’s People You Know (New York: Boni
and Liveright, 1924), 332–35; see also Louis Weitzenkorn’s article,
described below.]

Stein, Marian L.

“John Conrad at Home.” Conradiana, 4.2 (1972–73): 67–71.

[John Conrad’s recollections of Edward Garnett, Cunninghame Graham,

Arthur Marwood, Ford, the blacksmith, the journey to Wales, JC’s
drawings, sense of humour and modesty; they are mostly repeated in his
Joseph Conrad: Times Remembered (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1981.)]

Stravinsky, Igor

Themes and Conclusions. London: Faber & Faber, 1972, 71.

In a conversation with Stravinsky in 1963, T. S. Eliot described JC as “a

Grand Seigneur, the grandest I have ever met, but it was a terrible shock
after reading him to hear him talk. He had a very guttural accent.” Eliot
considered “Youth” and “The End of the Tether” to be the “finest
stories of their kind that I know.”

Stravinsky, Igor, and Robert Craft

Dialogues and A Diary. London: Faber & Faber, 1968, 249–50. [Ray,
ed., 221]
 145

Saint-John Perse regarded JC as “the most perfect aristocrat and the

truest friend I have ever known” (249). JC, he said to Craft, would never
judge a friend morally or intellectually, for friendship was sacred to him.
He did not love the sea but “man-against-the-sea,” and “he never
understood me when I talked about the sea itself. I think he must have
disliked my poems, though the only literature that I am certain he
positively hated was Dostoevsky” (250). JC told Perse of a dinner he
once attended, with Shaw, Bennett, and Wells, and they horrified JC by
talking about writing as “action.” He pretended he had to catch an earlier
train and left. “[JC] told me later, in épouvantable French,1 except for one
English word I will never forget, ‘Writing, for me, is an act of faith. They
all made me feel so dowdy.’” [Perse in conversation with Craft, 1962.]

Sutherland, J. G.2

“At Sea with Conrad.” Nautical Magazine, 105.5 (May 1921): 385–90.
JC spoke of his early days at Cracow University [sic]. He did not show
anxiety for his son Borys who was fighting in France, and he spoke of
him with great pride and feeling. He loved to discuss the courts of
Europe, who married whom, and why. He could talk for hours about the
sea and had an infectious cheeriness.

Swettenham, Sir Frank

“The Story of Lord Jim.” Times Literary Supplement, 6 September

1923: 588.

1 Saint-John Perse’s description of JC’s French as “dreadful” is a rare, perhaps

unique, criticism of his command of the spoken language; it may partly
reflect a disdain for Conrad’s distinctly Provençal accent.
2 J(ohn) G(eorgeson) Sutherland, (1871–?), Commander in the Royal Navy
Reserve in charge of minesweeping vessels during the war at Granton Harbour,
Scotland. He captained the HMS Ready, in which JC made a ten-day voyage
in November 1916, putting ashore at Bridlington. Sutherland later wrote an
entire 150-page book about the experience, At Sea with Joseph Conrad (London:
Richards, 1922). JC described it as “that preposterous bosh” (CL7 484).
146

Had JC known the full story of the sinking of the Jeddah, he would not
have omitted to mention that the pilgrims came on deck in their grave-
clothes to await their doom. [This anecdote is also found in Gertrude
Atherton’s book: see above.]

Swinnerton, Frank1

Authors I Never Met. London: Allen & Unwin, 1956, 25–32.

JC was very concerned about being thought a fraud. H. G. Wells did

excellent imitations of his accent.

Background with Chorus. London: Hutchinson, 1956, 125–29.

Henry James was not “wholly approving” (125) of JC’s work. H. G. Wells
gave “irresistible imitations of Conrad’s broken English” (125–26), while
Arnold Bennett once exclaimed, about JC, “That poor tired old man!” Ford
once mumbled some hardly intelligible words to Swinnerton about JC, in
which “ridicule, patronage and enthusiasm were communicated” (126).
One of JC’s favourite schemes, which he discussed with friends, was a
plan to exploit his wife’s talent for cookery by opening a boarding-house.

Figures in the Foreground. London: Hutchinson, 1963, 95.

In January 1920, Swinnerton received a letter from Hugh Walpole, in

which he remarked that “what Conrad said in the summer, that ‘it is
easier to have an intellectual friendship with a Chinaman than an
American’ is perfectly true.”2

1 Frank Arthur Swinnerton (1884–1982), novelist and critic.

2 JC made this remark in January 1919; see Rupert Hart-Davis entry, above.
 147

Symons, Arthur1
Arthur Symons: Selected Letters, 1880–1935, ed. Karl Beckson and
John M. Munro. London: Macmillan, 1989.
[Rhoda Symons, wife, to James G. Huneker, 24 December 1910] “we go
over and see Joseph Conrad occasionally – Arthur has a passionate
admiration for him” (202).

[Symons to Rhoda, 6 February 1911]

“Yesterday was splendid. A[gnes Tobin] hired a car from Rye and we
went to the Conrads.2 A. and C. talked at such a rate that I imagined how
on earth I was to edge in words between them: about Poland, Polish,
California, etc. Finally my triumph came. Exit all but C. and I. He said to
A.: I must talk with A.! And such a talk we had. He said: How living you
look. Your beard gives you un air distingué, a poetical distinction. Then I
read him ‘Crimen Amoris.’3 He sat close beside me on the sofa, and
listened, breathing hard. One or two interruptions came: up went C.,
door shut: back: then: magnificent! what a magnificent translation. So I
read over in a sonorous voice the 1st stanza and then the last in its lovely
nuances (adores; implores). Then C.: I am transported.
Then money. He said: I have had £300 for the serial rights of my
novel:4 think of those awful creatures who get thousands. I may get
altogether £1,000 out of it. Mais, I am always under the water. (He was
walking to and fro, smoking.) I am not content with my novel. It has no
end. It sickens me when I have to sit down to my desk and write so
many thousand words for a short story – for money. (He put his hand
over his forehead: All is here!) But how can I go on?

1 Arthur William Symons (1865–1945), poet, critic, and author of The Symbolist
Movement in Literature (1899). Symons suffered several severe nervous break-
downs, and JC met him quite regularly during the period 1909–12, offering
his support and encouragement. Symons lived nearby at Wittersham, Kent.
2 On 7 February 1911, JC told Symons that “I was glad to see you more alert,
more hopeful and altogether better this time,” adding that “Miss Tobin’s
passage under our roof left a delightful scent of intelligence and charm of a
finely humane quality” (CL4 411–12).
3 From Paul Verlaine’s Jadis et Naguère (1884).
4 Under Western Eyes.
148

I reminded him of my thing on him1 and he said, with such curious

emotion: When you publish another book, you won’t forget me? Certainly
not, said I.
Then, as we left, to return to Laurence’s,2 said C.: Au revoir, cher! and
I answering him. Wasn’t it lovely?” (217)

[Symons to Gordon Craig, April 1911]

“how astonishing a creature is he – a Hamlet, if you like – with all his

wisdom and nerves, and vision also. As the man (whom I have met
continually) so are his works” (218).

[Symons to John Quinn, 1 December 1911]

“I have here the MSS. of my essay on Conrad3 (which extends to 80

pages, excessively revised and rewritten) which has a history. […] I
rubbed out the pencil marks, sent the thing to Conrad, who wrote me an
enormous letter,4 entirely approving (with all his foreign grace and using
such words as gratitude) what I had written, advising me to omit two
references to two American novelists (one Mark Twain). This I did. […]
He, of course, is anxious for the publishing of the thing (which I have
since revised) in some American magazine” (220).

[Symons to Rhoda, 1 June 1912]

“Conrad was caressingly kind. Vous avez l’air très bien, plus raffiné, plus
jeune: et tout le reste. He was intensely absorbed in my Collected Edition:
listened to every detail; gave me some wise hints; and never have we had
such a conversation, so natural, so simple, and for several hours. He was

1 An essay by Symons on JC.

2 The Dutch-born English Classicist painter and Royal Academician Laurence
Alma-Tadema (1836-1912; knighted 1899) had a house near Symons in
Wittersham, Kent.
3 Symons’s essay appeared as “Joseph Conrad,” Forum, 53 (May 1915): 579–92.
4 For JC’s lengthy reply in August 1908, see CL4 99–101. He recognized,
however, that Symons was mentally ill at the time, and told William
Rothenstein on 4 November 1908 that the article was “wildly laudatory and I
was simply appalled by it. I wrote as delicately as I could and he took my
letter in very good part” (CL4 150).
 149

just the same, somewhat less nervous, but with all his vitality. He said a
splendid thing: We overleap two centuries” (223).
JC drove “the funniest little car I ever saw. He bought it or hired it for
a year – awfully cheap. And his childish enjoyment at this new adventure
was amusing” (224).1
“And he told me two strange affairs of his. He got £40 for the
Titanic,2 which he wrote in 48 hours. Before then he had sold the MS of
The Outcast of the Islands [sic] (of immense length, 800 pages or more) and
for only £40” (224).
“Conrad is most curious to see [Augustus] John3 when he comes
here” (224).

[Symons to John Quinn, 28 September 1913]

“I spent most of yesterday at Conrad’s.4 He was in splendid form, and

found me the same. I don’t think that either he nor I were ever so much
our own selves. And I think both enjoyed it immensely” (228).

[Symons to Rhoda, 29 September 1913]

“Conrad was more himself than ever: proud of his work, praising my art
as aesthetic, exactly like the prose of Flaubert: What a compliment! He
got excited over The Secret Agent; told me lots about it. As I said entirely
ironical. He: I showed an utter contempt for those Nihilists. The murder
and the rest made it. My quality, as a foreigner, is that of the art of

1 In a letter to Sidney Colvin of 13 August 1912, JC said, “Yes. We have the

little car. It’s a worthy and painstaking one-cylinder puffer which amuses us
very much” (CL5 96; see also Borys Conrad, My Father, 67–68, and John
Conrad, Times Remembered, 46). The car was a second-hand two-seater Cadillac
with epicyclic gears.
2 This first of two articles by JC on the sinking appeared as “Some Reflexions,
Seamanlike and Otherwise, on the Loss of the Titanic,” English Review, 11
(May 1912): 304–15.
3 Augustus Edwin John (1878–1961), the painter, had been introduced to JC
by William Rothenstein. In 1912, JC told John Quinn that “I used to meet
him some eight years ago at Rothenstein’s. A fascinating personality. A great
artist. I admire him without restriction” (CL5 81–82; see also CL3 134, CL5
363).
4 On 27 September 1913, JC told Pinker that “To day Symons turned up for
lunch” (CL5 286).
150

narration, which distinguishes me from any other novelist. (Think of

Lord Jim!) I write laboriously, go over my work. I write by images, which
I have some trouble in putting into words. (Every poet also! but more by
instinct.) Nor can I write without adventures. […]
He showed then his hatred against women in general. He said: I don’t
want praise from my wife nor any woman; with a great scowl. There, I
can’t just fathom him” (229).

[Symons to John Quinn, 4 August 1916]

[3 August 1916, at Capel House] “His adventure in Poland took him

more than an hour to relate; incredible – amazing – terrible. One: ‘There
were 25,000 stinking Jews on the stairs up which I went to have my pass-
port vised. I had to wait 5 hours in the corridor – thought I would never
get in nor out. Finally I enter. The man flings up his hands and says: “I
can’t! I can’t!”’ In Vienna he just escaped being arrested; ‘had I been
(said he) I shouldn’t have been here.’ […] I never saw him in better
spirits than on that afternoon” (240).

[Symons to John Quinn, 15 September 1922]

“We spent a day with Joseph Conrad. He was sinister, one mass of
writhing nerves; irritable and impatient – yet always the man of genius”
(252).

[Symons to Warner Taylor, (late 1931?)]

JC visited Symons on 1 April 1914 (231).

“One day Conrad (a man of genius, whose fascination was unique,
and whose own style was inimitable and often exasperating) standing in
my study many years ago, having read these sentences, in an article of
mine on Salammbô,1 looked up at me with surprise and expressed his
delight in finding that I was the first to discover, what he had wondered
at, the secret of Flaubert’s rhythm” (258).

“Joseph Conrad: A Personal Impression.” Queen, No. 4052 (20

August 1924): 5.

1 “Gustave Flaubert,” an introduction to Salammbô (1901).

 151

JC was incapable of rest. When not writing, he was elaborating a fine art
of conversation. He told Symons that “I do not create, I invent.” JC was
the proudest man Symons ever met, and the most lovable. He was
inscrutable and impenetrable at times, and there was something almost
inhuman in his aspect. He had a physical disquietude.

“A Set of Six” in George T. Keating, A Conrad Memorial Library.

Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1929, 170–81.
JC said, “I always plot out my novels any amount of times before I begin
them; [...] I just go on inventing; I let my people think and they do just as
they like; they often escape from my control” (170). Asked whether his
work was abnormal, JC replied, “Probably it is – not all of it, by any
means. When I create monstrous images and monstrous beings it is because
my imagination often works in two directions at once – in the Seen and
in the Unseen Worlds” (170).
All the details in “Heart of Darkness” were correct, he said. He saw
the sacrilegious rites and naked dancing natives. “Kurtz looked like an
animated image of death carved out of old ivory” (170–71). He saw
Kurtz’s mistress in Singapore, moving past him “like the animal she was”
(171). JC was proud of having written “Il Conde” in ten days; every
incident of this adventure had been related to him at Capri in 1905 by
Count Szembek.1 JC said of Victory that “I consider this one of my finest
achievements, yet when I was writing it I felt tormented and feverish. I
tried to write that novel simply, event following hard on event and
always surprise, and to avoid as far as possible putting into it too much
style and too much imagination” (173).

Temple, Frédéric-Jacques

“Joseph Conrad à Montpellier.” Cahiers d’Études et de Recherches

Victoriennes et Édouardiennes, No. 2: Studies in Joseph Conrad, ed.
Claude Thomas (Montpellier: Université Paul-Valéry, 1975), 13–18.

1 The manuscript of “Il Conde” is dated as having been completed on 4

December 1906. In August 1908, JC told Ada Galsworthy that the writing of
the story “took me ten days” (CL4 104). Count Zygmunt Szembek (1844–
1907) was a Pole whom JC met in Capri in early 1905. See also Jessie Conrad,
Joseph Conrad As I Knew Him, 127, and Joseph Conrad and His Circle, 97.
152

In 1942, Temple met Louis-Charles Eymar,1 a traveller and local painter

who knew JC during his visits to Montpellier in 1906–07. JC would tell
Eymar about the adventures described in Typhoon and The Nigger, but he
never said he was a writer, and Eymar knew him only as an ancient mariner
with “un nom difficile” [i.e., Korzeniowski]. It was only much later that
Valery Larbaud explained to Eymar that he had been talking to Conrad.
One evening, Eymar had suspected that his friend might be a writer.
He had mentioned the work of Henri de Régnier,2 whom the sailor had
appreciated, and he had offered to lend him one of de Régnier’s books,
but JC had refused, saying that lending books deprived the author of his
income. Eymar and JC frequented the Café Riche in Montpellier, where
JC would sit very near the orchestra and observe a young girl musician
[the model for Lena in Victory]. Eymar showed Temple a photograph of
this “jeune personne, assez jolie femme” (17).

Thomas, Edward

Letters from Edward Thomas to Gordon Bottomley, ed. R. G. Thomas.

London: Oxford University Press, 1968. [Ray, ed., 217–18]

Thomas3 says he has just spent a couple of days with the Conrads [letter
of 26 August 1910]. JC “looks something like Sir Richard Burton in the
head, black hair, and moustache and beard and a jutting out face, and
pale thin lips extraordinarily mobile among the black hair, flashing eyes
and astonishing eyebrows, and a way of throwing his head right back to
laugh.” He was very friendly (206–07).

1 Louis-Charles Eymar (1882–1944).

2 Henri-François-Joseph de Régnier (1864–1936) was a leading French symbolist
poet of the early twentieth century.
3 Edward Thomas (1878–1917), Anglo–Welsh poet who was killed in the First
World War. On 13 July 1910, JC wrote to him from Capel House, saying
“Do not forget your promise to come with your boy end August” (CL4 350).
Thomas lived at Petersfield, Hampshire. His son, Merfyn, was born in 1900.
 153

The Letters of Edward Thomas to Jesse Berridge, ed. Anthony Berridge.

London: Enitharmon Press, 1983.
Writing from Lydd, Kent, Thomas mentioned that “Twice I have seen
Conrad who lives 12 miles away,” at Capel House [82; letter dated 24
December 1916].1

Tittle, Walter2

“The Conrad Who Sat for Me.” Outlook (New York), 140 (1 and 8
July 1925): 333–35, 361–62. [Ray, ed., 153–63]

In his last couple of years, JC was on the defensive against new

acquaintances, for he had little surplus strength to expend. He also felt
that he did not have long to live, and that there was something vitally
wrong with his heart, although he concealed this from his family. He
confided to Tittle that he wished to live longer, in order to try and excel

1 In November 1916, Thomas had been posted as a Second Lieutenant to 244

Siege Battery at Lydd. On 10 December 1916, Thomas came to say goodbye
to Conrad before being posted as a volunteer to front-line service in France,
where he was killed four months later at Arras (see Najder 422).
2 Ohio-born Walter Ernest Tittle (1883–1966) moved to New York and
London as a magazine illustrator and later portrait painter. He first met JC in
the Curzon Hotel, Mayfair, in July 1922. He did two oils, two lithographs,
and a copper dry-point etching of JC. (One of the oils, painted on 6 January
1924, was acquired by the National Portrait Gallery in 1931, another pre-
sented to Yale University Library in 1948. The etching was undertaken on 12
November 1922.) JC appreciated Tittle’s portraits of him above all others, in
part because Tittle represented him as “the rough old sea-dog that I am,” and
he chose one of them as the frontispiece for Dent’s Collected Edition of his
works. Although their friendship was not of long standing and they saw each
other infrequently, Tittle would visit the Conrads when he was in England,
and he was the first to greet JC on his arrival in New York in May 1923.
JC told Eric S. Pinker on 26 July 1922 that “Yesterday I sat for a very
successful sketch of my head in lithographic pencil by W Tittle an American
artist working for Scribners & Century here. He’s very talented and has already
done a lot of big-wigs here” (CL7 501). Other sitters included Walter de la
Mare, Arnold Bennett, and G. K. Chesterton. See also CL7 580; John Conrad,
Times Remembered, 206; and Richard P. Veler’s article, described below.
154

his previous literary efforts and to provide for his family. His trouble, he
was convinced, was not the result of overwork: “I really am able to
achieve so little, and, besides, hard work never hurt anybody. It is some-
thing else. Sixty-five is a critical age for many men” (333). [1922]
When Tittle suggested a visit to America, JC refused to believe that
he was well known there, since he felt he was not a writer of great
popularity and had a distinctly limited audience. His eventual trip to
America quickly shattered his “unbelief in his fame” (334).
JC agreed with Tittle’s view that much of the beauty that inspires
creative work is omitted from the finished work; “I have estimated the
proportion that can be captured at about thirty-five per cent,” he said
(334).
When JC was sitting for his portrait [6 January 1924?], Tittle asked
him how he regarded The Rover [published 3 December 1923]. JC sat for
a moment in an attitude of deepest dejection, and then replied: “I have
not yet made up my mind about it. It worries me. It is going wonderfully
well both here and in America, and the reviews have been excellent,1 but
I cannot come to a satisfactory conclusion about it myself. I cannot
decide if it is one of my best works. Perhaps I shall know later. It may be
the best of the lot, but for the moment I am very much at sea about it.
Which is my best book? Again, I don’t know. They are all so different. I
can never resist the temptation to experiment, and can never write in the
same way twice. ‘Nostromo’ is my biggest canvas, my most ambitious
performance. Perhaps it is the best. I do not know. Dickens and
Thackeray always wrote in a consistent style. They had established methods,
and one book resembled another, so that comparison is possible. This is
not the case with me. With each effort I want to try something new. This
makes immediate comparison very difficult, almost impossible” (334).
The Rover, he explained, was written at least eleven times, and he had
to cease work repeatedly because of illness. He rarely used a stenog-
rapher, and the writing had to be done largely by hand. The first draft of
a novel can be dictated, and then begins the endless re-writing: “I hate to
write! I do it only when an idea comes to me so strongly that I cannot
resist it. Otherwise it would be impossible for me. I write when a story
demands telling so strongly that there is no further possibility of post-
ponement. I am not a literary man. Literary men can write about

1 Reviews of The Rover, in fact, were usually respectful or valedictory at best,

and JC himself, in a letter to his agent, acknowledged the “note of disap-
pointment.” For Conrad’s view of the novel’s reception, see LL2 337.
 155

anything, often with equal facility. I am not one of those clever and
accomplished people” (334–35). JC disagreed with Tittle’s idea that he
should write a book on his impressions of America: “that sort of thing is
not possible for me. I cannot sit down in cold blood and write for profit.
I can produce only creative work, and that only when the desire to write
is so strong that it takes complete possession of me and resistance is
impossible” (335).
He instructed Tittle to “paint me to look as I am – an old pirate with
hooded eyes, like a snake! You laugh? Well, I was virtually a pirate once.
I commanded that filibustering ship in The Arrow of Gold, you know, and
was nearly captured many times.”1 He asked Tittle not to alter the length
of his nose in the portrait: “That’s the Korzeniowski nose absolutely.”
Even the posture was correct, he thought, for “My father used to sit like
that” (335). James Barrie2 applauded Tittle’s portraits of JC: “It is so like
him as he used to sit talking with me by the hour in my studio. [...]
Always so nervous and intent on the subject in hand” (335).
“Technique,” JC remarked to Tittle, may these days be “blatantly
scoffed at by so-called modernism [but] I find a command of it indis-
pensable in my own work; for, after all, my dear, technique comprises
about sixty per cent of any art, doesn’t it?” Dickens, a “very great
writer,” will live when his modern critics are long forgotten (361).
JC had a deep aversion to cinema, and thought that Chaplin’s work
was vulgar. Films, he said, are “stupid, and can never be of real value. [...]
Shadowgraphs3 in pantomime are much better” (362).
JC described himself as “a sailor, not a society man. I could sit on a
wharf in Marseilles and talk to an old salt with pleasure, at any time. I can
always get on with people like that, but not with everybody” (362).
[Tittle’s recollections of JC, 1922–February 1924]

1 In The Mirror of the Sea, JC explains how he and three other adventurers
smuggled guns in the Tremolino in 1877 for the supporters of Don Carlos,
Pretender to the Spanish throne, from Marseilles to Spain. The ship had to
be run onto the rocks and wrecked to escape the coastguard. However, there
is very little evidence to support this claim.
2 J(ames) M(atthew) Barrie (1860–1937; knighted 1913), Scottish novelist and
dramatist, author of The Admirable Crichton (1902) and Peter Pan (1904). JC
met him in 1903, and Barrie provided moral and financial support, although
the two men were not close friends.
3 Shadowgraphs are silhouettes made by casting a shadow, usually of the
hands, on a lighted surface.
156

“Mrs. Conrad was not eclipsed by her Husband.” New York Times
[Book Review], 17 May 1925: 2.

JC told Tittle that “Henry James said that no artist should ever marry.
[...] I think he was right as this applied to his own case; certainly he was
better off as a bachelor. He nearly excommunicated me when I married
but soon became reconciled to the idea when he saw how beautifully it
worked out.”
JC was a rather refractory invalid; a new medicine would fill him
with enthusiasm, and he would try to consume several days’ supply
within the first few hours, after which he would exclaim in disgust,
“Take it away. It is terrible stuff. I cannot stand it.” Tittle once heard JC
remark, “Women are so silly! All except you, my dear Jessie.” Jessie
related to Tittle one of her husband’s motoring adventures; their son,
Borys, was driving with JC one day when, to avoid a collision, he drove
into a ditch. Both were thrown out of the car, and Borys “cried out
excitedly just as they were toppling over, ‘Are you hurt, Dad?’ He
declares most solemnly that the answer came while his father was in
midair, ‘All right so far!’”1

“Portraits in Pencil and Pen III: Joseph Conrad.” Strand Magazine,

67 (June 1924): 546–50.

[Account of Tittle’s visits to Bishopsbourne in the 1920s] JC said,

“Nearly everyone thinks of me as a writer of the South Seas, but, do you
know, I have never even been there” (548). “Youth” was based on an
actual experience: “the decks of our ship were blown up by an accumu-
lation of coal-gas, and the fire smouldered for days before we made the
port. It was a most unearthly thing to see the deck deliberately rise in the
air to the accompaniment of a dull roar. One of the sailors was so
frightened by it that he jumped overboard” (548).2
Twain is one of JC’s greatest idols, and he has additional sympathy
for him because of the parallels in their lives. JC, at the beginning of his
career, “loved to write. I was fascinated at being able to do it. So I tried

1 Borys appears to give another version of this story in My Father, 103.

2 “Youth” is closely based on JC’s experiences as second mate in the Palestine, a
wooden barque that sank off Sumatra in 1883, following a lengthy and
fraught voyage with a cargo of coal from Newcastle to Bangkok.
 157

again with great enthusiasm, and when my first book was published it
had good notices from the best of the critics” (549).
Shortly after the opening of his play, The Secret Agent [2 November
1922], JC said, “I cannot sit down and say ‘Now I will write a play’; a
play or novel must germinate in my mind and demand to be written. I
cannot force it. And I cannot knowingly make concessions to the
popular taste. If I wrote a bad play it would not be because I willed it,
but in spite of the fact that I was trying to do my best” (549).
JC has a high estimate of Arnold Bennett, who, as a young writer,
vowed to JC and Wells that, in ten years, he would be one of the most
popular writers in Britain: “We exchanged a smile at this, but hanged if
he did not go and do it!” (550). JC held Chesterton in the greatest admi-
ration: “He will stand as one of the biggest literary figures of his time”
(550).

Titus, Edward K.1

“Write and Burn, Conrad advises Yale Aspirants.” World (New York),
20 May 1923, 2nd News Section: 1, 3; rpt. in Dale B. J. Randall,
“Conrad Interviews, No. 4: Edward K. Titus, Jr.” Conradiana, 3.1
(1970–71): 75–80.
[JC interviewed in New Haven, 16 May 1923] “Self-expression succeeds
only when the writer has lived through many experiences” (77), JC said.
He admired what he would perhaps call the “poetic novels of Browning”
(77). He praised Henry James, and was unenthusiastic about the influx of
steamboats. He thought he had been a good captain. He had originally
planned to enter the diplomatic service, and his eventual decision to
become a sailor, he hinted, had not been well received in some quarters –
“It seemed like becoming a Capuchin monk” (79).

1 Edward K. Titus, Jr, appears in the US Federal Census of 1920, aged 16 years
and living with his parents in Newton City, Massachusetts. Born
Massachusetts. His father, Edward K., was a journalist. His World War II
Enlistment Record (1942) gives his date of birth as 1903, and he worked as a
journalist and in the motion picture industry.
158

Tomlinson, H. M.1

Gifts of Fortune. London: Heinemann, 1926, 84–89.

JC would occasionally vouchsafe a closer glimpse of himself, only for it
to fade away quickly. “He would utter such a word as Meddlers; meaning
you and me, meaning all those Englishmen who, for example, are restive
under the constraint of foolish men and statutes and plainly show it. He
would exclaim Humanitarians in a way that implied, merely implied, that
pitiful men are a nuisance. My own guess is that he desired to take part in
English affairs, for he had strong antipathies, but that he repressed
himself, doubting his right to – well, to meddle. [...] Mainly he was silent
about the affairs that provoked the prejudice of the English, giving no
more than an appraising and ironic glance” (85–86).
Seamen sometimes wrote to JC to tell him that they “knew”
Singleton [in The Nigger], and such letters gave JC much pleasure and
assurance. Tomlinson once reviewed one of JC’s “books of the sea,” and
a few weeks later met him for the first time at the offices of the English
Review, in the company of Norman Douglas and Austin Harrison.2 JC
thanked Tomlinson for his review and asked, to the latter’s shock, “You
do think I am genuine, don’t you?” (88). Though modest, JC could be
quick enough in attack when “folly or presumption was about,” and he
was “not the man to suffer gladly the more ruinous absurdities of his
fellows” (88).

“The Prelude: Almayer’s Folly” in George T. Keating, A Conrad

Memorial Library. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran,
1929, 3–7.
1 H(enry) M(ajor) Tomlinson (1873–1958), writer and journalist, grew up in
London’s docklands (his father was a foreman in the West India Dock) and
worked in a shipping-office before joining The Morning Leader. He made his
reputation with a book about trawlermen; his first book, The Sea and the Jungle
(1912) describes his journey to the Amazon as a ship’s purser. He often
wrote for the English Review, and in 1917 became literary editor of The Nation.
2 This meeting might be the one that JC mentioned in his letter to Tomlinson
of 17 February 1914: “I have seen your article before, and at the E[nglish]
R[eview] offices I tried in my clumsy way to thank You for the pleasure it has
given me” (CL5 356). Perhaps Tomlinson had contributed the unsigned
notice of Chance in the English Review of February 1914 (443–45)
 159

JC regretted that Pará1 was a landfall that he had never made. His voyage
in the Torrens was the one after she was dismasted in a blow and had put
into a West Indian port for repairs. He had forgotten the name of her
owner until Tomlinson reminded him (5).2

Tschiffely, A. F.

Don Roberto: The Life of R. B. Cunninghame Graham. London:

Heinemann, 1937, 391.

In 1928, Graham wrote to H. W. Nevinson that, when Conrad and he

first knew Roger Casement, the latter had “no words, but of contempt
for Irish Catholics.” It was JC who informed Graham that Casement was
homosexual.

“An Unusual Modern.” America (New York), 29 (19 May 1923): 111.

There was no secret about his style, JC told a group of interviewers in

America. “He wrote his thoughts and his style took care of itself.”

Unwin, (Sir) Stanley

The Truth about a Publisher: An Autobiographical Record. London:

Allen & Unwin, 1960.

1 Pará, also known as Belém, is a city in north-eastern Brazil, capital of Pará

State, and the chief port of the lower Amazon River, near the equator, on the
Pará River estuary. The port is accessible to ocean-going ships and includes a
naval base. Founded in 1615 by the Portuguese, Belém owes its commercial
importance to the opening of the Amazon to foreign trade in the late 19th
century. Tomlinson himself had sailed 2,000 miles up the Amazon.
2 The Torrens was owned by A. L. Elder and Co. of London. JC made two
return voyages to Australia in the Torrens as first mate, 1891–93.
160

Unwin1 quotes the reminiscences of a colleague, A. D. Marks, that “an

attempt between the late J. B. Pinker and myself to bring [T. Fisher
Unwin] and Conrad together again after many years, resulted in Conrad
threatening to throw him out of his own window” (111).2

Valéry, Paul

“Sujet d’une conversation avec Conrad.” Nouvelle Revue Française, 12

(December 1924): 663–65.

Valéry3 met JC in London and again, in Kent, shortly before his death.
JC spoke French with “un bon accent provençal” and English with “un accent
horrible” (663). JC recalled his memories of France, its navy and sailors, and
they discussed at length the failure of the French navy to rule the waves.

1 Stanley Unwin (1885–1968; knighted 1946), publisher, founded George Allen

and Unwin house in 1914. T. Fisher Unwin was his uncle.
2 The end of JC’s connection with T. Fisher Unwin, his publisher, had come
on 26 March 1898, when Tales of Unrest was published. Their relationship had
reached a crisis in 1896, following the completion of The Nigger; by this time,
JC had begun to feel that Unwin was guilty of sharp business practices and
meanness, and he began “the task of waging war – at Garnett’s instigation –
against T. F. Unwin, his publisher. Conrad’s position was not easy, as he had
been on friendly terms with the Unwins. But the need was pressing: he had
already been compelled to borrow money from Galsworthy against future
earnings. Thus, when Unwin suggested a £50 advance and a fairly low royalty
from the sales, Conrad demanded an advance twice as large, and higher
royalties” (Najder 202). Unwin refused, and JC opened negotiations with
other publishers. In January 1898, JC told John Galsworthy that Fisher Unwin
was a “scoundrel” who was “trying to play me a dirty trick”: “The man is
unsafe and I am a fool when dealing with such a type for I can’t understand
it” (CL2 11).
3 Paul-Ambroise Valéry (1871–1945), French poet. In October 1922, Jean-
Aubry had invited him to London to lecture, and the pair lunched at Oswalds
on 5 November. JC told Gide on 28 December 1922 that “J’ai eu dernière-
ment le très grand plaisir de faire la connaissance de Ravel et de Paul Valery.
Ils ont été charmants tous les deux pour moi. Je me suis pris de réelle
affection a première vue pour Valery” (CL7 629). Valéry visited JC again in
late October 1923. (Hugh Walpole, Jean-Aubry, and Richard Curle were also
present for Sunday lunch on 21 October: see Najder 483.)
 161

André Gide–Paul Valéry: Correspondance, 1890–1942, ed. Robert

Mallet. Paris: Gallimard, 1955, 492–95.

Valéry tells Gide that he spent yesterday with JC [October 1922]: “Je lui
dis qu’il devrait écrire en français ses souvenirs marins de Marseille et de
Cette. Il paraît assez alléché de l’idée, qu’il repousse en même temps”
(493).1
Valéry to Gide [November 1922]: “Conrad charmant. Parle Cette et
Montpellier et balancines et marchepieds” (494).2 Gide [October 1923]
asks Valéry to send “mille souvenirs” to Arnold Bennett and, perhaps, to JC,
who had called on him at his home in Cuverville recently when he was out.3

Veler, Richard P.

“Walter Tittle and Joseph Conrad.” Conradiana, 12 (1980): 93–104.

[Veler prints extracts from Tittle’s unpublished autobiography and diary,

most of which are included in Tittle’s published articles on JC, q.v.] Tittle
first met JC, ca. 7 July 1922, in London’s Curzon Hotel. He was the first
person to welcome JC on his arrival in New York, May 1923; JC told him
that the sailors in the Tuscania looked like “clerks in a counting house.
Seafaring life is a sedentary life these days!” (96–97). He had spent much
time during the crossing in the chartroom, fascinated by the maps.

Vidan, Ivo

“Saint-John Perse’s Visit to Conrad: A Letter by Alexis Saint-Léger

Léger to G. Jean-Aubry.” Conradiana, 2.3 (1969–70): 17–22.

1 JC first met him at the London salon of Lady Colefax in 1922 and promptly
invited him to Oswalds in October of that year.
2 Valéry lunched at Oswalds on 5 November 1922 (see CL7 557).
3 André Gide, French author (1869–1951) was awarded the Nobel Prize in
Literature in 1947. He first met JC in July 1911, when he visited him at Capel
House in the company of Agnes Tobin and Valery Larbaud. JC’s attempted
visit to Gide in Cuverville, the country estate of his wife, accompanied by
Jessie Conrad, son John, and G. Jean-Aubry, took place in September 1923;
see John Conrad, Joseph Conrad: Times Remembered, 208.
162

[Vidan prints and translates Perse’s letter, which recalls his visit to JC,
summer 1912.1] JC and Perse discussed Melville, W. H. Hudson,2 and
Edward Lear’s “The Jumblies.” JC had an unexpected taste for Molière
and Zola, but had a strong dislike of Dostoevsky, to whom he preferred
Turgenev. He declared that he loved, not the sea, but the boat, the
triumph of skill and man against the sea. Perse was surprised by JC’s
curiosity about the role of women behind the course of events.
[This letter has also been published in Le Figaro, 18 November 1972,
and in Roger Little, “Saint-John Perse and Joseph Conrad: Some Notes
and an Uncollected Letter,” Modern Language Review, 72 (1977): 811–14.
Another translation is given in Little’s “A Letter about Conrad by Saint-
John Perse,” Conradiana, 8 (1976): 263–64.]

Vidan, Ivo, and Gabrijela Vidan

“Further Correspondence between Joseph Conrad and André Gide.”

Studia Romanica et Anglica Zagrabiensia, 5.29–32 (1970–71): 523–36.

In a long letter to Gide, dated 8 October 1924, Jean-Aubry expressed his

dislike of permitting a woman to translate Youth: “A mon sens une femme,
quelqu’elle soit, est incapable, par nature, de comprendre Conrad. D’ailleurs c’était
également le sentiment de Conrad lui-même” (532 n. 18).

Walt, James

“At Home with Jessie Conrad.” Conradiana, 8 (1976): 259–62.

[Walt describes some notes, written in 1944 by Mrs Katherine Clemens,

about her visit to Jessie Conrad in 1930. She was accompanied by her
son, Cyril.3] JC, said his widow, found their last home, Oswalds, to be

1 Saint-John Perse first visited JC in the summer of 1912, in the company of

Agnes Tobin (see CL5 87).
2 Hudson met Perse at Capel House during this visit: see Jacques Charpier,
above.
3 Cyril Coniston Clemens (1902–99), a cousin of Mark Twain, had been intro-
duced to JC at Oswalds in October 1923 by Hugh Walpole (Najder 484).
 163

claustrophobic. “His body as well as his mind was eternally restless,” she
said; “I often wondered why he called this ‘home,’” although JC used to
assure Jessie that “He had lost his love of roving” (260).
JC lacked any taste or enthusiasm for good music. Jessie described
him as, in essence, a Polish sailor. He held old-fashioned political princi-
ples, praised monarchs in general, and looked at great medieval ventures
like the Crusades with nostalgia. She also remembered him saying that a
story must contain living men and women situated in a “real, ambient
background” (261).

Watson, Elliot L. Grant

But To What Purpose: The Auto-Biography of a Contemporary. London:

Cresset Press, 1946, 148–51.

In [July?] 1913, Watson1 sent the manuscript of his first novel [Where
Bonds Are Loosed (1914)] to JC, who, with Arthur Marwood, read it seven
times and made thirty-one pages of notes. They wanted Watson to
reduce it to a long short story of forty thousand words, and JC thought
that Watson’s style mingled his own manner with that of Clark Russell.2
JC was pleased that Watson liked “The Secret Sharer” best of all his
works, saying of it, “Ah, that story! [...] I wrote that just for myself. Yes, I
am glad you like it” (150).

Watson, Frederick3

The Life of Sir Robert Jones. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1934.

1 E(lliot) L(ovegood) Grant Watson (1885–1970), biologist, writer, and mystic,

took a First in Natural Sciences at Cambridge. A friend introduced him to
JC, and he asked for an opinion of his first novel, which had an Australian
setting (see CL5 265).
2 William Clark Russell (1844–1911), a novelist of maritime melodramas.
3 Frederick Watson (1885–1935), the husband of Sir Robert Jones’s daughter,
Hilda, was a writer. In 1912, he invited JC to collaborate on an adventure
story for boys (CL5 69–70).
164

“Literary work always dismayed Robert Jones1 a good deal in prospect.

When Joseph Conrad, to whom he turned at the time for counsel, said –
though he rarely acted on the advice himself – that it was desirable to
cover a couple of thousand words a day, Robert Jones pondered over
such an achievement, and replied, with a touch of malice, ‘But I have to
be accurate’” (268–69).2
“Joseph Conrad was taken by car on a most forbidding day3 to see
the famous Beddgelert Pass. Unfortunately, to him it was not even a
name once heard. And the whole valley was shrouded in a cold and
drenching mist. Conrad – who had an attack of gout – shivered and
peered and finally relapsed into what I presumed was a Polish resigna-
tion. But Robert Jones was unconquerable. He had a great and intense
patriotism for the traditions of Welsh history. As we passed through
swirling mist up the pass he spoke not without emotion of Gelert, and
Conrad glowered and shivered and maintained a silence which seemed to
descend into depths unplumbed by the English temperament. At last
when we stopped at the summit where, in happier circumstances, a view
could be obtained, he broke his silence.
“‘Who was this Gelert?’ he asked rather sharply.4

1 “A leading British orthopædic surgeon, Sir Robert Armstrong Jones (1858–

1933; knighted 1917; baronet 1926) came from North Wales, and practised in
Liverpool, where he was consulting surgeon to all the major hospitals. He
was also a consultant at St Thomas’s Hospital, and a member of the War
Office’s Medical Advisory Board. During the war, he held the rank of Major-
General and took on the immense task of organizing reconstructive surgery
at home and in the field. From 1921 to 1924, he served as President of the
British Orthopædic Association, and was frequently honoured overseas. His
monographs and textbooks on the surgery of joints, military orthopædics,
and general orthopædics were widely used. The professional relationship that
began, in 1917, with the care of Jessie Conrad developed into a warm friend-
ship with the Conrads” (CL7 44).
2 This conversation appears to have taken place around 1921, when Jones was
editing Orthopædic Surgery of Injuries.
3 JC wrote to Jean-Aubry on 22 September 1922 that “I was away when your
letter arrived. Jessie and I were in Liverpool (with John) visiting Sir Robert,
who offered to take us on a three-day tour of North Wales. The weather was
bad, but my wife was pleased with the novelty of the countryside and with
travelling. John amused himself a good deal. As for myself, I had a frightful
cough” (CL7 522). See also John Conrad, Times Remembered, 192–94.
4 Beddgelert’s most famous historical feature is “Gelert’s Grave.” According
to legend, the stone monument in the fields marks the resting place of
 165

“There was a painful pause. And in an instant Conrad, realising he had

disappointed the man for whom he had a deep admiration and affection,
made handsome overtures. He had gout, it was a tragic day, he had seen
nothing, but that his host should be even slightly hurt brought him
instantly into anxious solicitation. And the reconciliation over some sloe
gin at an isolated inn was, like all else in the life of Robert Jones, only a
new instance of the charm and innocency of his personality” (283).

Watt, Ian

“Conrad, James and Chance.” In Imagined Worlds: Essays on Some

English Novels and Novelists in Honour of John Butt, eds. Maynard
Mack and Ian Gregor. London: Methuen, 1968, 301–22.

Olive Garnett, in her diary, records the following exchange between JC

and Henry James: “Conrad, for once gleeful, exclaimed: ‘I am at the top
of the tree.’ H. J. replied: ‘I am a crushed worm; I don’t even revolve
now, I have ceased to turn’” (314; entry dated 13 February 1904). [See
also article by Thomas C. Moser (1974) described above.]

Watts, Cedric, and Laurence Davies

Cunninghame Graham: A Critical Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1979.

Cunninghame Graham told Curle [letter dated 8 October 1924] that

“Spain & the Spanish were an ignis fatuus, to dear Conrad. He
understood them as little as I do the Slavs” (149). In June 1904, Graham
and JC had read Le Chat Maigre, “& laughed by the clock for two hours”
(269)1 [Graham’s letter to William Rothenstein, 2 July 1904]. JC’s sons
told the authors how a visit by Graham would rejuvenate the ageing JC.

“Gelert,” the faithful hound of the medieval Welsh Prince, Llywelyn the
Great, who was tragically killed by his master.
1 Anatole France, Jocaste et Le chat maigre (1879), his first collection of short
stories.
166

Weissman, Frida, ed.

Valery Larbaud–G. Jean-Aubry: Correspondance, 1920–1935. Paris:

Gallimard, 1971.
JC told Jean-Aubry yesterday that he had lost his copy of Larbaud’s A.
O. Barnabooth (1913) during a house removal and would like to re-read it
(20; letter dated 7 January 1923). Jean-Aubry notes that JC told him he
saw the model for Lena (Victory) in the Café Riche, Montpellier (64;
letter dated March 1930). Jean-Aubry recalls staying with JC and his
family in the Hôtel de L’Allier, Moulins, on 27 January 1921 (105; letter
dated 30 September 1932). Jean-Aubry recalls JC seeing Arnold Bennett
in 1923 (125; letter dated 19 May 1933).1 [All letters from Jean-Aubry to
Larbaud]

Weitzenkorn, Louis

“Conrad, in light and shadow, talks of Crane and Hardy and the
paleness of words.” World (New York), 3 June 1923, 2nd News
Section: 1S, 3S; rpt. in Dale B. J. Randall, “Conrad Interviews, No.
6: Louis Weitzenkorn.” Conradiana, 4.1 (1972): 25–32. [Ray, ed.,
197–201]
[Weitzenkorn2 interviewed JC in America, 30 May 1923] JC pronounced
“very” as “vairy.” He praised Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage,
and said that Crane was the first person to call him Joseph. There was
always a crowd around Crane, and JC used to sit in a corner and wait till
he was free.
JC regarded Thomas Hardy as the last of the Elizabethans, and a
Victorian also. He thought the English were all Elizabethans, and that
the sentence in “Heart of Darkness” about a gun-boat shelling a con-
tinent “sounds to me just like Conrad.” He discussed the origin of Dona
Rita’s physical cowardice [in The Arrow of Gold].

1 JC dined with Bennett and Maurice Ravel on 17 April 1923.

2 Louis Weitzenkorn (1894–1943), American journalist, newspaper editor, and
playwright. He fought in France during the First World War. He was married
five times and died in a fire. He interviewed JC on 30 May 1923 in the New
York apartment of Frank N. Doubleday.
 167

JC does not like writing letters: “It uses me up.” On self-revelation

in literature, he said that “It is impossible to reveal oneself,” for “the
words lose their meaning – pale.” JC told another interviewer that “I get
my hints from a passing face. I saw Lord Jim that way.” [This other
interviewer was “Young Boswell” – see Harold Stark’s article, described
above.]

Wells, H. G.1

Experiment in Autobiography: Discoveries and Conclusions of a Very

Ordinary Brain (Since 1866). 2 vols. London: Gollancz, 1934. [Ray,
ed., 109–12]

JC pronounced the final e in “these” and “those,” and he would say “Wat
shall we do with thesa things?”2 He was always unsure about the use of
“shall” and “will.” “When he talked of seafaring his terminology was
excellent but when he turned to less familiar topics he was often at a loss
for phrases” (616).
Wells and JC had a “long, fairly friendly but always rather strained
acquaintance” (618). He was incredulous that Wells could take social and
political issues seriously, and Wells’s indifference to stylistic matters
irritated him. JC would ask, “What is this Love and Mr. Lewisham about?”3
(618), although he would ask the same about Jane Austen. One day, on
Sandgate beach, JC asked Wells how he would describe a boat which
they could see. Wells replied that he would simply use “the commonest
phrases possible.” This was “all against Conrad’s over-sensitized recep-

1 H(erbert) G(eorge) Wells (1866–1946), novelist, critic, and sociologist, first

met JC in 1896, and their friendship lasted for about a decade until a growing
estrangement set in. Even at its height, it had always been an uneasy friend-
ship, given their differences in politics and temperament. The breach seems
to have begun in 1907, but the decisive episode might have been the
publication of Wells’s Tono-Bungay (1909), which contains a vicious portrait of
JC as a Romanian Jewish ship’s captain accused of bribery and incompetence.
JC is recorded by Hugh Walpole as saying that “the difference between us,
Wells, is fundamental. You don’t care for humanity but think they are to be
improved. I love humanity but know they are not!”
2 Cf. John Conrad, Times Remembered, 84.
3 Love and Mr Lewisham was published in 1900.
168

tivity that a boat could ever be just a boat. He wanted to see it with a
definite vividness of his own” (619).
JC first met Shaw at Wells’s house, and felt he had been insulted by
him. Wells explained that it was merely Shaw’s humour: “one could
always baffle Conrad by saying ‘humour.’ It was one of our damned
English tricks he had never learnt to tackle” (622). On another occasion,
JC wanted Ford to challenge Wells to a duel, after Wells had commented
that an article Ford had written on Hall Caine sounded as if its author
were a discharged valet. Ford told Wells, “I tried to explain to him that
dueling isn’t done” (622).1 Ford and JC remain in Wells’s memory as
“contrasted and inseparable” (617). Wells thought there was something
ridiculous in JC’s “persona of a romantic adventurous un-mercenary
intensely artistic European gentleman carrying an exquisite code of
unblemished honour through a universe of baseness” (621).

“A Footnote to Hueffer.” English Review, 31 (August 1920), 178–

79 [not seen]; rpt. in Ford Madox Ford: The Critical Heritage, ed.
Frank MacShane. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972, 128–
29.

At their first meeting, Ford told Wells that he had persuaded JC to col-
laborate with him. Wells warned him that this was a “very mischievous
enterprise” (128). [Letter to the Editor]

West, H. F.

A Modern Conquistador: Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham: His Life

and Works. London: Cranley & Day, 1932.

Cunninghame Graham told West2 that JC was “the soul of honour”

(111). [West prints verbatim some recollections of JC that Richard Curle

1 Najder comments that Wells “was taken in by the story that Conrad had tried
to persuade Ford to call Wells to a duel; a typical Fordian fabrication” (285).
Hall Caine (1832–1931), popular novelist.
2 H(erbert) F(aulkner) West (1898–1974), bibliophile and Professor of
Comparative Literature at Dartmouth College.
 169

wrote especially for this book, 112–15.] JC, said Curle, never criticised
Cunninghame Graham. Shortly before JC’s death, Graham and Mrs
Dummett1 visited JC at Oswalds. JC praised his Mogreb-El-Acksa.2 They
regarded each other as extraordinary personalities.
Curle also told West in a conversation that JC would say to him,
“We must collaborate on a novel,” or “Jack’s (John Galsworthy’s) book
is ‘excellent’” (111). JC’s generosity to his friends influenced his
judgement of their literary abilities.

[Willard, Grace]

“Conrad, the Man.” New York Evening Post Literary Review, 9 August
1924: 952. [Ray, ed., 43–48]

Willard3 saw JC at Oswalds, less than a fortnight ago. He praised Valéry

(“un vrai”) and Chesterton, who had recently, for once, written a dull

1 Elizabeth (“Toppie”) Dummett (née Miéville, 1868–1940), Graham’s

companion for many years. She had married Charles Henry Dummett in
1887; he died in 1891 at the age of 29.
2 Mogreb-El-Acksa: A Journey in Morocco (1898) recounts Graham’s attempt to
cross the Atlas Mountains.
3 Grace Robinson Willard (née Cameron, 1877–1933), an American, was at
one time London correspondent of Vanity Fair. The Conrads met her
through Jo Davidson, the sculptor, and she helped to furnish and decorate
their homes (apparently her professional occupation). Borys Conrad remem-
bered her and her daughter Catherine thus: “It was during our tenancy of
Spring Grove [1919] that an American lady and her daughter became
frequent visitors. I have no knowledge of the circumstances under which
they came to be included among our circle of friends and I think the first
contact must have been made when I was in hospital or, possibly, still in
France [1918]. Mrs. Grace Willard – she was a widow – and her daughter
Catherine, then about seventeen were very charming, but I have never been
able to understand why they were upon such intimate terms with my parents.
Catherine always called her mother ‘Mama Grace’ and it was not long before
she was so addressed by all of us […]. Mama Grace seemed to occupy most
of her time in searching out various pieces of antique furniture, also old silver
and cut glass, most of which she succeeded in selling to J.C. – he had a strain
of the collector in him – and I am pretty certain that Mama Grace’s income
depended to a considerable extent upon these transactions” (My Father: Joseph
Conrad, 138–39; see also John Conrad, Times Remembered, 148).
170

essay. He judiciously assessed Aldous Huxley’s poetry. Reading aloud

from his work, in America, was “the most terrifying experience” of his
life. JC always referred to Ibsen as “Papa Ibsen.” [Article signed “G. W.”
The detailed description of furniture at Oswalds, which Willard chose for
JC, confirms her authorship.]

“More about Conrad.” New York Evening Post Literary Review, 30

August 1924: 8. [Ray, ed., 48–53]
Willard first met JC one January [1905] and they discussed James’s
recently published The Golden Bowl [1904], Ellen Glasgow, and
Dostoevsky. Of the latter, JC remarked: “How can Western minds hope
to understand Dostoievsky [...]; he reverences things which they hold in
contempt and treats with contempt much that they reverence.”
His favourite port was Marseilles, he said, where he had been called
“l’ami.” A Virginia farmer sent JC a box of apples every year, and JC sent
him some books in return, inscribed “Art for apples is not a bad
exchange.”
Willard and JC once drove over to Rye to see Henry James. In his
friends, JC looked above all for a “point of view.” He hated any kind of
derivative work, and was dismayed to see himself once described in print
as “the English Anatole France,” in spite of his admiration for the
Frenchman. He had a great weakness for The Nigger, of which he said,
“one can’t write a book like that twice.” He thought its title matchless,
and disliked its American one, The Children of the Sea.
JC advised a young actress [Catherine Willard?] not to consult or
seek help from colleagues: “from within must come your success – if it is
to come. Keep away from the theatre. Study life – and yourself.” JC did
not care for theatre or cinema. During a conversation about the Franco-
Prussian war, JC praised the literature of that period, such as Huysmans’s
Sac au Dos (1880). In politics, JC disliked any popular tendencies towards
control, such as village improvement societies in England. [Article signed
“G. W.” A sequel to previous item]

Wilson, Harris, ed.

Arnold Bennett and H. G. Wells: A Record of a Personal and a Literary

Friendship. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1960.
 171

Wells asks Bennett to visit him because “something has arisen that might
enable you to be of very great service to the Conrads” (69; 26 November
1901). Wells later describes JC’s financial difficulties to Bennett: “the
Conrads are under an upset hay cart as usual, and God knows what is to
be done. J. C. ought to be administered by trustees” (107; 29 March 1904).

Wisehart, M. K.
“Joseph Conrad Described by Jo Davidson.” Sun (New York), 2
March 1919. [Ray, ed., 149–52]
[Davidson1 tells Wisehart of his visit to JC in 1914.] JC told Davidson
that he found his models for characters in The Secret Agent by sitting in
restaurants in Greek Street, Dean Street, or Soho Square, where he
watched the types, but did not talk to them. Davidson felt that Under
Western Eyes was the novel that meant most to him. JC thought it was
“more difficult” to write in French: “English is so plastic – you can do
anything with it!”
He was not distraught by the war, and did not talk excitedly about it.
He could not say which was the best American book he had read in the
previous year, for he had read so few. His room was full of special
remedies for imaginary ills. There were three maids, but he would eat
only his wife’s cooking.

Woolf, Virginia
The Diary of Virginia Woolf: Volume V: 1936–41, ed. Anne Olivier
Bell. London: Hogarth Press, 1984, 258.
“Hugh [Walpole] told us the story of the Conrads, told it very well; about
C. sizing up the sod. masseur at tea; withdrawing, shrieking; & Miss
Hallow[e]s2 & Jessie, who wouldnt [sic] ask Miss Hallow[e]s for the salt;
& C. shut up alone with her; & Jessie growing fat on the sofa with her
bad leg” [entry for 19 January 1940].

1 Jo Davidson (1883–1952), sculptor, was born in New York, and studied at

Yale and Paris. For further details, see his autobiography above.
2 L(ilian) M(ary) Hallowes (1870–1950), JC’s secretary and typist for the last
twenty years of his life.
172

“Joseph Conrad.” The Common Reader: First Series, ed. Andrew

McNeillie. London: Hogarth Press, 1984, 223–30.

JC was far beyond the reach of hostesses, and for news of him one had
to rely on casual visitors who reported that he had “the most perfect
manners, the brightest eyes, and spoke English with a strong foreign
accent” (223).

Zagórska, Aniela

“Conrad’s Visit to Poland.” Poland: The Journal of the American Polish

Chamber of Commerce and Industry (New York), 7.9 (September 1926):
545–47, 574–78, 580, 582.

Describing JC’s 1914 visit to her in Zakopane, Zagórska1 recalls JC

telling her that his strongest memory of his father’s imprisonment was of
standing with his mother in a large prison yard and seeing his father’s
face at a distance, looking through a barred window. Although sceptical
of any improvement in Poland’s situation as a result of the current war,
he did not attempt to weaken the hopes of others.
JC devoured books by contemporary Polish writers during his stay.
“Though charmed by Sieroszewski and Strug, his beloved authors were
Wyspiański, Żeromski and Prus” (576).2 [All of the other recollections
are described by Zagórska in her “Kilka wspomnień o Conradzie,” trans. in
CUFE, 210–23.]

1 Aniela Zagórska (1881–1943) was the daughter of Karol Zagórski, JC’s

second cousin once removed. During their 1914 visit to Poland, the Conrads
stayed for nine weeks at the Zagórski family pension in Zakopane. Aniela
and her sister, Karola, stayed in regular contact with JC in his later years.
Aniela translated Almayer’s Folly into Polish; she later oversaw the first col-
lected edition of JC’s works in translation, beginning in 1923, and the edition
eventually comprised 22 volumes, at least ten of which she translated herself.
2 Wacław Sieroszewski (1858–1945); Andrzej Strug (1871–1937); Stanisław
Wyspiański (1869–1907); Stefan Żeromski (1864–1925); Bolesław Prus
(1847–1912).
 173

“Souvenirs sur Conrad.” Le Messager Polonais (Warsaw) (1928): No.

10 (898): 3; No. 11 (899): 3; No. 11 (903): 6.

[All of these recollections of JC’s visit to Poland in 1914 are contained,

in more detail, in her “Kilka wspomnień o Conradzie,” trans. in CUFE, 210–
23.]

Zelie, John Sheridan1

“An Evening with Joseph Conrad.” Christian Century, 42 (19 February

1925): 251–53. [Ray, ed., 191–97]

JC said he was disappointed at his inability to speak English fluently. He

admired the amiable and flexible local government in Britain. He said,
Zelie thinks, that he had been invited to become a magistrate in Kent. JC
recalled his only public speech, to the Lifeboat Service.2 He praised
Keats and James Fenimore Cooper, but did not like Shelley. His experi-
ence at sea “was not a good equipment for a literary life” (253), although
he hesitated to describe himself as a literary man. To an unliterary writer,
he explained, the writing of the first book is an inexplicable event. He
had never made a note in his life, as preparation for writing, which was
for him “neither burden nor joy in a positive sense” (253). JC asked,
“Why do people call me a writer of sea-stories? They do not call Mr.
Hardy ‘a writer of land-stories’” (253).

1 Dr John Sheridan Zelie (1866–1942), clergyman, was born in Princeton, New

Jersey, and graduated from Yale in 1890. He later served as an Army chaplain
in France, 1918–19. At the time of his meeting with JC on 22–23 May 1923,
Zelie was a clergyman at Troy, New York. The meeting occurred at the
country home of Elbridge L. Adams in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.
Muirhead Bone was a fellow guest.
2 On 17 April 1923, JC gave a speech at the annual meeting of the Lifeboat
Institution held at the Æolian Hall, London.
174
INDEX
Abbott, Lawrence F., 1
Adams, Elbridge L., 1–2, 43, 173
Addison, Joseph, 103
Adelaide, 3, 48, 138, 139
Adeler, Max, 108
Albéniz, Isaac, 79
Alcorta, Gloria, 2–3
Aldington, 47, 106
Allen, Vio, 3–4
Alma-Tadema, Laurence, 148
Alvar, Madame: see Harding, Louisa
Amazon (river), 158
Anderson, Jane, 40, 61
Anderson, Percy, 67
Angola, 111
Annand, James, 70
Archer, William, 143
Arizona, 40
Arnold, Fred, 12
Arras, 45, 153
Ashford, 24
Atherton, Gertrude, 13, 25, 27, 146
Aubry, Jean: see Jean-Aubry
Auckland, 138
Austen, Jane, 167
Austin, Mary, 13–15
Australia, 3, 96, 138, 159, 163
Austria, 17
Bagenal, Barbara, 53
Bagenal, Nicholas, 53
Baker, (Sir) Herbert, 85
Balfour, Arthur James, 119
Balzac, Honoré de, 6, 33, 48, 77,
138
Bangkok, 156
Banks, Walter, 143
Barker, Dudley, 15
Barrès, Maurice, 57, 78
Barrie, J. M., 123, 140, 155
Barron, Joseph, 50
Baudelaire, Charles, 66, 77
Bax, Arnold, 79
Beauvoir, Simone de, 85
Beckson, Karl, 147
Beddgelert Pass (Wales), 164
Beer, Thomas, 15, 85, 141
Beerbohm, Max, 131, 136, 143
Béhaine, René, 45
Bell, Anne Olivier, 124, 171
Belloc, Hilaire, 52
Bennett, Arnold, 4, 15–18, 22, 45,
50, 55–56, 58, 62, 68, 73, 80, 87,
123, 133, 145–46, 153, 157, 161,
166, 170–71
Bennett, James Gordon, 27
Bennett, Sanford, 142
Benrimo, J. Harry, 75
Beresford, J. D., 52
Berners, Lord Gerald, 79
Berridge, Anthony, 153
Berridge, Jesse, 153
Bester, Alfred, 18
Bible, 77, 102
Biliński, Leon, 17
Biliński, Marian, 17
Binyon, Laurence, 15
Bishopsbourne, 14, 31, 49, 85, 156
Bizet, Georges, 48, 83
Blanche, Jacques-Émile, 18
Bliss, (Sir) Arthur, 79
Bobrowski, Tadeusz, 37
Bojarski, Edmund A., 18–19, 99–
100
Bombay, 27, 50
Bone, David, 17, 19–21, 83, 108,
120
Bone, Gertrude, 73
Bone, James, 17
Bone, Muirhead, 17, 19–21, 37, 52,
73, 120, 173
Boston, 2, 5–6, 9, 22

Boswell, James, 144
Boult’s School, 104
Brahms, Johannes, 2
Brazil, 159
Bridlington, 145
Brighton, 23
Brill, A. A., 87
Briquel, Emilie, 48
British Academy, 57
Brock, H. I., 22
Bronowicz-Chylińska, T., 80
Browning, Robert, 35, 78, 157
Bruce, John, 109
Brugmans, Linette, 22
Bryant, William Cullen, 2
Bullen, Frank T., 87
Burma, 35
Burns, John, 105
Burroughs, Arthur, 63
Burroughs, John, 8, 108, 128
Burton, (Sir) Richard, 152
Buszczyński, Konstanty, 127
Buszczyński, Stefan, 127
Byard, Theodore, 143
Byron, Lord George, 76
Cadby, Carine, 23
Cadby, William, 23
Caine, Hall, 168
California, 13, 56, 147
Cambridge, 55, 67, 78, 103, 106,
137, 163
Cambridge (MA), 6, 9
Cameron, (Sir) Maurice, 27
Camus, Albert, 85
Canada, 96
Candler, Edmund, 31, 103
Candler, Henry, 31
Canterbury, 12, 31, 36, 76, 91, 112
Cape Horn, 6
Capel House, 1, 19, 22–24, 39–40,
42, 57–58, 61–62, 66, 68, 76–77,
88, 98, 124, 150, 152–53, 161–62
Capri, 38, 41, 58, 119, 151
175
Carabine, Keith, 23
Cardiff, 99
Carroll, Eleanor, 24
Casement, Roger, 111–12, 124, 136,
159
Castor, 52
Cather, Willa, 85
Cecil, Lord David, 111
Cecil, Viscount Robert, 64
Cesare, Oscar Edward, 22
Cette, 160
Champel-les-Bains, 17, 48
Champion, H. H., 3
Chaplin, Charles, 32, 155
Chapman, Frederic, 38
Charpier, Jacques, 24, 161
Chatham, 76
Chesson, W. H., 16, 24–25, 110
Chesterton, Frances, 15
Chesterton, G. K., 15, 22, 82, 103,
116, 153, 157, 169
Chile, 56
Chłapowski, Karol Bodzenta, 72
Chodźko, Wiktor, 107
Chopin, Frédéric, 76, 80, 124
Churchill, (Sir) Winston, 43
Chwalewik, Witold, 99
cinema, 7, 142, 155, 170
Civil List Pension, 33, 142
Clark, E. Holman, 73
Claude, Jean, 57
Claudel, Paul, 22
Clemens, Cyril, 25, 161
Clemens, Katherine, 161
Clifford, (Sir) Hugh, 26–28, 84, 123
Clodd, Edward, 27–29
Clyde (river), 108, 117, 120
Cockerell, Christopher, 107
Cockerell, (Sir) Sydney, 106–07
Collier, Constance, 72
Colvin, Frances, 15
Colvin, Sidney, 15, 29, 67–68, 149
Congo, 7, 35, 48, 88, 91, 111–12,
141
176
Conrad, Borys, 29, 40, 47–48, 60,
83, 90, 96, 114, 127, 139, 145,
149, 156, 169
Conrad, Jessie, 3, 10, 19–20, 23–24,
30, 39, 42–43, 45, 47–49, 52–53,
58, 60, 64, 79–81, 83–84, 92, 96,
101–03, 107, 111, 114, 119, 127,
139, 141–43, 151, 156, 161–64,
171
Conrad, John, 12, 23, 30, 35, 38, 40,
43, 65, 91, 95, 103, 108, 114, 144,
149, 153, 161, 164, 167, 169
Conrad, Joseph, WORKS BY TITLE
Stories and Essays
“Amy Foster”, 68, 74
“Black Mate, The”, 84, 102
“End of the Tether, The”, 77,
113, 144
“Falk”, 71
“Freya of the Seven Isles”, 4
“Idiots, The”, 112
“Il Conde”, 151
“Karain”, 34
“Prince Roman”, 122
“Secret Sharer, The”, 4, 131, 163
“Smile of Fortune, A”, 3
“Some Reflexions on the Loss
of the Titanic”, 97–98, 149
“To-morrow”, 49
“Typhoon”, 14–15, 23, 56, 102,
107, 152
“Unlighted Coast, The”, 102,
133
“Warrior’s Soul, The”, 122
“Youth”, 118, 126, 144, 156
Novels and Others
Almayer's Folly, 16–17, 24–25, 35,
50, 53, 58, 67, 70, 81, 87, 91,
108, 126, 129, 158, 172
Arrow of Gold, The, 3, 18, 21, 37,
61, 69, 122, 132, 155, 166
Chance, 3, 23, 27–28, 46, 51, 53,
84–85, 114, 158, 165
Heart of Darkness, 25, 113, 124,
141, 151, 166
Inheritors, The, 52, 117
Laughing Anne, 123
Lord Jim, 3–4, 13, 47, 58, 68, 71,
87, 102, 133, 140–41, 145,
150, 167
Mirror of the Sea, The, 19, 37, 46,
66, 77, 88, 101, 120, 129, 155
Nigger of the “Narcissus”, The, 1, 8,
35, 46, 50–51, 66, 68, 70, 86,
100, 102, 108, 110, 118, 132,
142, 152, 158, 160, 170
Nostromo, 5, 7, 26–28, 50, 68–70,
80, 119, 132–33, 136, 154
Notes on Life and Letters, 8, 21,
35–36, 98, 115
One Day More, 49, 72–73, 86, 120
Outcast of the Islands, An, 4, 54,
102, 149
Personal Record, A, 1, 26, 46, 58,
60, 108
Rescue, The, 7, 36–38, 50, 66,
117–18, 140
Romance, 68, 78
Rover, The, 14, 61, 82, 84, 138,
142, 154
Secret Agent, The, 65, 68–69, 103,
140–41, 149, 171
Secret Agent, The (play), 3, 64, 75,
101, 103–05, 122, 157
Seraphina: see Romance
Set of Six, A, 3, 151
Shadow-Line, The, 36
Some Reminiscences: see A Personal
Record
Suspense, 4–5, 54, 69–70, 84, 86,
140
Tales of Unrest, 159
’Twixt Land and Sea, 3, 36
Typhoon and Other Stories, 114
Under Western Eyes, 22, 56, 69,
83, 147, 171
Victory, 1, 37–38, 47, 51, 68, 82,
84, 123, 139, 151–52, 166

Victory (play), 44, 71–73
Within the Tides, 36
Youth, A Narrative, and Two Other
Stories, 84, 113, 162
Cooper, Frederick George, 31
Cooper, James Fenimore, 1, 8, 35,
70, 108, 173
Cope, Walter H., 110
Copeau, Jacques, 57
Corkill, Rachael A., 31, 103
Corsica, 3, 86–87, 107
Courtney, W. L., 46
Cracow, 12, 72, 92, 104, 127, 145
Craft, Robert, 144–45
Craig, Gordon, 148
Crane, Cora, 142
Crane, Stephen, 1, 6, 10, 15, 51–52,
62, 66, 69, 76, 83, 85, 118, 126,
140–42, 166
Crankshaw, Edward, 45
Crippen, H. H., 96
Croydon, 41
Curle, Richard, 17, 31, 62, 70, 121–
22, 160, 165, 168–69
Cuverville, 161
Dąbrowski, Marian, 18
Daghistany, Ann, 14
Dane, Clemence (Winifred Ashton),
74
Davidson, Jo, 31–32, 42, 169, 171
Davies, Laurence, 165
Davies, W. H., 32–33, 52
Davray, Henry-Durand, 33–34, 97
Dawson, Ernest, 35–36
Dawson, F. Warrington, 58, 124
de la Mare, Walter, 82, 153
d’Esque, Jean-Louis, 109
d’Humières, Robert, 86
Deal, 30
Debussy, Claude, 79
Dent, H. R., 36, 130
Dent, J. M., 36, 69, 130
Dent’s Collected Edition, 153
177
De Ternant, Andrew, 36–37
Dickens, Charles, 2, 35, 48, 76, 92,
99, 103, 131, 138, 154–55
Dobree, Hatherley, 126
Dobree, Muriel, 126
Dodd, Mead and Co., 51
Dostoevsky, Fyodor , 2, 48, 57, 86–
87, 103, 145, 162, 170
Doubleday, Florence, 37–38, 123
Doubleday, F. N., 7, 10–11, 24, 37–
38, 51, 82, 123, 129, 138, 140–41,
166
Doubleday, Page and Co., 11, 23,
38, 85, 89, 139
Douglas, Norman, 3, 38–41, 52, 75,
84, 88, 94–95, 158
Douglas, Robert (Robin) Sholto, 38,
40
Dover, 82
Dowson, Ernest, 130
Draper, Muriel Gurdon, 40–41, 75
Drinkwater, John, 74
Duckworth & Co., 115
Duhst, Captain, 91
Dukes, T. Archibald, 41
Dummett, Charles, 169
Dummett, Elizabeth, 169
Dunkirk, 50
Dupré, Catherine, 41–42
Dymchurch, 81–82
Edel, Leon, 42, 52
Edgware, 129, 134
Edison, Thomas Alva, 117
education, 2, 7, 30, 38
Effenberger-Śliwiński, Jan, 80
Ehrsam, Theodore G., 21, 25, 48,
57, 110, 132
Einstein, Albert, 32, 43, 135
Elder and Co., A. L., 159
Elgar, (Sir) Edward, 79
Eliot, T. S., 16, 111, 113, 144
Ellis, Havelock, 5, 42
Elstree School, 129, 134
178
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 8
Enfield, 41
England, 4, 17, 25, 27, 32, 40, 44,
49, 51, 57–58, 61, 70, 83, 91, 96,
100, 102, 104, 108, 113, 124, 129,
153, 170
English language, 1–3, 7–8, 16–17,
19, 26–27, 32–33, 35, 37, 41, 44,
51, 72, 74, 77, 81, 92–93, 99,
101–02, 104–05, 109, 113, 121,
125, 129, 144–45, 160, 171–73
Epsom, 41
Epstein, Jacob, 43–44
Evans, Robert O., 44
Eymar, Louis-Charles, 151
Fabian Society, 14
Falla, Manuel de, 79
Falmouth, 76
Farjeon, Eleanor, 45
Fielding, Henry, 82
Flaubert, Gustave, 33–35, 48, 57,
60, 77–78, 86, 139, 149–50
Flower, Newman, 16
Folkestone, 34, 82
Follett, Helen Thomas, 73
Follett, Wilson, 73
Ford, Ford Madox, 16, 39, 42, 45–
46, 52–55, 59–60, 68, 78–79, 81–
82, 84, 90, 106, 113–15, 144, 146,
168
France, 40, 45, 50, 135, 142, 145,
153, 160, 166, 169, 173
France, Anatole, 21, 32, 78, 96, 165,
170
Franco-Prussian War, 169
Frederic, Harold, 10, 69
Freeman, John, 74
French language, 2–3, 8, 16–17, 26–
28, 32–35, 37, 42, 44, 53, 57, 66,
77, 93–94, 102, 105, 115, 121,
134, 139, 142, 145, 160, 171
Freud, Sigmund, 87
Gallagher, John F., 66
Galsworthy, Ada, 47, 58, 115, 151
Galsworthy, Arthur, 58
Galsworthy, John, 27, 32, 39, 41–42,
46–49, 52, 58, 66, 68, 72–73, 78,
82, 95, 103, 113–15, 123, 126,
129, 135–06, 143, 160, 169
Garland, Hamlin, 17, 49–51
Garland, Mary Isabel, 50
Garnett, Constance, 52–54, 81
Garnett, David, 8, 52–54, 81, 86
Garnett, Edward, 7–8, 21, 25, 32,
38, 46–47, 52–55, 66, 73, 81, 84,
91, 93–94, 114–15, 122, 132–34,
142, 144, 160
Garnett, Martha, 53, 114
Garnett, Olive (Olivia), 52, 92, 113–
15, 165
Garnett, Robert S., 47, 53, 114
Gathorne-Hardy, Robert, 112
Geneva, 17, 35, 48, 92
George, Dolly, 23
George, W. L., 59
Gerhardie, William Alexander, 55–
56
German language, 37, 63
Germany, 36, 57, 63, 111
Gettman, Royal A., 56
Ghéon, Henri, 57
Gibbon, Perceval, 23, 30, 52, 81–82,
84, 102, 127
Gide, André, 22, 56–57, 80, 89,
160–62
Gilkes, Lilian, 142
Gill, David, 58
Gissing, George, 29, 56, 68, 84, 141
Gladstone, W. E., 101, 104
Glasgow, 20–21, 116–18, 120
Glasgow, Ellen, 58–59, 170
Gold Coast, 26
Goldring, Douglas, 59–60
Goossens, Eugène, 79
Gorky, Maxim, 65

Gosse, Edmund, 22, 27–28, 57, 119
Graham, R. B. Cunninghame, 3, 8,
34, 60–61, 62, 69, 81, 85, 105,
112, 116, 118, 130, 136, 144, 159,
165, 168–69
Granados, Enrique, 79
Granton, 145
Gravesend, 17
Greenhithe, 29
Gregor, Ian, 164
Hackney, 63
Haines, Paul, 10
Hallowes, Lilian M., 65, 170
Halverson, John, 61–63
Hamer, Douglas, 63–64
Hammond, J. R., 105
Hammond, Percy, 64
Hampstead, 23
Hand, Richard J., 64
Harding, Charles Copely, 16
Harding, Louisa Alvar, 16, 80, 107
Hardy, Thomas, 16, 22, 27–28, 48,
58, 65, 74, 86–87, 123, 166, 173
Harkness, Bruce, 65–66
Harmsworth, Alfred: see Northcliffe
Harper and Brothers, Messrs, 26–
28, 51
Harris, Frank, 39, 66–67
Harrison, Austin, 39, 66, 157
Harrison, Frederic, 39
Hart-Davis, Rupert, 29, 67–71, 127,
145
Harte, Bret, 87
Hartman, Howard, 71
Harvard University, 9, 79
Harvey, David Dow, 46
Harvey, George, 26–28
Hastings, B. Macdonald, 44, 71–73
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 77, 87
Hearn, Lafcadio, 74
Hearst, William Randolph, 51, 97
Heilbrun, Carolyn G., 73
Heinemann, William, 37, 51, 66, 142
179
Hellman, George S., 71
Henley, W. E., 35, 142
Henry Simpson & Sons, 3, 138
Henry, Patrick, 98
Hewlett, Maurice, 15
Hichens, Robert Smythe, 87, 89,
124
Hidaka, Tadaichi, 74
Hiles, Barbara, 53
Hind, C. L., 74–75
Hoenselaars, Ton, 86
Hogarth, William, 130–31
Holland, Bernard, 112
Holloway, Mark, 75
honorary degrees, 20
Hope, Conrad, 126
Hope, Frances Ellen, 126–27
Hope, G. F. W., 25, 75–76, 126
Hope, Herford, 76
Hope, Jean, 76
Hope, Muriel: see Dobree, Muriel
House, Colonel E. M., 64, 80
Howe, W. T. H., 79
Howells, William Dean, 48
Hudson, W. H., 24, 33, 38, 47, 52,
60, 69, 114, 130, 162
Hueffer, Elsie, 52–53, 79, 106, 113–
14
Hueffer, Ford Madox: see Ford,
Ford Madox
Huneker, J. G., 2, 10, 76–78, 146
Huneker, Josephine, 76
Hunt, Alfred, 78
Hunt, Violet, 78–79
Hurd, Maurice, 74
Huxley, Aldous, 169
Huysmans, J.-K., 78, 170
Hythe, 34, 106, 114
Ibsen, Henrik, 72, 77, 170
Île-Grande, 35
India, 31, 103
Indian Ocean, 102, 142
Iowa, 49
180
Ireland, 65, 111
Irving, H. B., 73
Italy, 71, 79, 112, 131, 134
Ivy Walls, 92, 126
Jacobs, W. W., 30, 51, 82
James, Henry, 1, 10, 15, 18, 35, 42,
44, 52, 57–58, 77, 92–94, 108,
112–14, 126, 128, 141, 146, 156–
57, 165, 170
James, William (brother), 42, 49
James, William (nephew), 42
Janta, Aleksander, 79
Jean-Aubry, G., 50, 56, 70, 73, 79–
80, 118, 160, 161–62, 164, 166
Jefferson, George, 81
Jefferson, Thomas, 98
Jepson, Edgar, 81–82
Jerrold, W. C., 84
John, Augustus, 111, 149
Johnson, Samuel, 102
Johnstone, Will B., 82
Jones, Edith R., 83
Jones, Hilda, 162
Jones, (Sir) Robert, 163–65
Kalff, Marie, 86
Karrakis, S., 83–84
Keating, George T., 14, 84, 117,
121, 151, 158
Keats, John, 59, 67, 74, 102–03, 173
Kelvin, Lord (William Thomson),
117
Kennedy, Bart, 125
Kentucky, 64
Kinshassa, 91
Kipling, Rudyard, 18–19, 22, 86–87
Klein, Georges-Antoine, 141
Kliszczewski: see Spiridion
Knight, Edward Frederick, 76
Knopf, Alfred A., 15, 23, 70, 85
Knowles, Owen, 14, 19, 20, 49, 81,
112, 143
Korzeniowska, Ewa, 172
Korzeniowska-Oleksińska,
Mirosława, 12
Korzeniowski, Adolph, 12
Korzeniowski, Apollo, 12, 37, 73,
79, 127, 132, 142, 155, 172
Korzeniowski, Mrs Adolph, 12
Korzeniowski, Zachary, 12
Krzyżanowski, Ludwik, 79
Landor, Walter Savage, 67
Lane, John, 39
Langlois, Paul, 105
Larbaud, Valery, 56–57, 152, 161,
166
Larigot, M., 130
Lausanne, 92
Lawrence, A. W., 85
Lawrence, D. H., 44, 74, 111
Lawrence, T. E., 69, 85–86, 135
League of Nations, 64
Lear, Edward, 162
Lee, Edgar, 36
Legge, Arthur E. J., 27
Lemaître, Jules, 57
Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich, 22
Lenormand, H.-R., 86–87
Lessing, Doris, 85
L’Estrange, Julian, 72
Lewis, John S., 23, 88
Lewis, Tracy Hammond, 88–89
Lhombreaud, Roger, 89
Lifeboat Institution, 173
Limpsfield, 52
Liszt, Franz, 79
Littell, Robert, 90
Little, John, 89
Little, Roger, 162
Liverpool, 19, 21–22, 64, 69, 80,
113, 164
Liverpool University, 63–64
Löhr, Marie, 44
London (general), 7, 12, 17, 28, 30–
31, 35–36
“The 43”, 106

Adelphi Terrace, 123
Æolian Hall, 173
Ambassadors Theatre, 75, 101
Arts Club, 96
Bedford Square, 132
Bedford Street, 36
British Museum, 67, 135
Brown’s Hotel, 38
Camden House Mews, 32
Camden Town, 43
Campden Hill, 49
Carlton Hotel, 67
Chelsea Arts Club, 16
Cheshire Cheese Tavern, 98
Covent Garden, 48, 124
Curzon Hotel, 101, 104, 153,
161
Dean Street, 170
European Café, 32
Fenchurch Street, 104
Fleet Street, 97
Gatti’s Restaurant, 113
Gerrard Street, 32, 52, 106
Globe Theatre, 44, 71
Gordon Place, 49, 90
Greek Street, 170
Holland Park, 16
Holland Park Avenue, 60
Hyde Park, 130
Hyde Park Mansions, 132, 133
King’s Cross, 138
Lawrence Mansions, 47
Leicester Galleries, 69
Limehouse, 125
Marylebone Road, 133
Mont Blanc (restaurant), 32, 38,
45, 52, 96
National Liberal Club, 96
National Portrait Gallery, 135,
153
New Oxford Street, 36
Oddenino’s (restaurant), 53
Old Compton Street, 91
Piccadilly, 27, 119
181
Pimlico, 71, 100
Poplar, 125
Regent Street, 53, 98
Restaurant d’Italie, 91
Royal Theatre, 49, 120
Savile Club, 119
Savoy Theatre, 73
Soho, 32, 38, 52, 65, 69, 96
Soho Square, 171
Square Club, 82
Strand, 113
Tate Gallery, 134
Tower Hill, 95, 104, 138
Wellington Club, 27
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 9
Lowell, James Russell, 9
Lowenfels, Walter, 75
Lowestoft, 7, 104, 112
Lucas, Audrey, 90
Lucas, E. V., 90–91
Lütken, Otto, 91
Lutosławski, Wincenty, 92
Lwów, 72
Lydd, 45, 153
Lynd, Robert, 69
Lyons, Kate, 10
MacCarthy, (Sir) Desmond, 93
McClure, S. S., 37, 78
MacDiarmid, Hugh, 94
MacIntyre, John, 116–17
Mack, Maynard, 164
Mackenzie, Compton, 94
McNeillie, Andrew, 171
MacShane, Frank, 54–55, 59, 167
Madras, 69
Madrid, 19, 138
Malaya, 13, 26–28, 35
Malipiero, Gian Francesco, 79
Mann, Thomas, 85
Marbot, (Baron) Jean-Baptiste, 53
maritime career, 2–4, 8, 20–21, 25,
30, 33, 41, 63, 69, 88–89, 95, 104,
106, 110, 116, 126, 155–57, 160–
182
61, 163
Markham, Lady Violet, 89
Marks, A. D., 160
Marle, Hans van, 41, 95, 107, 109–
10, 135, 143
Marquis, Don, 108
Marrot, H. V., 95
Marryat, Frederick, 35, 138
Marseilles, 3, 21, 37, 48, 79, 84, 88,
107, 113, 155, 170
Marshall, Archibald, 96–97
Marwood, Arthur, 78, 97, 114, 144,
163
Marwood, Caroline, 114
Masefield, John, 33, 131, 135–36
Maupassant, Guy de, 35, 52, 57, 96,
112, 115, 131
Mauritius, 105
Maxwell, Perriton, 97–99
Mee, Arthur, 99–100
Mégroz, R.-L., 100–05
Melville, Herman, 2, 44, 69, 162
Mérédac, Savinien, 105
Meredith, George, 44, 48, 87
Mérimée, Prosper, 48, 80
Methuen & Co., 91
Meyer, Mathilde, 105–06
Meyerbeer, Giacomo, 48, 79
Meyers, Jeffrey, 48
Meynell, Alice, 56
Meynell, Viola, 106
Meyrick, Kate, 106
Mill, John Stuart, 101
Milton, John, 16
Mitchell, Anne Lee, 114–15
Mizener, Arthur, 106–07
Modjeska, Helena (Modrzejewska),
72–73
Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin),
162
Montpellier, 37, 139, 151–52, 161,
166
Moor, Dolly, 23–24
Moore, Gene M., 75, 86, 107
Moore, George, 16, 22, 131
Morley, Christopher, 107–10
Morrell, Lady Ottoline, 111–13, 137
Morrell, Philip, 111
Morris, William, 78
Morrison, Toni, 85
Moser, Thomas C., 46, 113–15, 165
Mottram, R. H., 115
Moulins, 166
Mozambique, 111
Mroczkowski, Przemysław, 116
Mudford, William, 102
Munro, John M., 147
Munro, Neil, 116–18, 120
Murry, J. M., 74
Myers, Rollo H., 118
Mylett, Andrew, 15, 80
Najder, Zdzisław, 27, 30, 45–46, 48,
50, 56–57, 63–64, 75, 80, 83, 84,
86, 88, 93–95, 105, 111, 113, 118,
131, 139, 142, 153, 160, 162, 168
Naples, 58, 138
Napoleon I (Emperor of the
French), 5, 53, 86
Neel, Philippe, 22
Nevinson, H. W., 159
New Hampshire, 29
New Haven, 123, 157
New South Wales, 3, 44
New York, 1, 8–14, 20–22, 31, 38,
43, 56, 76, 80, 82, 85, 89–90, 96–
97, 99–100, 108–10, 121, 123,
127–28, 138, 153, 160, 166, 171,
173
Newbolt, (Sir) Henry, 118–20
Newcastle, 104, 156
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 77
Nigeria, 26
Northcliffe, Viscount Alfred, 40
“O., E. B.”, 120
Offenbach, Jacques, 79
“O. Henry” (William Sydney
 183

Porter), 87 Bookman’s Journal & Print

Ohnet, Georges, 57 Collector, 27, 122, 138
Okuda, Yoko, 74 Bookmark, 60
Orel, Harold, 19 Books and Bookmen, 131
Orlestone, 39, 56 Boston Evening Transcript, 141
Orzeszkowa, Eliza, 93 Boston Sunday Globe, 6
Osborne, Brian D., 120 Bulletin (Sydney), 109
Oswalds, 14, 31, 40, 43, 50, 69, 70, Cahiers d’Études et de Recherches
74, 83, 93, 107–08, 112, 160–62, Victoriennes et Édouardiennes,
169–70 151
Owen, Charles, 56 Century Magazine, 55
Owen, Lyman B., 121, 136 Chambers’s Journal, 104
Oxford University, 45, 86, 94, 107 Chesterian, 79
Chicago Tribune, 46
Paderewski, Ignacy, 64, 80, 89, 117, Christian Century, 173
144 Christian Science Monitor, 5
Page, Walter Hines, 1, 11 Conradian, The, 23, 29, 49, 58, 64,
Palestine, 88, 100 67, 74–75, 94, 107, 117–18,
Palffy, Eleanor, 121 120, 124, 126
Pará, 158 Conradiana, 10, 12, 14, 23, 25, 31,
Paramor, William, 58 41, 48, 61, 65, 71, 86, 88, 92,
Paris, 32, 48, 59, 84, 86, 92, 107, 171 95, 97, 99, 103, 110, 121, 137,
Parker, W. M., 121–22 140–41, 143–44, 157, 161–62,
Partington, Wilfred, 122–23 166
Pawling, Sidney S., 37, 66, 141 Cornhill Magazine, 40
Pell, Elsie, 57 Cosmopolitan, 4
Pent Farm, 26, 34, 52, 90, 113, 125, Daily Dispatch, 43
135 Daily Graphic, 64
Pepys, Samuel, 108 Daily Mail, 40, 96
Periodicals Daily Mirror, 40
Academy, 12 Daily News, 69
Adelaide Mail, 138 Daily Telegraph, 12, 84
Adelphi, 5 Empire Review, 26–27, 93
America, 159 English Illustrated Magazine, 139
American, 97 English Life, 91
Anglo-Welsh Review, 99 English Review, 39, 59–60, 78, 82,
Arts & Decoration, 128 97–98, 149, 158, 168
Atlanta Journal, 139 Evening News, 39
Atlantic Monthly, 83, 85 Evening Standard, 15, 80, 102, 113
Blackwood’s Magazine, 4, 116, 126 Evening World, 11, 82
Blue Peter, 31, 92, 121 Figaro, 161
Bookman, 9, 25, 30, 103, 126, Fortnightly Review, 35, 39, 56, 121
130, 132 Forum, 148
Bookman’s Journal, 123 Gazette des Lettres, 87
184
Glasgow Evening News, 120
Glasgow Herald, 121
Globe, 91
Graphic, 23
Harper’s Weekly, 26, 28
Hearst’s Magazine, 51
Hindustan Review, 100
Hobbies, 25
Holiday, 18
Illustrated London News, 140
John O’London’s, 122
John O’London’s Weekly, 5
Joseph Conrad Today, 30, 54
Journal of the Joseph Conrad Society,
7, 65, 120
Kipling Journal, 18
Kraj, 73, 92
Kurier Polski, 12
L’Essor: Revue du Cercle Littéraire
de Port-Louis, 105
Listener, 93
Literary Digest, 100
London Mercury, 91
Manchester Guardian, 17
Manchester Guardian Weekly, 21
Mariner’s Mirror, 31
Mentor, 7, 25
Mercure de France, 33–34
Messager Polonais, 173
Metropolitan Magazine, 78
Modern Language Review, 68, 162
Modern Philology, 139
Morning Leader, 157
Morning Post, 52, 120
Munsey’s Magazine, 51
Nash’s Magazine, 97
Nation, 5, 158
Nation & Athenaeum, 55, 111
Nautical Magazine, 138, 144
New Age, 16
New Republic, 90
New Review, 35, 142
New Statesman, 36, 93
New Witness, 125
New York Evening Post, 10, 24,
107–08, 124
New York Evening Post Literary
Review, 169–70
New York Herald, 8, 11, 27, 51
New York Herald and New York
Tribune, 97
New York Herald Tribune, 128
New York Herald, New York
Tribune Magazine, 59
New York Morning Telegraph, 88–
89
New York Times, 6, 8–11, 22, 77,
155
New York Tribune, 10, 64, 128,
144
New York Tribune Magazine, 59
North American Review, 26
Notes & Queries, 44, 58, 117
Nottingham Journal, 131
Nouvelle Revue Française, 2, 56–57,
87, 160
Outlook, 1, 45, 127, 153
Petit Méridional, 139
Pictorial Review, 14
Polish American Studies, 18
Polish Review, 88
Queen, 149
Radical (Port-Louis), 105
Review of English Literature, 3
Review of English Studies, 63
Review of Reviews, 105
Revue Hebdomadaire, 101
Ruch Literacki, 99
Saturday Review, 39, 54, 61, 67
Saturday Review of Literature, 15,
20, 107, 109–10
Semaine Littéraire, 34
Singapore Free Press, 28
Spectator, 41
Sphere, 139
St. Stephen’s Review, 36
Stockport Advertiser, 142
Strand Magazine, 155

Studia Romanica et Anglica
Zagrabiensia, 161
Sun, 5, 10, 98, 170
Sunday Times, 93
T.P.’s & Cassell’s Weekly, 102,
125
Tatler, 140
Texas Quarterly, 19
Texas Studies in Literature and
Language, 112
Thomas Hardy Journal, 27, 65
Thurrock Historical Society Journal,
126
Times, 40, 132
Times Literary Supplement, 13, 145
Tit-Bits, 84
To-day, 24
transatlantic review, 86
Tygodnik Illustrowany, 18
Vanity Fair, 169
Virginia Quarterly Review, 134
Weekly Westminster, 54
Western Mail, 99
Wiadomości Literackie, 19
World, 6, 157, 166
World Today, 38, 51
Perłowski, Jan, 19
Petersfield, 151
Petrarch, Francesco, 56
Phelps, William Lyon, 123
Phillpotts, Eden, 73
Pinker, Eric S., 96, 153
Pinker, J. B., 4, 9, 13, 16–17, 26, 32,
38, 40, 70, 83–84, 86, 91, 95–96,
114, 115, 136, 149, 160
Plomer, William, 124
Poe, Edgar Allan, 8, 77
Poland, 2, 9, 12, 17, 32, 41, 49, 62–
63, 84, 88, 104, 113, 117, 127,
147, 150, 172–73
Polish language, 2, 19, 27, 33, 36,
92, 121, 147, 172
Poradowska, Marguerite, 16
Pound, Ezra, 81–82
185
Powell, John, 124, 144
Proust, Marcel, 70, 136
Prus, Bolesław, 172
Pugh, Edwin, 125–26
Pugh, Mrs J. C. L., 126–27
Putnam, George, 127
Queensland, 138
Quinn, John, 9, 56, 76–77, 129,
148–50
Racine, Jean, 56
Randall, Dale B. J., 58, 88, 97, 139,
141, 157, 166
Ransome, Arthur, 127
Rascoe, Arthur Burton, 100, 128
Ravel, Maurice, 16, 80, 118, 160,
166
Ray, Martin, 27, 65, 68
Joseph Conrad: Interviews and
Recollections, 5, 8, 12, 15, 21,
23–24, 35–36, 38–39, 41, 43,
48, 50, 55, 61, 63, 66–67, 71,
77–78, 81, 83, 86, 90–93, 96–
97, 99, 109, 112, 116, 118,
124, 125–26, 130, 132, 135,
141, 144, 152–53, 166–67,
169–71, 173
Raymond-Duval, P.-H., 86
Redmayne, E. B., 143
Régnier, Henri de, 152
Reid, Benjamin L., 129
Retinger, J. H., 32, 62
Retinger, Otolia, 62
Reynolds, Mabel E., 129
Reynolds, Stephen, 38, 52
Reynolds, Thomas Blair, 129
Rhymers’ Club, 130
Rhys, Ernest, 130–31
Riach, Alan, 94
Richardson, Samuel, 63
Rivière, Jacques, 57
Roberts, Cecil, 131–34
Rodger, (Sir) John Pickersgill, 27
186

Roditi, Édouard, 134 Shanks, Edward, 74

Rogers, Bruce, 86 Shaw, George Bernard, 14, 32, 43,
Röntgen, Wilhelm, 117 65, 84, 93, 123, 130, 136, 145, 168
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 78 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 173
Rothenstein, John, 134–35 Sherman, Thomas B., 139–40
Rothenstein, William, 119, 135–36, Sherry, Norman, 4, 12, 138–39
148–49, 165 Ships
Rouen, 35, 58, 60, 108 Adowa, 58, 108
Royal Bounty Fund, 119, 136 Cameronia, 19
Royal College of Art, 135 Duke of Sutherland, 90
Royal Literary Fund, 119 Highland Forest, 71
Royal Navy, 133, 145 Jeddah, 4, 146
Rubinstein, Artur, 88 Leviathan, 6
Ruskin, John, 78 Majestic, 11
Russell, Bertrand, 51, 111, 112, 137 Mavis, 113
Russell, William Clark, 163 Montrose, 96
Russia, 17, 21–22, 40, 53–55, 61–62, Narcissus, 50
69, 72, 86 105, 122, 124, 136–38 Nellie, 25, 76
Rye, 42, 147, 170 Otago, 3, 25, 90, 138
Palestine, 76, 156
Safroni-Middleton, Arnold, 121, Ready, HMS , 144
137–38 Riversdale, 68–69
Saint-John Perse (Marie-René- Skimmer of the Sea, 7, 104
Auguste-Alexis-Saint-Léger Tilkhurst, 63
Léger), 2–3, 24, 145, 161–62 Titanic, 97, 149
Sampson, John, 64 Torrens, 41, 48, 95, 109–10, 143,
San Francisco, 56, 137 159
Sanderson, E. L. (Ted), 95, 129, 134 Tremolino, 37, 90, 155
Sanderson, Katherine, 129 Tuscania, 8, 11, 19–21, 83, 122,
Sanderson, Lancelot, 129 161
Sanderson, Monica, 95 Winifredian, 22
Sandgate, 34–35, 74, 167 Worcester, 29, 40
Sandling, 34 Shiraishi, Y., 74
Sargent, George H., 138 Shorter, C. K., 140
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 85 Siberia, 142
Saunders, A. T., 138–39 Sibley, Carroll, 140–41
Schlumberger, Jean, 57 Sidmouth, 39
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 48–49 Sieroszewski, Wacław, 171
Schwab, Arnold T., 139 Simpson, James, 137–38
Scott, (Sir) Walter, 92 Simpson, Mrs James, 137–38
Seccombe, Thomas, 38 Sinclair, May, 74
Sée, Ida-R., 139 Singapore, 4, 71, 151
Selassie, Haile (Emperor), 43 Skirmunt, Konstanty, 80
Shakespeare, William, 2, 73, 101 Smith, James Walter, 138, 141–42

Smollett, Tobias, 63
Someries, 30, 60
Spain, 37, 40, 48, 79, 155, 165
Sparks, T. Ashley, 20
Spiridion, Joseph, 99
Spring Grove, 31, 168
Squire, J. C., 17, 74
Stage Society, 72, 119
Stallman, R. W., 56, 87, 142
Stanford-le-Hope, 126
Stape, J. H., 14, 19, 20, 23, 41, 49,
67, 81, 109–10, 126, 143
Stark, Harold, 144, 167
Stein, Marian L., 144
Stendhal, Henri de, 35, 77
Stepniak, Sergei, 113
Stevens, Wallace, 85
Stevenson, Robert Louis, 29, 35, 67
Stockport, 142
Stout, Rex, 18
Stravinsky, Igor, 144–45
Strindberg, August, 87
Strug, Andrzej, 171
Sumatra, 155
Sutherland, J. G., 145
Swaffer, Hannen, 64
Swettenham, (Sir) Frank, 13, 27,
145–46
Swinnerton, Frank, 146
Switzerland, 17, 50, 112
Sydney, 3, 137
Symons, Arthur, 8, 24, 56, 89, 147–
51
Symons, Rhoda, 147–50
Szembek, Zygmunt, 151
Szymanowski, Karol, 80
Taylor, Deems, 40, 61
Taylor, Jeremy, 102–03
Taylor, Warner, 149
Temple, Frédéric-Jacques, 151–52
Thackeray, William Makepeace, 48,
92, 99, 131, 154
theatre, 4, 72, 83, 105, 125, 170
187
Thomas, Claude, 151
Thomas, Claude-Nöel, 84
Thomas, Edward, 30, 45, 52, 82,
152–53
Thomas, Merfyn, 151
Thomas, R. G., 151
Tibet, 103
Tittle, Walter, 153–57, 161
Titus, Edward K., 157
Tobin, Agnes, 3, 24, 56, 89, 147,
161–62
Tokyo, 74
Tolstoy, Leo, 2
Tomlinson, H. M., 52, 158–59
Toulon, 107
Trieste, 127
Trinidad, 26
Trollope, Anthony, 48
Trosley (Trottiscliffe), 23
Tschiffely, A. F., 159
Turgenev, Ivan, 44, 48, 77, 84, 87,
115, 131, 137, 162
Twain, Mark, 7, 25, 50, 63, 88, 140,
148, 156, 162
Ukraine, 80
United States of America, 1–2, 5–
12, 14, 21–22, 36, 38, 49, 51, 59,
63, 69–70, 78, 83–84, 89, 98,
102–03, 117, 120–22, 128, 138–
39, 144, 146, 154–55, 159, 166,
169–70
Unwin, (Sir) Stanley, 159–60
Unwin, T. Fisher, 16, 24–25, 50, 54,
91, 160
Valencia, 138
Valéry, Paul, 16, 70, 80, 160–61, 169
Van Hamm, Caleb, 97
Vaughan Williams, Ralph, 79
Veler, Richard P., 152, 161
Venice, 112, 127
Verdi, Giuseppe, 79
Verlaine, Paul, 80, 135, 147
188
Vevey, 16–17, 50
Vidan, Gabrijela, 162
Vidan, Ivo, 161–62
Vienna, 11, 150
Vilnius, 89, 92
Virginia, 58, 98, 169
Voynich, E. L., 65–66
Voynich, Wilfred Michael, 65
Wagner, Richard, 48
Wales, 64, 144, 164
Wallace, Alfred R., 69
Walpole, Hugh, 65, 67–70, 86, 121,
124, 126, 146, 160, 162, 167, 171
War, First World, 2, 9, 11, 21, 23,
30, 33, 36, 40, 53, 58, 61–63, 68,
70–71, 82, 88, 100, 103, 106, 111,
115, 122, 123, 130, 131–35, 145,
152, 164, 166, 171–72
War, Second World, 55, 100, 135,
157
Warsaw, 72, 80
Washington, George, 9, 98
Watson, E. L. Grant, 163
Watson, Frederick, 163–65
Watt, Ian, 61–63, 118, 165
Watts, Cedric, 117, 165
Waugh, Evelyn, 106
Weissman, Frida, 166
Weitzenkorn, Louis, 144, 166–67
Weldon, Fay, 82
Wells, Amy (Jane), 106
Wells, H. G., 13, 15, 21, 32, 34–35,
45, 55–56, 62, 65, 67–68, 73–74,
78, 84, 93, 105–06, 114, 118,
123–25, 133, 135, 142, 144–46,
157, 167–68, 170–71
West Indies, 159
West, Herbert Faulkner, 168–69
West, (Dame) Rebecca, 62, 114
Wharton, Edith, 73, 130
Wheeler, Marcus, 54
Whibley, Charles, 4
Whiteing, Richard, 65
Whitman, Walt, 8, 56, 77
Wilhelm II (Kaiser), 9
Willard, Catherine, 169–70
Willard, Grace, 31, 132–33, 169–70
Willcox, Louise Collier, 58
Williams, Augustine Podmore, 4
Williams, Frederick Benton, 29
Wilson, Harris, 170–71
Winchelsea, 113
Wisconsin, 49
Wise, Thomas J., 122–23
Wisehart, M. K., 42, 171
Wittersham, 147–48
Woodville (Australia), 139
Woolf, Virginia, 111, 123–24, 171–
72
Wright, Hagberg, 65
Wrotham, 23
Wye, 31
Yale University, 9, 32, 153, 157, 171,
173
Yeats, W. B., 16, 56, 111, 130
Youloff, 137
Zabierowski, Stefan, 116
Zagórska, Aniela, 19, 88, 172–73
Zagórska, Karola, 172
Zagórski, Karol, 172
Zakopane, 17, 88, 172
Zelie, John Sheridan, 1, 172
Żeromski, Stefan, 171
Zola, Émile, 162