APPENDIX
Writing to his Collaborator in a letter published in theTransatlantic Reviewfor January, 1924, Mr. Conrad makes the following ascription of passages in the work above named:
First Part, yours; Second Part, mainly yours, with a little by me on points of seamanship and suchlike small matters; Third Part, about 60 percent mine with important touches by you; Fourth Part, mine with here and there an important sentence by you; Fifth Part practically all yours, including the famous sentence at which we both exclaimed: “This is Genius,” (Do you remember what it is?) with perhaps half a dozen lines by me....
First Part, yours; Second Part, mainly yours, with a little by me on points of seamanship and suchlike small matters; Third Part, about 60 percent mine with important touches by you; Fourth Part, mine with here and there an important sentence by you; Fifth Part practically all yours, including the famous sentence at which we both exclaimed: “This is Genius,” (Do you remember what it is?) with perhaps half a dozen lines by me....
Mr. Conrad’s recollections—except for the generosity of his two “importants”—tally well enough with those of his Collaborator if conception alone is concerned. When it comes however to the writing the truth is that Parts One, Two, Three and Five are a singular mosaic of passages written alternately by one or other of the collaborators. The matchless Fourth Part is both in conception and writing entirely the work of Mr. Conrad.
Below will be found the analysis of “Romance.” Any student of literature with an ear for prose will hardly need these underlinings, for Mr. Conrad’s definitenesses of statement stand out amongst his Collaborator’s more English keyings down so that when one of his half sentences bursts into the no doubt suaver prose of the other it is as if the page comes to life and speaks.
Every collaboration is a contest of temperaments if it be at all thoroughly carried out; and this collaboration was carried out so thoroughly that, even when the book came to the proof stage, the original publishers, half way through the printing, sent the MS. back to the authors. They were still making innumerable corrections.
Originally conceived, in the attempt to convey realistically a real story of adventure recorded in a State Trial, as the thin tale of a very old man—and this before the question of collaboration arose—the book contains of its first version only the two opening sentences—and the single other sentence: “And, looking back, we see Romance!” In between lay to say the least of it almost unbelievable labours—a contest of attrition lasting over several years. For insofar as this collaboration was a contest of wills it was a very friendly one; yet it was the continual attempt on the part of the onecollaborator to key up and of the other to key down. And so exhausting was the contest that in the course of the years two definite breakdowns occurred. In the first the robuster writer let the book called “The Inheritors” just go and it remains a monument as it were of silverpoint, delicacies and allusiveness. The second breakdown is recorded in the Fourth Part of “Romance,” sketches for which were written over and over—and then over—again, until the weaker brother, in absolute exhaustion, in turn let it go at that. So, to mark those breaking points, you have the silverpoint of “The Inheritors” set against the, let us say, oil-painting of this matchless Fourth Part.
“The Nature of a Crime” should have become a novel treating of the eternal subject of the undetected criminal—a theme which every writer for once or twice in his life at least contemplates in a world in which the fortunate are so very often the merely not found out. The courage of few writers carries them even beyond the contemplation; in this case the joint courages of the authors went as far as what you may read.
The passage from the Fifth Part of “Romance” printed below contains the “famous sentence” as to which Mr. Conrad writes: “We both exclaimed: ‘This is genius’.”
Joseph Conrad in Italics; F. M. Hueffer in Roman type.
Part One: Chapter One.To yesterday and to-day I say my polite “vaya usted con dios.” What are these days to me?But that far-off day of my romance, when from betweenthe blue and white bales in Don Ramon’s darkened storeroom, at Kingston, I saw the door open before the figure ofan old man with the tired, long, white face, that day I am not likely to forget. I rememberthe chilly smell of the typical West Indian store, the indescribablesmell of damp gloom, of locos, of pimento, of olive oil, of new sugar, of new rum; the glassy double sheen of Ramon’s great spectacles, the piercing eyes in the mahogany face, while the tap, tap, tap of a cane on the flags went on behind the inner door;the click of the latch; the stream of light. The door, petulantly thrust inwards, struck against some barrels. I remember the rattling of the bolts on that door, andthe tall figurethat appeared there,snuff-box in hand. In that land of white clothes that precise, ancient, Castilian in black was something to remember. The black cane that had made the tap, tap, tap dangled by a silken cord from the hand whose delicate blue-veined, wrinkled wrist ran back into a foam of lawn ruffles.The other hand pausedin the act of conveying a pinch of snuff to the nostrils of thehooked nose that had, on the skin stretched tight over the bridge, the polish of old ivory; the elbow pressing the black cocked hat against the side; the legs, one bent, the other bowing a little back—this was the attitude of Seraphina’s father.Having imperiously thrust the door of the inner room open, he remained immovable, with no intention of entering, and called in a harsh, aged voice: “Señor Ramon! Señor Ramon!” and then twice: “Seraphina—Seraphina!” turning his head back.Then for the first time I saw Seraphina, looking over her father’s shoulder.I remember her face of that day;her eyes were grey—the grey of black, not of blue. For a moment they looked me straight in the face, reflectively, unconcerned, and then travelled to the spectacles of old Ramon.This glance—remember I was young on that day—had been enough to set me wondering what they were thinking of me; what they could have seen of me.“But there he is your Señor Ramon,” she said to her father,as if she were chiding him for a petulance in calling; “your sight is not very good, my poor little father—there he is, your Ramon.”The warm reflection of the light behind her, gilding the curve of her face from ear to chin,lost itself in the shadows of black lace falling from dark hair that was not quite black. She spoke as if the words clung to her lips; as if she had to put them forth delicately for fear of damaging the frail things.Part One: Chapter Five.Macdonald cleared his throat, with a sound resembling the coughing of a defective pump, and a mere trickle of a voiceasked:“Hwhat evidence have ye of identitee?”I hadn’t any at all and began to finger my buttonholes as shame-faced as a pauper before a Board. The certitude dawned upon me suddenly that Carlos, even if he would consent to swear to me, would prejudice my chances.I cannot help thinking thatI came very near to being cast adrift upon the streets of Kingston. To my asseverations Macdonald returned nothing but a series of minute “humphs.” I don’t know what overcame his scruples; he had shown no signs of yielding, but suddenly turning on his heelmade a motion with one of his flabby white hands. I understood it to mean that I was to follow him aft.The decks were covered with a jabbering turmoil of negroes with muscular arms and brawny shoulders. All their shining faces seemed to be momentarily gashed open to showrows of white, and were spotted with inlaid eyeballs. The sounds coming from them were a bewildering noise. They were hauling baggage about aimlessly.A large soft bundle of bedding nearly took me off my legs.There wasn’t room for emotion. Macdonald laid about him with the handle of the umbrella a few inches from the deck; but the passage that he made for himself closed behind him.Suddenly, in the pushing and hurrying, I came upon a little clear space beside a pile of boxes. Stooping over them was the angular figure of Nichols, the second mate. He looked up at me, screwing his yellow eyes together.“Going ashore,” he asked, “long of that Puffing Billy?”“What business is it of yours?” I mumbled sulkily.Sudden and intense threatening came into hisyelloweyes.“Don’t you ever come toyou know where,”he said; “I don’t want no spies on what I do. There’s a man there’ll crack your little backbone if he catches you. Don’t yeh come now. Never.”Part Four: Chapter One.In my anxiety to keep clear of the schooner which, for all I know to this day, may not have been there at all, I had come too close to thesand, so close that I heard soft, rapid footfalls stop short in the fog. A voice seemed to be asking me in a whisper:“Where, oh, where?”Another cried out irresistibly, “I see it.”It was a subdued cry, as if hushed in awe.My arm swung to and fro; the turn of my wrist went on imparting the propelling motion of the oar. All the rest of my body was gripped helplessly in the dead expectation of the end, as if in the benumbing seconds of a fall from a towering height. And it was swift, too. I felt a draught at the back of my neck—a breath of wind. And instantly, as if a battering ram had been let swing past me at many layers of stretched gauze, I beheld, through a tattered deep hole in the fog, a roaring vision of flames, borne down and swimming up again; a dance of purple gleams on the strip of unveiled water, and three coal black figures in the light.One of them stood high on lank black legs, with long black arms thrown up stiffly above the black shape of a hat. The two others crouched low on the very edge of the water, peering as if from an ambush.The clearness of this vision was contained by a thick and a fiery atmosphere, into which a soft white rush and swirl of fog fell like a sudden whirl of snow. It closed down and overwhelmed at once the tall flutter of the flames,the black figures, the purple gleams playing round my oar. The hot glare had struck my eyeballs once, and that melted away again into the old, fiery stain on the mended fabric of the fog. But the attitudes of the crouching men left no room for doubt that we had been seen. I expected a sudden uplifting of voices on the shore, answered by cries from the sea, and I screamed excitedly at Castro to lay hold of his oar.He did not stir, and after my shouts, which must have fallen on the scared ears with a weird and unearthly note, a profound silence attended us—the silence of a superstitious fear: And, instead of howls, I heard, before the boat had travelled its own short length, a voice that seemed to be the voice of fear itself asking, “Did you hear that?” and a trembling mutter of an invocation to all the saints. Then a strangled throat trying to pronounce firmly, “The soul of the dead Inglez. Crying for pain.”Admiral Rowley’s seamen, so miserably thrown away in the ill-conceived attack on the bay, were making a ghostly escort to our escape. Those dead boats’-crews were supposed to haunt the fatal spot, after the manner of spectres that linger in remorse, regret, or revenge, about the gates of departure. I had blundered; the fog, breaking apart, had betrayedus. But my obscure and vanquished country-men held possession of the outlet by memory of their courage. In this critical moment it was they, I may say, who stood by us.We, on our part, must have been disclosed, dark, indistinct, utterly inexplicable; completely unexpected; an apparition of stealthy shades. The painful voice in the fog said:“Let them be. Answer not. They shall pass on, for none of them died on the shore—all in the water. Yes, all in the water.”Part Five: Chapter One.“Why have I been brought here your worship?” I asked with a great deal of firmness.There were two figures in black, the one beside, the other behind a large black table. I was placed in front of them between two dirty soldiers, in the centre of a large, gaunt room, with bare, dirty walls, and the arms of Spain above the judge’s seat.“You are before the Juez de la Primera Instancia,” said the man in black beside the table. He wore a large and shadowy tricorn. “Be silent, and respect the procedure.”It was, without doubt, excellent advice.He whispered some words in the ear of the Judge of the First Instance. It was plain enough to methat the judge was quite an inferior official, who merely decided whether there was any case against the accused; he had, even to his clerk, an air of timidity, of doubt.I said: “But I insist on knowing....”The clerk said: “In good time....” And then, in the same tone of disinterested official routine,he spoke to the Lugareño, who, from beside the door, rolled very frightened eyesfrom the judges and the clerk to myself and the soldiers—“Advance.”The judge, in a hurried, perfunctory voice, put questions to the Lugareño; the clerk scratched with a large quill on a sheet of paper.“Where do you come from?”“The town of Rio Medio, excellency.”“Of what occupation?”“Excellency—a few goats....”“Why are you here?”“My daughter, excellency, married Pepe of the posada in the Calle....”The judge said, “Yes, yes,”with an unsanguine impatience. The Lugareño’s dirty hands jumped nervously on the large rim of his limp hat.“You lodge a complaint against the señor there.”The clerk pointed the end of his quill towards me.“I? God forbid, excellency,” the Lugareñobleated.“The Alguazil of the Criminal Court instructed me to be watchful....”Part Five: The End.A long time after a harsh voice said:“Your excellency, we retire, of course, from the prosecution.”A different one directed:“Gentlemen of the jury you will return a verdict of ‘Not Guilty’....”Down below they were cheering uproariously because my life was saved. But it was I that had to face my saved life. I sat there, my head bowed into my hands. The old judge was speaking to me in a tone of lofty compassion:“You have suffered much, as it seems, but suffering is the lot of us men. Rejoice now that your character is cleared; that here in this public place you have received the verdict of your country-men that restores you to the liberties of our country and the affection of your kindred. I rejoice with you who am a very old man at the end of my life....”It was rather tremendous, his deep voice, his weighted words. Suffering is the lot of us men.... The formidable legal array, the great powers of a nation, had stood up to teach me that, and they had taught me that—suffering is the lot of us men!It takes long enough to realise that someone is dead at a distance. I had done that. But how long, how long it needs to know that the life of your heart has come back from the dead.For years afterwards I could not bear to have her out of my sight.Of our first meeting in London all I can remember is a speechlessness that was like the awed hesitation of our overtried souls before the greatness of a change from the verge of despair to the opening of a supreme joy. The whole world, the whole of life, with her return had changed all around me; it enveloped me, it enfolded me so lightly as not to be felt, so suddenly as not to be believed in, so completely that that whole meeting was an embrace, so softly that at last it lapsed into a sense of rest that was like the fall of a beneficent and welcome death.For suffering is the lot of man, but not inevitable failure or worthless despair which is without end—suffering, the mark of manhood, which bears within its pain a hope of felicity like a jewel set in iron....Her first words were:“You broke our compact. You went away from me whilst I was sleeping.” Only the deepness of her reproach revealed the depth of her love, and the suffering she too had endured to reach a union that was to be without end—and to forgive.And, looking back, we see Romance—that subtle thing that is mirage—that is life. It is the goodness of the years we have lived through, of the old time when we did this or that, when we dwelt here or there. Looking back it seems a wonderful enough thing that I who am this and she who is that, commencing so far away a life that after such sufferings borne together and apart, ended so tranquilly there in a world so stable—that she and I should have passed through so much, good chance and evil chance, sad hours and joyful, all lived down and swept away into the little heap of dust that is life. That, too, is Romance.
Part One: Chapter One.
To yesterday and to-day I say my polite “vaya usted con dios.” What are these days to me?But that far-off day of my romance, when from betweenthe blue and white bales in Don Ramon’s darkened storeroom, at Kingston, I saw the door open before the figure ofan old man with the tired, long, white face, that day I am not likely to forget. I rememberthe chilly smell of the typical West Indian store, the indescribablesmell of damp gloom, of locos, of pimento, of olive oil, of new sugar, of new rum; the glassy double sheen of Ramon’s great spectacles, the piercing eyes in the mahogany face, while the tap, tap, tap of a cane on the flags went on behind the inner door;the click of the latch; the stream of light. The door, petulantly thrust inwards, struck against some barrels. I remember the rattling of the bolts on that door, andthe tall figurethat appeared there,snuff-box in hand. In that land of white clothes that precise, ancient, Castilian in black was something to remember. The black cane that had made the tap, tap, tap dangled by a silken cord from the hand whose delicate blue-veined, wrinkled wrist ran back into a foam of lawn ruffles.The other hand pausedin the act of conveying a pinch of snuff to the nostrils of thehooked nose that had, on the skin stretched tight over the bridge, the polish of old ivory; the elbow pressing the black cocked hat against the side; the legs, one bent, the other bowing a little back—this was the attitude of Seraphina’s father.
Having imperiously thrust the door of the inner room open, he remained immovable, with no intention of entering, and called in a harsh, aged voice: “Señor Ramon! Señor Ramon!” and then twice: “Seraphina—Seraphina!” turning his head back.
Then for the first time I saw Seraphina, looking over her father’s shoulder.I remember her face of that day;her eyes were grey—the grey of black, not of blue. For a moment they looked me straight in the face, reflectively, unconcerned, and then travelled to the spectacles of old Ramon.
This glance—remember I was young on that day—had been enough to set me wondering what they were thinking of me; what they could have seen of me.
“But there he is your Señor Ramon,” she said to her father,as if she were chiding him for a petulance in calling; “your sight is not very good, my poor little father—there he is, your Ramon.”
The warm reflection of the light behind her, gilding the curve of her face from ear to chin,lost itself in the shadows of black lace falling from dark hair that was not quite black. She spoke as if the words clung to her lips; as if she had to put them forth delicately for fear of damaging the frail things.
Part One: Chapter Five.
Macdonald cleared his throat, with a sound resembling the coughing of a defective pump, and a mere trickle of a voiceasked:
“Hwhat evidence have ye of identitee?”
I hadn’t any at all and began to finger my buttonholes as shame-faced as a pauper before a Board. The certitude dawned upon me suddenly that Carlos, even if he would consent to swear to me, would prejudice my chances.
I cannot help thinking thatI came very near to being cast adrift upon the streets of Kingston. To my asseverations Macdonald returned nothing but a series of minute “humphs.” I don’t know what overcame his scruples; he had shown no signs of yielding, but suddenly turning on his heelmade a motion with one of his flabby white hands. I understood it to mean that I was to follow him aft.
The decks were covered with a jabbering turmoil of negroes with muscular arms and brawny shoulders. All their shining faces seemed to be momentarily gashed open to showrows of white, and were spotted with inlaid eyeballs. The sounds coming from them were a bewildering noise. They were hauling baggage about aimlessly.A large soft bundle of bedding nearly took me off my legs.There wasn’t room for emotion. Macdonald laid about him with the handle of the umbrella a few inches from the deck; but the passage that he made for himself closed behind him.
Suddenly, in the pushing and hurrying, I came upon a little clear space beside a pile of boxes. Stooping over them was the angular figure of Nichols, the second mate. He looked up at me, screwing his yellow eyes together.
“Going ashore,” he asked, “long of that Puffing Billy?”
“What business is it of yours?” I mumbled sulkily.
Sudden and intense threatening came into hisyelloweyes.
“Don’t you ever come toyou know where,”he said; “I don’t want no spies on what I do. There’s a man there’ll crack your little backbone if he catches you. Don’t yeh come now. Never.”
Part Four: Chapter One.
In my anxiety to keep clear of the schooner which, for all I know to this day, may not have been there at all, I had come too close to thesand, so close that I heard soft, rapid footfalls stop short in the fog. A voice seemed to be asking me in a whisper:
“Where, oh, where?”
Another cried out irresistibly, “I see it.”
It was a subdued cry, as if hushed in awe.
My arm swung to and fro; the turn of my wrist went on imparting the propelling motion of the oar. All the rest of my body was gripped helplessly in the dead expectation of the end, as if in the benumbing seconds of a fall from a towering height. And it was swift, too. I felt a draught at the back of my neck—a breath of wind. And instantly, as if a battering ram had been let swing past me at many layers of stretched gauze, I beheld, through a tattered deep hole in the fog, a roaring vision of flames, borne down and swimming up again; a dance of purple gleams on the strip of unveiled water, and three coal black figures in the light.
One of them stood high on lank black legs, with long black arms thrown up stiffly above the black shape of a hat. The two others crouched low on the very edge of the water, peering as if from an ambush.
The clearness of this vision was contained by a thick and a fiery atmosphere, into which a soft white rush and swirl of fog fell like a sudden whirl of snow. It closed down and overwhelmed at once the tall flutter of the flames,the black figures, the purple gleams playing round my oar. The hot glare had struck my eyeballs once, and that melted away again into the old, fiery stain on the mended fabric of the fog. But the attitudes of the crouching men left no room for doubt that we had been seen. I expected a sudden uplifting of voices on the shore, answered by cries from the sea, and I screamed excitedly at Castro to lay hold of his oar.
He did not stir, and after my shouts, which must have fallen on the scared ears with a weird and unearthly note, a profound silence attended us—the silence of a superstitious fear: And, instead of howls, I heard, before the boat had travelled its own short length, a voice that seemed to be the voice of fear itself asking, “Did you hear that?” and a trembling mutter of an invocation to all the saints. Then a strangled throat trying to pronounce firmly, “The soul of the dead Inglez. Crying for pain.”
Admiral Rowley’s seamen, so miserably thrown away in the ill-conceived attack on the bay, were making a ghostly escort to our escape. Those dead boats’-crews were supposed to haunt the fatal spot, after the manner of spectres that linger in remorse, regret, or revenge, about the gates of departure. I had blundered; the fog, breaking apart, had betrayedus. But my obscure and vanquished country-men held possession of the outlet by memory of their courage. In this critical moment it was they, I may say, who stood by us.
We, on our part, must have been disclosed, dark, indistinct, utterly inexplicable; completely unexpected; an apparition of stealthy shades. The painful voice in the fog said:
“Let them be. Answer not. They shall pass on, for none of them died on the shore—all in the water. Yes, all in the water.”
Part Five: Chapter One.
“Why have I been brought here your worship?” I asked with a great deal of firmness.
There were two figures in black, the one beside, the other behind a large black table. I was placed in front of them between two dirty soldiers, in the centre of a large, gaunt room, with bare, dirty walls, and the arms of Spain above the judge’s seat.
“You are before the Juez de la Primera Instancia,” said the man in black beside the table. He wore a large and shadowy tricorn. “Be silent, and respect the procedure.”
It was, without doubt, excellent advice.He whispered some words in the ear of the Judge of the First Instance. It was plain enough to methat the judge was quite an inferior official, who merely decided whether there was any case against the accused; he had, even to his clerk, an air of timidity, of doubt.
I said: “But I insist on knowing....”
The clerk said: “In good time....” And then, in the same tone of disinterested official routine,he spoke to the Lugareño, who, from beside the door, rolled very frightened eyesfrom the judges and the clerk to myself and the soldiers—“Advance.”
The judge, in a hurried, perfunctory voice, put questions to the Lugareño; the clerk scratched with a large quill on a sheet of paper.
“Where do you come from?”
“The town of Rio Medio, excellency.”
“Of what occupation?”
“Excellency—a few goats....”
“Why are you here?”
“My daughter, excellency, married Pepe of the posada in the Calle....”
The judge said, “Yes, yes,”with an unsanguine impatience. The Lugareño’s dirty hands jumped nervously on the large rim of his limp hat.
“You lodge a complaint against the señor there.”
The clerk pointed the end of his quill towards me.
“I? God forbid, excellency,” the Lugareñobleated.“The Alguazil of the Criminal Court instructed me to be watchful....”
Part Five: The End.
A long time after a harsh voice said:
“Your excellency, we retire, of course, from the prosecution.”
A different one directed:
“Gentlemen of the jury you will return a verdict of ‘Not Guilty’....”
Down below they were cheering uproariously because my life was saved. But it was I that had to face my saved life. I sat there, my head bowed into my hands. The old judge was speaking to me in a tone of lofty compassion:
“You have suffered much, as it seems, but suffering is the lot of us men. Rejoice now that your character is cleared; that here in this public place you have received the verdict of your country-men that restores you to the liberties of our country and the affection of your kindred. I rejoice with you who am a very old man at the end of my life....”
It was rather tremendous, his deep voice, his weighted words. Suffering is the lot of us men.... The formidable legal array, the great powers of a nation, had stood up to teach me that, and they had taught me that—suffering is the lot of us men!
It takes long enough to realise that someone is dead at a distance. I had done that. But how long, how long it needs to know that the life of your heart has come back from the dead.For years afterwards I could not bear to have her out of my sight.
Of our first meeting in London all I can remember is a speechlessness that was like the awed hesitation of our overtried souls before the greatness of a change from the verge of despair to the opening of a supreme joy. The whole world, the whole of life, with her return had changed all around me; it enveloped me, it enfolded me so lightly as not to be felt, so suddenly as not to be believed in, so completely that that whole meeting was an embrace, so softly that at last it lapsed into a sense of rest that was like the fall of a beneficent and welcome death.
For suffering is the lot of man, but not inevitable failure or worthless despair which is without end—suffering, the mark of manhood, which bears within its pain a hope of felicity like a jewel set in iron....
Her first words were:
“You broke our compact. You went away from me whilst I was sleeping.” Only the deepness of her reproach revealed the depth of her love, and the suffering she too had endured to reach a union that was to be without end—and to forgive.
And, looking back, we see Romance—that subtle thing that is mirage—that is life. It is the goodness of the years we have lived through, of the old time when we did this or that, when we dwelt here or there. Looking back it seems a wonderful enough thing that I who am this and she who is that, commencing so far away a life that after such sufferings borne together and apart, ended so tranquilly there in a world so stable—that she and I should have passed through so much, good chance and evil chance, sad hours and joyful, all lived down and swept away into the little heap of dust that is life. That, too, is Romance.