Lord Jim (52 page)
Authors: Joseph Conrad
It was only then that I perceived that the pilgrim ship episode
4
was a good starting-point for a free and wandering tale; that it was an
event, too, which could conceivably colour the whole “sentiment of existence” in a simple and sensitive character. But all these preliminary moods and stirrings of spirit were rather obscure at the time, and they do not appear clearer to me now after the lapse of so many years.
The few pages I had laid aside were not without their weight in the choice of subject. But the whole was re-written deliberately. When I sat down to it I knew it would be a long book, though I didn't foresee that it would spread itself over thirteen numbers
5
of “Maga.”
I have been asked at times whether this was not the book of mine I liked best. I am a great foe to favouritism in public life, in private life, and even in the delicate relationship of an author to his works. As a matter of principle I will have no favourites; but I don't go so far as to feel grieved and annoyed by the preference some people give to my
Lord Jim
. I won't even say that I “fail to understandâ¦.”No! But once I had occasion to be puzzled and surprised.
A friend of mine returning from Italy had talked with a lady there who did not like the book. I regretted that, of course, but what surprised me was the ground of her dislike. “You know,” she said, “it is all so morbid.”
The pronouncement gave me food for an hour's anxious thought. Finally I arrived at the conclusion that, making due allowances for the subject itself being rather foreign to women's normal sensibilities, the lady could not have been an Italian. I wonder whether she was European at all? In any case, no Latin temperament would have perceived anything morbid in the acute consciousness of lost honour. Such a consciousness may be wrong, or it may be right, or it may be condemned as artificial; and, perhaps, my Jim
6
is not a type of wide commonness. But I can safely assure my readers that he is not the product of coldly perverted thinking. He's not a figure of Northern Mists either. One sunny morning, in the commonplace surroundings of an Eastern roadstead,
7
I saw his form pass byâappealingâsignificantâunder a cloudâperfectly silent. Which is as it should be. It was for me, with all the sympathy of which I was capable, to seek fit words for his meaning. He was “one of us.”
8
J.C.
1917.
1.
internal evidence
: Although Marlow states at the end of
Chapter XXI
that his âlast words about Jim shall be few', the novel continues for another twenty-four chapters.
2.
talk all that time
: Several reviewers complained about the story's unrealistic length, perhaps most notably the novelist and playwright Arnold Bennett (1867â1931), who wrote, in an unsigned review: âThis after-dinner story, told without a break, consists of about 99,000 words. Now it is unreasonable to suppose that the narrator, who chose his words with care, spoke at a greater rate than 150 words a minute, which means that he was telling that after-dinner story to his companions for eleven solid hours' (
Academy
, 10 November 1900, 443; reprinted in
Conrad:
The Critical Heritage
, ed. Norman Sherry, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973, p. 117).
3.
William Blackwood
: The head of the long-established Scottish publishing house, William Blackwood (1836â1912) was also the editor of the conservative and popular monthly
Blackwood's Magazine
(familiarly called â
Maga
'), which published fiction as well as articles on current events and general topics.
4.
pilgrim ship episode
: In August 1880, the
Jeddah
, a steamship carrying almost a thousand pilgrims to Mecca from Singapore for the Hajj (the once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage imposed by the Koran) was abandoned by her European crew after severe damage from heavy weather. She was towed to Aden and an inquiry into her abandonment was held.
5.
thirteen numbers
: The novel was serialized from October 1899 to November 1900: thus, in fact, fourteen numbers.
6.
my Jim
: Jim is a composite character, partly a feat of imagination but drawing as well on real-life sources. The first thirty or so chapters freely play up material from the
Jeddah
incident and her disgraced first mate, Conrad learning of the affair from newspapers and port gossip. The last ten chapters of the novel draw on the life of James Brooke (1803â68; knighted 1848), the first rajah of Sarawak, who lived adventurously and explored large stretches of the Malay Archipelago, particularly Borneo.
7.
Eastern roadstead
: The roadstead (see
Glossary of Nautical Terms
) is Singapore's, where Conrad saw George Augustine (Austin) Podmore Williams (1852â1916), the first mate of
Jeddah
and the historical figure providing aspects of Jim. When
Conrad saw him, Williams was employed in the well-known ship's chandlers McAlister & Company.
8.
one of us
: Some critics link this phrase to Genesis 3:22 (King James version): âthe man is become as one of us, to know good and evil'. It more immediately affirms social identity and group allegiance. Another source may be a letter from Conrad's French translator H.-D. Davray (1873â1944), to which Conrad replied on 10 July 1899: âThe phrase “who is one of ours” touched me, for, truly, I feel bound to France by deep sympathy, by some old friendships⦠by the lasting charm of memories untinged by bitterness' (
Letters
, vol. II, p. 185).
Topics adequately covered in a standard desk dictionary are not glossed here, and unless contextual information might be useful place-names are identified on the map. In the notes below, where a place-name has changed since the novel's writing, the present-day name is given on the first occurrence. The Riverside Shakespeare (2nd edition, 1997) is used for quotations from Shakespeare's plays, and biblical quotations are from the King James Bible. Nautical terms and foreign words are explained in the Glossaries.
Conrad drew on and borrowed from a large number of sources; the notes indicate the most important of these and do not attempt to catalogue all source materials.
Letters | The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad |
Keppel | Captain Henry Keppel, |
Low | Hugh Low, |
McNair | Major Fred McNair, |
Mundy | Rodney Mundy, |
Sherry | Norman Sherry, |
Wallace | Alfred Russel Wallace, |
Lord Jim
,
A Tale
: Conrad's title underwent several transformations. The earliest version, when he thought of the work as a short story, was âJim: A Sketch', which he then changed to âTuan Jim, A Sketch'. The novel was serialized in 1899â1900 under the title
Lord Jim: A Sketch
. For book publication, Conrad altered this to
Lord Jim
,
A Tale
. Critics have noted that the formal and aristocratic âlord' and the informality of the nickname may suggest a fundamental divergence or split in character.
It
â¦
Novalis
: Fragment 153 of
Das Allgemeine Brouillon
by the German Romantic poet Friedrich Leopold, Baron von Hardenberg (1772â1801), who wrote under the pen-name Novalis. Conrad possibly came across the phrase in the version by the English essayist and historian Thomas Carlyle (1795â1881): â“It is certain”, says Novalis, “my Conviction gains infinitely, the moment another soul will believe in it”' in
On Heroes
,
Hero-Worship
,
and the Heroic in History
(1841), Lecture II, or in
Sartor Resartus
(1838).
Hope
: Conrad met Fountaine Hope (George Fountaine Weare Hope, 1854â1930), his first English friend, in 1880. Trained for the Merchant Service in the famed
Conway
and having a career at sea, Hope later went into business. He and his wife Frances Ellen Hope (née Mayer, 1854â1941) lived in Stanford-le-Hope, Essex. The drowning of the Hopes' seventeen-year-old son Fountaine in mysterious circumstances during the writing of
Lord Jim
seems to have renewed the friendship's intensity, Conrad and his wife going to console the Hopes shortly after they learned the news of their loss.
1.
ship
-
chandler
: Retailer of marine stores and equipment.
2.
patience of Job
: The biblical figure Job uncomplainingly bears a series of hard trials with extreme forbearance, his patience becoming proverbial.
3.
Confounded
: Like âinfernal', âblessed' and âdash', a euphemism for âdamned'.
4.
Bombay
â¦
Batavia
: Jim goes eastward through the British Empire's major Far Eastern ports and trading cities as well as to Batavia, the capital and commercial centre of the Dutch East Indies (present-day Jakarta, Indonesia).
5.
Tuan
: Variously âmaster', âsir' or simply âMr', a Malay term of reference or of address to high-status individuals, local or European. Malays commonly use the first name rather than surname with this (e.g., Tuan Jim or Mr Jim).
6.
babel
: A scene of confusion or a confused turbulent medley of sounds, conjured up by association with the Tower of Babel in Genesis 9.
1.
daily task that gives bread
: An allusion to the âLord's Prayer': âGive us this day our daily breadâ¦' (Matthew 6:11 and Luke 11:3).
2.
Tamil
: Tamils are a people from south-east India and Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka).
3.
dark places of the sea
: The phrase plays on a once well-known commonplace from Psalms 74:20: âHave respect unto the covenant: for the dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty.'
4.
country ships
: Ships registered in a colonial port and plying a local rather than international trade.
5.
half
-
castes
: A now obsolete term for persons of mixed race.
6.
New South Wales German
: That is, a German immigrant to the Australian state of New South Wales.
7.
“
blood
-
and
-
iron
”: The German chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1815â98) pursued an aggressive foreign policy in Europe. The allusion here is to his well-known statement made in a speech to the Prussian Budget Commission in Berlin on 29 September 1862: âThe great questions of the day will not be settled by speeches and majority decisions â that was the mistake of 1848 and 1849 â but by iron and blood.'
8.
Strait
: The Strait of Malacca, a busy waterway for trade separating Sumatra from the Malay Peninsula.
9.
bay
: The Bay of Bengal, a northern arm of the Indian Ocean, off India's eastern coast.
10.
“
One
-
degree
” passage: Properly, the âOne and a Half Degree' Channel, off the Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean.
1.
sleep
,
death
'
s brother
: In Greek mythology, the personification of sleep, Hypnos, and the personification of death, Thanatos, were sons of Nyx (Night).
2.
Perim
: At the time of the novel a British coaling-station on a small island in the Red Sea, off Aden.
3.
half cooked
: Intoxicated, drunk (slang).
4.
durned
: A euphemism for âdamned', an Americanism, with Conrad perhaps mistaking its usage since the speaker is British.
5.
Schnapps
: Any of various strong spirits resembling genever gin.
6.
Penny wise
,
pound foolish
: English expression meaning thrifty in small matters while careless or wasteful in large ones.
7.
four
-
finger
: A unit of measurement equivalent to the breadth of four fingers.
8.
old stager
: An expression indicating great experience, and derived from the metaphor that âall the world's a stage'. Cf. Jacques's famous speech in Shakespeare's
As You Like It
: âAll the world's a stage, / And all the men and women merely players' (II.vii. 139â40).
9.
Wapping
: An east London district on the River Thames near the Tower of London, an area inhabited for centuries by seamen and peppered with shipping businesses.
10.
dollars
: That is, Straits dollars, the currency of the Straits Settlements (Penang, the Dindings, Malacca and Singapore).
11.
find yourself
: To pay out of one's pocket for one's living and needs.
12.
dratted
: An elision of âGod rot', a euphemism for âaccursed' or âdamned'.