Conrad's Quixote
TONY TANNER
The temperamental conservative and the temperamental radical often have one strong feeling in common—a contempt for the dominant ethics and prevailing social sys- tems of the present. The fact that this feel- ing can form a bond between two people which is far stronger than the notional allegiances based on ideological agreements is nowhere more powerfully demonstrated than in the moving friendship between Joseph Conrad and R. B. Cunninghame Graham.
Graham was a Scottish aristocrat, a flam- boyant romantic figure who, in the course of a richly adventurous life, was a cattle- dealer in South America, a pioneer socialist who went to prison, a Member of Parlia- ment, a prolific writer, and a Scottish Nationalist. In his advocacy of a complete rejection of the state as it was then com- posed, he qualified as one of those `sincere, but dangerous, lunatics' who in Conrad's eyes were helping to precipitate 'the ruin of all that is respectable, venerable and holy.' Conrad was always sceptical of the notion of universal brotherhood (`Fraternity means nothing unless the Cain-Abel business' he wrote to Graham) and he maintained, in one of his more mordant formulations, that 'Socialism must inevitably end in Cw.sarism'.
Nevertheless, as Mr Watts stresses in his admirable introduction, Conrad and Graham had much in common and to a large extent shared the same values and the same view of the world. They differed not on arid points of ideology but in their instinctive estimates of the capacities and failings of human nature. As Conrad wrote: `You are a most hopeless idealist—your aspirations are irrealisable. You want from men faith, honour, fidelity to truth in themselves and others. You want them to have all this, to show it every day, to make out of these words their rule of life. The respectable classes which suspect you of such pernicious longings lock you up and would just as soon have you shot—because your per- sonality counts and you can not deny that you are a dangerous man. What makes you dangerous is your unwarrantable belief that your desire may be realised. This is the only point of difference between us. I do not believe.
For Conrad, as for many other admirers, Graham was a modern Don Quixote, a figure peculiarly attractive precisely because of the vulnerable nobility of his beliefs and aspirations. 'I am more in sympathy with you than words can express yet if I had a grain of belief left in me I would believe you misguided. You are misguided by the desire of the impossible—and I envy you. Alas! What you want to reform are not institutions—it is human nature. Your faith will never move that mountain.' The note of envy and affection is important, and Mr Watts is right to suggest that In a sense Graham was Conrad's "secret sharer."'
The figure of Don Quixote had a special significance for Conrad, who wrote, in A Persona! Record, 'he rides forth, his head encircled by a halo—the patron saint of all lives spoiled or saved by the irresistible grace of imagination. But he .kas not a good citizen.' Similarly Conrad clearly felt that Graham was something of romantic anomaly in the modern world, a figure who could have been `a Renaissance swell' or even a 'Conquistador. "torts—vows etes ne mop lard. The stodgy sun of the future—our
early Victorian future—lingers on the hori- zon, but all the same it will rise—it will indeed--to throw its sanitary light upon a dull world of perfected municipalities and wcs sans pear et sans reproche. The grave
of individual temperaments is being dug by CBS and Hum/ with hopeful industry. Finita la commedia!'
It is one of Conrad's most important themes that idealists often do not make good citizens, but the implications of this perception were forever ambivalent. Some- times Conrad showed that the idealist could be disastrously unfitted to cope with the exigencies of reality; but then again, the man who pursued a noble dream 'amongst this jumble of shadows and—well--filth which is called the earth' could also attract Con- rad's profoundest sympathy. To Graham he writes 'I don't know how you feel about yourself but to me you appear extremely real—even when I perceive you enveloped in the cloud of your irremediable illusions.'
Figures like Graham had a peculiar reality for Conrad precisely because of the tenacity with which they adhered to a saving illusion.
The simultaneous need for, and danger of, illusions is a paradox which lies right at the heart of Conrad's major fiction, and in these unusually full and revealing letters (half of them written in the crucial forma- tive years of 1897-1900) we can see Conrad clarifying his thoughts about this matter as he responds to the great attractiveness of Graham as a figure even while entertaining some reservations about his schemes and dreams. Mr Watts reminds us that Graham was of some specific help to Conrad when he drew on his South American experiences for parts of Nostromo. But it could be argued that the figure of Cunninghame Graham himself exerted a more general, permeating influence on Conrad's whole fictional universe. Mr Watts quotes Arthur
Symons's report that Conrad once said to him -Could you conceive for a moment that I could go on existing if Cunninghame Graham were to die?' Clearly, the pessimist- novelist carried the image of the radical idealist unusually close to his heart.
I should add a word about the edition of these letters. Out of eighty-one, fifty-two (and most of another one) have been pub- lished before in Jean-Aubry's Life and Letters, and T was frankly sceptical that the remaining twenty-eight would justify a new
volume. But in the event Mr Watts has done much more than reprint a batch of, famous letters with a few addenda and Corrections. I was going to say that his edition is exemplary, but it is better than that ---it is a most thoughtful and informa- tive addition to our knowledge and appreci- ation of Conrad and his age. The twenty- eight letters he has brought to light are for the most part not very exciting. But in addition to an elegant and economic intro- duction full of adroit connections and subtle observations, Mr Watts has provided the most copious notes to each letter (for instance, providing just the relevant quota- tions from Cunninghame Graham's own writings, or citing the appropriate con- temporary episode or some helpful data from a book or paper of the day which serve to illuminate a point Conrad is making).
By the time one has read all these com- mentaries one has gained an unusually detailed and revealing picture of this out- standingly important friendship in Conrad's life. To Conrad Graham was 'a tri,s noble gektilhomme', while at Conrad's funeral Graham recalled that 'something there was about him, both of the Court and of the quarter-deck, an air of courtesy and of high breeding, and yet with something of com- mand.' In a profound sense they were brothers, and Mr Watts has commemorated their rare fraternity with a splendid volume.
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