AT SEA WITH JOSEPH CONRAD.t
HUMANITY is always curious about the private foibles of its gods. We are delighted when Max reveals the dinner-table idiosyncrasies of the Swinburne-Watts-Dunton menage. So we opened Captain Sutherland's book with an excitement almost equal to his own at the vision of that distant submarine. At last we were to see the mysterious "Conrad en pantoujles" who has always eluded the vulgar gaze. A brother-seaman might disclose him. For these sailors have a common philosophy ; we find it in the late Admiral Moresby's confession of faith : " . . . to carry one's soul with clean hands through this difficult world, and to have earned the kind thoughts and approval of one's fellows," which is the very pith of Mr. Conrad's creed. But, like the crew of the ` Freya,' we are disappointed ; for Mr. Conrad runs up the analiar ensign of his reticence, and Captain Sutherland, sailor-like, respects the signal. Yet, though we do not catch him in his slippers—and we begin to suspect that he wears them much like the rest of us—we get a glimpse of him frolicking in sea-boots. Moreover, Captain Sutherland makes good use of his guest as a peg whereon to hang a very readable account of his Q-boat adventure, and throws in a handful of stories, whose irrelevance is excused by their having depressed or diverted Mr. Conrad. And, if he adds little to our knowledge of his Johnson, he presents us with the picture of a very likeable Boswell, whose admiration for his hero is second only to that of the Freya's ' Chief Engineer for Admiral Beatty.
* The Autobiography of Countess Sophie Tolstoi. Translated by S. S. Botellansky and Leonard Woolf. Published at the Hogarth Press. [4g. net.] t At Sea with Joseph Conrad. By Captain J. G. Sutherland, R.N.R. London : Grant Richards. [1es. net.]
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