JOSEPH CONRAD
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—I, too, was a passenger on the Torrens ' to Australia —in 1890, I think—and, strangely, it was some yeah; after I settled here in 1905 before I came, through reading a chance review in some paper, to realize that the Joseph Conrad of " Typhoon was, in reality, Conrad, chief mate of the Torrens.
Our intercourse on board was no more than what is usual between a very courteous officer and .a very youthful passenger. The Torrens ' was a clipper that boasted for many years of an average of (I think) seventy-two days--1-London tp Melbourne. But I had • a hundred days of Conrad—what with doldrums and Oilier things. One was this :—on a previous voyage the ship had in• a storm carried away a principal spar—I -think it - was the mizzen-top-mast—which could not be replaced, and she was,- in consequence, -laid up "in Pernambuco and lost the wool season. The owner (old Capt. Angell) no doubt made it hot for his successor as master ; so that kindly gentleman was extremely careful to take in sail when there was the slightest prospect of a bit of a blow. And Conrad used to pray for half a gale in the night, when the -captain had his watch below, in order to make the old ship -show her paces.
I shall never forget his figure on deck, in his old reefer jacket, with a red silk handkerchief round his neck—swift, almost stealthy, and silent in his movements—with knees slightly bent, -shoulders bowed—we knew that- he had lately been captain of a Congo river steamer and riddled with African fever !—his chin and alert face thrust forward, his keen eyes between half-closed lids noting everything, or constantly in changeable weather raised to sky and • cloud and sails.
His manner with his men was generally very quiet, though he did raise his voice excitedly, when things went wrong or not so fast as they ought to. There was,-of course, implicit and immediate obedience to his orders, and I never heard a sound of grousing about them. The men could not -fail to see in Conrad the keen and knowledgeable sailor. I don't know whether they loved him, but admire him they did, and trusted him completely.
I had no idea at that time that he wrote, but apart from his watch or looking after the hundred-and-one things the mate of a sailing ship has to see to, he was not greatly in evidence. I do not remember him at all in the saloon, except passing through on his duties.
' It remains a marvel to me how any man who spoke, as Conrad did when I knew him, what one' might 'almost call broken " English "—I mean not only English with a foreign accent—should have attained such a perfect mastery in writing this foreign tongue as he did.—I am, Sir, &c.,
Jonw WYLD PrreAmoR.
Morne d 'Or, Tobago, British West Indies." '
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