The Domestic Background
Joseph Conrad and his Circle. By Jessie Conrad. (Jarrolds. 185.)
THE domestic background is of interest : to know how a writer with the peculiar sensitivity 'we call genius compro- mises with family life. There is usually some comprOmise ; few writers have had the ruthless egotism of Joseph Conrad who, at the birth of his first child, delayed the doctor whom he had been sent to fetch by sitting down with him and eating a second breakfast. The trouble is that a writer's home, just as much as the world outside, is his raw material. His wife's or a child's sickness : Conrad couldn't help unconsciously regarding them, as Henry James regarded the germinal anecdote at the dinner table, as something to cut short when he had had enough human pain for his Purpose:1 " Soniething human," he put as epigraph to one of his novels, quoting Grimm, "is dearer to me than the wealth of all the world.". But no quotation more misrepresented him in his' home, if Mrs. Conrad's memory is accurate. Out of a long marriage she has remembered nothing tender, nothing considerate. On her own part, yes ; she is the heroine of every anecdote.
It makes rather repellent reading, this long record of slights, grievances, verbal brutalities. . Is it a true portrait ? We are dealing with a mind curiously naive (on one occasion she refers to Edward Thomas :in uniform, wearing his khaki " without ostentation, but correct in every, detail "), unable to realize imaginatively 'her husband's devotion to his art, a mind peculiarly retentive of injuries. The •triviality of her attacks on Mr. FordrMadM&Ford,,fof example, is astonishing. For how many years has the grievance over a laundry bill fermented in this not very generous brain ? After a quarter of a century the fact that Henry James served Mrs. Hueffer first at tea has not been forgotten. She writes of Mr. Ford that he has reviled Conrad " when he is beyond the power of defending himself." The truth is that no one has done more than Mr. Ford to preserve Conrad's fame, and no one has done more than Mrs. Conrad to injure it in this portrait, she has drawn of a man monstrously selfish, who grudged the money he gave his children, who avoided responsibilities by taking to his bed, who was unfaithful to her in his old age. Of this last story we should have known nothing if' it were not for Mrs. Conrad's dark hints and evasions here.: " I made no comment " : this is the phrase Is it h which the story of his slights so often ends. But I do not think she is conscious of its complacency any more than she is conscious that the phrase with which she describes herself at •the eint of her book, one who has " the privilege
and theimn tense satisfaction of being regarded as the guardian Of his memory," must seem to her readers either heartless or '.•'
It would he easy to east doubt upon these ungrammatical revelations (on one occasion her memory fails her completely in the course of a paragraph). But there is obviously no conscious dishonesty in the one-sided record .; the writer does not realize how damaging it is. " The dear form," "the
dear fellow," " the beloved face," one need- not believe that these are meaningless endearnients ; it is simply that her mind is of a ..kind which harbours slights more easily than acts of kindness. Sin suffered—you cannot help believing
that—suffered bitterly in thii marriage, but it has never Once occurred to her that Conrad suffered too :
"From the sound nevi door (we have three rooms) I know that the , pain has roused Bogs from his feverish doze. I wont go to him. no-use. presently' I shall give him his salicylato, take his temperature amid then go and elaborate a little more of the Converse- tion• of Mr. Verloc with his wife. It is very important that the conversation of Mr. Vorloc and his wife should be elaborated-----made more effective—more true to the character and the situation of these people. " By Jove ! I've got to hold Myself with both hands not to lutist into a laugh which would scare wife, baby.- and the °that invalid— let alone the lady whose room is- on the other side of the corridor. To-day completes the round dozen years Bluets I finished Almayir'e Folly."
" His own picturesque language " is Mrs. Conrad's phrase
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