Transcribed from the 1921 J. M. Dent edition , emailccx074@coventry.ac.uk
Contents:
Author’s note
PART I—Letters
BOOKS—1905.
HENRY JAMES—AN APPRECIATION—1905
ALPHONSE DAUDET—1898
GUY DE MAUPASSANT—1904
ANATOLE FRANCE—1904
TURGENEV—1917
STEPHEN CRANE—A NOTE WITHOUT DATES—1919
TALES OF THE SEA—1898
AN OBSERVER IN MALAYA—1898
A HAPPY WANDERER—1910
THE LIFE BEYOND—1910
THE ASCENDING EFFORT—1910
THE CENSOR OF PLAYS—AN APPRECIATION—1907
PART II—Life
AUTOCRACY AND WAR—1905
THE CRIME OF PARTITION—1919
A NOTE ON THE POLISH PROBLEM—1916
POLAND REVISITED—1915
FIRST NEWS—1918
WELL DONE—1918
TRADITION—1918
CONFIDENCE—1919
FLIGHT—1917
SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE LOSS OF THE TITANIC—1912
CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE ADMIRABLE INQUIRY INTO THE LOSS OF THE TITANIC—1912
PROTECTION OF OCEAN LINERS—1914
A FRIENDLY PLACE
I don’t know whether I ought to offer an apology for this collectionwhich has more to do with life than with letters. Its appeal ismade to orderly minds. This, to be frank about it, is a processof tidying up, which, from the nature of things, cannot be regardedas premature. The fact is that I wanted to do it myself becauseof a feeling that had nothing to do with the considerations of worthinessor unworthiness of the small (but unbroken) pieces collected withinthe covers of this volume. Of course it may be said that I mighthave taken up a broom and used it without saying anything about it. That, certainly, is one way of tidying up.
But it would have been too much to have expected me to treat allthis matter as removable rubbish. All those things had a placein my life. Whether any of them deserve to have been picked upand ranged on the shelf—this shelf—I cannot say, and, frankly,I have not allowed my mind to dwell on the question. I was afraidof thinking myself into a mood that would hurt my feelings; for thosepieces of writing, whatever may be the comment on their display, appertainto the character of the man.
And so here they are, dusted, which was but a decent thing to do,but in no way polished, extending from the year ’98 to the year’20, a thin array (for such a stretch of time) of really innocentattitudes: Conrad literary, Conrad political, Conrad reminiscent, Conradcontroversial. Well, yes! A one-man show—or is itmerely the show of one man?
The only thing that will not be found amongst those Figures and Thingsthat have passed away, will be Conrad en pantoufles. Itis a constitutional inability. Schlafrock und pantoffeln! Not that! Never! . . . I don’t know whether I dare boastlike a certain South American general who used to say that no emergencyof war or peace had ever found him “with his boots off”;but I may say that whenever the various periodicals mentioned in thisbook called on me to come out and blow the trumpet of personal opinionsor strike the pensive lute that speaks of the past, I always tried topull on my boots first. I didn’t want to do it, God knows! Their Editors, to whom I beg to offer my thanks here, made me performmainly by kindness but partly by bribery. Well, yes! Bribery? What can you expect? I never pretended to be better than the peoplein the next street, or even in the same street.
This volume (including these embarrassed introductory remarks) isas near as I shall ever come to dêshabillé in public;and perhaps it will do something to help towards a better vision ofthe man, if it gives no more than a partial view of a piece of his back,a little dusty (after the process of tidying up), a little bowed, andreceding from the world not because of weariness or misanthropy butfor o