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The Several Lives of
Joseph Conrad Joseph Conrad: A Life
Najder's study, lovingly translated from the Polish by his wife Halina, is cast in the old-fashioned mould and can be described justly as a heroic achievement. The Josef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski who features in its densely packed pages is much more of a determinedly nationalistic Pole than the Victorian and Edwardian country gentleman who became Joseph Conrad probably ever thought he was. Both biographers seem to be in agreement when they suggest – Stape briefly; Najder at inordinate length – that Conrad was something of an emotional cripple, constantly in need of affection and praise, who chose the lower-middle-class Jessie George to be his wife because of the maternal qualities he detected in her nature. The orphaned youth remained orphaned well into manhood, as Jessie surely realised as she cosseted him while he laboured at his writing in the "torture chamber", which he went in to most mornings with the fear of failure uppermost in his mind. Of the "several lives" John Stape unravels, none is more important than the one Conrad decided to assume in his final years as a merchant seaman in the early 1890s, as he began his first novel, Almayer's Folly. In these days of creative-writing courses, it is salutary to be reminded of the agonies of flesh and spirit Conrad had to endure as he composed Nostromo and Lord Jim. He was writing, for adventurous reasons, in his third language, but one doubts if he would have found life any easier if he had settled for French, which he spoke and read with absolute confidence. His battle with English grammar and syntax had to be fought on a daily basis, and his more astute admirers – VS Pritchett and Ian Watt – have quoted passages that show when he came perilously close to losing it. Heart of Darkness, for all the allegations of racism that Chinua Achebe has expressed against its author, remains the most piercing indictment of the white man's scramble for the riches of Africa. Conrad's life as a writer was helped with the encouragement (and occasional financial assistance) of several distinguished friends – among them Henry James, who praised Almayer's Folly, and John Galsworthy, that unlikely recipient of the Nobel Prize, whose inadequacies as a stylist should not prevent one honouring him for the support he bestowed upon Conrad with unfailing generosity. Conrad's masterpieces were recognised as such by the finest critics of his day, but they made him little money. Even after he was taken up by JB Pinker, the agent whose clients included Arnold Bennett and HG Wells, he still had problems with his creditors. These continued until the publication of Chance in 1913, a potboiler by his own high standards, brought him unexpected security. He died a rich man in 1924. Jessie, who had suffered alongside him over decades of mutual ill-health and the problems visited upon them by their profligate elder son Borys, transmogrified into a merry widow, parting with the cash they had been strapped for through their marriage. Three of Conrad's close acquaintances were homosexual men – his translator Andr`E9 Gide; the rogueish paedophile Norman Douglas, first encountered on Capri, who would become Elizabeth David's mentor in his old age; and Hugh Walpole, whose books outsold Conrad's by hundreds of thousands. Conrad's ironic view of human failings made him wary of quick, unconsidered judgments. He knew some anti-Semites, but he was not of their number.Edward Garnett, Conrad's inspired and inspirational editor, is a beguiling presence in The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad and in Najder's exhaustive and exhausting tome. The patient, scrupulous editor who can see beyond the obvious flaws in a text is a virtually forgotten figure in publishing, but it was Conrad's immeasurable good fortune to have Garnett's wise guidance at an early stage in his career. Conrad's gratitude to him is ours, too. Stape's succinct way of dealing with the complexities of Conrad's "several lives" must be applauded, but his over-reliance on clich`E9 has to be chastised. "He had only himself to blame", "grasping at straws", and "reading between the lines" are just a few of the old chums brought out for an airing. He dismisses HG Wells as a "Grubstreeter", an inelegant coinage that is cruelly unfair to a writer of more distinction and percipience than Virginia Woolf, who deemed Jessie Conrad fat and common. And the word "novelist" seems inadequate to account for Rebecca West. Yet I am happier with the intermittently slovenly Stape than with Najder, who might have cured Conrad of the insomnia he frequently had to contend with. Stape drags Conrad out of the solemn Polish tomb Najder has buried him in, and for that violent act of grave-snatching he has to be thanked. — By arrangement with The Independent
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