Lord Jim Read online

  LORD JIM: A TALE

  JOSEPH CONRAD (Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski) was born in December 1857 in Berdichev (now in the Ukraine) of Polish parents. His father, a poet and translator, and his mother were exiled for nationalist activities and died when he was a child. He grew up and was educated informally in Lemberg (now L'viv) and Cracow, which he left for Marseilles and a career at sea in 1874. After voyages to the French Antilles, he joined the British Merchant Service in 1878, sailing first in British coastal waters and then to the Far East and Australia. In 1886, he became a British subject and received his captaincy certificate. In 1890, he was briefly in the Congo with a Belgian company. After his career at sea ended in 1894, he lived mainly in Kent. He married in 1896 and had two sons.

  Conrad began writing, in his third language, in 1886. His first novels, Almayer's Folly (1895) and An Outcast of the Islands (1896), were immediately hailed as the work of a significant new talent. He produced his major fiction from about 1897 to 1911, a period that saw the publication of The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ (1897), Heart of Darkness (1898–9), Lord Jim (1900) and the political novels Nostromo (1904), The Secret Agent (1907) and Under Western Eyes (1911). Considered ‘difficult’, his writing received considerable critical acclaim, but not until 1914 after the appearance of Chance did it win a wide public. The dazzling narrative experiments and thematic complexities of Conrad's earlier fiction are largely absent from his later writings, pitched to a more popular audience.

  Fame saw the offer of honorary degrees and a knighthood (both declined) capped by a triumphal publicity tour in America in 1923. In addition to novels, Conrad produced short stories, plays, several essays and two autobiographical volumes, The Mirror of the Sea (1906) and A Personal Record (1908–9). He died in August 1924 at the age of sixty-six.

  ALLAN H. SIMMONS is Reader in English Literature at St Mary's College, Strawberry Hill, London. Author of Joseph Conrad (2006) for Palgrave and Heart of Darkness for Continuum's ‘Reader's Guides Series’ (2007), he edited the ‘Centennial Edition’ of The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ for Everyman (1997) and coedited Lord Jim: Centennial Essays (2000) and Nostromo: Centennial Essays (2004) for Rodopi of Amsterdam. Currently editing Conrad in Context for Cambridge University Press, he is General Editor of The Conradian: The Journal of the Joseph Conrad Society (UK).

  J. H. STAPE has taught in universities in Canada, France and the Far East. Author of The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad (2007), he has edited The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad (1996) and Conrad's Notes on Life and Letters (2004) and coedited A Personal Record (2007) and Volumes VII and IX of The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad (2005 and forthcoming) for Cambridge University Press. He has also co-edited Conrad's An Outcast of the Islands and The Rover for Oxford World's Classics, and has written on Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolf, William Golding and Angus Wilson. He is Contributing Editor of The Conradian: The Journal of the Joseph Conrad Society (UK).

  JOSEPH CONRAD

  Lord Jim

  A Tale

  Edited with an Introduction by

  ALLAN H. SIMMONS

  With Notes and Glossaries by

  J. H. STAPE

  General Editor

  J. H. STAPE

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN CLASSICS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  First published 1900

  Published in Penguin Classics 2007

  1

  Introduction, Note on the Texts copyright © Allan H. Simmons, 2007

  Author Biography, Chronology, Notes, Glossaries copyright © J. H. Stape, 2007

  Further Reading copyright © J. H. Stape and Allan H. Simmons, 2007

  Map copyright © The Joseph Conrad Society (UK), 2007

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the editors has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  ISBN: 978-0-14-192015-3

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Chronology

  Introduction

  Further Reading

  A Note on the Texts

  Map: The Near and Far East, 1890s

  LORD JIM

  Appendix: Author's Note (1917)

  Notes

  Glossary of Nautical Terms

  Glossary of Foreign Words and Phrases

  Acknowledgements

  Allan H. Simmons should like to thank Captain Simon Culshaw, C. T. S. Marine Consultants, Ltd, for information.

  J. H. Stape is grateful to the following individuals for sharing their expertise and answering enquiries: Katherine Baxter, Willem Mörzer Bruyns, Andrew Busza, Mario Curreli, Björg and Jeremy Hawthorn, Owen Knowles, Claudine Lesage, Ulrich Menzefricke, Marion Michael, Gene M. Moore, Mary Morzinski, Zdzislaw Najder, Norman Page, Véronique Pauly, Yasuko Shidara, Robert W. Trogdon and Cedric Watts.

  We are both indebted to the work of the late Hans van Marle on Conrad's South-east Asia and to Don Shewan and The Joseph Conrad Society (UK) for facilitating the drawing of the map.

  Chronology

  1857 Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, coat-of-arms Nalecz, is born on 3 December in Berdichev (Ukraine), the only child of the Polish poet and translator Apollo Korzeniowski and Ewelina (or Ewa), nee Bobrowska.

  1862 Apollo Korzeniowski, his wife and son are exiled from Warsaw to Vologda, northern Russia.

  1865 Ewa Korzeniowska dies of consumption.

  1868–9 Permitted to leave Russia, Apollo Korzeniowski relocates to Austro-Hungarian territory with his son, first in Lemberg (now L'viv, Ukraine) and vicinity and then in Cracow, where he dies (May).

  1870 Becomes the ward of his maternal grandmother and maternal uncle, Tadeusz Bobrowski, and begins private studies with Adam Pulman, a medical student at Cracow's Jagiellonian University.

  1873 Tours Vienna, Swiss Alps and northern Italy with Pulman. Private studies in Lemberg.

  1874–7 Arrives in Marseilles to work for the shippers Delestang et Fils, sailing to the French Antilles in the Mont-Blanc and Saint-Antoine. A period of biographical mystery ensues, involving a possible brief side voyage to Venezuela, gunrunning in the Basque country for the doomed cause of the pretender to the Spanish throne and smuggling near Marseilles.

  1878 After amassing debts and gambling losses, attempts suicide (February or March). Leaves Marseilles in the British steamer Mavis for Mediterranean waters (Malta and Constantinople) and then lands at Lowestoft,
Suffolk. Employed as ordinary seaman in the Skimmer of the Sea (Lowestoft to Newcastle).

  1878–80 In the Duke of Sutherland (to Australia) and then the Europa (to Genoa, Sicily and Greece). Passes the British Merchant Service second mate's examination.

  1880–85 Third mate in the Loch Etive (to Australia); second mate in the ill-fated Palestine (bound for Bangkok, but sinks in the Straits of Malacca), ships out of Singapore in the Riversdale (to Madras) and after crossing India by rail joins the Narcissus in Bombay (to Dunkirk). Passes the examination for first mate (1884).

  1886 Second mate in the Tilkhurst (Hull to Wales, Singapore, Calcutta, Dundee). Submits first story, ‘The Black Mate’, to a competition for Tit-Bits. Becomes a British subject and passes the captaincy examination, receiving his ‘Certificate of Competency as Master’.

  1886–8 Second mate in the Falconhurst (London to Penarth); first mate in the Highland Forest (Amsterdam to Semarang) and Vidar (Singapore to Celebes and Borneo ports); captain of the Otago (to Bangkok, Australia and Mauritius).

  1889 Living in Pimlico (London), begins Almayer's Folly. Visits Bobrowski in the Ukraine.

  1890 In the Congo Free State, working for the Belgian company Société Anonyme du Haut-Congo; second-in-command, then temporarily captain, of Congo River steamer Roi des Belges.

  1891 Recuperating from African experience in the German Hospital, London, then in Geneva for hydrotherapy. On return, works for warehouse and shippers Barr, Moering, Company.

  1891–4 First mate in the passenger clipper Torrens (to Australia), meeting John Galsworthy (1893), later novelist and playwright awarded a Nobel Prize. Second mate in the Adowa (Rouen to Quebec and Montreal, but making only a return voyage from London to Rouen as the company collapses). Sea career ends.

  1894 Tadeusz Bobrowski dies. Meets Edward Garnett, his literary mentor and advisor, and Jessie George, his future wife. Though still looking for a berth, turns to professional authorship in earnest.

  1895 Almayer's Folly. In Geneva in the spring for hydrotherapy, and in Paris in August on business for Fountaine (G. F. W.) Hope, his first English friend.

  1896 An Outcast of the Islands. After marrying Jessie George, honeymoons in Brittany (April–September), later settling in Stanford-le-Hope, Essex, near Hope and family. Christmas holidays in Cardiff.

  1897 Meets Henry James. Writes ‘The Return’ and ‘Karain: A Memory’. Befriends American novelist Stephen Crane and R. B. Cunninghame Graham, socialist and writer. The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’.

  1898 Alfred Borys Conrad born in Stanford. Tales of Unrest. Becomes friendly with Ford Madox Hueffer (later Ford) and H. G. Wells. In Glasgow, looks for a command. The Conrads move to Pent Farm, near Hythe, Kent, sub-let from Ford. ‘Youth, A Narrative’ in Blackwood's Magazine.

  1899 Works on Lord Jim. Heart of Darkness serialized in Blackwood's Magazine. Meets Hugh Clifford, writer and civil servant in Malaya. The Boer War begins.

  1900 Becomes a client of J. B. Pinker's literary agency. Crane dies. Working-holiday in Belgium with Ford. Lord Jim.

  1901 Queen Victoria dies. Works on ‘Amy Foster’, ‘Falk’ and Romance (with Ford). The Inheritors (with Ford).

  1902 The Boer War ends. Writes ‘The End of the Tether’. Youth: A Narrative and Two Other Stories.

  1903 Works on Nostromo. Typhoon and Other Stories and Romance (with Ford) appear.

  1904 Two-month sojourn in London. Engages ‘typewriter’ Lilian M. Hallowes, his secretary on and off for twenty years. Nostromo.

  1905 In Capri (January–May). One Day More staged in London. Writes sea papers and critical articles.

  1906 In Montpellier (mid-February–mid-April). John Alexander Conrad born in London. The Mirror of the Sea.

  1907 In Montpellier (January–May). Writes ‘The Duel’, and then in Geneva (May–August) The Secret Agent. The Conrads move to Luton, Bedfordshire.

  1908 Works on Under Western Eyes (then ‘Razumov’). Involved with Ford's English Review, in which ‘Some Reminiscences’ appears (later A Personal Record).

  1909 The Conrads move to Aldington, Kent. The Nature of a Crime, with Ford, with whom he quarrels and breaks off relationship. Writes ‘The Secret Sharer’ and more of Under Western Eyes.

  1910 Suffers a mental and physical breakdown, recovery extending into the summer. The Conrads move to Capel House, Orlestone, Kent. Reviews for the Daily Mail (July) and writes ‘A Smile of Fortune’ and ‘The Partner’.

  1911 Writes ‘Freya of the Seven Isles’ and works on Chance. Meets novelist André Gide, who later translates ‘Typhoon’ and oversees Conrad's French translations. Under Western Eyes.

  1912 A Personal Record in America, then as Some Reminiscences in England. Writes two articles on the Titanic. ’Twixt Land and Sea. Writes short stories. Meets Richard Curle, journalist and short-story writer, in effect the unofficial private secretary to Conrad's later career.

  1913 Chance. Becomes friendly with Cambridge philosopher Bertrand Russell through Lady Ottoline Morrell. Works on ‘The Planter of Malata’, ‘Because of the Dollars’ and Victory.

  1914 Visiting Cracow in late July, the Conrads are caught by the outbreak of war. Taking refuge in Zakopane in the Tatras, return home via Vienna and Genoa (October–November).

  1915 Writes ‘Poland Revisited’. Victory and Within the Tides appear. Borys Conrad in basic training in the Army Service Corps, and fights in France for the next few years.

  1916 Writes ‘The Warrior's Soul’ and ‘The Tale’. For the Admiralty, visits naval bases, tours in a minesweeper, takes a flight, and sails in a Q-ship in the North Sea.

  1917 Writes prefaces for new editions of Youth, Lord Jim and Nostromo. The Shadow-Line appears. Meets London-based French music critic and journalist Jean Aubry (‘G. Jean-Aubry’), later his first biographer, who succeeds Gide in overseeing the French translations.

  1918 Becomes friendly with novelist Hugh Walpole. Writes articles about the Merchant Service and Polish events for the newspapers. Borys Conrad is shell-shocked and gassed. The war ends (11 November).

  1919 Basil MacDonald Hastings's adaptation of Victory has a successful London run, including a royal performance. Moves to Spring Grove, near Wye, Kent. The Arrow of Gold. Moves to Oswalds, Bishopsbourne, near Canterbury.

  1920 Polish relative Aniela Zagórska visits the Conrads for six months. The Rescue. Writes, with Pinker, Gaspar the Strongman, a film version of ‘Gaspar Ruiz’. In December, collected editions begin publication in England by Heinemann (in the early new year in America by Doubleday, Page).

  1921 Conrad and wife sojourn in Corsica (January–April), celebrating silver wedding anniversary in March. Notes on Life and Letters (collected essays) appears.

  1922 J. B. Pinker dies in New York on a business trip, his son Eric taking over management of Conrad. Meets composer Maurice Ravel and poet Paul Valéry. Dramatic version of The Secret Agent flops in London (November).

  1923 Triumphant publicity tour in New York, with excursions to Connecticut and Massachusetts (May–June). Briefly in Normandy to arrange for French immersion experience for son John (September). The Rover.

  1924 Declines a knighthood. Succumbs to fatal heart attack on 3 August. After Roman Catholic rites, is buried in Canterbury Cemetery. The Nature of a Crime (with Ford) and The Shorter Tales. Ford rushes out Joseph Conrad: A Personal Remembrance.

  1925–8 Posthumous works published: Tales of Hearsay and the unfinished Suspense (1925); Last Essays, edited by Richard Curle (1926); Joseph Conrad: Life and Letters (1927), edited by G. Jean-Aubry; the unfinished The Sisters (1928).

  Introduction

  New readers are advised that this Introduction makes details of the plot explicit.

  Never out of print since its publication in 1900, Lord Jim in some sense requires little introduction. It is one of the high points in the development of the English novel, marking the transition from the Victorian novel of social concern to Modernist experiments with form that culminated in the writings of James Jo
yce and Virginia Woolf. Lord Jim confirmed Conrad's authorial genius and ushered in his greatest creative phase. The novels that followed included the great trio of political novels: Nostromo (1904), The Secret Agent (1907) and Under Western Eyes (1911).

  Published at the height of Empire, when the British Merchant Service dominated the world's shipping-trade, Lord Jim is a very British novel. It tells the story of a young English officer in the Merchant Service who disgraces himself before becoming the benevolent ‘virtual ruler’ of a remote Malay state. The English narrator, Marlow, is one of Conrad's most celebrated and enduring creations. To Virginia Woolf, ‘Conrad was compound of two men; together with the sea captain dwelt that subtle, refined, and fastidious analyst whom he called Marlow.’1 Through Marlow, Conrad brings an English perspective to bear upon social codes of comportment and inclusion, together with the public and private responsibilities these entail. Coming after ‘Youth’ (1898) and Heart of Darkness (1899), Lord Jim completes a trilogy of Marlow narratives.

  The novel is shaped by its concern with the life-giving properties of danger, the dark voids that gape under the most polished of surfaces and the problem, once these have been perceived, of going on living. In his ‘Author's Note’, Conrad identified his subject as ‘the acute consciousness of lost honour’. Marlow views it as one of ‘those struggles of an individual trying to save from the fire his idea of what his moral identity should be’ (VII). Published in the same year as Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams, the novel shares Freud's concern with identity, questioning whether the self is ultimately public or private property.

  I

  Britain's pride in herself as a nation ruling the waves derives from a history of maritime successes punctuated by disasters, such as the sinking of the Birkenhead in 1852 or of the Titanic in 1912, where tragedy is ennobled by self-sacrificing service. The call ‘Women and children first’ has become a byword for what Captain Brierly terms the ‘professional decency’ (VI) that unites and identifies the seafaring community. Accounts of the Birkenhead's sinking in shark-infested waters off the South African coast reveal how soldiers stood fast in their ranks on deck to enable the women and children on board to leave safely, passing into mythology in a host of well-known poems and paintings. Similar reports of chivalry make up part of the Titanic myth and include, for example, a woman's account of how her husband, having assisted her into a lifeboat, replied to pleas to join her with the stolid phrase: ‘I must be a gentleman.’2 In that light, Punch quite rightly carried a cartoon of a mourning Britannia accompanied by a paean to ‘that gallant breed/ Schooled in the ancient chivalry of the sea’ (24 April 1912).