A Set of Six Read online

  Produced by Judy Boss and David Widger

  A SET OF SIX

  By Joseph Conrad

  _Les petites marionnettesFont, font, font,Trois petits toursEt puis s'en vont_.--NURSERY RHYME

  TO MISS M. H. M. CAPES

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  THE six stories in this volume are the result of some three or fouryears of occasional work. The dates of their writing are far apart,their origins are various. None of them are connected directly withpersonal experiences. In all of them the facts are inherently true, bywhich I mean that they are not only possible but that they have actuallyhappened. For instance, the last story in the volume, the one I callPathetic, whose first title is Il Conde (misspelt by-the-by) is analmost verbatim transcript of the tale told me by a very charming oldgentleman whom I met in Italy. I don't mean to say it is only that.Anybody can see that it is something more than a verbatim report,but where he left off and where I began must be left to the acutediscrimination of the reader who may be interested in the problem.I don't mean to say that the problem is worth the trouble. What I amcertain of, however, is that it is not to be solved, for I am not atall clear about it myself by this time. All I can say is that thepersonality of the narrator was extremely suggestive quite apart fromthe story he was telling me. I heard a few years ago that he had diedfar away from his beloved Naples where that "abominable adventure" didreally happen to him.

  Thus the genealogy of Il Conde is simple. It is not the case with theother stories. Various strains contributed to their composition, and thenature of many of those I have forgotten, not having the habit of makingnotes either before or after the fact. I mean the fact of writing astory. What I remember best about Gaspar Ruiz is that it was written, orat any rate begun, within a month of finishing Nostromo; but apartfrom the locality, and that a pretty wide one (all the South AmericanContinent), the novel and the story have nothing in common, neithermood, nor intention and, certainly, not the style. The manner for themost part is that of General Santierra, and that old warrior, I notewith satisfaction, is very true to himself all through. Looking nowdispassionately at the various ways in which this story could have beenpresented I can't honestly think the General superfluous. It is he, anold man talking of the days of his youth, who characterizes the wholenarrative and gives it an air of actuality which I doubt whether I couldhave achieved without his help. In the mere writing his existenceof course was of no help at all, because the whole thing had to becarefully kept within the frame of his simple mind. But all this is buta laborious searching of memories. My present feeling is that the storycould not have been told otherwise. The hint for Gaspar Ruiz the manI found in a book by Captain Basil Hall, R.N., who was for some time,between the years 1824 and 1828, senior officer of a small BritishSquadron on the West Coast of South America. His book published in thethirties obtained a certain celebrity and I suppose is to be found stillin some libraries. The curious who may be mistrusting my imagination arereferred to that printed document, Vol. II, I forget the page, but itis somewhere not far from the end. Another document connected with thisstory is a letter of a biting and ironic kind from a friend then inBurma, passing certain strictures upon "the gentleman with the gun onhis back" which I do not intend to make accessible to the public. Yetthe gun episode did really happen, or at least I am bound to believe itbecause I remember it, described in an extremely matter-of-fact tone,in some book I read in my boyhood; and I am not going to discard thebeliefs of my boyhood for anybody on earth.

  The Brute, which is the only sea-story in the volume, is, like Il Conde,associated with a direct narrative and based on a suggestion gathered onwarm human lips. I will not disclose the real name of the criminal shipbut the first I heard of her homicidal habits was from the late CaptainBlake, commanding a London ship in which I served in 1884 as SecondOfficer. Captain Blake was, of all my commanders, the one I rememberwith the greatest affection. I have sketched in his personality, withouthowever mentioning his name, in the first paper of The Mirror of theSea. In his young days he had had a personal experience of the brute andit is perhaps for that reason that I have put the story into the mouthof a young man and made of it what the reader will see. The existenceof the brute was a fact. The end of the brute as related in the story isalso a fact, well-known at the time though it really happened toanother ship, of great beauty of form and of blameless character, whichcertainly deserved a better fate. I have unscrupulously adapted it tothe needs of my story thinking that I had there something in the natureof poetical justice. I hope that little villainy will not cast a shadowupon the general honesty of my proceedings as a writer of tales.

  Of The Informer and An Anarchist I will say next to nothing. Thepedigree of these tales is hopelessly complicated and not worthdisentangling at this distance of time. I found them and here they are.The discriminating reader will guess that I have found them within mymind; but how they or their elements came in there I have forgotten forthe most part; and for the rest I really don't see why I should givemyself away more than I have done already.

  It remains for me only now to mention The Duel, the longest story in thebook. That story attained the dignity of publication all by itself in asmall illustrated volume, under the title, "The Point of Honour." Thatwas many years ago. It has been since reinstated in its proper place,which is the place it occupies in this volume, in all the subsequenteditions of my work. Its pedigree is extremely simple. It springs from aten-line paragraph in a small provincial paper published in the South ofFrance. That paragraph, occasioned by a duel with a fatal ending betweentwo well-known Parisian personalities, referred for some reason or otherto the "well-known fact" of two officers in Napoleon's Grand Army havingfought a series of duels in the midst of great wars and on some futilepretext. The pretext was never disclosed. I had therefore to invent it;and I think that, given the character of the two officers which I had toinvent, too, I have made it sufficiently convincing by the mere force ofits absurdity. The truth is that in my mind the story is nothing but aserious and even earnest attempt at a bit of historical fiction. I hadheard in my boyhood a good deal of the great Napoleonic legend. I had agenuine feeling that I would find myself at home in it, and The Duelis the result of that feeling, or, if the reader prefers, of thatpresumption. Personally I have no qualms of conscience about this pieceof work. The story might have been better told of course. All one's workmight have been better done; but this is the sort of reflection aworker must put aside courageously if he doesn't mean every one of hisconceptions to remain for ever a private vision, an evanescent reverie.How many of those visions have I seen vanish in my time! This one,however, has remained, a testimony, if you like, to my courage or aproof of my rashness. What I care to remember best is the testimony ofsome French readers who volunteered the opinion that in those hundredpages or so I had managed to render "wonderfully" the spirit of thewhole epoch. Exaggeration of kindness no doubt; but even so I hug itstill to my breast, because in truth that is exactly what I was tryingto capture in my small net: the Spirit of the Epoch--never purelymilitarist in the long clash of arms, youthful, almost childlike in itsexaltation of sentiment--naively heroic in its faith.

  1920. J. C.

  CONTENTS

  GASPAR RUIZ

  THE INFORMER

  THE BRUTE

  AN ANARCHIST

  THE DUEL

  IL CONDE

  A SET OF SIX