laughter and tears which is declared to be the highest achievement of
imaginative literature. Only, to be a great magician one must surrender
oneself to occult and irresponsible powers, either outside or within
one's breast. We have all heard of simple men selling their souls for
love or power to some grotesque devil. The most ordinary intelligence
can perceive without much reflection that anything of the sort is bound
to be a fool's bargain. I don't lay claim to particular wisdom because
of my dislike and distrust of such transactions. It may be my sea
training acting upon a natural disposition to keep good hold on the one
thing really mine, but the fact is that I have a positive horror of
losing even for one moving moment that full possession of myself which
is the first condition of good service. And I have carried my notion of
good service from my earlier into my later existence. I, who have never
sought in the written word anything else but a form of the Beautiful--I
have carried over that article of creed from the decks of ships to the
more circumscribed space of my desk, and by that act, I suppose, I have
become permanently imperfect in the eyes of the ineffable company of
pure esthetes.
As in political so in literary action a man wins friends for himself
mostly by the passion of his prejudices and by the consistent narrowness
of his outlook. But I have never been able to love what was not lovable
or hate what was not hateful out of deference for some general
principle. Whether there be any courage in making this admission I know
not. After the middle turn of life's way we consider dangers and joys
with a tranquil mind. So I proceed in peace to declare that I have
always suspected in the effort to bring into play the extremities of
emotions the debasing touch of insincerity. In order to move others
deeply we must deliberately allow ourselves to be carried away beyond
the bounds of our normal sensibility--innocently enough, perhaps, and of
necessity, like an actor who raises his voice on the stage above the
pitch of natural conversation--but still we have to do that. And surely
this is no great sin. But the danger lies in the writer becoming the
victim of his own exaggeration, losing the exact notion of sincerity,
and in the end coming to despise truth itself as something too cold, too
blunt for his purpose--as, in fact, not good enough for his insistent
emotion. From laughter and tears the descent is easy to snivelling and
giggles.
These may seem selfish considerations; but you can't, in sound morals,
condemn a man taking care of his own integrity. It is his clear duty.
And least of all can you condemn an artist pursuing, however humbly and
imperfectly, a creative aim. In that interior world where his thought
and his emotions go seeking for the experience of imagined adventures,
there are no policemen, no law, no pressure of circumstance or dread of
opinion to keep him within bounds. Who then is going to say Nay to his
temptations if not his conscience?
And besides--this, remember, is the place and the moment of perfectly
open talk--I think that all ambitions are lawful except those which
climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind. All intellectual
and artistic ambitions are permissible, up to and even beyond the limit
of prudent sanity. They can hurt no one. If they are mad, then so much
the worse for the artist. Indeed, as virtue is said to be, such
ambitions are their own reward. Is it such a very mad presumption to
believe in the sovereign power of one's art, to try for other means, for
other ways of affirming this belief in the deeper appeal of one's work?
To try to go deeper is not to be insensible. An historian of hearts is
not an historian of emotions, yet he penetrates further, restrained as
he may be, since his aim is to reach the very fount of laughter and
tears. The sight of human affairs deserves admiration and pity. They are
worthy of respect, too. And he is not insensible who pays them the
undemonstrative tribute of a sigh which is not a sob, and of a smile
which is not a grin. Resignation, not mystic, not detached, but
resignation open-eyed, conscious, and informed by love, is the only one
of our feelings for which it is impossible to become a sham.
Not that I think resignation the last word of wisdom. I am too much the
creature of my time for that. But I think that the proper wisdom is to
will what the gods will without, perhaps, being certain what their will
is--or even if they have a will of their own. And in this matter of life
and art it is not the Why that matters so much to our happiness as the
How. As the Frenchman said, "_Il y a toujours la maniere_." Very true.
Yes. There is the manner. The manner in laughter, in tears, in irony, in
indignations and enthusiasms, in judgments--and even in love. The manner
in which, as in the features and character of a human face, the inner
truth is foreshadowed for those who know how to look at their kind.
Those who read me know my conviction that the world, the temporal world,
rests on a few very simple ideas; so simple that they must be as old as
the hills. It rests notably, among others, on the idea of Fidelity. At a
time when nothing which is not revolutionary in some way or other can
expect to attract much attention I have not been revolutionary in my
writings. The revolutionary spirit is mighty convenient in this, that it
frees one from all scruples as regards ideas. Its hard, absolute
optimism is repulsive to my mind by the menace of fanaticism and
intolerance it contains. No doubt one should smile at these things; but,
imperfect Esthete, I am no better Philosopher. All claim to special
righteousness awakens in me that scorn and danger from which a
philosophical mind should be free....
I fear that trying to be conversational I have only managed to be unduly
discursive. I have never been very well acquainted with the art of
conversation--that art which, I understand, is supposed to be lost now.
My young days, the days when one's habits and character are formed, have
been rather familiar with long silences. Such voices as broke into them
were anything but conversational. No. I haven't got the habit. Yet this
discursiveness is not so irrelevant to the handful of pages which
follow. They, too, have been charged with discursiveness, with disregard
of chronological order (which is in itself a crime) with
unconventionality of form (which is an impropriety). I was told severely
that the public would view with displeasure the informal character of my
recollections. "Alas!" I protested, mildly. "Could I begin with the
sacramental words, 'I was born on such a date in such a place'? The
remoteness of the locality would have robbed the statement of all
interest. I haven't lived through wonderful adventures to be related
_seriatim_. I haven't known distinguished men on whom I could pass
fatuous remarks. I haven't been mixed up with great or scandalous
affairs. This is but a bit of psychological document, and even so, I
haven't written it with a view to put forward any conclusion of my own."
But my objector was not placated. These were good reasons for not
writing at all--not a defence of what stood written already, he said.
I admit that almost anything, anything in the world, would serve as a
good reason for not writing at all. But since I have written them, all I
want to say in their defence is that these memories put down without any
regard for established conventions have not been thrown off without
system and purpose. They have their hope and their aim. The hope that
from the reading of these pages there may emerge at last the vision of a
personality; the man behind the books so fundamentally dissimilar as,
for instance, "Almayer's Folly" and "The Secret Agent," and yet a
coherent, justifiable personality both in its origin and in its action.
This is the hope. The immediate aim, closely associated with the hope,
is to give the record of personal memories by presenting faithfully the
feelings and sensations connected with the writing of my first book and
with my first contact with the sea.
In the purposely mingled resonance of this double strain a friend here
and there will perhaps detect a subtle accord.
J. C.
TWIXT LAND AND SEA
The only bond between these three stories is, so to speak, geographical,
for their scene, be it land, be it sea, is situated in the same region
which may be called the region of the Indian Ocean with its off-shoots
and prolongations north of the equator even as far as the Gulf of Siam.
In point of time they belong to the period immediately after the
publication of that novel with the awkward title "Under Western Eyes"
and, as far as the life of the writer is concerned, their appearance in
a volume marks a definite change in the fortunes of his fiction. For
there is no denying the fact that "Under Western Eyes" found no favour
in the public eye, whereas the novel called "Chance" which followed
"Twixt Land and Sea" was received on its first appearance by many more
readers than any other of my books.
This volume of three tales was also well received, publicly and
privately and from a publisher's point of view. This little success was
a most timely tonic for my enfeebled bodily frame. For this may indeed
be called the book of a man's convalescence, at least as to
three-fourths of it; because the Secret Sharer, the middle story, was
written much earlier than the other two.
For in truth the memories of "Under Western Eyes" are associated with
the memory of a severe illness which seemed to wait like a tiger in the
jungle on the turn of a path to jump on me the moment the last words of
that novel were written. The memory of an illness is very much like the
memory of a nightmare. On emerging from it in a much enfeebled state I
was inspired to direct my tottering steps towards the Indian Ocean, a
complete change of surroundings and atmosphere from the Lake of Geneva,
as nobody would deny. Begun so languidly and with such a fumbling hand
that the first twenty pages or more had to be thrown into the
waste-paper basket, A Smile of Fortune, the most purely Indian Ocean
story of the three, has ended by becoming what the reader will see. I
will only say for myself that ï have been patted on the back for it by
most unexpected people, personally unknown to me, the chief of them of
course being the editor of a popular illustrated magazine who published
it serially in one mighty instalment. Who will dare say after this that
the change of air had not been an immense success?
The origins of the middle story, The Secret Sharer, are quite other. It
was written much earlier and was published first in _Harper's Magazine_,
during the early part, I think, of 1911. Or perhaps the latter part? My
memory on that point is hazy. The basic fact of the tale I had in my
possession for a good many years. It was in truth the common possession
of the whole fleet of merchant ships trading to India, China, and
Australia: a great company the last years of which coincided with my
first years on the wider seas. The fact itself happened on board a very
distinguished member of it, _Cutty Sark_ by name and belonging to Mr.
Willis, a notable ship-owner in his day, one of the kind (they are all
underground now) who used personally to see his ships start on their
voyages to those distant shores where they showed worthily the honoured
house-flag of their owner. I am glad I was not too late to get at
least one glimpse of Mr. Willis on a very wet and gloomy morning
watching from the pier head of the New South Dock one of his clippers
starting on a China voyage--an imposing figure of a man under the
invariable white hat so well known in the Port of London, waiting till
the head of his ship had swung down-stream before giving her a dignified
wave of a big gloved hand. For all I know it may have been the _Cutty
Sark_ herself though certainly not on that fatal voyage. I do not know
the date of the occurrence on which the scheme of The Secret Sharer is
founded; it came to light and even got into newspapers about the middle
eighties, though I had heard of it before, as it were privately, among
the officers of the great wool fleet in which my first years in deep
water were served. It came to light under circumstances dramatic enough,
I think, but which have nothing to do with my story. In the more
specially maritime part of my writings this bit of presentation may take
its place as one of my two Calm-pieces. For, if there is to be any
classification by subjects, I have done two Storm-pieces in "The Nigger
of the _Narcissus_" and in "Typhoon"; and two Calm-pieces: this one and
"The Shadow-Line," a book which belongs to a later period.
Notwithstanding their autobiographical form the above two stories are
not the record of personal experience. Their quality, such as it is,
depends on something larger if less precise: on the character, vision
and sentiment of the first twenty independent years of my life. And the
same may be said of the Freya of the Seven Isles. I was considerably
abused for writing that story on the ground of its cruelty, both in
public prints and private letters. I remember one from a man in America
who was quite furiously angry. He told me with curses and imprecations
that I had no right to write such an abominable thing which, he said,
had gratuitously and intolerably harrowed his feelings. It was a very
interesting letter to read. Impressive too. I carried it for some days
in my pocket. Had I the right? The sincerity of the anger impressed me.
Had I the right? Had I really sinned as he said or was it only that
man's madness? Yet there was a method in his fury.... I composed in my
mind a violent reply, a reply of mild argument, a reply of lofty
detachment; but they never got on paper in the end and I have forgotten
their phrasing. The very letter of the angry man has got lost somehow;
and nothing remains now but the pages of the story which I cannot recall
and would not recall if I could.
But I am glad to think that the two women in this book: Alice, the
sullen, passive victim of her fate, and the actively individual Freya,
so determined to be the mistress of her own destiny, must have evoked
some sympathies because of all my volumes of short stories this was the
one for which there was the greatest immediate demand.
J. C.
1920.
CHANCE
"Chance" is one of my novels that shortly after having been begun were
laid aside for a few months. Starting impetuously like a sanguine
oarsman setting forth in the early morning I came very soon to a fork in
the stream and found it necessary to pause and reflect seriously upon
the direction I would take. Either presented to me equal fascinations,
at least on the surface, and for that very reason my hesitation extended
over many days. I floated in the calm water of pleasant speculation,
between the diverging currents or conflicting impulses, with an
agreeable but perfectly irrational conviction that neither of those
currents would take me to destruction. My sympathies being equally
divided and the two forces being equal it is perfectly obvious that
nothing but mere chance influenced my decision in the end. It is a
mighty force that of mere chance; absolutely irresistible yet
manifesting itself often in delicate forms such for instance as the
charm, true or illusory, of a human being. It is very difficult to put
one's finger on the imponderable, but I may venture to say that it is
Flora de Barral who is really responsible for this novel which relates,
in fact, the story of her life.
At the crucial moment of my indecision Flora de Barral passed before me,
but so swiftly that I failed at first to get hold of her. Though loth to
give her up I didn't see the way of pursuit clearly and was on the point
of becoming discouraged when my natural liking for Captain Anthony came
to my assistance. I said to myself that if that man was so determined to
embrace a "wisp of mist" the best thing for me was to join him in that
eminently practical and praiseworthy adventure. I simply followed
Captain Anthony. Each of us was bent on capturing his own dream. The
reader will be able to judge of our success.
Captain Anthony's determination led him a long and roundabout course and
that is why this book is a long book. That the course was of my own
choosing I will not deny. A critic had remarked that if I had selected
another method of composition and taken a little more trouble the tale
could have been told in about two hundred pages. I confess I do not
perceive exactly the bearings of such criticism or even the use of such
a remark. No doubt that by selecting a certain method and taking great
pains the whole story might have been written out on a cigarette paper.
For that matter, the whole history of mankind could be written thus if
only approached with sufficient detachment. The history of men on this
earth since the beginning of ages may be resumed in one phrase of
infinite poignancy: They were born, they suffered, they died.... Yet it
is a great tale! But in the infinitely minute stories about men and
women it is my lot on earth to narrate I am not capable of such
detachment.
What makes this book memorable to me apart from the natural sentiment
one has for one's creation is the response it provoked. The general
public responded largely, more largely perhaps than to any other book of
mine, in the only way the general public can respond, that is by buying
a certain number of copies. This gave me a considerable amount of
pleasure, because what I always feared most was drifting unconsciously
into the position of a writer for a limited coterie; a position which
would have been odious to me as throwing a doubt on the soundness of my
belief in the solidarity of all mankind in simple ideas and in sincere
emotions. Regarded as a manifestation of criticism (for it would be
outrageous to deny to the general public the possession of a critical
mind) the reception was very satisfactory. I saw that I had managed to
please a certain number of minds busy attending to their own very real
affairs. It is agreeable to think one is able to please. From the minds
whose business it is precisely to criticize such attempts to please,
this book received an amount of discussion and of a rather searching
analysis which not only satisfied that personal vanity I share with the
rest of mankind but reached my deeper feelings and aroused my gratified
interest. The undoubted sympathy informing the varied appreciations of
that book was, I love to think, a recognition of my good faith in the
pursuit of my art--the art of the novelist which a distinguished French
writer at the end of a successful career complained of as being: _Trop
difficile!_ It is indeed too arduous in the sense that the effort must
be invariably so much greater than the possible achievement. In that
sort of foredoomed task which is in its nature very lonely also,
sympathy is a precious thing. It can make the most severe criticism
welcome. To be told that better things have been expected of one may be
soothing in view of how much better things one had expected from oneself
in this art which, in these days, is no longer justified by the
assumption, somewhere and somehow, of a didactic purpose.
I do not mean to hint that anybody had ever done me the injury (I don't
mean insult, I mean injury) of charging a single one of my pages with
didactic purpose. But every subject in the region of intellect and
emotion must have a morality of its own if it is treated at all
sincerely; and even the most artful of writers will give himself (and
his morality) away in about every third sentence. The varied shades of
moral significance which have been discovered in my writings are very
numerous. None of them, however, have provoked a hostile manifestation.
It may have happened to me to sin against taste now and then, but
apparently I have never sinned against the basic feelings and elementary
convictions which make life possible to the mass of mankind and, by
establishing a standard of judgment, set their idealism free to look for
plainer ways, for higher feelings, for deeper purposes.
I cannot say that any particular moral complexion has been put on this
novel but I do not think that anybody had detected in it an evil
intention. And it is only for their intentions that men can be held
responsible. The ultimate effects of whatever they do are far beyond
their control. In doing this book my intention was to interest people in
my vision of things which is indissolubly allied to the style in which
it is expressed. In other words I wanted to write a certain amount of
pages in prose, which, strictly speaking, is my proper business. I have
attended to it conscientiously with the hope of being entertaining or at
least not insufferably boring to my readers. I can not sufficiently
insist upon the truth that when I sit down to write my intentions are
always blameless however deplorable the ultimate effect of the act may
turn out to be.
J. C.
1920.
WITHIN THE TIDES
The tales collected in this book have elicited on their appearance two
utterances in the shape of comment and one distinctly critical charge. A
reviewer observed that I liked to write of men who go to sea or live on
lonely islands untrammeled by the pressure of worldly circumstances
because such characters allowed freer play to my imagination which in
their case was only bounded by natural laws and the universal human
conventions. There is a certain truth in this remark no doubt. It is
only the suggestion of deliberate choice that misses its mark. I have
not sought for special imaginative freedom or a larger play of fancy in
my choice of characters and subjects. The nature of the knowledge,
suggestions or hints used in my imaginative work has depended directly
on the conditions of my active life. It depended more on contacts, and
very slight contacts at that, than on actual experience; because my life
as a matter of fact was far from being adventurous in itself. Even now
when I look back on it with a certain regret (who would not regret his
youth?) and positive affection, its colouring wears the sober hue of
hard work and exacting calls of duty, things which in themselves are not
much charged with a feeling of romance. If these things appeal strongly
to me even in retrospect it is, I suppose, because the romantic feeling
of reality was in me an inborn faculty, that in itself may be a curse
but when disciplined by a sense of personal responsibility and a
recognition of the hard facts of existence shared with the rest of
mankind becomes but a point of view from which the very shadows of life
appear endowed with an internal glow. And such romanticism is not a sin.
It is none the worse for the knowledge of truth. It only tries to make
the best of it, hard as it may be; and in this hardness discovers a
certain aspect of beauty.
I am speaking here of romanticism in relation to life, not of
romanticism in relation to imaginative literature, which, in its early
days, was associated simply with mediæval subjects, or, at any rate,
with subjects sought for in a remote past. My subjects are not mediæval
and I have a natural right to them because my past is very much my own.
If their course lie out of the beaten path of organized social life, it
is, perhaps, because I myself did in a sort break away from it early in
obedience to an impulse which must have been very genuine since it has
sustained me through all the dangers of disillusion. But that origin of
my literary work was very far from giving a larger scope to my
imagination. On the contrary, the mere fact of dealing with matters
outside the general run of everyday experience laid me under the
obligation of a more scrupulous fidelity to the truth of my own
sensations. The problem was to make unfamiliar things credible. To do
that I had to create for them, to reproduce for them, to envelop them in
their proper atmosphere of actuality. This was the hardest task of all
and the most important, in view of that conscientious rendering of truth
in thought and fact which has been always my aim.