I put this letter on record to show the painful and hectic conditions under which the end of "Nostromo" was written, because the melodramatic finish of that great book is the weakness thereof.

This spurt was characteristic of Conrad's endings; he finished most of his books in that way-his vivid nature instinctively staged itself with dramatic rushes. Moreover, all those long early years he worked under the whip-lash of sheer necessity. In 1909, writing to my wife, he says: "Excuse this discordant strain, but the fact is that I've just received the accounts of all my publishers, from which I perceive that all my immortal works (13 in all) have brought me last year something under five pounds in royalties. That sort of thing quenches that joie de vivre which should burn like a flame in an author's breast and, in the manner of an explosive engine, drive his

pen onwards at thirty pages on

A sailor and an artist, he had sense of money. He was not of thos can budget exactly and keep with and anyway he had too little, ho neatly budgeted. It is true that hi matic instinct and his subtlety woul a sort of pleasure in plotting again lack of money, but it was at best a brious amusement for one who h whip his brain along when he was when he was ill, when he was a desperate. Letter after letter, talk talk, unfolded to me the travail of years. He needed to be the Stoic he

I used to stay with him a good from 1895-1905, first at Stanfor Essex, and then at Stanford in He was indefatigably good to me my own puppy's eyes were openi literature. In 1901, when I was s the early stages of that struggle wi craft which a writer worth his salt quite abandons, he could write. "That the man who has written on 'Four Winds,' has written now the of Devon' volume, is a source of in gratification to me. It vindicates m sight, my opinion, my judgment, a satisfies my affection for you-in wh believed and am believing. Because is the point: I am believing. You've now beyond the point when I could use to you otherwise than just by m lief."

His affectionate interest was a wholly generous like that. In his l to me, two to three hundred, there a sentence which breaks, or even jar feeling that he cared that one shou good work. There is some valuable cism, but never any impatience, an stinting of appreciation or encou ment. He never went back on fr ship. He never went back on anyt I think. The word "loyalty" has much used by those who write or sp him. It has been well used. He w ways loyal to what he had at hear his philosophy, to his work, and t friends; he was loyal even to his di (not few) and to his scorn. People ta Conrad as an aristocrat; I think it r a silly word to apply to him. His n er's family, the Bebrowskis, were F

landowners: the Korzeniowekis

had little those who within it; , however at his drawould take gainst the est a luguno had to was tired, as almost talk after il of those ic he really good deal anford in in Kent. • me while opening to vas still in le with his salt never rite thus: n once the the 'Man of infinite tes my innt, and it in whom I cause that ou've gone ould be of by my be

father's family, came, I think, of landowning stock; but the word aristocrat is much too dry to fit Conrad; he had no touch with "ruling," no feeling for it, except, maybe, such as is necessary to sail a ship; he was first and last the rover and the artist, with such a first-hand knowledge of men and things that he was habitually impatient with labels and pigeonholes, with cheap theorizing and word debauchery. He stared life very much in the face, and distrusted those who don't. Above all, he had the keen humor which spifflicates all class and catalogues, and all ideals and aspirations that are not grounded in the simplest springs of human nature. He laughed at the clichés of socalled civilization. His sense of humor, indeed, was far greater than one might think from his work. He had an almost ferocious enjoyment of the absurd. Writing seemed to dry or sardonize his sense of fun. "Borys" (his eldest son, then very small) "wants to know whether you are related to Jack the Giant-Killer-otherwise he is well." In a letter to my wife he thus describes the advent of his second son, who happened to be born in our house. "He arrived here to-day at 9:30 A. M. in a modest and unassuming manner which struck me very favorably. His manner is quiet-somnolent, his eyes contemplative, his forehead noble, his stature short, his nose pug, his countenance ruddy and weather-beaten." Referring to a little harmless carriage accident we had at Charing Cross, he writes: "I always feel that the bit of Strand in front of Charing Cross Station is about as near Eternity as any spot on earth." But in conversation his sense of fun was much more vivid; it would leap up in the midst of gloom or worry, and take charge with a shout.

Conrad had six country homes after his marriage, besides two temporary abodes. He wrote jestingly to my wife: "Houses are naturally rebellious and inimical to man." And, perhaps, having lived so much on ships, he really had a feeling of that sort. He certainly grew tired of them after a time.

I best remember Pent Farm-that little, very old, charming, if inconvenient, farmhouse, with its great barn beyond the

vard under the lee of the almost

ATIAN

where you had to mind your head in connection with beams; and from whose. windows you watched ducks and cats and lambs in the meadows beyond. He liked those quiet fields and that sheltering hill. Though he was not what we should call a "lover of nature" in the sense of one who spends long hours lost in the life of birds and flowers, of animals and trees, he could be vividly impressed by the charm and the variety of such things. He was fond, too, of Hudson's books; and no lover of Hudson's work is insensible to nature.

In Conrad's study at the Pent, we burned together many midnight candles, much tobacco. In that house was written some of the "Youth" volume, “Lord Jim," most of the "Typhoon" volume, "Nostromo," "The Mirror of the Sea," "The Secret Agent," and other of Conrad's best work. Save that "The Nigger of the Narcissus" and the story "Youth were written just before, at Stanford in Essex, the Pent may be said to synchronize with Conrad's best period. Kent was undoubtedly the county of his adoption, and this was the first of his four Kentish homes. Many might suppose that Conrad would naturally settle by the sea. He never did. He had seen too much of it; like the sailor, who when he turns into his bunk takes care that no sea air shall come in, he lived always well inland. The sea was no friend of one too familiar with its moods. He disliked being labelled a novelist of the sea. He wrote of the sea, as perhaps no one, not even Herman Melville, has written; but dominant in all his writing of the sea is the note of struggle and escape. His hero is not the sea, but man in conflict with that cruel and treacherous element. Ships he loved, but the sea-no. Not that he ever abused it, or talked of it with aversion; he accepted it as he accepted all the inscrutable remorselessness of Nature. It was man's job to confront Nature with a loyal and steady heart-that was Conrad's creed, his contribution to the dignity of life. Is there a better? First and last he was interested in men, fascinated by the terrific spectacle of their struggles in a cosmos about which he had no illusions. He was sardonic, but he had none

than any never sufse, swelled -ed no part he literary formative. have been It won't ous reader, w temperanture, vast h language rom which rged. Not m speak of n for Flauenev, and ly to read T's Folly," on a path e peculiar gerous deno definite . He was s as East in natural rical bent, As for constancy n and defor ConNo one subdue to »n a lan1; to work e natural >erament. sert that he most 'urgenev, ence that ved Turked Tolas in the told that vski was was why ly it was ied with :tite.

In

isms of

due regard for such creations as Major Pendennis. Meredith's characters to him were "seven feet high," and his style too inflated. He admired Hardy's poetry. He always spoke with appreciation of Howells, especially of the admirable "Rise of Silas Lapham." His affectionate admiration for Stephen Crane we know from his introduction to Thomas Beers's biography of that gifted writer. Henry James in his middle period-the Henry James of "Daisy Miller," "The Madonna of the Future," "Greville Fane," "The Real Thing," "The Pension Beaurepas" -was precious to him. But of his feeling for that delicate master, for Anatole France, De Maupassant, Daudet, and Turgenev, he has written in his "Notes on Life and Letters." I remember he had a great liking for those two very different writers Balzac and Merimée.

Of philosophy he had read a good deal, but on the whole spoke little. Schopenhauer used to give him satisfaction twenty years and more ago, and he liked both the personality and the writings of William James.

drew from him a somewhat violently expressed detestation. I suppose what he most despised in life was ill-educated theory, and what he most hated, blatancy and pretence. He smelled it coming round the corner and at once his bristles would rise. He was an extremely quick judge of a man. I remember a dinner convoked by me, that he might meet a compatriot of his own married to one who was not a compatriot. The instant dislike he took to that individual was so full of electricity that we did not dine in comfort. The dislike was entirely merited. This quick instinct for character and types inimical to him was balanced by equally sure predilections, so that his friendships were always, or nearly always, lasting-I can think of only one exception. He illustrated vividly the profound truth that friendship is very much an affair of nerves, grounded in instinct rather than in reason or in circumstance, the outcome of a sort of deep affinity which prevents jarring. His Preface to the "Life of Stephen Crane" supplies all the evidence we need of Conrad's instantaneous yet lasting sympathy with certain people, and of his instant antipathy to others. It contains also the assurance that he "never kept a diary and never owned a notebook"-a statement which surprised no one who knew the resources of his memory and the brooding nature of his creative spirit. "Genius" has somewhere been defined as the power to make much out of little. In "Nostromo" Conrad made a continent out of a few casual sailors' landings on the Central American coast twenty years before. In "The Secret Agent" he created an underworld out of probably as little actual experience. On the other hand, we have in "The Nigger," in "Youth" and "Heart of Darkness" the raw material of his own life transmuted into the gold of fine art. People, and there are such, who think that writers like Conrad, if there be any, can shake things from their sleeve, would be staggered if they could have watched the pain and stress of his writing life. In his last letter to me but one, February 1924, speaking of "The Rover," he says: "I have wanted for a long time to do a sea

I saw little of Conrad during the war. Of whom did one see much? He was caught in Poland at the opening of that business, and it was some months before he succeeded in getting home. Tall words such as "War to end War" left him, a Continental and a realist, appropriately cold. When it was over he wrote: "So I send these few lines to convey to you both all possible good wishes for unbroken felicity in your new home and many years of peace. At the same time I'll confess that neither felicity nor peace inspire me with much confidence. There is an air of 'the packed valise' about these two divine but unfashionable figures. I suppose the North Pole would be the only place for them, where there is neither thought nor heat, where the very water is stable, and the democratic bawlings of the virtuous leaders of mankind die out into a frozen, unsympathetic silence." Conrad had always a great regard for men of action, for workmen who stuck to their last and did their own jobs well; he had a corresponding distrust of amateur omniscience and handy wiseacres; he curled his lip at

political and