Joseph Conrad and H. G. Wells

The Fin-de-Siècle Literary Scene

L. Dryden

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137500120
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Modern Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This book traces the literary friendship between Joseph Conrad and H. G. Wells from their early correspondence through to the differences that caused their estrangement, including their respective responses to the First World War. It thus gives an overview of the literary scene in the late Victorian and early Edwardian period.

1

Martians, Sleepers, Time Travellers and Hearts of Darkness

It was H. G. Wells’s anonymous article on An Outcast of the Islands in the Saturday Review on 16 May 1896 that was the catalyst for his friendship with Conrad. Wells was already well known as a writer of scientific fantasies, due to the publication the previous year of The Time Machine, but, as Parrinder and Philmus point out, his literary ambitions went well beyond this. He was a perceptive and witty critic who dealt mercilessly with the ‘sentimental fiction and romantic fantasy which made up the major proportion of the literary diet of the 1890s’: ‘No other reviewer of his time was so consistently successful in sifting the good from the bad and in recognising new talent’ (Parrinder and Philmus 2). Conrad was one such talent, and Wells’s review of his second novel caused Frank Harris’s assistant on the Saturday Review, H. Blanchamp, to inform Wells that ‘The Editor . . . asks me to tell you that he thinks it one of the best pieces of literary criticism in the English Language’ (Parrinder and Philmus 48 [ellipses in original]). This was high praise indeed: the prodigally talented Wells was delighted, and remembered it to the end of his days.¹

Wells’s opinion of the artistic success of An Outcast was mixed, but he held it in high esteem nevertheless, using it as an exemplar in subsequent reviews of lesser works. For example, reviewing Arthur Morrison’s A Child of the Jago on 28 November 1896, he cites the ‘spacious effect at the end of Mr Conrad’s Outcast of the Islands, when Almayer shook his fist at the night and silence outside his sorrows’, and claims this is an effect that Morrison fails to achieve (Parrinder and Philmus 116). Wells begins his review of ‘Ian Maclaren’s’ A Doctor of the Old School, on 30 May 1896, with a wittily unfavourable comparison to Conrad’s ‘masterpiece’ (Parrinder and Philmus 94).² And at the beginning of his extensive manifesto on his theory of the novel, ‘The Contemporary Novel’ (1914), Wells reminisces on his early career as a critic, and specifically recalls his review of Conrad (Parrinder and Philmus 192).³

Of Almayer’s Folly Wells had written in the Saturday Review of 15 June 1895, that it ‘is indeed exceedingly well imagined and well written, and it will certainly secure Mr. Conrad a high place among contemporary story-tellers’ (Parrinder 53). In recognizing the promise that Conrad’s first novel demonstrated, Wells shows that his prophetic abilities extended from his scientific romances to his literary criticism. As Parrinder and Philmus note: ‘Wells was not yet a convert to the propaganda novel or novel of ideas […] But he clearly preferred novels which combined a vigorous narrative tone, such as that which Dickens and Thackeray had used, with a pungent and wide-ranging exploration of contemporary problems’ (Parrinder and Philmus 6). Though not a novelist in the style of earlier Victorian writers, Conrad was exploring contemporary issues, especially imperialism, in innovative and challenging ways, and Wells may well have felt that, in Conrad, he was championing an author after his own heart.

Within a week or so of first meeting Wells, Conrad began what was to become one of his most famous tales, Heart of Darkness (1901). This was exactly the kind of story to appeal to Wells’s political sensitivities, and he would prove his admiration through his mention of it in the first book version of When the Sleeper Wakes (1899).⁴ Wells does not appear to have critically reviewed Heart of Darkness, but as this and subsequent chapters will prove, he was profoundly impressed by the novella. Conrad was similarly impressed by what he had read of Wells’s oeuvre and certain allusions to Wells’s work in Heart of Darkness testify to the impact that Wells made upon him in the early stages of their literary friendship. This chapter will thus chart the development of their relationship from Wells’s reviews of Conrad’s first two novels through to their first meeting in 1898. At the same time it will explore the various allusions that Conrad makes to Wells in Heart of Darkness and how Wells repays the compliment with his reference to that novella in When the Sleeper Wakes. What emerges is a much clearer picture of the early development of this literary friendship than has previously been available.

In the beginning

Wells’s review of An Outcast had piqued Conrad’s interest, flattered him considerably, but also caused him to reflect on his own style, and to be defensive. While he admired the freshness of Conrad’s approach, Wells found his prose overly complex: ‘it never seems to dawn upon [Conrad] that, if a sentence fails to carry the full weight and implication it was meant to do, the remedy is not to add a qualifying clause, but to reject it and try another’ (Parrinder 75). Sherborne points out that Conrad ‘obediently cut fifty-six words from a passage Wells had ridiculed’, but he fails to register Conrad’s mixed reaction to his reviewer (Sherborne 125). In fact, Conrad’s ambivalence to the review can be traced through his initial letters to Wells and through those he wrote to his publisher, T. Fisher Unwin, and to Edward Garnett.

Initially unaware that Wells was the author of the review, Conrad wrote on 18 May 1896, presumably via the Saturday Review, to express his ‘simple gratitude’ that a ‘man of letters had thought it worth his while’ to give any thought to his book: ‘You have written all your thought regardless of pain or pleasure for the – more or less – thin-skinned creature behind the book.’ The letter is so carefully worded not to offend that it becomes almost obsequious:

I wish to thank You for the guidance of Your reproof and for the encouragement of your commendation. You have repeated aloud and distinctly the muttered warnings of my own conscience. I am proud to think that, writing in the twilight of my ignorance, I have yet seen dimly the very shortcomings which You point out with a hand so fine and yet so friendly. (Collected Letters 1: 278–9)

Conrad is characteristically enthusiastic, as he is in all his letters to reviewers who praised his work, but his seemingly grateful and humble acceptance of the criticisms masks a deeper sense of injury. It is unfortunate that the letter exists only as a fragment, as Conrad appears to have begun an attempt to justify himself in the final extant sentence: ‘[I]t seems to me from the last paragraph of the review that you suspect my faults to be the outcome of affectation – of a deliberate insincerity of expression’ (Collected Letters 1: 279). As the extant part of the letter effectively ends there we can only assume that Conrad proceeds to elaborate on this justification. Certainly his comments to others at the time show that the humility and deference of the letter are but one aspect of Conrad’s response to the criticisms in Wells’s review; and he was yet to learn the name of its author.

As Martin Ray notes, Wells’s comments rankled and Conrad was flattered and irritated in equal measure (Ray 563). In Experiment in Autobiography (1932) Wells wrongly identifies his review of Almayer’s Folly as the one which had ‘excited’ Conrad, but he seems unaware of, or at least to overlook Conrad’s mixed reaction when he says that ‘it was his first “important” recognition and he became anxious to make my acquaintance’ (Autobiography 615). However, it was to be another two years before the two actually met after Conrad had moved to Pent Farm and Wells was installed at Sandgate. In the meantime, Wells had given him much to mull over concerning his approach to writing, as Conrad was later to confess.

Notwithstanding reservations about his style, Wells must have had high expectations for Conrad’s writing career. In that brief review of Almayer’s Folly, which is included within a longer review article of three new novels, Wells had said that Conrad’s novel ‘is a very powerful story indeed, with effects that will certainly capture the imagination and haunt the memory of the reader’, and he speaks of the ‘rare beauty of the love-story between Nina and Dain’. Conrad’s debut novel is the only one of the two other books considered in this review that could be ‘regarded seriously as a work of art’ (Parrinder 53). Wells’s subsequent review with its criticisms of An Outcast will have been designed to have a positive, nurturing effect, to encourage Conrad, but also to alert him to stylistic issues. He responds to Conrad in late May 1896, revealing his identity, and begins with: ‘I am very glad indeed that my review of your book was to your liking. Though I really don’t see why you should think gratitude necessary when a reviewer gives you your just deserts’ (Correspondence 1: 262). This is generous enough, but some of Wells’s further comments could be read as condescending:

If I have instead put my finger on a weak point in your armour of technique, so that you may be able to strengthen it against your next reviewer, I shall have done the best a reviewer can do. You have everything for the making of a splendid novelist except dexterity, and that is attainable by drill. (Correspondence 1: 263)

Wells writes with the confidence of a seasoned critic offering friendly advice to a novice. He was at this point the ‘chief fiction reviewer for the Saturday Review’, and had been bouyed by the editor’s praise of his review of An Outcast (Parrinder and Philmus 1). However, Conrad’s sense of Wells’s condescension was amplified by these patronizing comments.

Conrad wrote to Edward Garnett on 22 May 1896 that he never suspected Wells as the author of the review: ‘May I be cremated alive like a miserable moth if I suspected it!’ He was deeply impressed to have been reviewed by Wells, but he states that he was ‘puzzled’ by the criticism and continues: ‘Anyway he descended from his “Time Machine” to be as kind as he knew how. It explains the review. He dedicates his books to W. Henley – you know’ (Collected Letters 1: 281). One can feel the excitement in Conrad’s tone, but there is a sense too that he conceived of Wells as high-handed and patronizing. Nevertheless, his response to Wells’s first letter, three days after the letter to Garnett, while on holiday in Capri, is ingratiating: ‘If I praised highly the review before I knew who wrote it – it becomes still more precious now, when the name of my kind appreciator is known.’ He confesses unworthiness in the face of ‘a mind which could conceive and execute such work’, before proceeding to pile praise upon the works he has read, The Time Machine, The Wonderful Visit (1895), and the collection of short stories, The Stolen Bacillus (1895):

Your book lay [sic] hold of me with a grasp that can be felt. I am held by the charm of their expression and of their meaning. I surrender to their suggestion, I am delighted by the cleanness of atmosphere by the sharp definition – even of things implied – and I am convinced by the logic of your imagination so unbounded and so brilliant. (Collected Letters 1: 282)

In his review of An Outcast Wells had complained that Conrad ‘is wordy’, that his best expressions are ‘lost in this dust-heap of irrelevant words’ (Parrinder and Philmus 88–90). Conrad’s response acknowledges this criticism by focusing on Wells’s own clarity of expression and ability to convey his meaning cleanly and succinctly, and concludes this appreciation of Wells with further humility: ‘I see all this – but the best I am probably unable to see’ (Collected Letters 1: 282). It is an astute response that signals Conrad’s recognition of the criticism at the same time as appearing to bow down before Wells’s greater narrative clarity and sharpness of expression. Thus, from the very beginning of their relationship, Conrad nurtures Wells’s acquaintance with praise and humility, while privately grumbling about his criticisms.

Conrad’s letters to Wells cannot, therefore, be taken at face value: while he gives no hint that he is wounded by the criticisms, Conrad is defiant in his comments to others. For example, he confided to T. Fisher Unwin on 28 May 1896 that Wells’s review was ‘invaluable’ but ‘fallacious on the critic’s own showing’. He states that he will not defend himself, but goes on to do just that:

I grant, the achievement is wretched – but not in the way the critic says – at least not altogether. But enough of this. My style may be atrocious – but it produces its effect – is as unalterable as – say – the size of my feet – and I will never disguise it in boots of Wells’ (or anybody else’s) making. It would be utter folly. I shall make my own boots or perish. (Collected Letters 9: 31–2)

Conrad’s exasperation is palpable: he is flattered by Wells’s praise, stung by his criticism, and determined to follow his own artistic impulses, to ‘walk in his own boots’, so to speak. Conrad’s attitude here is irritable and defensive, and the reason for his pique stems from frustration that his experimental, unique, and what Wells would later, curiously, term ‘his delicate Oriental’ style had not been understood.⁵ As Chapter 5 will demonstrate, Conrad, along with Ford, was expanding the frontiers of meaning in the novel through new and often complex narrative techniques that marked a clean break with the Victorian realist novel. He also challenged assumptions about the Victorians’ justification of imperialism and the fictive portrayal of native peoples. And, it must be said that Wells’s more appreciative comments about An Outcast demonstrate a genuine appreciation of the success of Conrad’s characterization of Aïssa and the other Malays in the book.⁶ Unlike many other reviewers of the time, Wells draws no comparisons with Stevenson, but takes the book on its own merits, and admires it as such. Nevertheless, he feels that Conrad needs to cultivate narrative economy: ‘It never seems to occur to Mr Conrad to put forth his effect and leave it there stark and beautiful; he must needs set it and explain it, and refer to it, and thumb and maul it to extinction’ (Parrinder and Philmus 90). Conrad is a fledgling writer, sensitive and lacking in confidence: Wells’s forthright comments caused him pain and made him defensive.

Indeed, Zdzislaw Najder suggests that some of Wells’s comments must have struck home, ‘judging by the relatively economic style of The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ (1897), probably begun in June’ (A Life 228). In the next extant letter to Wells over two years later, on 6 September 1898, Conrad openly admits how he had kept Wells’s criticisms in mind in his subsequent work. Conrad writes in intimate terms, suggesting that they had continued to correspond, in this case concerning the short story ‘Youth’ (1898):⁷

A few days ago I learned with great concern of the news of your illness. It saddened me the more because for the last two years (since your review of the Outcast in S.R compelled me to think seriously of many things till then unseen) I have lived on terms of close intimacy with you, referring to you many a page of my work, scrutinising many sentences by the light of your criticism. You are responsible for many sheets torn up and also for those that remained untorn and presently meeting your eye have given me the reward of your generous appreciation. (Collected Letters 2: 92)

What Conrad means by ‘meeting your eye’ is ambiguous; rather than an actual meeting, it is most likely that he is referring to the fact that Wells has read the ‘untorn pages’ of ‘Youth’ and sent an appreciative letter, with some suggestions for improvement. Najder concludes that Conrad and Wells did not actually meet until Conrad took up residence at the Pent, and even then the first encounter came after some failed attempts by Conrad at calling on the Wellses (A Life 279–80). Due to a lack of evidence, there is no way of being certain whether the two met before the Conrads move to the Pent, but a close examination of how Conrad addresses Wells in the extant correspondence provides a clue as to an approximate time of their first meeting. The letter above is headed ‘My dear Sir’, implying a lack of familiarity, and although friendly, the l...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Martians, Sleepers, Time Travellers and Hearts of Darkness
• 2. Conrad, Wells, Ford and the Ghost of Robert Louis Stevenson
• 3. Quap, Ivory and Insect Empires
• 4. ‘The difference between us’: Science, Politics and the Human Factor
• 5. Conrad, Wells and the Art of the Novel
• 6. The Shape of War and of Things to Come
• Afterword
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index