Victory: an Island Tale, by Joseph Conrad
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Title: Victory
Author: Joseph Conrad
Release Date: January 9, 2006 [EBook #6378]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VICTORY ***
Produced by Tracy Camp and David Widger
VICTORY: AN ISLAND TALE
By Joseph Conrad
Contents
PART THREE
NOTE TO THE FIRST EDITION
CHAPTER ONE
AUTHOR'S NOTE
CHAPTER TWO
PART ONE
CHAPTER THREE
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CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER TEN
PART TWO
PART FOUR
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
NOTE TO THE FIRST EDITION
The last word of this novel was written on 29 May 1914. And that last word was
the single word of the title.
Those were the times of peace. Now that the moment of publication approaches I
have been considering the discretion of altering the title-page. The word "Victory"
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the shining and tragic goal of noble effort, appeared too great, too august, to
stand at the head of a mere novel. There was also the possibility of falling under the
suspicion of commercial astuteness deceiving the public into the belief that the
book had something to do with war.
Of that, however, I was not afraid very much. What influenced my decision most
were the obscure promptings of that pagan residuum of awe and wonder which
lurks still at the bottom of our old humanity. "Victory" was the last word I had
written in peace-time. It was the last literary thought which had occurred to me
before the doors of the Temple of Janus flying open with a crash shook the minds,
the hearts, the consciences of men all over the world. Such coincidence could not
be treated lightly. And I made up my mind to let the word stand, in the same
hopeful spirit in which some simple citizen of Old Rome would have "accepted the
Omen."
The second point on which I wish to offer a remark is the existence (in the novel)
of a person named Schomberg.
That I believe him to be true goes without saying. I am not likely to offer
pinchbeck wares to my public consciously. Schomberg is an old member of my
company. A very subordinate personage in Lord Jim as far back as the year 1899,
he became notably active in a certain short story of mine published in 1902. Here
he appears in a still larger part, true to life (I hope), but also true to himself. Only,
in this instance, his deeper passions come into play, and thus his grotesque
psychology is completed at last.
I don't pretend to say that this is the entire Teutonic psychology; but it is
indubitably the psychology of a Teuton. My object in mentioning him here is to
bring out the fact that, far from being the incarnation of recent animosities, he is the
creature of my old deep-seated, and, as it were, impartial conviction.
J. C.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
On approaching the task of writing this Note for Victory, the first thing I am
conscious of is the actual nearness of the book, its nearness to me personally, to the
vanished mood in which it was written, and to the mixed feelings aroused by the
critical notices the book obtained when first published almost exactly a year after
the beginning of the war. The writing of it was finished in 1914 long before the
murder of an Austrian Archduke sounded the first note of warning for a world
already full of doubts and fears.
The contemporaneous very short Author's Note which is preserved in this edition
bears sufficient witness to the feelings with which I consented to the publication of
the book. The fact of the book having been published in the United States early in
the year made it difficult to delay its appearance in England any longer. It came out
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in the thirteenth month of the war, and my conscience was troubled by the awful
incongruity of throwing this bit of imagined drama into the welter of reality, tragic
enough in all conscience, but even more cruel than tragic and more inspiring than
cruel. It seemed awfully presumptuous to think there would be eyes to spare for
those pages in a community which in the crash of the big guns and in the din of
brave words expressing the truth of an indomitable faith could not but feel the edge
of a sharp knife at its throat.
The unchanging Man of history is wonderfully adaptable both by his power of
endurance and in his capacity for detachment. The fact seems to be that the play of
his destiny is too great for his fears and too mysterious for his understanding. Were
the trump of the Last Judgement to sound suddenly on a working day the musician
at his piano would go on with his performance of Beethoven's sonata and the
cobbler at his stall stick to his last in undisturbed confidence in the virtues of the
leather. And with perfect propriety. For what are we to let ourselves be disturbed
by an angel's vengeful music too mighty our ears and too awful for our terrors?
Thus it happens to us to be struck suddenly by the lightning of wrath. The reader
will go on reading if the book pleases him and the critic will go on criticizing with
that faculty of detachment born perhaps from a sense of infinite littleness and
which is yet the only fac
ulty that seems to assimilate man to the immortal gods.
It is only when the catastrophe matches the natural obscurity of our fate that even
the best representative of the race is liable to lose his detachment. It is very obvious
that on the arrival of the gentlemanly Mr. Jones, the single-minded Ricardo, and the
faithful Pedro, Heyst, the man of universal detachment, loses his mental self-
possession, that fine attitude before the universally irremediable which wears the
name of stoicism. It is all a matter of proportion. There should have been a remedy
for that sort of thing. And yet there is no remedy. Behind this minute instance of
life's hazards Heyst sees the power of blind destiny. Besides, Heyst in his fine
detachment had lost the habit asserting himself. I don't mean the courage of self-
assertion, either moral or physical, but the mere way of it, the trick of the thing, the
readiness of mind and the turn of the hand that come without reflection and lead the
man to excellence in life, in art, in crime, in virtue, and, for the matter of that, even
in love. Thinking is the great enemy of perfection. The habit of profound reflection,
I am compelled to say, is the most pernicious of all the habits formed by the
civilized man.
But I wouldn't be suspected even remotely of making fun of Axel Heyst. I have
always liked him. The flesh-and-blood individual who stands behind the infinitely
more familiar figure of the book I remember as a mysterious Swede right enough.
Whether he was a baron, too, I am not so certain. He himself never laid claim to
that distinction. His detachment was too great to make any claims, big or small, on
one's credulity. I will not say where I met him because I fear to give my readers a
wrong impression, since a marked incongruity between a man and his surroundings
is often a very misleading circumstance. We became very friendly for a time, and I
would not like to expose him to unpleasant suspicions though, personally, I am sure
he would have been indifferent to suspicions as he was indifferent to all the other
disadvantages of life. He was not the whole Heyst of course; he is only the physical
and moral foundation of my Heyst laid on the ground of a short acquaintance. That
it was short was certainly not my fault for he had charmed me by the mere amenity
of his detachment which, in this case, I cannot help thinking he had carried to
excess. He went away from his rooms without leaving a trace. I wondered where he
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had gone to—but now I know. He vanished from my ken only to drift into this
adventure that, unavoidable, waited for him in a world which he persisted in
looking upon as a malevolent shadow spinning in the sunlight. Often in the course
of years an expressed sentiment, the particular sense of a phrase heard casually,
would recall him to my mind so that I have fastened on to him many words heard
on other men's lips and belonging to other men's less perfect, less pathetic moods.
The same observation will apply mutatis mutandis to Mr. Jones, who is built on a
much slenderer connection. Mr. Jones (or whatever his name was) did not drift
away from me. He turned his back on me and walked out of the room. It was in a
little hotel in the island of St. Thomas in the West Indies (in the year '75) where we
found him one hot afternoon extended on three chairs, all alone in the loud buzzing
of flies to which his immobility and his cadaverous aspect gave a most gruesome
significance. Our invasion must have displeased him because he got off the chairs
brusquely and walked out, leaving with me an indelibly weird impression of his
thin shanks. One of the men with me said that the fellow was the most desperate
gambler he had ever come across. I said: "A professional sharper?" and got for an
answer: "He's a terror; but I must say that up to a certain point he will play fair. . .
." I wonder what the point was. I never saw him again because I believe he went
straight on board a mail-boat which left within the hour for other ports of call in the
direction of Aspinall. Mr. Jones's characteristic insolence belongs to another man of
a quite different type. I will say nothing as to the origins of his mentality because I
don't intend to make any damaging admissions.
It so happened that the very same year Ricardo—the physical Ricardo—was a
fellow passenger of mine on board an extremely small and extremely dirty little
schooner, during a four days' passage between two places in the Gulf of Mexico
whose names don't matter. For the most part he lay on deck aft as it were at my
feet, and raising himself from time to time on his elbow would talk about himself
and go on talking, not exactly to me or even at me (he would not even look up but
kept his eyes fixed on the deck) but more as if communing in a low voice with his
familiar devil. Now and then he would give me a glance and make the hairs of his
stiff little moustache stir quaintly. His eyes were green and every cat I see to this
day reminds me of the exact contour of his face. What he was travelling for or what
was his business in life he never confided to me. Truth to say, the only passenger
on board that schooner who could have talked openly about his activities and
purposes was a very snuffy and conversationally delightful friar, the superior of a
convent, attended by a very young lay brother, of a particularly ferocious
countenance. We had with us also, lying prostrate in the dark and unspeakable
cuddy of that schooner, an old Spanish gentleman, owner of much luggage and, as
Ricardo assured me, very ill indeed. Ricardo seemed to be either a servant or the
confidant of that aged and distinguished-looking invalid, who early on the passage
held a long murmured conversation with the friar, and after that did nothing but
groan feebly, smoke cigarettes, and now and then call for Martin in a voice full of
pain. Then he who had become Ricardo in the book would go below into that
beastly and noisome hole, remain there mysteriously, and coming up on deck again
with a face on which nothing could be read, would as likely as not resume for my
edification the exposition of his moral attitude towards life illustrated by striking
particular instances of the most atrocious complexion. Did he mean to frighten me?
Or seduce me? Or astonish me? Or arouse my admiration? All he did was to arouse
my amused incredulity. As scoundrels go he was far from being a bore. For the rest
my innocence was so great then that I could not take his philosophy seriously. All
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the time he kept one ear turned to the cuddy in the manner of a devoted servant,
but I had the idea that in some way or other he had imposed the connection on the
invalid for some end of his own. The reader, therefore, won't be surprised to hear
that one morning I was told without any particular emotion by the padrone of the
schooner that the "rich man" down there was dead: He had died in the night. I don't
remember ever being so moved by the desola
te end of a complete stranger. I looked
down the skylight, and there was the devoted Martin busy cording cowhide trunks
belonging to the deceased whose white beard and hooked nose were the only parts I
could make out in the dark depths of a horrible stuffy bunk.
As it fell calm in the course of the afternoon and continued calm during all that
night and the terrible, flaming day, the late "rich man" had to be thrown overboard
at sunset, though as a matter of fact we were in sight of the low pestilential
mangrove-lined coast of our destination. The excellent Father Superior mentioned
to me with an air of immense commiseration: "The poor man has left a young
daughter." Who was to look after her I don't know, but I saw the devoted Martin
taking the trunks ashore with great care just before I landed myself. I would
perhaps have tracked the ways of that man of immense sincerity for a little while,
but I had some of my own very pressing business to attend to, which in the end got
mixed up with an earthquake and so I had no time to give to Ricardo. The reader
need not be told that I have not forgotten him, though.
My contact with the faithful Pedro was much shorter and my observation of him
was less complete but incomparably more anxious. It ended in a sudden inspiration
to get out of his way. It was in a hovel of sticks and mats by the side of a path. As I
went in there only to ask for a bottle of lemonade I have not to this day the slightest
idea what in my appearance or actions could have roused his terrible ire. It became
manifest to me less than two minutes after I had set eyes on him for the first time,
and though immensely surprised of course I didn't stop to think it out I took the
nearest short cut—through the wall. This bestial apparition and a certain enormous
buck nigger encountered in Haiti only a couple of months afterwards, have fixed