The

The life of a man is an open book for no one, not even for himself. characteristics and peculiarities of Conrad intrigued his biographer from the beginning. He binds them with tenuous threads to Conrad's hereditary traits and the influence of his environment, and finally presents the picture complete, allowing his readers to draw their own conclusions.

Joseph Conrad, according to the portrait, was not the sort of man about whom a conclusion could be readily reached; and when it was, you could not bank on it. He was of cosmopolitan appearance: considerable British insularity, but more Slav and Eastern in his makeup. He gave the impression of a Frenchman, born and brought up in Marseilles! His hatreds seem to have exceeded his loves, but his life was a contradiction of his tastes and he has more friends than enemies. Mr. Ford avows that Conrad hated the sea and disliked to write. "Un métier de chien", he used to call it. When he had made up his mind to write for a living, he had his choice of three languages: he discarded Polish instantly, French with a sigh of regret which he never overcame, and decided on English. And he hated English as a medium of prose, even more than he hated the sea! He thought in French, sometimes in Polish, never in English, unless his thoughts were confined to the most common of everyday commonplaces; when they occupied a higher sphere they were always in French. It was because of the difficulty with which Conrad was constantly confronted that he first thought of collaborating with one who was reputed to be "the finest stylist in the English language". Like Omar's master potter, he knows!

Mr. Ford does not marvel at Conrad's desire to write in English, despite the

fact that he knew French so much better. Ford himself writes French better than he does English, not that he knows it better- he does not — but because "in English, he can go gaily on, exulting in his absolute command of the tongue; he can write like Ruskin or like the late Charles Garvice, at will”. In writing, but not in speaking French, he must pause for a word; it is in pausing for a word that the salvation of all writers lies. The proof of prose is in the percentage of right words not the precious word; not even the startlingly real word. That we might have a whole book on Mr. Ford without a word about anyone else!

Mr. Ford bears heavily on their collaboration, and one unfamiliar with the writings of the two authors might gather that Mr. Ford was the fons et origo of much of Conrad's work. I have no doubt that Conrad put an appreciative valuation on Mr. Ford's assistance, but I have the same certainty that he did not evaluate it as did his biographer.

Some will think that Mr. Ford has recently had a bad quarter of an hour reading the current number of "La Nouvelle Revue Française" which is devoted wholly to Conrad. There his colleagues and admirers, French and English, tell of Conrad's personality and his writings but never a word of his "collaborator". Water enters a duck's back a thousand times more penetratingly than failure to accord him what he believes to be his right penetrates the dura mater of Mr. Ford Madox Ford.

ready to agree with Stephen Crane even after we read as an antithesis that the words in which Henry James always referred to Mr. Ford were "votre ami, le jeune homme modeste".

Conrad's life revolved around his books, he was constantly occupied with the best manner in which to introduce a character of fiction. It was necessary to get the character in with a strong impression, and then. work backward and forward over his past; this theory was the result of thought and experiment on the part of the collaborators. In the same manner, they devised the best opening for each type of writing; their theory was that the opening paragraph of book or story should be of the tempo of the whole performance, so that the ideal novel should begin either with a dramatic scene or with a note that should suggest the entire book. They agreed that style has no other use than to make the work interesting. Hence, they sought to render their thought in the manner which appeared the most sincere and interesting, not to make a display of erudition or of cleverness, or of juggling with words.

Mr. Ford's book is adorned with flights into the land of constructive writing, and there is much to learn from the theories and principles expressed on the authority of both Joseph Conrad and Mr. Ford. For, there is no denying that the latter's style is fluent and clear, picturesque enough to be original yet kept constantly within the limits of pure English. Mr. Ford says that their greatest admiration for a stylist in any language was given to W. H. Hudson, of whom Conrad said that his writing was like the grass that the good God made to grow when it was there, one could not tell how it came. The consensus of opinion however would

seem to be that Conrad got his greatest inspiration from Turgenev.

Conrad's philosophy was resumed in one word, "fidelity". He was faithful in his adhesion to Herrick's maxim: To live merrily and trust to good letters. He never believed in using novels as a medium of preaching; if his standards of morality suffered from some of his heroes' breaches, he would create one who would express the opinions Conrad might have been willing to express himself. Thus did Conrad expound his beliefs anonymously, and because he was a gentleman he always created another hero who would refute the preacher's arguments. His belief was that one of the most important qualities for a novelist to cultivate was humility, to make himself as little conspicuous as possible to the reader.

Mr. Ford has a heart. Unlike his mind, it is assiduously concealed, but it pierces through the coarse envelope of the purely intellectual interest to which he attempts to confine his biography of Joseph Conrad. None of his memoir may be true, but that does not detract from it as a work of art. He shows no trace of real emotion, and his remembrances carry with them no suggestion of the broken heart which some authors would have assumed had they been writing on the same subject with the material Mr. Ford had at his disposal. His book, whether biography or autobiography, is a beautiful tribute to the man he liked and the author he loved. He says that there never was a word of spoken affection between them, never a personal note which would have revealed to either the inner sentiment the other entertained for his collaborator and playmate. But if Mr. Ford will never know what were Conrad's feelings for him, readers of the biography will know that Mr. Ford's book

found its first inspiration in his heart, and, shaped by his affection, found expression in his intelligence. The duty which prompted him to write it was one of love, and the real sentiment, never expressed in words, is constantly watching over the author's shoulder.

My disappointment in Mr. Ford's book is the treatment of Conrad's art. Conrad had a form of realism that was nearly unique, blended with an impressionism that was at once captivating and awesome. Colors, sounds, voices, visions, atmospheres, are manipulated to make a harmony and an effectiveness that are sometimes overwhelming, always stirring. He accomplished realism through impressionism, and in this he was as nearly original as one can be in literature. Then he had another great merit; he did not draw conclusions about his characters. He submits the evidence without plea or prejudice, the reader renders the verdict. He saw life as it is, and man as he wishes to be, and he took them both in at a glance, just as Marlow did in "Chance". He registered them and in his hectic leisure reproduced them, and thus made posterity his debtor. And Fidus Ford has made us his debtors for showing Conrad as he appeared to him. I have no doubt he was quite a different Conrad to Stephen Crane, John Galsworthy, Mr. Doubleday, and Mrs. Conrad, but not more lovable and not more worthy of the admiration the whole literary world gives him today.

Another biography, this time of a decadent individual, Arthur Rimbaud, has recently appeared from the pen of Edgell Rickword. It is too laudatory, too apologetic, too condoning, but it reveals penetrative insight, sympathetic understanding, and a measure of critical acumen.

He

Rimbaud was a contentious, bumptious, conceited, selfish, pigheaded, insensitive young hobo who in three years of his youthful life wrote the best poetry of France since Baudelaire. printed only one book, "Une Saison en Enfer", an epitome of his mind's life. When he was eighteen he stopped writing and began wandering, scoffing at literature, regretting his part in its creation, and scorning recognition of a position among the writers of his country.

He tramped, he traveled with a circus, he was overseer in a stone quarry, and finally landed in Africa where he lived the last nineteen years of his life, pioneering, exploring, merchandising. Then, just as he was about to secure a modest competency and to see his dream of fireside and family come true, a parasite possessed him. When he reached Marseilles they amputated a leg, and soon after he died in the odor of sanctity and in his thirty eighth year. A devoted, pious sister, Isabelle, has told of his last days with fervid affection in a booklet "Mon Frère Arthur", and Ernest Delahaye, who knew, understood, loved, and tolerated him perhaps more than anyone, published in 1923 a volume which pleased both the critics and Rimbaud's friends. About the same time, an industrious critic of French letters, Maurice Coulon, published a volume "Le Problème de Rimbaud, Poète Maudit".

Rimbaud has been dead nearly thirty five years. His literary output is the smallest on record. His poetry, although generally admitted to stand beside that of Hugo, Vigny, and Musset, has no human interest; he does not sing of love, he does not chant the virtues of his country or its people. Probably not one reader in twenty is touched by "Les Illuminations", and

not one in ten discerns his thesis or his philosophy in "Une Saison en Enfer".

What then is the explanation of this sustained interest in him? Why does posterity extol him and neglect Gérard de Nerval, who brought to the light of day a long hidden pediment of literature: the æsthetics of symbolism? The answer is easily given. His "affair" with Verlaine is the human interest of Arthur Rimbaud. People like to read about him as they like to read "Town Topics" or "Le Cri de Paris". Mr. Rickword is to be congratulated on rendering the theme with his foot on the soft pedal. Had he called his book "The Taming by Time of an Antinomian", it would have been a comprehensive and a just title.

The wide dissemination of the Freudian theories is responsible in a measure for the keen interest of the reading public in sexual fixations, their manifestations and liberations. Rimbaud apparently got stuck on third base in the game of life, but there are many indications that he was stealing home when the bell rang.

It is refreshing to go from the wards of a madhouse or the corridors of an observation pavilion into the fields where sane men and women are working, into the streets and parks where children are romping and birds are singing. It is refreshing to go from Rimbaud to Anatole France, even though one gets such a left handed introduction to him, and inadequate presentation of him, as that made by James Lewis May. If comparisons were not odious still, I should say that L. P. Shanks's book on Anatole France was a juster estimate of his talents than his English translator's book, which is called "Anatole France, The Man and His Work".

Biographers should learn the difference between a panegyric and a

No

critical study. It is a custom sanctified by time that the death of a great contemporary figure should be the signal of a truce as it were; foes lay down their arms for a period of time, friends and admirers join in lauding the man who has gone to his reward. one takes much stock in an obituary dictated by the emotional reaction engendered by death, and no one looks to such writing for constructive criticism; but when a biography is written during the lifetime of the subject - be he as old as Anatole France was when Mr. May published his biography there should be less puffing and more illumination.

Posterity will not forget the name of Anatole France, because his contribution to literature has been of such nature as to make him immortal; but to call him "the greatest of writers" and to prophesy for him a crown of immortality which will put all others in the shade, to uphold him as the poet, the essayist, the philosopher, the novelist, and the stylist "par excellence", is to deny to contemporaries the power of reasoning and to refuse to be lessoned by the past. Mr. May has allowed too much of his personal feeling of friendship and of his pleasure and pride of semi-intimacy with Anatole France to color his estimate of the writer. He admires him for his numerous stunts, for his manysidedness, for the rapidity with which he changed his point of view, in such a bewildering manner that often within the limits of a single page he plays all parts in turn. These are no grounds for admiration. At most, they would be occasions of wonder and amazement, but the truth is that a writer of Anatole France's calibre who "played all parts in turn" lacks convictions and standards; his philosophy was not to have any, and his belief was that none is satisfying.