women’s normal sensibilities, the lady could not have been The few pages I had laid aside were not without their weight an Italian. I wonder whether she was European at al ? In any in the choice of subject. But the whole was re-written delibcase, no Latin temperament would have perceived anything erately. When I sat down to it I knew it would be a long morbid in the acute consciousness of lost honour. Such a book, though I didn’t foresee that it would spread itself over consciousness may be wrong, or it may be right, or it may be thirteen numbers of Maga.

condemned as artificial; and, perhaps, my Jim is not a type I have been asked at times whether this was not the book of wide commonness. But I can safely assure my readers that of mine I liked best. I am a great foe to favouritism in public he is not the product of coldly perverted thinking. He’s not life, in private life, and even in the delicate relationship of an a figure of Northern Mists either. One sunny morning, in author to his works. As a matter of principle I wil have no the commonplace surroundings of an Eastern roadstead, I favourites; but I don’t go so far as to feel grieved and ansaw his form pass by—appealing—significant—under a noyed by the preference some people give to my Lord Jim. I cloud—perfectly silent. Which is as it should be. It was for won’t even say that I

‘fail to understand …’ No! But once I me, with al the sympathy of which I was capable, to seek fit 4

Joseph Conrad

words for his meaning. He was ‘one of us’.

LORD JIM

J.C.

CHAPTER 1

1917.

HE WAS AN INCH, perhaps two, under six feet, powerful y built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bul . His voice was deep, loud, and his manner displayed a kind of dogged self-assertion which had nothing aggressive in it. It seemed a necessity, and it was directed apparently as much at himself as at anybody else. He was spotlessly neat, apparel ed in immaculate white from shoes to hat, and in the various Eastern ports where he got his living as ship-chandler’s water-clerk he was very popular. A water-clerk need not pass an examination in anything under the sun, but he must have Ability in the abstract and demonstrate it practical y. His work consists in racing under sail, steam, or oars against other water-clerks for any ship about to anchor, greeting her captain cheerily, forcing upon 5

Lord Jim

him a card—the business card of the ship-chandler—and had always good wages and as much humouring as would on his first visit on shore piloting him firmly but without have bought the fidelity of a fiend. Nevertheless, with black ostentation to a vast, cavern-like shop which is ful of things ingratitude he would throw up the job suddenly and depart. that are eaten and drunk on board ship; where you can get To his employers the reasons he gave were obviously inadeverything to make her seaworthy and beautiful, from a set equate. They said ‘Confounded fool!’ as soon as his back was of chain-hooks for her cable to a book of gold-leaf for the turned. This was their criticism on his exquisite sensibility. carvings of her stern; and where her commander is received To the white men in the waterside business and to the caplike a brother by a ship-chandler he has never seen before. tains of ships he was just Jim—nothing more. He had, of There is a cool parlour, easy-chairs, bottles, cigars, writing course, another name, but he was anxious that it should not implements, a copy of harbour regulations, and a warmth of be pronounced.