Magnificent TLS from Joseph Conrad to his friend and biographer, Elbridge L. Adams, accompanied by a typescript draft of the latter’s article, “Joseph Conrad—The Man,” which Conrad has extensively edited in pencil. The TLS, one page, both sides, 7 x 9, January 22, 1923, Oswalds, Bishopsbourne, Kent letterhead, reads, in part: “Your registered article arrived this morning and I put everything aside to welcome it with all the regard and care due to this proof of your solid friendship for us.
I have just read it carefully once and am writing this to (first of all) give you my warm thanks for the pervading sympathy of this sketch of our personal relations. The man who would not be satisfied with it would have to be a very cantankerous, conceited, crooked-minded and objectionable brute. Seriously…I am touched by the genuineness of sentiment which informs this survey of our intercourse. I am not alluding here to facts, which are correct but which might have been expressed accurately in many other forms of words, but to that something intangible proceeding from the spirit which makes your form specially welcome to me.
I have not yet touched the text so I can not allude here precisely to certain corrections which I am going to make. Some of them will bear mainly on the minor details of matters of fact; just a few words changed. One will deal with a whole paragraph. It is very short and relates to the remarks I made to you about Wells, Belloc and Chesterton. I think it could very well come out, as it is a very general statement, dealing mainly with Wells from a critical point of view, and certainly not expressing all my views of Wells, which, in many respects is quite appreciative. There is also the passage dealing more or less with my material position, which I should like to tone down, as what one says to a friend for whom one has a particular regard need not be repeated quite so openly to the world at large. You may think that I am too particular in that respect. It is, no doubt, a weakness of mine to cling to my prejudices in favour of privacy. If, in a sense, it may be a weakness, it is a harmless one.
I assure you, I was extremely annoyed at this beginning of publicity started by Mr. Doubleday. On the other hand Morley’s article is perfectly charming and I can not but be grateful to him for striking the right note. What is most vexing is to think that after all the thing may not come off, as you know my health is very uncertain, and the month of March and April are a critical time for me in that respect. So the least said about it the better.
I am hard at work at a novel and am feeling fairly well, but the uncertainty of which I have spoken prevents me indulging in hopes. Even my ‘good’ health is a very poor and precarious thing. What frightens me most is the fact that people on your side won’t be able to understand how the commonest social exertion may on any given day be too much for me, and take my shrinking for ungraciousness, or laziness, or lack of appreciation, or any other repulsive trait of character.”
Conrad continues the letter in his own hand: “I have just finished to annotate and modify—as you have permitted me to do. You may think I have been too meticulous in the alterations suggested. My view is that this first personal sketch by a friend of mine will become an authority. People will refer to it in the future. This accounts for my care to get the shades of my meaning established in your recollections which are wonderfully accurate in the main. As to alterations on pp 20 & 21 I tried to tone down all references to my age. Must give no opportunity to seize on what may have been a pessimistic moment in our talk. The world is very stupid and one must be careful. I must finish here to catch the mail—with and united love to you both and the chicks.” In a postscript, penned in the upper border, Conrad has added: “Thanks for the press cuttings. The incident on board that ship was an extraordinary one. I have had a 50 foot spar on deck getting adrift in a gale and it was terrifying enough to tackle it in the dark.” Conrad adds the salutation in his own hand and makes several ink emendations to the text.
The accompanying 10-page typescript, 8.5 x 11, a draft of an article Adams was writing for the American magazine The Outlook, features numerous pencil corrections and additions by Conrad, who clarifies his time spent at sea as a youth, reflects on American reluctance to enter the World War, and strikes through a passage regarding literary great James Fenimore Cooper, replacing the line “pioneer writer of sea tales” with “master of the English language.” Shortly thereafter, Conrad adds lines to sections dedicated to Henry James—“I loved him [He was for years most charmingly kind to me and my wife.] He was a specialist in the art of [creative literature],” and Ivan Turgenev, of whom he “had a sincere admiration for the exquisite art.” The typescript also mentions Conrad’s approbation towards writer Stephen Crane and diplomat Walter Hines Page. Each page is affixed to a slightly larger sheet. In overall very good to fine condition, with creasing to the article pages (and a short edge tear to the first page), and a strip of old mounting residue along the edge of the letter passing over the last name of Conrad's signature.
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