Typhoon and Other Tales by Joseph Conrad: Author's Note

Typhoon by Joseph Conrad read by Donald Miller. Author's note. The main characteristic of this volume consists in this, that all the stories composing it belong not only to the same period but have been written one after another in the order in which they appear in the book. The period is that which follows on my connection with Blackwood's magazine. I had just finished writing The End of the Tether and was casting about for some subject which could be developed in a shorter form than the tales in The Volume of Youth, when the instance of a steamship full of returning coolies from Singapore to some port in northern China occurred to my recollection. Years before I had heard of it being talked about in the East as a recent occurrence. It was for us merely one subject of conversation amongst many others of the kind. Men earning their bread in any very specialized occupation will talk shop, not only because it is the most vital interest of their lives, but also because they have not much knowledge of other subjects. They have never had the time to get acquainted with them. Life, for most of us, is not so much a hard as an exacting taskmaster. I never met anybody personally concerned in this affair, the interest of which for us was, of course, not the bad weather but the extraordinary complication brought into the ship's life at a moment of exceptional stress by the human element below her deck. Neither was the story itself ever enlarged upon my hearing. In that company each of us could imagine easily what the whole thing was like. The financial difficulty of it, presenting also a human problem, was solved by a mind much too simple to be perplexed by anything in the world except men's idle talk for which it was not adapted. From the first, the mere anecdote, the mere statement, I might say, that such a thing had happened on the high seas, appeared to me a sufficient subject for meditation. Yet it was but a bit of a sea yarn after all. I felt that to bring out its deeper significance, which was quite apparent to me, something other, something more was required, a leading motive that would harmonize all these violent noises and a point of view that would put all that elemental fury into its proper place. What was needed, of course, was Captain McWhir. Directly, I perceived him. I could see that he was the man for the situation. I don't mean to say that I ever saw Captain McWhir in the flesh or had ever come in contact with his literal mind and his dauntless temperament. McWhir is not an acquaintance of a few hours or a few weeks or a few months. He is the product of 20 years of life, my own life. Conscious invention had little to do with him. If it is true that Captain McWhir never walked and breathed on this earth, which I find for my part extremely difficult to believe, I can also assure my readers that he is perfectly authentic. I may venture to assert the same of every aspect of the story, while I confess that the particular typhoon of the tale was not a typhoon of my actual experience. At its first appearance, Typhoon, the story, was classed by some critics as a deliberately intended storm piece. Others picked out McWhir in whom they perceived a definite symbolic intention. Neither was exclusively my intention. Both the Typhoon and Captain McWhir presented themselves to me as the necessities of the deep conviction with which I approached the subject of the story. It was their opportunity. It was also my opportunity, and it would be vain to discourse about what I made of it in a handful of pages, since the pages themselves are here, between the covers of this volume, to speak for themselves. This is a belated reflection. If it had occurred to me before, it would have perhaps done away with the existence of this author's note. For indeed, the same remark applies to every story in this volume. None of them are stories of experience in the absolute sense of the word. Experience in them is but the canvas of the attempted picture. Each of them has its more than one intention. With each, the question is what the writer has done with his opportunity, and each answers the question for itself in words which, if I may say so without undue solemnity, were written with a conscientious regard for the truth of my own sensations. And each of those stories, to mean something, must justify itself in its own way to the conscience of each successive reader. Falk, the second story in the volume, offended the delicacy of one critic, at least by certain peculiarities of its subject. But what is the subject of Falk? I personally do not feel so very certain about it. He who reads must find out for himself. My intention in writing Falk was not to shock anybody, as in most of my writing I insist not on the events but on their effect upon the persons in the tale. But in everything I have written there is always one invariable intention, and that is to capture the reader's attention by securing his interest and enlisting his sympathies for the matter in hand, whatever it may be, within the limits of the visible world and within the boundaries of human emotions. I may safely say that Falk is absolutely true to my experience of certain straightforward characters combining a perfectly natural ruthlessness with a certain amount of moral delicacy. Falk obeys the law of self-preservation without the slightest misgivings as to his right, but at a crucial turn of that ruthlessly preserved life he will not condescend to dodge the truth. As he is presented as sensitive enough to be affected permanently by a certain unusual experience, that experience had to be set by me before the reader vividly, but is not the subject of the tale. If we go by mere facts then the subject is Falk's attempt to get married, in which the narrator of the tale finds himself unexpectedly involved both on its ruthless and its delicate side. Falk shares with other of my stories the return, in the Tales of Unrest volume, the distinction of never having been serialized. I think the copy was shown to the editor of some magazine who rejected it indignantly on the sole ground that the girl never says anything. This is perfectly true. From the first last Herman's niece utters no word in the tale and it is not because she is dumb, but for the simple reason that whenever she happens to come under the observation of the narrator she has either no occasion or is too profoundly moved to speak. The editor, who obviously had read the story, might have perceived that for himself. Apparently he did not, and I refrained from pointing out the impossibility to him because, since he did not venture to say that the girl did not live, I felt no concern at his indignation. All the other stories were serialized. The Typhoon appeared in the early numbers of the Palmol magazine, then under the direction of the late Mr. Halkett. It was on that occasion, too, that I saw for the first time my conceptions rendered by an artist in another medium. Mr. Morris Griffinhagen knew how to combine in his illustrations the effect of his own most distinguished personal vision with an absolute fidelity to the inspiration of the writer. Amy Foster was published in the Illustrated London News with a fine drawing of Amy on her day out giving tea to the children at her home in a hat with a big feather. Tomorrow appeared first in the Palmol magazine. Of that story, I will only say that it struck many people by its adaptability to the stage and that I was induced to dramatize it under the title of One Day More. Up to the present, my only effort in that direction. I may also add that each of the four stories on their appearance in book form was picked out on various grounds as the best of the lot by different critics, who reviewed the volume with a warmth and appreciation and understanding, a sympathetic insight and a friendliness of expression for which I cannot be sufficiently grateful. 1919, Joseph Conrad