Lord Jim

by Joseph Conrad

  Keppel

  Captain Henry Keppel, A Visit to the Indian Archipelago in H. M. Ship Mæander, with Portions of the Private Journal of Sir James Brooke, K. C. B., 2 vols. (London: Richard Bentley, 1853).

  Low

  Hugh Low, Sarawak; Its Inhabitants and Productions: being Notes during a Residence in that Country with H. H. The Rajah Brooke (London: Richard Bentley, 1848).

  McNair

  Major Fred McNair, Perak and the Malays: Sārong and Krīs (London: Tinsley Bros., 1878).

  Mundy

  Rodney Mundy, Narrative of Events in Borneo and Celebes down to the Occupation of Labuan, from the Journals of James Brooke, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1848).

  Sherry

  Norman Sherry, Conrad's Eastern World (Cambridge University Press, 1966).

  Wallace

  Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, The Land of the Orang-Utan and the Bird of Paradise, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1869).

  TITLE

  Lord Jim, A Tale: Conrad's title underwent several transformations. The earliest version, when he thought of the work as a short story, was ‘Jim: A Sketch’, which he then changed to ‘Tuan Jim, A Sketch’. The novel was serialized in 1899–1900 under the title Lord Jim: A Sketch. For book publication, Conrad altered this to Lord Jim, A Tale. Critics have noted that the formal and aristocratic ‘lord’ and the informality of the nickname may suggest a fundamental divergence or split in character.

  EPIGRAPH

  It… Novalis: Fragment 153 of Das Allgemeine Brouillon by the German Romantic poet Friedrich Leopold, Baron von Hardenberg (1772–1801), who wrote under the pen-name Novalis. Conrad possibly came across the phrase in the version by the English essayist and historian Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881): ‘“It is certain”, says Novalis, “my Conviction gains infinitely, the moment another soul will believe in it”’ in On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841), Lecture II, or in Sartor Resartus (1838).

  DEDICATION

  Hope: Conrad met Fountaine Hope (George Fountaine Weare Hope, 1854–1930), his first English friend, in 1880. Trained for the Merchant Service in the famed Conway and having a career at sea, Hope later went into business. He and his wife Frances Ellen Hope (née Mayer, 1854–1941) lived in Stanford-le-Hope, Essex. The drowning of the Hopes' seventeen-year-old son Fountaine in mysterious circumstances during the writing of Lord Jim seems to have renewed the friendship's intensity, Conrad and his wife going to console the Hopes shortly after they learned the news of their loss.

  I

  1. ship-chandler: Retailer of marine stores and equipment.

  2. patience of Job: The biblical figure Job uncomplainingly bears a series of hard trials with extreme forbearance, his patience becoming proverbial.

  3. Confounded: Like ‘infernal’, ‘blessed’ and ‘dash’, a euphemism for ‘damned’.

  4. Bombay… Batavia: Jim goes eastward through the British Empire's major Far Eastern ports and trading cities as well as to Batavia, the capital and commercial centre of the Dutch East Indies (present-day Jakarta, Indonesia).

  5. Tuan: Variously ‘master’, ‘sir’ or simply ‘Mr’, a Malay term of reference or of address to high-status individuals, local or European. Malays commonly use the first name rather than surname with this (e.g., Tuan Jim or Mr Jim).

  6. babel: A scene of confusion or a confused turbulent medley of sounds, conjured up by association with the Tower of Babel in Genesis 9.

  II

  1. daily task that gives bread: An allusion to the ‘Lord's Prayer’: ‘Give us this day our daily bread…’ (Matthew 6:11 and Luke 11:3).

  2. Tamil: Tamils are a people from south-east India and Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka).

  3. dark places of the sea: The phrase plays on a once well-known commonplace from Psalms 74:20: ‘Have respect unto the covenant: for the dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty.’

  4. country ships: Ships registered in a colonial port and plying a local rather than international trade.

  5. half-castes: A now obsolete term for persons of mixed race.

  6. New South Wales German: That is, a German immigrant to the Australian state of New South Wales.

  7. “blood-and-iron”: The German chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1815–98) pursued an aggressive foreign policy in Europe. The allusion here is to his well-known statement made in a speech to the Prussian Budget Commission in Berlin on 29 September 1862: ‘The great questions of the day will not be settled by speeches and majority decisions – that was the mistake of 1848 and 1849 – but by iron and blood.’

  8. Strait: The Strait of Malacca, a busy waterway for trade separating Sumatra from the Malay Peninsula.

  9. bay: The Bay of Bengal, a northern arm of the Indian Ocean, off India's eastern coast.

  10. “One-degree” passage: Properly, the ‘One and a Half Degree’ Channel, off the Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean.

  III

  1. sleep, death's brother: In Greek mythology, the personification of sleep, Hypnos, and the personification of death, Thanatos, were sons of Nyx (Night).

  2. Perim: At the time of the novel a British coaling-station on a small island in the Red Sea, off Aden.

  3. half cooked: Intoxicated, drunk (slang).

  4. durned: A euphemism for ‘damned’, an Americanism, with Conrad perhaps mistaking its usage since the speaker is British.

  5. Schnapps: Any of various strong spirits resembling genever gin.

  6. Penny wise, pound foolish: English expression meaning thrifty in small matters while careless or wasteful in large ones.

  7. four-finger: A unit of measurement equivalent to the breadth of four fingers.

  8. old stager: An expression indicating great experience, and derived from the metaphor that ‘all the world's a stage’. Cf. Jacques's famous speech in Shakespeare's As You Like It: ‘All the world's a stage, / And all the men and women merely players’ (II.vii. 139–40).

  9. Wapping: An east London district on the River Thames near the Tower of London, an area inhabited for centuries by seamen and peppered with shipping businesses.

  10. dollars: That is, Straits dollars, the currency of the Straits Settlements (Penang, the Dindings, Malacca and Singapore).

  11. find yourself: To pay out of one's pocket for one's living and needs.

  12. dratted: An elision of ‘God rot’, a euphemism for ‘accursed’ or ‘damned’.

  IV

  1. Eastern port: Bombay (not Singapore, as Sherry and others have claimed).

  2. punkahs: Large swinging fans made from cloth or from palm fronds and placed so as to make air circulate and to cool a room. A servant or slave, the punkah-wallah, pulled the cord to set and maintain the fan in motion.

  3. drill suits: A gentleman's tropical suit made of stout twilled linen or cotton and featuring a diagonal weave.

  4. pith hats: A hat made from spongewood and designed to protect against the hot tropical sun.

  5. peons: Minor functionaries (cf. also ‘police peon’).

  v

  1. pilgrim in this valley: An image from the Christian concept that humans are on earth, a ‘vale’ of tears, sin and temptation, before going to heaven. There may be a recollection of Pilgrim's Progress (1678 and 1684) by John Bunyan (1628–88), the hero of which, the eponymously named Christian, travels through the Valley of Humiliation and the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

  2. Parsee Dubash: A dubash (Hindi) is a person of two languages; hence, an interpreter. A Parsi (present-day English spelling) is an Indian adherent of Zoroastrianism and, as the word suggests – Phaarsi in Hindi – of Persian descent. Parsis remain a prominent and well-to-do, if numerically small, community in Mumbai (formerly Bombay).

  3. Captain Elliot: Based on Captain Henry Ellis (1835–1908), Singapore's Master-Attendant during Conrad's time in the port.

  4. nose-nippers: Spectacles held in place on the bridge of the nose by a spring.

  5. Viceroy: In British India, the highes
t colonial administrator, residing in the administrative capital Calcutta. India was the only British colony to have such a high-ranking official.

  6. Apia: A port city in Western Samoa in the South Pacific. Conrad's contemporary readers likely connected it with the popular Scottish novelist and poet Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94), perhaps best known for The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), who had resided there.

  7. Flensborg: A German port town (properly, Flensburg) near the present Danish border and Germany's northernmost large city.

  8. Stettin: A port town (present-day Szczecin, Poland) on the Oder River near the Baltic Sea, at the time of the novel part of the German Empire.

  9. Talcahuano: A port town in south central Chile.

  10. twinkling of an eye: ‘We shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye’ (1 Corinthians 15:51–2).

  11. quill-driver: A common pejorative term for someone employed in record-keeping and writing.

  12. keeping up his pecker: Holding steadfast by dint of effort, maintaining one's equilibrium, ‘pecker’ being slang for one's nose.

  13. snowy-winged coif: A coif is a tight-fitting cap worn under a nun's veil and used to support it on the head. Conrad has transferred this to nurses, who in British parlance are ‘sisters’.

  14. Q.T.: Quietly, on the sly (slang).

  15. dresser: A medical assistant, particularly in dressing wounds.

  16. pursued me like a vengeance: Nemesis, a minor female deity in classical mythology, was the winged personification of vengeance. She pursued wrongdoers and those suffering from hubris (pride) and was attended on by the Furies.

  17. D.T.s: A slang abbreviation for delirium tremens, a condition caused by acute alcohol poisoning and usually involving trembling, hallucinations and psychotic episodes.

  18. method in his raving: ‘Though this be madness, yet there is method in't’ (Shakespeare, Hamlet, II.ii.205–6).

  19. batrachian: The order of amphibia including toads and frogs.

  VI

  1. Emperor of East and West: A title used during the late days of the Roman Empire.

  2. ignored: A Gallicism from ignorer, that is ‘to be unaware of’ or ‘not to know’, not in the English sense of ‘disregard’.

  3. jumped overboard: Captain Brierly's suicide draws on that of Captain James Smith Wallace (1853–80), the captain of the famed Cutty Sark, who jumped off his ship in the Straits of Anjer in early September 1880, apparently to avoid facing an inquiry for his role in helping his first mate escape after he killed a rebellious crew member during heavy weather. Conrad also drew on the incident for his short story ‘The Secret Sharer’.

  4. Hector Bank: The bank, which ceased to exist in 1886, was situated east of the south-east approach to Carimata Straits, off Java.

  5. out of his time: Out of his term of apprenticeship.

  6. off my chump: Mad or insane (slang).

  7. Pelion… Ossa: Mountains famed in Greek mythology. The Giants, who supported Cronus, deposed from his position as the head of the Titans, piled Pelion upon Ossa in assaulting the usurper Zeus.

  8. tiffin: The mid-day meal (colonial English).

  9. Punch and Judy: A popular street or seaside entertainment with puppets, featuring stock figures, a great deal of rousting about and Mr Punch's beating of his wife Judy.

  10. Haï-phong: A major port on the South China Sea in what at the time of the novel's action was the French colony of Tonkin (present-day Vietnam).

  11. occupation: The French Protectorate established in 1883.

  12. putting on side: Obtaining the cooperation or allegiance of.

  13. east of the fiftieth meridian: That is, beyond the Middle East, the meridian mentioned running through the Gulf of Aden and Arabia.

  14. committed… keeping of the sea: ‘The Order for the Burial of the Dead at Sea’, Book of Common Prayer (1623): ‘We therefore commit his body to the deep, to be turned into corruption.’

  VII

  1. labelled… luggage: Putting gummed stickers on trunks with place-names of the destinations travelled to was once popular, particularly during the days of ocean travel.

  2. iced pudding: Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management (1861) by Isabella Beeton (1836–65) gives a recipe for this confection in which almonds, eggs and milk are mixed together and frozen in a mould.

  3. bonâ-fide: In good faith (Latin).

  4. sepulture: A literary usage meaning burial or interment.

  VIII

  1. the hod of the rag-picker or the fine linen: Hodden is a coarse, hand-woven woollen fabric. Fine linen suggests wealth and luxury and has biblical connotations; cf. ‘There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day’ (Luke 16:19), and ‘a garment of fine linen and purple’ (Esther 8:15).

  2. on the square: Colloquial: honest, fair.

  3. It is always the unexpected that happens: Proverbial from at least Roman times (see, for example, Plautus' Mostellaria, I.iii.40).

  4. the waters and the firmament: ‘And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven’ (Genesis 1:6–8).

  5. the sword hanging by a hair: An allusion to the famous story that Damocles, one of the courtiers of Dionysius of Syracuse (c.430–367 BC), having extolled the tyrant's good fortune, was invited to taste of it and at a banquet looked up to find a sword hanging above his head suspended by a single horsehair.

  6. The sights it showed him had turned him into cold stone: In classical mythology, seeing the snake-headed Medusa turned the beholder to stone.

  7. confessed himself… to bind and to loose: As interpreted by the Roman Catholic Church, the words ‘Whatever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever ye lose on earth shall be loosed in heaven’ (Matthew 18:18) addressed by Christ to Peter, instituted the Sacrament of Penance (‘confession’).

  8. farthing: British coin, worth a quarter of a penny at the time.

  9. Omnipotence whose mercy: A reference to Islamic tradition, one of the ninety-nine names of Allah being ‘The Merciful’.

  10. Thou shalt not: An echo in the negative of the repeated enjoinder ‘Thou shalt’ of the Ten Commandments.

  11. white Tuan: A literal translation of the Malay tuan putih.

  IX

  1 . Gott-for-dam: An anglicized version of Gottverdammt (German).

  2. make angels weep: Cf. ‘man, proud man… / Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven / As makes the angels weep; who, with our spleens, / Would all themselves laugh mortal’ (Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, II.ii.117–23).

  X

  1. quick: That is, ‘alive’. Cf. The Creed in The Order for the Administration of the Lord's Supper, or Holy Communion, Book of Common Prayer (1623): ‘And he shall come again in glory to judge both the quick and the dead.’

  2. shadow of death: A commonplace from the King James Bible. The phrase occurs in seven books, perhaps most familiarly in Psalm 23:4: ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.’

  3. Canal: The Suez Canal, opened in 1869, links the Mediterranean Sea to the Gulf of Suez.

  XI

  1. in which he moved and had his being: Cf. ‘In him we live, and move, and have our being’ (Acts 17:28).

  XII

  1. Réunion: A small island in the Indian Ocean off Madagascar's east coast, one of France's overseas territories.

  2. Fort intrigues par ce cadavre: Marlow's French is usually immediately translated; the phrase here is translated at the end of the paragraph.

  3. ‘Home News': The Sydney location suggests Home News for Australia, published during Conrad's time in the Far East and the Antipodes.

  4. One had to attend… agitate themselves: The literal translati
on reproduces French syntax: On… s'agitaient. Cf. also ‘made my proofs’ (faire mes preuves) and ‘make good countenance’ (faire bonne figure).

  5. One has done one's possible: A literal translation of the French On a fait son possible (to do one's best).

  6. Toulon: A major Mediterranean port and since 1599 the site of the French Naval Arsenal and base for the French Navy.

  XIII

  1. submitted himself passively to: A Gallicism from se soumettre à or a Polonism from poddał się (though the ‘to’ is not involved). The reflexive is unnecessary in English.

  2. third lieutenant: The French Navy lacks such a rank.

  3. Rushcutters’ Bay: A cove near Sydney, Australia.

  4. ‘remarked’: The French Lieutenant uses remarquer (to note).

  5. southerly buster: An abrupt southerly change in wind occurring off the New South Wales coast mainly during the summer. It often produces strong, squally winds and is sometimes accompanied by a sharp drop in temperature and thunderstorms.

  6. elevated his eyebrows: Unless a French cast is being given to Marlow's description, a Gallicism: élever.

  7. One may talk: A Gallicism: On peut parler.

  8. rolled my hump: A literal translation. The French phrase means ‘knocked about a bit’ or ‘to know how the world works’.

  9. L'homme est né poltron: Possibly an ironic transformation of the famous opening of Le Contrat social (1762) by the French philosophe and political theorist Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78): ‘L'homme est ne libre’ (Man is born free).

  10. Sephora disaster: The story is based on the Royal Mail Line's steamship Douro's collision with the Spanish steamship the Yrurac Bat off Cape Finisterre on 1 April 1882. The Douro's captain, five male passengers and six officers were lost. Accounts in The Times of 3–12 April 1882 relate the death of the maid in the service of Lady Becher. (The Douro was discovered and salvaged in 1995, its cargo of bullion having attracted salvagers.)