Lord Jim

by Joseph Conrad

  11. pull devil, pull baker: A proverbial expression for a contest resisting resolution.

  12. loved too well: ‘Then must you speak/ Of one that lov'd not wisely but too well’ (Shakespeare, Othello, V.ii.343–4).

  13. fount and origin: A translation of fons et origo (Latin), sometimes given, less literally, as ‘source and origin’. The phrase was a commonplace.

  XIV

  1. block… head roll off: Decapitation by an axe was, in fact, reserved for the aristocracy and gentry sentenced for the crime of high treason.

  2. Tower Hill: Near the London docks, the site at which traitors and malefactors held in the Tower of London were publicly executed. Royal persons and nobles were privately executed in the Tower.

  3. sombre uniform: A Gallicism from sombre (dark).

  4. Walpole Reefs: Coral reefs in the south-west Pacific Ocean off the island of New Caledonia.

  5. ass's skin: Literally parchment, but by extension a certificate or any important or official document. Used in both Polish and French, the phrase has a significant literary provenance in the novel La Peau de chagrin (The Wild Ass's Skin, 1831) by Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850).

  6. Old Robinson: Conrad was friendly with a seaman so named living in retirement in Melbourne with his daughter. Robinson, who had travelled widely in the Malay Archipelago, had a first-hand knowledge of Malay intrigues and affairs (Conrad to S. S. Pawling, 8 November 1897). He may also have been aware of English-born Edward Oswin Robinson (1847–1917), whose adventurous life in Australia and the South Seas included trading, pearling, ‘knocking about’ the Northern Territory coast and gold fields and establishing a trepanning station on Croker Island in partnership with a friend. (See The Dictionary of Australian Biography.)

  7. shipwreck: The details may partly come from the wreck of the Lorenzo on 6–7 January 1885. Loading guano at Sydney Island, in the Phoenix group, the ship, which was possibly overloaded, succumbed to heavy weather. The crew remained on the island until late February, when they were rescued and taken to Fiji. Conrad possibly knew of the events from a fellow officer in the Adowa, William Paramor (1861–1941), who had undergone them, whom he recalls in A Personal Record.

  8. Stewart Island: An inhospitable island off the southern tip of South Island, New Zealand.

  9. gave me the name of: A Gallicism, formed on the construction de traiter quelqu'un de.

  10. crakee: Normally spelled ‘crikey’ (although an Australian accent may be suggested), an oath of circumlocution that avoids ‘Christ’. The exclamation expresses various moods ranging from disgust to exasperation to simple surprise.

  11. Hobart: The capital of the large Australian island of Tasmania.

  12. Honour bright: A colloquial version of ‘on my honour’.

  13. screw: A slang expression for salary or wages.

  14. Argonauts: In classical mythology, a group of heroes who accompanied Jason in the Argo in search of the Golden Fleece.

  XV

  1. Prince Ravonalo something: Prince Rainilairivony (1826–95) served as prime minister to three queens of Madagascar, the last being his wife, Queen Razafindrahèty Ranavalona III Manjaka (1861–1917; reigned 1883–96).

  2. Admiral Pierre: Rear-Admiral Pierre (d. 1883), Commander-in-Chief of the French Naval Division in the Indian Ocean, was ordered to attack Madagascar in February 1883. French forces established a garrison at Mahajanga in May and took Tamatave in June.

  3. annas: Indian coins of the lowest value, sixteen being equivalent to a rupee.

  4. rather smaller than a mustard-seed: That is, infinitesimal. Possibly a distant echo or garbled version of ‘Unto what is the kingdom of God like?… It is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and cast into his garden; and it grew, and waxed a great tree’ (Luke 13:18–19).

  5. Sidiboy fireman: A Muslim of African descent, from sidi, a Hindi coinage, a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad's daughter. In a steamship, a fireman supplies coal to the furnaces for running the engine.

  XVI

  1. Arcadian: From Arcady or Arcadia, the version of paradise in Greek mythology.

  2. face of the waters: ‘And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters’ (Genesis 1:2).

  3. hipped: In an unhappy state (obsolete).

  4. the envelope of flesh and blood: A figure of speech derived from enveloppe mortel (French), that is, the body as the receptacle of the soul.

  5. And that's true, too: Shakespeare, King Lear, V.ii.11:

  EDGAR. Ripeness is all. Come on.

  GLOUCESTER. And that's true too.

  XVII

  1. brick: A slang expression for a kind and generous person.

  2. destiny… face of a rock: An image possibly borrowing from a commonplace in Islamic culture that an individual's destiny is written upon his forehead.

  XVIII

  1. Egström & Blake: A firm based on the well-known Singapore ships’ chandlers McAlister & Company, located near Emmerson's Tiffin Rooms in what was at the time the centre of European commercial and social activity in the city. Jacques Berthoud in his edition of Lord Jim (Oxford, 2002) convincingly places this scene at Penang, a seaport 800 miles south of Rangoon (not the 700 miles specified here). Singapore is 1,200 miles distant from Rangoon.

  2. the voice of one scolding desperately in a wilderness: ‘The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight’ (Mark 1:3).

  XIX

  1. rolling stone: Proverbial: ‘A rolling stone gathers no moss.’

  2. Yucker Brothers: Based on the Swiss firm Jucker & Sigg & Co. of Bangkok, ships’ chandlers and dealers in teak, rice and general merchandise (established in 1882 by Albert Jucker in partnership with Henry Sigg). Conrad had dealings with the firm when he was captain of the Otago in 1888.

  3. Siegmund Yucker: A character based in part on Albert Jucker (1844–85), who died of cholera in Bangkok. A company history records that his cousin and business partner Henry Sigg suffered from dyspepsia and was forced to return to Switzerland in 1890 because of ill health.

  4. Menam: In Thai, simply ‘a river’. Bangkok's Chao Phraya River commonly was and sometimes still is simply called the Menam (‘The River’). Usage here follows the practice of the day.

  5. pot-house shindies: Brawls in a public house caused by excessive drinking.

  6. Stein: A character (the name is pronounced ‘shtine’) based in part on the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913) who extensively explored the farthest reaches of Borneo and the Outer Islands of the Dutch East Indies and was a great collector of animal and plant specimens, particularly of butterflies and beetles. The German Romantic writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) has also been suggested as an influence.

  7. the Moluccas: A group of islands in the Dutch East Indies (present-day Maluku, Indonesia) situated between the Celebes and New Guinea and the world's main source of cloves.

  8. Buprestridœ and Longicorns: Species of beetles, the first often brightly coloured, the latter distinguished by long antennae.

  9. Mohammed Bonso: The name occurs as Mahomed Bansoo in McNair (p. 209) and also appears in William Marsden's Memoirs of a Malayan Family (1830).

  XX

  1. Coleoptera: A species of winged beetle.

  2. revolutionary movement of 1848: Inspired by the overthrow of King Louis-Philippe of France (1773–1850; reigned 1830–48) in February 1848, nationalist groups in Bohemia, northern Italy, Hungary, Slovenia and Slovakia attempted to rid their lands of Austrian rule, while insurgents in the various German polities wanted democratic constitutions on a parliamentary model. These efforts failed, and the nationalist cause across Europe was for a time eclipsed.

  3. republican: That is, wishing to see the end of the Habsburg monarchy that held sway over the diverse peoples of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the end of the First World War.

  4. Trieste: A major Adriatic seaport, at the time of the novel part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; it was a
nnexed to Italy in 1919.

  5. Tripoli: An ancient Mediterranean port (present-day Tarabalus, Libya) in northern Africa.

  6. a Dutch traveller: A composite figure based in part on a German naturalist mentioned in Wallace, Dr Bernstein, who collected for the Leiden Museum (hence ‘Dutch’), and on Wallace himself, who amassed enormous collections of tropical flora and fauna and had a special interest in collecting butterflies and beetles.

  7. the Archipelago: The Malay Archipelago, which stretches from the west of the Malay Peninsula to a point north of Western Australia.

  8. chief ruler of Wajo States: Base Kajuara, Queen of Boni, ruled the Wajo kingdom in the south-eastern Celebes in the 1850s, being defeated by the Dutch the following decade. Conrad was interested in the travels of James Brooke in the Celebes, particularly in Wajo, from Mundy's account of Brooke's life.

  9. I captured this rare specimen: Two incidents in Wallace provide the source:

  I was one afternoon walking along a favorite road through the forest, with my gun, when I saw a butterfly on the ground. It was large, handsome, and quite new to me, and I got close to it before it flew away.’ (chapter 3, p. 40)

  I had seen sitting on a leaf out of reach, an immense butterfly of a dark color marked with white and yellow spots. I could not capture it as it flew away high up into the forest… During the two succeeding months I only saw it once again… I had begun to despair of ever getting a specimen, as it seemed so rare and wild… The next day I went again to the same shrub and succeeded in catching a female, and the day after a fine male. I found it to be as I had expected, a perfectly new and most magnificent species, and one of the most gorgeously colored butterflies in the world… The beauty and brilliance of this insect are indescribable, and none but a naturalist can understand the intense excitement I experienced when I at length captured it. On taking it out of my net and opening the glorious wings, my heart began to beat violently, the blood rushed to my head, and I felt much more like fainting than I have done when in apprehension of immediate death. (chapter 24, pp. 341–2)

  10. So halt’ ich's… Sinne mein: Johann Wolfgang van Goethe's Torquato Tasso (1790): ‘I hold it, then, at last in my hands,/And unambiguously I call it mine’ (I.iii.393–4).

  11. the question… how to live: Cf. ‘Le problème est de vivre, et pas de guérir’ (The problem is to live, not to be cured), a phrase in a letter of 8 February 1777 from the Italian economist, philosopher and diplomat the Abbé Ferdinando Galiani (1728–87) to society figure and hostess of a literary salon Madame d'Epinay (Louise Tardieu d'Esclavelle de la Live, 1726–83).

  12. the words of your great poet: That is the question: ‘To be, or not to be, that is the question’ (Shakespeare, Hamlet, III.i.55).

  13. the heart pain—the world pain: Translations of Herzweh and Weltschmerz (German).

  14. sea… keep you up: The passage parallels one in Goethe (1795), as translated by Thomas Carlyle: ‘“We look upon our scholars”, said the Overseer, “as so many swimmers, who, in the element which threatened to swallow them, feel with astonishment that they are lighter, that it bears and carries them forward: and so it is with every thing that man undertakes”,’ Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (1824; 1899 edn) II, 321; cf. also Carlyle's Past and Present (1843), Book III, chapter 11: ‘All work of man is as the swimmer's: a waste of ocean threatens to devour him; if he front it not bravely, it will keep its word. By incessant wise defiance of it, lusty rebuke and buffet of it, behold how it loyally supports him, bears him as it conquerors along. “It is so”, says Goethe, “with all things that man undertakes in this world.”’

  XXI

  1. Patusan: The name (pronounced PAH-tu-san) was that of a large pirate settlement in Sarawak, north-west Borneo, the destruction of which is described in Keppel. Chapter XXXVIII establishes the geographical locale as north-west Sumatra, but topographical and ethnographic details are from the Berau River region of north-east Borneo, an area Conrad knew from his voyages in the Vidar in 1887–8.

  2. a star of the fifth magnitude: In Ptolemy's system, stars of the fifth magnitude are barely visible.

  3. Malacca Portuguese: Until its harbour silted up, a major port (present-day Melaka, Malaysia) and administrative centre on the Strait of Malacca. The Portuguese laid claim to it in 1511; it later passed to Dutch (1641) and then to British (1825) control.

  4. Cornelius: The English version of the Portuguese name Cornélio, and probably a concession to Conrad's readership.

  5. native-ruled State: Until the political consolidations of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, administration in the Dutch East Indies was diverse, with some areas of the vast archipelago under direct control, and others, particularly the so-called ‘Outer Islands’, having a largely symbolic or trade-related Dutch presence.

  6. reward… dead leaves: A metaphor derived from a mistranslation of ‘The Hunchback's Tale, The Story of the Barber's Fourth Brother’ in a popular French version of The Arabian Nights (1704–8) by Antoine Galland (1646–1715).

  7. secular: A Gallicism from séculaire; literally, ‘centuries old’ but, more generally, ‘of great age’.

  8. how you call it: A Gallicism derived from comment (how).

  9. had done with my very young brother: Cf. ‘And the Lord said unto Cain, “Where is Abel thy brother?” And he said, “I know not: Am I my brother's keeper?”’ (Genesis 4:9).

  10. onlookers see most of the game: The Oxford English Dictionary gives the first recorded occurrence in The Comedy of Acolastus (1529) by John Palsgrave (d. 1554): ‘It fareth between thee and me as it doth between a player at the chess and a looker on, for he that looketh on seeth many draughts that the player considereth nothing at all.’

  11. The heaven and the earth must not be shaken: A possible echo of the Latin legal tag Fiat justitia ruat caelum (Let justice be done though the heavens fall).

  XXII

  1. the passion for pepper… James the First: The Dutch and English competition with Portugal, the established player, for the Southeast Asian pepper trade dates from 1596, prior to the reign of James I of England (also James VI of Scotland; born 1566; reigned 1603–25).

  2. an imbecile youth with two thumbs on his left hand: Several historical accounts of the region mention this figure:

  The Sultan, who is a nephew of the Rajah Muda Hassim, appears to be about forty years of age, very heavy and timid, whilst a degree of stupidity or idiotcy is strongly exhibited in his features; he also has a deformity in the right hand, in having two thumbs. (Captain Sir Edward Belcher, Narrative of the H. M. S. ‘Samarang’ during the Years 1843–46, 2 vols. (London: Reeve, Benham and Reeve, 1848), I, 58)

  the present ruler of Borneo… is a man of upwards of fifty years of age, of dark complexion, and stupid features. On his right hand he has a malformation resembling a thumb, which stands at an angle from the true thumb… His mind is also weak, approaching to idiotcy; he is, nevertheless, possessed of a wicked disposition. (Low, p. 108).

  He appeared about sixty years of age, his countenance evidencing imbecility and hypocrisy. He has two thumbs on his right hand; is five feet five inches in height; thin and meagre of limb. He was well dressed, his manner and deportment thorough bred, and he was treated with marked respect by the numerous princes and magnates who thronged the hall… his carriage was gentleman-like… (Munday, vol. II, pp. 262–3)

  3. news were: Plural in English until the early nineteenth century, ‘news’ in this form was obsolete at the time of the novel. Marlow may, however, be echoing Stein's faulty English: the German die Nachtrichten requires a plural.

  4. Rajah Allang: A historical pirate-chief by the name of Tunku Allang appears in McNair.

  5. visit of ceremony: This is possibly based on a visit Wallace and a companion made to a native court: ‘the Rajah asked what we wanted… questions were asked about my guns, and what powder I had… Each of my answers and explanations was followed by a low and serious conversation which we could not understand but
the purport of which we could guess. They were evidently quite puzzled, and did not believe a word we had told them’ (Wallace, Chapter 11, p. 176; Sherry, pp. 145–6).

  6. slaves: The Royal Netherlands government abolished slavery in 1863, although it continued to exist and even flourish at Berau in the 1880s, as it did elsewhere in the Dutch East Indies.

  7. on the way of becoming: A Gallicism from en passe de.

  8. rotten state: ‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark’ (Shakespeare, Hamlet, I.iv.89).

  XXIII

  1. ring: Although a common folklore motif, the story of the talismanic ring draws on an account of the friendship between a Malay dignitary and Rajah James Brooke recounted in Mundy:

  Pangeran Budrudeen then took a ring from his finger, and calling Jaffer to his presence, placed it in his hands with a last injunction to flee in haste to the sea, to endeavour to reach Sarāwak, and to convey the ring to his friend Mr Brooke as a dying memento of his esteem, and to bid Mr Brooke not to forget him, and to lay his case and the cause of his country before the Queen of England… It was difficult… to imagine that the story… was not a romantic fiction but a stern and undoubted fact. (vol. II, pp. 131–6)

  2. Doramin: The real-life basis for the name occurs in McNair: ‘there were… six Malays belonging to the boat, named Hadjee Doraman, who was nacodah (skipper)… Tamb' Itam…’ (p. 283).