Joseph Conrad, Stephen Crane and W. L. Courtney's Review of The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'

188 JOSEPH CONRAD, STEPHEN CRANE AND W. L. COURTNEY'S REVIEW OF THE NIGGER OF THE 'NARCISSUS' By Donald W. Rude (Texas Tech University) Writing of Joseph Conrad, Stephen Crane and The Nigger of the 'Narcissus.' Conrad's biographer Jocelyn Baines observes; Crane admired Conrad's work, or at least The Nigger, as much as he did Conrad. He told his friend Harold Frederic; "You and I and Kipling couldn't have written The Nigger and to another person described the book as "a crackerjack." Conrad on the other hand was well aware of the limitations of Crane's work. He told Garnett: "His eye is very individual and his expression satisfies me artistically. He certainly is the impressionist and his temperament is curiously unique. His thought is concise , connected, never very deep - yet often startling. He is the only impressionist and only an impressionist. . . . I could not explain why he disappoints me - why my enthusiasm withers as soon as I close the book. While one reads, of course he is not to be questioned. He is the master of his reader to the very last line - then - apparently for no reason at all - he seems to let go his hold." And to Cunninghame-Graham he said; "The man sees the outside of many things and the inside of some." As both The Red Badge and The Nigger had attempted to portray realistically the behaviour of individuals in a corporate setting it was inevitable that the two books, coming so closely one upon the other, should have been compared. For instance, W. L. Courtney wrote in The Daily Telegraph¡ Mr Joseph Conrad has chosen Mr Stephen Crane for his example, and has determined to do for the sea and the sailor what his predecessor had done for the war and warriors. The style, though a good deal better than Mr Crane's, has the same jerky and spasmodic quality; while a spirit of faithful and minute description - even to the verge of the wearisome - is common to both.! This must have galled Conrad because he was undoubtedly convinced that The Nigger was a far more substantial piece of work than The Red Badge. In piecing together this argument, Baines was not only ingenious but guilty of several critical errors. First, he gravely distorts Conrad's statements regarding Crane, excising six sympathetic, often laudatory sentences from his letter to Garnett and omitting Conrad's admonition to Cunninghame-Graham to "Read the Badge."2 Secondly, by taking the quotation from Courtney's review out of the proper context, he gives the remarks far more significance than they did in fact have in Courtney's remarkably detailed 189 analysis of The Nigger. Finally, and most importantly, Baines ignores altogether Conrad's two surviving letters which treat the reviewi one addressed to the critic himself, which responds in great detail to the thoughtful criticism of the reviewer; the other to Stephen Crane, damning the comparison because it was both libelous to Conrad and perhaps insulting to Crane.3 Published less than a week after the novel was issued in England by William Heinemann, Courtney's review appeared in his column "Books of the Day" in The Daily Telegraph. Whereas other newspapers had been content to accord the novel a paragraph or two, Courtney devoted an entire column to Conrad's third novel. His essay, while making concessions to Victorian taste, expressed general approval of The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' and is remarkable for the extent to which Courtney comprehended the narrative technique of the Anglo-Polish novelist whose style was not universally appreciated in 1897. Both the early appearance of the review and its detail must have given Courtney's examination of The Nigger particular interest for the author. The reviewer began by assertingi Mr. Joseph Conrad does not shrink from the conditions involved in his literary art. He is an unflinching realist and, therefore, has no hesitation in giving to his singularly vivid sind powerful tale of the sea the ugliest conceivable title. No one would say that "The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'" was a pretty or attractive inscription to stand at the head of an exceedingly careful and minute study, but we...