"The Idiots" in The Savoy: Decadence and the Celtic Fringe

"The Idiots" was Conrad's first published story. Written in the spring of 1896, it appeared in October of the same year in a short-lived magazine called The Savoy. Students of Conrad probably know "The Idiots" as one of five stories in a collection called Tales of Unrest, published in 1898. This paper will concentrate on the story's original site of publication, arguing that when we read "The Idiots" as part of The Savoy, themes and continuities from that publication illuminate facets of the story that we might otherwise overlook.¹

Conrad wrote "The Idiots" while on his honeymoon in Brittany; the title refers to a family of local children whom he had encountered in the area around Île-Grande, where he and Jessie were staying. Conrad asked T. Fisher Unwin to place the story for him, but Unwin had difficulty finding a magazine to take it. Eventually, through Edward Garnett, the story found its way to The Savoy. But Conrad was not entirely pleased to be in such a magazine, one now best known as the epitome of nineties decadence. "Decadence" will link the various parts of my account and explain both why Conrad was uncomfortable with The Savoy and why its editor was drawn to Conrad's work. The Breton location of "The Idiots" is paralleled by similarly baleful Celtic settings in stories and essays in the eight numbers of The Savoy.² The Celtic world was decaying and yet at the same time undergoing a cultural revival. This paper will discuss "The Idiots" in the light of the complex and contradictory discourse of Celticism.

I

In 1896, Conrad wrote two other short stories in addition to "The Idiots—"An Outpost of Progress" and "The Lagoon." He needed to sell them, and magazines were the market for short stories. But Conrad was suspicious of magazines. Anxious to develop a reputation as a serious novelist, he was well aware of the difference between wide popularity and recognition from a discerning few. Magazines catered to popular tastes, so they did little for a writer's prestige. But Conrad did make distinctions among them. When he wrote to Unwin telling him about a request from The Cornhill for stories, he commented, "I think this Cornhill is not a bad mag. to appear in" (CL 1: 286). A bad magazine was one like Pearson's, which asked him for something the following year. He turned it down: "I think it ["The Return"] is much too good to be thrown away where the right people won't see it" (CL 1: 405, original emphasis). Conrad's concern was to establish his literary standing, and the right people were those whose good opinion would help establish it. Such people did not read Pearson's. But they might well read The Cornhill and probably would look at Cosmopolis, another journal that interested Conrad. It began publication in January 1896, and although its editor turned down "The Idiots," he accepted "An Outpost of Progress." Conrad First tells us that "Cosmopolis: An International Review offered itself as a forum for European culture and international understanding in a time of escalating nationalism and militarism." The magazine included sections in English, French, and German, appearing with different covers in London, Paris, and Berlin; the London edition was published by Fisher Unwin. It ran only until November 1898, but during that short period "attracted an extraordinary array of contributors" (Cosmopolis). Apparently, the right people did see "An Outpost of Progress"; Conrad observes with satisfaction that "The Sat[urday] Review notices my story in the Cosmo[polis] with great discrimination" (CL 1: 363).

The Cornhill published "The Lagoon" in January 1897. Conrad had every reason to be happy to be in The Cornhill. Michael Ashley describes it as "the premier literary magazine of the High Victorian period, dominating the scene between 1860 and the 1890s" (250). Almost all the leading British writers of the period had shown their work there during the magazine's first twenty years. But by the early 1880s, circulation had dropped from 110,000 to 12,000. James Payn...