Whenever he turns from the starker lusts to the pale passions of man
under civilization, Conrad fails. "The Return" is a thoroughly infirm
piece of writing--a second rate magazine story. One concludes at once
that the author himself does not believe in it. "The Inheritors" is
worse; it becomes, after the first few pages, a flaccid artificiality, a
bore. It is impossible to imagine the chief characters of the Conrad
gallery in such scenes. Think of Captain MacWhirr reacting to social
tradition, Lord Jim immersed in the class war, Lena Hermann seduced by
the fashions, Almayer a candidate for office! As well think of
Huckleberry Finn at Harvard, or Tom Jones practising law.
These things do not interest Conrad, chiefly, I suppose, because he does
not understand them. His concern, one may say, is with the gross anatomy
of passion, not with its histology. He seeks to depict emotion, not in
its ultimate attenuation, but in its fundamental innocence and fury.
Inevitably, his materials are those of what we call melodrama; he is at
one, in the bare substance of his tales, with the manufacturers of the
baldest shockers.
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