The sea to
him is a living thing, an omnipotent and unfathomable thing, almost a
god. He sees it as the Eternal Enemy, deceitful in its caresses, sudden
in its rages, relentless in its enmities, and forever a mystery.
Sec. 6
Conrad's first novel, "Almayer's Folly," was printed in 1895. He tells
us in "A Personal Record" that it took him seven years to write
it--seven years of pertinacious effort, of trial and error, of learning
how to write. He was, at this time thirty-eight years old. Seventeen
years before, landing in England to fit himself for the British merchant
service, he had made his first acquaintance with the English language.
The interval had been spent almost continuously at sea--in the Eastern
islands, along the China coast, on the Congo and in the South Atlantic.
That he hesitated between French and English is a story often told, but
he himself is authority for the statement that it is more symbolical
than true. Flaubert, in those days, was his idol, as we know, but the
speech of his daily business won, and English literature reaped the
greatest of all its usufructs from English sea power.
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