Joseph Conrad

William Rothenstein

Pencil on paper

Photographically “reproduced by Mr. Emery Walker” (Preface)

Signed with initials and dated 1916

Materials on Joseph Conrad in the Victorian Web

See below for text accompanying this portrait.

Image capture, color correction, and text by George P. Landow

[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the Internet Archive and University of Toronto and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one. ]

[Rothenstein does does not identify which of the “various hands” wrote the commentary below that accompanies his portrait drawing.]

It is said that no human being is more solitary than a ship-captain. Joseph Conrad held the august and withdrawn situation of a ship-captain, in the British Merchant Service, for a number of years. He has now been an author, before the public, for just a quarter of a century; but the habit of solitude, reinforced continually by a reserved and sensitive temperament, has so clung to him that his personality is scarcely better known to-day than when he published his first book, "Almayer's Folly", in 1895. The few people of his second vocation who meet him know that he is as distinguished, elusive, and romantic as the finest of his own heroes; and, save exceeding few among them, they know no more. His portrait is a rare and a misleading apparition in the papers. His name hides a more formidable one. The language which he uses is not the language which he spoke as a youth; nor is it quite the idiom of an Englishman. In his earlier works are to be found many exotic turns of phrase, and some which cannot be strictly defined as English. He has gradually perfected the instrument which he selected for himself, and to-day his luxurious prose, while no Englishman could write it, is unassailable by purists and professors. Even his magnificent partiality for the adjective, which he dangerously lifted to a level hitherto unknown in Britain, has been chastened in obedience to the genius of the tongue. His handling of English must count with the historic miracles of the craft of letters; but this miracle of slowly acquired virtuosity is forgotten in the intrinsic splendour of the work itself. He does not merely write in the grand manner, he conceives and imagines in the grand manner. So much so that the astounding vehicle of the work sinks to secondary importance. His character and his plots are heroic. His ruthless realism is romantic. He sees man and the earth grandly. He does not want to alter human nature he loves it.

References

Rothenstein, William. Twenty-four Portraits with critical appreciations by various hands. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1920. Internet Archive version of a copy at the University of Toronto. Web. 20 November 2012.

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Last modified 20 November 2012