Notes on My Books | Page 9

and by themselves in the body of my work. It is also the period
during which I contributed to Maga; a period dominated by "Lord Jim"
and associated in my grateful memory with the late Mr. William
Blackwood's encouraging and helpful kindness.
"Youth" was not my first contribution to Maga. It was the second. But
that story marks the first appearance in the world of the man Marlow,
with whom my relations have grown very intimate in the course of
years. The origins of that gentleman (nobody as far as I know had ever
hinted that he was anything but that)--his origins have been the subject
of some literary speculation of, I am glad to say, a friendly nature.
One would think that I am the proper person to throw a light on the

matter; but in truth I find that it isn't so easy. It is pleasant to remember
that nobody had charged him with fraudulent purposes or looked down
on him as a charlatan; but apart from that he was supposed to be all
sorts of things: a clever screen, a mere device, a "personator," a familiar
spirit, a whispering "dæmon." I myself have been suspected of a
meditated plan for his capture.
That is not so. I made no plans. The man Marlow and I came together
in the casual manner of those health-resort acquaintances which
sometimes ripen into friendships. This one has ripened. For all his
assertiveness in matters of opinion he is not an intrusive person. He
haunts my hours of solitude, when, in silence, we lay our heads
together in great comfort and harmony; but as we part at the end of a
tale I am never sure that it may not be for the last time. Yet I don't think
that either of us would care much to survive the other. In his case, at
any rate, his occupation would be gone and he would suffer from that
extinction, because I suspect him of some vanity. I don't mean vanity in
the Solomonian sense. Of all my people he's the one that has never
been a vexation to my spirit. A most discreet, understanding man....
Even before appearing in book-form "Youth" was very well received. It
lies on me to confess at last, and this is as good a place for it as another,
that I have been all my life--all my two lives--the spoiled adopted child
of Great Britain and even of the Empire; for it was Australia that gave
me my first command. I break out into this declaration not because of a
lurking tendency to megalomania, but, on the contrary, as a man who
has no very notable illusions about himself. I follow the instinct of
vain-glory and humility natural to all mankind. For it can hardly be
denied that it is not their own deserts that men are most proud of, but
rather of their prodigious luck, of their marvellous fortune: of that in
their lives for which thanks and sacrifices must be offered on the altars
of the inscrutable gods.
Heart of Darkness also received a certain amount of notice from the
first; and of its origins this much may be said: it is well known that
curious men go prying into all sorts of places (where they have no
business) and come out of them with all kinds of spoil. This story, and

one other, not in this volume, are all the spoil I brought out from the
centre of Africa, where, really, I had no sort of business. More
ambitious in its scope and longer in the telling, Heart of Darkness is
quite as authentic in fundamentals as Youth. It is, obviously, written in
another mood. I won't characterize the mood precisely, but anybody
can see that it is anything but the mood of wistful regret, of reminiscent
tenderness.
One more remark may be added. Youth is a feat of memory. It is a
record of experience; but that experience, in its facts, in its inwardness
and in its outward colouring, begins and ends in myself. Heart of
Darkness is experience, too; but it is experience pushed a little (and
only very little) beyond the actual facts of the case for the perfectly
legitimate, I believe, purpose of bringing it home to the minds and
bosoms of the readers. There it was no longer a matter of sincere
colouring. It was like another art altogether. That sombre theme had to
be given a sinister resonance, a tonality of its own, a continued
vibration that, I hoped, would hang in the air and dwell on the ear after
the last note had been struck.
After saying so much there remains the last tale of the book, still
untouched. The End of the Tether is a story of sea-life in