When this novel first appeared in book form a notion
got about that I had been bolted away with. Some
reviewers maintained that the work starting as a short
story had got beyond the writer’s control.
One or two discovered internal evidence of the fact,
which seemed to amuse them. They pointed out
the limitations of the narrative form. They argued
that no man could have been expected to talk all that
time, and other men to listen so long. It was
not, they said, very credible.
After thinking it over for something like sixteen
years, I am not so sure about that. Men have
been known, both in the tropics and in the temperate
zone, to sit up half the night ‘swapping yarns’.
This, however, is but one yarn, yet with interruptions
affording some measure of relief; and in regard to
the listeners’ endurance, the postulate must
be accepted that the story was interesting. It
is the necessary preliminary assumption. If I
hadn’t believed that it was interesting I could
never have begun to write it. As to the mere physical
possibility we all know that some speeches in Parliament
have taken nearer six than three hours in delivery;
whereas all that part of the book which is Marlow’s
narrative can be read through aloud, I should say,
in less than three hours. Besides—though
I have kept strictly all such insignificant details
out of the tale—we may presume that there
must have been refreshments on that night, a glass
of mineral water of some sort to help the narrator
on.
But, seriously, the truth of the matter is, that my
first thought was of a short story, concerned only
with the pilgrim ship episode; nothing more.
And that was a legitimate conception. After writing
a few pages, however, I became for some reason discontented
and I laid them aside for a time. I didn’t
take them out of the drawer till the late Mr. William
Blackwood suggested I should give something again to
his magazine.
It was only then that I perceived that the pilgrim
ship episode was a good starting-point for a free
and wandering tale; that it was an event, too, which
could conceivably colour the whole ‘sentiment
of existence’ in a simple and sensitive character.
But all these preliminary moods and stirrings of spirit
were rather obscure at the time, and they do not appear
clearer to me now after the lapse of so many years.
The few pages I had laid aside were not without their
weight in the choice of subject. But the whole
was re-written deliberately. When I sat down
to it I knew it would be a long book, though I didn’t
foresee that it would spread itself over thirteen
numbers of Maga.
I have been asked at times whether this was not the
book of mine I liked best. I am a great foe to
favouritism in public life, in private life, and even
in the delicate relationship of an author to his works.
As a matter of principle I will have no favourites;
but I don’t go so far as to feel grieved and
annoyed by the preference some people give to my Lord
Jim. I won’t even say that I ‘fail
to understand . . .’ No! But once
I had occasion to be puzzled and surprised.
