Once again, the wisdom of the Kent edition of Conrad’s corpus comes through.
This is because, in A Personal Record, the sixth stop of the Conradathon, we learned about the real-life inspiration for the protagonist of this debut novel, from Conrad’s earliest sailing days in the southeast Asian seas.
The real-life Kaspar Almayer was half Dutch, half Malayan. In the story, his aspirations to grandeur drive him to erect an opulent house on a riverfront property in the fictional village of Sambir, in anticipation of a trading boom that never comes. The ostentatious house is the “Folly” of the title.
Almayer’s Folly is not only Conrad’s first book, but the first of a trilogy centered around Tom Lingard, another real-life nautical figure. (And Tom’s nephew James became Lord Jim in Conrad’s literary universe.)
The novel begins with so much table-setting about Lingard’s glory and exploits as a trader of English merchant goods. He’s here to throw old Almayer in further relief, since he’s everything Almayer is not:
And so Lingard came and went on his secret or open expeditions, becoming a hero in Almayer’s eyes by the boldness and enormous profits of his ventures, seeming to Almayer a very great man indeed as he saw him marching up the warehouse, grunting a “how are you?” to Vinck, or greeting Hudig, the Master, with a boisterous “Hallo, old pirate! Alive yet?” as a preliminary to transacting business behind the little green door.
We dwell on domestic scenes in Almayer’s house and his strained relationships to his nagging wife and daughter Nina. Conrad in this debut novel is truly freaking it with his descriptive prose, particularly in the second sentence of the passage below: the phrasing deftly threads the scene together while stamping the imagery in two colors.
He shivered in the night air, and suddenly became aware of the intense darkness which, on the sun’s departure, had closed in upon the river, blotting out the outlines of the opposite shore. Only the fire of dry branches lit outside the stockade of the Rajah’s compound called fitfully into view the ragged trunks of the surrounding trees, putting a stain of glowing red half-way across the river where the drifting logs were hurrying towards the sea through the impenetrable gloom. He had a hazy recollection of having been called some time during the evening by his wife. To his dinner probably. But a man busy contemplating the wreckage of his past in the dawn of new hopes cannot be hungry whenever his rice is ready. Time he went home, though; it was getting late.
Almayer’s daughter Nina gets into a courtship with Prince Dain Maroola, who had come to Sambir to trade with Almayer (and plan an expedition for gold — Almayer’s chief obsession). The pressure builds when Dutch colonial officers start looking for Dain, prompting the Rajah Lakamba to order Almayer’s assassination.
The passages Conrad devotes to Nina’s perspective on these events are charged with some Romantic and expressionist lines, where internal passion animates external nature:
But Nina put the lamp out and turned back again towards the balustrade of the verandah, standing with her arm round the wooden support and looking eagerly towards the Pantai reach. And motionless there in the oppressive calm of the tropical night she could see at each flash of lightning the forest lining both banks up the river, bending before the furious blast of the coming tempest, the upper reach of the river whipped into white foam by the wind, and the black clouds torn into fantastic shapes trailing low over the swaying trees. Round her all was as yet stillness and peace, but she could hear afar off the roar of the wind, the hiss of heavy rain, the wash of the waves on the tormented river. It came nearer and nearer, with loud thunder-claps and long flashes of vivid lightning, followed by short periods of appalling blackness. When the storm reached the low point dividing the river, the house shook in the wind, and the rain pattered loudly on the palm-leaf roof, the thunder spoke in one prolonged roll, and the incessant lightning disclosed a turmoil of leaping waters, driving logs, and the big trees bending before a brutal and merciless force.
Then on the other hand, is a paternalistic colonial view, as seen in this long passage on Taminah, one of Viceroy Babalatchi’s slaves.
Taminah walked on, her tray on the head, her eyes fixed on the ground. From the open doors of the houses were heard, as she passed, friendly calls inviting her within for business purposes, but she never heeded them, neglecting her sales in the preoccupation of intense thinking. Since the very early morning she had heard much, she had also seen much that filled her heart with a joy mingled with great suffering and fear. Before the dawn, before she left Bulangi’s house to paddle up to Sambir she had heard voices outside the house when all in it but herself were asleep. And now, with her knowledge of the words spoken in the darkness, she held in her hand a life and carried in her breast a great sorrow. Yet from her springy step, erect figure, and face veiled over by the everyday look of apathetic indifference, nobody could have guessed of the double load she carried under the visible burden of the tray piled up high with cakes manufactured by the thrifty hands of Bulangi’s wives. In that supple figure straight as an arrow, so graceful and free in its walk, behind those soft eyes that spoke of nothing but of unconscious resignation, there slept all feelings and all passions, all hopes and all fears, the curse of life and the consolation of death. And she knew nothing of it all. She lived like the tall palms amongst whom she was passing now, seeking the light, desiring the sunshine, fearing the storm, unconscious of either. The slave had no hope, and knew of no change. She knew of no other sky, no other water, no other forest, no other world, no other life. She had no wish, no hope, no love, no fear except of a blow, and no vivid feeling but that of occasional hunger, which was seldom, for Bulangi was rich and rice was plentiful in the solitary house in his clearing. The absence of pain and hunger was her happiness, and when she felt unhappy she was simply tired, more than usual, after the day’s labour. Then in the hot nights of the south-west monsoon she slept dreamlessly under the bright stars on the platform built outside the house and over the river. Inside they slept too: Bulangi by the door; his wives further in; the children with their mothers. She could hear their breathing; Bulangi’s sleepy voice; the sharp cry of a child soon hushed with tender words. And she closed her eyes to the murmur of the water below her, to the whisper of the warm wind above, ignorant of the never-ceasing life of that tropical nature that spoke to her in vain with the thousand faint voices of the near forest, with the breath of tepid wind; in the heavy scents that lingered around her head; in the white wraiths of morning mist that hung over her in the solemn hush of all creation before the dawn.
All the same, Nina is one of the most fascinating female characters drawn by Conrad that we’ve seen yet — and to think this rendering came so early. She is the one who dares to blow up at the Dutch officers who come to call on Almayer:
“I hate the sight of your white faces. I hate the sound of your gentle voices. That is the way you speak to women, dropping sweet words before any pretty face. I have heard your voices before. I hoped to live here without seeing any other white face but this,” she added in a gentler tone, touching lightly her father’s cheek.
Yup, overall, a very short work that shows off what Conrad was ready to pour out, in his third language, in his downtime while working on steamships and merchant vessels.
This will most likely be the last update in our completionist reading of Conrad for the year. When we resume, we’ll take up the middle book of the “Lingard trilogy,” a book which didn’t even come out till late in Conrad’s career.