Heart of Darkness and Selected Short Fic - Joseph Conrad [127]
7 (p.10) Sartor Resartus and Burnaby’s Ride to Khiva: Sartor Resartus (1834) was by Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881). A Ride to Khiva: Travels and Adventures in Central Asia (1876) was by Captain Frederick Burnaby (1842-1885). It is consistent with Marlow’s fond recounting of his own youthful recklessness that he expresses a preference for the writings of the man of action over those of the cultural critic. It is also significant that the subject of Burnaby’s immensely popular work—it was reprinted eleven times in the first year alone—is the alleged Russian threat to British India, suggesting a dovetailing of security concerns between Poland and Britain. (See endnote 5, above, for another suggestion as to how Conrad obliquely injects a Polish-based Russophobia into this story that extols English virtue.)
8 (p. 16) the ghost of a Geordie skipper: A Geordie is a coal-shipping vessel; this usage is derived from the term Geordie to denote a native of Tyneside, a coal-mining and shipping area in northeastern England. The facetious depiction of Captain Beard emphasizes the anxiety and humiliation he experiences, in his inaugural command, over being in charge of a Geordie that has been delayed for so long that it has become a laughingstock.
9 (p.16) Mesopotamia: The reference is to a region of southwest Asia between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers that was the site of the ancient civilizations of Assyria and Babylon.
10 (p.17) Regent Street ... Byron’s works ... railway rug: Regent Street refers to a popular locale in the London shopping district. Lord Byron (1788-1824) was an English Romantic poet. A railway rug is a small rug used as a blanket during railway journeys.
11 (p. 17) all the rats left the ship: Conrad here foreshadows the destruction of the judea via the superstition that if rats leave a ship before it embarks, it is fated to sink. The former seaman Conrad was fond of using this superstition in both nautical and nonnautical contexts. For example, in the 1907 novel The Secret Agent he would foreshadow the catastrophic demise of the family of the protagonist, Adolf Verloc, by likening the departure of Verloc’s mother-in-law from “his menaced home” to “rats leaving a doomed ship” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, p. 137).
12 (p. 18) from Land’s End to the Forelands: Land’s End is the southwestern tip of Britain (in County Cornwall), and the North and South Forelands are on the southeast coast (in County Kent).
13 (p.18) brown nations... Solomon the Jew: This is a typically exotic account of non-European peoples, who are represented as surpassing, on the one hand, the cruelty and capriciousness of the Roman emperor Nero (A.D. 37-68) and, on the other hand, the wisdom of the biblical King Solomon.
14 (p. 19) though the coal.... spontaneous combustion: Zdzislaw Najder points out that Conrad’s representation of the perils of shipping coal are not exaggerated, as it was, aside from grain, viewed as the most dangerous of all cargoes. He also notes that 1883 (the year in which Conrad served on the burning, sinking Palestine) was “a record year for accidents at sea: 2,019 seamen’s lives were lost—or about 1 percent of those in active service” (Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle, p.78). The fact that no one dies on board Conrad’s fictional Judea and that the dangers are described in the language of comedy by the unflappable Marlow should not keep us from recognizing that the circumstances are extraordinarily perilous.
15 (p. 22) “The carpenter’s bench.... fire in it’ ”: This episode is an example of what Ian Watt has termed Conrad’s technique of “delayed decoding,” which he characterizes as “the verbal equivalent of the impressionist painter’s attempt to render visual sensation directly.” Specifically, the method involves “present[ing] a sense impression and... withhold[ing] naming it or explaining its meaning until later” (Conrad in the Nineteenth Century, pp.175-176).
16 (p. 26) And, mind, .... fate of nations: Marlow’s contention that these English crewmen are “without the drilled-in habit of obedience” furthers his claim that it is nature (