Details
CONRAD, Joseph (formerly Jóseph Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, 1857-1924). Three autograph letters signed ('Joseph Conrad') to Bernard [Henry] Holland, Oswalds, Bishopsbourne, Kent, 9 February 1922 - 12 April 1923, the last with envelope, 5 pages, 4to (first letter with long tear through one line, all rubbed and with slight splits along folds).
Conrad thanks Holland for sending 'the vols of Hartington' [Holland's
Life of Spencer Compton, eighth Duke of Devonshire, (1911)] and promises to return them 'in about fortnight. I have struck a lucky vein for a piece of work which has been hung up for weeks and must follow it up'. A month later, he returns the volumes 'Till I read this work of yours I did not know that a political biography could be made so interesting, and even fascinating. The art of selection could go no further'. In the last letter he approves of Holland's 'disposition ... to adopt the History of the Thirty Years War for convalescent diet. How old and dark it is. It seems to me older than the Sicilian Expedition which in comparison seems a bright and progressive undertaking with a modern touch in it -- and with the added charm that it was the occasion of the Athenian Democracy getting it in the neck ....'.
UNPUBLISHED. The 1922 letters are not in The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad, ed. F.R. Karl and L. Davies, VII (2005). Bernard Holland's brother, Michael, had been a neighbour of the Conrads at Smeeth Hill, near Aldington, Kent, before the 1914 war. Bernard was a neighbour in post war years, living at Harleledown Lodge, near Canterbury. Was Conrad genuinely too busy to read at his normal pace or was he making allowance for the fact that political biography did not interest him very much? It took him only two days to read Gérard Jean-Aubry's biography of Eugene Boudin in early April (see Collected Letters, VII, pp. 415, 452-53). (3)
Conrad thanks Holland for sending 'the vols of Hartington' [Holland's
Life of Spencer Compton, eighth Duke of Devonshire, (1911)] and promises to return them 'in about fortnight. I have struck a lucky vein for a piece of work which has been hung up for weeks and must follow it up'. A month later, he returns the volumes 'Till I read this work of yours I did not know that a political biography could be made so interesting, and even fascinating. The art of selection could go no further'. In the last letter he approves of Holland's 'disposition ... to adopt the History of the Thirty Years War for convalescent diet. How old and dark it is. It seems to me older than the Sicilian Expedition which in comparison seems a bright and progressive undertaking with a modern touch in it -- and with the added charm that it was the occasion of the Athenian Democracy getting it in the neck ....'.
UNPUBLISHED. The 1922 letters are not in The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad, ed. F.R. Karl and L. Davies, VII (2005). Bernard Holland's brother, Michael, had been a neighbour of the Conrads at Smeeth Hill, near Aldington, Kent, before the 1914 war. Bernard was a neighbour in post war years, living at Harleledown Lodge, near Canterbury. Was Conrad genuinely too busy to read at his normal pace or was he making allowance for the fact that political biography did not interest him very much? It took him only two days to read Gérard Jean-Aubry's biography of Eugene Boudin in early April (see Collected Letters, VII, pp. 415, 452-53). (3)
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