A SET OF SIX

BY
JOSEPH CONRAD

Les petites marionnettes
   Font, font, font,
Trois petits tours
   Et puis s'en vont.
                       - NURSERY RHYME

SPECIAL EDITION

TO
MISS M. H. M. CAPES


AUTHOR'S NOTE

     THE six stories in this volume are the result of some
three or four years of occasional work. The dates of
their writing are far apart, their origins are various.
None of them are connected directly with personal ex-
periences. In all of them the facts are inherently
true, by which I mean that they are not only possible
but that they have actually happened. For instance,
the last story in the volume, the one I call Pathetic,
whose first title is Il Conde (misspelt by-the-by) is an
almost verbatim transcript of the tale told me by a very
charming old gentleman whom I met in Italy. I don't
mean to say it is only that. Anybody can see that it is
something more than a verbatim report, but where he
left off and where I began must be left to the acute dis-
crimination of the reader who may be interested in the
problem. I don't mean to say that the problem is
worth the trouble. What I am certain of, however,
is that it is not to be solved, for I am not at all clear
about it myself by this time. All I can say is that the
personality of the narrator was extremely suggestive
quite apart from the story he was telling me. I heard
a few years ago that he had died far away from his be-
loved Naples where that "abominable adventure" did
really happen to him.
     Thus the genealogy of Il Conde is simple. It is
not the case with the other stories. Various strains
contributed to their composition, and the nature of
many of those I have forgotten, not having the habit of
making notes either before or after the fact. I mean

vii

viii         AUTHOR'S NOTE

the fact of writing a story. What I remember best
about Gaspar Ruiz is that it was written, or at any rate
begun, within a month of finishing Nostromo; but
apart from the locality, and that a pretty wide one (all
the South American Continent), the novel and the
story have nothing in common, neither mood, nor in-
tention and, certainly, not the style. The manner for
the most part is that of General Santierra, and that
old warrior, I note with satisfaction, is very true to
himself all through. Looking now dispassionately at
the various ways in which this story could have been
presented I can't honestly think the General super-
fluous. It is he, an old man talking of the days of his
youth, who characterizes the whole narrative and
gives it an air of actuality which I doubt whether I
could have achieved without his help. In the mere
writing his existence of course was of no help at all,
because the whole thing had to be carefully kept within
the frame of his simple mind. But all this is but a
laborious searching of memories. My present feeling
is that the story could not have been told otherwise.
The hint for Gaspar Ruiz the man I found in a book
by Captain Basil Hall, R.N., who was for some time,
between the years 1824 and 1828, senior officer of a
small British Squadron on the West Coast of South
America. His book published in the thirties obtained a
certain celebrity and I suppose is to be found still in
some libraries. The curious who may be mistrusting
my imagination are referred to that printed document,
Vol. II, I forget the page, but it is somewhere not far
from the end. Another document connected with this
story is a letter of a biting and ironic kind from a friend
then in Burma, passing certain strictures upon "the
gentleman with the gun on his back" which I do not
intend to make accessible to the public. Yet the gun

AUTHOR'S NOTE         ix

episode did really happen, or at least I am bound to
believe it because I remember it, described in an ex-
tremely matter-of-fact tone, in some book I read in my
boyhood; and I am not going to discard the beliefs of
my boyhood for anybody on earth.
     The Brute, which is the only sea-story in the volume,
is, like Il Conde, associated with a direct narrative and
based on a suggestion gathered on warm human lips.
I will not disclose the real name of the criminal ship
but the first I heard of her homicidal habits was from
the late Captain Blake, commanding a London ship
in which I served in 1884 as Second Officer. Captain
Blake was, of all my commanders, the one I remember
with the greatest affection. I have sketched in his
personality, without however mentioning his name,
in the first paper of The Mirror of the Sea. In his
young days he had had a personal experience of the
brute and it is perhaps for that reason that I have put
the story into the mouth of a young man and made of it
what the reader will see. The existence of the brute
was a fact. The end of the brute as related in the story
is also a fact, well-known at the time though it really
happened to another ship, of great beauty of form and
of blameless character, which certainly deserved a
better fate. I have unscrupulously adapted it to the
needs of my story thinking that I had there something
in the nature of poetical justice. I hope that little
villainy will not cast a shadow upon the general honesty
of my proceedings as a writer of tales.
     Of The Informer and An Anarchist I will say next
to nothing. The pedigree of these tales is hopelessly
complicated and not worth disentangling at this dis-
tance of time. I found them and here they are. The
discriminating reader will guess that I have found them
within my mind; but how they or their elements came

x         AUTHOR'S NOTE

in there I have forgotten for the most part; and for the
rest I really don't see why I should give myself away
more than I have done already.
     It remains for me only now to mention The Duel, the
longest story in the book. That story attained the
dignity of publication all by itself in a small illustrated
volume, under the title, "The Point of Honour." That
was many years ago. It has been since reinstated in
its proper place, which is the place it occupies in this
volume, in all the subsequent editions of my work.
Its pedigree is extremely simple. It springs from a
ten-line paragraph in a small provincial paper published
in the South of France. That paragraph, occasioned
by a duel with a fatal ending between two well-known
Parisian personalities, referred for some reason or other
to the "well-known fact" of two officers in Napoleon's
Grand Army having fought a series of duels in the
it; and I think that, given the character of the two offi-
cers which I had to invent, too, I have made it suffi-
ciently convincing by the mere force of its absurdity.
The truth is that in my mind the story is nothing but a
serious and even earnest attempt at a bit of historical
fiction. I had heard in my boyhood a good deal of the
great Napoleonic legend. I had a genuine feeling that
I would find myself at home in it, and The Duel is the
result of that feeling, or, if the reader prefers, of that
presumption. Personally I have no qualms of con-
science about this piece of work. The story might
have been better told of course. All one's work might
have been better done; but this is the sort of reflection
a worker must put aside courageously if he doesn't
mean every one of his conceptions to remain for ever a
private vision, an evanescent reverie. How many of

AUTHOR'S NOTE          xi

those visions have I seen vanish in my time! This one,
however, has remained, a testimony, if you like, to my
courage or a proof of my rashness. What I care to re-
member best is the testimony of some French readers
who volunteered the opinion that in those hundred
pages or so I had managed to render "wonderfully"
the spirit of the whole epoch. Exaggeration of kind-
ness no doubt; but even so I hug it still to my breast,
because in truth that is exactly what I was trying to cap-
ture in my small net: the Spirit of the Epoch -- never
purely militarist in the long clash of arms, youthful,
almost childlike in its exaltation of sentiment -- naïvely
heroic in its faith.

     1920.                                    J. C.


CONTENTS

                                      PAGE
GASPAR RUIZ  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .      3

THE INFORMER .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .     73

THE BRUTE .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .    105

AN ANARCHIST .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .    135

THE DUEL  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .    165

IL CONDE  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .    269