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Volume 8: 1923-1924,edited by Laurence Davies and Gene M. Moore.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.lxxii + 426 pp. £90/$180Volume 9: Uncollected Letters and Indexes,edited by Laurence Davies, Owen Knowles,Gene M. Moore, and J. H. Stape.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.xlviii + 373 pp. £90/$180Available as a 9-volume set 5,700 pp. £750 / $1,475AS THE WAD of unread pages of a novel becomes thinner and thinner we know that we are heading for an ending if not a conclusion. But we also know that the ending can be one of many varieties: marriage, death, escape, return to quotidian dullness, or a post-modern denial of closure. Reading the final volume of an individual's collected letters we know, alas, that there is only one conclusion - death. It is impossible to read Volume 8 of Conrad's letters without a constant awareness of this inevitable conclusion. But that volume is not the final one of Collected Letters: Volume 9 includes newly discovered or newly available letters not in earlier volumes, new texts of letters published in previous volumes from texts other than holographs, a revised corrigenda and addenda for Volumes 1-7, and a consolidated Index. But it is Volume 8 over which the shadow of impending death falls, darkening even the most light-hearted of the letters.And there are light-hearted letters here, ones reminding us that Conrad can be witty, ironic, facetious, leg-pulling, and just downright funny. Here for example is Conrad writing to Christopher Morley about his planned trip to the United States. The truth is that event is on the knees of the Gods - a notably insecure place. Last time made up my mind to come over they could think of nothing but starting a world war. They have no sense of proportion. It was squashing a fly with a steamhammer (5 February 1923; CL8 21). And here is a wonderful postscript added to a letter Conrad wrote to Eric S. Pinker (whose father had died in 1922 and left his son to carry on his business), just a couple of months before his death: Do you know Watts is sending out a new ed (1924) of Letters to Watts. That's all right - but why should he send a copy to mei Never done it before! Anyhow the collection reminds me of the bundle of testimonials the washermen used to bring on board ships arriving in Calcutta - quite as numerous and nearly as glowing (22 May 1924; CLB 360-61). Even the familiar Conradian misery can be couched in a selfdeprecatory, mocking tone. Writing to Hugh Walpole Conrad reports on a visit from Borys and wife, the former suffering from a cold or flu, and complains:Jessie came out strong a[s] usual. remained crocky, groggy tottery, staggery, shuddery shivery, seedy, gouty, sorry wretch that am.What is the most terrible is that the animal still keeps going and even cuts small jokes and expects his family to laugh at them. (19 November 1923; CL8 220)Which is reality, which appearance here? Is Conrad a man riddled with concealed sickness and depression who puts a brave face on things and cracks jokes to his family, or a man able of laughing at his miserable state by displaying his complaints in the absurdly extended list he provides for Walpole? Or is he, perhaps, both? Writing again to Eric Pinker, Conrad notes in an aside: I am recovering my balance too. - mean the mental - not (16 June 1924; CL8 387). Eric Pinker may have been able to raise more of a smile in response to the quip than his father would have done fifteen years earlier, when Conrad's banking balance was very much a matter of what is now known euphemistically as negative equity.Volume 8 includes two particularly charming letters to young children. One to the then twelve-year-old Veronica Wedgwood regales its recipient with an absurd tale of a Corsican driver of a horse and trap and asks her with tongue in cheek whether Cook's people ever showed her a vendetta (31 March 1923; 65-66). …
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