Joseph Conrad at Home in England

Abstract

A five minute ride on the switch-off of the main line from Canterbury brought me to the trundling little town in which rests Oswalds, his estate. Visitors are few. And strangers can learn nothing about him from the globular station agent or from the twin spinster sister postmistresses, who, with their centenarian mother, monopolise the local shopping marts. Sighting a man across the field I called to him. He knew there were two boys, one at work in London, the younger playing at farming and he pointed to a hillock behind which he went on to say was the farm. No, he couldn’t say anything about their father. ‘He’s a writing man’, was the sum of his knowledge. No, he had not read his writings. No one I approached in the village had read his writings, and I thought of the prophet who remained a stranger to those about him. On a bulletin board on the rear wall of the church I saw his name among others listed for parish duty of a sort, the sun had bleached the writing into invisibility almost.

From Joseph Conrad at Home in England’, Poland, vol. v (April 1924) pp. 225–8, 247–8.