Despite the evidence that Leggatt murdered another man in a fit of passion, the captain holds to a belief in Leggatt's control and sanity and insists that the killing was an act of duty. But the reader does not forget that Leggatt committed a horribly immoral act that he does not regret.
In Chance and Victory, Conrad's subject matter is less his own life than the external world. The form and narrative technique stress his detachment and withdrawal. Even when he revives Marlow in Chance, that figure is no longer a surrogate who echoes his own anxieties and doubts. Although we certainly see important resemblances between Conrad and his characters Heyst and Captain Anthony, he is not primarily writing about fictional versions of himself.
Chance, the first novel after the three major political novels, sustains and intensifies the stress on private life and passionate love as the only alternatives to a world threatened by materialism, political ideology, and uncontrollable historical forces. In Chance, as in Conrad's earlier novels, each is lonely, isolated and separate, and requires the recognition of another as friend, lover, parent, child, or counsel to complete him. If there is an alternative in Chance to repression, isolation, and self-imprisonment, it is in the possibility of sympathy and understand -709- ing, and, most significantly, passionate love. Once one perceives the prominence of the prison metaphor within the texture of the novel, one realizes that Conrad's indictment of English life has the harshness and bitterness of The Secret Agent. Chance discovers a heart of darkness beneath the civilized exteriors of Edwardian London, just as The Secret Agent discovers it in the political machinations not only of anarchists and reactionaries but also of those charged with upholding the status quo. In Chance, the London of The Secret Agent still exists in all its shabby, ugly decadence; mankind is separated by individual dreams and illusions.
Although London is not the setting, Victory is the last of Conrad's novels that analyzes contemporary European culture. As we shall see, beginning with The Shadow-Line (1916), the subsequent novels beat a retreat from confronting the crisis of values that Conrad believed was undermining Western civilization. For Conrad, the crisis was epitomized by imperialism, capitalism, the decline of family and national ties, and the replacement of human relationships based upon personal ties with relationships based on economic consideration. Victory depicts an 'age in which we are camped like bewildered travellers in a garish, unrestful hotel.' Schomberg's hotel becomes a mnemonic device to recall that image, and Schomberg's malice, enervation, lust, and greed are the quintessence of that age. In a world dominated by various forms of materialistic adventurism-from the coal mine in the tropics to Zangiacomo's traveling band and Schomberg's parody of a hotel-Heyst's courtesy and delicacy stand as a vestige of an older tradition. But his manners and formality also serve as a barrier not only to reaching a complete understanding with Lena but also to contending with the forces of economic barbarism-Jones, Ricardo, and Schomberg. 'Outward cordiality of manner' and 'consummate politeness' become Heyst's refuge. Victory is about the decline in civility and morality not only in what Conrad had once called 'an outpost of progress' but in Western civilization. Conrad perceived, as Thomas Mann had in Death in Venice (1912), that something had gone wrong with the amenities and proprieties that are the glue that holds civilization together.
In the period between 1912 and 1914, when Conrad wrote Victory, the stable, secure England in which Conrad had found a home was in danger of disintegration. Beset by political turmoil in the form of labor unrest, the women's movement, and the excesses and zeal of the Conservative opposition, which threatened to undermine parliamentary govern-710- ment, England must have seemed to him to be increasingly in danger of becoming like his native Poland. The ironically titled Victory is Conrad's response to an England torn by conflicting but powerful enclaves and suffering a loss of esteem in its own eyes as well as in those of other nations.
Heyst may represent Conrad's perception that a certain kind of man-polished, tolerant, polite, considerate of others, and of impeccable integrity and the highest personal standards-was becoming obsolete in England. For all his quirks, Heyst adheres to Edwardian propriety and decorum in all his actions with the single exception of his elopement. The negativism of Heyst's father may echo the anonymous 1905 pamphlet The Decline and Fall of the British Empire; in any case, it is an extreme rejection of the more optimistic of the social Darwinists. It may also be a criticism of A Commentary (1908) by Conrad's friend John Galsworthy. Victory is a novel that attacks imperialistic pretensions, decadent aristocracy, and business morality, only to give those forces the laurels of victory. The title Victory finally implies the triumph of materialism and greed over feelings and personal relationships. By using business interchangeably with game, Conrad emphasizes the effort of Edwardian culture to disguise in understatements its competitive and aggressive impulses.
The second phase of Conrad's later career derives more from a personal impulse. After Chance and Victory, he returns from contemporary issues to his own memories. The Shadow-Line and The Arrow of Gold (1919), like 'The Secret Sharer' and 'A Smile of Fortune' (1911), are expressive of Conrad's emotions and passions, but in these works, unlike the Marlow tales, Conrad re-creates emotions of the past more than he objectifies his present inner turmoil. As Conrad aged, he sought subjects in his personal and literary past, and his later fiction less frequently addresses his immediate personal problems or current public issues. The Shadow-Line and The Arrow of Gold reach back into his personal past, while The Rescue was completed primarily to settle his longstanding anxiety about a work that had been stalled for two decades. The Rescue returns to the romance world of Malay that provided the setting of his first two novels, Almayer's Folly and An Outcast of the Islands, as well as such early tales as «Karain» and 'The Lagoon.' It is a nostalgic look at his personal and literary past and provides something of an escape from Conrad's present anxieties and harsher memories.
Based on his command of the Otago in 1888, The Shadow-Line explores the difference between merely practicing skills and providing -711- leadership to a community. Conrad had written in Richard Curle's copy of the novel, 'This story had been in my mind for some years. Originally I used to think of it under the name of First Command. When I managed in the second year of war to concentrate my mind sufficiently to begin working I turned to this subject as the easiest. But in consequence of my changed mental attitude to it, it became The ShadowLine.' In contrast, the seemingly similar Secret Sharer emphasized the captain-narrator's personal psychological development rather than his ability to occupy a position in terms of standards established by maritime tradition. By fulfilling the moral requirements of a clearly defined position, the captain-narrator fulfills himself; he overcomes ennui, anxiety, and anomie and merges his psychological life with the demands of the external world. To oversimplify: The Shadow-Line affirms that hyperconsciousness is a moral rather than-as in 'The Secret Sharer'-a psychological problem. The later work demonstrates how hyperconsciousness and its symptoms can be overcome by discovering the authentic self that exists beneath self-doubt and anxiety.
The last novel Conrad completed, The Rover (1923), was written with the idea of reaching that part of the mass of mankind which was literate. In important respects, it is a synopsis of a number of major themes in his previous work. Conrad spoke of The Rover in terms that suggest its special importance to him: 'I have wanted for a long time to do a seaman's 'return' (before my own departure).' Peyrol's desire in his final voyage to merge his destiny with that of his nation may reflect Conrad's desire, as he approached death, to contribute meaningfully to Poland's destiny. His fantasy of a significant political act is embodied in Peyrol. If, like Nabokov's, Conrad's life was embodied in his imagination, he was never comfortable that he had turned his back on politics and the heritage of his father, whom he recalled as an idealistic patriot. The novel's title also refers to himself, the twice transplanted alien who finally found a home in England and no longer felt himself something of an outsider. Peyrol re-creates himself at fifty-eight when circumstances connive with his own weariness to deprive him of his past; he creates a new identity just as surely as a younger Conrad did when he left Poland to go to sea and, later, when he turned from the sea to a writing career. The Rover combines Conrad's fantasy of retreat with his lifelong fantasy of a heroic return home. (Neither his first visit to Poland in 1890 nor his second at the outbreak of the war quite fulfilled this fantasy.) The Rover associates Peyrol's return with Conrad's own -712- romantic desire to return to his past. In A Personal Record (1912), writing of his first return to Poland, Conrad remarked that the faces 'were as familiar to me as though I had known them from childhood, and my childhood were a matter of the day before yesterday.'
In the final phase, he looks back in The Rover and the incomplete Suspense to the Napoleonic period and creates large historical canvases that recall the great political novels. While we do not know what he would have done in Suspense, his real concern in The Rover is coming to terms with his own approaching death. In that novel, the Napoleonic era provides the occasion for a moving lyrical novel about the possibility of facing death heroically. The principal character, an aging seaman and an outsider, is a fictional counterpart of Conrad.
Conrad's later works demonstrate the continuity of his career. Throughout his career his works are expressions of his quest for values and self-definition. Continuing the focus of the novels about politics (Nostromo, The Secret Agent, and Under Western Eyes), Conrad's later works are more concerned with family and personal relationships than are his prior works. Except for 'The Secret Sharer' and The ShadowLine, the later works are concerned with how and why people love one another. But they also address how historical and social forces limit
