RELICS OF NOTED AUTHOR

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32637, 19 June 1971, Page 21

RELICS OF NOTED AUTHOR

Relics of the famous author, Joseph Conrad, have come to light in Christchurch. They comprise a typewritten letter by Conrad to a friend, and three old photographs which are the subject of the letter.

They belong to Mr J. Carlton, a retired master mariner, of Dyers Pass Road, who had forgotten that he owned them until he was searching through his papers,' kept in a Christchurch lawyer’s office.

Then he remembered buying the articles “about 20 years ago” at a maritime auction in London, where he subsequently learned that he had been the successful bidder against an equerry of Prince Philip. “I don’t know why I bought the papers,” he said. “I have no idea what I will do with them—-perhaps give them to some seamen’s organisation. Conrad is by far

and away the finest writer on the sea—no-one compares with him making sea-lore live.” The photographs comprise two of a full-rigged ship, one taken from a painting, and both inscribed on the back "Tweed,” and another of a full-bearded man identified on the back as “Captain

Stuartin.” Mr Carlton had rib idea of the significance of the photographs, but said he thought the Tweed finished her days as a coal hulk in a Tasmanian port. Not much light is thrown by the letter, either. Addressed Spring Grove, Wye, Kent, August 15, 1919, the letter reads:

“Dear Mr Robinson, — Many thanks for the set of photographs and the copy of the newspaper notice you have been good enough to make for me out of the Peterhead paper. “I had no memory of any kind of the Loch Etive for many years until Mr Moxon (of Newcastle, N.S.W.) sent

me a photograph of an oilpainting of a ship which he has in his possession. That was just before the War and the painting was obviously very good, but the photograph you sent me is more of a real thing and I shall insert it with the portrait of Captain Stuartin in my own copy of the Mirror of the Sea.

“I think the old Tweed should go there too. I heard a lot about that ship from the Loch Etive’s carpenter (Cummins, I think was his name) but I had no Idea how she looked. She looks very fine; but what strikes me most in the photograph is the distance of the foremast from the bows. I seems most unusual.

“j am very glad you like the Mirror. It was written mainly for shore people, but a sailor (of that time) would naturally understand best what I am trying to express here. Things have changed since, but old or new we need not be ashamed of the Service which had our best years.

“I suppose I am right in my surmise that you are the A. Robinson who was second officer of the Earl of Shaftesbury some time in the middle of the eighties, lying in Penarth Dock ready to load. If so, then it is the last occasion on which we met, on a dismal and damp afternoon in winter. Let me express the hope that the world has used you well, and assure you of an old shipmate’s regard. Believe me, very faithfully yours, Joseph Conrad.” Conrad, who was bom in Poland and whose father, a revolutionary, was exiled, served in British merchant ships from 1878, and became a naturalised British subject in 1884. He was for 10 years a master on the Far East run. He settled ashore in Kent, and produced a series of novels and short stories, his “Lord Jim” being regarded as a masterpiece. “The Mirror of the Sea,” is believed to be semi-autobiographical. Conrad, a recluse in his later days, died in 1924.