CONRAD’S TRAVAIL.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 22 January 1927, Page 11

CONRAD’S TRAVAIL.

OUCH a task as completing a novel W as often a terrifying ordeal to Joseph Conrad, whose letters to intimate friends reveal the great mental and physical suffering he “had endured in his unending struggle for perfection in writing. Publication of the letters has begun in “The World To-day. ’ ’ The end of L.J. has been pulled off with a steady drag of 21 hours. I sent wife and child out of the house (to London) and sat down at 9 a.m. with a desperate resolve to be done with it. Now and then I took a walk around the house, out at one door, in at the other. Ten-minute meals. A great hush, cigarette ends growing into a mound similar. to a cairn over a dead hero. Moon rose over the barn, looked in at the window, and climbed out of sight. Day broke, brightened. I put the light out. and went on, with the morning breeze blowing the sheets of manuscript all over the room. Sun rose, I wrote the last word and went into the dining room. Six o'clock, I shared a piece of cold chicken with Escamillo (the dog), who was very miserable, and in want of sympathy. Four years later, in September, 190-!, he told Galsworthy about tlie completion of “Xestromo”: — At 11.00 p.m. (on the 27th) something happened. What it. is I don't know. I was writing and raised my eyes to look at the clock. The next thing I knew I was sitting (not lying) on the concrete outside the door.