The Shape of War and of Things to Come

Abstract

The last extant letter from Conrad that mentions Wells is to Elbridge L. Adams, written on 22 January 1923.¹ Adams had written an article for the American magazine the Outlook, called ‘Joseph Conrad — The Man’, and Conrad was commenting on a draft prior to publication.² He advised that Adams’s comment about Conrad’s relationship with Wells ‘could very well come out, as it is a very general statement, dealing mainly with Wells from a critical point of view, and certainly not expressing all my view of Wells, which in many respects is quite appreciative’ (Collected Letters 8: 13).³ By this time their acquaintance had been more or less over for some years, yet Conrad’s comments to Adams are testimony to an enduring regard for Wells’s early science fantasies, and his desire not to be publicly critical. His final extant letter to Wells was written on 23 January 1911. It concerns The New Machiavelli (1911), and Conrad writes in glowing terms: ‘I don’t know what a “masterpiece” may be — but I know what a master-work is when I see it. And this is it.’ He signs off, ‘Ever yours with admiring affection J. Conrad’ (Collected Letters 4: 408). Despite something of a cooling in their relations after his criticisms of Mankind in the Making, Conrad persisted in reaching out to Wells even while knowing that their closeness was at an end; if Conrad knew that the Roumanian captain in Tono-Bungay was a parody of himself, it does not appear to have dampened his enthusiasm for Wells’s best work.