The Ford-Conrad Collaboration
Summary
Conrad's function in The Inheritors as it to-day stands was to give to each scene a final tap; these, in a great many cases, brought the whole meaning of the scene to the reader's mind. Looking through the book the writer comes upon instance after instance of these completions of scenes by a speech of Conrad's. Here you have the—quite unbearably vague—hero talking to the royal financier about the supernatural-adventuress heroine. Originally the speeches ran:
“You don't understand…. She…. She will….”
He said: “Ah! Ah!” in an intolerable tone of royal badinage.
I said again “You don't understand…. Even for your own sake….”
He swayed a little on his feet and said: “Bravo…. Bravissimo…. You propose to frighten….”
I looked at his great bulk of a body…. People began to pass, muffled up, on their way out of the place.
The scene died away in that tone. In the book as it stands it runs, with Conrad's addition italicised:
“If you do not” [cease persecuting her had been implied several speeches before], I said, “I shall forbid you to see her. And I shall….”
“Oh, oh! ” he interjected with the intonation of a reveller at a farce. “We are at that—we are the excellent brother—” He paused and then added: “Well, go to the devil, you and your forbidding.” He spoke with the greatest good humour.
“I am in earnest,” I said, “very much in earnest. The thing has gone too far. And even for your own sake you had better….”
He said: “Ah, ah! ” in the tone of his “Oh, oh! ”
“She is no friend to you,” I struggled on, “she is playing with you for her own purposes; you will….”
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- Information
- The InheritorsAn Extravagant Story, pp. 155 - 156Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 1999