The story of his career presents remarkable features, far-reaching and dramatic in their consequences. Conrad was a native of Poland, that wonderful country which has given to music Chopin the composer and Paderewski the pianist; to science Madame Curie the discoverer of radium and Copernicus the astronomer. It has been said that Poland is a land of surprises and paradoxes the greatest of which is the Pole himself, "a puzzling mixture of human contradictions". Joseph Conrad was in all points true to type.
The portrait that has been drawn of the paradoxical Pole fits his character exactly. "He is honest but indirect. He is romantic and a stark realist; a poet and a scientist in one. He is an innovator and a traditionalist. He has the heart of a confirmed optimist and the soul of tragedy. He has Occidental energy and Oriental patience. He has a zest for life and knows the taste of death: the art of life he understands so perfectly that he has forgotten it is an art.” If this formula be applied to any or all of Joseph Conrad’s novels and reminiscences it will be found to stand the test perfectly. His career was a succession of surprises. The last thing his family dreamed of for the embryonic novelist was a sailor’s calling, and when the choice was first announced it encountered strong opposition.
The sea and England are two of the supreme formative forces in his work. He had intense sympathy with both. But for his becoming a sailor and deliberately electing to express himself in the English language, there would have been no novelist. Conrad did not write a line for print until he was thirty-six years of age. Finally the manuscript came into the hands of Mr Edward Garnett, publisher’s reader for Mr Fisher Unwin. Conrad has left it on record that if “Almayer’s Folly” had been rejected he would never have written another book. Happily Mr Garnett was a discerning critic.
— editorial
Does not mind 4am wake-up
To the editor:
Sir, There are some things done inside the Public Hospital of which the public of Dunedin do not know, one being the practice of waking the patients at 3 o'clock in the morning for the purpose of getting their beds made. Even 4 o'clock seems very early, but when we take into consideration the fact that the nurse has been on her feet from 10.30 on the previous night, and that her work must be finished by 7 o'clock, no right-minded person will say that 4 o'clock is too early. Personally, I have no complaint to make. I have been a patient in the Hospital for nearly ten weeks, and for most of that time was unable to leave my bed. I have never been put to any inconvenience, nor have I been neglected, but have received every kindness and consideration from both the medical and the nursing staff.
— I am, etc, E.D.M. King, Plunket Ward, Public Hospital, August 5, 1924
Hygiene in the lab
In a lecture on bacteriology in Christchurch, Dr A.B. Pearson remarked that to the layman it was a source of wonder why the bacteriologists, who were in contact with the most deadly germs, did not become infected. Precautions taken against infection were many, but the first and most important was care. It was, however, an impossibility to work among bacteria and not inhale the germs at some time or other, but it was usual for those engaged in this department to become immune from the ravages of the germs. During the 12 years he had been associated with the laboratory at the Christchurch Hospital, only two cases of diphtheria had been contracted by members of the staff.
The Nation-Builder on housing
In the course of his address on “Cheap Houses”, delivered at the YMCA last evening, Mr James Fletcher stated that when they saw Auckland spending £100,000 on housing and talking of another £50,000, spending £500,000 on a civic square, with city markets which cost £100,000, a water scheme and a road scheme running into seven figures, it would surely be sounder business for the Dunedin City Council to finance a housing scheme with 5 percent housing bonds. That would show the rest of the dominion that while Dunedin was solid it was not a pillar of salt.
— ODT, 6.8.1924 (Compiled by Peter Dowden)
