This is the hope. The immediate aim, closely associated with the hope,
is to give the record of personal memories by presenting faithfully the
feelings and sensations connected with the writing of my first book and
with my first contact with the sea.

In the purposely mingled resonance of this double strain a friend here
and there will perhaps detect a subtle accord.

J.C.K.


Chapter I.

Books may be written in all sorts of places. Verbal inspiration may
enter the berth of a mariner on board a ship frozen fast in a river in
the middle of a town; and since saints are supposed to look benignantly
on humble believers, I indulge in the pleasant fancy that the shade
of old Flaubert--who imagined himself to be (amongst other things) a
descendant of Vikings--might have hovered with amused interest over
the decks of a 2000-ton steamer called the "Adowa," on board of which,
gripped by the inclement winter alongside a quay in Rouen, the tenth
chapter of "Almayer's Folly" was begun. With interest, I say, for was
not the kind Norman giant with enormous moustaches and a thundering
voice the last of the Romantics? Was he not, in his unworldly, almost
ascetic, devotion to his art a sort of literary, saint-like hermit?

"'It has set at last,' said Nina to her mother, pointing to the hills
behind which the sun had sunk. . . ." These words of Almayer's romantic
daughter I remember tracing on the grey paper of a pad which rested on
the blanket of my bed-place. They referred to a sunset in Malayan Isles