Continuing Education

One of the joys of editing is the relationship you sometimes get lucky enough to establish with a writer. It doesn't happen all that often, though; things get in the way and you learn soon enough that you aren't such a hot communicator after all. You said you were going to publish an article in June and halfway through July you're wondering why you ever accepted the piece in the first place, and there it sits in all its grandiloquent glory, pretty much as it looked the day you first saw it, not even set in galleys. Or you're looking over the "blues," that very last chance to pick up an errant comma, and one of your colleagues pops in and hands you another campus periodical in which the very article you're proofing has just appeared. Or you print a piece that seemed well-enough researched. The guy who wrote it knows, by all accounts, more about the subject than anyone else from Moosilauke to the other end of the Appalachian Trail. And then, bang! You discover he's overlooked one of the main players in the action. These things probably happen to all editors at one time or another. They have to me, and in less than two years.

But what happened this morning also happens. It involves this month's cover, part of a letter written by novelist Joseph Conrad to a friend. I liked it enormously when I first saw it, and wanted to figure out a way to use it on the cover to call attention to a nifty essay Laurence Davies of the English department had written for the Magazine (pp. 37-39). His essay is a gem, I think, not only because of its gusto and charm, but also because it details in a very unpretentious manner the joys of academic research.

In trying to compose a cover blurb for the table of contents page, I found myself in need of the good professor's counsel. Even after reading the manuscript in toto it's eight pages long and includes another free-hand drawing by Conrad I had all kinds of questions. To whom was it addressed? (It begins, "Cher ami.") What was the occasion of the letter? Why the two P.S.'s? Who was Rajah Laur? And what does W-H stand for?

Dr. Davies, an amiable Welshman who lives in the Choates as a Faculty Master, set the scene at once. "Well," he began, "this letter is to R.B. Cunninghame Graham. Graham is writing an essay about a trip he once took on a Scottish tramp steamer when the stack (or funnel) broke away in a storm. Graham must have written Conrad to ask how the stack would have been secured again."

"Ah," I conjectured, "so the top P.S. must stand for port and star- board, with the bottom representing the usual postscript." "Precisely."

But what about this abrupt departure from the stack business: "Ah! Amigo! I've thought of Rajah Laur in London and if not in the W-H then next thing to it?"

"Well," Davies continued, "Rajah Laur, the King of the Seas, is a character in Conrad and the W-H may be I'm not sure but it may be Western Hemisphere. The whole thing has to do with Conrad's The Rescue, a book he started in 1897 [the same year this letter was written] but didn't publish until 1919. Conrad had trouble with it. He caught the wrong note."

Laurence's explanation came easily. It was as if he'd been working on the very letter only days before. As co-editor of Conrad's correspondence, he knows a lot about Conrad. The minutiae, the obscure allusions are second nature to him, tiny particulates in the larger portrait of a great writer's life. It is always a pleasure to come into contact with minds that challenge without belittling those less well-informed. And think about those lucky undergraduates who have access to Davies all the time.