Joseph Conrad Among the Anarchists: Nineteenth Century Terrorism and The Secret Agent

194 Pages·2016·3.43 MB·English

by  David Mulry (auth.)

Nineteenth Century Terrorism and Th e Secret Agent
JOSEPH CONRAD
AMONG THE
ANARCHISTS
David Mulry
Joseph Conrad Among the Anarchists
David   Mulry
Joseph Conrad
Among the Anarchists
Nineteenth Century Terrorism and The Secret
Agent
David   Mulry
College of Coastal Georgia
Brunswick, Georgia, USA
ISBN 978-1-137-50288-9 ISBN 978-1-137-49585-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-49585-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016943546
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C
ONTENTS
1 Introduction 1
2 Conrad and the Imaginative Shades 1 5
3 Popular Accounts of the Greenwich Bombing 39
4 The Dynamite Novel and The Secret Agent 7 3
5 The Anarchists in the House 1 03
6 “Verloc”: The Origins of the Text 1 19
7 Patterns of Revision inT he Secret Agent 1 33
8 The Perfect Detonator 1 63
Bibliography 1 85
Index 191
v
L F
IST OF IGURES
Fig. 1.1 Vive La République, P unch, or the London
Charivari, Vol. 107. July 7, 1894. 7 8
Fig. 2.1 Misery, The Torch, No. 8, 18 January 1895. 7 28
Fig. 2.2 The Dynamite Dragon, P unch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102,
April 16, 1892. 188 32
Fig. 3.1 Greenwich Park bomb location— The Times, 17 February 1894 45
Fig. 3.2 The Were-Wolf of Anarchy, P unch, or the
London Charivari, Vol. 105, Dec 3, 1893: 290 60
Fig. 4.1 The Modern Medusa, P unch, or the London Charivari,
Vol. 105, December 9, 1893: 270/271 75
Fig. 4.2 Reckoning without their Host, P unch, or the London Charivari,
Vol. 102, May 7, 1892: 224 91
Fig. 5.1 Winter, T he Torch, No. 5, 31 October 1894. 7 114
Fig. 7.1 Holograph of T he Secret Agent, page 481 139
Fig. 7.2 Holograph of T he Secret Agent, page 482 140
vii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
IN THE FOLLOWING chapters we will be considering the textual devel-
opment and the contributing contexts of Joseph Conrad’s remarkable
novel, The Secret Agent. In part, our concern is to establish the emerging
vision of the novel, its historical milieu, and the climate of ideas in which
Conrad wrote and which inevitably shapes his writing, and in part, to
examine the emerging text through various stages of composition.
The fi ction of the novel pivots upon the historical fact of an attempted
dynamite outrage in Greenwich Park, London. It was presumably con-
ceived as a demonstration against the hilltop observatory, though the
bomb never got close to that site, and the premature detonation of the
bomb resulted in the death of the anarchist who was carrying it. This
curious explosion in Greenwich, central to the plot of Conrad’s novel and
simultaneously intriguingly absent from it, was a c ause célèbre in its day. Its
notoriety was understandable, given that it was the fi rst anarchist bomb-
ing, or explosive act of anarchist “propaganda by deed,” to take place on
British soil during the era of bombs in the latter part of the nineteenth
century.
It was not the fi rst terror bombing by any means. It followed an extended
Fenian campaign of violence intended to destabilize the British domestic
political scene suffi ciently to help bring about home rule for Ireland. It
also followed bloody anarchist attacks on the continent. The nature of
the attack on English soil, and its source, contributed to a heightened
anxiety in the domestic response, not only to terror, but to vague and
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 1
D. Mulry, Joseph Conrad Among the Anarchists,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-49585-3_1
2 D. MULRY
mounting fears that contemporary novelists were quick to capitalize on,
that Fenian, anarchist, and revolutionary socialist groups had formed, or
were forming, an international alliance which threatened the very fabric of
the world of late Victorian and Edwardian England. 1 In the opening of his
novel of nineteenth-century terrorism, T he Anarchist (published the same
year as the Greenwich bombing, 1894), Colonel Richard Henry Savage
announces in his preface, “The story of active anarchism is a chronicle of
the present time. The bells ringing out the nineteenth century may ring
in a confl ict which, in its political and social importance, will dwarf every
other issue of the day.” 2
The occasion of the Greenwich bombing, a singular anarchist atrocity,
rather than a Fenian demonstration, convinced some commentators that
the turn of England had at last come for a sustained campaign of terror.
Hitherto, it had largely been free from anarchist threats because it was a
(more or less) neutral political home to European dissident voices. It had
not so much been ignored by the anarchists, as spared, because England
had provided a virtual safe haven for varieties of European and Slav dissent;
as Vladimir, in Conrad’s novel is quick to point out when he dictates a series
of outrages “executed here in this country; not only p lanned here” as he
goes on to note: “Your friends could set half the Continent on fi re without
infl uencing the public opinion here in favour of a universal repressive legis-
lation. They will not look outside their backyard here.” 3 Instead, England
was a center of sorts for a variety of European revolutionary dissidents and
revolutionaries—a philosophic bulwark against European authoritarianism
and autocracy. Peter Kropotkin, in T he Conquest of Bread , identifi es Britain
along with France as one of only two nations which “stood at the head of
the industrial movement” which saw modern socialism emerge. 4
England’s attitude had a twofold effect, it meant that London could
become the philosophical center of the movement with fi gures like
Kropotkin and Malatesta seeking its security, but it also had a dampening
effect on domestic anarchism. Instead of domestic dissent among disenfran-
chised labor, plots abroad were fomented and equipped in England, while
the anarchist preserved the tender peace of their valuable adopted refuge.
The considerable external efforts to force England to change its policy on
political refugees were to no avail. The Russian Nihilists found refuge as
the darlings of English Society, the European refugees were less attractive
to English taste, but equally, they were less visible, and p resumably, they
were, after all, much more agreeable than the Fenians—at least until the
INTRODUCTION 3
Greenwich detonation which was to change the character of late Victorian
England and its reception of political extremism.
As one might expect, this did not go unnoticed. The more repressive
European Governments, along with Russia, brought diplomatic pressure
to bear upon England. Prussia, without success, proposed that England
join a pact to close doors to the Nihilists, social revolutionaries, and anar-
chists. The French Newspapers at the height of the dynamite outrages
printed bitter condemnations of the lax policing so close to their borders
that allowed the inception and development of anarchist plots which came
to fruition in France.
So it was no surprise that the Greenwich bombing was welcomed by
the French, bringing down in Mr. Asquith and on “‘selfi sh England’ the
jibes of the Parisian Press” as reported at length in T he Times :
The République Français says:- “The English have two pairs of spectacles,
one for looking at their own affairs, and the other at those of their neigh-
bours.” So long as the Anarchists were content with operating in France,
Spain and Belgium, they were free to “demonstrate” on Tower-hill, and to
form their abominable plots at the Autonomie Club, but when it was seen in
London that people there ran a risk of having their own fi ngers burnt at the
game, and that bombs exploded at Greenwich as well as at the c afé Terminus
and the Licéo , a different tone is taken …. Everybody will benefi t by this
tardy awakening of conscience, and we cannot but congratulate ourselves
on it. M. Bourdin was therefore well-inspired, if not for himself, at least for
others, in stumbling with his bottle.
And again in the same article we are offered a response from Prussia:
A Vienna telegram, dated yesterday [18 February 1894] says:- “there is
much anxiety here respecting the inaction of the English Government
towards the Anarchists. It may be expected that the various powers will
shortly communicate their observations to the English Foreign Offi ce.” 5
The Greenwich Bombing focused international attention on English
domestic policy over the anarchist question. Some contemporary observ-
ers were not slow to point out that, what for anarchism in England was a
bizarre, untimely, and costly incident, was for its opponents, at home and
abroad, of tremendous value in the ongoing war of words, and in tough-
ening attitudes to political dissent in England.
4 D. MULRY
London had a history of openness to philosophical dissent; moreover, it
was extensively used for printing and dissemination of anarchist literature.
It was the home of the group that organized the fi rst Workers’ Congresses
(the London Congress in 1881, a signifi cant turning point in anarchist
policy development). The “offi cial” adoption of violent provocation
toward revolution left the movement vulnerable to its repressive oppo-
nents, but England remained the haven of radical thinkers like Karl Marx,
Kropotkin himself, and Errico Malatesta, along with terrorist activists like
Sergey Stepniak (who stabbed and killed the chief of the Russian secret
police, and later fl ed to England). During increasingly bloody anarchist
campaigns in Europe and America, there had been no serious anarchist
outrage in Britain, though that gap had been fi lled by a persistent and
violent (sometimes according to press accounts, a wildly incompetent)
Fenian campaign.
Where anarchism occurred, it was often more philosophical or cerebral,
and England valued its role as a place for freedom of thought. An inter-
esting example of just such a philosophical terrorist is the case of John
E. Barlas, an anarchist, educated at Oxford. He is remembered partly for
his poetry—only some of which carries his anarchist convictions of the
need for regeneration and rebirth. In a sonnet sequence “Holy of Holies:
Confessions of an Anarchist,” he envisages a fi ery cloud sweeping across
the metropolis:
Slowly it sailed, and came
A sheet of fl ame,
High o’er that city’s topmost column-peak, —
The Town lay still as Death:
I held my breath:
The blood-red deluge fell. Without a shriek
The town was cleansed of all that made it reek.
Then changed those furial gleams
To mild moon-beams.
And in that city, late those demons’ lair,
Angels went to and fro. 6
Aside from any commentary on style or expression, his meaning is clear.
Barlas’ vision of society is one of reek and corruption. Only annihilation
will bring about a world in which his self-styled “angels” can dwell. It is a
standard vision of the need for a clean sweep so that society can rebuild in