Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1925-02-19
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES E. TRACEWELL.

The Secret Agent" BY the late
Joseph Conrad, published in 1907 by
Doubleday, Page & Co., is the sub.
ject of today's review of an old book
This simple tale of the nineteenth
century" as Conrad ironically called
the tragic story of anarchism in Lon
don, contains two unforgettable pic
lures. that Of the professor" and that
of Stevie.
The professor" carried explosives
constantly and never lost his life
while poor Stevie toted' bomb just
once-and stumbled over a root
The author was at some pains, In
a note written in 1920, to declare that
in telling this story he had mot In
tended to commit a gratuitous out
rage on the feelings of mankind" In
deed. he did not; but he did write a
book that could never have originated
in America.
Conrad wrote all his novels in Eng
lish. but he was Pole by birth, i'm
billing with his life's blood some OF
seems to be something unfortunate in
the outlook of many literary Euro
peans. Perhaps 1t is because their land
has gone through so many genera
lions of living that life has soured
bit for them.
The United States. on the other
hand, is a compa ratively new coun-
try, and it's authors are filled with
the happy enthusiasm Of discoveries
Even the faint Of Observation-Disclosures
which is running through some of the
books by the younger writer's Is not
sufficiently large as yet to much dis
turb the general optimism of Ameri-
can authorship as whole.
Behind most of his novels stands
Fate, Nemesis. something inherent in
life that makes for sorrow and dis
tress. 1t is the cry of the old Greek
tragedians, brought up to date and
written in English. Most of his novels
end in death. The happy ending
was not for him. He ended them the
way life ends them.
Il X X !:
Yet the Secret Agent is a fine tale,
, for all that. To me there is curious de-
tachment about a Conrad novel. AS ter
rible as this story is. am sensible all
the time that / am reading a book
That keeps it from being more than the
reader can stand.
In this novel, which was dedicated to
H. G. Wells, the author told a straight
out-and-out story Of intrigue among the
anarchists and bomb throwers of Lon
don. stringing the action upon the do
ings Of Winnie Verloc. married to the
secret agent
The story has to do largely with the
reactions of the curiously aIoof Winnie
to life as lived by her in her husband s
small shop. which also is sort OF
rendezvous for anarchists and those So
cialists who longed to tear existing gov
ernments to pieces. Il IL said that the
novel was so true to life that socialists
in America wrote to the author, ad-
dressing him as "Comrade
Winnies life hinged around her half
witted brother, Stevie. Everything ran
smoothly in the shop in the little Lon
don side street, until one day Mr. Verloc
managed to get poor Stevie blown up
when the latter stumbled with bomb
Verloc had given him to raze Greenwich
Observatory.
Then the pent-up wrath of the woman
broke loose, for she never particularly
wanted to marry the secret agent, any
way. She calmly enough sticks a big
butcher knife into her husband; then, in
her fright. tries to induce "comrade
to take her to Paris. After getting her
on the train for the channel the COM
rade backs out of the compact News
paper dispatches later tell Of the drown
ing of q woman.
A nice little tale, what? Yes, but
curiously interesting from start to finish
How could it help being, with those two
most. interesting characters the pro
fessor" and poor Stevie?
y x 4 X
We are introduced to the professor
as he sits in a basement restaurant
He was a dingy little man who wore
spectacles. His nat, large ears de-
parted widely from the sides of his
skull; the dome of the forehead seemed