Conrad’s purpose, however, is not to elicit the typical response of the civilised world to reports of barbarism. In his account Commander Bacon had exemplified this attitude: ‘. . . they [the natives] cannot fail to see that peace and the good rule of the white man mean happiness, contentment and security’. Similar sentiments are expressed in the report which Kurtz composes for the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs. Marlow describes this ‘beautiful piece of writing’, ‘vibrating with eloquence’. And yet, scrawled ‘at the end of that moving appeal to every altruistic sentiment it blazed at you, luminous and terrifying, like a flash of lightning in a serene sky: “Exterminate all the brutes!”.’106
This savagery at the heart of civilised humans is also revealed in the behaviour of the white traders – ‘pilgrims’ as Marlow calls them. White travellers’ tales, like those of H. M. Stanley in ‘darkest Africa’, written from an unquestioned sense of the superiority of the European over the native, were available to Conrad. Heart of Darkness thrives upon the ironic reversals of civilisation and barbarity, of light and darkness. Here is a characteristic Stanley episode, recorded in his diary. Needing food, he told a group of natives that ‘I must have it or we would die. They must sell it for beads, red, blue or green, copper or brass wire or shells, or . . . I drew significant signs across the throat. It was enough, they understood at once.’107 In Heart of Darkness, by contrast, Marlow is impressed by the extraordinary restraint of the starving cannibals accompanying the expedition, who have been paid in bits of brass wire, but have no food, their rotting hippo flesh – too nauseating a smell for European endurance – having been thrown overboard. He wonders why ‘they didn’t go for us – they were thirty to five – and have a good tuck-in for once’.108 Kurtz is a symbolic figure, of course (‘All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz’), and the thrust of Conrad’s fierce satire emerges clearly through Marlow’s narrative. The imperial civilising mission amounts to a savage predation: ‘the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of the human conscience’, as Conrad elsewhere described it.109
At the time Heart of Darkness appeared there was – and there continues to be – a distaste for Conrad on the part of some readers. It is that very reaction which underlines his significance. This is perhaps best explained by Richard Curle, author of the first full-length study of Conrad, published in 1914.110 Curle could see that for many people there is a tenacious need to believe that the world, horrible as it might be, can be put right by human effort and the appropriate brand of liberal philosophy. Unlike the novels of his contemporaries, Wells and Galsworthy, Conrad derides this point of view as an illusion at best, and the pathway to desperate destruction at its worst.111 Evidence shows that Conrad was sickened by his experience in Africa, both physically and psychologically, and was deeply alienated from the imperialist, racist exploiters of Africa and Africans at that time. Heart of Darkness played a part in ending Leopold’s tyrannical misrule in what was then the Belgian Congo.
Born in Poland, and despite the fact that Heart of Darkness is set in the Belgian Congo, Joseph Conrad wrote in English. A final achievement of Empire, which began in earnest with the American colonies but culminated in India and the ‘scramble’ for Africa, was the spread of the English language. Today, there are as many English-speakers in India as there are in England, and five times that number in North America. Across the world, one and a half billion people speak English. Yet for many years – for centuries – English was a minority tongue, which hung on only with great difficulty. Its subsequent triumph, as the world’s most useful language, is, as Melvyn Bragg has said, a remarkable adventure.
The first inkling we have of English was when it arrived in the fifth century AD, spoken by Germanic warriors, who were invited to Britain as mercenaries to shore up the ruins of the recently-departed Roman empire.112 The original inhabitants of the British Isles were Celts, who spoke Celtish, no doubt laced with a little Latin, thanks to the Romans. But the Germanic tribes – Saxons, Angles and Jutes – spoke a variety of dialects, mutually intelligible, and it was some time before the Angles won out. The present-day language of Friesland, by the North Sea in Holland, is judged to have the closest language to early English, where such words as trije (three), froast (frost), blau (blue), brea (bread) and sliepe (sleep) are still in use.113
Early English took on a few words from Latin/Celtic, such as ‘win’ (wine), ‘cetel’ (cattle) and ‘streat’ (street), but the great majority of English words today come from Old English – you, man, son, daughter, friend, house and so on. Also the northern words ‘owt’ (anything) and ‘nowt’ (nothing), from ‘awiht’ and ‘nawiht’.114 The ending ‘-ing’ in place names means ‘the people of . . .’ – Reading, Dorking, Hastings; the ending ‘-ham’ means farm, as in Birmingham, Fulham, Nottingham; ‘-ton’ means enclosure or village, as in Taunton, Luton, Wilton. The Germanic tribes brought with them the runic alphabet, known as the futhorc after the first letters of that alphabet. Runes were made up mainly of straight lines, so they could more easily be cut into stone or wood. The language had twenty-four letters, lacking j, q, v, x and z but including æ, Þ, ð and uu, later changed to w.115
‘Englisc’, as it was originally called, did not begin to grow until the Viking invasions, when endings such as ‘-by’ were added to places, to indicate farm or town: Corby, Derby, Rugby. The Danes made personal names by adding ‘-son’ to the name of the father: Johnson, Hudson, Watson. Other Old Norse words taken into Englisc at this time included ‘birth’, ‘cake,’ ‘leg’, ‘sister’, ‘smile’, ‘thrift’ and ‘trust’.116
The language came under most threat in the three hundred years following the battle of Hastings in 1066. When William the Conqueror was crowned in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day that year the service was carried out in English and Latin but he himself spoke French throughout. French became the language of the court, and of the courts, and of Parliament. But, while English survived, words from French were transferred. Mainly, they described the new social order: army (armée), throne (trone), duke (duc), govern (governer), but also cooking: pork (porc), sausages (saussiches), biscuit (bescoit), fry (frire) and vinegar (vyn egre).117 Old English didn’t simply die out: often it adapted. For example, the Old English ‘æppel’ was used to mean any kind of fruit, but after the French word fruit came in, the Old English retreated, to mean just one kind of fruit, the apple.118 Other French words that entered English at this time included chimney, chess, art, dance, music, boot, buckle, dozen, person, country, debt, cruel, calm and honest. The word ‘checkmate’ comes from the French eschec mat, which in turn comes from the Arabic Sh hmt, meaning ‘the king is dead’.119 These were the words that became Middle English.120