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prejudice against a foreigner”: “Oh dear; one could never take him for an Englishman, and he doesn’t look French, either,” her mother whispered to her upon first being introduced to her future son-in-law (Joseph Conrad and His Circle, pp. 16, 14). The next paragraph’s assertion that Yanko and Amy “went on ‘walking out’ together in the face of opposition” appears to allude to this situation. It is also noteworthy that Jessie herself shared this sense of Conrad’s peculiar foreignness. She recalls that her initial impression upon meeting him was that “[h]is strangeness was very noticeable, almost oriental in its extravagance, both in gesture and speech,” and she goes on to make the astonishing admission that “[h]e was the first foreigner I had met” (Joseph Conrad and His Circle, p. 9).

7 (p. 151) Suddenly coming to himself... the child in her arms: This scene, in which Amy feels “the unreasonable terror... of that man she could not understand creeping over her,” bears striking resemblances to what Jessie Conrad recalls about her husband’s episode of fever during their honeymoon in Brittany in 1896:

For a whole long week the fever ran high, and for most of the time Conrad was delirious. To see him lying in the white canopied bed, dark-faced, with gleaming teeth and shining eyes, was sufficiently alarming, but to hear him muttering to himself in a strange tongue (he must have been speaking Polish), to be unable to penetrate the clouded mind or catch one intelligible word, was for a young, inexperienced girl truly awful (Joseph Conrad as I Knew Him, p. 35).

“The Secret Sharer”

1 (p. 157) I asked myself... the kindest of motives: The narrator’s ensuing encounter with Leggatt will provide a practical test of precisely this question and will lead him to the conclusion that such departures from routine in favor of kind motives are, in fact, justifiable. Notably, it is his initial departure from “the established routine of duties” (his unorthodox decision to take the watch, which has created an impression among the crew that he is eccentric) that precipitates these reflections as well as sets the plot in motion, for it leads directly to his discovery of Leggatt.

2 (p.159) like my double: This is the first of many such passages that draw parallels between the narrator and Leggatt. The fact that both have trained as cadets on the Liverpool-based ship the Conway (as has the director of companies in “Youth”) further solidifies the sense of identity and solidarity between them.

3 (p.161) “My father’s a parson in Norfolk”: Among the various correspondences between Leggatt and the eponymous protagonist of Lord Jim (1900) is that both exiled transgressors have fathers back in England who are parsons (representatives of upright conduct and traditional morality), and in each story the narrator is entrusted to provide both moral and material support for the transgressor.

4 (p.165) brand of Cain: This is the first of several allusions to the biblical story of Cain and Abel (Genesis 4:1-16; KJV), in which Adam and Eve’s son Cain, having killed his brother, Abel, is branded by God and exiled. Casting himself as the exiled fratricide Cain, Leggatt continues the reference later by remarking, “What does the Bible say? ‘Driven off the face of the earth’ ” (p. 185). The narrator will extend this allusion as well in the story’s conclusion by reflecting on the fact that, unlike his biblical counterpart, Leggatt will have “no brand of the curse on his sane forehead to stay a slaying hand” (p.192).

5 (p. 178) “Beats all these tales ... Yankee ships”: The first mate’s implication here is that honor, discipline, and standards of conduct generally on English ships are greater than on ships of other nations, such as those of the Americans, and that a killing of this sort is therefore absolutely scandalous. The captain of the Sephora makes this point as well when he exclaims, “I’ve never heard of such a thing happening in an English ship” (p. 174). Clearly, however, he is less concerned with the stain to the honor of the British merchant marine than