Joseph Conrad - Death

Death

On 3 August 1924 Conrad died, probably of a heart attack. He was interred at Canterbury Cemetery, Canterbury, England, under a misspelled version of his original Polish name, as "Joseph Teador Conrad Korzeniowski". Inscribed on his gravestone are the lines from Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene which he had chosen as the epigraph to his last complete novel, The Rover:

Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas,
Ease after warre, death after life, doth greatly please

Conrad's modest funeral took place amid great crowds. His old friend Edward Garnett recalled bitterly:

To those who attended Conrad's funeral in Canterbury during the Cricket Festival of 1924, and drove through the crowded streets festooned with flags, there was something symbolical in England's hospitality and in the crowd's ignorance of even the existence of this great writer. A few old friends, acquaintances and pressmen stood by his grave.

Another old friend of Conrad's, Cunninghame Graham, wrote Garnett: "Aubry was saying to me... that had Anatole France died, all Paris would have been at his funeral."

Twelve years later, Conrad's wife Jessie died on 6 December 1936 and was interred with him.

Read more about this topic:  Joseph Conrad

Famous quotes containing the word death:

    So he with difficulty and labour hard
    Moved on, with difficulty and labour he;
    But he once passed, soon after when man fell,
    Strange alteration! Sin and Death amain
    Following his track, such was the will of Heaven,
    Paved after him a broad and beaten way
    Over the dark abyss, whose boiling gulf
    Tamely endured a bridge of wondrous length
    From hell continued reaching th’ utmost orb
    Of this frail world;
    John Milton (1608–1674)

    In every unbeliever’s heart there is an uneasy feeling that, after all, he may awake after death and find himself immortal. This is his punishment for his unbelief. This is the agnostic’s Hell.
    —H.L. (Henry Lewis)

    Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.
    —E.M. (Edward Morgan)