Tales of Unrest

Of the five stories in this volume The Lagoon, the last in order, is the
earliest in date. It is the first short story I ever wrote and marks, in
a manner of speaking, the end of my first phase, the Malayan phase with
its special subject and its verbal suggestions. Conceived in the same
mood which produced "Almayer's Folly" and "An Outcast of the Islands,"
it is told in the same breath (with what was left of it, that is, after
the end of "An Outcast"), seen with the same vision rendered in the same
method--if such a thing as method did exist then in my conscious
relation to this new adventure of writing for print. I doubt it very
much. One does one's work first and theorizes about it afterwards. It is
a very amusing and egotistical occupation of no use whatever to any one
and just as likely as not to lead to false conclusions.

Anybody can see that between the last paragraph of "An Outcast" and the
first of The Lagoon there has been no change of pen, figuratively
speaking. It happens also to be literally true. It was the same pen: a
common steel pen. Having been charged with a certain lack of emotional
faculty I am glad to be able to say that on one occasion at least I did
give way to a sentimental impulse. I thought the pen had been a good pen
and that it had done enough for me, and so, with the idea of keeping it
for a sort of memento on which I could look later with tender eyes, I
put it into my waistcoat pocket. Afterwards it used to turn up in all
sorts of places, at the bottom of small drawers, among my studs in
cardboard boxes, till at last it found permanent rest in a large wooden
bowl containing some loose keys, bits of sealing wax, bits of string,
small broken chains, a few buttons, and similar minute wreckage that
washes out of a man's life into such receptacles. I would catch sight of
it from time to time with a distinct feeling of satisfaction till, one
day, I perceived with horror that there were two old pens in there. How
the other pen found its way into the bowl instead of the fireplace or
waste-paper basket I can't imagine, but there the two were, lying side
by side, both encrusted with ink and completely undistinguishable from
each other. It was very distressing, but being determined not to share
my sentiment between two pens or run the risk of sentimentalizing over a
mere stranger, I threw them both out of the window into a flower
bed--which strikes me now as a poetical grave for the remnants of one's
past.

But the tale remained. It was first fixed in print in the _Cornhill
Magazine_, being my first appearance in a serial of any kind; and I have
lived long enough to see it most agreeably guyed by Mr. Max Beerbohm in
a volume of parodies entitled