Record Number: 33483

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Reading Experience:

Evidence:

'The writer [Ford Madox Ford] never saw Conrad read any book of memoirs except those of Maxime Ducamp and the Correspondence of Flaubert; those we read daily together over a space of years. But somewhere in the past Conrad had read every imaginable and unimaginable volume of politician's memoirs, Mme de Campan, the Duc d'Audiffret Pasquier, Benjamin Constant, Karoline Bauer, Sir Horace Rumbold, Napoleon the Great, Napoleon III, Benjamin Franklin, Assheton Smith, Pitt, Chatham, Palmerston, Parnell,the late Queen Victoria, Dilke, Morley [...] There was no memoir of all these that he had missed or forgotten—down to "Il Principe" or the letters of Thomas Cromwell. He could sugddenly produce an incident from the life of Lord Shaftesbury and work it into "Nostromo" [...].'

Century:

1850-1899, 1900-1945

Date:

Between 1 Jan 1895 and 31 Dec 1923

Country:

unknown, probably England

Time

n/a

Place:

n/a

Type of Experience
(Reader):
 

silent aloud unknown
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown

Type of Experience
(Listener):
 

solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown

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Reader / Listener / Reading Group:

Reader:

Joseph Conrad

Age:

Adult (18-100+)

Gender:

Male

Date of Birth:

3 Dec 1857

Socio-Economic Group:

Gentry
'Szlachta', or Polish landed gentry/nobility

Occupation:

Master mariner and author

Religion:

Roman Catholic

Country of Origin:

Poland

Country of Experience:

unknown, probably England

Listeners present if any:
e.g family, servants, friends

n/a

Additional Comments:

n/a

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Text Being Read:

Author:

Etienne-Denis Pasquier

Title:

Histoire de mon temps: mémoires du chancelier Pasquier

Genre:

Autobiog / Diary

Form of Text:

Print: Book

Publication Details

Paris: edited by M. le duc d'Audiffret-Pasquier, (great- nephew) 1893-1895 (6 vol.)

Provenance

unknown

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Source Information:

Record ID:

33483

Source:

Print

Author:

Ford Madox Ford

Editor:

n/a

Title:

Joseph Conrad: A Personal Remembrance

Place of Publication:

London

Date of Publication:

1924

Vol:

n/a

Page:

59

Additional Comments:

n/a

Citation:

Ford Madox Ford, Joseph Conrad: A Personal Remembrance, (London, 1924), p. 59, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/record_details.php?id=33483, accessed: 19 April 2024

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Additional Comments:

Etienne-Denis Pasquier (1767-1862) whose memoirs were published by his great-nephew,the senator Gaston d'Audiffret-Pasquier(1823-1905), was a French politician who had a long liaison (and possibly a secret marriage)with Adèle d'Osmond, the Comtesse de Boigne whose own memoirs were a central source for Conrad's last and unfinished novel "Suspense" (1925). The senator (Pasquier's great nephew), did not publish any memoirs himself, so it is most likely that the text to which Ford refers is his great uncle's memoirs.