"The Heart of Darkness" & "Hatteras"

Old habits die hard. And a literary puzzle still has the power to concentrate my thoughts.

Reading through some short stories by AEW Mason (author of The Four Feathers and Fire Over London) I came across “Hatteras” - its form and content immediately reminded me of “Heart of Darkness” by Conrad.

Both stories are ‘stories within stories’ and both are told on ships at a time when “the air had grown chilly with the dusk, and the sea when it lost the sun took on a leaden and a dreary look.” (Hatteras) Both stories are set in Africa and both concern themselves with ‘civilized’ men becoming too concerned with aspects of native life. Both have elements of horror and both have the character that has ‘gone native’ dying.

I do not pretend that the two stories are of equal interest. “The Heart of Darkness” (sic) was the title of the serialized version of the story when it was published in three parts in Blackwood’s Magazine around March 1899 and as Conrad himself said, in what one biographer described as “one of the literary understatements of all time,” he felt that this story was similar to his “An Outpost of Youth” but was “a little wider” in its scope!

By contrast “Hatteras” by AEW Mason is much more limited. It was published in 1901 in a collection of short stories with the title of “Ensign Knightly” but I suspect, but do not know, that the story itself could have been published in magazine form before that. Black and White: A Weekly Illustrated Record and Review was a British illustrated weekly periodical established in 1891 was a magazine which published stories by AEW Mason and it could have appeared here or in one of the other literary magazines that flourished at the turn of the century.

“Hatteras” is not a common English name and in the 1890s it might have been linked in the literary mind with with Jules Verne who had published The Adventures of Captain Hatteras (Voyages et aventures du capitaine Hatteras) an adventure novel in two parts: The English at the North Pole (Les Anglais au pôle nord) and The desert of ice (Le Désert de glace).

In Verne’s novel the story of an expedition to the North Pole ends when Captain Hatteras and his crew find a volcano with the exact location of the Pole being in the centre of the crater. Hatteras throws himself in and dies. In a rewrite of the original version Hatteras survives but is made permanently insane by the intensity of the experience and loses his “soul” inside the crater. He is brought back to England and walks the streets around the asylum where he is placed but "Captain Hatteras forever marches northward".

The novel was published for the first time in 1864. The definitive version from 1866 was included into Voyages Extraordinaires series (The Extraordinary Voyages). These were successful and widely known, so AEW Mason may well have had the name of this explorer who ‘lost his soul’ in mind when he came to write his own story of a man who felt drawn to the darker aspects of native life in Africa.

By the end of the 1890s Conrad was fully involved in the literary life of Britain and a number of prominent visitors came to his house in Pent: Edward Garnett, Ford Madox Hueffer, Glasworthy, HG Wells, William Rothenstein and Stephen Crane. Not to mention visits to Henry James in Rye. It would seem to be highly likely that Conrad would read all the latest literary effusions from his colleagues and competitors.

I can find, with my limited literary resources, no evidence to suggest that Conrad and Mason were acquainted with each other, though it is more than likely that they knew each other’s work. I wonder who read whose story first!

“Hatteras” will never be more than a literary curiosity, though it does try to bring horror to the situation where a classically educated young man is forced by circumstances to go to Africa and there becomes fascinated by the life of the natives in the dark forest. He blacks himself up and with his fluent command of the native languages is able to immerse himself in the darker aspects of the native life. Hatteras says "It's not only the things you care about, old man, which tug at you; it's the things you hate as well. I hate this country. I hate these miles and miles of mangroves, and yet I am fascinated. I can't get the forest and the undergrowth out of my mind. I dream of them at nights. I dream that I am sinking into that black oily batter of mud. Listen," and he suddenly broke off with his head stretched forwards. "Doesn't it sound wicked?"

Jim Walker the ‘decent’ Englishman is appalled by what he hears from Hatteras and urges him to find a wife to give himself stability. Although Hatteras takes his advice it does not stop his nocturnal excursions and he eventually confesses that "It's like going down to Hell and coming up again and wanting to go down again. Oh, you'd want to go down again. You'd find the whole earth pale. You'd count the days until you went down again. Do you remember Orpheus? I think he looked back not to see if Eurydice was coming after him but because he knew it was the last glimpse he would get of Hell."

Which is all good stuff; but it is far from the suggestiveness that you find in Conrad’s story. Mason is too literal and the horror of his narrative is always contained with the institutions of the white man. At the end of “Hatteras” there is a terribly English public school sort of execution: "Good bye, Jim," said Hatteras, and he climbed up the bank until he stood in the light of the lantern. Twice Walker raised the rifle to his shoulder, twice he lowered it. Then he remembered that Hatteras and he had been at school together.
"Good bye, Dicky," he cried, and fired. Hatteras tumbled down to the boat-side.”

There is a tidiness in “Hatteras” that is not present in “Heart of Darkness” which is why “Hatteras” remains a horrid story set in Africa while “Heart of Darkness” becomes more of an allegory which transcends its African setting.

I also cannot find any linking of these two stories, but I find it difficult to believe that no one else has seen the similarities and commented on them. The internet while offering much has been more frustrating than informative and the chaos of my books has meant my looking more and more like some crazed bibliophile as I flit from shelf to shelf trying to find something to help my discoveries.

I think that the most that “Hatteras” can prompt me to do is re-read “Heart of Darkness”.

Which is a good thing.

In spite of what Chinua Achebe said in his famous (or infamous) talk: "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness” – though something to think about!