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ON THE EVE of Conrad's departure for his triumphal visit to America in April, 1923, his wife Jessie learned to her dismay that their elder son Borys, then twenty-five years old, had secretly married (6). Endowed with an unusually sensitive understanding of her somewhat eccentric husband, and aware of the strained nature of the relationship between father and son, Jessie feared that disclosing the news might well ruin her husband's impending trip, if it did not prompt him to cancel it altogether. With a characteristic display of courage, therefore, she elected to keep the secret to herself, and Conrad sailed for New York untroubled by personal domestic concerns. Although stage fright probably caused him to restrict his public appearances to a minimum, his brief tour was a decided success and signified that he was now recognized on both sides of the Atlantic as an acknowledged master of English prose. The trip was a success in another respect too, for it was accompanied by a subjective state of relative good health, itself an unusual condition for Conrad during the latter half of his life.
Immediately upon his return home in June, however, the long-delayed bombshell exploded when, after they had retired to bed for the night, Jessie broke the news about Borys. Gripping her