BEFORE sending Conrad off to Marseilles his Uncle Thaddeus
had arranged that he should be paid the 'modest but sufficient'
allowance of 2,000 francs a year in monthly instalments. ¹ He had also
asked a Pole named Victor Chodźko, who was in the French mer-
chant navy, and another man named Baptistin Solary to keep an eye
on Conrad. ² Conrad describes his first meeting with Solary in A

Personal Record:

This Solary (Baptistin), when I beheld him in the flesh, turned out a
quite young man, very good-looking, with a fine black, short beard, a
fresh complexion, and soft, merry black eyes. He was as jovial and good-
natured as any boy could desire. I was still asleep in my room in a modest
hotel near the quays of the old port, after the fatigues of the journey via
Vienna, Zurich, Lyons, when he burst in flinging the shutters open to the
sun of Provence and chiding me boisterously for lying abed. How
pleasantly he startled me by his noisy objurgations to be up and off
instantly for a 'three years' campaign in the South Seas'. ³

Apparently Solary introduced Conrad to life among the pilots in
the Vieux Port. Again, Conrad gives an account of his activities:

The very first whole day I ever spent on salt water was by invitation,
in a big half-decked pilot-boat, cruising under close reefs on the lookout,
in misty, blowing weather, for the sails of ships and the smoke of steamers
rising out there, beyond the slim and tall Planier lighthouse cutting the
line of the windswept horizon with a white perpendicular stroke. They
were hospitable souls, these sturdy Provençal seamen. Under the general
designation of le petit ami de Baptistin I was made the guest of the Corpora-
tion of Pilots, and had the freedom of their boats night or day. And many
a day and a night too did I spend cruising with these rough, kindly men,
under whose auspices my intimacy with the sea began. Many a time
'the little friend of Baptistin' had the hooded cloak of the Mediterranean
sailor thrown over him by their honest hands while dodging at night
under the lee of Chateau d' If on the watch for the lights of ships. Their

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