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Jessie George
The next main event in Conrad's life was his marriage with Jessie George. Jessie was sixteen years younger than he was. A great amount of historians had been puzzled by this marriage already. It looks like that neither bride nor bridegroom were aware of a relationship so close to result in a marriage. Conrad proposed the question of marriage while he was visiting a museum with Jessie. And just a sentence after his proposal he complained about the bad weather. Something of a romantic touch, isn't it ? A possible statement could be that he was aged 38 now and he might have found it reasonable to be married. Some people brought up the idea that Conrad hardly knew anybody in England, or - after the short affair with Emilie - he was ready to give his life a touch of more security, of hold. The positive sides of Jessie when it came to cooking and general housework might also have been a reason for him. However it was: It should turn out they had made the right decision.
Though Jessie was not - at least not from the beginning - interested in his literary work, and Conrad did not bother her with 'serious talks' the marriage was to last. And the relationship of the differing couple became much better during the years. Jessie spoiled him and took care of him as good as possible. She kept him from being bothered by the 'normal daily grind'. Even after both her knees were seriously injured during an accident in 1904 - she was not to recover from this - she remained being a caring wife and mother.
They got married on March 24th, 1896 and the couple spent the honeymoon in Britanny. In his book 'The Secret Agent' (published in 1907) he wrote about life in a marriage being sort of bizarre. He describes the life of Mr. Verloc (not his own) with this words:
Mr Verloc loved his wife as a wife should be love - that is, maritally, with the regard one has for one’s chief possession. This head arranged for the night, those ample shoulders, had an aspect of familiar sacrednes - the sacredness of domestic peace.
During the time in Britanny he wrote some stories, for example 'An Outpost of Progress', 'The Lagoon', 'The Idiots' (the stories were put together in the book 'Tales of Unrest'). There were days on which he wrote a good amount of words, but also times he had to fight for every single word. He was depressed quite often, not only during the times when he was in search for proper words, and he was afraid of being able to write in a 'state of intoxication' only. His writing-problems caused a heavy physical and psychological overload to him, which came up mostly after having finished a particular work. The most serious mental breakdown came in 1910. It was very clear, the burden of 'wanting to write' (together with the certainty of 'having to write' for financial reasons) lasted heavily on his shoulders.
