Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent

The publication of Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent in 1907 is an important milestone in the development of the spy novel. Spy fiction already existed but it was very much of the heroic sort. The Secret Agent is the beginning of a tradition in spy fiction that would reach its full flowering in the works of Eric Ambler, Somerset Maugham, Graham Greene, John le Carre and Len Deighton - the pessimistic, sordid, cynical school of spy fiction.

The inspiration for Conrad’s novel was an anarchist bomb outrage in London in the 1880s. Even by the standards of anarchist terrorism this was a remarkably senseless and useless act - an attempt to blow up the Greenwich Observatory, of all things. It also seems highly likely that it was influenced by Dostoevsky’s The Devils (also known as Demons or The Possessed) although the rabidly Russophobic Conrad was unlikely to have admitted to the influence.

Mr Verloc runs a sleazy little shop in London, specialising in dirty books. He makes very little money from this trade but he has another source of income - he is a secret agent working for an unnamed European great power. He is in fact an agent provocateur. His problem is that so far he has provided some useful intelligence on the anarchist organisations he has infiltrated he has not actually managed to provoke anything. And now his employers want him to do just that. They want a terrorist outrage in Britain. They believe this will encourage the British Government to join them in a continent-wide crackdown on anarchists, socialists and other trouble-makers.

While the foreign power for which Mr Verloc works is not named it does has an emperor so it has to be the Austrians, the Germans or the Russians. Given that the Polish-born Conrad was not only motivated by his inherent Polish Russophobia but had presumably picked up on the hysterical Russophobia of 19th century England it seems reasonable to assume that the power in question is Tsarist Russia. And it’s made clear that this power is extremely reactionary which tends to confirm the view that it’s Russia.

Mr Verloc has close connections to a committee of anarchist activists. They are in fact a motley collection of dreamers, ineffectual agitators, incompetent propagandists, lunatics, losers and would-be terrorists who would be unlikely to terrify even a sensitive five-year-old child. Somehow Mr Verloc will have to find a way to produce the required terrorist outrage or risk losing his lucrative post as a secret agent. That would mean that he might actually have to work for a living, a prospect that horrifies him. Mr Verloc has a wife to support, as well as Stevie. Stevie is his wife’s brother, a young man who is somewhat child-like, over-sensitive and over-excitable.

Most of Mr Verloc’s anarchist contacts are unlikely to be of much help to him but the Professor is another story. The Professor makes bombs. He also carries a bomb with him permanently concealed in his person, a bomb which he intends to detonate if a policeman ever tries to arrest him.

Preventing such acts of terrorism is the task of the Special Crimes division at Scotland Yard. Chief Inspector Heat is an old hand at the job and he is very competent. His superior, the Assistant Commissioner in charge of the Special Crimes division, is perhaps not so competent. He’s an ex-colonial policeman but he is more adept at playing politics than at catching anarchists. The sensible course of action would clearly be to leave the matter to Chief Inspector Heat but the Assistant Commissioner, for reasons which an ungenerous observer might describe as self-interest, decides to meddle.

Conrad clearly has little sympathy for these anarchist misfits and even less sympathy for secret agents. He doesn’t have a huge amount of sympathy for the police either, or for the governments that employ them. And for all his contempt for the anarchists he has to admit that the society they wish to overthrow is corrupt and unjust. He just doesn’t think that throwing bombs will lead to a better society.

Conrad was a deeply pessimistic writer but his tone in this novel is ironic and mocking. It’s often rather amusing. This is not quite the black comedy of Greene’s spy thrillers but at times it does approach black comedy. The world of Conrad’s novel is sordid and cynical. This is not quite Greeneland but one could say that Conrad was mapping out the territory that would later become Greeneland.

This is of course a lot more than a spy novel but it’s The Secret Agent’s place in the history of spy novels with which this review is concerned. Don’t expect a great deal of action and excitement or even suspense (although there is some suspense at the end). The Secret Agent is a study in the psychology of espionage, and the psychology of betrayal, and its influence on writers like Greene and le Carre make it a crucial step in the evolution of the genre. And they make it essential reading for serious students of espionage fiction. Recommended.