BR suggests that he read Portraits from Memory for what he has to say about Joseph Conrad. "He was, as you know, legally Austrian and, when he expressed a desire for the sea, his family tried to induce him to go into the Austrian navy. But he wanted something more adventurous and therefore decided on the British Merchant service. ... I admired and loved him partly because his intensely passionate nature was controlled by an immense will-power and subdued to the purposes of art and life."