Conrad's character Stevie is based on the French anarchist Martial Bourdin who died gruesomely when the explosives he carried detonated prematurely.[8] Bourdin's motives remain a mystery as does his intended target, which may have been the Greenwich Observatory.[9] In the 1920 Author's Note to the novel, Conrad recalls a discussion with Ford Madox Ford about the bombing:[10]
[...] we recalled the already old story of the attempt to blow up the Greenwich Observatory; a blood-stained inanity of so fatuous a kind that it was impossible to fathom its origin by any reasonable or even unreasonable process of thought. For perverse unreason has its own logical processes. But that outrage could not be laid hold of mentally in any sort of way, so that one remained faced by the fact of a man blown to bits for nothing even most remotely resembling an idea, anarchistic or other. As to the outer wall of the Observatory it did not show as much as the faintest crack. I pointed all this out to my friend, who remained silent for a while and then remarked in his characteristically casual and omniscient manner: "Oh, that fellow was half an idiot. His sister committed suicide afterwards." These were absolutely the only words that passed between us [...].[11]
