Oliver Madox Hueffer
(1876-1931)
A Bibliography
By Ashley Chantler
Hueffer, Oliver Franz (1876–1931), writer, was born on 9 January 1876 at 5 Fairlawn Villas, Merton, Surrey, the second of the three children of Francis Hueffer (1845–1889), a free-thinking émigré German musicologist and author who Anglicized his name from Franz Hüffer, and his wife, Catherine (1850–1927), daughter of the Pre-Raphaelite painters Ford Madox Brown (1821–1893) and his second wife, Matilda (Emma) Hill (1829–1890). Francis Hueffer had come to England in 1869 and was for a decade the music critic of The Times. Oliver’s elder brother, Ford Hermann, was the writer later known as Ford Madox Hueffer, and eventually (from 1919) Ford Madox Ford (1873–1939). Oliver too incorporated Madox into his name, publishing mainly as Oliver Madox Hueffer.
Oliver, like his brother, went first to an advanced boarding school in Folkestone run by German émigrés, the Praetoriuses. Then both boys attended University College School (in Gower Street, London), Oliver from 1888 to 1892. In 1889, after the sudden death of their father, the boys were sent to live with Madox Brown, whom they adored.
Ford recalled Madox Brown’s pride in the ‘genius’ of his talented grandchildren, and his delight that Oliver was that rarer being, a ‘mad genius’ (Ford, 251). He was extravagant, theatrical, charming, entertaining, and ingeniously irresponsible, particularly where facts, money, or women were concerned. The dash he cuts in the diaries and memoirs of his circle is of a person of gusto, caprice, and hilarity; someone always larger than life. He moved in a cloud of exaggeration, rumour, and pranks.
Hueffer tried acting, and in September 1895 was given a small part in Romeo and Juliet, starring Mrs Patrick Campbell. But his stage presence turned out as anarchic as it was untheatrical. Ford said he ‘ran through the careers of Man About Town, Army Officer, Actor, Stockbroker, Painter, Author and, under the auspices of the father of one of his fiancées, that of valise manufacturer’ (Ford, 251). Oliver went to Rome in 1893, hoping to be employed by a wealthy Hüffer uncle, and where he was said to have had an audience with the pope. He also considered becoming a barrister, or even a tobacco trader. However, he gave his ‘rank or profession’ as ‘gentleman’ when, on 2 March 1897, at Kippington, near Sevenoaks, Kent, he married the violinist Zoe Pyne (1867–1938), daughter of James Kendrick Pyne, who had been the organist in Manchester town hall when Ford Madox Brown painted its frescoes. The couple lived in Chelsea.
Hueffer had begun to write: first plays, later novels; six of his novels were written under the pseudonym Jane Wardle of which The Lord of Latimer Street (1907) was one of the most successful. He also wrote journalism and books of reminiscence and cultural observation (French France, 1929, was particularly well received). He specialized in portraying artists, vagabonds, burglars, and outcasts. His style is versatile and fluent; often light and entertaining, with touches of Dickensian comic realism. His pleasure in straining the credibility of his plots results in facetiousness. His personal vivacity and wit is thinner on the page than in life, and his work is little read now.
In 1903 Hueffer was hired by the Manchester Guardian to write ‘a daily “miscellany” column, “shorts”, special articles, drama criticism, personals, and a London letter’ (Troy, 173). This was the beginning of a decade of journalism. In 1906 he wrote for Tribune. He was Paris correspondent for The Times, and covered the Mexican revolution for the Daily Express, beginning in 1910. That May he and four other journalists were arrested by Mexican secret police. He also said he wrote for the New York Sun, and was a correspondent during the Balkans campaign of 1912–13 and at the start of the First World War.
It was said that Hueffer ‘went wrong’ before the war. He appears to have squandered the Pyne family fortunes in an ‘unfortunate investment’. In July 1911 he was cited as co-respondent in the divorce case of the actress Elaine Inescourt and John Wightman. By 1915 he was living with the novelist and journalist Muriel Harris (1879–1975), who also worked for the Manchester Guardian. She continued to use her own name professionally, but later ‘told a friend that they were married in the United States because “circumstances” prevented them from marrying in England. It is not clear whether Hueffer was ever legally divorced from Pyne’ (Troy, 176).
In October 1915 Hueffer got a commission in the 10th battalion of the East Surrey regiment; he was wounded in the shoulder at Thiepval in September 1916, during the battle of the Somme. He was invalided home, but in February 1918 he was transferred to the 3rd battalion of the Suffolk regiment with the temporary rank of lieutenant, and returned to France to serve as a railway transport officer. He was gazetted out of the army in February 1919. In the 1920s Hueffer and Harris lived in France. On 21 June 1931, after ‘an exceptionally good dinner’, he is said to have exclaimed ‘I've never felt better in my life’, and died of a heart attack, aged fifty-four, in West Lavington, Midhurst, Sussex (Saunders, 2.383). He was cremated at Golders Green on 25 June.
Max Saunders, ‘Hueffer, Oliver Franz (1876–1931)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)
Fiction:
Love’s Disguises: A Book of Little Plays (Being Four of a Sequence and One Other) (Hackbridge, Surrey: The Sign of the Rose, 1900)
In Arcady and Out [short stories] (London: R. Brimley Johnson, 1901)
Where Truth Lies: A Study of the Improbable (London: Stanley Paul, 1911)
Hunt the Slipper (London: Stanley Paul, 1913; New York: John Lane, 1914)
Little Pitchers (London: Stanley Paul, 1919)
Needles and Pins (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1924)
‘Cousins German’ (London: Ernest Benn, 1930)
By Whose Authority? (London: Ernest Benn, 1931)
The Right Honourable: Being Three Days From the Life of Elbert, Second Baron Thornton Heath (London: Ernest Benn, 1931)
Fiction (pseud. ‘Jane Wardle’):
The Artistic Temperament (London: Alston Rivers; New York: McClure, Phillips, 1907)
The Lord of Latimer Street (London: Alston Rivers, 1907)
Margery Pigeon (London: Edward Arnold, 1909)
The Pasque-Flower (London: Edward Arnold, 1909)
The Little Grey Man (London: Edward Arnold, 1910)
Non-fiction:
Excludes periodical articles.
The Book of Witches (London: Eveleigh Nash, 1908; New York: John McBride, 1909)
The Spinola Rubens: An Appreciation, with Wallace L. Crowdy and Henri Franty (Edinburgh: Otto Schulze, 1911)
A Vagabond in New York (London: John Lane, The Bodley Head; New York: John Lane; Toronto: Bell and Cockburn, 1913); parts published previously in Truth.
French France (London: Ernest Benn, New York: D. Appleton, 1929)
Some of the English: A Study Towards a Study (London: Ernest Benn; New York: D. Appleton, 1930)
On Hueffer:
Ford Madox Ford, It Was the Nightingale, ed. John Coyle (1933; Manchester: Carcanet Press, 2007)
Olive Garnett, Tea and Anarchy! The Bloomsbury Diary of Olive Garnett, 1890-1893, ed. Barry C. Johnson (London: Bartletts Press, 1989)
Olive Garnett, Olive & Stepniak: The Bloomsbury Diary of Olive Garnett, 1893-1895, ed. Barry C. Johnson (London: Bartletts Press, 1993)
‘Hueffer, Oliver Madox’, Edwardian Fiction: An Oxford Companion, ed. Sandra Kemp, Charlotte Mitchell and David Trotter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997)
Alan Judd, Ford Madox Ford (London: Collins, 1990)
Arthur Mizener, The Saddest Story: A Biography of Ford Madox Ford (London: The Bodley Head, 1972)
Max Saunders, Ford Madox Ford: A Dual Life, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996)
Max Saunders, ‘Hueffer, Oliver Franz (1876–1931)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)
Michele K. Troy, ‘Oliver Madox Hueffer’, Dictionary of Literary Biography: Late Victorian and Edwardian British Novelists, Second Series, vol. 197 (Detroit: Gale, 1998)
Michele K. Troy, ‘Double Trouble: The Hueffer Brothers and Artistic Temperament’, Journal of Modern Literature, 26:3/4 (2003), 28-46
Joseph Wiesenfarth, ‘The Genius and the Donkey: Brothers Hueffer at Home and Abroad’, in Ford Madox Ford’s Literary Contacts, ed. Paul Skinner (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007)
I would be grateful to learn of any omissions or errors. Acknowledgement will be made. Please write to me at:
[email protected]
Dr Ashley Chantler
Department of English
University of Chester
Parkgate Road
Chester
CH1 4BJ
UK
To be confirmed:
‘The Hungry Girl, Collier’s, 51:17 (12 July 1913), 7-15
‘The Pied Piper of Chatham Square’, Smart Set, 50:2 (Oct. 1916), 65-67
‘The Day of the Envelopes’, Detective Magazine, 4:41 (6 June 1924), 134-38
‘The Day of the Road-Menders’, Detective Magazine, 4:43 (4 July 1924), 329-34
‘The Day of the Stradivarious’, Detective Magazine, 4:44 (18 July 1924), 423-28
‘The Day of the 20-Franc Notes’, Detective Magazine, 4:45 (1 Aug. 1924), 531-37
‘The Day of the 10,000’, Detective Magazine, 4:46 (15 Aug. 1924), 622-28
‘The Day of the Easy Money’, Detective Magazine, 4:47 (29 Aug. 1924), 753-57
‘The Day of Reckoning’, Detective Magazine, 4:48 (12 Sep. 1924), 863-68
‘Earned Increment’, Detective Magazine, 4:51 (24 Oct. 1924), 1121-28
‘The Man with the Black Beard’, Detective Magazine, 4:52 (7 Nov. 1924), 1248-56
‘The Pudding’, Sketch, 128:1663 (17 Dec. 1924), 602
‘The Day of the Building Lots’, Detective Magazine, 5:55 (19 Dec. 1924), 234-38
‘The Day of the Onions’, Detective Magazine, 5:58 (30 Jan. 1925), 566-72
‘The Day of the Rich Uncle’, Detective Magazine, 5:60 (27 Feb. 1925), 777-83
‘The Day of the Near-Hooch’, Detective Magazine, 5:61 (13 Mar. 1925), 825-31
‘The Day of the Little God’, Detective Magazine, 5:63 (10 Apr. 1925), 1041-49
‘The Day of the Jewel Case’, Detective Magazine, 5:64 (24 Apr. 1925), 1125-31
