JOSEPH CONRAl)’S HOMES IN KENT With photographs of the houses as they were in his time and some biographical notes by Borys Conrad Copyright Borys Conrad 1974 'i ,- ..; |”I.qHIIqI ‘ CONTENTS PENT FARM, POSTLING, NR. HYTHE 1898-1907 CAPBL HOUSE, ORLESTONE, NR. ASHFORD June I910-—-Mafch 1919 SPRING GROVE, WYE, NR. ASHFORD March—September 1919 “OswALDs”, BISHOPSBOURNE, NR. CANTERBURY September 1919—August 1924 I898 I907 PENT FARM Postling, Nr. Hythe This old farmhouse was the second home which my parents occupied after their marriage. (The first - Ivy Walls in Essex — was bulldozed out of existence some years ago to make room for urban development.) The house itself is virtually unchanged in appearance except for the fact that the wooden porch over the front door and the grapevine which grew over it no longer exist, and the big washhouse which was built on to the back of the main building has been demolished, as also has the outside toilet — a building of considerable size providing accommodation for two adults an-d one child and situated about twenty yards away from the house along an uneven brick pathway. The original farm buildings are also unhappily no longer in existence; in particular, the old tithe barn, reputed to have been one of the finest in England, was burned down some years ago; and the granary situated quite close to the house on four stone pedestals — to protect the grain from the depradations of rats ~— has also disappeared. The tenancy of the house was taken over by my parents from Ford Madox Hueifer. On the lintel over the front door were written in script the following words: “Want we not for board or rent While overhead we have the Pent.” The author of this couplet was reputed to have been Walter Crane, but whether it was written there by him during Hueffer’s tenancy or whether Crane himself lived there at some earlier period, I do not know. It remained there until some six or seven years ago when some over-enthusiastic house decorator obliterated the inscription. The tenant at that time promised me that he would have it restored but unhappily this has not been done. Pent Farm Books associated with the Pent are: “Youth”, “The Heart of Darkness”, “Lord Jim”, “Tales of Unrest”, “Nostromo”, “Typhoon”, “The Secret Agent”, “Chance” and “The Mirror of the Sea”. Among the books listed above should be included “The End of the Tether” which was partly destroyed by fire when the glass bowl of my father’s table lamp burst and set fire to the manuscript on his writing table. Among the many people who visited my father at the Pent were: John Galswort-hy, who stayed with us from time to time for several days; Edward Garnett; H. G. Wells; William Rothenstein; Stephen Crane, who was a very close friend of my father’s up till the time of his premature death and who presented me with my first dog as soon as he had learned of my birth; R. B. Cunningham Graham; Mr. Fountain Hope, my father’s first English friend; Henry James; Sidney Darke; W. H. Hudson; Sir Hugh Clifford, later Governor of the Gold Coast; and Roger Casement, the Irish patriot, who my father first met during his Congo experience and who was later hanged as a traitor at the beginning of the 1914-18 War. Major A. J. Dawson and his brother Ernest also made their first appearance on the family scene, and caused a consider- able stir so far as my father and I were concerned owing to the fact that they arrived on a mechanically propelled vehicle known as a “Tri-car” upon which the passenger sat on a sort of bathchair seat in front and the driver sat on a saddle at the back. It was this visit which 1 think aroused my father’s interest in motor cars, which quickly became almost as great as my own, and it was not long before he had arranged with a garage in Ashford to hire a car occasionally, in which we had some hair-raising adventures, from all of which we miraculously escaped unscathed. I believe we all regretted leaving Pent Farm but my mother’s increasing incapacity and the advent of my small brother made it necessary to seek a larger house. June 1910 March 1919 CAPEL HOUSE Orlestone, Nr. Ashford 1 think that this was undoubtedly the happiest of the Conrad homes and one in which J .C. might well have ended his days had it not been for the death of our landlord, Mr. Edmund Oliver, and the fact that his son, the late Sir Roland Oliver (at that time Roland Oliver, K.C.) wanted the house for his own immediate use and gave us six months’ notice. Capel was thus the family home d-uring the whole of the 1914-18 War period and saw the beginning of many close friendships. Although the house itself is virtually unchanged in appearance, Roland Oliver added a monstrous extension to it quite out of keeping with the architecture of the original house and which completely overshadows it, rather giving it the appearance of being a sort of annexe to the extension, but the surroundings are the same as they were in the days when we lived there. Cape] House is now a home for retired members of the legal profession endowed by the late Sir Roland Oliver. First among the many friendships which grew and matured during our Capel period was that with Reginald Perceval Gibbon, of which unhappily very little information remains available. This is quite simply due to the fact that shortly after the end of the 1914-18 War, Gibbon decided, for family reasons, to remove himself to the Channel Islands, where he died in 1926. His widow remained there and is in fact still living there. At the time of the German Occupation of the Islands during the Second World War the German-s turned her out of her cottage which was close to the beach and burned it to the ground, allowing her no time to remove any of her possessions except what she was able to snatch up and put into her handibag before being ejected. When she Capel House returned a few days later to view the smouldering ruins of her home she found that everything had been completely destroyed, including the big trunk in which Gibbon had kept all his manuscripts and documents and also a big bundle of letters which he had received from J.C. There was nothing whatever which it was possible to salvage. By the time we moved to Cape], Gibbon had acquired a powerful twin-cylinder motor cycle, upon which he used to come and see us, and upon which he used to take me for rides on the pillion, to my delight and to my parents’ considerable anxiety. I think it was the fact of Gibbon’s acquisition of a motor cycle, and the periodic appearance of the Dawson brothers on their Tri-car, which finally induced my fat-her to take the plunge and buy a car himself. It was a secondhand single-cylinder 12-horse-power Cadillac, a sturdy and reliable little machine which both my parents learned to drive, in spite of my mother’s disability, and I also learned to drive despite the fact that I was only 11 years old. The fact that I was still three years too young to hold even a motor-cycle licence did not seem to cause my father any concern, We had many adventures with this little car, from which we managed to escape unscathed despite the fact that my father drove it into a ditch on several occasions, and also into the back of a farm cart, as a result of which we all got buried in hay with which the cart was loaded but otherwise uninjured. All our Pent Farm friends continued to visit us, as we were still living in the same area, being only about eight miles from the Pent. Another close friend about whom very little information is available was Arthur Marwood, who lived only a few miles away and with whom J.C. exchanged weekly visits. Other Visitors were Sir Sidney Darke, Hugh Walpole, Jean-Aubry, Stephen Reynolds and Norman Douglas, and Richard Curle. Other very close friends were Lady Millais and her son Sir John Millais, grandson of the artist. It was here too that we made the acquaintance of Warrington Dawson who paid us many visits and even hired a cottage in the neighbourhood in order to be near at hand. Andre Gide and Valery Larbaud - two of J.C’s. French friends — also used to come over and see us whilst at Cape]. A lady named Miss Agnes Tobin, who I believed to have had something to do with putting J.C. in touch with John Quinn, who eventually bought a number of his manuscripts, also put in an appearance from time to time. It was in 1912 that our circle of friends was increased by two. They were a young Polish partiot — about twenty-six at that time —— whose name was Joseph Retinger, and his wife who was undoubtedly the most beautiful girl I ever remember seeing in my life. They became very close friends of ours and accompanied us on our visit to Poland in 1914. In fact we were to have stayed at the country home of Mrs. Retinger’s parents for three months’ holiday. Their estate was several miles on the Russian side of the Austro—Russian border but the war caught up with us while we were in Cracow and put an end to our plans. Capel House witnessed my departure to join the Thames Nautical Training College, H.M.S. Worcester; our departure for a holiday in Poland on the eve of the 1914-18 War, from which we eventually managed to escape and return to England in November 1914; my entry into the Army in 1915; and my eventual discharge from hospital at the beginning of 1919. March I919 September I919 SPRING GROVE Wye, Nr. Ashford This house was lent to us furnished by a certain Captain Halsey, R.N., in order that we should "have a roof over our heads whilst we were waiting for ‘Oswalds’ to become avail- able. It was a very big house, far bigger than we needed, and there were always parties, which were augmented to a certain extent by young friends of mine because I had just been finally released from a shell shock hospital. Although still far from well I enjoyed the opportunity of having some of my former war-time companions to stay with me from time to time. The usual circle of friends came and went rather more frequently than usual, and Pinker — my father’s agent — was a frequent visitor, as he was occupied at that time with J .C. in writing a filmscript of his story “Gaspar Ruiz” which was to have borne the title of “The Strong Man”. Jean-Aubry, who was to be his biographer, was also a frequent visitor at that time. There were also two American ladies who, so far as I know, had no connection with literature. I don’t really know who introduced them into our circle of friends. They were Mrs. Grace Willard and her daughter Catherine; they used to stay for quite long periods and were both quite charming. Catherine had ambitions to become an actress and J .C., whose book “Victory” was at that time being dramatised by Macdonald Hastings, made determined attempts to get her a part in the play, but without success. As to the young lady’s mother, apart from looking decorative about the house and being a companion for my mother, she seemed to spend most of her time searching for odd pieces of furniture in the local shops in Hythe, Folkestone and Canterbury, and persuading J .C. to buy them for ‘Oswalds’. S-he even succeeded in persuad~ ing him to buy a grand piano. My mother had been able to play the piano quite well in -her youth but, with her stiff leg Spring Grove (Showing the Study window) having to be propped up on a stool, she now had to sit side- ways at the instrument, and she also had in her youth lost the use of one little finger by getting it trapped in a venetian blind, so really the piano was not going to be of very much use. However, as will be seen later, that piano gave an enormous amount of pleasure to both my parents after it had eventually come to rest in the drawing room at ‘Oswalds’. It was at Spring Grove that we acquired our first really high performance car, much to my delight, which I think was also shared by my father who, although he did not attempt to drive the vehicle, greatly enjoyed speed. It was a fourcylinder 30-horse-power Cadillac, and the grandest car that we had ever owned. Moreover, it was very roomy, both in the front and in the rear, and my mother was for the first time since the old single-cylinder Cadillac days able to sit in the front seat with me, which gave her great pleasure. The move from Spring Grove to ‘Oswalds’ actually took place during an industrial strike and we had great difficulty in organising it; in fact I had to borrow a farm truck from a farmer friend of mine and enlist voluntary labour from here and there, and we had to do the job ourselves. The brief stay at Spring Grove was a ‘happy time, both for my parents and for myself and my brother. On 25th November, 1919, J .C. finished “The Rescue” which he had begun 23 years and two months before, while on his honeymoon. September 1919 3rd August I 924 “ OSWALDS ” Bishopsbourne, Nr. Canterbury Although J.C. liked the house he did not like the situa- tion. He complained it was down in a hole, which to a certain extent was true although by getting into a car and driving for about ten minutes you could get right on top of the North Downs and be in sight of the sea within twenty minutes. However. that remained his criticism throughout the rest of his life. I think he was happy there on the whole. He enter- tained quite lavishly, especially his favourite luncheon parties. and all his friends liked the house. For my part I saw compar- atively little of it as I was by then wit-h the Daimler Company and stationed in Manchester for most of the time, although later I returned to London and was able to get home more frequently. ‘Oswalds’ is very much changed in appearance. Half or it has been knocked down and it has been converted from a Dower House attached to Bourne Park into a sort of nonde- script building, although I believe the present owners are trying to restore it to its original glory. They will, however, never be able to replace the three beautiful walled gardens which opened from one to the other and stretched right out into Bourne Park — there is no trace remaining of them now. We moved to ‘Oswalds’ on 19th August and “The Arrow of Gold” was published the same month: the rest of the year was mainly occupied in completing the dramatisation of “The Secret Agent”. J .C. soon settled down to having weekly luncheon parties at ‘Oswalds’ and in consequence it was some time before my mother got the whole of the house arranged to ‘her satisfaction, and almost immediately after this she had to go to Liverpool for yet another operation which was carried out at the private nursing home of her surgeon, Sir Robert Jones. “Oswalds” In 1920 my parents decided to spend part of the winter in Corsica and were joined there by J. B. Pinker and his wife, and J.C. and Pinker occupied part of their time in continuing working on the lilmscript of “Gaspar Ruiz”. J .C. also worked on “The Rover”. When they went to Corsica they took the car with them and I drove them around the Somme battle- fields and down as far as Rouen, where I handed over to the chauffeur and came back by train to return to my job. On their return the number of visitors seemed to increase. J.C’s. closest Polish relatives, Angela and Carola Zagorska; Richard Curle, J ean-Aubry and all the rest of the usual cro-Wd kept coming and going, but there was one very interesting addition to the circle of friends who was introduced by Warrington Dawson. This was John Powell, the young American pianist, and it was then that the baby grand piano came into its own. J.C. would sit by the hour in the big drawing room at ‘Oswalds’ (it had been built originally as a billiard room and is now demolis-hed) and listen to John Powell playing Chopin for him. I am deeply thankful that quite by coincidence I arrived home for a weekend with my wife and baby son the day before my father died and that my younger brother was also present. A snapshot of JOSEPH CONRAD AT “OswALDs” (Study window in background)