Double Trouble: The Hueffer Brothers and the Artistic Temperament

Abstract

Oliver Madox Hueffer has achieved only footnote fame in literary history as the younger brother of Ford Madox Ford. Yet such near oblivion was the last fate that family friend Olive Garnett would have expected from the larger-than-life character she described in her diary. No one understands him, no one knows whether he will be hanged, or become a person, she commented on March 23, 1893, as if certain that Hueffer's devil-may-care attitude would earn him long-term notoriety of one stripe or another.2 The now largely forgotten Hueffer once cast himself in many ways as Ford's double, pursuing an erratic career and becoming involved in financial and sexual exploits resembling Ford's to the point where certain plot details in Hueffer's novels could be loosely based on the life of either brother. Yet Hueffer also chose a different literary niche than Ford. Best known as a novelist and war correspondent, he wrote many newspaper and journal articles; had several plays produced; and published four books of non-fiction, one volume of short stories, and twelve novels, five of them under the pseudonym Jane Wardle. Preoccupied with adventure rather than the quest for literary immortality that drove his brother, Hueffer never quite became a great person in his own right. His obituary in the New York Times of June 23, 1931, for instance, identifies him as a writer, but thereafter as Brother of Ford Madox Ford and Grandson of F.M. Brown, Artist.3