Stephen Hudson is the pen name of Sydney Schiff (1868-1944), an
English novelist who received acclaim in the 1920s and 1930s from
such writers as Thomas Mann and Somerset Maugham. Since that time,
however, literary tastes have changed, and interest in Hudson's
work has diminished. That Hudson's novels do not deserve such
obscurity is the belief of Theophilus E. M. Boll, who here
introduces one of the best of them, Richard, Myrtle and I, to
present-day readers. Boll's biographical and critical sections
contain, respectively, the first authentic account of Hudson's
life, and the first comprehensive study of the development and the
meaning of his art as novelist and short-story writer. The two
-part introduction adds a wholly new section to the history of the
English novel in the twentieth century and to the history of
literary relationships between the Continent and England. In
telling the story of a marriage of minds and the literary
consequences it produced, Boll places the form and content of
Hudson's art against the background of his particular experiences.
The novel Richard, Myrtle and I, which forms the second half of
this volume, is clearly representative of Stephen Hudson's best
work. It is largely autobiographical in its main theme: the
evolution of Stephen Hudson as novelist. Newly edited by Violet
Schiff, the Myrtle in the story, it is a blend of realism and
allegory that tells how a strong creative impulse and encouragement
from a sympathetic wife make it possible for a sensitive and
perceptive man to become a creative artist. Appraising his own
work, Stephen Hudson once remarked, "I have never had any desire to
write for the sake of writing and I am devoid of ambition. I have
accumulated a quantity of vital experience which remains in a state
of flux. Continuously passing in and out of my consciousness it
demands to be sorted out and synthesized. When the chaos becomes
unbearable I start writing and go on until the congestion is
relieved." Referring to this passage, Boll comments, "We ought not
to misunderstand that modesty of his. It was based on a pride that
aimed at perfection because nothing lower was worth aiming at.
After the labor of creating was over, Hudson measured what he had
done against what he judged to be supremely great; any lower
standard meant a concession his pride would not make." It is in
Richard, Myrtle and I that Stephen Hudson came closest, perhaps, to
his unattainable goal.
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