#

This article draws on a pamphlet entitled Coach Tour of Joseph Conrad’s Homes in Kent by Borys Conrad. Written by Joseph Conrad’s eldest son, the pamphlet was issued in 1974, just four years before its author’s death. It is a charming production, comprised of only eight leaves, in light blue paper wraps with the Nałęcz coat of arms to the front panel, and contains six photographic plates – five being of Conrad’s homes, and another of the man himself. It is interesting to read the pamphlet in Borys’s voice, being so accustomed to the narrative voices of his father – it becomes detached, but remains intimate, and makes for fine reading.

Pent Farm, Postling
The very first page, after the contents of course, is concerned with “the second home” Conrad occupied after his marriage – Pent Farm in Postling, near Hythe.¹ Pent Farm was the former residence of Ford Madox Hueffer, who was there from 1897-1898, and from whom Joseph Conrad and Jessie George took over the tenancy. (Interestingly, at the time of writing, the property is for sale with an asking price of £1,500,000). A beautiful cottage, the lintel of Pent Farm once contained a quotation, reputedly by Walter Crane, which read:

Want we not for board or tent
While overhead we have the Pent

Borys writes that the quote “remained there until some six or seven years ago [from 1974] when some over-enthusiastic house decorator obliterated the inscription”.² As one will see if they choose to search for the property listing, the “grapevine which grew over it no longer exist[s]”, but despite this, the house has remained almost untouched – inscription and grapevine aside.³

Pent Farm is supposed to be associated with many of Conrad’s key works, such as Youth (1898), The Heart of Darkness (1899), Lord Jim (1900), Typhoon (1902), Nostromo (1904) and The Secret Agent (1907) to say a few. A lesser known work, The End of the Tether (1902) is included later by Borys, as a work which “was partly destroyed by fire when the glass bowl of [his] father’s table lamp burst and set fire to the manuscripts on his writing table”.⁴ Despite this, it would be collected in Youth, A Narrative and Two Other Stories in 1902.

The author reports that many literary figures visited Pent Farm, including John Galsworthy, H. G. Wells, William Rothstein, Henry James, R. B. Cunningham Graham and numerous others. The family remained at the house until 1907, when Jessie George grew and when the advent of John Conrad “made it necessary to seek a larger house”.⁵

Capel House, Orlestone, Nr. Ashford
The Conrad family then moved, in 1910, to Capel House, Orlestone, which was “undoubtedly the happiest of the Conrad homes”.⁶ Borys remarks that had it not been for the death of the landlord, Mr. Edmund Oliver, “and the fact that, the late Sir Roland Oliver (at that time Roland Oliver, K.C.) wanted the house for his own immediate use”, it might have been the place where Joseph ended his days.⁷ The family lived at Capel House until March 1919, for the entire period of the First World War.

Capel House, at the time of Borys’s writing, was virtually unchanged, with the exception of “a monstrous extension to it quite out of keeping with the architecture of the original house”.⁸ It was, at least in the nineteen seventies, a home for retired members of the legal profession, endowed by Sir Roland Oliver.

The property fuelled Joseph’s love of the motorcar, by association with Reginald Percival Gibbon, who would visit on a twin-cylinder motorcycle; whilst at Capel, Conrad bought his first car – “a second-hand single-cylinder 12-horsepower Cadillac”.⁹ It was a “sturdy and reliable little machine” which both Jessie and Joseph learned to drive, and it would enable many family adventures.¹⁰

There were, as at Pent Farm, many visitors to Capel. These included Sir Sidney Darke, Hugh Walpole, Jean-Aubry, Norman Douglas and Stephen Reynolds to name just a few. It held many happy memories for the Conrads, who witnessed many seismic world events from its walls. It was a happy home.

Spring Grove, Wye, Nr. Ashford
They then occupied Spring Grove in Wye, which is approximately four miles northwest of Ashford town centre. Those versed on English preparatory schools will know that Spring Grove is now Spring Grove School for ages two to eleven.

The Conrad family arrived at Spring Grove in March 1919, as a short-term address between renovations at Oswalds. It was lent by Captain Halsey, R.N., for just six months. Despite the short occupancy, it posed yet another happy home.

The building, according to Borys Conrad, was “far bigger than […] needed”, and that there were “always parties” which posed a happy salve to his recent release from a “shell shock hospital”.¹¹

It was also here that the family acquired their “first really high performance car”, a “four-cylinder 30-horse-power Cadillac”.¹² It was very roomy, and to be a sure companion in the move from Spring Grove to Joseph Conrad’s final home, Oswalds, which “actually took place during an industrial strike”, causing the family “great difficulty in organising” the move.¹³

Oswalds, Bishopsbourne, Nr. Canterbury
Oswalds in Bishopsbourne would be Joseph Conrad’s final home – and not just in Kent. The Conrad family moved to Oswalds immediately after Spring Grove on August 19th, 1919, the very same month that The Arrow of Gold was published.

Joseph Conrad often complained that Oswalds was “down in a hole” and isolated from local life, despite being just twenty minutes from Canterbury, and just ten from the North Downs.¹⁴ Despite this, he was “happy there on the whole” and would entertain lavishly, with his many friends and visitors finding the house favourable.¹⁵

The house has changed greatly in appearance since the nineteen twenties. Half of the building has “been knocked down”, but at the time of Borys’s writing, the owners were “trying to restore it to its original glory”.¹⁶ The three beautiful walled gardens, however, could not be recreated.

The family lived at Oswalds for five happy years, but on August 3rd, 1924, their happiness would soon lapse. Borys Conrad’s pamphlet speaks very little about his father’s death, so I would like to quote Jocelyn Baines’s biography to complete the narrative:

the Borys Conrad family and John Conrad arrived for a Bank Holiday visit which had already been arranged. Conrad had a bad night, but seemed a little better in the early morning, and Jessie, who was in the next room, remembered him having called out to her at about six: ‘You Jess, I am better this morning. I can always get a rise out of you.’ At eight-thirty he was dead.¹⁷

References