Stephen Hudson

Stephen Hudson (1868 – 29 October 1944) is a pseudonym of the British novelist and translator Sydney Schiff, whose work was published in the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s. With a substantial income from his commercially successful family, Schiff was a patron of the arts, with friendships in the musical, artistic and literary circles of England and France.

Life and career

Schiff was born in London, the illegitimate child of Alfred George Schiff (c.1840–1908), a stockbroker, and Caroline Mary Ann Eliza Cavell, née Scates (1842–c.1896). The precise date of his birth is unknown, although his family celebrated his birthday on 12 December. After schooling at Wellington College he worked in Canada and the US, where he met Marion Canine, whom he married in 1889. The marriage was unsuccessful and ended in separation and eventually (1911) divorce.

With a substantial income from his wealthy family, Schiff turned to patronage of the arts and to writing fiction. He published his first novel, Concessions (1913) under his own name, but for his later books he took the pen name Stephen Hudson. In 1911 he married for the second time. His second wife was Violet Zillah Beddington (1874–1962). She had earlier (1896) been wooed unsuccessfully by the composer Arthur Sullivan, and Hudson used elements of that relationship in his 1925 novel Myrtle.

Schiff divided his time mostly between London and the south of France. He was the host at a celebrated party in Paris on 18 May 1922, when Marcel Proust met James Joyce (without the slightest rapport); other guests included Sergei Diaghilev, Igor Stravinsky and Pablo Picasso. The occasion was the first night of Stravinsky's Renard. Schiff tried unsuccessfully to get Picasso to paint a portrait of Proust.