Joseph Conrad, the Polish-born novelist and creator of Lord Jim, lived for some years in Stanford-le-Hope.

ALEX MORROWSMITH delves into this surprising piece of literary history

It is a truth largely unacknowledged in Essex that a man in possession of a good story or two might be in need of a place to settle down and write.

Following on from this parody of one of the best introductions in the English language you might be right in thinking that Stanford-le-Hope is not the kind of place given to putting up Blue Plaques to the great and the good

Little hope, then, to find anything in Stanford that venerates its most famous one-time resident - Josef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, aka Joseph Conrad, Polish born but British novelist. It's a missed opportunity for interesting those who pass through the town.

Joseph, scion of a noble Polish family - French was his second language, while English was a late third - was a man of many parts. Before putting pen to paper Joseph's earlier years had spanned a career as master mariner, gun-runner and participant in the Scramble for Africa in the shape of an unsuccessful expedition to the Congo.

Financial disaster struck Conrad in July 1896 when the bankruptcy of a South African gold mining company put paid to an inheritance of 15,000 roubles - and saw Conrad's expedient move to Essex with his new English bride, Jessie.

He became a British subject and settled in Stanford to hone and extend his skills as a writer. It was here he finished The Nigger of the Narcissus and got on with Heart of Darkness, which was retold with a Vietnam War setting in Francis Ford Coppola's film Apocalypse Now.

It's a common belief that the novel's sense of isolation and moral decline in a strange and hostile environment owes much to Conrad's experiences in the Congo - a far cry from urban Stanford-le-Hope.

He chose that particular place to be near a lifetime friend from Merchant Navy days, G F W Hope. It was to him that Conrad later dedicated the novel Lord Jim.

The Conrads settled in September 1896 into a newly-built modest semi at the end of Victoria Street - now Victoria Road - which still runs down to the railway station.

At that time, Stanford-le-Hope was described as a dreary village a few miles inland from the Thames Estuary among the Essex mud flats.

Clearly not content with his down-turn in fortunes, Conrad regarded his house as a "damned jerry-built rabbit hutch...not room in this blamed hole to swing a cat."

Five months in the confines of Victoria Street put him off town life for good and from then on he immersed himself deep in the country.

On March 13, 1897 the Conrads moved to Ivy Walls, a 15th century farmhouse situated outside Stanford-le-Hope and costing the Conrads the princely rent of £28 a year. This more comfortable home had an orchard and was protected from the wind off Mucking Flats by elms and limes.

Conrad echoes Dickens in his description of his bit of Essex. Stanford-le-Hope lies across the Thames Estuary from Cooling in Kent, where Dickens set the start of Great Expectations among the tiny plague victims' graves in Cooling churchyard.

The Thames could be seen from the second floor window. Conrad described the setting in the Heart of Darkness and in the Mirror of the Sea: "The estuary of the Thames is not beautiful; it has no noble features, no romantic grandeur of aspect, no smiling geniality, but it is wide open, spacious, inviting, hospitable at first glance, with a strange air of mysteriousness."

Ivy Walls was also the birthplace of Conrad's eldest son, Alfred Borys, in 1898. A second son, John Alexander was born elsewhere in 1906.

The Conrad's rented farmhouse - now Ivy Walls House - is still there, cut off from Rainbows End Leisure Centre and Public House by high walls and gates with push button entryphones.

Beware of the Dog notices are in evidence and in the forecourt is one of those convoy-type truck power units as driven by Burt Reynolds in the film Smokey and the Bandit.

Conrad's tenure in Essex ended in October 1898 after he met fellow author Ford Madox Ford - a literary friendship that had the greatest impact on his later work.

Ford sublet to the Conrads his rented house - Pent Farm in Postling, Kent - some three miles north west off the sea at Hythe.

It might have seemed apposite for the old seadog to settle by the sea but Conrad was not content.

Like his character Captain Allistoun in the Nigger of the Narcissus, he ..."wished to end his days in a little house, with a plot of land - far in the country - out of sight of the sea."

Conrad never again lived in Essex.

Reluctant resident - Joseph Conrad, author and Essex dweller

(Right) Suburban lifestyle - when Conrad lived here, Victoria Road was called Victoria Street. From here he moved to Ivy Walls, where his first son was born

Picture: ROBIN WOOSEY

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.