Profession: novelist

Galsworthy was a passenger on a ship Conrad was first mate of: Conrad took the opportunity to discuss his first novel, still in progress. James was a neighbour, Wells a correspondent, and Ford collaborated on two books. Valéry met him when he came to inaugurate a plaque on Verlaine’s London lodgings, and later had a ‘maritime discussion’ with him. Epstein stayed with him while modelling a portrait bust. Bennett, Kipling, Crane and Lawrence (who called him “a giant of the subjective”) were all friends. He only met Russell a few times, but they felt a deep affinity, Russell naming his son Conrad after him.

His friend Cummings and he volunteered as WWI ambulance drivers. Cendrars and Léger were good Paris café-haunting friends — he and Léger talked endlessly, and he translated Cendrars into English, though found himself landed with Tzara’s café bill. Hemingway and he went to cycle-races together, survived a car-crash, but split bitterly over events in civil-war Spain (he had gone to help Hemingway and Ivens make a film, and met his kindred spirit Orwell.) He wrote an introduction to his friend Grosz’s drawings, and was acqainted with Faulkner and Fitzgerald (influencing both), Rivera, Picasso and Goncharova.

Gray was his schoolfriend; though temperamentally incompatible, they went on the Grand Tour together (Walpole’s pet spaniel was taken by an alpine wolf in broad daylight), and split after a quarrel. Walpole frequented d’Holbach’s intellectual salon in Paris, and called on Pringle and Franklin there too. He met Montagu in Florence and wrote uncomplementarily about her. Adam helped Walpole remodel interiors at Strawberry Hill. Sloane was a correspondent. Chatterton sent some writing to him, asked for help and was rebuffed, causing Walpole much anguish after Chatterton’s untimely death.

Balzac and Daumier were friends and early professional colleagues, provincials in Paris of a short thickset build. Heine was among his parisian friends; Balzac dedicated a novel to him. Balzac wasn’t particularly close to Hugo, another dedicatee, but they stayed friends for life, with Hugo visiting as Balzac was dying, and reading an oration at his funeral. Andersen visited him when he came to Paris. Sand visited him to take ice-cream; when he went to stay with her, he found her smoking a cigar by the fireside. He dedicated a short story to Berlioz, and lent the composer his fur coat for the long icy sleigh-ride to St Petersburg.