Lindsay Bashford

The son of Frederick Bashford, Lindsay Bashford was born on 6 February 1881 in London. His brother Henry Howarth Bashford was a physician and novelist. He was educated at Bedford Modern School, at schools in Germany, at the University of Edinburgh and the Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques in Paris.^[1]

In 1902, Bashford was appointed Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Bordeaux, a position he held for just one year.^[1] In the summer of 1903 Joseph Pulitzer, bibliophile and owner of the New York World, had established himself at Etretat in Normandy and was advertising for a new member of his secretariat. In July 1903 Bashford successfully applied for the position. Pulitzer was by all accounts a demanding and irascible man; the previous incumbent had requested a transfer due to the tensions of working daily with his employer. One well qualified candidate had been discarded for having "an anxious and worried expression", and another for being a noisy walker and Bashford did well to survive for over a year in the job.^[2]

In 1905 he returned to England and took up a position as a reporter on The Daily News, and in 1906 he was appointed the new Literary Editor of the Daily Mail.^[1] Alfred Harmsworth wanted Bashford to exploit the interest in Literature amongst the growing ranks of the British middle-classes through commissioning the best writers of the day, including Thomas Hardy and Joseph Conrad, to contribute to the paper. Conrad regularly complained to Bashford about the late or non-payment of fees, and the trivial and undemanding nature of the books he was expected to review, and the two kept up a lively correspondence; for example, this undated letter from 1912 or 1913:

Dear Mr Bashford

I am immensely flattered by your invitation to fill up the cracks in the Silly Season. But I haven't by me the kind of putty that would suit the taste of your readers. The article I keep is much too expensive for the dear old impecunious Daily Mail. The sight of virtue struggling with adversity is always touching, but all I can contribute is a tear-till that little matter of five pounds owing me for an article is settled either by a cheque or by a plain statement of an inability to pay which I could leave amongst my papers as a document pour servir for the secret history of our times.

Yours Truly

J. Conrad^[3]

Lindsay Bashford had three of his own novels published: Everybody's Boy (1912), Splendrum (1914) and Cupid in the Car (1914).^[1] The latter, a story of romantic misadventures during a motoring holiday in France, was enjoyed by the reviewer at Punch.^[4]