Stephen Hudson was the pseudonym Schiff used for his novels. We excerpt from Richard Kurt (1920) to get a sense of his prose:
"He would have had to come back eventually when Elinor returned, and what would his life have been then? What would it be now, supposing he made a superhuman effort and gave her up? What was the good of deceiving himself? He knew that there was not a ray of happiness, not a moment's contentment, to be got out of the empty shell of his married existence. He realised now that all this beauty and charm of scene, all the idle luxury of his life, had only made its emptiness more apparent. That idea, the seeking an objective cure for a subjective malady, the creating of an atmosphere of happiness out of material things, the building of a shrine for the worship of nothinginess, was the greatest illusion of all. As he pursued his way downwards he no longer looked about him for pleasing evidences of Elinor's creative taste. His feeling towards Aquafonti was ripening into something near akin to hate.
"Richard found Elinor and Robinson having tea in the wintergarden. Richard saw at a glance that she was in a bad temper and that the little painter was uncomfortably aware of it. His face lightened when Richard sat down and accepted the cup passed to him by his wife, who did not look up and preserved a stony silence.
"Where's Jason?" he asked, more to break the embarrassment than because he wanted to know.
"Robinson, seeing that Elinor made no sign of replying, answered:
"He stopped at Scapa with Lady Daubeny and Mrs Prothero. Lovely place it looked. To tell the truth, I hoped Mrs Kurt would call, so that I could see it."
"He stopped, looking again at Elinor and then at her husband.
"And I told you, Why don't you go on?"
"Robinson fidgeted. His self-inflicted social discipline dictated unwilling reticence, but he was longing to know what underlay his hostess's resentment of Mrs Rafferty.
"Elinor cast a withering glance at him and fire leapt into her eyes.
"He needn't be so mealy-mouthed. I told him old Rafferty is a spiteful old cat, and I hate her, and I wouldn't go to see her if she begged me to on her knees."
"Richard was thinking that there was little enough likelihood of that. Robinson's look said: "There, now."
"And," went on Elinor recklessly, "I consider it vile form of Jason to go there. I ask his friends here to please him, take them up the lake and then, if you please, they calmly leave me alone and go off to call on a woman I'm not on speaking terms with. Charming guests!"
"Richard was exceedingly bored. Time was when he would have been humiliated by his wife's lack of dignity, but he had ceased to care. And yet he hankered to smooth things over, to let her down as easily as circumstances permitted.
"You mustn't be so hard on Jason," he interposed. "Mrs Rafferty asked him to come the other morning when she was calling on his friends. I got let in for luncheon at Hohenthal's at the same time. One can't sometimes get out of things."
''Can't one? I can when I choose. Not that I in the least care. He's welcome to live with Mrs Rafferty for the rest of his life. Thank goodness he's going soon, and I sha'n't be bored with his rotten playing and his mooning sentimentality."
"With this she gathered together her gold bag and other rattling objects and sailed out of the room.
"I'm sorry Mrs Kurt's so annoyed," Robinson was beginning, but Richard stopped him. He could put up with the scene, but the sympathy of this little outsider was unbearable."
Sydney Schiff also drew. This link has pictures of some of his renderings, including one titled "Curiosity Killed the Cat".
It is for the people he knew, and the artists he helped, that we remember Stephen Schiff.
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